Mixed-ligand Cu(I) complexes have attracted attention as alternatives to the noble- and/or rare-metal complexes, because of their remarkable photofunctions. To develop mixed-ligand Cu(I) complexes ...with rich photofunctions, an investigation of a suitable combination of ligands has captured more and more research interests. Herein, we report the first examples of emissive heteroleptic diphosphine-disulfide Cu(I) complexes combined with diphosphine ligands. The systematic study using a series of diphosphine ligands revealed that large π-conjugated bridging moieties between the two P atoms in the diphosphine ligands result in higher light-emission performance. When the diphosphine ligand was (R)-BINAP ((R)-BINAP = (R)-(+)-2,2′-bis(diphenylphosphino)-1,1′-binaphthyl), the Cu(I) complex had an emission quantum yield (Φem) of 0.13 and a long emission lifetime (τem = 118 μs).
Abstract
Perceptual judgements are formed through invisible cognitive processes. Reading out these judgements is essential for advancing our understanding of decision making and requires inferring ...covert cognitive states based on overt motor actions. Although intuition suggests that these actions must be related to the formation of decisions about where to move body parts, actions have been reported to be influenced by perceptual judgements even when the action is irrelevant to the perceptual judgement. However, despite performing multiple actions in our daily lives, how perceptual judgements influence multiple judgement-irrelevant actions is unknown. Here we show that perceptual judgements affect only saccadic eye movements when simultaneous judgement-irrelevant saccades and reaches are made, demonstrating that perceptual judgement-related signals continuously flow into the oculomotor system alone when multiple judgement-irrelevant actions are performed. This suggests that saccades are useful for making inferences about covert perceptual decisions, even when the actions are not tied to decision making.
•New non-invasive sampling device, passive flux sampler (PFS), was developed for the determination of dermal emission flux of ageing odor related compounds.•Emission fluxes of 2-nonenal and diacetyl ...remarkably varied with sampling position of a body.•The emission flux of 2-nonenal increased with age, whilst the flux of diacetyl showed highest in 30’s and decreased over 40’s.•Although diacetyl has been known as a middle-aged male odor, this study showed the odor caused by diacetyl was not specific to male.
It is commonly said elderly persons have a characteristic body odor, and, at present, two chemical compounds have been found to vary with age in male Japanese: 2-nonenal and diacetyl. To investigate dermal emission flux of the ageing odor related compounds, we have developed a non-invasive sampling device based on a concept of passive flux sampler (PFS). The sampler was placed on the skin surface to create a headspace, and the gases emanating from skin moved toward a disk-type adsorbent. The trapped gases were then extracted with dichloromethane and determined by GCMS. The PFS was practically applied to healthy volunteers covering a wide range of age. Since emission fluxes of both compounds remarkably varied with sampling position, the nape of the neck was fixed as regular sampling position where there are dense networks of both sebaceous and eccrine glands which are potential sources of both compounds. The emission flux of 2-nonenal increased with age for both male and female volunteers, whilst the flux of diacetyl showed highest in 30s and decreased over 40s. Although diacetyl has been known as a middle-aged male odor, this study showed the odor caused by diacetyl was not specific to male.
C3-positive reactive astrocytes play a neurotoxic role in various neurodegenerative diseases. However, the mechanisms controlling C3-positive reactive astrocyte induction are largely unknown. We ...found that the length of the primary cilium, a cellular organelle that receives extracellular signals was increased in C3-positive reactive astrocytes, and the loss or shortening of primary cilium decreased the count of C3-positive reactive astrocytes. Pharmacological experiments suggested that Ca
2+
signalling may synergistically promote C3 expression in reactive astrocytes. Conditional knockout (cKO) mice that specifically inhibit primary cilium formation in astrocytes upon drug stimulation exhibited a reduction in the proportions of C3-positive reactive astrocytes and apoptotic cells in the brain even after the injection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS). Additionally, the novel object recognition (NOR) score observed in the cKO mice was higher than that observed in the neuroinflammation model mice. These results suggest that the primary cilium in astrocytes positively regulates C3 expression. We propose that regulating astrocyte-specific primary cilium signalling may be a novel strategy for the suppression of neuroinflammation.
Graphical Abstract
The primary cilium of astrocytes are required for the C3 expression in reactive astrocytes. Furthermore, the potentiation of calcium signalling appears to be involved in the promotion of C3 expression in reactive astrocytes.
•Simultaneous and multi-point measurement of dermal emission flux of ammonia was conducted for ten healthy young volunteers.•Ammonia emanating from human skin surface was non-invasively collected by ...Passive Flux Sampler and determined by Ion chromatography.•Using the measured emission fluxes at 13 positions and surface area of the volunteers, the whole body dermal emission rate of ammonia was estimated.•The dermal emission was found more significant odor source than the breath exhalation in indoor environment.
Ammonia is one of the members of odor gases and a possible source of odor in indoor environment. However, little has been known on the actual emission rate of ammonia from the human skin surface. Then, this study aimed to estimate the whole-body dermal emission rate of ammonia by simultaneous and multi-point measurement of emission fluxes of ammonia employing a passive flux sampler – ion chromatography system. Firstly, the emission fluxes of ammonia were non-invasively measured for ten volunteers at 13 sampling positions set in 13 anatomical regions classified by Kurazumi et al. The measured emission fluxes were then converted to partial emission rates using the surface body areas estimated by weights and heights of volunteers and partial rates of 13 body regions. Subsequent summation of the partial emission rates provided the whole body dermal emission rate of ammonia. The results ranged from 2.9 to 12mgh−1 with an average of 5.9±3.2mgh−1 per person for the ten healthy young volunteers. The values were much greater than those from human breath, and thus the dermal emission of ammonia was found more significant odor source than the breath exhalation in indoor environment.
An octopus arm with a flexible structure and no rigid skeleton shows a high degree of freedom and flexibility. These excellent features are suitable for working in an environment having fragile and ...unknown-shaped objects. Therefore, a soft robot arm resembling an octopus arm can be useful as a harvesting machine without damaging crops in the agricultural field, as a rehabilitation apparatus in the welfare field, as a safe surgery tool in the medical field, and so on. Unlike industrial robots, to consider the applications of the soft robot arm, the instructions for it relating to a task cannot in many cases be given as a numerical value, and the motion according to an operator’s sense and intent is useful. This paper describes the design and feedback control of a soft master-slave robot system. The system is configured with two soft rubber machines; one is a slave machine that is the soft robot arm mimicking the muscle arrangement of the octopus arm by pneumatic artificial muscles, and the other is a master machine that gives the target motion to the slave machine. Both are configured with soft materials. The slave machine has an actuating part and a sensing part, it can perform bending and torsional motions, and these motions are estimated by the sensing part with threads that connect to wire encoders. The master machine is almost the same configuration, but it has no actuating part. The slave machine is driven according to the deformation of the master machine. We confirmed experimentally that the slave machine followed the master machine that was deformed by an operator.
The development of efficient redox-photosensitizers based on the earth-abundant metal ions as an alternative toward noble- and/or rare-metal based photosensitizers is very desirable. In recent years, ...heteroleptic diimine-diphosphine Cu(I) complexes have been well investigated as one of the most remarkable candidates because of their great potentials as efficient photosensitizers. Here, we investigated the effects of the structure of the diphosphine ligands on the photosensitizing abilities using a series of Cu(I) complexes bearing 2,9-dimethyl-4,7-diphenyl-1,10-phenanthroline (dmpp) and various diphosphine ligands in order to explore the suitable structure for the photosensitizing reactions. The number of methylene chains between the two phosphorous atoms in the diphosphine ligands was systematically changed from two to four, and the relationship between the length of the carbon chains and the photosensitizing abilities were investigated by conducting photocatalytic CO
2
reduction with the Cu(I) complexes as photosensitizers. Turnover frequencies of the CO
2
reduction drastically increased with increasing the length of the carbon chains. The systematic study herein reported suggests that the large P-Cu-P angles should be one of the most important factors for enhancing the photosensitizing abilities.
This study proposed a quantitative evaluation method for vitreous opacities using motion video. The proposed method focused on moving turbidity in the vitreous. The moving turbidity appeared as an ...inter-frame difference, which was calculated from two consecutive frames. Therefore, the degree of vitreous opacity was estimated using this inter-frame difference. The proposed method was applied in the experiments to actual motion videos obtained using slit-lamp examination. The effectiveness of method was confirmed using the
t
-test and linear discriminant method.
Behçet's disease (BD) is a systemic inflammatory vasculitis with both autoimmune and autoinflammatory properties. Renal involvement in BD and its spontaneous remission have been rare. We herein ...describe a case of parallel disease activity of BD with entero and renal involvements, followed by a spontaneous remission without corticosteroid treatment.
A 54-year-old woman who had a 4-year history of BD, maintained with colchicine treatment, suffered abdominal pain, hemorrhagic stool and diarrhea. Physical examination revealed strong tenderness in the entire abdomen. Laboratory test results showed increased levels of inflammation, and a computed tomography scan revealed edematous intestinal wall thickening with ascites. Blood and stool cultures showed no specific findings. Since she was suspected to have developed panperitonitis with acute enterocolitis, she started treatment with an antibacterial agent under bowel rest. Her abdominal symptoms gradually improved, while diarrhea and high levels of inflammatory reaction persisted. Colonoscopy revealed discontinuous abnormal mucosal vascular patterns and ulcerations in the whole colon except for the rectum, and histological analyses of the intestine demonstrated transmural mucosal infiltration of inflammatory cells without epithelioid granuloma or amyloid deposition. Based on these findings, she was diagnosed with entero BD. Meanwhile, pedal edema appeared during her hospitalization. Urinalysis results were consistent with nephrotic syndrome, thus a renal biopsy was performed. Light microscopy showed no obvious glomerular and interstitial abnormalities, whereas electron microscopy revealed foot process effacement without immune complex deposition or fibrillary structure, compatible with minimal change disease (MCD). Only with conservative therapy, her proteinuria decreased, followed by a complete remission in 3 weeks from the onset of edema. The coincident episode of MCD was finally diagnosed as renal BD that paralleled disease activity to entero BD. She started adalimumab administration, resulting in the further improvement of diarrhea and inflammatory levels.
This is the first report to demonstrate MCD as renal involvement of BD along with the disease activity of entero BD.
The effects of rapid hemorrhage on coagulopathy have been reported. However, the effects of different hemorrhage speeds on the blood coagulation/fibrinolysis system have not been investigated. This ...study aimed to compare different hemorrhage speeds for clarifying their effects on the coagulation/fibrinolysis system and circulation disorders in rats. Male Sprague–Dawley rats (301–396 g) were randomly assigned to five groups depending on hemorrhage speed and length of procedurefirst, rapid (1.4 ml/min, 30-min bleeding); second, rapid-L (1.4 ml/min, 30-min bleeding and observation until 6 h); third, slow (0.1 ml/min, intermittently, 6-h bleeding); fourth, control (30-min observation); and fifth, control-L (6-h observation). Hemorrhage was induced by withdrawing blood until 40% of the estimated blood volume from the femoral artery. We measured vital signs, hematology, general chemistry, blood gas status, coagulation parameters, fibrinolytic markers tissue-type plasminogen activator and plasminogen activator inhibitor one (PAI-1), vascular endothelial damage (syndecan-1), and liver PAI-1 mRNA expression. Rapid hemorrhage induced elevation of lactate and syndecan-1 levels and prolonged prothrombin time and activated partial thromboplastin time in the rapid group. In contrast, slow hemorrhage did not induce these changes. Hemorrhage speed had no effect on plasma tissue-type plasminogen activator and hematology. Plasma PAI-1 levels were significantly increased in the rapid-L group, while liver PAI-1 mRNA levels were increased in the slow group. This study shows changes in the circulatory and fibrinolysis systems, depending on the hemorrhage speed. Hemorrhage might promote production of PAI-1, while tissue hypoxia due to rapid hemorrhage might promote release of PAI-1.
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