Comparison of alterations in cerebral hemoglobin oxygenation in late life depression ans Alzheimer's disease as assessed by near-infrared spectroscopy

BACKGROUND: Patients with Alzheimer's disease (AD) often present with apathy symptoms resembling the decreased motivation observed in depressed patients. Therefore, differentiating the initial phase of AD from late life depression may be difficult in some cases. Near-infrared spectroscopy (NIRS) is a functional neuroimaging modality that uses near-infrared light to measure changes in hemoglobin concentration on the cortical surface during activation tasks. The objective of this study was to investigate differences in brain activation associated with late life depression and with AD by means of NIRS. METHODS: NIRS was performed in 30 patients with depression, 28 patients with AD, and 33 healthy controls, all aged 60 years or older. During two tasks, a verbal fluency task and a visuospatial task, changes in oxygenated hemoglobin concentration in the frontal and parietal cortices were investigated. RESULTS: In the visuospatial task, cortical activation was lower in the depressed group than in the AD group, and significant differences were observed in the parietal cortex. CONCLUSIONS: NIRS can detect differences in brain activation between patients with late life depression and those with AD. NIRS is a promising tool for the differential diagnosis of late life depression and AD.ArticleBEHAVIORAL AND BRAIN FUNCTIONS. 10:8 (2014)journal articl

Choroidal Structure of CSC on OCT Image

Purpose To determine the structural changes of the choroid in eyes with central serous chorioretinopathy (CSC) by enhanced depth imaging optical coherence tomography (EDI-OCT). Methods A retrospective comparative study was performed at two academic institutions. Forty eyes with CSC, their fellow eyes, and 40 eyes of age-matched controls were studied. Subfoveal cross sectional EDI-OCT images were recorded, and the hypo reflective and hyperreflective areas of the inner and outer choroid in the EDI-OCT images were separately measured. The images were analyzed by a binarization method to determine the sizes of the hyporeflective and hyperreflective areas. Results In the inner choroid, the hyperreflective area was significantly larger in the CSC eyes (35,640±10,229 μm2) than the fellow eyes (22,908±8,522 μm2) and the control eyes (20,630±8,128 μm2; P<0.01 vs control for both, Wilcoxon signed-rank test). In the outer choroid, the hyporeflective area was significantly larger in the CSC eyes (446,549 ±121,214 μm2) than the control eyes (235,680±97,352 μm2, P<0.01). The average ratio of the hyporeflective area to the total choroidal area was smaller in the CSC eyes (67.0%) than the fellow eyes (76.5%) and the control eyes (76.7%) in the inner choroid (P<0.01, both). However, the ratio was larger in the CSC eyes (75.2%) and fellow eyes (71.7%) than in the control eyes (64.7%) in the outer choroid (P<0.01, both). Conclusions The larger hyperreflective area in the inner choroid is related to the inflammation and edema of the stroma of the choroid in the acute stage of CSC. The larger hyporeflective areas in the outer choroid is due to a dilatation of the vascular lumens of the larger blood vessels. These are the essential characteristics of eyes with CSC regardless of the onset

Photon Upconverting Solid Films with Improved Efficiency for Endowing Perovskite Solar Cells with Near‐Infrared Sensitivity

Perovskite solar cells have emerged as the next‐generation high‐efficiency solar cell, but their absorption is mostly limited to the visible (vis) range. One possible solution is to integrate near‐infrared (NIR)‐to‐vis photon upconversion (UC). Herein, we show the first example of endowing perovskite solar cells with NIR sensitivity by using solid films showing NIR‐to‐vis UC based on triplet‐triplet annihilation (TTA). A high TTA‐UC efficiency of 4.1±0.3 % at an excitation intensity of 125 W/cm² is achieved by sensitizing a rubrene (acceptor) triplet with an osmium (Os) complex donor having singlet‐to‐triplet (S−T) absorption in the NIR range, and by increasing the fluorescence quantum yield through energy harvesting to a highly fluorescent collector. In particular, our spectroscopic studies indicate that the upconverted acceptor singlet energy is almost selectively transferred to the collector rather than being quenched by the donor. By attaching the TTA‐UC film behind a semi‐transparent perovskite solar cell, a photocurrent generation is observed under excitation at 938 nm

The modeling of Alzheimer's disease by the overexpression of mutant Presenilin 1 in human embryonic stem cells.

Cellular disease models are useful tools for Alzheimer's disease (AD) research. Pluripotent stem cells, including human embryonic stem cells (hESCs) and induced pluripotent stem cells (iPSCs), are promising materials for creating cellular models of such diseases. In the present study, we established cellular models of AD in hESCs that overexpressed the mutant Presenilin 1 (PS1) gene with the use of a site-specific gene integration system. The overexpression of PS1 did not affect the undifferentiated status or the neural differentiation ability of the hESCs. We found increases in the ratios of amyloid-β 42 (Aβ42)/Aβ40 and Aβ43/Aβ40. Furthermore, synaptic dysfunction was observed in a cellular model of AD that overexpressed mutant PS1. These results suggest that the AD phenotypes, in particular, the electrophysiological abnormality of the synapses in our AD models might be useful for AD research and drug discovery

東シナ海の流れ藻に蝟集する稚魚の摂餌生態と海洋環境

Many commercially important fishes associate with drifting seaweeds in their juvenile stage, however, the ecological significance of drifting seaweeds for juvenile fishes is still unclear. We postulated that the following two hypotheses may be applicable for juvenile fishes associate with drifting seaweeds, the “concentration of food supply” hypothesis: juvenile fishes are attracted by phytal animals on the drifting seaweeds and the “indicator-log” hypothesis: fish use accumulations of drifting seaweed as an indicator of productive areas (e.g. frontal areas) for food. We investigated the frontal areas, zooplankton abundance around the drifting seaweed, and the food availability of fish juveniles associated with drifting seaweed accumulations in the East China Sea in 2012 and 2013. A total of 14 drifting seaweed mass and 22 species (n = 408) of fish juveniles were collected. We found that 49.7 - 99.7 % of the individual fed on planktonic food and the feeding incidence on phytal animals was less than 50 %. Although drifting seaweeds were aggregated around the frontal areas of surface currents, the zooplankton abundance was not significantly different between these frontal areas and other areas. Our findings indicate that ecological significance of drifting seaweeds as feeding habit is relatively low for juvenile fishes associated with drifting seaweeds.流れ藻には多くの水産上重要種の稚魚が付随するが，流れ藻の稚魚にとっての生態学的意義は明らかにされていない。筆者らは次の2仮説のいずれかが流れ藻付随稚魚に当てはまると考え，“concentration of food supply hypothesis”（流れ藻葉上生物を摂餌するため）と“indicator log hypothesis”（流れ藻をフロント域のような餌豊度の高い海域の目印とするため）を検証するため，2012年と2013年に東シナ海の流れ藻周辺の海洋環境，フロント域，動物プランクトン豊度，流れ藻付随稚魚の摂餌個体率を調べた。流れ藻は表層流の収束帯に集積されていたが，収束帯のプランクトン豊度は高くなかった。合計14個の流れ藻を採集し，合計22種（408尾）の稚魚の胃内容物を調査した結果，稚魚の49.7 - 99.7 %の個体はプランクトンを選択的に摂餌していたが，葉上生物の摂餌個体率は高くなかった（50 %未満）。以上の結果から流れ藻の稚魚にとっての生態学的意義は摂餌場でないことが示唆された

The 2nd DBCLS BioHackathon: interoperable bioinformatics Web services for integrated applications

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The interaction between biological researchers and the bioinformatics tools they use is still hampered by incomplete interoperability between such tools. To ensure interoperability initiatives are effectively deployed, end-user applications need to be aware of, and support, best practices and standards. Here, we report on an initiative in which software developers and genome biologists came together to explore and raise awareness of these issues: BioHackathon 2009.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Developers in attendance came from diverse backgrounds, with experts in Web services, workflow tools, text mining and visualization. Genome biologists provided expertise and exemplar data from the domains of sequence and pathway analysis and glyco-informatics. One goal of the meeting was to evaluate the ability to address real world use cases in these domains using the tools that the developers represented. This resulted in i) a workflow to annotate 100,000 sequences from an invertebrate species; ii) an integrated system for analysis of the transcription factor binding sites (TFBSs) enriched based on differential gene expression data obtained from a microarray experiment; iii) a workflow to enumerate putative physical protein interactions among enzymes in a metabolic pathway using protein structure data; iv) a workflow to analyze glyco-gene-related diseases by searching for human homologs of glyco-genes in other species, such as fruit flies, and retrieving their phenotype-annotated SNPs.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Beyond deriving prototype solutions for each use-case, a second major purpose of the BioHackathon was to highlight areas of insufficiency. We discuss the issues raised by our exploration of the problem/solution space, concluding that there are still problems with the way Web services are modeled and annotated, including: i) the absence of several useful data or analysis functions in the Web service "space"; ii) the lack of documentation of methods; iii) lack of compliance with the SOAP/WSDL specification among and between various programming-language libraries; and iv) incompatibility between various bioinformatics data formats. Although it was still difficult to solve real world problems posed to the developers by the biological researchers in attendance because of these problems, we note the promise of addressing these issues within a semantic framework.</p

Diatom, contributors of coralloid speleothems, from Togawa-Sakaidani-Do Cave in Miyazaki Prefecture, Central Kyushu, Japan

Coralloid speleothems are commonly distributed in Togawa-Sakaidani-do Cave in Miyazaki Prefecture, Central Kyushu, but their speleological study has not heretofore been achieved. Light and scanning microscopes analyses revealed that coralloid speleothems consist of alternating layers of diatom colonies, detrital minerals and clay. Electron microprobe analysis shows coralloid speleothems to be silicious. This paper asserts that diatom (genus Melosira) is one of the important contributors to siliceous coralloid speleothems in the threshold zone at non-calcareous caves