Separation of Religion and State in Japan: A Pragmatic Interpretation of Articles 20 and 89 of the Japanese Constitution

Article 20 of Japan’s Constitution establishes freedom of religion. To protect this freedom, the provisions of Articles 20 and 89 separate religion from the state to prevent the return of State Shintō. Despite this separation, the Japanese Supreme Court has consistently upheld instances where state entities interact with religious groups. These decisions have raised the ire of numerous academics and legal professionals in and out of Japan who believe that Japan’s constitutional separation requires absolute separation, or at least something more stringent than the Supreme Court has been willing to find. Although this comment rejects the approach taken by the Supreme Court in these cases, it also seeks to rebut the arguments of scholars and professionals opposed to these decisions by reinterpreting these articles in a way that still comports with the results reached in these Supreme Court cases

Evidence for spindle apparatus in somatic nuclei

Evidence for spindle apparatus in somatic nucle

Ultrastructure of slime

Ultrastructure of slim

Mitigating implicit bias and promoting compassionate behavior in public health/healthcare professionals: Implications for treatment outcomes

Partly because it is unconscious, managing implicit bias in public health/healthcare remains intractable. Hence, administrators, practitioners, and their students unknowingly discriminate against others especially including socioeconomically disadvantaged people in the US and elsewhere. . .

A twist in chiral interaction between biological helices

Using an exact solution for the pair interaction potential, we show that long, rigid, chiral molecules with helical surface charge patterns have a preferential interaxial angle ~((RH)^1/2)/L, where L is the length of the molecules, R is the closest distance between their axes, and H is the helical pitch. Estimates based on this formula suggest a solution for the puzzle of small interaxial angles in a-helix bundles and in cholesteric phases of DNA.Comment: 7 pages, 2 figures, PDF file onl

Buckling Instabilities of a Confined Colloid Crystal Layer

A model predicting the structure of repulsive, spherically symmetric, monodisperse particles confined between two walls is presented. We study the buckling transition of a single flat layer as the double layer state develops. Experimental realizations of this model are suspensions of stabilized colloidal particles squeezed between glass plates. By expanding the thermodynamic potential about a flat state of $N$ confined colloidal particles, we derive a free energy as a functional of in-plane and out-of-plane displacements. The wavevectors of these first buckling instabilities correspond to three different ordered structures. Landau theory predicts that the symmetry of these phases allows for second order phase transitions. This possibility exists even in the presence of gravity or plate asymmetry. These transitions lead to critical behavior and phases with the symmetry of the three-state and four-state Potts models, the X-Y model with 6-fold anisotropy, and the Heisenberg model with cubic interactions. Experimental detection of these structures is discussed.Comment: 24 pages, 8 figures on request. EF508

The Cytotoxicity and Mode of Action of 2,3,4-Trisubstituted Pyrroles and Related Derivatives in Human Tmolt4 Leukemia Cells

4-Carbechoxy-l-methyl-2-phenacyl-3-phenylpyrrole (9), 4-carbethoxy-2-(4-methoxybcnzoyl)-3-(4-methoxyphcnyl)pyrrole (10) and 2-(4-methoxybenzoyl)-3,4-bis-(4-methoxyphenyl)pyrrole (11) proved to be potent cytotoxic agents against the growth of murine and human leukemias and lymphomas. Selective toxicity was demonstrated against the growth of solid tumors, e.g. human adenocarcinoma of the colon SW480 and ileum HCT-8, glioma U-87-MG, and rat UMR-106 osteosarcoma. A mode of action study in Tmolt4 leukemia cells demonstrated that the agents inhibited de novo purine synthesis at the regulatory sites PRPP-amido transferase, IMP dehydrogenase as well as dihydrofolate reductase resulting in significant inhibition of DNA synthesis in 60 min. Other biochemical sites which were affected significantly were thymidylate synthetase, DNA polymerase a, RNA polymerases, nucleoside kinase and ribonucleoside reductase