Effect of Surrounding Blur on Foveal Visibility

Visibility of a simple stimulus is known to be determined not only by its physical contrast, but also by the configuration of surrounding stimuli. In this study, we investigated the surrounding modulation of foveal visibility of a blurred target. Subjects were instructed to respond to the gap orientation of a Gaussian-blurred Landolt ring presented at a fixation point with a surrounding stimulus. The correct response rate was measured as a metric of the foveal visibility. Results were subsequently compared among different surrounding stimulus conditions. Results showed an improvement in the subjects’ performance when low-pass white noise filtered with the same Gaussian function used for the target was presented in the surrounding area, although no effect was observed using high-contrast white noise. A performance improvement was observed when the surround stimulus had an intermediate contrast in the spatial frequency band necessary for identifying the target orientation

Concierge: Personal Database Software for Managing Digital Research Resources

This article introduces a desktop application, named Concierge, for managing personal digital research resources. Using simple operations, it enables storage of various types of files and indexes them based on content descriptions. A key feature of the software is a high level of extensibility. By installing optional plug-ins, users can customize and extend the usability of the software based on their needs. In this paper, we also introduce a few optional plug-ins: literature management, electronic laboratory notebook, and XooNlps client plug-ins. XooNIps is a content management system developed to share digital research resources among neuroscience communities. It has been adopted as the standard database system in Japanese neuroinformatics projects. Concierge, therefore, offers comprehensive support from management of personal digital research resources to their sharing in open-access neuroinformatics databases such as XooNIps. This interaction between personal and open-access neuroinformatics databases is expected to enhance the dissemination of digital research resources. Concierge is developed as an open source project; Mac OS X and Windows XP versions have been released at the official site (http://concierge.sourceforge.jp)

胃がん検診用高濃度硫酸バリウムの物理特性

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Visualization of Documents and Concepts in Neuroinformatics with the 3D-SE Viewer

A new interactive visualization tool is proposed for mining text data from various fields of neuroscience. Applications to several text datasets are presented to demonstrate the capability of the proposed interactive tool to visualize complex relationships between pairs of lexical entities (with some semantic contents) such as terms, keywords, posters, or papers' abstracts. Implemented as a Java applet, this tool is based on the spherical embedding (SE) algorithm, which was designed for the visualization of bipartite graphs. Items such as words and documents are linked on the basis of occurrence relationships, which can be represented in a bipartite graph. These items are visualized by embedding the vertices of the bipartite graph on spheres in a three-dimensional (3-D) space. The main advantage of the proposed visualization tool is that 3-D layouts can convey more information than planar or linear displays of items or graphs. Different kinds of information extracted from texts, such as keywords, indexing terms, or topics are visualized, allowing interactive browsing of various fields of research featured by keywords, topics, or research teams. A typical use of the 3D-SE viewer is quick browsing of topics displayed on a sphere, then selecting one or several item(s) displays links to related terms on another sphere representing, e.g., documents or abstracts, and provides direct online access to the document source in a database, such as the Visiome Platform or the SfN Annual Meeting. Developed as a Java applet, it operates as a tool on top of existing resources

Tissue engineering of corneal stroma with rabbit fibroblast precursors and gelatin hydrogels

PURPOSE: To isolate fibroblast precursors from rabbit corneal stroma using a sphere-forming assay, to engineer corneal stroma with the precursors and gelatin, and to establish the therapeutic application of precursors in a rabbit corneal stroma. METHODS: In the in vitro study, a sphere-forming assay was performed to produce precursors from rabbit corneal stroma. Corneal stroma was engineered by cultivating precursors in porous gelatin for one week. In the in vivo study, the engineered corneal stromal sheet with precursors (precursor/gelatin group) or with fibroblasts (fibroblast /gelatin group) or without cells (gelatin group) was transplanted to a pocket of rabbit corneal stroma. Gene expression and extracellular matrix production were examined immunohistochemically in each group one week and four weeks after surgery. RESULTS: In the in vitro study, cells in the spheres were BrdU-positive, and their progeny were keratocan-positive. The study also showed that the corneas transplanted with a porous gelatin sheet did not show any opacity four weeks after transplantation in any group. In the gelatin sheet of the precursor/gelatin group, a more intense expression of type I collagen was observed relative to the other two groups four weeks after the surgery. CONCLUSIONS: Our findings demonstrate that the transplantation of fibroblast precursors combined with gelatin hydrogel into the corneal stroma is a possible treatment strategy for corneal stromal regeneration