Hospital Evacuation Assistance from Public and Private Resources: Lessons Learned from the 2018 Western Japan Floods

During major flooding in June/July 2018, the Mabi Memorial Hospital in Kurashiki, Okayama, Japan was flooded and patients were stranded in the hospital. Peace Winds Japan, a non-governmental organization, collaborated with the Japanese Disaster Medical Assistance Team and Self-Defense Force Public to transport 8 critical patients from the hospital by helicopter. Ultimately, 54 patients and hospital staff members were safely evacuated. The evacuation was accomplished without any casualties, despite the severe conditions. Public and private organizations can work together and continue to seek ways to collaborate and cooperate in disaster settings

3-D eddy current analysis in moving conductors of permanent magnet type retarders using moving coordinate system

A 3-D DC steady state eddy current analysis of a permanent magnet type retarder which rotates at high speed is carried out using a moving coordinate system. The method of DC steady state analysis using a moving coordinate system is described. The calculated results, braking torque etc., are compared with measured ones</p

Optimization of permanent magnet type of retarder using 3-D finite element method and direct search method

3-D optimization method using the combined experimental design method and direct search method is developed to apply to the optimal design of a permanent magnet type of retarder. It is shown that the braking torque is increased by using the optimization method. The CPU time can be considerably reduced by utilizing the initial values obtained by the experimental design method </p

3-D eddy current analysis in moving conductor of permanent magnet type of retarder using moving coordinate system

A 3-D DC steady state eddy current analysis of a permanent magnet type of retarder which rotates at high speed is carried out using a moving coordinate system. The method of DC steady-state analysis using a moving coordinate system is described. The calculated braking torque is compared with measured data</p

Recent Developments for ECR Ion Sources at HIMAC

Two ECR ion sources are installed for the Heavy Ion Medical Accelerator in Chiba (HIMAC) at the National Institute of Radiological Sciences (NIRS). One of them, the NIRS-ECR, is a 10GHz ECR ion source, and is mainly operated to produce C4+ ions for the daily clinical treatment. The other source, the NIRS-HEC, is an 18GHz ECR ion source, and is expected to produce heavier ion species. In order to realize the uniform ion-density distribution at the extraction aperture for the higher beam intensity, the radial magnetic field given by the permanent sextupole magnet has been optimized. In the case of the optimized magnetic configuration of the NIRS-HEC, the extracted intensities of Ar8+ and Ar9+ ions increased from 250 and 150 up to 800 and 400 electric micro A, respectively. An optimized sextupole magnet for the NIRS-ECR is under construction. Other developments for increasing the beam intensity and extension of producible ion species are now in progress. An aluminum chamber, which is exchanged for the old copper chamber of the NIRS-HEC, has been tested. An additional microwave-injection system with a wide frequency range of 10 to 18GHz, which allows to investigate the effects of two-frequency heating, has been installed

Constitutive Expression of AID Leads to Tumorigenesis

Genome stability is regulated by the balance between efficiencies of the repair machinery and genetic alterations such as mutations and chromosomal rearrangements. It has been postulated that deregulation of class switch recombination (CSR) and somatic hypermutation (SHM), which modify the immunoglobulin (Ig) genes in activated B cells, may be responsible for aberrant chromosomal translocations and mutations of non-Ig genes that lead to lymphocyte malignancy. However, the molecular basis for these genetic instabilities is not clearly understood. Activation-induced cytidine deaminase (AID) is shown to be essential and sufficient to induce both CSR and SHM in artificial substrates in fibroblasts as well as B cells. Here we show that constitutive and ubiquitous expression of AID in transgenic mice caused both T cell lymphomas and dysgenetic lesions of epithelium of respiratory bronchioles (micro-adenomas) in all individual mice. Point mutations, but not translocations, were massively introduced in expressed T cell receptor (TCR) and c-myc genes in T lymphoma cells. The results indicate that AID can mutate non-Ig genes including oncogenes, implying that aberrant AID expression could be a cause of human malignancy

Huge Enhancement of Impurity Scattering due to Critical Valence Fluctuations in a Ce-Based Heavy Electron System

On the basis of the Ward-Pitaevskii identity, the residual resistivity $\rho_{0}$ is shown to exhibit huge enhancement around the quantum critical point of valence transition in Ce-based heavy electron systems. This explains a sharp peak of $\rho_{0}$ observed in CeCu$_2$Ge$_2$ under the pressure at $P\sim$16GPa where the superconducting trasition temperature also exhibit the sharp peak.Comment: 5 pages, 1 figur

Distribution of allele frequencies at TTN g.231054C > T, RPL27A g.3109537C > T and AKIRIN2 c.*188G > A between Japanese Black and four other cattle breeds with differing historical selection for marbling

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Marbling defined by the amount and distribution of intramuscular fat, so-called <it>Shimofuri</it>, is an economically important trait of beef cattle in Japan. Our previous study detected 3 single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs), <it>g.231054C > T</it>, <it>g.3109537C > T </it>and <it>c.*188G > A</it>, respectively, in the 5' flanking region of the <it>titin </it>(<it>TTN</it>), the 5' flanking region of the <it>ribosomal protein L27a </it>(<it>RPL27A</it>) and the 3' untranslated region of the <it>akirin 2 </it>genes (<it>AKIRIN2</it>), which have been considered as positional functional candidates for the genes responsible for marbling, and showed association of these SNPs with marbling in Japanese Black beef cattle. In the present study, we investigated the allele frequency distribution of the 3 SNPs among the 5 cattle breeds, Japanese Black, Japanese Brown, Japanese Shorthorn, Holstein and Brown Swiss breeds.</p> <p>Findings</p> <p>We genotyped the <it>TTN g.231054C > T</it>, <it>RPL27A g.3109537C > T </it>and <it>AKIRIN2 c.*188G > A </it>SNPs by polymerase chain reaction-restriction fragment length polymorphism method, using 101 sires and 1,705 paternal half sib progeny steers from 8 sires for Japanese Black, 86 sires and 27 paternal half sib progeny steers from 3 sires for Japanese Brown, 79 sires and 264 paternal half sib progeny steers from 14 sires for Japanese Shorthorn, 119 unrelated cows for Holstein, and 118 unrelated cows for Brown Swiss breeds. As compared to the frequencies of the <it>g.231054C > T T</it>, <it>g.3109537C > T T </it>and <it>c.*188G > A A </it>alleles, associated with high marbling, in Japanese Black breed that has been subjected to a strong selection for high marbling, those in the breeds, Japanese Shorthorn, Holstein and Brown Swiss breeds, that have not been selected for high marbling were null or lower. The Japanese Brown breed selected slightly for high marbling showed lower frequency than Japanese Black breed in the <it>g.3109537C > T T </it>allele, whereas no differences were detected between the 2 breeds in the frequencies of the <it>g.231054C > T T </it>and <it>c.*188G > A A </it>alleles.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Based on this finding, we hypothesized that the pressure of the strong selection for high marbling in Japanese Black breed has increased the frequencies of the <it>T</it>, <it>T </it>and <it>A </it>alleles at the <it>TTN g.231054C > T</it>, <it>RPL27A g.3109537C > T </it>and <it>AKIRIN2 c.*188G > A </it>SNPs, respectively. This study, together with the previous association studies, suggested that the 3 SNPs may be useful for effective marker-assisted selection to increase the levels of marbling.</p