Practice of Open Sharing at Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM]

Yamaguchi Center for Arts and Media [YCAM] (herein after "YCAM") is an art center focused on media technology. It produces artwork incorporating media technology, develops media technology, archives related information, and provides education. YCAM has open shared its achievements from some of its projects. “Open share” means to publish an achievement so that a third party can utilize it freely within a certain extent. In this paper, introduction of open sharing at YCAM and the practice of implementing open sharing will be described and discussed

Skin Autofluorescence Associated with IMT

Aim: Accumulation level of fluorescent advanced glycation end products (AGEs) in the skin can be measured non-invasively as skin autofluorescence (skin AF) by autofluorescence reader. The aim of this study was to assess possible associations between skin AF and diabetic complications, especially early-stage atherosclerosis, in Japanese type 1 diabetic patients. Methods: Skin AF was measured by AGE reader® in 105 Japanese type 1 diabetic patients (34 men and 71 women, aged 37.4±12.4 years (±SD)) and 23 age-matched healthy non-diabetic subjects. Ultrasonic carotid intima-media thickness (IMT), ankle-brachial index (ABI), and brachial ankle pulse wave velocity (baPWV) were evaluated as indices of early-stage diabetic macroangiopathy. Urinary albumin-to-creatinine ratio (UACR), the coefficient of variation of R-R intervals (CVR-R), and presence of retinopathy were also evaluated. Results: Skin AF values were significantly higher in type 1 diabetic patients than in healthy controls (2.07±0.50 (mean±SD) and 1.90±0.26, respectively, p=0.024). Skin AF was associated with carotid IMT (r=0.446, p＜0.001) and baPWV (r=0.450, p＜0.001), but not with ABI (r=－0.019, p=0.8488). Notably, skin AF was an independent risk factor for IMT thickening. Similarly, skin AF was associated with log (UACR) (r=0.194, p=0.049) and was an independent risk factor for UACR. Furthermore, skin AF values were significantly higher in patients with diabetic retinopathy than in those without (2.21±0.08 and 1.97±0.06, respectively, p=0.020). Conclusions: Skin AF was significantly associated with the presence and/or severity of diabetic complications and was an independent risk factor for carotid atherosclerosis

Cell wall N-glycan of Candida albicans ameliorates early hyper- and late hypo-immunoreactivity in sepsis

Severe infection often causes a septic cytokine storm followed by immune exhaustion/paralysis. Not surprisingly, many pathogens are equipped with various anti-inflammatory mechanisms. Such mechanisms might be leveraged clinically to control septic cytokine storms. Here we show that N-glycan from pathogenic C. albicans ameliorates mouse sepsis through immunosuppressive cytokine IL-10. In a sepsis model using lipopolysaccharide (LPS), injection of the N-glycan upregulated serum IL-10, and suppressed pro-inflammatory IL-1 beta, TNF-alpha and IFN-gamma. The N-glycan also improved the survival of mice challenged by LPS. Analyses of structurally defined N-glycans from several yeast strains revealed that the mannose core is key to the upregulation of IL-10. Knocking out the C-type lectin Dectin-2 abrogated the N-glycan-mediated IL-10 augmentation. Furthermore, C. albicans N-glycan ameliorated immune exhaustion/immune paralysis after acute inflammation. Our results suggest a strategy where the immunosuppressive mechanism of one pathogen can be applied to attenuate a severe inflammation/cytokine storm caused by another pathogen

A global metagenomic map of urban microbiomes and antimicrobial resistance

We present a global atlas of 4,728 metagenomic samples from mass-transit systems in 60 cities over 3 years, representing the first systematic, worldwide catalog of the urban microbial ecosystem. This atlas provides an annotated, geospatial profile of microbial strains, functional characteristics, antimicrobial resistance (AMR) markers, and genetic elements, including 10,928 viruses, 1,302 bacteria, 2 archaea, and 838,532 CRISPR arrays not found in reference databases. We identified 4,246 known species of urban microorganisms and a consistent set of 31 species found in 97% of samples that were distinct from human commensal organisms. Profiles of AMR genes varied widely in type and density across cities. Cities showed distinct microbial taxonomic signatures that were driven by climate and geographic differences. These results constitute a high-resolution global metagenomic atlas that enables discovery of organisms and genes, highlights potential public health and forensic applications, and provides a culture-independent view of AMR burden in cities.Funding: the Tri-I Program in Computational Biology and Medicine (CBM) funded by NIH grant 1T32GM083937; GitHub; Philip Blood and the Extreme Science and Engineering Discovery Environment (XSEDE), supported by NSF grant number ACI-1548562 and NSF award number ACI-1445606; NASA (NNX14AH50G, NNX17AB26G), the NIH (R01AI151059, R25EB020393, R21AI129851, R35GM138152, U01DA053941); STARR Foundation (I13- 0052); LLS (MCL7001-18, LLS 9238-16, LLS-MCL7001-18); the NSF (1840275); the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation (OPP1151054); the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation (G-2015-13964); Swiss National Science Foundation grant number 407540_167331; NIH award number UL1TR000457; the US Department of Energy Joint Genome Institute under contract number DE-AC02-05CH11231; the National Energy Research Scientific Computing Center, supported by the Office of Science of the US Department of Energy; Stockholm Health Authority grant SLL 20160933; the Institut Pasteur Korea; an NRF Korea grant (NRF-2014K1A4A7A01074645, 2017M3A9G6068246); the CONICYT Fondecyt Iniciación grants 11140666 and 11160905; Keio University Funds for Individual Research; funds from the Yamagata prefectural government and the city of Tsuruoka; JSPS KAKENHI grant number 20K10436; the bilateral AT-UA collaboration fund (WTZ:UA 02/2019; Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine, UA:M/84-2019, M/126-2020); Kyiv Academic Univeristy; Ministry of Education and Science of Ukraine project numbers 0118U100290 and 0120U101734; Centro de Excelencia Severo Ochoa 2013–2017; the CERCA Programme / Generalitat de Catalunya; the CRG-Novartis-Africa mobility program 2016; research funds from National Cheng Kung University and the Ministry of Science and Technology; Taiwan (MOST grant number 106-2321-B-006-016); we thank all the volunteers who made sampling NYC possible, Minciencias (project no. 639677758300), CNPq (EDN - 309973/2015-5), the Open Research Fund of Key Laboratory of Advanced Theory and Application in Statistics and Data Science – MOE, ECNU, the Research Grants Council of Hong Kong through project 11215017, National Key RD Project of China (2018YFE0201603), and Shanghai Municipal Science and Technology Major Project (2017SHZDZX01) (L.S.