A Distinct Structure Inside the Galactic Bar

We present the result of a near-infrared (J H Ks) survey along the Galactic plane, -10.5deg < l < +10.5deg and b=+1.0deg, with the IRSF 1.4m telescope and the SIRIUS camera. Ks vs. H-Ks color-magnitude diagrams reveal a well-defined population of red clump (RC) stars whose apparent magnitude peak changes continuously along the Galactic plane, from Ks=13.4 at l=-10deg to Ks=12.2 at l=+10deg after dereddening. This variation can be explained by the bar-like structure found in previous studies, but we find an additional inner structure at |l| < 4deg, where the longitude - apparent magnitude relation is distinct from the outer bar, and the apparent magnitude peak changes by only 0.1 mag over the central 8deg. The exact nature of this inner structure is as yet uncertain.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figures. accepted by ApJ

In vivo evaluation of drug dialyzability in a rat model of hemodialysis.

It is important to calculate the drug removal by hemodialysis (HD) for drug dosing regimens in HD patients. However, there are limited and inconsistent information about the dialyzability of drugs by HD. Therefore, the aim of our study is to evaluate drug removal by utilizing a rat model of HD (HD rat) and to extrapolate this result to the drug removal rate in HD patients. HD rats received bilateral nephrectomy and HD for 2 h. The dialysis removal of 6 drugs was evaluated in HD rats. Dialysis efficiency, plasma protein binding rate (PBR) and distribution volume (Vd) of drugs were also measured. Furthermore, we examined the correlation between the dialyzability of drug in HD rats and humans and constructed the prediction formula of the drug dialyzability in HD patients. The clearance of urea and creatinine and normalized dialysis dose in HD rats were 0.83 ± 0.07 mL/min, 0.70 ± 0.08 mL/min, and 0.13 ± 0.06, respectively. The drug dialyzability in HD rats was similar to reported clinical data except for doripenem. A higher correlation was observed between drug dialyzability in reported clinical data and HD rats which were adjusted for PBR (r2 = 0.936; p < 0.001) compared to unadjusted (r2 = 0.812; p = 0.009). Therefore, we constructed the prediction formula of the drug dialyzability in HD patients by utilizing the HD rat model and PBR. This study is useful for evaluating the dialyzability of high-risk drugs in a clinical setting and might provide appropriate preclinical dialyzability data for new drug

Homogenous web communication platform in non-homogenous network environment for emerging countries

近年,先進国と発展途上国において利用可能なネットワークの帯域幅に格差が生じてきている.利用可能なネットワークの帯域幅とコンピュータ環境が異なる複数地域の人々が,ある一つのWebサーバにおいて提供されるSNS(ソーシャルネットワーキングサービス)などのWebコンテンツを利用し,互いにコミュニケーションを行う状況を考える.本研究では,このような環境を“非均質なネットワーク と表現する.非均質なネットワークにおいては,地域間においてWebコンテンツを構成するファイルの取得速度に差異が生じる.結果として,各地域の人々に対して均質にWebコンテンツを提供することができず,地域間における人々のコミュニケーションを妨げてしまう可能性がある.本研究では,非均質なネットワークにおいて均質にWebコンテンツを提供するために,利用可能帯域幅が広い地域のファイル取得速度を低下させることなく,利用可能帯域幅が狭い地域のファイル取得速度を向上させるシステムを提案する.In recent years, there has been a more distinct gap in network bandwidths between developed countries and developing countries. In a non-homogeneous network environment , which is a mixture of narrowband and broadband networks, the amount of time to obtain a Web file differs from one place to another. As a result, people in developing countries have difficulties downloading certain Web files, which prevents them from communicating fully with people in other faraway places. In this paper, we propose a platform for Web communication (e.g. social networking) in a non-homogeneous network environment in order to reduce the time to obtain Web files and reduce the usage of Internet connection bandwidths for users in developing countries. This paper describes the system structure of the proposed platform and presents the simulation results to verify its effectiveness