What Makes Resources Capital? – The Labour Market Integration of Highly Skilled Japanese in Finland

Capital is viewed as an essential instrument for highly skilled migrants (HSMs) to gain employment in a host country. Although scholars analyse the impact of capital on the labour market integration, the difference between capital and resources is rarely made. Treating resources such as a degree or networks as capital is too unspecific and disguises what is truly counted as capital that affects the occupational attainment of HSMs. This study addresses this issue by analysing what resources are used by HSMs to gain employment in a host country and what makes resources capital in HSMs' occupational attainment. To do so, the study conducts semi-structured interviews with Japanese from the Finnish university who seek employment in Finland. An analysis of these interviews yields cultural and social resources used during their job search. It also identifies the Finnish job market and the job-seeking intention of highly skilled Japanese as key elements to create capital out of resources. Eventually, this study contributes to the debate on the concept of capital and its role in the labour market integration of HSMs. Furthermore, it offers an extensive viewpoint on the topic of HSMs and integration in the Finnish context through the empirical data.Peer reviewe

Realization of SU(2)*SU(6) Fermi System

We report the realization of a novel degenerate Fermi mixture with an SU(2)*SU(6) symmetry in a cold atomic gas. We successfully cool the mixture of the two fermionic isotopes of ytterbium 171Yb with the nuclear spin I=1/2 and 173Yb with I=5/2 below the Fermi temperature T_ F as 0.46T_F for 171Yb and 0.54T_F for 173Yb. The same scattering lengths for different spin components make this mixture featured with the novel SU(2)*SU(6) symmetry. The nuclear spin components are separately imaged by exploiting an optical Stern-Gerlach effect. In addition, the mixture is loaded into a 3D optical lattice to implement the SU(2)*SU(6) Hubbard model. This mixture will open the door to the study of novel quantum phases such as a spinor Bardeen-Cooper-Schrieffer-like fermionic superfluid.Comment: 4 pages, 5 figures V2: revised reference

Protective Actions of 17 β

Steroid hormones synthesized in and secreted from peripheral endocrine glands pass through the blood-brain barrier and play a role in the central nervous system. In addition, the brain possesses an inherent endocrine system and synthesizes steroid hormones known as neurosteroids. Increasing evidence shows that neuroactive steroids protect the central nervous system from various harmful stimuli. Reports show that the neuroprotective actions of steroid hormones attenuate oxidative stress. In this review, we summarize the antioxidative effects of neuroactive steroids, especially 17β-estradiol and progesterone, on neuronal injury in the central nervous system under various pathological conditions, and then describe our recent findings concerning the neuroprotective actions of 17β-estradiol and progesterone on oxidative neuronal injury induced by organometallic compounds, tributyltin, and methylmercury

Magnetic properties of terminal iodinated nitroxide radical liquid crystals

We designed and synthesized terminal iodinated nitroxide radical liquid crystalline compounds (NR-LCs) with octyloxy side chain (±)-8-I and dodecyloxy side chain (±)-12-I to understand the substitution effects of an iodine atom on the phase transition behavior and on the magnetic properties in crystalline (Cr), liquid crystalline (LC) and isotropic (Iso) phases. These NR-LCs show monotropic nematic phases because the iodine atom is too short and apolar as a terminal group to stabilize LC phases. Furthermore, the SQUID magnetometry and electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy indicate that the magnetic properties in the Cr phase depend on the length of the alkoxy side chain; antiferromagnetic interactions occur in (±)-8-I, whereas ferromagnetic interactions occur in (±)-12-I, and the paramagnetic susceptibility of (±)-8-I slightly decreases (J¯0) at each of the Cr-to-Iso phase transitions. These results suggest that the most frequent type of the magnetic interactions in LC and Iso phases is similar to those in the Cr phases among the various types of intermolecular magnetic interactions induced by the inhomogeneous intermolecular contacts.Akita T., Yamazaki T., Uchida Y., et al. Magnetic properties of terminal iodinated nitroxide radical liquid crystals. Polyhedron 136, 79 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1016/j.poly.2017.02.030

Dual Role of Superoxide Dismutase 2 Induced in Activated Microglia: OXIDATIVE STRESS TOLERANCE AND CONVERGENCE OF INFLAMMATORY RESPONSES

Microglia are activated quickly in response to external pathogens or cell debris and clear these substances via the inflammatory response. However, excessive activation of microglia can be harmful to host cells due to the increased production of reactive oxygen species and proinflammatory cytokines. Superoxide dismutase 2 (SOD2) is reportedly induced under various inflammatory conditions in the central nervous system. We herein demonstrated that activated microglia strongly express SOD2 and examined the role of SOD2, focusing on regulation of the microglial activity and the susceptibility of microglia to oxidative stress. When rat primary microglia were treated with LPS, poly(I:C), peptidoglycan, or CpG oligodeoxynucleotide, respectively, the mRNA and protein levels of SOD2 largely increased. However, an increased expression of SOD2 was not detected in the primary neurons or astrocytes, indicating that SOD2 is specifically induced in microglia under inflammatory conditions. The activated microglia showed high tolerance to oxidative stress, whereas SOD2 knockdown conferred vulnerability to oxidative stress. Interestingly, the production of proinflammatory cytokines was increased in the activated microglia treated with SOD2 siRNA compared with that observed in the control siRNA-treated cells. Pretreatment with NADPH oxidase inhibitors, diphenylene iodonium and apocynin, decreased in not only reactive oxygen species generation but also the proinflammatory cytokine expression. Notably, SOD2 knockdown largely potentiated the nuclear factor κB activity in the activated microglia. Taken together, increased SOD2 conferred tolerance to oxidative stress in the microglia and decreased proinflammatory cytokine production by attenuating the nuclear factor κB activity. Therefore, SOD2 might regulate neuroinflammation by controlling the microglial activities.This work was supported in part by KAKENHI Grants 26740024, 30291149, and 22310041 from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science, and Technology of Japan (to Y. I., K. I., and T. Y.); a grant from the Fujii Foundation (to Y. I.); and a grant from the Hiroshima University Education and Research Support Foundation (to Y. I.)

Large negative magneto-LC effects induced by racemic dimerization of liquid crystalline nitroxide radicals with a terminal cyano group

This article reports the synthesis and mesomorphism of new nitroxide radical compounds with a terminal cyano group and discusses the magneto-LC effects in the new compounds; one of the new compounds shows the largest decrease of paramagnetic susceptibility at the crystalline-to-liquid crystalline (LC) phase transition (negative magneto-LC effects) in the all-organic LC radicals reported thus far. The origins of the phenomenon are rationalized on the basis of the racemic magnetic dipolar interaction model using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy; the temperature dependences of the Lorentzian and Gaussian components of the line widths obtained by fitting EPR spectra with Voigt function provide important insights.Akita T., Kiyohara D., Yamazaki T., et al. Large negative magneto-LC effects induced by racemic dimerization of liquid crystalline nitroxide radicals with a terminal cyano group. Journal of Materials Chemistry C 5, 12457 (2017); https://doi.org/10.1039/c7tc04699e

Conserved charges in the quantum simulation of integrable spin chains

When simulating the time evolution of quantum many-body systems on a digital quantum computer, one faces the challenges of quantum noise and of the Trotter error due to time discretization. The Trotter error in integrable spin chains can be under control if the discrete time evolution preserves integrability. In this work we implement, on a real quantum computer and on classical simulators, the integrable Trotterization of the spin-1/2 Heisenberg XXX spin chain. We study how quantum noise affects the time evolution of several conserved charges, and observe the decay of the expectation values. We in addition study the early time behaviors of the time evolution, which can potentially be used to benchmark quantum devices and algorithms in the future. We also provide an efficient method to generate the conserved charges at higher orders.Comment: 26 pages, data and codes available at https://github.com/takuoku/integrable-trotterizatio

Endocrinological Changes after Anamorelin Administration in Patients with Gastrointestinal Cancer

Changes in hormone levels in patients with cancer cachexia after anamorelin administration have not been fully investigated. This study aimed to determine how anamorelin affects the endocrine system in patients with gastrointestinal cancer and cachexia. We prospectively enrolled 13 patients and comprehensively investigated their body weight and levels of serum albumin, hemoglobin A1c (HbA1c), and hormones before (week 0) and 3 and 12 weeks after anamorelin administration. The variables were evaluated at week 3 in 9 patients and at week 12 in 5 patients. At week 3, anamorelin administration resulted in body weight gain and increased the levels of growth hormone and HbA1c, as well as insulin-like growth factor-1 standard deviation scores (IGF-1 SD scores). At the same time, negative correlations were observed between ΔIGF-1 SD score and Δthyroidstimulating hormone (TSH) and between ΔIGF-1 SD score and Δfree testosterone. ΔBody weight and ΔIGF-1 SD score correlated positively at week 12. These results suggest that TSH and free testosterone levels can be affected 3 weeks after anamorelin administration; however, those variables tend to return to a state of equilibrium, and anabolic effects of anamorelin appear in long-term (≥ 12 weeks) users