空間統計分析による民間賃貸住宅の地域格差の考察-地理的加重回帰法を用いた地域格差の要因分析-

Last updated: 6/1/200

Cesium Implant for Tongue Carcinoma with a Thickness of 1.5 cm or More: Cases Successfully Treated with a Modified Manchester System

∙The authors have no financial conflicts of interest. Purpose: Deciding on treatment carcinoma of the tongue when the tumor has a thickness of 1.5 cm or more is difficult. Surgery often requires wide resection and re-construction, leading to considerable functional impairment. A cesium implant is an attractive option, but according to the Manchester System, a two plane implant is needed. Materials and Methods: According to the textbook, a tumor is sandwiched between the needles, which are implanted at the edge of the tumor. This may cause an unnecessarily high dose to the outer surface of the tongue, which sometimes leads to a persistent ulcer. To avoid this complication, we invented a modified implantation method, and applied the method to five consecutive patients. Results: With a minimum follow-up of 2 years, all primary tumors in 5 consecutive patients have been controlled. No complications occurred in soft tissu

Design report of the KISS-II facility for exploring the origin of uranium

One of the critical longstanding issues in nuclear physics is the origin of the heavy elements such as platinum and uranium. The r-process hypothesis is generally supported as the process through which heavy elements are formed via explosive rapid neutron capture. Many of the nuclei involved in heavy-element synthesis are unidentified, short-lived, neutron-rich nuclei, and experimental data on their masses, half-lives, excited states, decay modes, and reaction rates with neutron etc., are incredibly scarce. The ultimate goal is to understand the origin of uranium. The nuclei along the pathway to uranium in the r-process are in "Terra Incognita". In principle, as many of these nuclides have more neutrons than 238U, this region is inaccessible via the in-flight fragmentation reactions and in-flight fission reactions used at the present major facilities worldwide. Therefore, the multi-nucleon transfer (MNT) reaction, which has been studied at the KEK Isotope Separation System (KISS), is attracting attention. However, in contrast to in-flight fission and fragmentation, the nuclei produced by the MNT reaction have characteristic kinematics with broad angular distribution and relatively low energies which makes them non-amenable to in-flight separation techniques. KISS-II would be the first facility to effectively connect production, separation, and analysis of nuclides along the r-process path leading to uranium. This will be accomplished by the use of a large solenoid to collect MNT products while rejecting the intense primary beam, a large helium gas catcher to thermalize the MNT products, and an MRTOF mass spectrograph to perform mass analysis and isobaric purification of subsequent spectroscopic studies. The facility will finally allow us to explore the neutron-rich nuclides in this Terra Incognita.Comment: Editors: Yutaka Watanabe and Yoshikazu Hirayam

Chemical Characterization of a Volatile Dubnium Compound, DbOCl3

The formation and the chemical characterization of single atoms of dubnium (Db, element 105), in the form of its volatile oxychloride, was investigated using the on-line gas phase chromatography technique, in the temperature range 350–600 °C. Under the exactly same chemical conditions, comparative studies with the lighter homologues of Group 5 in the Periodic Table clearly indicate the volatility sequence being NbOCl3 > TaOCl3 ≥ DbOCl3. From the obtained experimental results, thermochemical data for DbOCl3 were derived. The present study delivers reliable experimental information for theoretical calculations on chemical properties of transactinides

A Preclinical Evaluation towards the Clinical Application of Oxygen Consumption Measurement by CERMs by a Mouse Chimera Model.

We have developed an automated device for the measurement of oxygen consumption rate (OCR) called Chip-sensing Embryo Respiratory Measurement system (CERMs). To verify the safety and the significance of the OCR measurement by CERMs, we conducted comprehensive tests using a mouse model prior to clinical trials in a human in vitro fertilization (IVF) program. Embryo transfer revealed that the OCR measured by CERMs did not compromise the full-term development of mice or their future fertility, and was positively correlated with adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production and the mitochondrial membrane potential (ΔΨm), thereby indirectly reflecting mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation (OXPHOS) activity. We demonstrated that the OCR is independent of embryo morphology (the size) and number of mitochondria (mitochondrial DNA copy number). The OCR correlated with the total cell numbers, whereas the inner cell mass (ICM) cell numbers and the fetal developmental rate were not. Thus, the OCR may serve as an indicator of the numbers of trophectoderm (TE) cells, rather than number or quality of ICM cells. However, implantation ability was neither correlated with the OCR, nor the embryo size in this model. This can probably be attributed to the limitation that chimeric embryos contain non-physiological high TE cells counts that are beneficial for implantation. CERMs can be safely employed in clinical IVF owing to it being a safe, highly effective, non-invasive, accurate, and quantitative tool for OCR measurement. Utilization of CERMs for clinical testing of human embryos would provide further insights into the nature of oxidative metabolism and embryonic viability

Model experiment of magnetic field amplification in laser-produced plasmas via the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability

A model experiment of magnetic field amplification (MFA) via the Richtmyer-Meshkov instability (RMI) in supernova remnants (SNRs) was performed using a high-power laser. In order to account for very-fast acceleration of cosmic rays observed in SNRs, it is considered that the magnetic field has to be amplified by orders of magnitude from its background level. A possible mechanism for the MFA in SNRs is stretching and mixing of the magnetic field via the RMI when shock waves pass through dense molecular clouds in interstellar media. In order to model the astrophysical phenomenon in laboratories, there are three necessary factors for the RMI to be operative: a shock wave, an external magnetic field, and density inhomogeneity. By irradiating a double-foil target with several laser beams with focal spot displacement under influence of an external magnetic field, shock waves were excited and passed through the density inhomogeneity. Radiative hydrodynamic simulations show that the RMI evolves as the density inhomogeneity is shocked, resulting in higher MFA