Field excursion to enhance coastal and environmental engineering capacities of engineers in administrative positions

The capacity building of coastal administrators is essential for sustainable coastal zone management. In order to enhance the ability of trainees in coastal and environmental engineering, the College of Land, Infrastructure, Transport and Tourism of the Japanese Government has carried out annual field excursions to Kujukuri Beach, a typical sandy beach in central Japan for comprehensively learning about real phenomena occurring on the beach and in the hinterland. This paper describes the excursion in 2011, in which 20 trainees participated. The importance of learning through the field excursions to coasts is discussed

Mutations in the guinea pig preproglucagon gene are restricted to a specific portion of the prohormone sequence

AbstractA cDNA clone encoding guinea pig preproglucagon has been isolated from a pancreatic cDNA library. The predicted amino acid sequence of proglucagon is highly conserved in all regions, in comparison to other mammals, except for the C-terminal portion of the 29-residue glucagon region, in which 5 amino acid substitutions have occurred. These changes may serve to offset the reduced receptor-binding potency of the highly mutated insulin in this New World species.GlucagonEvolutionHystricomorphcDNAGlycogenolytic hormon

Search for Dark Photon Dark Matter in the Mass Range 74-110 μeV with a Cryogenic Millimeter-Wave Receiver

ミリ波を用いたダークマター探索手法を確立. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-03-07.Thinking big and dark by starting small and light: Millimeter-wave technologies assist in examining 'light' dark matter. 京都大学プレスリリース. 2023-03-23.We search for the dark photon dark matter (DPDM) using a cryogenic millimeter-wave receiver. DPDM has a kinetic coupling with electromagnetic fields with a coupling constant of χ and is converted into ordinary photons at the surface of a metal plate. We search for signal of this conversion in the frequency range 18-26.5 GHz, which corresponds to the mass range 74-110 μeV/c². We observed no significant signal excess, allowing us to set an upper bound of χ<(0.3-2.0)×10⁻¹⁰ at 95% confidence level. This is the most stringent constraint to date and tighter than cosmological constraints. Improvements from previous studies are obtained by employing a cryogenic optical path and a fast spectrometer

Structural, Electronic, and Magnetic Properties of MnO

We calculate the structural, electronic, and magnetic properties of MnO from first principles, using the full-potential linearized augmented planewave method, with both local-density and generalized-gradient approximations to exchange and correlation. We find the ground state to be of rhombohedrally distorted B1 structure with compression along the [111] direction, antiferromagnetic with type-II ordering, and insulating, consistent with experiment. We show that the distortion can be understood in terms of a Heisenberg model with distance dependent nearest-neighbor and next-nearest-neighbor couplings determined from first principles. Finally, we show that magnetic ordering can induce significant charge anisotropy, and give predictions for electric field gradients in the ground-state rhombohedrally distorted structure.Comment: Submitted to Physical Review B. Replaced: regenerated figures to resolve font problems in automatically generated pd

Comparative effectiveness of dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors and human glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogue as add-on therapies to sulphonylurea among diabetes patients in the Asia-Pacific region: a systematic review

The prevalence of diabetes mellitus is rising globally, and it induces a substantial public health burden to the healthcare systems. Its optimal control is one of the most significant challenges faced by physicians and policy-makers. Whereas some of the established oral hypoglycaemic drug classes like biguanide, sulphonylureas, thiazolidinediones have been extensively used, the newer agents like dipeptidyl peptidase-4 (DPP-4) inhibitors and the human glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) analogues have recently emerged as suitable options due to their similar efficacy and favorable side effect profiles. These agents are widely recognized alternatives to the traditional oral hypoglycaemic agents or insulin, especially in conditions where they are contraindicated or unacceptable to patients. Many studies which evaluated their clinical effects, either alone or as add-on agents, were conducted in Western countries. There exist few reviews on their effectiveness in the Asia-Pacific region. The purpose of this systematic review is to address the comparative effectiveness of these new classes of medications as add-on therapies to sulphonylurea drugs among diabetic patients in the Asia-Pacific countries. We conducted a thorough literature search of the MEDLINE and EMBASE from the inception of these databases to August 2013, supplemented by an additional manual search using reference lists from research studies, meta-analyses and review articles as retrieved by the electronic databases. A total of nine randomized controlled trials were identified and described in this article. It was found that DPP-4 inhibitors and GLP-1 analogues were in general effective as add-on therapies to existing sulphonylurea therapies, achieving HbA1c reductions by a magnitude of 0.59–0.90% and 0.77–1.62%, respectively. Few adverse events including hypoglycaemic attacks were reported. Therefore, these two new drug classes represent novel therapies with great potential to be major therapeutic options. Future larger-scale research should be conducted among other Asia-Pacific region to evaluate their efficacy in other ethnic groups