CHANGE IN MECHANICAL PROPERTIES OF TRICEPS SURAE MUSCLE-TENDON UNIT AND RACE PERFORMANCE AFTER 1 YEAR IN WELL TRAINED DISTANCE RUNNERS

The purpose of this study was to determine change in relationship between stiffness of triceps surae muscle-tendon unit and race performance after one year with continuous training in well trained long distance runners. For 9 long distance runners, official race record and stiffness indexes of both muscle and tendon were investigated in pre and post measurements (after one year). The race performance (1.9%), passive torque of ankle joint (13.2%), and muscle stiffness index (73.6%) increased significantly between pre and post. Although significant correlations were not found between increment of race performance and change in all parameters, 6 of the 9 athletes showed increments of both race performance and stiffness index of muscle tissue. These results suggest that an increment of stiffness of the ankle joint and triceps muscle could be related to improvement of race performance in distance running

Symmetrically coupled higher-order nonlinear Schroedinger equations: singularity analysis and integrability

The integrability of a system of two symmetrically coupled higher-order nonlinear Schr\"{o}dinger equations with parameter coefficients is tested by means of the singularity analysis. It is proven that the system passes the Painlev\'{e} test for integrability only in ten distinct cases, of which two are new. For one of the new cases, a Lax pair and a multi-field generalization are obtained; for the other one, the equations of the system are uncoupled by a nonlinear transformation.Comment: 12 pages, LaTeX2e, IOP style, final version, to appear in J.Phys.A:Math.Ge

Expression-Based Genome-Wide Association Study Links Vitamin D-Binding Protein With Autoantigenicity in Type 1 Diabetes.

Type 1 diabetes (T1D) is caused by autoreactive T cells that recognize pancreatic islet antigens and destroy insulin-producing β-cells. This attack results from a breakdown in tolerance for self-antigens, which is controlled by ectopic antigen expression in the thymus and pancreatic lymph nodes (PLNs). The autoantigens known to be involved include a set of islet proteins, such as insulin, GAD65, IA-2, and ZnT8. In an attempt to identify additional antigenic proteins, we performed an expression-based genome-wide association study using microarray data from 118 arrays of the thymus and PLNs of T1D mice. We ranked all 16,089 protein-coding genes by the likelihood of finding repeated differential expression and the degree of tissue specificity for pancreatic islets. The top autoantigen candidate was vitamin D-binding protein (VDBP). T-cell proliferation assays showed stronger T-cell reactivity to VDBP compared with control stimulations. Higher levels and frequencies of serum anti-VDBP autoantibodies (VDBP-Abs) were identified in patients with T1D (n = 331) than in healthy control subjects (n = 77). Serum vitamin D levels were negatively correlated with VDBP-Ab levels in patients in whom T1D developed during the winter. Immunohistochemical localization revealed that VDBP was specifically expressed in α-cells of pancreatic islets. We propose that VDBP could be an autoantigen in T1D

Tuning quadratic nonlinear photonic crystal fibers for zero group-velocity mismatch

We consider an index-guiding silica photonic crystal fiber with a triangular air-hole structure and a poled quadratic nonlinearity. By tuning the pitch and the relative hole size, second-harmonic generation with zero group-velocity mismatch is found for any fundamental wavelength above 780 nm. The phase-velocity mismatch has a lower limit with coherence lengths in the micron range. The dimensionless nonlinear parameter is inversely proportional to the pitch and proportional to the relative hole size. Selected cases show bandwidths suitable for 20 fs pulse-conversion with conversion efficiencies as high as 25%/mW.Comment: 3 pages, 5 figures, submitted to Optics Letter

Characterization of the feldspars in felsic gneiss from Mt. Riiser Larsen in Napier Complex, East Antarctica

第2回極域科学シンポジウム/第31回極域地学シンポジウム 11月17日（木） 国立極地研究所　2階大会議室前フロ

The investigation of back-transformation mechanisms of ringwoodite and majorite in the Yamato 75267 H6

The Tenth Symposium on Polar Science/Special session: [OA] Antarctic meteorites, Thur. 5 Dec. / 3F Multipurpose conference room, National Institute of Polar Researc

Structure Formation with Generalized Dark Matter

The next generation of cosmic microwave background (CMB) experiments, galaxy surveys, and high-redshift observations can potentially determine the nature of the dark matter observationally. With this in mind, we introduce a phenomenological model for a generalized dark matter (GDM) component and discuss its effect on large-scale structure and CMB anisotropies. Specifying the gravitational influence of the otherwise non-interacting GDM requires not merely a model for its equation of state but one for its full stress tensor. From consideration of symmetries, conservation laws, and gauge invariance, we construct a simple but powerful 3 component parameterization of these stresses that exposes the new phenomena produced by GDM. Limiting cases include: a particle component (e.g. WIMPS, radiation or massive neutrinos), a cosmological constant, and a scalar field component. Intermediate cases illustrate how the clustering properties of the dark matter can be specified independently of its equation of state. This freedom allows one to alter the amplitude and features in the matter power spectrum relative to those of the CMB anisotropies while leaving the background cosmology fixed. Conversely, observational constraints on such properties can help determine the nature of the dark matter.Comment: 13 pages, 10 figures, accepted to ApJ. Typo in eqn (A8) correcte