Observations of SiO Maser Sources within a Few Parsec from the Galactic Center

Mapping and monitoring observations of SiO maser sources near the Galactic center were made with the Nobeyama 45-m telescope at 43 GHz. Rectangular mapping an area of approximately 200'' x 100''$ in a 30'' grid, and triangular mapping in a 20'' grid toward the Galactic center, resulted in 15 detections of SiO sources; the positions of the sources were obtained with errors of 5--10'', except for a few weak sources. Three-year monitoring observations found that the component at V_lsr=-27 km/s of IRS 10 EE flared to about 1.5 Jy during 2000 March--May, which was a factor of more than 5 brighter than its normal intensity. Using the radial velocities and positions of the SiO sources, we identified 5 which are counterparts of previously observed OH 1612 MHz sources. The other 10 SiO sources have no OH counterparts, but two were previously detected with VLA, and four are located close to the positions of large-amplitude variables observed at near-infrared wavelengths. A least-squares fit to a plot of velocities versus Galactic longitudes gives a rather high speed for the rotation of the star cluster around the Galactic center. The observed radial-velocity dispersion is roughly consistent with a value obtained before. It was found that all of the SiO sources with OH 1612 MHz counterparts have periods of light variation longer than 450 days, while SiO sources without OH masers often have periods shorter than 450 days. This fact suggests that lower-mass AGB stars are more often detected in SiO masers than in the OH 1612 MHz line.Comment: 9 pages, 7 figures. PASJ 54, No. 1 (2002) in pres

EFSO at different geographical locations verified with observing-system experiments

ひとつひとつの観測データが気象予測に与える影響を簡易に評価する手法を確認 --北極の観測データは7日先の北米気象予測の改善に貢献することも明らかに--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2021-04-30.An ensemble-based forecast sensitivity to observations (EFSO) diagnosis has been implemented in an atmospheric general circulation model–ensemble Kalman filter data assimilation system to estimate the impacts of specific observations from the quasi-operational global observing system on weekly short-range forecasts. It was examined whether EFSO reasonably approximates the impacts of a subset of observations from specific geographical locations for 6-hour forecasts, and how long the 6-hour observation impacts can be retained during the 7-day forecast period. The reference for these forecasts was obtained from 12 data denial experiments in each of which a subset of three radiosonde observations launched from a geographical location was excluded. The 12 locations were selected from three latitudinal bands comprising (i) four Arctic regions, (ii) four midlatitude regions in the Northern Hemisphere, and (iii) four tropical regions during the Northern Hemisphere winter of 2015/16. The estimated winter-averaged EFSO-derived observation impacts well corresponded to the 6-hour observation impacts obtained by the data denials and EFSO could reasonably estimate the observation impacts by the data denials on short-range (6-hour to 2-day) forecasts. Furthermore, during the medium-range (4-day to 7-day) forecasts, it was found that the Arctic observations tend to seed the broadest impacts and their short-range observation impacts could be projected to beneficial impacts in Arctic and midlatitude North American areas. The midlatitude area located just downstream of dynamical propagation from the Arctic toward the midlatitudes. Results obtained by repeated Arctic data-denial experiments were found to be generally common to those from the non-repeated experiments

Mixing Histopathology Prototypes into Robust Slide-Level Representations for Cancer Subtyping

Whole-slide image analysis via the means of computational pathology often relies on processing tessellated gigapixel images with only slide-level labels available. Applying multiple instance learning-based methods or transformer models is computationally expensive as, for each image, all instances have to be processed simultaneously. The MLP-Mixer is an under-explored alternative model to common vision transformers, especially for large-scale datasets. Due to the lack of a self-attention mechanism, they have linear computational complexity to the number of input patches but achieve comparable performance on natural image datasets. We propose a combination of feature embedding and clustering to preprocess the full whole-slide image into a reduced prototype representation which can then serve as input to a suitable MLP-Mixer architecture. Our experiments on two public benchmarks and one inhouse malignant lymphoma dataset show comparable performance to current state-of-the-art methods, while achieving lower training costs in terms of computational time and memory load. Code is publicly available at https://github.com/butkej/ProtoMixer.Comment: The final authenticated publication is available online at https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-031-45676-3_1

IgA-enhancing effects of membrane vesicles derived from Lactobacillus sakei subsp. sakei NBRC15893

Immunoglobulin (Ig) A in the mucus of the intestinal tract plays an important role in preventing the invasion of pathogenic microorganisms and regulating the composition of the gut microbiota. Several strains of probiotic lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are known to promote intestinal IgA production. Bacteria are also known to naturally release spherical membrane vesicles (MVs) that are involved in various biological functions such as quorum sensing, pathogenesis, and host immunomodulation. However, the production of MVs by LAB and their effects on host immunity remain poorly understood. In this study, we investigated the MV production by Lactobacillus sakei subsp. sakei NBRC15893 isolated from kimoto, the traditional seed mash used for brewing sake. MVs were separated from the culture broth of L. sakei NBRC15893 through filtration and density gradient ultracentrifugation and were observed by transmission electron microscopy. The MVs showed a spherical morphology, with a diameter of 30–400 nm, and contained proteins and nucleic acids. In addition, both the LAB cells and purified MVs promoted IgA production by murine Peyer’s patch cells. This MV- and cell-induced IgA production was suppressed by neutralization of Toll-like receptor (TLR) 2, which recognizes cell wall components of gram-positive bacteria, using an anti-TLR2 antibody. Collectively, our results indicate that MVs released from L. sakei NBRC15893 enhance IgA production by activating host TLR2 signaling through its cell wall components. Thus, it is important to consider novel interactions between gut microbiota and hosts via MVs, and MVs derived from probiotic bacteria could have promising applications as safe adjuvants.Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (JSPS) KAKENHI grant (Nos. 16K18302 and 18K04857 [to S.Y.Y]; 15H05790, 16H01373, 17H04134, and 26293111 [to J.K.]

Spontaneous Vacuolar Degeneration of the Thyroid Follicular Epithelium in Cynomolgus Monkeys

Vacuolar degeneration of the thyroid follicular epithelium was observed in two untreated female cynomolgus monkeys assigned to control groups. In light microscopy, large vacuoles containing a homogenous substance occupied the basal region of the epithelium, and the nuclei had shifted toward the apical region. The vacuoles showed negative reactions to PAS and thyroglobulin. Electron microscopic observation revealed dilatation of the rough endoplasmic reticulum corresponding to the vacuoles. The plasma TSH, T3 and T4 levels determined for the samples kept frozen were within the normal ranges, suggesting that the thyroid function was kept intact

Spinal Surgery after Bilateral Subthalamic Stimulation for Patients with Parkinson's Disease: A Retrospective Outcome Analysis of Pain and Functional Control

Parkinson's disease (PD) patients often suffer from spinal diseases requiring surgeries, although the risk of complications is high. There are few reports on outcomes after spinal surgery for PD patients with deep brain stimulation (DBS). The objective of this study was to explore the data on spinal surgery for PD patients with precedent DBS. We evaluated 24 consecutive PD patients with 28 spinal surgeries from 2007 to 2017 who received at least a 2-year follow-up. The characteristics and outcomes of PD patients after spinal surgery were compared to those of 156 non-PD patients with degenerative spinal diseases treated in 2013-2017. Then, the characteristics, outcomes, and spinal alignment of PD patients receiving DBS were analyzed in degenerative spinal/ lumbar diseases. The mean age at the time of spinal surgery was 68 years. The Hoehn and Yahr score regarding PD was stage 1 for 8 patients, stage 2 for 2 patients, stage 3 for 8 patients, stage 4 for 10 patients, and stage 5 for 0 patient. The median preoperative L-DOPA equivalent daily dose was 410 mg. Thirteen patients (46%) received precedent subthalamic nucleus (STN) DBS. Lumbar lesions with pain were common, and operation and anesthesia times were long in PD patients. Pain and functional improvement of PD patients persisted for 2 years after surgery with a higher complication rate than for non-PD patients. PD patients with STN DBS maintained better lumbar lordosis for 2 years after spinal surgery. STN DBS significantly maintained spinal alignment with subsequent pain and functional amelioration 2 years after surgery. The outcomes of spinal surgery for PD patients might be favorably affected by thorough treatment for PD including DBS