Histidine-Rich Glycoprotein Inhibits High-Mobility Group Box-1-Mediated Pathways in Vascular Endothelial Cells through CLEC-1A

High-mobility group box-1 (HMGB1) protein has been postulated to play a pathogenic role in severe sepsis. Histidine-rich glycoprotein (HRG), a 75 kDa plasma protein, was demonstrated to improve the survival rate of septic mice through the regulation of neutrophils and endothelium barrier function. As the relalionship of HRG and HMGB1 remains poorly understood, we investigated the effects of HRG on HMGB1-mediated pathway in endothelial cells, focusing on the involvement of specific receptors for HRG. HRC potently inhibited the HMGB1 mobilization and effectively suppressed rHMGB1-induced inflammatory responses and expression of all three HMGB1 receptors in endothelial cells. Moreover, we first clarified that these protective effects of HRG on endothelial cells were mediated through C-type lectin domain family 1 member A (CLEC-1A) receptor. Thus, current study elueiates protective effects of HRG on vascular endothelial cells through inhintion of HMGB1-mediated pathways may contribute to the therapeutic effects of HRG on severe sepsis

Research pertaining to Peace Education (1) Through a research of the elementary school of Nagasaki

The purpose of this study is to measure and evaluate the outcome through practical activities of peace education for the elementary school of Nagasaki. The aim of the outcome was consisted of the frame of the three factors; knowledge about peace, interest and attitude for contributing to realization of the peace, and peace image. Main findings were as followed. 1. The knowledge about peace was developed. 2. The particular part of the peace image was developed. On the basis of the results of this study, we discussed the problems of the future of the peace education

Fate of dissolved black carbon in the deep Pacific Ocean

Black carbon (BC), a byproduct of biomass and fossil fuel combustion, may impact the climate because it can be stored on Earth's surface for centuries to millennia. Dissolved BC (DBC) occurs ubiquitously in the ocean. However, the DBC cycle in the ocean has not been well constrained. Here, we show the basin-scale distribution of DBC in the Pacific Ocean and find that the DBC concentrations in the deep Pacific Ocean decrease along with deep-ocean meridional circulation. The DBC concentration is negatively correlated with apparent oxygen utilization, a proxy of the integrated flux of sinking particles, in the deep Pacific Ocean, implying that DBC is removed from the deep ocean to abyssal sediments through sorption onto sinking particles. The burial flux of BC to abyssal sediments is estimated to be 0.040-0.085 PgC yr(-1), corresponding to 1.5-3.3% of the anthropogenic CO2 uptake by the ocean

Development and Evaluation of Pocket-Size Blind Source Separation Microphone

IWAENC2008: the 11th International Workshop on Acoustic Echo and Noise Control, September 14-17, 2008, Seattle, Washington USA.We develop a new blind source separation (BSS) microphone named SSM-001 which can separate multiple sounds in real-time under noisy conditions. The BSS microphone is based on our previously proposed BSS algorithm which combines a Single-Input Multiple-Output (SIMO)-model based BSS and SIMO-model based binary masking. We modify this algorithm and implement it to DSP for the purpose of more effective and realistic real-time operation. In this paper, the issue of real-time implementation in the BSS microphone is illustrated in detail, and the experimental evaluations of the hardware reveal the proposed BSS microphone’s efficacy

Real-Time Blind Separation of Acoustic Signals Using SIMO-Model-Based Independent Component Analysis

SCIS & ISIS 2006: Joint 3rd International Conference on Soft Computing and Intelligent Systems and 7th International Symposium on advanced Intelligent Systems , September 20-24, 2006, Tokyo, Japan.A new real-time two-stage blind source separation (BSS) method for convoltive mixtures of speech is proposed, in which a single-input multiple-output (SIMO)-model-based independent component analysis (lCA) and a new SIMO-model-based binary masking are combined. SIMO-model-based lCA can separate the mixed signals, not into monaural source signals but into SIMO-model-based signals from independent sources in their original form at the microphones. Thus, the separated signals of SIMO-model-based ICA can maintain the spatial qualities of each sound source. Owing to this attractive property, novel SIMO-model-based binary masking can be applied to efficiently remove the residual interference components after SIMO-model-based ICA. In addition, the performance deterioration due to the latency problem in ICA can be mitigated by introducing real-time binary masking. We develop a pocket-size real-time DSP module implementing the new BSS method, and report the experimental evaluation of the proposed method's superiority to the conventional BSS methods, regarding moving-sound separation