Effects of ipsilateral cerebellum ablation on acquisition and retention of classically conditioned eyeblink responses in rats.

The ipsilateral cerebellum to the trained eye has been reported to be essential for acquisition and retention of the conditioned response (CR) in rabbit eyeblink conditioning. Although pharmacological studies have suggested its important roles in other species too, to what degree does eyeblink conditioning in rats depend on the ipsilateral cerebellum is not clear. In this work, we ablated the ipsilateral cerebellum in rats before or after conditioning to examine its roles in acquisition and retention of the CR. In the first experiment, rats received ablation of the ipsilateral cerebellum and recovered for more than 3 weeks. They then underwent eyeblink conditioning for 7 days with a tone and a periorbital electrical shock. Consistent with other previous reports, hemicerebellectomized rats showed significant impairment compared to sham-lesioned rats. However, the hemicerebellectomized rats acquired CRs to some degree, and the acquired CR showed adaptive timing. In the second experiment, rats received the hemicerebellectomy after acquiring CR by 7 days of conditioning in a delay paradigm. After more than 3 weeks of recovery, they were again conditioned in a delay paradigm. Rats with ipsilateral cerebellar lesions showed severe impairment in retention of the pre-acquired CR; however, they reacquired CR to some degree during the subsequent reconditioning sessions. These results suggest that the ipsilateral cerebellum plays an important role in rat eyeblink conditioning as well but that other brain regions can partially compensate for its removal

Greener Preparation of 5-Ethyl-4a-hydroxyisoalloxazine and Its Use for Catalytic Aerobic Oxygenations

Isoalloxazine ring systems are found in flavin cofactors in nature, and the simulation of their redox catalyses is an important task for developing sustainable catalytic oxidation reactions. Although 5- ethyl-4a-hydroxyisoalloxazines are among the most promising candidates as catalyst for such purposes, the use of them for laboratorial as well as industrial synthetic chemistry has so far been quite limited presumably due to the lack of their preparation methods readily, safely, and inexpensively available. In this communication, we introduce an environmentally benign and practical preparation of 5-ethyl-4a-hydroxy-3,7,8,10-tetramethylisoalloxazine (1EtOH) from 3,7,8,10-tetramethylisoalloxazine (1), in which conventional synthetic requirements, including (i) operations under inert conditions, (ii) risky or expensive chemicals, and (iii) isolation of labile intermediates, have all been dissolved. In addition, we have presented that 1EtOH could be an effective catalyst for Baeyer-Villiger oxidation as well as sulfoxidation with molecular oxygen (O2) as a terminal oxidant under suitable conditions, which is the first report on aerobic oxygenations catalyzed by 5-alkyl-4a-hydroxyisoalloxazines

Analysis of Hydraulic and Geomorphic Conditions Causing Railway Embankment Breach due to Inundation Flow

Embankments on a floodplain, usually treated as solid walls in inundation simulations can cause considerable damage during severe flood events. The damage to road or railway embankment system not only changes the propagation of inundation flow but also destroys the transportation infrastructure. In this study, the failure of the embankment system of the Kishin Railway Line during the flood event in August, 2009 is analyzed. The factors in causing embankment failure are analyzed from the geographic and hydraulic view points. A framework to estimate the risk of the embankment failure, which is based on the analysis of the structures of the geography and inundation flow, is proposed in this work

Characterization of ZnS-layer-inserted bulk-heterojunction organic solar cells by ac impedance spectroscopy

金沢大学理工研究域物質化学系A fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO)/zinc sulfide (ZnS)/[6,6]-phenyl C 61 butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM): regioregular poly(3-hexylthiophene) P3HT)/poly(3,4-ethylenedioxylenethiophene): poly(4-styrene sulfonic acid) (PEDOT:PSS)/Au type organic solar cell (FTO/ZnS/PCBM:P3HT/PEDOT:PSS/Au, ZnS cell) with a 1 cm2 active area was first developed using transparent ZnS prepared on a FTO electrode by a chemical bath deposition method. The ZnS inserted solar cells were investigated by photocurrent-voltage (I-V) and ac impedance spectroscopy (IS) measurements. In photo I-V measurements, the ZnS cell exhibited scattered power conversion efficiencies (η) of 0.7%-1.2% when the FTO/ZnS electrode was not immersed in various aqueous solutions before the fabrication of the ZnS cells. In contrast, the solar cells with a surface-modified FTO/ZnS electrode by immersing in 0.1M Na2 S solutions at pH 7-9 containing hydrosulfide ions (HS-) exhibited reproducible η of 1.5%-1.7%. The electric resistance components in the cell consisting of five layers were separately estimated by the IS measurement. The larger of the solar cell using HS- modified ZnS was explained by the fact that the charge transport resistance at the ZnS/PCBM:P3HT interface became smaller due to this surface modification. When a continuous light irradiation was carried out for the modified cells, the resistance at the ZnS/PCBM:P3HT interface increased, being accompanied by the decrease in the η. That is, the cell performance was controlled mainly by charge transport velocity at the ZnS/PCBM:P3HT interface. © 2009 American Institute of Physics

Structural and functional insights into thermally stable cytochrome c' from a thermophile

Thermophilic Hydrogenophilus thermoluteolus cytochrome c0 (PHCP) exhibits higher thermal stability than a mesophilic counterpart, Allochromatium vinosum cytochrome c0 (AVCP), which has a homo-dimeric structure and ligand-binding ability. To understand the thermal stability mechanism and ligand-binding ability of the thermally stable PHCP protein, the crystal structure of PHCP was first determined. It formed a homo-dimeric structure, the main chain root mean square deviation (rmsd) value between PHCP and AVCP being 0.65 A ° . In the PHCP structure, six specific residues appeared to strengthen the heme-related and subunit–subunit interactions, which were not conserved in the AVCP structure. PHCP variants having altered subunit–subunit interactions were more severely destabilized than ones having altered heme-related interactions. The PHCP structure further revealed a ligand-binding channel and a penta-coordinated heme, as observed in the AVCP protein. A spectroscopic study clearly showed that some ligands were bound to the PHCP protein. It is concluded that the dimeric PHCP from the thermophile is effectively stabilized through heme-related and subunit–subunit interactions with conservation of the ligand-binding ability.This work was performed under the Cooperative Research Program of the “Network Joint Research Center for Materials and Devices”

Erroneous selection of a non-target item improves subsequent target identification in rapid serial visual presentations

The second of two targets (T2) embedded in a rapid serial visual presentation (RSVSVP) is often missed even though the first (T1) is correctly reported (attentional blink). The rate of correct T2 identification is quite high, however, when T2 comes immediately after T1 (lag-1 sparing). This study investigated whether and how non-target items induce lag-1 sparing. One T1 and two T2s comprising letters were inserted in distractors comprising symbols in each of two synchronised RSVSVPs. A digit (dummy) was presented with T1 in another stream. Lag-1 sparing occurred even at the location where the dummy was present (Experiment 1). This distractor-induced sparing effect was also obtained even when a Japanese katakana character (Experiment 2) was used as the dummy. The sparing effect was, however, severely weakened when symbols (Experiment 3) and Hebrew letters (Experiment 4) served as the dummy. Our findings suggest a tentative hypothesis that attentional set for item nameability is meta-categorically created and adopted to the dummy only when the dummy is nameable

New high-efficiency source of photon pairs for engineering quantum entanglement

We have constructed an efficient source of photon pairs using a waveguide-type nonlinear device and performed a two-photon interference experiment with an unbalanced Michelson interferometer. Parametric down-converted photons from the nonlinear device are detected by two detectors located at the output ports of the interferometer. Because the interferometer is constructed with two optical paths of different length, photons from the shorter path arrive at the detector earlier than those from the longer path. We find that the difference of arrival time and the time window of the coincidence counter are important parameters which determine the boundary between the classical and quantum regime. When the time window of the coincidence counter is smaller than the arrival time difference, fringes of high visibility (80$\pm$ 10%) were observed. This result is only explained by quantum theory and is clear evidence for quantum entanglement of the interferometer's optical paths.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures, IQEC200