Pseudogagrella amamiana (Opiliones: Sclerosomatidae) from Kanto District, Japan, as the first probable cases of domestically introduced species in Japanese harvestmen

A population of Pseudogagrella amamiana (Nakatsudi 1942) (Arachnida: Opiliones: Sclerosomatidae) was found from a town park in the suburbs of Yokohama City, Kanagawa Prefecture, Honshu, Japan, in 2017. Furthermore, another population of the species was found from Unomisaki Point, Ishihama Beach, Hitachi City, Ibaraki Prefecture, in 2019. This species has been known from the Ryukyu Islands (in and north of Kumejima Island), and sporadically from Kyushu and westernmost part of Honshu (Yamaguchi Prefecture). It is highly probable that these populations in Yokohama and Unomisaki Point have originated from a few males and females or a gravid female or soil litter containing eggs somehow introduced from the native ranges of the species, because the present localities are more than 700 km apart from the nearest known locality of the species in Yamaguchi Prefecture. The chromosome number of these populations showed 2n = 18, hence it seems that the population came from the native ranges of the species other than Okinawa and Kumejima Islands where it is 2n = 20

Insulin-like growth factor 1 modulates bioengineered tooth morphogenesis

Regenerative therapy to replace missing teeth is a critical area of research. Functional bioengineered teeth have been produced by the organ germ method using mouse tooth germ cells. However, these bioengineered teeth are significantly smaller in size and exhibit an abnormal crown shape when compared with natural teeth. The proper sizes and shapes of teeth contribute to their normal function. Therefore, a method is needed to control the morphology of bioengineered teeth. Here, we investigated whether insulin-like growth factor 1 (IGF1) can regulate the sizes and shapes of bioengineered teeth, and assessed underlying mechanisms of such regulation. IGF1 treatment significantly increased the size of bioengineered tooth germs, while preserving normal tooth histology. IGF1-treated bioengineered teeth, which were developed from bioengineered tooth germs in subrenal capsules and jawbones, showed increased sizes and cusp numbers. IGF1 increased the number of fibroblast growth factor (Fgf4)-expressing enamel knots in bioengineered tooth germs and enhanced the proliferation and differentiation of dental epithelial and mesenchymal cells. This study is the first to reveal that IGF1 increases the sizes and cusp numbers of bioengineered teeth via the induction of enamel knot formation, as well as the proliferation and differentiation of dental epithelial and mesenchymal cells

Intraoperative Fine Needle Aspiration Biopsy and Rapid Nuclear DNA Content Analysis of Lung Tumors

Intraoperative fine needle aspiration biopsy using 21 gauge needle was performed on 16 patients with suspected lung cancer during exploratory thoracotomy, and results were obtained from pathologists in about 20 minutes. The biopsy demonstrated 100% accuracy in differentiating malignant from benign tumors. This technique, which can be applied even to tumors located deep within the lung parenchyma with technical easiness and permits quick and accurate biopsy, was evaluated as a useful diagnostic tool. Rapid nuclear DNA content analysis was performed for 13 of the 16 patients concurrently with the intraoperative fine needle biopsy. Results were obtained in about 10 minutes. Decision of surgical procedures was made referring to the result of the analysis in one patient. Importance of nuclear DNA content analysis as well as intraoperative fine needle aspiration biopsy is thus emphasized

Particle therapy for prostate cancer: The past, present and future

Although prostate cancer control using radiotherapy is dose‐dependent, dose–volume effects on late toxicities in organs at risk, such as the rectum and bladder, have been observed. Both protons and carbon ions offer advantageous physical properties for radiotherapy, and create favorable dose distributions using fewer portals compared with photon‐based radiotherapy. Thus, particle beam therapy using protons and carbon ions theoretically seems suitable for dose escalation and reduced risk of toxicity. However, it is difficult to evaluate the superiority of particle beam radiotherapy over photon beam radiotherapy for prostate cancer, as no clinical trials have directly compared the outcomes between the two types of therapy due to the limited number of facilities using particle beam therapy. The Japanese Society for Radiation Oncology organized a joint effort among research groups to establish standardized treatment policies and indications for particle beam therapy according to disease, and multicenter prospective studies have been planned for several common cancers. Clinical trials of proton beam therapy for intermediate‐risk prostate cancer and carbon‐ion therapy for high‐risk prostate cancer have already begun. As particle beam therapy for prostate cancer is covered by the Japanese national health insurance system as of April 2018, and the number of facilities practicing particle beam therapy has increased recently, the number of prostate cancer patients treated with particle beam therapy in Japan is expected to increase drastically. Here, we review the results from studies of particle beam therapy for prostate cancer and discuss future developments in this field

Importance of individual events in temporal networks

Records of time-stamped social interactions between pairs of individuals (e.g., face-to-face conversations, e-mail exchanges, and phone calls) constitute a so-called temporal network. A remarkable difference between temporal networks and conventional static networks is that time-stamped events rather than links are the unit elements generating the collective behavior of nodes. We propose an importance measure for single interaction events. By generalizing the concept of the advance of event proposed by [Kossinets G, Kleinberg J, and Watts D J (2008) Proceeding of the 14th ACM SIGKDD International conference on knowledge discovery and data mining, p 435], we propose that an event is central when it carries new information about others to the two nodes involved in the event. We find that the proposed measure properly quantifies the importance of events in connecting nodes along time-ordered paths. Because of strong heterogeneity in the importance of events present in real data, a small fraction of highly important events is necessary and sufficient to sustain the connectivity of temporal networks. Nevertheless, in contrast to the behavior of scale-free networks against link removal, this property mainly results from bursty activity patterns and not heterogeneous degree distributions.Comment: 36 pages, 13 figures, 2 table

東北メディカル・メガバンク事業 三世代コホート調査の進捗について

第3回日本DOHaD研究会学術集会　抄録集　【ポスター発表