浙江金华八咏大厦

该项目位于浙江省金华市经济开发区,是浙江八咏公路工程有限公司的办公楼和酒店楼。由于位于经济开发区的入口,委托方提出要使这个项目成为标志性的建筑。预计到周边是一组皇冠式的圆顶建筑,我们设计两个简约到极致的体块。     

Aerobic Exercise Ameliorates Cancer Cachexia-Induced Muscle Wasting through Adiponectin Signaling

Cachexia is a multifactorial syndrome characterized by muscle loss that cannot be reversed by conventional nutritional support. To uncover the molecular basis underlying the onset of cancer cachectic muscle wasting and establish an effective intervention against muscle loss, we used a cancer cachectic mouse model and examined the effects of aerobic exercise. Aerobic exercise successfully suppressed muscle atrophy and activated adiponectin signaling. Next, a cellular model for cancer cachectic muscle atrophy using C2C12 myotubes was prepared by treating myotubes with a conditioned medium from a culture of colon-26 cancer cells. Treatment of the atrophic myotubes with recombinant adiponectin was protective against the thinning of cells through the increased production of p-mTOR and suppression of LC3-II. Altogether, these findings suggest that the activation of adiponectin signaling could be part of the molecular mechanisms by which aerobic exercise ameliorates cancer cachexia-induced muscle wasting.     

Micronization and polymorphic conversion of tolbutamide and barbital by rapid expansion of supercritical solutions

Rapid expansion of supercritical solutions (RESS) was applied to tolbutamide and barbital. The solubility in supercritical CO₂ was determined to estimate the extraction efficiency roughly by a simple method and accurately by a direct spectrophotometric technique. The latter revealed that the solubility of tolbutamide was a function of applied pressure and temperature and was proportional to the pressure. No significant difference in solubility between polymorphic Forms I and II of tolbutamide was detected. Tolbutamide and barbital particles produced by the RESS were characterized by size distribution measurement, polymorph identification and morphological evaluation. Significant size reduction to micron or sub-micron level with narrow size distribution was achieved, while conventional mechanical grinding had only slight effect. The particle size was greatly affected by both extraction and expansion conditions. The lower the extraction temperature was, the smaller was the mean particle size. Higher extraction pressure resulted in smaller mean particle size when compared at the same extraction temperature. The mean particle size was reduced by lowering the spray nozzle temperature, by lowering the expansion chamber temperature, by increasing the CO₂ amount per spray, and by increasing the exhaust gas flow rate. The RESS processing realized the polymorphic conversion as well. As for tolbutamide, three polymorphs (Forms I, II, and IV) out of four could be produced by changing the extraction conditions, and in the case of barbital, one polymorph (Form II) out of three was produced consistently.     

High surface area solids obtained by intercalation of iron oxide pillars in montmorillonite

When montmorillonite is dispersed in aqueous solutions of trinuclear acetato-hydroxo iron(III) nitrate, [Fe₃(OCOCH₃)₇OH]NO₃, the interlayer cations of the montmorillonite are exchanged with the partially hydrolyzed trinuclear acetato complex ions. On heating the exchanged complex ions are converted into iron oxide pillars which keep the silicate layers apart and form micropores between the layers. The resulting product has a basal spacing of 16.7 Å and a specific surface area of about 300 m²/g at 500°C. Adsorption isotherms for various vapors on the product have been measured.     

Treatment of metastatic liver tumors by intermittent repetitive injection of an angiogenesis inhibitor using an implantable port system in a rabbit model

Horse heart apomyoglobin traps the heme released from Aplysia californica myoglobin. The kinetics fit a triangular mechanism for a bipbasic reaction. Laplacian solutions for differential equations appropriate to triangular kinetic schemes involving up to four rate constants are elaborated and confirmed. Two general schemes and two special cases are considered. In the first scheme, a rearrangement of the starting material is concurrent with product formation. In the second scheme, the starting material forms two products in equilibrium at two different rates. A general equation for the absorbance-time curve is derived for these triangular schemes, from which rate constants can be estimated. Changes in instantaneous rate versus time are employed to analyze the absorption versus time plots and the curvature of a first-order rate analysis. Aplysia metmyoglobin equilibrates between slow donor (pentacoordinate, which lacks the axial water molecule) and fast donor (bexacoordinate). No heme release was observed for deoxy, oxy, carbonyl, or azide derivatives of the Aplysia myoglobin, or when the distal HisE7 of the apohemoprotein is replaced by leucine or valine. This suggest a role for hydrophobicity of the active site, and for a trans effect of the axial ligand in determining the stability of the embedded prosthetic heme.     

Topic tracking language model for speech recognition

In a real environment, acoustic and language features often vary depending on the speakers, speaking styles and topic changes. To accommodate these changes, speech recognition approaches that include the incremental tracking of changing environments have attracted attention. This paper proposes a topic tracking language model that can adaptively track changes in topics based on current text information and previously estimated topic models in an on-line manner. The proposed model is applied to language model adaptation in speech recognition. We use the MIT OpenCourseWare corpus and Corpus of Spontaneous Japanese in speech recognition experiments, and show the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Reconnaissance report on geotechnical damage caused by a localized torrential downpour with emergency warning level in Kyushu,Japan

Kumamoto and Kogoshima prefectures are located in the southern Kyushu district of western Japan. In July 2020, a warm, humid air front triggered the delayed rains of the rainy season, resulting in torrential rains in many parts of Japan, especially in Kyushu. In particular, heavy downpours occurred in the southern Kyushu district on July 4th, causing severe damage to much of the infrastructure. Details could not be analyzed as usual because some branch office of local government were also damaged by floods. The spatial distribution of precipitation in the Kuma River basin, in the southern part of Kumamoto, was characterized by the uniformity of 400–500 mm on July 3rd and 4th. Finally, emergency warnings of torrential rain were issued for the southern Kumamoto and the northern Kagoshima Prefectures by Japan Meteorological Agency (JMA) at 4:50 a.m., July 4th, 2020. Then, the active rain front gradually shifted towards northern Kyushu. Again, torrential rain fell on northern Kyushu in the afternoon due to a stagnant rainy season front, and the JMA issued an emergency warning for a localized torrential downpour for parts of Fukuoka, Saga and Nagasaki prefectures at 4:30 pm. Gradually, the damage status involving geodisasters such as several types of slope failures, road subsidence, damage of the river levee was reported by local governments in each area where there had been emergency warnings.Based on the brief report of the pre-investigation team from the Kyushu branch of the Japan Geotechnical Society (JGS) in the first week after the disaster on July 4th, the geo-research teams investigated the following: 1) landslides; 2) damaged roads; 3) damaged river levees, and 4) any geotechnical infrastructures which were partially damaged and may be even more severely damaged by the next torrential rain. This reconnaissance report introduces the geological features in Kyushu, the analysis of precipitation distribution and geotechnical damages on the slope failures, road failures and river embankments based on reports obtained from July 4th to August 31st, 2020.     

A method for evaluating dynamic functional network connectivity and task-modulation: application to schizophrenia

Objective

In this paper, we develop a dynamic functional network connectivity (FNC) analysis approach using correlations between windowed time-courses of different brain networks (components) estimated via spatial independent component analysis (sICA). We apply the developed method to fMRI data to evaluate it and to study task-modulation of functional connections.

Materials and methods

We study the theoretical basis of the approach, perform a simulation analysis and apply it to fMRI data from schizophrenia patients (SP) and healthy controls (HC). Analyses on the fMRI data include: (a) group sICA to determine regions of significant task-related activity, (b) static and dynamic FNC analysis among these networks by using maximal lagged-correlation and time–frequency analysis, and (c) HC–SP group differences in functional network connections and in task-modulation of these connections.

Results

This new approach enables an assessment of task-modulation of connectivity and identifies meaningful inter-component linkages and differences between the two study groups during performance of an auditory oddball task (AOT). The static FNC results revealed that connectivities involving medial visual–frontal, medial temporal–medial visual, parietal–medial temporal, parietal–medial visual and medial temporal–anterior temporal were significantly greater in HC, whereas only the right lateral fronto-parietal (RLFP)–orbitofrontal connection was significantly greater in SP. The dynamic FNC revealed that task-modulation of motor–frontal, RLFP–medial temporal and posterior default mode (pDM)–parietal connections were significantly greater in SP, and task modulation of orbitofrontal–pDM and medial temporal–frontal connections were significantly greater in HC (all P < 0.05).

Conclusion

The task-modulation of dynamic FNC provided findings and differences between the two groups that are consistent with the existing hypothesis that schizophrenia patients show less segregated motor, sensory, cognitive functions and less segregated default mode network activity when engaged with a task. Dynamic FNC, based on sICA, provided additional results which are different than, but complementary to, those of static FNC. For example, it revealed dynamic changes in default mode network connectivities with other regions which were significantly different in schizophrenia in terms of task-modulation, findings which were not possible to discover by static FNC.