The circadian system alters thermoregulation depending on the time of day and feeding condition

The circadian rhythm of body temperature (Tb) is a well-known phenomenon. However, it is unknown how the circadian system affects thermoregulation. Food deprivation in mice induces a greater reduction of Tb particularly in the light phase. We examined the role of the clock gene and the suprachiasmatic nucleus (SCN) during induced hypothermia. At 20C with fasting, mice increased their metabolic heat production in the dark phase and maintained T~b~, whereas in the light phase, heat production was less, resulting in hypothermia. Under these conditions, neuronal activity in the SCN, assessed by cFos expression, increased only in the light phase. The differences between the phases in Clock mutant mice were less marked. The neural network between the SCN and paraventricular nucleus appeared to be important in hypothermia. These findings suggest that the circadian system per se is influenced by both the feeding condition and environmental temperature and that it modulates thermoregulation

Quantitative Temperature Dependence of Longitudinal Spin Seebeck Effect at High Temperatures

This article reports temperature-dependent measurements of longitudinal spin Seebeck effects (LSSEs) in Pt/Y$_3$Fe$_5$O$_{12}$ (YIG)/Pt systems in a high temperature range from room temperature to above the Curie temperature of YIG. The experimental results show that the magnitude of the LSSE voltage in the Pt/YIG/Pt systems rapidly decreases with increasing the temperature and disappears above the Curie temperature. The critical exponent of the LSSE voltage in the Pt/YIG/Pt systems at the Curie temperature was estimated to be 3, which is much greater than that for the magnetization curve of YIG. This difference highlights the fact that the mechanism of the LSSE cannot be explained in terms of simple static magnetic properties in YIG.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 1 tabl

Development of Multi-Agent Simulation Model for Evacuation from Landslide Disaster Area

Japan is a country which has many steep slopes along rivers. Therefore, the disasters due to landslide and mud flood have often occurred in mountainous urbanized areas. In rainy or typhoon season much rain triggers such disasters because of unusual rainfall. In these years those disasters have been increased in not only mountainous areas but also the housing area developed in the fringe of urban region newly. On the other hand, some of the nursing homes for aging people located in such disaster estimated areas. The people have also fallen victim to landslide disasters. So it has been important for a local government to build a comprehensive evacuation program of a large natural disaster. In this program, it is substantial to give appropriate information on human behavior for the evacuating time. In this study a new methodology based on behavior-oriented agent system should be discussed to develop. The production roles of the attributive groups were built in terms of the questionnaire survey on evacuation trips from damaged districts. Using the set of production rules composed of the questionnaire data, a multi-agent simulation model in a hypothetical landslide disaster was developed by a multi-agent system (MAS) method. An agent in this study is the person that can perceive its environment through sensors and decide the activities due to effectors. The multi-agent system was simulated in terms of evacuation from a damaged district to a safe shelter in Sapporo, Japan. It comes to the conclusion that the human behaviors and their interactions during the disaster impact were constructed by multi-agent simulation model and the possibility of the evacuation was found in view of both topographic and human attributive conditions