Survey Study of Resident Awareness on Waste Final Disposal Site

As construction of final waste disposal site is essential recently, a problem where we should build it becomes important issue. However, public opposition occurs for the construction because the final waste disposal site has negative image such as pollution of various kinds, increase of traffic volume and noise by truck and bulldozer, and aggravation of living conditions. Public opposition is the most critical problem in constructing final waste disposal site. The source of public opposition has been characterized as NIMBY or not-in-my-yard. This paper presents a survey of the resident awareness on final waste disposal site, and attempts to find factors which affect the public opposition using logistic regression analysis and CART(classification and regression tree)

Evaluation of genotoxic potential in sewage and treated effluent with the umu-test

The umu-test, which can detect genotoxic activites of a wide variety of environmental carcinogens and mutagenes, was carried out with samples from several sewage treatment processes. We applied the umu-test to raw sewage and treated effluent from two points of view, one is to evaluate a treatment process and the other is to identify the genotoxic substances. The original strain of umu-test, Salmonella typhimurium TA1535/pSK1002 can detect nonspecific genotoxicity, on the other hand, by using S. typhimurium NM2009 of the umu-test highly sensitive to aromatic amines, genotoxicity related to aromatic amines is measured. The result showed that genotoxic substances which have the polycyclic aromatic amino structures in the sewage remained after biological treatment. Tow-step HPLC fractionation followed by MS analysis to identify the genotoxic substances was applied to samples to detect mutagenic and carcinogenic heterocyclic amines. The concentration of Trp-P-1 and Trp-P-2 determined in the effluent caluculated from HPLC-UV analysis were on the order of 10(-5) mg/L. Because of the possibility of the reuse of wastewater in urban areas, the need for the investigation of the safety of the treated water from the sewage treatment plants was suggested, in order to evaluate strategies for advanced treatment, if necessary

Efficient Installation of Gravel Drains

The gravel drain system aims to avert liquefaction in a sandy soil by quickly dissipating excess pore water pressure. We have developed a compaction-rod type machine which allows efficient construction of gravel drains. Main attributes of this machine are: (1) extremely fast installation of gravel drains, (2) low noise, (3) low level of vibration, (4) virtually no ground deformation during construction, and (5) densification of the surrounding soil. Large-scale model tests demonstrated that a cone-type compaction rod is most effective in densifying the surrounding soil when installing gravel drains with our machine

Observation of an Inner-Shell Orbital Clock Transition in Neutral Ytterbium Atoms

内殻電子が励起する時計遷移の初観測に成功 --新奇な光格子時計を用いた超高感度な新物理探索へ--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-04-17.We observe a weakly allowed optical transition of atomic ytterbium from the ground state to the metastable state 4f¹³5d6s² (J=2) for all five bosonic and two fermionic isotopes with resolved Zeeman and hyperfine structures. This inner-shell orbital transition has been proposed as a new frequency standard as well as a quantum sensor for new physics. We find magic wavelengths through the measurement of the scalar and tensor polarizabilities and reveal that the measured trap lifetime in a three-dimensional optical lattice is 1.9(1) s, which is crucial for precision measurements. We also determine the g factor by an interleaved measurement, consistent with our relativistic atomic calculation. This work opens the possibility of an optical lattice clock with improved stability and accuracy as well as novel approaches for physics beyond the standard model

Observation of spin-exchange dynamics between itinerant and localized ¹⁷¹Yb atoms

We report on the observation of the spin-exchange dynamics of ¹⁷¹Yb atoms in the ground state ¹S₀ and in the metastable state ³P₀. We implement the mixed-dimensional two-orbital system using near-resonant and magic-wavelength optical lattices, where the ¹S₀ and ³P₀ atoms are itinerant in a one-dimensional tube and localized in three dimensions, respectively. By exploiting an optical Stern-Gerlach method, we observe the spin depolarization of the ¹S₀ atoms induced by the spin-exchange interaction with the ³P₀ atom. Our work could pave the way to the quantum simulation of the Kondo effect

Observation of spin-space quantum transport induced by an atomic quantum point contact

冷却原子の量子状態を制御し新たな「流れ」を実現 --「原子回路」で電子の流れをシミュレーションする--. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2021-11-22.Quantum transport is ubiquitous in physics. So far, quantum transport between terminals has been extensively studied in solid state systems from the fundamental point of views such as the quantized conductance to the applications to quantum devices. Recent works have demonstrated a cold-atom analog of a mesoscopic conductor by engineering a narrow conducting channel with optical potentials, which opens the door for a wealth of research of atomtronics emulating mesoscopic electronic devices and beyond. Here we realize an alternative scheme of the quantum transport experiment with ytterbium atoms in a two-orbital optical lattice system. Our system consists of a multi-component Fermi gas and a localized impurity, where the current can be created in the spin space by introducing the spin-dependent interaction with the impurity. We demonstrate a rich variety of localized-impurity-induced quantum transports, which paves the way for atomtronics exploiting spin degrees of freedom

Menaquinone (vitamin K2) therapy for bronchial asthma. I. Mechanism of action menaquinone on allergic reactions.

The mechanism of action of the drug was investigated from various points of view. The findings may be summarized as follows: 1. In the experiments of the degranulation of mesenteric mast cells of rats, menaquinone proved to significantly inhibit the degranulation either in active or passive sensitization with the reagin-like antibody. 2. Menaquinone did not inhibit the formation of the reagin-like antibody. 3. In the experiements of the degranulation of basophilic granulocytes from patients of bronchial asthma, the rate of appearance of A form basophilic cells upon addition of the antihuman IgE goat serum was not markedly but significantly inhibited in the patients treated with menaquinone for long periods, as compared with that in the control, whereas the in vitro addition of menaquinone did not exert a significant inhibitory action.</p

A unique missense variant in the E1A-binding protein P400 gene is implicated in schizophrenia by whole-exome sequencing and mutant mouse models

Genetic and epidemiological evidence has suggested that genetic factors are important in schizophrenia, although its pathophysiology is poorly understood. This study used whole-exome sequencing to investigate potential novel schizophrenia-causing genes in a Japanese family containing several members affected by severe or treatment-resistant schizophrenia. A missense variant, chr12:132064747C>T (rs200626129, P2805L), in the E1A-binding protein P400 (EP400) gene completely segregated with schizophrenia in this family. Furthermore, numerous other EP400 mutations were identified in the targeted sequencing of a schizophrenia patient cohort. We also created two lines of Ep400 gene-edited mice, which had anxiety-like behaviours and reduced axon diameters. Our findings suggest that rs200626129 in EP400 is likely to cause schizophrenia in this Japanese family, and may lead to a better understanding and treatment of schizophrenia