Identification of Tumor Suppressive Genes Regulated by miR-31-5p and miR-31-3p in Head and Neck Squamous Cell Carcinoma

We identified the microRNA (miRNA) expression signature of head and neck squamous cell carcinoma (HNSCC) tissues by RNA sequencing, in which 168 miRNAs were significantly upregulated, including both strands of the miR-31 duplex (miR-31-5p and miR-31-3p). The aims of this study were to identify networks of tumor suppressor genes regulated by miR-31-5p and miR-31-3p in HNSCC cells. Our functional assays showed that inhibition of miR-31-5p and miR-31-3p attenuated cancer cell malignant phenotypes (cell proliferation, migration, and invasion), suggesting that they had oncogenic potential in HNSCC cells. Our in silico analysis revealed 146 genes regulated by miR-31 in HNSCC cells. Among these targets, the low expression of seven genes (miR-31-5p targets: CACNB2 and IL34; miR-31-3p targets: CGNL1, CNTN3, GAS7, HOPX, and PBX1) was closely associated with poor prognosis in HNSCC. According to multivariate Cox regression analyses, the expression levels of five of those genes (CACNB2: p = 0.0189; IL34: p = 0.0425; CGNL1: p = 0.0014; CNTN3: p = 0.0304; and GAS7: p = 0.0412) were independent prognostic factors in patients with HNSCC. Our miRNA signature and miRNA-based approach will provide new insights into the molecular pathogenesis of HNSCC.     

Acrolein formation in the oxidation of ethane over silica catalysts supporting iron and cesium

A significant yield of aldehydes was obtained by the partial oxidation of ethane over alkali‐modified Fe/SiO₂ catalysts at 475°C (<2% in the case of Cs–Fe/SiO₂). Not only acetaldehyde and formaldehyde but also acrolein were produced in the present system. There are no reports regarding the catalysts for the direct acrolein formation from partial oxidation of ethane. Such significant promoting effect of alkali‐modified Fe/SiO₂ catalysts in the partial oxidation of hydrocarbons has never been observed. Aldol‐type condensation for formation of acrolein could occur in the partial oxidation of ethane over alkali‐modified Fe/SiO₂ catalysts. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

An Approach to a Higher‐Power‐Density Power Supply for a 380‐V DC Distribution System

A methodology for realizing a higher‐power‐density DC‐DC converter has been proposed for a power unit installed in a 380‐V DC distribution system. The possibility of the converter design will be strengthened by using the series–parallel connection topology for isolated DC‐DC converters. A converter prototype with a power density of 10 W/cm³ has been fabricated, and the feasibility of the converter design has been confirmed experimentally. This result contributes to the realization of a highly efficient and highly space‐saving 380‐V DC distribution system. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 186(3): 51–62, 2014; Published online in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.22494     

Kinetics of CO2 reforming of methane by catalytically activated metallic foam absorber for solar receiver-reactors

Ni–Cr–Al metallic foam absorber with high porosity was catalytically activated using a Ru/γ-Al₂O₃ catalyst, and was subsequently tested with respect to CO₂ reforming of methane in a small-scale volumetric receiver-reactor by using a sun-simulator. A chemical storage efficiency of 37% was obtained for a mean light flux of 325 kW m⁻². Furthermore, the activity and the stability of the metallic foam absorber were compared with those of a SiC foam absorber activated with the same Ru/γ-Al₂O₃ catalyst for 50 h of light irradiation, and it was found that the metallic foam absorber has superior catalytic stability in comparison to the SiC form absorber. In addition, unlike ceramic foams such as SiC, metallic foams feature superior plasticity, which prevents the emergence of cracks caused by mechanical or thermal shock.     

Implementation of Fault-Tolerant GridRPC Applications

A task parallel application is implemented with Ninf-G, a GridRPC system. A series of experiments are conducted on the Grid testbed in Asia Pacific for three months. Through tens of long executions, typical fault patterns were collected, and instability of the network throughput was determined to be a major reason of the faults. Several important points are stressed to avoid task throughput decline due to the fault-recovery operations: Timeout minimization for fault detection, background recovery, redundant task assignments, and so on. This study also issues a steer for design of the automated fault-tolerant mechanism in an upper layer of the GridRPC framework.     

Intra-body data transmission for the personal area network

Intra-body communication is a wireless means of exchanging information within a personal area network (PAN) between wearable electronic sensors and devices. The feasibility of intra-body communication is confirmed through several experiments on signal propagation within the human body, and a human phantom is designed and used to obtain reproducible results over repeated experiments. Based on the results of these experiments, a prototype transmission system is constructed using aluminum electrodes powered by 3 V DC and operating in the 10.7 MHz frequency modulation (FM) band. This prototype is demonstrated to be capable of transmitting analog signals through the human subjects in the presence of external noise. Digital data transmission at 9600 bps is also achieved using newly fabricated 10.7 MHz frequency shift keying (FSK) transmitter and receiver devices. The carrier frequency of 10.7 MHz is the intermediate frequency of FM radio receivers, meaning that the proposed system can make use of a wide selection of inexpensive, commercial radio frequency devices.     

Multiple fuzzy state-value functions for human evaluation through interactive trajectory planning of a partner robot

The purpose of this study is to develop partner robots that can obtain and accumulate human-friendly behaviors. To achieve this purpose, the entire architecture of the robot is designed, based on a concept of structured learning which emphasizes the importance of interactive learning of several modules through interaction with its environment. This paper deals with a trajectory planning method for generating hand-to-hand behaviors of a partner robot by using multiple fuzzy state-value functions, a self-organizing map, and an interactive genetic algorithm. A trajectory for the behavior is generated by an interactive genetic algorithm using human evaluation. In order to reduce human load, human evaluation is estimated by using the fuzzy state-value function. Furthermore, to cope with various situations, a self-organizing map is used for clustering a given task dependent on a human hand position. And then, a fuzzy state-value function is assigned to each output unit of the self-organizing map. The robot can easily obtain and accumulate human-friendly trajectories using a fuzzy state-value function and a knowledge database corresponding to the unit selected in the self-organizing map. Finally, multiple fuzzy state-value functions can estimate a human evaluation model for the hand-to-hand behaviors. Several experimental results show the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Adaptive Ray‐bundle Tracing with Memory Usage Prediction: Efficient Global Illumination in Large Scenes

This paper proposes an adaptive rendering technique for ray‐bundle tracing. Ray‐bundle tracing can be done by per‐pixel linked‐list construction on a GPU rasterization pipeline. This rasterization based approach offers significant benefits for the efficient generation of light maps (e.g., hardware acceleration, tessellation, and recycling of shaders used in real‐time graphics). However, it is inapplicable to large and complex scenes due to the limited capacity of the GPU memory because it requires a high‐resolution frame buffer and high‐capacity node buffer for the linked‐lists. In addition, memory overflow can potentially occur on the per‐pixel linked‐list since the memory usage of the lists is usually unknown before the rendering process. We introduce an adaptive tiling technique with memory usage prediction. Our method uses an appropriately tiled frame buffer, thus eliminating almost all of the overflow risks thanks to our adaptive tile subdivision scheme. Using this technique, we are able to render high‐quality light maps of large and complex scenes which cannot be computed using previous ray‐bundle based methods.     

Deformation characteristics of ultra-thin liquid film considering temperature and film thickness dependence of surface tension

Thermocapillary deformations of an ultra-thin liquid film caused by temperature distribution were three-dimensionally analyzed using the unsteady and linearized long wave equation considering the temperature and film thickness dependence of surface tension. The temperature and film thickness dependence equation for the surface tension of a liquid was firstly established. The temperature dependence of the surface tension was obtained experimentally using a surface tensiometer and the film thickness dependence was obtained theoretically from the corrected van der Waals pressure equation for a symmetric multilayer system. Time evolutions of depression and groove of the ultra-thin liquid film caused by local heating were obtained quantitatively.