Dynamical breaking of shift-symmetry in supergravity-based inflation

Shift-symmetry is essential to protect the flatness of the potential, even beyond the super-Planckian vacuum expectation value (VEV) for an inflaton field. The breaking of the shift-symmetry can yield potentials suitable for super-Planckian excursion of the inflaton. The aim of this paper is to illustrate that it is indeed possible to break the shift-symmetry dynamically within 4 dimensional supergravity prior to a long phase of inflation. Thanks to the shift-symmetry, the leading contribu- tion to the inflaton potential is free from the dangerous exponential factor even after its breaking, which is the main obstacle to realizing the super-Planckian inflation in supergravity. But, in our simple model, the resulting inflaton potential is a cosine type potential rather than the power-law one and it is difficult to realize a super-Planckian breaking scale unfortunately.Comment: 8 pages, no figure; v2: minor revision, estimation of the inflaton potential is corrected; v3: minor revision, published version, title is change

3-O-Methylfunicone, a Selective Inhibitor of Mammalian Y-Family DNA Polymerases from an Australian Sea Salt Fungal Strain

We isolated a pol inhibitor from the cultured mycelia extract of a fungal strain isolated from natural salt from a sea salt pan in Australia, which was identified as 3-O-methylfunicone by spectroscopic analyses. This compound selectively inhibited the activities of mammalian Y-family DNA polymerases (pols) (i.e., pols η, ι and κ). Among these pols, human pol κ activity was most strongly inhibited, with an IC50 value of 12.5 μM. On the other hand, the compound barely influenced the activities of the other families of mammalian pols, such as A-family (i.e., pol γ), B-family (i.e., pols α, δ and ɛ) or X-family (i.e., pols β, λ and terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase), and showed no effect on the activities of fish pol δ, plant pols, prokaryotic pols and other DNA metabolic enzymes, such as calf primase of pol α, human immunodeficiency virus type-1 (HIV-1) reverse transcriptase, human telomerase, T7 RNA polymerase, mouse IMP dehydrogenase (type II), human topoisomerases I and II, T4 polynucleotide kinase or bovine deoxyribonuclease I. This compound also suppressed the growth of two cultured human cancer cell lines, HCT116 (colon carcinoma cells) and HeLa (cervix carcinoma cells), and UV-treated HeLa cells exhibited lower clonogenic survival in the presence of inhibitor

当院におけるヘロイン依存症者へのbuprenorphineによる解毒治療についての検討

Aim: We assessed the efficacy of buprenorphine replacement taper therapy in a psychiatric hospital in Japan. Methods: Based on the medical records, a retrospective analysis was performed to evaluate the outcomes of buprenorphine replacement taper therapy in 106 subjects with heroin dependence. Results: We found that replacement and taper therapy with buprenorphine could significantly reduce withdrawal symptoms during detoxification. In addition, the completion rate of detoxification was significantly improved and the length of hospital stay was significantly reduced relative to those who received conventional treatment without buprenorphine. However, the readmission rate increased after the introduction of detoxication therapy with buprenorphine. Conclusion: The present findings suggest not only the efficacy and safety of buprenorphine replacement and taper therapy, but also the requirement for maintenance therapy for individuals with heroin dependence.博士（医学）・乙第1502号・令和3年3月15日© 2020 The Authors. Neuropsycho pharmacology Reports published by John Wiley & Sons Australia, Ltd on behalf of the Japanese Society of NeuropsychoPharmacology. This is an open access article under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License(https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, distribution and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited