Ancient DNA reveals multiple origins and migration waves of extinct Japanese brown bear lineages.

Little is known about how mammalian biogeography on islands was affected by sea-level fluctuations. In the Japanese Archipelago, brown bears (Ursus arctos) currently inhabit only Hokkaido, the northern island, but Pleistocene fossils indicate a past distribution throughout Honshu, Japan's largest island. However, the difficulty of recovering ancient DNA from fossils in temperate East Asia has limited our understanding of their evolutionary history. Here, we analysed mitochondrial DNA from a 32 500-year-old brown bear fossil from Honshu. Our results show that this individual belonged to a previously unknown lineage that split approximately 160 Ka from its sister lineage, the southern Hokkaido clade. This divergence time and fossil record suggest that brown bears migrated from the Eurasian continent to Honshu at least twice; the first population was an early-diverging lineage (greater than 340 Ka), and the second migrated via Hokkaido after approximately 160 Ka, during the ice age. Thus, glacial-age sea-level falls might have facilitated migrations of large mammals more frequently than previously thought, which may have had a substantial impact on ecosystem dynamics in these isolated islands

Retroperitoneoscopic resection of a congenital adrenal teratoma in an infant

AbstractWe present a case of a 4-month-old boy with a congenital adrenal teratoma. A right suprarenal cystic mass was detected before birth. Ultrasonography at the age of one day showed a 20-mm suprarenal mass. No blood flow was observed in the mass. It decreased in size over the first ten days after birth, but subsequently increased in size during four months of follow-up. Imaging examinations showed that the mass changed from cystic to solid with areas of adipose tissue. Complete resection of the mass was performed retroperitoneoscopically with preservation of the right adrenal gland. Pathological examination showed a mature teratoma with no immature or malignant elements. There were no postoperative complications. With the growing use of ultrasonography during pregnancy, increasing numbers of neonates present for management of suprarenal masses. In the majority of cases, the mass is a congenital cystic neuroblastoma or adrenal hemorrhagic pseudocyst. Although congenital adrenal teratoma is extremely rare, it should be considered in the differential diagnosis of a neonatal suprarenal mass

Phylogeographic and Demographic Analysis of the Asian Black Bear (Ursus thibetanus) Based on Mitochondrial DNA.

The Asian black bear Ursus thibetanus is widely distributed in Asia and is adapted to broad-leaved deciduous forests, playing an important ecological role in the natural environment. Several subspecies of U. thibetanus have been recognized, one of which, the Japanese black bear, is distributed in the Japanese archipelago. Recent molecular phylogeographic studies clarified that this subspecies is genetically distantly related to continental subspecies, suggesting an earlier origin. However, the evolutionary relationship between the Japanese and continental subspecies remained unclear. To understand the evolution of the Asian black bear in relation to geological events such as climatic and transgression-regression cycles, a reliable time estimation is also essential. To address these issues, we determined and analyzed the mt-genome of the Japanese subspecies. This indicates that the Japanese subspecies initially diverged from other Asian black bears in around 1.46Ma. The Northern continental population (northeast China, Russia, Korean peninsula) subsequently evolved, relatively recently, from the Southern continental population (southern China and Southeast Asia). While the Japanese black bear has an early origin, the tMRCAs and the dynamics of population sizes suggest that it dispersed relatively recently in the main Japanese islands: during the late Middle and Late Pleistocene, probably during or soon after the extinction of the brown bear in Honshu in the same period. Our estimation that the population size of the Japanese subspecies increased rapidly during the Late Pleistocene is the first evidential signal of a niche exchange between brown bears and black bears in the Japanese main islands. This interpretation seems plausible but was not corroborated by paleontological evidence that fossil record of the Japanese subspecies limited after the Late Pleistocene. We also report here a new fossil record of the oldest Japanese black bear from the Middle Pleistocene, and it supports our new evolutionary hypothesis of the Japanese black bear

Laryngotracheal separation for a type 4 laryngotracheoesophageal cleft with multiple significant malformations

AbstractLaryngotracheoesophageal cleft (LTEC) is an extremely rare congenital malformation that is difficult to treat. We present a female patient with type 4 LTEC associated with multiple significant malformations. She suffered from a severe asthma attack due to aspiration of saliva, and it was determined that she should undergo surgery for associated congenital heart disease as early as possible to ensure long-term survival. Therefore, we performed laryngotracheal separation with an end-tracheostomy to completely and immediately prevent aspiration. She was then able to undergo radical surgery for her congenital heart disease. She recovered well postoperatively, and long-term survival is expected

Development of Support Facilities for Exercising Arithmetical Word Problems in ITS

算数の文章題の問題解決においては，解法を同定するまでの過程が最も重要となる．従って，問題解決，問題生成，問題解説といったITSにおける問題演習支援のための基本機能を，解法の同定に関する支援を指向して設計・開発する必要がある．本論文では，問題解決モデルMIPSに基づいてこれら三つの基本機能をそれぞれ実現した．問題解決モジュール，問題生成モジュール，問題解説モジュール，について述べた．問題解決モジュールは，算数の文章題を解けるだけでなく，解法の同定過程に関する記述を生成することができる．また，問題生成モジュールは，解法の同定過程に関する指定に応じた問題を生成することができる．更に，問題解説モジュールは，解法の同定の支援を目的として，基本的な問題と応用問題の解法の同定に関する等価性を指摘する問題解説を生成することができる

Quantum criticality around metal-insulator transitions of strongly correlated electrons

Quantum criticality of metal-insulator transitions in correlated electron systems is shownto belong to an unconventional universality class with violation of Ginzburg-Landau-Wilson(GLW) scheme formulated for symmetry breaking transitions. This unconventionality arises from an emergent character of the quantum critical point, which appears at the marginal point between the Ising-type symmetry breaking at nonzero temperatures and the topological transition of the Fermi surface at zero temperature. We show that Hartree-Fock approximations of an extended Hubbard model on square latticesare capable of such metal-insulator transitions with unusual criticality under a preexisting symmetry breaking. The obtained universality is consistent with the scaling theory formulated for Mott transition and with a number of numerical results beyond the mean-field level, implying that the preexisting symmetry breaking is not necessarily required for the emergence of this unconventional universality. Examinations of fluctuation effects indicate that the obtained critical exponents remain essentially exact beyond the mean-field level. Detailed analyses on the criticality, containing diverging carrier density fluctuations around the marginal quantum critical point, are presented from microscopic calculations and reveal the nature as quantum critical "opalescence". Analyses on crossovers between GLW type at nonzero temperature and topological type at zero temperature show that the critical exponents observed in (V,Cr)2O3 and kappa-ET-type organic conductor provide us with evidences for the existence of the present marginal quantum criticality.Comment: 24 pages, 19 figure

Radial Spoke Proteins of \u3cem\u3eChlamydomonas\u3c/em\u3e Flagella

The radial spoke is a ubiquitous component of `9+2\u27 cilia and flagella, and plays an essential role in the control of dynein arm activity by relaying signals from the central pair of microtubules to the arms. The Chlamydomonas reinhardtii radial spoke contains at least 23 proteins, only 8 of which have been characterized at the molecular level. Here, we use mass spectrometry to identify 10 additional radial spoke proteins. Many of the newly identified proteins in the spoke stalk are predicted to contain domains associated with signal transduction, including Ca2+-, AKAP- and nucleotide-binding domains. This suggests that the spoke stalk is both a scaffold for signaling molecules and itself a transducer of signals. Moreover, in addition to the recently described HSP40 family member, a second spoke stalk protein is predicted to be a molecular chaperone, implying that there is a sophisticated mechanism for the assembly of this large complex. Among the 18 spoke proteins identified to date, at least 12 have apparent homologs in humans, indicating that the radial spoke has been conserved throughout evolution. The human genes encoding these proteins are candidates for causing primary ciliary dyskinesia, a severe inherited disease involving missing or defective axonemal structures, including the radial spokes

Cool core disturbed: Observational evidence for coexistence of sub-sonic sloshing gas and stripped shock-heated gas around the core of RX J1347.5-1145

RXJ1347.5-1145 (z = 0.451) is one of the most luminous X-ray galaxy clusters, which hosts a prominent cool core and exhibits a signature of a major merger. We present the first direct observational evidence for sub-sonic nature of sloshing motion of the cool core. We find that a residual X-ray image from the Chandra X-ray Observatory after removing the global emission shows a clear dipolar pattern characteristic of gas sloshing, whereas we find no significant residual in the Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect (SZE) image from the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA). We estimate the equation of state of perturbations in the gas from the X-ray and SZE residual images. The inferred velocity is 420 +310 -420 km s-1, which is much lower than the adiabatic sound speed of the intracluster medium in the core. We thus conclude that the perturbation is nearly isobaric, and gas sloshing motion is consistent with being in pressure equilibrium. Next, we report evidence for gas stripping of an infalling subcluster, which likely shock-heats gas to high temperature well in excess of 20 keV. Using mass distribution inferred from strong lensing images of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), we find that the mass peak is located away from the peak position of stripped gas with statistical significance of > 5{\sigma}. Unlike for the gas sloshing, the velocity inferred from the equation of state of the excess hot gas is comparable to the adiabatic sound speed expected for the 20 keV intracluster medium. All of the results support that the southeast substructure is created by a merger. On the other hand, the positional offset between the mass and the gas limits the self-interaction cross section of dark matter to be less than 3.7 h-1 cm2 g-1 (95% CL).Comment: 18 pages, 10 figures, accepted for publication in Ap