ルテイン集合体の電子顕微鏡による観察

Lutein, one of major carotenoids in green leaves, disperses in aqueous solutions to form chiral helical aggregates which acquire an optical activity in visible region. We confirmed that this aggregate had enormous size with ultrafiltration and sedimentation equilibrium analyses. In this paper, lutein aggregates dispersed in dilute surfactant solution, SDS or DTAB, are observed with electron microscope to estimate the size and the shape of the aggregate. Lutein aggregate showed images of rod-like shape, and their sizes are from 0.3 to 1.5 um in length and from 0.05 to 0.2 um in width. Possible conformation of the aggregate with helical structure was illustrated, and a working hypothesis for physiological function of lutein in thylakoid was postulated

Multi-layered reasoning by means of conceptual fuzzy sets

The real world consists of a very large number of instances of events and continuous numeric values. On the other hand, people represent and process their knowledge in terms of abstracted concepts derived from generalization of these instances and numeric values. Logic based paradigms for knowledge representation use symbolic processing both for concept representation and inference. Their underlying assumption is that a concept can be defined precisely. However, as this assumption hardly holds for natural concepts, it follows that symbolic processing cannot deal with such concepts. Thus symbolic processing has essential problems from a practical point of view of applications in the real world. In contrast, fuzzy set theory can be viewed as a stronger and more practical notation than formal, logic based theories because it supports both symbolic processing and numeric processing, connecting the logic based world and the real world. In this paper, we propose multi-layered reasoning by using conceptual fuzzy sets (CFS). The general characteristics of CFS are discussed along with upper layer supervision and context dependent processing

Liposarcoma of stomach: report of a case

A report is made on a case of liposarcoma of stomach in a 42 year old man. This is the first case of liposarcoma of stomach reported in Japan. The patient has remained asymptomatic for five years after operation.</p

Bound and Radiation Fields in the Rindler Frame

The energy-momentum tensor of the Li\'enard-Wiechert field is split into bound and emitted parts in the Rindler frame, by generalizing the reasoning of Teitelboim applied in the inertial frame. Our analysis proceeds by invoking the concept of ``energy'' defined with respect to the Killing vector field attached to the frame. We obtain the radiation formula in the Rindler frame (the Rindler version of the Larmor formula), and it is found that the radiation power is proportional to the square of acceleration $\alpha^\mu$ of the charge relative to the Rindler frame. This result leads us to split the Li\'enard-Wiechert field into a part II', which is linear in $\alpha^\mu$, and a part I', which is independent of $\alpha^\mu$. By using these, we split the energy-momentum tensor into two parts. We find that these are properly interpreted as the emitted and bound parts of the tensor in the Rindler frame. In our identification of radiation, a charge radiates neither in the case that the charge is fixed in the Rindler frame, nor in the case that the charge satisfies the equation $\alpha^\mu=0$. We then investigate this equation. We consider four gedanken experiments related to the observer dependence of the concept of radiation.Comment: 30 pages 2 figure

Lotus root-like appearance in the left anterior descending artery treated with a drug-coated balloon angioplasty

A lotus root-like appearance of the coronary artery diagnosed by optical coherence tomography (OCT) is characterized by old coronary thrombi that form small lumen channels. Herein, serial OCT images of a left anterior descending artery with a lotus root-like appearance, treated with drug-coated balloon angioplasty are described

The Use of Social Media for Engaging People with Environmentally Friendly Lifestyle: A Conceptual Model

Some recent research has investigated factors affecting household recycling and waste reduction behavior (Ho and So, 2017; Nishio and Takeuchi, 2005) in traditional media platforms like newspaper, radio, and television, but scant related to social media. In this study, we develop a conceptual model for comparing how traditional media and social media can be used as platforms for promoting and engaging young people in adopting an environmentally friendly lifestyle. We are particularly interested in the impact of social media on the engaging young people because: (i) there is huge population of young and active users on social media; and (ii) prior research reports that social media may contribute for value co-creation (See-To and Ho, 2014) in a marketing campaign through the interactions among the users and the owner of the social media, thus affecting the users’ behavior accordingly

Quantitative Estimation of Urate Transport in Nephrons in Relation to Urinary Excretion Employing Benzbromarone-Loading Urate Clearance Tests in Cases of Hyperuricemia

Background: A four-component system for urate transport in nephrons has been proposed and widely investigated by various investigators studying the mechanisms underlying urinary urate excretion. However, quantitative determinations of urate transport have not been clearly elucidated yet. Methods: The equation Cua = {Ccr(1 – R1) + TSR}(1 – R2) was designed to approximate mathematically urate transport in nephrons, where R1 = urate reabsorption ratio; R2 = urate postsecretory reabsorption ratio; TSR = tubular secretion rate; Cua = urate clearance, and Ccr = creatinine clearance . To investigate relationships between the three unknown variables (R1, R2, and TSR), this equation was expressed as contour lines of one unknown on a graph of the other two unknowns. Points at regular intervals on each contour line for the equation were projected onto a coordinate axis and the high-density regions corresponding to high-density intervals of a coordinate were investigated for three graph types. For benzbromarone (BBR)-loading Cua tests, Cua was determined before and after oral administration of 100 mg of BBR and CuaBBR(∞) was calculated from the ratio of CuaBBR(100)/Cua. Results: Before BBR administration, points satisfying the equation on the contour line for R1 = 0.99 were highly dense in the region R2 = 0.87–0.92 on all three graphs, corresponding to a TSR of 40–60 ml/min in hyperuricemia cases (HU). After BBR administration, the dense region was shifted in the direction of reductions in both R1 and R2, but TSR was unchanged. Under the condition that R1 = 1 and R2 = 0, urate tubular secretion (UTS) was considered equivalent to calculated urinary urate excretion (Uex) in a model of intratubular urate flow with excess BBR; CuaBBR(∞) = TSR was deduced from the equation at R1 = 1 and R2 = 0. In addition, TSR of the point under the condition that R1 = 1 and R2 = 0 on the graph agreed with TSR for the dense region at excess BBR. TSR was thus considered approximately equivalent to CuaBBR(∞), which could be determined from a BBR-loading Cua test. Approximate values for urate glomerular filtration, urate reabsorption, UTS, urate postsecretory reabsorption (UR2), and Uex were calculated as 9,610; 9,510; 4,490; 4,150, and 440 µg/min for HU and 6,890; 6,820; 4,060; 3,610, and 520 µg/min for normal controls (NC), respectively. The most marked change in HU was the decrease in TSR (32.0%) compared to that in NC, but UTS did not decrease. Calculated intratubular urate contents were reduced more by higher UR2 in HU than in NC. This enhanced difference resulted in a 15.4% decrease in Uex for HU. Conclusion: Increased UR2 may represent the main cause of urate underexcretion in HU

Sensorless parameter estimation of electromagnetic transducer considering eddy currents

This paper presents a method of estimating the parameters of an electromagnetic transducer without sensors. The proposed method utilizes the measured admittance of the electromagnetic transducer, and therefore position, velocity, and/or acceleration sensors are not necessary in this framework. Novel impedance models are proposed based on the basic physical principles of electromagnetics; in particular, the effect of eddy currents has been included in these proposed models. The validity of the proposed estimation method and models was experimentally demonstrated by comparing the parameter estimation and vibration control capabilities of the proposed models with three conventional models. © 2017 Elsevier LtdEmbargo period 12 month