脱脂米糠抽出物のヒト由来食細胞に対する免疫賦活性の検討

The present report describes the effect of the three kinds of degreasing rice bran extracts (rice bran (Rb), rice bran extract E (RbE), and rice bran heat water extract (RbhS) on the immune response of human cells. Samples of Rb and RbE were processed by fermentation with Enterococcus sp. and Pichia sp. at 37°C for 3 to 5 days, subsequently, RbE samples were treated with hemicellulose enzyme. While RbhS samples were heattreated and used as the control. We studied the effect of inactive Staphylococcus aureus cells coated with the three kinds of rice bran extracts on phagocytosis and phagosome-lysosome fusion by human leukocytes in vitro. Rice bran extracts increased phagocytic activity and phagosome-lysosome fusion in neutrophils and monocytes in a doseresponse manner. The rate of phagocytosis of RbE-coated S. aureus by neutrophils was significantly higher, by approximately 3.6 times, than that of uncoated S. aureus. The rate of phagocytosis of RbE-coated S. aureus by monocytes was about 1.6 times higher than that of the control. The phagosome-lysosome fusion index (FI) for RbE-coated bacteria by neutrophils was higher, by approximately 6 times, than that of the control. The ratio of the FI to the phagocytic index (PI) in human neutrophils showed that 83% of phagocytosed cells were digested the fused phagolysosomes when the S. aureus coated with RbE at a concentration of 25 μg/ml. These results show that RbE has immune-enhancing activity. Although degreasing rice bran is traditionally discarded, if processed with Enterococcus sp., Pichia sp. and hemicellulose enzyme, it becomes consumable and can be used as a health food material to enhance immune activity in humans3種類の方法で調製した脱脂米糠抽出物について免疫賦活性(貧食活性と食胞融合性)の視点から,未利用資源としての活用可能性を検討した。　(1)ライフペップ(Rb)は乳酸菌・酵母処理(37℃ ・3～5日)。　(2)ライフペップE(RbE)は乳酸菌・酵母処理後　酵素(ヘミセルラーゼ)処理。　(3)熱水抽出物(RbhS)はオートクレープ処理。　何れの処理サンプルも,凍結乾燥後試験に供した。その結果,ヒト好中球に対する貧食活性は,3試料とも,濃度に依存して貧食作用が上昇した。RbEでは5μg/mlプラトーに達し,コントロールに比べ3.6倍(p<0.001)の活性を示した。また,単球に対する貧食活性では,RbEが1.6倍(p<0.001)活性を示した。RbEは,脱脂米糠の熱水抽出物(RbhS)とRbより高い活性を示した。　最も貧食活性の強かったRbEの食胞融合能は,コントロールに対して6倍の食胞融合性を示し,25μg/mlの濃度で貧食された菌のうち約8割が殺菌されることが確認できた。この結果,脱脂米糠を乳酸菌・酵母処理後酵素(ヘミセルラーゼ)処理すると,貧食活性を促進できることがわかり,免疫賦活作用を示す利用資源として役に立つことが明確となった

Inter-comparison of stratospheric mean-meridional circulation and eddy mixing among six reanalysis data sets

The stratospheric mean-meridional circulation (MMC) and eddy mixing are compared among six meteorological reanalysis data sets: NCEP-NCAR, NCEP-CFSR, ERA-40, ERA-Interim, JRA-25, and JRA-55 for the period 1979–2012. The reanalysis data sets produced using advanced systems (i.e., NCEP-CFSR, ERA-Interim, and JRA-55) generally reveal a weaker MMC in the Northern Hemisphere (NH) compared with those produced using older systems (i.e., NCEP/NCAR, ERA-40, and JRA-25). The mean mixing strength differs largely among the data products. In the NH lower stratosphere, the contribution of planetary-scale mixing is larger in the new data sets than in the old data sets, whereas that of small-scale mixing is weaker in the new data sets. Conventional data assimilation techniques introduce analysis increments without maintaining physical balance, which may have caused an overly strong MMC and spurious small-scale eddies in the old data sets. At the NH mid-latitudes, only ERA-Interim reveals a weakening MMC trend in the deep branch of the Brewer–Dobson circulation (BDC). The relative importance of the eddy mixing compared with the mean-meridional transport in the subtropical lower stratosphere shows increasing trends in ERA-Interim and JRA-55; this together with the weakened MMC in the deep branch may imply an increasing age-of-air (AoA) in the NH middle stratosphere in ERA-Interim. Overall, discrepancies between the different variables and trends therein as derived from the different reanalyses are still relatively large, suggesting that more investments in these products are needed in order to obtain a consolidated picture of observed changes in the BDC and the mechanisms that drive them

Shear Power Spectrum Reconstruction using Pseudo-Spectrum Method

We develop a pseudo power spectrum technique for measuring the lensing power spectrum from weak lensing surveys in both the full sky and flat sky limits. The power spectrum approaches have a number of advantages over the traditional correlation function approach. We test the pseudo spectrum method by using numerical simulations with square-shape boundary that include masked regions with complex configuration due to bright stars and saturated spikes. Even when 25% of total area of the survey is masked, the method recovers the E-mode power spectrum at a sub-percent precision over a wide range of multipoles 100<l<10000. The systematic error is smaller than the statistical errors expected for a 2000 square degree survey. The residual B-mode spectrum is well suppressed in the amplitudes at less than a percent level relative to the E-mode. We also find that the correlated errors of binned power spectra caused by the survey geometry effects are not significant. Our method is applicable to the current and upcoming wide-field lensing surveys.Comment: 11 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Cosmology from cosmic shear power spectra with Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam first-year data

We measure cosmic weak lensing shear power spectra with the Subaru Hyper Suprime-Cam (HSC) survey first-year shear catalog covering 137deg$^2$ of the sky. Thanks to the high effective galaxy number density of $\sim$17 arcmin$^{-2}$ even after conservative cuts such as magnitude cut of $i<24.5$ and photometric redshift cut of $0.3\leq z \leq 1.5$, we obtain a high significance measurement of the cosmic shear power spectra in 4 tomographic redshift bins, achieving a total signal-to-noise ratio of 16 in the multipole range $300 \leq \ell \leq 1900$. We carefully account for various uncertainties in our analysis including the intrinsic alignment of galaxies, scatters and biases in photometric redshifts, residual uncertainties in the shear measurement, and modeling of the matter power spectrum. The accuracy of our power spectrum measurement method as well as our analytic model of the covariance matrix are tested against realistic mock shear catalogs. For a flat $\Lambda$ cold dark matter ($\Lambda$CDM) model, we find $S_8\equiv \sigma_8(\Omega_{\rm m}/0.3)^\alpha=0.800^{+0.029}_{-0.028}$ for $\alpha=0.45$ ($S_8=0.780^{+0.030}_{-0.033}$ for $\alpha=0.5$) from our HSC tomographic cosmic shear analysis alone. In comparison with Planck cosmic microwave background constraints, our results prefer slightly lower values of $S_8$, although metrics such as the Bayesian evidence ratio test do not show significant evidence for discordance between these results. We study the effect of possible additional systematic errors that are unaccounted in our fiducial cosmic shear analysis, and find that they can shift the best-fit values of $S_8$ by up to $\sim 0.6\sigma$ in both directions. The full HSC survey data will contain several times more area, and will lead to significantly improved cosmological constraints.Comment: 43 pages, 21 figures, accepted for publication in PAS

Immunization of institutionalized asthmatic children and patients with psychomotor retardation using live attenuated cold-adapted reassortment influenza A H1N1, H3N2 and B vaccines

Live attenuated cold-adapted reassortant (CR) influenza virus vaccines were evaluated in institutionalized asthmatic children and severe psychomotor-retarded (SPR) patients. Almost all the vaccines were seropositive to the vaccine strains before immunization. Trivalent CR vaccine (containing A H1N1 (CR-125), A H3N2 (CR-149) and B (CRB-117)), bivalent CR vaccine (CR-125 and CR-149) and monovalent CRB-117 were inoculated to 19 asthmatic children and 36 and 16 SPR patients, respectively. Overall 49, 22, 11% of vaccinees were infected by A H1N1, A H3N2 or B vaccine viruses, respectively, as indicated by significant haemagglutination-inhibition (HI) antibody titre rises 4 weeks after inoculation. No severe adverse reactions associated with CR vaccination were observed in the handicapped patients. A nosocomial outbreak of influenza A H1N1 occurred in the ward with asthmatic children, but none of the 19 CR-trivalent vaccinees became infected. However, five of 20 non-vaccinees in the same ward, and ten of 30 vaccinees in another ward that received inactivated split vaccine became infected. The CR vaccines demonstrated significant protective effects against natural exposure to the A H1N1 virus, and were well tolerated and safe when given to patients with bronchial asthma and severe psychomotor retardation.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/31097/1/0000775.pd

Using galaxy-galaxy weak lensing measurements to correct the Finger-of-God

For decades, cosmologists have been using galaxies to trace the large-scale distribution of matter. At present, the largest source of systematic uncertainty in this analysis is the challenge of modeling the complex relationship between galaxy redshift and the distribution of dark matter. If all galaxies sat in the centers of halos, there would be minimal Finger-of-God (FoG) effects and a simple relationship between the galaxy and matter distributions. However, many galaxies, even some of the luminous red galaxies (LRGs), do not lie in the centers of halos. Because the galaxy-galaxy lensing is also sensitive to the off-centered galaxies, we show that we can use the lensing measurements to determine the amplitude of this effect and to determine the expected amplitude of FoG effects. We develop an approach for using the lensing data to model how the FoG suppresses the power spectrum amplitudes and show that the current data implies a 30% suppression at wavenumber k=0.2h/Mpc. Our analysis implies that it is important to complement a spectroscopic survey with an imaging survey with sufficient depth and wide field coverage. Joint imaging and spectroscopic surveys allow a robust, unbiased use of the power spectrum amplitude information: it improves the marginalized error of growth rate fg=dln D/dln a by up to a factor of 2 over a wide range of redshifts z<1.4. We also find that the dark energy equation-of-state parameter, w0, and the neutrino mass, fnu, can be unbiasedly constrained by combining the lensing information, with an improvement of 10--25% compared to a spectroscopic survey without lensing calibration.Comment: 26 pages, 13 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA