Analysis of Plasmalogen Species in Foodstuffs

Ethanolamine plasmalogen (PlsEtn), which is present at high levels in brains, is believed to be involved in neuronal protection. The present study was performed to search for PlsEtn resources in foodstuffs. The foodstuffs examined showed a wide range of PlsEtn contents from 5 to 549 μmol/100 g wet wt. The marine invertebrates, blue mussel, and ascidian had high PlsEtn contents (over 200 μmol/100 g wet wt). Profiling of the molecular species showed that the predominant fatty acids of PlsEtn species were 20:5 (EPA) and 22:6 (DHA) at the sn‐2 position of the glycerol moiety in marine foodstuffs, whereas major PlsEtn species in land foodstuffs were 20:4. Following quantitative analysis by multiple reaction monitoring, the ascidian viscera were shown to contain the highest levels of 18:0/20:5‐PlsEtn and 18:0/22:6‐PlsEtn (86 and 68 μmol/100 g wet wt, respectively). In order to evaluate a neuronal antiapoptotic effect of these PlsEtn species, human neuroblastoma SH‐SY5Y cells were treated with ethanolamine glycerophospholipid (EtnGpl), purified from the ascidian viscera, under serum starvation conditions. Extrinsic EtnGpl from ascidian viscera showed stronger suppression of cell death induced by serum starvation than with bovine brain EtnGpl. The EtnGpl from ascidian viscera strongly suppressed the activation of caspase 3. These results suggest that PlsEtn, especially that containing EPA and DHA, from marine foodstuffs is potentially useful for a therapeutic dietary supplement preventing neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD).     

Role of Stripes in Spin and Charge Dynamics of Underdoped La2−x Sr x CuO4

We investigate the electronic states of underdoped La _2–x Sr _x CuO ₄ (LSCO) by using a microscopic model, i.e., t-t-t-J model, containing charge stripes. The numerically exact diagonalization calculation is employed on small clusters. The physical properties observed in the angle-resolved photoemission and optical conductivity experiments are consistently explained in the model with vertical stripes, but not diagonal ones. These results demonstrate a crucial role of the vertical stripes in underdoped LSCO.     

Design of a grid service-based platform for in silico protein-ligand screenings

Grid computing offers the powerful alternative of sharing resources on a worldwide scale, across different institutions to run computationally intensive, scientific applications without the need for a centralized supercomputer. Much effort has been put into development of software that deploys legacy applications on a grid-based infrastructure and efficiently uses available resources. One field that can benefit greatly from the use of grid resources is that of drug discovery since molecular docking simulations are an integral part of the discovery process. In this paper, we present a scalable, reusable platform to choreograph large virtual screening experiments over a computational grid using the molecular docking simulation software DOCK. Software components are applied on multiple levels to create automated workflows consisting of input data delivery, job scheduling, status query, and collection of output to be displayed in a manageable fashion for further analysis. This was achieved using Opal OP to wrap the DOCK application as a grid service and PERL for data manipulation purposes, alleviating the requirement for extensive knowledge of grid infrastructure. With the platform in place, a screening of the ZINC 2,066,906 compound "drug-like" subset database against an enzyme's catalytic site was successfully performed using the MPI version of DOCK 5.4 on the PRAGMA grid testbed. The screening required 11.56 days laboratory time and utilized 200 processors over 7 clusters.     

Mathematics based on incremental learning—Excluded middle and inductive inference

Learning theoretic aspects of mathematics and logic have been studied by many authors. They study how mathematical and logical objects are algorithmically “learned” (inferred) from finite data. Although they study mathematical objects, the objective of the studies is learning. In this paper, a mathematics whose foundation itself is learning theoretic will be introduced. It is called Limit-Computable Mathematics. It was originally introduced as a means for “Proof Animation”, which is expected to make interactive formal proof development easier. Although the original objective was not learning theoretic at all, learning theory is indispensable for our research. It suggests that logic and learning theory are related in a still unknown but deep new way.     

碳纤维表面涂碳及涂碳后纤维强度测定

用４－甲氧基苯酚经醚化、氯甲基化、消除反应合成出不熔但可溶的聚（２－甲氧基－５－辛氧基）对亚苯基亚乙烯（ＰＭＯＯＯＰＶ）。用ＰＭＯＯＯＰＶ的ＣＨＣｌ３溶液浸涂碳纤维（ＣＦ）,然后在７７３Ｋ碳化,得到亮黑色且分散性很好的涂碳ＣＦ。单纤维平均拉伸强度（σ）测定结果表明,与未涂碳的ＣＦ（σ＝２９７７．８ＭＰａ）相比较,用０．１％ＰＭＯＯＯＰＶ浸涂的ＣＦσ＝３９０８．２ＭＰａ,用０．２％ＰＭＯＯＯＰＶ浸涂的ＣＦσ＝５０３１．２ＭＰａ,并浸涂后强度离散系数、平均矢径等有规律地变小。     

Study on fabrication of 3-D microstructures by synchrotron radiation based on pixels exposed lithography

We report research on the development of a method of fabricating three-dimensional microstructures that uses synchrotron radiation light. Some research on three-dimensional processing methods using SR lithography has already been reported. They have involved techniques of applying exposure energy distributions to resist surfaces. Complicated energy distributions need to be applied to resist surfaces to fabricate arbitrary three-dimensional structures. However, we devised a new method that made it possible to fabricate arbitrary three-dimensional microstructures by using a mask with pattern created function. The advantages of this method are that it is suitable for rapid prototyping and it reduces the fabrication time and cost since it is not necessary to fabricate conventional photolithographic masks. Our research involved a basic experiment on this method of fabrication where we succeeded in fabricating a free-form surface by exposing it through an overlapping array of pixels that created a single aperture. Moreover, the pixel size could be made smaller than the aperture size by overlapping adjoining pixels.     

Network coding-based reliable multicast in wireless networks

Reliable multicast, the lossless dissemination of data from one sender to a group of receivers, has a wide range of important applications. Recently, network coding has been applied to the reliable multicast in wireless networks, where multiple lost packets with distinct intended receivers are XOR-ed together as one packet and forwarded via single retransmission, resulting in a significant reduction of bandwidth consumption. However, the simple XOR operation cannot fully exploit the potential coding opportunities and finding the optimal set of lost packets for XOR-ing is a complex NP-complete optimization problem. In this work, we intend to move beyond the simple XOR to more general coding operations. Specifically, we propose two new schemes (a static scheme which repeatedly retransmits one coding packet until all intended receivers receive it and a dynamic scheme which updates the coding packet once one or more receivers receive it) to encode packets with more general coding operations, which not only can encode lost packets with common intended receivers together to fully exploit the potential coding opportunities but also have polynomial-time complexity. We demonstrate, through both analytical and simulation results, that the proposed schemes can more greatly reduce the bandwidth requirement than the available coding-based schemes, especially in the case of high packet loss probabilities and a larger number of receivers. This reduction can vary from a few percents to over 15% depending on the packet loss probabilities and the number of receivers.     

Development of anthropomorphic multi-D.O.F. master-slave arm for mutual telexistence

We developed a robotic arm for a master-slave system to support "mutual telexistence", which realizes remote dexterous manipulation tasks and close physical communication with other people using gestures. In this paper, we describe the specifications of the experimental setup of the master-slave arm to demonstrate the feasibility of the mutual telexistence concept. We developed the master arm of a telexistence robot for interpersonal communication. The last degree of the 7-degree-of-freedom slave arm is resolved by placing a small orientation sensor on the operator's arm. This master arm is made light and impedance control is applied in order to grant the operator as much freedom of movement as possible. For this development stage, we compared three control methods and confirmed that the impedance control method is the most appropriate to this system.     

融合外部语义知识的中文文本蕴含识别

基于神经网络的文本蕴含识别模型通常仅从训练数据中学习推理知识,导致模型泛化能力较弱。提出一种融合外部语义知识的中文知识增强推理模型(CKEIM)。根据知网知识库的特点提取词级语义知识特征以构建注意力权重矩阵,同时从同义词词林知识库中选取词语相似度特征和上下位特征组成特征向量,并将注意力权重矩阵、特征向量与编码后的文本向量相结合融入神经网络的模型训练过程,实现中文文本蕴含的增强识别。实验结果表明,与增强序列推理模型相比,CKEIM在15%、50%和100%数据规模的CNLI训练集下识别准确率分别提升了3.7%、1.5%和0.9%,具有更好的中文文本蕴含识别性能和泛化能力。     

一种快速的H.264/AVC帧内预测模式选择算法

H.264/AVC采用RDO技术选择帧内和帧间预测模式以进一步提高编码的效率,取得显著效果,但同时大幅度增加了预测的复杂度。该文提出一种RDO模式下的快速Intra_4x4模式选择算法,该算法根据SATD特征以及相邻块的预测模式之间的相关性,可以预先排除约50%可能性小的Intra_4x4模式,避免了不必要的代价(RD_Cost)计算,从而大幅度降低帧内预测的复杂度,同时基本保持了H.264/AVC的编码性能。