The Development of a New Setup for Video-assisted Thoracic Surgery

In order to accomplish video-assisted thoracic surgery (VATS) in a much easier and safer way, especially for assistant operators, we have developed a new display system for VATS. The original thoracoscope has been designed for this new system. The monitor is fixed at approximately 10 cm away from the surface of the chest wall just above the operative field. In using this procedure, the operator and assistants can see the patient and the monitor at the same time. According to this new idea, the previous problem in the area of hand–eye coordination and the three-dimensional understanding of this procedure can be improved compared to the image of the conventional thoracoscopy, because it is not necessary for the operator and assistants to look up at the monitors. When the thoracoscopy was placed in an adequate position to resect the target pathology, this new system led to good and easy handling of instruments, as it was with the standard thoracotomy

A static characteristic analysis of proposed bi-directional dual active bridge DC-DC converter

Recently, the power supply network with energy storage devices such as battery has been focused. This network topology uses bi-directional isolated DC-DC converter of low or medium capacity is required for the diversification of power supply network. The dual active bridge (DAB) DC-DC converter is one of the effective bi-directional isolated DC-DC converters. However, the circuit has some instinct problems such as degradation of power efficiency and the occurrence of the surge in light-load operation. In this paper, we have been done a static characteristic analysis and highly power-efficient technique for DAB DC-DC Converter at light load. Also the analysis results and the proposed technique are verified with some experimental results.7th International Power Electronics Conference, IPEC-Hiroshima - ECCE Asia 2014; Hiroshima; Japan; 18 May 2014 through 21 May 201

Anisotropy in the Antiferromagnetic Spin Fluctuations of Sr2RuO4

It has been proposed that Sr_2RuO_4 exhibits spin triplet superconductivity mediated by ferromagnetic fluctuations. So far neutron scattering experiments have failed to detect any clear evidence of ferromagnetic spin fluctuations but, instead, this type of experiments has been successful in confirming the existence of incommensurate spin fluctuations near q=(1/3 1/3 0). For this reason there have been many efforts to associate the contributions of such incommensurate fluctuations to the mechanism of its superconductivity. Our unpolarized inelastic neutron scattering measurements revealed that these incommensurate spin fluctuations possess c-axis anisotropy with an anisotropic factor \chi''_{c}/\chi''_{a,b} of \sim 2.8. This result is consistent with some theoretical ideas that the incommensurate spin fluctuations with a c-axis anisotropy can be a origin of p-wave superconductivity of this material.Comment: 5 pages, 3 figures; accepted for publication in PR

Elucidation of the mode of interaction in the UP1–telomerase RNA–telomeric DNA ternary complex which serves to recruit telomerase to telomeric DNA and to enhance the telomerase activity

We found that UP1, a proteolytic product of heterogeneous nuclear ribonucleoprotein A1 (hnRNP A1), both enhances and represses the telomerase activity. The formation of the UP1–telomerase RNA–telomeric DNA ternary complex was revealed by a gel retardation experiment. The interactions in the ternary and binary complexes were elucidated by NMR. UP1 has two nucleic acid-binding domains, BD1 and BD2. In the UP1–telomerase RNA binary complex, both BD1 and BD2 interact with telomerase RNA. Interestingly, when telomeric DNA was added to the binary complex, telomeric DNA bound to BD1 in place of telomerase RNA. Thus, BD1 basically binds to telomeric DNA, while BD2 mainly binds to telomerase RNA, which resulted in the formation of the ternary complex. Here, UP1 bridges telomerase and telomeric DNA. It is supposed that UP1/hnRNP A1 serves to recruit telomerase to telomeric DNA through the formation of the ternary complex. A model has been proposed for how hnRNP A1/UP1 contributes to enhancement of the telomerase activity through recruitment and unfolding of the quadruplex of telomeric DNA

Electronic Specific Heat of La_{2-x}Sr_{x}CuO_{4}: Pseudogap Formation and Reduction of the Superconducting Condensation Energy

To examine the so-called small pseudogap and the superconducting (SC) condensation energy U(0), the electronic specific heat Cel was measured on La_{2-x}Sr_{x}CuO_{4} up to ~120K. In samples with doping level p (=x) less than ~0.2, small pseudogap behavior appears in the \gamma (=Cel/T) vs. T curve around the mean-field critical temperature for a d-wave superconductor Tco (=2*\Delta_{0}/(4~5)k_B), where \Delta_{0} is the maximum gap at T<<Tc. The condensation energy U(0) is largely reduced in the pseudogap regime (p< ~0.2). The reduction of U(0) can be well reproduced by introducing an effective SC energy scale \Delta_{eff}=\beta*p*\Delta_{0} (\beta=4.5) instead of \Delta_{0}. The effective SC energy scale is discussed in relation to the coherent pairing gap formed over the nodal Fermi arc.Comment: 8page