attānam adhigacchaを考える

This paper discusses the phrase attānam adhigaccha as it occurs in the Therīgāthā, ver. 51. Buddhist scriptures contain many examples of attan used in a negative sense. We also find, however, attan used with a positive meaning, and this is one semantic range which I explore in this article. In section 1, I survey the meaning of adhigacchati. This has led me to conclude that attan in attānam adhigaccha is used in a positive sense, i.e. something which is to be aimed at. Section 2 deals with the basic spheres underlying attan in Buddhist texts. One is the ‘everyday self’, the other is attan that attaches itself to the mind and objects, a proclivity which Buddhism rejects. This paper focuses upon the positive aspect of the former meaning. 3. At Dhp ver. 160 and ver. 380, we see attan used in a positive sense, attan as an objective to be attained. This objective is attan as a master of oneself, attan that has been brought under control. 4. However, these general semantic features cannot explain the precise meaning of attan in attānam adhigaccha in the context of Thī. Here, the Buddha utters these words in order to help Ubbirī overcome her grief at her daughter’s death. Admonished by the Exalted One, Ubbirī’s grief vanishes. This is expressed by means of the metaphor of an arrow extracted from a wound. The arrow is often used in early Buddhist literature as a metaphor for defilement (kilesa) or craving (taṇhā). My conclusion is that the phrase attānam adhigaccha should be construed as ‘attain oneself [i.e., a self that is free from attachment]’ or ‘awake to oneself [i.e., a self that has been freed from attachment]’. A relevant usage can actually be found at Sn ver. 592. The nuance of ‘self that has been freed from attachment’ in attānam adhigaccha is in the same positive semantic range as attan with the meanings of ‘self as a master of oneself’ and ‘self that has been brought under control’

Antibacterial Actions of Dental Cements

We examined antibacteriral activities of ten clinically used dental cements on the oral indigenous bacteria. The order of the intensiveness of antibacterial activity in wideness of spectrum of various bacterial species was eugenol group, carboxylate group, zinc phosphate group, copper group=silicate phosahate group, silicate group. The two cements in eugenol group were active on all the indicator strains. Carboxylate group inhibited preferably anaerobes. The others were active on several strains. The action of cements on the susceptible cells was found to be both bactericidal and bacteriostatic, in which eugenol group acted mainly bactericidally. This bactericidal effects were demonstrated also in the teeth experimentally infected. Silicate group exhibited no measurable antibacterial activity. The inhibitory activities were rather stable, they did not lose at least 6 weeks in a solution except for one cement sample. The inhibitory activities were detected in the both of powder components and liquid components of the cements and the activities in the former components were stronger than those of the latter components. Of the authentic reagents consists of cements, eugenol, rosin, zinc oxide, and zinc phosphate exhibited inhibitory activity against various bactrial species

Instruction Tuned Models are Quick Learners

Instruction tuning of language models has demonstrated the ability to enhance model generalization to unseen tasks via in-context learning using a few examples. However, typical supervised learning still requires a plethora of downstream training data for finetuning. Often in real-world situations, there is a scarcity of data available for finetuning, falling somewhere between few shot inference and fully supervised finetuning. In this work, we demonstrate the sample efficiency of instruction tuned models over various tasks by estimating the minimal downstream training data required by them to perform transfer learning and match the performance of state-of-the-art (SOTA) supervised models. We conduct experiments on 119 tasks from Super Natural Instructions (SuperNI) in both the single task learning (STL) and multi task learning (MTL) settings. Our findings reveal that, in the STL setting, instruction tuned models equipped with 25% of the downstream train data surpass the SOTA performance on the downstream tasks. In the MTL setting, an instruction tuned model trained on only 6% of downstream training data achieve SOTA, while using 100% of the training data results in a 3.69% points improvement (ROUGE-L 74.68) over the previous SOTA. We conduct an analysis on T5 vs Tk-Instruct by developing several baselines to demonstrate that instruction tuning aids in increasing both sample efficiency and transfer learning. Additionally, we observe a consistent ~4% performance increase in both settings when pre-finetuning is performed with instructions. Finally, we conduct a categorical study and find that contrary to previous results, tasks in the question rewriting and title generation categories suffer from instruction tuning.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, 19 Tables (inclusing appendix), 12 pages of Appendi

Flower visitor fauna of the narrow endemic lily Lilium rubellum Baker in a lowland habitat in Yamagata, northern Japan

Floral visitor fauna of the narrow endemic lily Lilium rubellum was examined in a lowland habitat in Kaminoyama City, Yamagata Prefecture, northern Japan. Flowers of L. rubellum bloomed from early to late June. During 23 h of observing floral visitors, 64 insects were detected on L. rubellum flowers. Although coleopteran insects were most frequently found on L. rubellum flowers, they did not seem to be effective pollinators because of their body size. Bees were less frequently observed than coleopteran insects, but all individuals contacted sexual organs in L. rubellum flowers. Syrphid flies were seen less frequently, but they were also considered effective pollinators. From our observations, L. rubellum is a bee-pollinated species of the genus Lilium. Bee pollination has also been recorded in a species of Lilium sect. Archelirion, L. japonicum var. abeanum. The floral characteristics of L. japonicum var. abeanum (e.g., pinkish color, relatively small and tubular corolla, and lateral insertion of anthers into the corolla) were similar to those of L. rubellum and the character combination may be related to the bee-pollination mode in Lilium. key words： bee pollination, Bombus, Ceratina, flower visitor fauna, Lilium japonicum var. abeanum, Lilium rubellum, nitidulid beetle, syrphid fl

Association of increased plasma adipocyte fatty acid-binding protein with coronary artery disease in non-elderly men

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Adipocyte fatty acid-binding protein (A-FABP) has been reported to play critical roles in the development of atherosclerosis. We investigated whether an increased in plasma A-FABP level can be independently associated with the presence of coronary artery disease (CAD).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Two hundred eleven consecutive male patients (mean age: 66 years, range: 33-87 years) were enrolled from inpatients who underwent coronary angiography. Age-matched male subjects (n = 211) having no evidence of CAD served as controls. Plasma A-FABP levels were measured by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Plasma A-FABP levels in CAD patients were significantly higher than in control subjects (median [IQR], 20.6 [15.7-27.8] ng/mL vs. 15.1 [11.7-19.9] ng/mL, p < 0.01). Multivariate logistic regression analysis revealed that an increased plasma A-FABP level was independently associated with the presence of CAD in all subjects (adjusted odds ratio: 1.76, 95% confidence interval: 1.14 to 2.70, p = 0.01). Furthermore, sub-analysis based on age showed that this association remained significant in subjects aged < 65 years (adjusted odds ratio: 3.06, 95% confidence interval: 1.34 to 6.98, p < 0.01), but not in subjects aged ≥65 years.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Increased plasma A-FABP in non-elderly men had a significant association with the presence of CAD, independent of established CAD risk factors.</p

Elevated serum adipocyte fatty acid-binding protein concentrations are independently associated with renal dysfunction in patients with stable angina pectoris

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chronic kidney disease (CKD) is associated with cardiovascular events. Adipocyte fatty acid-binding protein (A-FABP) plays an important role in atherosclerosis. We investigated whether plasma A-FABP is involved in renal function in patients with stable angina pectoris.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>A total of 221 patients with significant coronary artery stenosis were enrolled after coronary angiography. CKD was defined as an estimated glomerular filtration rate (eGFR) < 60 ml/min/1.73 m². The severity of coronary stenosis was assessed using a modified Gensini score and coronary angiography. Serum A-FABP levels were determined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Serum A-FABP levels were significantly correlated with both eGFR (r = -0.41, p < 0.01) and the severity of coronary artery stenosis (r = 0.16, p = 0.02), and these relationships remained significant after adjusting for confounding factors. The prevalence of CKD and multi-vessel disease was significantly higher among patients with serum A-FABP levels above the median value of 20.3 ng/ml than among patients with serum A-FABP levels below the median value (57% vs. 27%, p < 0.01 and 64% vs. 48%, p = 0.02, respectively). Multivariate analysis revealed that the presence of three-vessel disease in comparison with single-vessel disease was independently associated with the higher A-FABP (per doubling) (odds ratio; 2.26, 95% confidential interval; 1.28-3.98, p < 0.01) and tended to be associated with the lower eGFR (p = 0.06).</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Serum A-FABP may have a significant role in the interplay between renal dysfunction and coronary atherosclerosis.</p

LRRN4 and UPK3B Are Markers of Primary Mesothelial Cells

Mesothelioma is a highly malignant tumor that is primarily caused by occupational or environmental exposure to asbestos fibers. Despite worldwide restrictions on asbestos usage, further cases are expected as diagnosis is typically 20–40 years after exposure. Once diagnosed there is a very poor prognosis with a median survival rate of 9 months. Considering this the development of early pre clinical diagnostic markers may help improve clinical outcomes.Microarray expression arrays on mesothelium and other tissues dissected from mice were used to identify candidate mesothelial lineage markers. Candidates were further tested by qRTPCR and in-situ hybridization across a mouse tissue panel. Two candidate biomarkers with the potential for secretion, uroplakin 3B (UPK3B), and leucine rich repeat neuronal 4 (LRRN4) and one commercialized mesothelioma marker, mesothelin (MSLN) were then chosen for validation across a panel of normal human primary cells, 16 established mesothelioma cell lines, 10 lung cancer lines, and a further set of 8 unrelated cancer cell lines.Within the primary cell panel, LRRN4 was only detected in primary mesothelial cells, but MSLN and UPK3B were also detected in other cell types. MSLN was detected in bronchial epithelial cells and alveolar epithelial cells and UPK3B was detected in retinal pigment epithelial cells and urothelial cells. Testing the cell line panel, MSLN was detected in 15 of the 16 mesothelioma cells lines, whereas LRRN4 was only detected in 8 and UPK3B in 6. Interestingly MSLN levels appear to be upregulated in the mesothelioma lines compared to the primary mesothelial cells, while LRRN4 and UPK3B, are either lost or down-regulated. Despite the higher fraction of mesothelioma lines positive for MSLN, it was also detected at high levels in 2 lung cancer lines and 3 other unrelated cancer lines derived from papillotubular adenocarcinoma, signet ring carcinoma and transitional cell carcinoma