Octopamine regulates social behaviors between genetically unrelated ant queens.

In different tasks involving action perception, performance has been found to be facilitated when the presented stimuli were produced by the participants themselves rather than by another participant. These results suggest that the same mental representations are accessed during both production and perception. However, with regard to spoken word perception, evidence also suggests that listeners’ representations for speech reflect the input from their surrounding linguistic community rather than their own idiosyncratic productions. Furthermore, speech perception is heavily influenced by indexical cues that may lead listeners to frame their interpretations of incoming speech signals with regard to speaker identity. In order to determine whether word recognition evinces similar self-advantages as found in action perception, it was necessary to eliminate indexical cues from the speech signal. We therefore asked participants to identify noise-vocoded versions of Dutch words that were based on either their own recordings or those of a statistically average speaker. The majority of participants were more accurate for the average speaker than for themselves, even after taking into account differences in intelligibility. These results suggest that the speech representations accessed during perception of noise-vocoded speech are more reflective of the input of the speech community, and hence that speech perception is not necessarily based on representations of one’s own speech

Comparison on Evaporation Heat Transfer between R32/R1234yf and R32/R1234ze(E) Flowing in Horizontal Microfin Tubes

Refrigerant mixtures R32/R1234yf and R32/R1234ze(E) are considered to be the low GWP alternatives of R32 and R410A for air conditioners. However, according to the recent reports, the severe heat transfer degradation is encountered during the evaporation process. This implies that much larger heat exchangers are required to maintain the COP and cooling/heating capacity with R32/R1234yf and R32/R1234ze(E). Therefore, the effects of mixture component and composition on the heat transfer degradation is experimentally investigated in this paper. Heat transfer coefficient of those two mixtures and their components (i.e., R32, R1234yf and R1234ze(E) alone) are experimentally quantified with horizontally set copper microfin tubes of 6.00 mm in outer diameter having 48, 58, and 64 fins of 0.26 mm in height and 19 ° in helical angle. The evaporation test was conducted at an average saturation temperature of 10 °C, a heat flux of 10 kW m-2, and mass fluxes from 150 to 400 kg m-2s-1. The heat transfer is degraded most at the composition where the temperature glide and concentration difference between vapor and liquid phases are maximized. This suggest that the relevance of the heat transfer degradation and mass transfer resistance caused by the concentration boundary layer and the additional sensible heat transfer. Although the heat transfer coefficients of R1234yf and R1234ze(E) alone are comparable, the magnitude of heat transfer degradation is obviously severer for R32/R1234ze(E) than that for R R32/R1234yf. This can be explained with the larger concentration difference and the temperature glide of R32/R1234ze(E) that those of R32/R1234yf. With increasing mass flux and number of fins, the heat transfer degradation is mitigated somewhat. It appears to be that mixing of concentration boundary layer contributes to recover the evaporation heat transfer. For the real possibility to use R32/R1234yf and R32/R1234ze(E) in air conditioners, the heat transfer recovery or enhancement could be the key technology

GROWTH OF InAsxSb1-x LAYERS ON GaAs SUBSTRATES BY HOT WALL EPITAXY

We have studied the structural and electrical characteristics of InAsSb ternary layers grown on GaAs (001) substrates by hot wall epitaxy (HWE) at arsenic (As) reservoir temperature in the range from 220 to 290 °C. The growth rate of the epilayer is found to be decreased with increasing As temperature. This is attributed to the abundance of group V molecules to the growth surface, which suppresses the mass transport of Indium (In) atoms. A dramatic change in the surface morphologies of the samples has been observed by scanning electron microscopy. X-ray diffraction studies indicate that the arsenic composition of the layer can be controlled by manipulating As temperature. Hall effect results of the samples show that the electron mobility of the layer decreases with increasing As temperature

Development of an Automatic Dishwashing Robot System

Proceedings of The 2009 IEEE International Conference on Mechatronics and Automation, August 9 - 12, Changchun, Chin

A Shock-Induced Pair of Superbubbles in the High-Redshift Powerful Radio Galaxy MRC 0406-244

We present new optical spectroscopy of the high-redshift powerful radio galaxy MRC 0406$-$244 at redshift of 2.429. We find that the two extensions toward NW and SE probed in the rest-frame ultraviolet image are heated mainly by the nonthermal continuum of the active galactic nucleus. However, each extension shows a shell-like morphology, suggesting that they are a pair of superbubbles induced by the superwind activity rather than by the interaction between the radio jet and the ambient gas clouds. If this is the case, the intense starburst responsible for the formation of superbubbles could occur $\sim 1 \times 10^9$ yr ago. On the other hand, the age of the radio jets may be of the order of $\sim 10^6$ yr, being much shorter than the starburst age. Therefore, the two events, i.e., the starburst and the radio-jet activities, are independent phenomena. However, their directions of the expanding motions could be governed by the rotational motion of the gaseous component in the host galaxy. This idea appears to explain the alignment effect of MRC 0406$-$244.Comment: 4 pages (emulateapj.sty), Fig. 1 (jpeg) + Fig.2 (eps). Accepted for publications in ApJ (Letters

Plasma Corticosterone Activates SGK1 and Induces Morphological Changes in Oligodendrocytes in Corpus Callosum

Repeated stressful events are known to be associated with onset of depression. Further, stress activates the hypothalamic–pituitary–adrenocortical (HPA) system by elevating plasma cortisol levels. However, little is known about the related downstream molecular pathway. In this study, by using repeated water-immersion and restraint stress (WIRS) as a stressor for mice, we attempted to elucidate the molecular pathway induced by elevated plasma corticosterone levels. We observed the following effects both, in vivo and in vitro: (1) repeated exposure to WIRS activates the 3-phosphoinositide-dependent protein kinase (PDK1)–serum glucocorticoid regulated kinase (SGK1)–N-myc downstream-regulated gene 1 (NDRG1)–adhesion molecule (i.e., N-cadherin, α-catenin, and β-catenin) stabilization pathway via an increase in plasma corticosterone levels; (2) the activation of this signaling pathway induces morphological changes in oligodendrocytes; and (3) after recovery from chronic stress, the abnormal arborization of oligodendrocytes and depression-like symptoms return to the control levels. Our data strongly suggest that these abnornalities of oligodendrocytes are possibly related to depression-like symptoms

Effect of Simultaneous Dual-Task Training on Regional Cerebral Blood Flow in Older Adults with Amnestic Mild Cognitive Impairment

東京都立大学Tokyo Metropolitan University博士（理学療法学）doctoral thesi