A New Induction Method for the Controlled Differentiation of Human-Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells Using Frozen Sections

Considering that every tissue/organ has the most suitable microenvironment for its functional cells, controlling induced pluripotent stem cell (iPSC) differentiation by culture on frozen sections having a suitable microenvironment is possible. Induced PSCs were cultured on frozen sections of the liver, the brain, the spinal cord, and cover glasses (control) for 9 days. The iPSCs cultured on the sections of the liver resembled hepatocytes, whereas those on sections of the brain and the spinal cord resembled neuronal cells. The percentage of hepatocytic marker-positive cells in the iPSCs cultured on the sections of the liver was statistically higher than that of those in the iPSCs cultured on the sections of the brain and the spinal cord or on cover glasses. In contrast, the iPSCs cultured on the sections of the brain and the spinal cord revealed a high percentage of neural marker-positive cells. Thus, iPSCs can be differentiated into a specific cell lineage in response to specific factors within frozen sections of tissues/organs. Differentiation efficacy of the frozen sections markedly differed between the iPSC clones. Therefore, our induction method could be simple and effective for evaluating the iPSC quality

A study on self-efficacy which students have just before graduation ; a comparison between students of nursing universities and those of junior colleges

看護学生の卒業直前の自己効力感を明らかにし，入職後の教育や指導などへの示唆を得る目的で，看護大学４年生と看護短期大学３年生に一般性自己効力感尺度による調査を行った．その結果，看護学生の自己効力感は一般学生よりも高く，大学生は短大生よりも高い傾向が認められ，入職時には自己効力感をより高める教育や指導の重要性が示唆された．We conducted a survey of fourth-year students at a university nursing program and third-year students at a nursing junior college, using a general self-efficacy scale. Our purpose was to investigate self-efficacy beliefs among nursing students immediately before graduation and find out what sort of education and guidance should be offered to nurses after they are employed. This survey revealed that nursing students has higher self-efficacy belief than other university students and that self-efficacy tended to be even higher among university nursing program students than among junior college nursing students. The result suggest that education and guidance are important for improving even more the self-efficacy of newly employed nurses

Assessment of canopy photosynthetic capacity and estimation of GPP by using spectral vegetation indices and the light–response function in a larch forest

Integration of CO2 flux observations with remote sensing technique and ecosystem modeling is expected to be useful for estimation of gross primary production (GPP). We focused on the changes in the two main parameters for the canopy-scale light-response curve-Pmax (maximum GPP at light saturation) and φ (initial slope)-as indicators to represent canopy photosynthetic capacity. We hypothesized that Pmax and φ could be evaluated by using spectral reflectance related to the changes in the levels of canopy nitrogen and chlorophyll. We analyzed the relationships between Pmax and φ, derived from tower-based CO2 flux observations, and ground-based spectral vegetation indices (VIs) in a temperate deciduous coniferous forest. The canopy-scale Pmax and φ showed clear seasonal changes accompanying phenological stages. Both the variations in Pmax and φ were strongly correlated with VIs, especially with the ratio vegetation index (RVI) and enhanced vegetation index (EVI), independent of the growth stages. Moreover, day-to-day short-term variations of Pmax and φ were affected by meteorological conditions such as vapor pressure deficit (VPD) and relative solar radiation which was calculated as the ratio of monitored radiation per theoretical maximum radiation. Thus, seasonal changes of Pmax and φ were effectively assessed by RVI or EVI, and their short-term variations were evaluated by the empirical relationships with VPD and relative solar radiation. We propose a new simple method for estimating GPP with good precision; by fitting the light-response function with the evaluated parameters, the estimated GPP reflects 3 types of temporal variation: diurnal, day-to-day, and seasonal

Associating Cooking Video with Related Textbook

We have been handling video with supplementary documents, such as cooking programs, and are working on integration of such media. Through the integration, many applications will become possible, for example, reconstruction of multimedia data that supplement the information of each medium, construction of interactive database, or kitchen automation. Until now, we have proposed an integration system that perform integrative analysis of image, audio and text and associate each other. In this paper, we will introduce the latest text analysis result and discuss about future image and audio analysis of the proposed system