Multi-Layer Distributed Storage of LHD Plasma Diagnostic Database

At the end of LHD experimental campaign in 2003, the amount of whole plasma diagnostics raw data had reached 3.16 GB in a long-pulse experiment. This is a new world record in fusion plasma experiments, far beyond the previous value of 1.5 GB/shot. The total size of the LHD diagnostic data is about 21.6 TB for the whole six years of experiments, and it continues to grow at an increasing rate. The LHD diagnostic database and storage system, i.e. the LABCOM system, has a completely distributed architecture to be sufficiently flexible and easily expandable to maintain integrity of the total amount of data. It has three categories of the storage layer: OODBMS volumes in data acquisition servers, RAID servers, and mass storage systems, such as MO jukeboxes and DVD-R changers. These are equally accessible through the network. By data migration between them, they can be considered a virtual OODB extension area. Their data contents have been listed in a “facilitator” PostgreSQL RDBMS, which now contains about 6.2 million entries, and informs the optimized priority to clients requesting data. Using the “glib” compression for all of the binary data and applying the three-tier application model for the OODB data transfer/retrieval, an optimized OODB read-out rate of 1.7 MB/s and effective client access speed of 3?25 MB/s have been achieved. As a result, the LABCOM data system has succeeded in combination of the use of RDBMS, OODBMS, RAID, and MSS to enable a virtual and always expandable storage volume, simultaneously with rapid data access

Steady-state data acquisition method for LHD diagnostics

The LHD experiment has gone through 5 campaign periods over the past 4 years, during which the diagnostics data continues to grow and the primary 28 measurements produce about 620 MB/shot in 150 shot/day 3-min cycles. In 2002, 30-min long-pulse experiments will be carried out in LHD, where real-time operations are indispensable for plasma measurements and data acquisition. The new scheme for utilizing conventional CAMAC digitizers in long-pulse experiments has been discussed and examined. As a result, in LHD, CAMACs will shift into 120?180 s cyclic operation, synchronized by the diagnostic timing system. The new CompactPCI-based digitizer frontend has performed about 84 MB/s continuous acquisition in benchmarks, and has been formulated with the conventional CAMAC system to make concurrent acquisitions

Nonstop Lose-Less Data Acquisition and Storing Method for Plasma Motion Images

Plasma diagnostic data analysis often requires the original raw data as they are, in other words, at the same frame rate and resolution of the CCD camera sensor. As a non-interlace VGA camera typically generates over 70 MB/s video stream, usual frame grabber cards apply the lossy compression encoder, such as mpeg-1/-2 or mpeg-4, to drastically lessen the bit rate. In this study, a new approach, which makes it possible to acquire and store such the wideband video stream without any quality reduction, has been successfully achieved. Simultaneously, the real-time video streaming is even possible at the original frame rate. For minimising the exclusive access time in every data storing, it has adopted the directory structure to hold every frame files separately, instead of one long consecutive file. The popular ‘zip’ archive method improves the portability of data files, however, the JPEG-LS image compression is applied inside by replacing its intrinsic deflate/inflate algorithm that has less performances for image data

Adaptive data migration scheme with facilitator database and multi-tier distributed storage in LHD

Recent “data explosion” induces the demand for high flexibility of storage extension and data migration. The data amount of LHD plasma diagnostics has grown 4.6 times bigger than that of three years before. Frequent migration or replication between plenty of distributed storage becomes mandatory, and thus increases the human operational costs. To reduce them computationally, a new adaptive migration scheme has been developed on LHD’s multi-tier distributed storage. So-called the HSM (Hierarchical Storage Management) software usually adopts a low-level cache mechanism or simple watermarks for triggering the data stage-in and out between two storage devices. However, the new scheme can deal with a number of distributed storage by the facilitator database that manages the whole data locations with their access histories and retrieval priorities. Not only the inter-tier migration but also the intra-tier replication and moving are even manageable so that it can be a big help in extending or replacing storage equipment. The access history of each data object is also utilized to optimize the volume size of fast and costly RAID, in addition to a normal cache effect for frequently retrieved data. The new scheme has been verified its effectiveness so that LHD multi-tier distributed storage and other next-generation experiments can obtain such the flexible expandability

サキシマフヨウとフヨウの繁殖特性

The reproductive characteristic of Hibiscus makinoi Jotani et H. Ohba and H. mutabilis L.（Malvaceae）was studied in Nagasaki Prefecture, Kyushu, southwestern Japan. The former is distributed from the Ryukyu Islands to western Kyushu of Japan and the latter is widely cultivated and sometimes found escaped in natural habitats in western Japan. Compared with H. mutabilis, H. makinoi is delayed about a month in the phenology of flower production. Hibiscus makinoi produced flowers from late September to late October and H. mutabilis from middle or late August to late September. Hibiscus mutabilis was pollinated by Lepidoptera, mainly Cehonodes hylas and Coleoptera such as Oxycetonia jucunda. However, pollinators rarely visited flowers of H. makinoi. This may be due to the late flower season. Pollination experiments with the following four treatments were done : open pollination, autonomous self-pollination, hand self-pollination and hand cross-pollination. The results of fruits set and seed sets indicated that these two Hibiscus species strictly avoid self pollination but are clearly self-compatible

PAX2 promoted prostate cancer cell invasion through transcriptional regulation of HGF in an in vitro model

AbstractElucidating the mechanism of prostate cancer cell invasion may lead to the identification of novel therapeutic strategies for its treatment. Paired box 2 (PAX2) and hepatocyte growth factor (HGF) proteins are promoters of prostate cancer cell invasion. We found that PAX2 protein activated the HGF gene promoter through histone H3 acetylation and upregulated HGF gene expression. Deletion analysis revealed that the region from −637 to −314 of the HGF gene was indispensable for HGF promoter activation by PAX2. This region contains consensus PAX2 binding sequences and mutations of the sequences attenuated HGF promoter activation. Using an in vitro invasion model, we found that PAX2 and HGF promoted prostate cancer cell invasion in the same pathway. Knockdown of HGF expression attenuated the cells' invasive capacity. Moreover, in tissue samples of human prostate cancers, HGF and PAX2 expression levels were positively correlated. These results suggested that upregulation of HGF gene expression by PAX2 enhanced the invasive properties of prostate cancer cells. The PAX2/HGF pathway in prostate cancer cells may be a novel therapeutic target in prostate cancer patients