Temporal change in rock-magnetic properties of volcanic ashes ejected during a 1-year eruption event: a case study on the Aso Nakadake 2019-2020 eruption

We investigated temporal changes in the rock-magnetic properties of volcanic ash ejected from the Aso Nakadake volcano during a sequence of ash eruptions from 2019 to 2020. For 39 volcanic ash samples, magnetic hysteresis parameters, including saturation magnetization (M-s), saturation remanent magnetization (M-rs), coercivity (B-c), and coercivity of remanence (B-cr), were obtained. Curie temperature (T-c) of the samples was also estimated using thermomagnetic analyses. Titanium-rich and -poor titanomagnetites were the dominant magnetic minerals in the volcanic ash, of which the titanium-rich phase was dominant. Systematic magnetic measurements of the volcanic ash ejected during the 1-year eruption event indicate that temporal changes in the hysteresis parameters occurred throughout the event. These temporal changes suggest that the M-rs/M-s and B-c values of the volcanic ash increased considerably during several periods. The clear increases in M-rs/M-s and B-c, associated with the central peak in FORC diagrams, indicate that non-interacting single-domain grains increased. For these high M-rs/M-s and B-c samples, thermal demagnetizations of 3-axis IRM show that the low unblocking-temperature component up to 250-300 & DEG;C has apparently higher coercivity, suggesting that the above-mentioned, non-interacting single-domain grains are Ti-rich titanomagnetite. Interestingly, the high M-rs/M-s and B-c values were synchronous with observations of volcanic glow. These results suggest that changes in the magnetic properties of titanomagnetite grains in volcanic ash reflect changes in physical conditions from the vent to the conduit of the volcano

A Method for suppresion of defects in zigzag bending of sheet metal

This study presents methods for suppression of defects observed in zigzag bending of sheet-metal or plate. This type of bending is widely used in industry for manufacturing structural parts in automobiles. Although it is easily conducted by press forming using upper and lower dies which have zigzag shape, it often has defects, such as spring-back and dents. A series of finite element analyses and experiments were conducted for suppression of the defects in two-place bending, which has three segments. As a result, it is revealed that that the distance between two bending positions is dominant for occurrence of the dents and that the dent area was able to be reduced by selecting the optimum moving direction of the upper die. It is also revealed that the cause of spring-back is elastic recovery of the straight segments instead of the bent parts against engineers' and technicians'' intuition, and that there is an optimum moving direction of the upper die for the least spring-back. Furthermore, another realistic method for suppression of spring-back was suggested for four-place bending

Bayesian phase difference estimation algorithm for direct calculation of fine structure splitting: accelerated simulation of relativistic and quantum many-body effects

Despite rapid progress in the development of quantum algorithms in quantum computing as well as numerical simulation methods in classical computing for atomic and molecular applications, no systematic and comprehensive electronic structure study of atomic systems that covers almost all of the elements in the periodic table using a single quantum algorithm has been reported. In this work, we address this gap by implementing the recently-proposed quantum algorithm, the Bayesian Phase Difference Estimation (BPDE) approach, to compute accurately fine-structure splittings, which are relativistic in origin and it also depends on quantum many-body (electron correlation) effects, of appropriately chosen states of atomic systems, including highly-charged superheavy ions. Our numerical simulations reveal that the BPDE algorithm, in the Dirac--Coulomb--Breit framework, can predict the fine-structure splitting of Boron-like ions to within 605.3 cm$^{-1}$ of root mean square deviations from the experimental ones, in the (1s, 2s, 2p, 3s, 3p) active space. We performed our simulations of relativistic and electron correlation effects on Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) by utilizing NVIDIA's cuQuantum, and observe a $\times 42.7$ speedup as compared to the CPU-only simulations in an 18-qubit active space.Comment: 7+4 pages, 2 figure

Vascular Endothelial Adrenomedullin-RAMP2 System Is Essential for Vascular Integrity and Organ Homeostasis

信州大学博士（医学）・学位論文・平成25年3月31日授与（甲第935号）・小山 晃英Background-Revealing the mechanisms underlying the functional integrity of the vascular system could make available novel therapeutic approaches. We previously showed that knocking out the widely expressed peptide adrenomedullin (AM) or receptor activity-modifying protein 2 (RAMP2), an AM-receptor accessory protein, causes vascular abnormalities and is embryonically lethal. Our aim was to investigate the function of the vascular AM-RAMP2 system directly. Methods and Results-We generated endothelial cell-specific RAMP2 and AM knockout mice (E-RAMP2(-/-) and E-AM(-/-)). Most E-RAMP2(-/-) mice died perinatally. In surviving adults, vasculitis occurred spontaneously. With aging, E-RAMP2(-/-) mice showed severe organ fibrosis with marked oxidative stress and accelerated vascular senescence. Later, liver cirrhosis, cardiac fibrosis, and hydronephrosis developed. We next used a line of drug-inducible E-RAMP2(-/-) mice (DI-E-RAMP2(-/-)) to induce RAMP2 deletion in adults, which enabled us to analyze the initial causes of the aforementioned vascular and organ damage. Early after the induction, pronounced edema with enhanced vascular leakage occurred. In vitro analysis revealed the vascular leakage to be caused by actin disarrangement and detachment of endothelial cells. We found that the AM-RAMP2 system regulates the Rac1-GTP/RhoA-GTP ratio and cortical actin formation and that a defect in this system causes the disruption of actin formation, leading to vascular and organ damage at the chronic stage after the gene deletion. Conclusions-Our findings show that the AM-RAMP2 system is a key determinant of vascular integrity and homeostasis from prenatal stages through adulthood. Furthermore, our models demonstrate how endothelial cells regulate vascular integrity and how their dysregulation leads to organ damage. (Circulation. 2013;127:842-853.)ArticleCIRCULATION. 127(7):842-853 (2013)journal articl

Readministration of gefitinib in a responder after treatment discontinuation due to gefinitib-related interstitial lung disease: a case report

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Introduction</p> <p>Gefitinib is a new molecular-targeted agent for the treatment of patients with advanced non-small cell lung cancer that fail to respond to conventional chemotherapy. Gefitinib is considered to be well tolerated and less toxic compared with conventional cytotoxic drugs. However, interstitial lung disease (ILD) has been reported as a serious adverse effect. The precise management of a gefitinib responder having severe adverse events remains unknown.</p> <p>Case Presentation</p> <p>We report the case of gefitinib readministration in a patient with lung adenocarcinoma who had once responded but in whom treatment had to be discontinued owing to gefinitib-related ILD. A dramatic response was achieved both at the time of initial treatment (250 mg/day) and at readministration of gefitinib (125 mg/day). The effectiveness of gefitinib therapy in our patient could be explained in part by the presence of an activating mutation of epidermal growth factor receptor (<it>EGFR</it>) gene, L858R in exon 21, which was identified in the primary tumor.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>A reduced dose of gefitinib might be sufficient for patients having tumors with <it>EGFR </it>gene mutations, and that the currently approved dose may be excessively potent in some of these patients, thus resulting in the onset of adverse events.</p