Home Location Estimation Using Weather Observation Data

We can extract useful information from social media data by adding the user's home location. However, since the user's home location is generally not publicly available, many researchers have been attempting to develop a more accurate home location estimation. In this study, we propose a method to estimate a Twitter user's home location by using weather observation data from AMeDAS. In our method, we first estimate the weather of the area posted by an estimation target user by using the tweet, Next, we check out the estimated weather against weather observation data, and narrow down the area posted by the user. Finally, the user's home location is estimated as which areas the user frequently posts from. In our experiments, the results indicate that our method functions effectively and also demonstrate that accuracy improves under certain conditions.Comment: The 2017 International Conference On Advanced Informatics: Concepts, Theory And Application (ICAICTA2017

ロバストな三次元表面性状用高速Ｍ推定ガウシアンフィルタの研究

Chukyo University（中京大学

Rice Nudix Hydrolase OsNUDX2 Sanitizes Oxidized Nucleotides

Nudix hydrolase (NUDX) hydrolyzes 8-oxo-(d)GTP to reduce the levels of oxidized nucleotides in the cells. 8-oxo-(d)GTP produced by reactive oxygen species (ROS) is incorporated into DNA/RNA and mispaired with adenine, causing replicational and transcriptional errors. Here, we identified a rice OsNUDX2 gene, whose expression level was increased 15-fold under UV-C irradiation. The open reading frame of the OsNUDX2 gene, which encodes 776 amino acid residues, was cloned into Escherichia coli cells to produce the protein of 100 kDa. The recombinant protein hydrolyzed 8-oxo-dGTP, in addition to dimethylallyl diphosphate (DMAPP) and isopentenyl diphosphate (IPP), as did Arabidopsis AtNUDX1; whereas the amino acid sequence of OsNUDX2 had 18% identity with AtNUDX1. OsNUDX2 had 14% identity with barley HvNUDX12, which hydrolyzes 8-oxo-dGTP and diadenosine tetraphosphates. Suppression of the lacZ amber mutation caused by the incorporation of 8-oxo-GTP into mRNA was prevented to a significant degree when the OsNUDX2 gene was expressed in mutT-deficient E. coli cells. These results suggest that the different substrate specificity and identity among plant 8-oxo-dGTP-hydrolyzing NUDXs and OsNUDX2 reduces UV stress by sanitizing the oxidized nucleotides

Quantum topology optimization of ground structures using noisy intermediate-scale quantum devices

To arrive at some viable product design, product development processes frequently use numerical simulations and mathematical programming techniques. Topology optimization, in particular, is one of the most promising techniques for generating insightful design choices. Topology optimization problems reduce to an NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem, where the combination of the existence or absence of the material at some positions is optimized. In this study, we examine the usage of quantum computers as a potential solution to topology optimization problems. The proposed method consists of two variational quantum algorithms (VQAs): the first solves the state equilibrium equation for all conceivable material configurations, while the second amplifies the likelihood of an optimal configuration in quantum superposition using the first VQA's quantum state. Several experiments, including a real device experiment, show that the proposed method successfully obtained the optimal configurations. These findings suggest that quantum computers could be a potential tool for solving topology optimization problems and they open the window to the near-future product designs.Comment: 16 pages, 6 figure

Latest research on acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) of penaeid shrimps

Acute hepatopancreatic necrosis disease (AHPND) is caused by unique strains of Vibrio parahaemolyticus (VPAHPND) and V. harveyi that have transferrable plasmid carrying the virulent PirAB-like toxin genes. The genomes of VPAHPND strains and V. harveyi from Thailand and Viet Nam, respectively, have been characterized by our group. The genome of VPAHPND strains from Mexico, Viet Nam, and China have also been studied by other groups. We have developed a conventional polymerase chain reaction (PCR) and loop-mediated isothermal amplification (LAMP) methods for the detection of AHPND using a primer set that targets the PirAB-like toxin genes of VPAHPND. We have characterized the toxin genes of VPAHPND strains and also constructed a recombinant plasmid (broad host range) carrying PirAB-like toxin genes. Non-VPAHPND strain N7 which does not carry the plasmid and strain FP11 which is carrying a plasmid not coding for the toxin genes were transformed with the plasmid carrying PirAB-like toxin genes. As a result, the transformed N7 and FP11 strains became virulent and killed whiteleg shrimp (Penaeus vannamei) similar to or at par with the virulence of VPAHPND strain. We then fed the whiteleg shrimp with commercial feed containing the formalin-killed VPAHPND strain. After 2 days of feeding, all of the whiteleg shrimp died. These results clearly indicate that the PirAB-like toxin is the virulence factor of VPAHPND. We have been investigating the virulence mechanism of the PirAB-like toxin produced by VPAHPND strains. First, we calculated the copy number of plasmid encoding the PirAB-like toxin genes of several VPAHPND strains. The copy number of the plasmid varied, ranging from 1 to 36 copies. Interestingly, VPAHPND strains carrying low copy number of plasmid were more virulent than VPAHPND strains carrying high copy number of the plasmid. These results imply that the copy number of toxin genes is not an important factor responsible for the degree of virulence of the VPAHPND strains. We are also studying other factors associated with the virulence of PirAB-like toxin. Likewise, we are developing prevention methods against AHPND including the use of formalin-killed cell vaccine, IgY additive in feed, and nano-bubble treatment of rearing water. This paper summarizes the current R&D on the disease

Short-Term Program on Three-Dimensional Printed Self-Help Devices for Occupational Therapy Students: A Pre-Post Intervention Study

Despite the increasing importance of digital fabrication, of which three-dimensional printing is an important aspect, educational programs in this area have not been fully developed. To utilize three-dimensional printing optimally, occupational therapists need to be familiar with this new technology, understand its scope of application, and possess certain levels of skills for producing. The purpose of this study was to examine the effectiveness of a short-term program for occupational therapy students to increase the acceptance of three-dimensional printed devices by acquiring the basic knowledge and skills of making three-dimensional printed self-help devices. The research involved an intervention study with a pre-post design. Participants comprised 112 entry-level occupational therapy students. The program consisted of two 90-minute sessions during 2019 and 2020. It included a three-part lecture series and two types of practice. The conducted pre-post questionnaires were structured into four categories: I. student profile; II. knowledge about digital fabrication technology; III. ideas and attitudes toward three-dimensional printed self-help devices; and IV. impressions and thoughts. After the program, the number of students who acquired basic knowledge of digital fabrication and who felt confident about making three-dimensional printed self-help devices significantly increased (p \u3c 0.05). The study suggested that the program was effective and assisted occupational therapy students to understand the usefulness of this new technology and be comfortable using it

Kernelized Back-Projection Networks for Blind Super Resolution

Since non-blind Super Resolution (SR) fails to super-resolve Low-Resolution (LR) images degraded by arbitrary degradations, SR with the degradation model is required. However, this paper reveals that non-blind SR that is trained simply with various blur kernels exhibits comparable performance as those with the degradation model for blind SR. This result motivates us to revisit high-performance non-blind SR and extend it to blind SR with blur kernels. This paper proposes two SR networks by integrating kernel estimation and SR branches in an iterative end-to-end manner. In the first model, which is called the Kernel Conditioned Back-Projection Network (KCBPN), the low-dimensional kernel representations are estimated for conditioning the SR branch. In our second model, the Kernelized BackProjection Network (KBPN), a raw kernel is estimated and directly employed for modeling the image degradation. The estimated kernel is employed not only for back-propagating its residual but also for forward-propagating the residual to iterative stages. This forward-propagation encourages these stages to learn a variety of different features in different stages by focusing on pixels with large residuals in each stage. Experimental results validate the effectiveness of our proposed networks for kernel estimation and SR. We will release the code for this work.Comment: The first two authors contributed equally to this wor

A RecA-mediated exon profiling method

We have developed a RecA-mediated simple, rapid and scalable method for identifying novel alternatively spliced full-length cDNA candidates. This method is based on the principle that RecA proteins allow to carry radioisotope-labeled probe DNAs to their homologous sequences, resulting in forming triplexes. The resulting complex is easily detected by mobility difference on electrophoresis. We applied this exon profiling method to four selected mouse genes as a feasibility study. To design probes for detection, the information on known exonic regions was extracted from public database, RefSeq. Concerning the potentially transcribed novel exonic regions, RNA mapping experiment using Affymetrix tiling array was performed. As a result, we were able to identify alternative splice variants of Thioredoxin domain containing 5, Interleukin1β, Interleukin 1 family 6 and glutamine-rich hypothetical protein. In addition, full-length sequencing demonstrated that our method could profile exon structures with >90% accuracy. This reliable method can allow us to screen novel splice variants from a huge number of cDNA clone set effectively