•A system consisting of tidal power generators and energy storage and heat supply equipment.•Forecasted values for planning electricity and heat storage from midnight to morning.•Economic efficiency ...of a heating system and capacity of tidal power investigation.•Prediction error of the tidal power generator and insulation efficiency investigation.
The rapid tidal current near a lake inlet is transformed into electrical energy with Darius-type hydraulic turbine generators. When the tidal power generation is insufficient, the stored excess electric power generated from midnight to early morning of a representative day is used. The balance of energy supply and demand for all sampling events in a representative day must be predicted very accurately in a system with energy storage. In this study, electric power and heat demand are forecasted on the basis of weather data obtained from the Internet, and the corresponding values are used to plan the storage of electricity and heat from midnight to early morning. The results of the case analysis show the influence of the economic efficiency of the heating system, the capacity of the tidal power generator, the prediction error of the tidal power generator, and the insulation efficiency (Q-value) on the energy cost. Optimization of the introduced simulation model was considered. The objective functions of optimization were minimization of operation cost and facilities cost of the simulation model.
Data regarding ambulatory blood pressure (ABP) or self-BP measurements at home (HBP) have been accumulated. The difference between ABP and HBP is that ABP monitoring (ABPM) provides BP information at ...many time points on a particular day during unrestricted routine daily activities, whereas HBP provides extensive amounts of BP information obtained under fixed times and conditions over a long period of time; thus, the mean values of HBP are stable, and the reproducibility are high. The high reproducibility of HBP is the rationale for its overall superiority over HBP compared with ABP and clinic BP (CBP). The higher practicality of HBPM over ABPM is definitely recognized. HBPM allows for ongoing disease monitoring by patients and can provide health-care providers with timely clinical data and direct and immediate feedback regarding the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension. HBP is better able than CBP to predict hypertensive target organ damage and a prognosis of cardiovascular disease. Unlike CBPM, HBPM provides BP information in relation to time, that is, BP in the morning, in the evening and at night during sleep. HBPM is an essential tool for the diagnosis of white-coat hypertension and masked hypertension. Day-to-day variability of HBP has clinical significance. HBPM yields minimal alerting effects and placebo effects. HBPM can distinguish small but significant serial changes in BP and is the most practical way to monitor BP in the day-by-day management of hypertension. HBPM improves compliance with antihypertensive medication. The operational threshold of HBP has been established. HBPM is suspected to have a great effect on the medical economy. The superiority of HBPM over ABPM and CBPM is apparent from almost all practical and clinical research perspectives. These characteristics of HBPM indicate that this method is ideal for the diagnosis and treatment of hypertension in daily practice.
In this paper, we introduce a general class of time discounting, which may exhibit present bias or future bias, to repeated games with perfect monitoring. A strategy profile is called an agent ...subgame perfect equilibrium if there is no profitable one-shot deviation by any player at any history. We study strongly symmetric agent subgame perfect equilibria for repeated games with a symmetric stage game. We find that the worst punishment equilibrium takes different forms for different types of bias. When players are future-biased or have quasi-hyperbolic discounting, the worst punishment payoff can be achieved by a version of stick-and-carrot strategies. When players are present-biased, the worst punishment path may fluctuate over time forever. We also find that the stage-game minmax payoff does not serve as a tight lower bound for the limit equilibrium payoff set. The worst punishment payoff can be below the minmax payoff with future bias and above the minmax payoff with present bias, even when players are very patient. Lastly, we compare the effect of making players interact more frequently and the effect of making them more patient for a given intertemporal bias structure defined on continuous time.
Abstract
We investigated the spatiotemporal evolution of an earthquake sequence following a series of large shallow intraplate earthquakes, including a
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6.2 foreshock and
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7.0 main shock, in ...the Kumamoto area of Kyushu, SW Japan. To more precisely characterize the evolution of the earthquake sequences, we applied a matched filter technique to continuous waveform data, using template events obtained via a double‐difference relocation algorithm. Migrations of seismicity fronts along the directions of fault strike and dip are clearly seen, starting immediately after the
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6.2 foreshock. These migrations are interpreted to result from aseismic slip triggered by the foreshock, propagating toward the nucleation point of the subsequent
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7.0 main shock rupture. When combined with static stress changes induced by the
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6.2 foreshock, it is likely that stress transfer from both aseismic and seismic slip during the foreshock sequence loaded stress onto the main shock rupture faults, bringing them closer to failure.
Key Points
Clear foreshock migration along the directions of fault strike and dip, including propagation toward the main shock nucleation point
Foreshock migrations likely represent the propagation of aseismic slip transients along active faults triggered by the
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6.2 foreshock
Stress transfer from both aseismic and seismic slip during the foreshock sequence loaded stress onto the main shock rupture faults
•Slow earthquakes were complementarily distributed along the Nankai megathrust.•Their activities are characterized by migration in deep & shallow plate boundaries.•Deep and shallow migrations ...occurred over 2–3 years & ∼1 month, respectively.•Both migrating phenomena propagate ∼300 km towards the Nankai locked area.
The Nankai megathrust is located offshore Shikoku and Kyushu, Japan and is characterized by various kinds of slow earthquakes whose relative motions across the plate boundary faults are slower than regular earthquakes. In the area, the interplate locking is stronger in the northern area (offshore Shikoku) than in the southern area (offshore Kyushu) and Mw ∼8 earthquakes (Nankai earthquakes) have occurred repeatedly in the northern area. In this paper, the spatio-temporal distributions of slow earthquakes (very low frequency earthquakes, tremors and slow-slip events) are examined based on the analyses of repeating earthquakes and slow earthquakes with special focus on the interaction between different activities. A comprehensive analysis of the seismic and geodetic data from 2003 to 2016 indicates complementary distribution of various types of slow earthquakes down to 35–50 km depth outside the Nankai main locking area. We also found interactions between different kinds of activities. The interactions between the repeating earthquakes and slow earthquakes suggest that the area of the repeating earthquakes activity can be divided into deeper (depth ≥ 20 km) and shallower (depth < 20 km) areas. The analyses of deep repeating earthquakes and the inland Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) data suggests slow northward migrations of long-term slow slip events (SSEs) in 20–50 km (offshore Kyushu) and 20–35 km (under Shikoku) depths along the plate boundary. These migrations occurred during a period of 2–3 years that includes the 2003 and 2010 large slow-slip events in the Bungo channel located in between Kyushu and Shikoku. The analysis has also shown interaction between shallow repeating earthquakes and shallow very low frequency earthquakes which indicates faster northward migrations of short-term SSEs from the shallow plate boundary offshore Kyushu to the deeper area under Shikoku over the duration of a month during the 2010 long-term slow-slip episode. The deep slow migration and the shallow to deep fast migration of SSEs in a ∼300 km area towards and around the source area of the recurrent Nankai earthquake (Mw 8.0–8.6) indicates the occurrence of a widespread non-steady stress build-up process around the source area of the Nankai megathrust earthquake.
Studies of the last two decades have demonstrated the presence in astrocytic cell membranes of
-methyl-d-aspartate (NMDA) receptors (NMDARs), albeit their apparently low abundance makes demonstration ...of their presence and function more difficult than of other glutamate (Glu) receptor classes residing in astrocytes. Activation of astrocytic NMDARs directly in brain slices and in acutely isolated or cultured astrocytes evokes intracellular calcium increase, by mutually unexclusive ionotropic and metabotropic mechanisms. However, other than one report on the contribution of astrocyte-located NMDARs to astrocyte-dependent modulation of presynaptic strength in the hippocampus, there is no sound evidence for the significant role of astrocytic NMDARs in astrocytic-neuronal interaction in neurotransmission, as yet. Durable exposure of astrocytic and neuronal co-cultures to NMDA has been reported to upregulate astrocytic synthesis of glutathione, and in this way to increase the antioxidative capacity of neurons. On the other hand, overexposure to NMDA decreases, by an as yet unknown mechanism, the ability of cultured astrocytes to express glutamine synthetase (GS), aquaporin-4 (AQP4), and the inward rectifying potassium channel Kir4.1, the three astroglia-specific proteins critical for homeostatic function of astrocytes. The beneficial or detrimental effects of astrocytic NMDAR stimulation revealed in the in vitro studies remain to be proven in the in vivo setting.
The heart wall has a multilayered structure and moves rapidly during ejection and rapid filling periods. Local strain rate (SR) measurements of each myocardial layer can contribute to accurate and ...sensitive evaluations of myocardial function. However, ultrasound-based velocity estimators using a single-frequency phase difference cannot realize these measurements owing to insufficient maximum detectable velocity, which is limited by a quadrature frequency. We previously proposed a velocity estimator using multifrequency phase differences to improve the maximum detectable velocity. However, the improvement is affected by a spatial discrete Fourier transform (DFT) window length that represents the locality of the velocity estimation. In this article, we theoretically describe that shortening the window increases the interference between different frequency components and decreases the maximum detectable velocity. The tradeoff between the maximum detectable velocity and the window length was confirmed through simulations and a water-tank experiment. Under the tradeoff, the Hanning window, which was used in previous studies, is not always appropriate for the local measurement of the velocity, which sometimes exceeds 100 mm<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">/\text{s} </tex-math></inline-formula> depending on the subject, direction of the ultrasound beam to the heart wall, and cardiac periods. In the in vivo measurement with the short window, the Tukey window with a large flat part that has a high-frequency resolution and ameliorates the discontinuity at both edges of the windowed signal was appropriate to measure the maximum velocity. This study offers the potential for local measurements of each myocardial layer using the multifrequency velocity estimator with the appropriate window function and window length.
Background: Secondhand smoke (SHS) from partners is a major source of exposure for non-smoking women. However, epidemiological studies have rarely examined social factors associated with continued ...and indoor smoking among pregnant women’s partners.Methods: We analyzed data on 6,091 partners of non-smoking pregnant women in the Tohoku Medical Megabank Project Birth and Three-Generation Cohort Study. Partners’ age, education, income, workplace SHS exposure (almost never or sometimes, almost every day), and pregnant women’s smoking history (never, quit before pregnancy awareness, quit after pregnancy awareness) were used as social factors. Multiple logistic regression analyses were conducted to examine the associations of social factors with partners’ continued smoking and indoor smoking.Results: Among 2,432 smoking partners, 2,237 continued to smoke after pregnancy awareness. Workplace SHS exposure was associated with increased risk of partners’ continued smoking: the odds ratio of workplace SHS exposure almost every day compared with almost never or sometimes was 2.08 (95% confidence interval, 1.52–2.83). Women’s quitting smoking after—but not before—pregnancy awareness was associated with decreased risk of partners’ continued smoking: the odds ratio of women’s quitting after pregnancy awareness compared with never smoking was 0.57 (95% confidence interval, 0.40–0.80). About one-third of partners who continued to smoke did so indoors. Older age, lower education, workplace SHS exposure, and women’s quitting smoking after pregnancy awareness were associated with increased risk of partners’ indoor smoking.Conclusions: Workplace SHS exposure and pregnant women’s smoking history were associated with continued smoking and indoor smoking among partners of non-smoking pregnant women.
Detection of shallow slow earthquakes offers insight into the near-trench part of the subduction interface, an important region in the development of great earthquake ruptures and tsunami generation. ...Ocean-bottom monitoring of offshore seismicity off southern Kyushu, Japan, recorded a complete episode of low-frequency tremor, lasting for 1 month, that was associated with very-low-frequency earthquake (VLFE) activity in the shallow plate interface. The shallow tremor episode exhibited two migration modes reminiscent of deep tremor down-dip of the seismogenic zone in some other subduction zones: a large-scale slower propagation mode and a rapid reversal mode. These similarities in migration properties and the association with VLFEs strongly suggest that both the shallow and deep tremor and VLFE may be triggered by the migration of episodic slow slip events.
Distigmine is a cholinesterase (ChE) inhibitor used for the treatment of detrusor underactivity in Japan. Distigmine’s pharmacological effects are known to be long-lasting, but the duration of its ...effect on urinary bladder contractile function has not been fully elucidated. The present study aimed to determine these effects in relation to the plasma concentrations of distigmine and its inhibition of ChE activities in blood, plasma, and bladder tissue. Intravesical pressures were recorded in anesthetized guinea-pigs for 12 h after the intravenous administration of saline or distigmine (0.01–0.1 mg/kg). Plasma distigmine concentrations were measured by liquid chromatograph-tandem mass spectrometry (LC-MS/MS), while ChE activities were assayed using 5,5′-dithiobis(2-nitrobenzoic acid). Distigmine (0.1 mg/kg) significantly increased the maximum intravesical pressure at micturition reflex for 12 h post-administration. In contrast, plasma distigmine was only detectable for 6 h post-administration in these animals and a one-compartment model calculated an elimination half-life of 0.7 h. However, bladder and blood acetylcholinesterase activities were significantly inhibited for 12 h after distigmine administration, although plasma ChE activities were not affected. The pharmacodynamic effects of distigmine thus persisted after its elimination from the circulation, indicating that it may bind to bladder acetylcholinesterase, producing sustained enzyme inhibition and enhancement of bladder contractility.
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