Preparation and Electrical Properties of PZT Thin Film Capacitors for Ferroelectric Random Access Memory

Keywords: PZT thin film, D-E hysteresis, SrRuO3 film, polarization switching, inprint, degredatio

Roles of CCN2 as a mechano-sensing regulator of chondrocyte differentiation

Cellular communication network factor 2 (CCN2) is a cysteine-rich secreted matricellular protein that regulates various cellular functions including cell differentiation. CCN2 is highly expressed under several types of mechanical stress, such as stretch, compression, and shear stress, in mesenchymal cells including chondrocytes, osteoblasts, and fibroblasts. In particular, CCN2 not only promotes cell proliferation and differentiation of various cells but also regulates the stability of mRNA of TRPV4, a mechanosensitive ion channel in chondrocytes. Of note, CCN2 behaves like a biomarker to sense suitable mechanical stress, because CCN2 expression is down-regulated when chondrocytes are subjected to excessive mechanical stress. These findings suggest that CCN2 is a mechano-sensing regulator. CCN2 expression is regulated by the activation of various mechano-sensing signaling pathways, e.g., mechanosensitive ion channels, integrin-focal adhesion-actin dynamics, Rho GTPase family members, Hippo-YAP signaling, and G protein-coupled receptors. This review summarizes the characterization of mechanoreceptors involved in CCN2 gene regulation and discusses the role of CCN2 as a mechano-sensing regulator of mesenchymal cell differentiation, with particular focus on chondrocytes

TCP: a tool for designing chimera proteins based on the tertiary structure information

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Chimera proteins are widely used for the analysis of the protein-protein interaction region. One of the major issues is the epitope analysis of the monoclonal antibody. In the analysis, a continuous portion of an antigen is sequentially substituted into a different sequence. This method works well for an antibody recognizing a linear epitope, but not for that recognizing a discontinuous epitope. Although the designing the chimera proteins based on the tertiary structure information is required in such situations, there is no appropriate tool so far.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>In light of the problem, we developed a tool named TCP (standing for a Tool for designing Chimera Proteins), which extracts some sets of mutually orthogonal cutting surfaces for designing chimera proteins using a genetic algorithm. TCP can also incorporate and consider the solvent accessible surface area information calculated by a DSSP program. The test results of our method indicate that the TCP is robust and applicable to various shapes of proteins.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>We developed TCP, a tool for designing chimera proteins based on the tertiary structure information. TCP is robust and possesses several favourable features, and we believe it is a useful tool for designing chimera proteins. TCP is freely available as an additional file of this manuscript for academic and non-profit organization.</p

Angiogenesis in Cancer

New growth in the vascular network is important since the proliferation, as well as metastatic spread, of cancer cells depends on an adequate supply of oxygen and nutrients and the removal of waste products. New blood and lymphatic vessels form through processes called angiogenesis and lymphangiogenesis, respectively. Angiogenesis is regulated by both activator and inhibitor molecules. More than a dozen different proteins have been identified as angiogenic activators and inhibitors. Levels of expression of angiogenic factors reflect the aggressiveness of tumor cells. The discovery of angiogenic inhibitors should help to reduce both morbidity and mortality from carcinomas. Thousands of patients have received antiangiogenic therapy to date. Despite their theoretical efficacy, antiangiogeic treatments have not proved beneficial in terms of long-term survival. There is an urgent need for a new comprehensive treatment strategy combining antiangiogenic agents with conventional cytoreductive treatments in the control of cancer

大阪南部に残る泊園書院藤澤南岳・黄鵠・黄坡の揮毫と碑文 : 中河内郡恵我村別所の中山家資料を中心に

補助事業　文部科学省私立大学学術研究高度化推進事業オープン・リサーチ・センター整備事業（平成17年度～平成21年度）なにわ・大阪文化遺産の総合人文学的研

Zero-shot domain adaptation of anomalous samples for semi-supervised anomaly detection

Semi-supervised anomaly detection~(SSAD) is a task where normal data and a limited number of anomalous data are available for training. In practical situations, SSAD methods suffer adapting to domain shifts, since anomalous data are unlikely to be available for the target domain in the training phase. To solve this problem, we propose a domain adaptation method for SSAD where no anomalous data are available for the target domain. First, we introduce a domain-adversarial network to a variational auto-encoder-based SSAD model to obtain domain-invariant latent variables. Since the decoder cannot reconstruct the original data solely from domain-invariant latent variables, we conditioned the decoder on the domain label. To compensate for the missing anomalous data of the target domain, we introduce an importance sampling-based weighted loss function that approximates the ideal loss function. Experimental results indicate that the proposed method helps adapt SSAD models to the target domain when no anomalous data are available for the target domain

Experimental Studies on the Concentrations of Subjectively Equivalent Irritation for Odorants

Discussion of non-olfactory “irritation”, which is caused by the excitement of the trigeminal nerve, has important implications for odor pollution. The main purpose of this study is to work out the mechanisms for the generation of non-olfactory irritation, and the sensory characteristics of the perceived irritation. Concentrations of subjectively equivalent irritation (CE) of 16 odorous compounds were measured by the sensory test. The relations between the CE and the physicochemical properties of the compounds were shown and discussed. It was found that the CE of dissociated compounds is much lower than that of undissociated compounds. And among the dissociated compounds, the acidic ones have a lower CE than the basic compounds. The CE of acrolein, which is an unsaturated compound, was the lowest among all the compounds used in this experiment. The delay time, i.e. time until the sensation of irritation after inhaling, was longer for acrolein gas than for other gases. Therefore, the mechanism for generating sensory irritation by the acrolein gas may be different from that of other gases. From analysis on the basis of relation to some physicochemical properties, it was concluded that the electrophilic reactivity of the acrolein molecule may be related to the generation of sensory irritation. In the case of dissociated compounds, the CE is related to the dissociation constants of the compounds. In other words, the larger the acidic and basic dissociation constants (Ka and Kb) are, the lower the CE becomes. Key Words : Sensory test, Odorous irritant, Concentration for subjectively equivalent irritation, Physicochemical properties, Dissociation constan