Effect of treatment of activated carbon fiber cloth electrodes with cold plasma upon performance of electric double-layer capacitors

Charge/discharge behavior of electric double-layer capacitors composed of activated carbon fiber cloth (ACFC) electrodes and an organic electrolyte was investigated. The modification of the ACFC electrodes was performed using cold plasma generated in argon-oxygen atmosphere. The effect of the cold plasma treatment of the ACPC electrodes on the capacitor performance was discussed on the basis of the physical and chemical properties of the ACFC surface such as pore radius distribution and surface atom concentration.     

Activation of Mast-Cell-Derived Chymase in the Lacrimal Glands of Patients with IgG4-Related Ophthalmic Disease

The purpose of this present study was to investigate the distribution and expression of chymase in the lacrimal glands (LGs) of patients afflicted with IgG4-related ophthalmic disease (IgG4-ROD). LGs from patients with severe canalicular obstruction were considered the control group. Toluidine blue staining confirmed a significant increase in the number of mast cells in the LGs obtained from the IgG4-ROD patients. In addition, immunostaining of serial sections from the LGs showed a significant increase in the number of chymase-positive cells and tryptase-positive cells in the IgG4-ROD LGs compared to the normal control LGs. The mRNA expression of chymase, tryptase, TGF-β1, and collagen-I tended to increase in the IgG4-ROD LGs. Immunostaining of vimentin and α-smooth muscle actin (α-SMA) showed that myofibroblasts were the main cellular components in severely fibrotic regions of LGs in patients with IgG4-ROD. Linear regression analyses on the number of mast cells, chymase-positive cells, and tryptase-positive cells revealed significant positive correlations between those respective cells. Our findings suggest that chymase may play a role in the fibrotic disorder of IgG4-ROD LGs through the regulation of TGF-β1 activation and collagen-I deposition, and that it may be a therapeutic target for patients afflicted with IgG4-ROD.     

Combination of cytomegalovirus enhancer with human cellular promoters for gene-induced chondrogenesis of human bone marrow mesenchymal stem cells

High-expression plasmid vectors for human mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs) were constructed by combination of cytomegalovirus immediate-early enhancer with cellular promoters. MSCs transfected with the vector showed higher transgene production of a cytokine, which increased the differentiation level to chondrocytes.     

Tetra-Repeat Microsatellite Markers for the Masu Salmon (Oncorhynchus masou masou) and Its Application in Cross-Subspecies Amplification

We developed tetranucleotide-repeat microsatellite markers for the masu salmon (Oncorhynchus masou) complex. 454 pyrosequencing was used to discover repeat motifs, and seven polymorphic microsatellite-primer sets were identified. The number of alleles detected at each locus ranged from four to 24 and the expected heterozygosity varied from 0.57 to 0.92. Cross-subspecies amplification for O. m. masou, O. m. ishikawae and O. m. subsp. was successful. These microsatellites can be utilized in studies of genetic structure, genetic diversity, and intra- and inter-subspecific hybridization, making a contribution to conservation and management of the Oncorhynchus masou complex.     

Numerical electric field analysis of capacitance and potential in space for estimation of permittivity distribution

We have been studying on measuring capacitance and potential using long‐distance electrode for estimating a permittivity distribution. The estimating method of permittivity distribution was proposed using finite element method (FEM) and genetic algorithm. However, the measurement accuracy was not reviewed. In this paper, we carried out numerical analysis using FEM in case of change of diameter, position, and permittivity of a rod of dielectric and discussed the measurement accuracy of capacitance and potential.     

Incremental learning of context free grammars based on bottom-up parsing and search

This paper describes approaches for machine learning of context free grammars (CFGs) from positive and negative sample strings, which are implemented in Synapse system. The grammatical inference consists of a rule generation by “inductive CYK algorithm,” mechanisms for incremental learning, and search. Inductive CYK algorithm generates minimum production rules required for parsing positive samples, when the bottom-up parsing by CYK algorithm does not succeed. The incremental learning is used not only for synthesizing grammars by giving the system positive strings in the order of their length but also for learning grammars from other similar grammars. Synapse can synthesize fundamental ambiguous and unambiguous CFGs including nontrivial grammars such as the set of strings not of the form ww with w∈{a,b}⁺.     

Isolation of dimethyl sulfone-degrading microorganisms and application to odorless degradation of dimethyl sulfoxide

With the objective of developing an odorless biodegradation process for dimethyl sulfoxide (DMSO), Hyphomicrobium sp. WU-OM3 was isolated. During the cultivation of strain WU-OM3 cells with 20 mM dimethyl sulfone (DMSO2) as the sole carbon source, DMSO2 was completely consumed within 48 h and sulfate ion accumulated in the culture broth. Methanesulfonate was also detected as an intermediate of DMSO2 degradation. By combining the DMSO-oxidizing microorganism and strain WU-OM3 cells, 0.64 mM (50 mg/l) DMSO was degraded to sulfate ion with 80% molar conversion ratio.     

Trading variance reduction with unbiasedness: the regularized subspace information criterion for robust model selection in kernel regression

A well-known result by Stein (1956) shows that in particular situations, biased estimators can yield better parameter estimates than their generally preferred unbiased counterparts. This letter follows the same spirit, as we will stabilize the unbiased generalization error estimates by regularization and finally obtain more robust model selection criteria for learning. We trade a small bias against a larger variance reduction, which has the beneficial effect of being more precise on a single training set. We focus on the subspace information criterion (SIC), which is an unbiased estimator of the expected generalization error measured by the reproducing kernel Hilbert space norm. SIC can be applied to the kernel regression, and it was shown in earlier experiments that a small regularization of SIC has a stabilization effect. However, it remained open how to appropriately determine the degree of regularization in SIC. In this article, we derive an unbiased estimator of the expected squared error, between SIC and the expected generalization error and propose determining the degree of regularization of SIC such that the estimator of the expected squared error is minimized. Computer simulations with artificial and real data sets illustrate that the proposed method works effectively for improving the precision of SIC, especially in the high-noise-level cases. We furthermore compare the proposed method to the original SIC, the cross-validation, and an empirical Bayesian method in ridge parameter selection, with good results.     

Wind-flow measurement over the Subaru Telescope

Wind flows over the 8.2-m Subaru Telescope at Mauna Kea in Hawaii were analyzed with a correlation method. Three or four wind flows were detected from our measurements. Spatial and temporal resolution of the wind-flow analysis across the 8.2 m pupil were investigated experimentally. A three-dimensional spatiotemporal-frequency analysis was also applied to the wind-flow data.