In 2020, Japan suddenly changed course and made carbon neutrality its intermediate target. In an attempt to understand this drastic policy change, this article analyzes the effects of climate ...security discourses on the perception of the Japanese business community, which holds the pivotal position in Japan’s climate policy. It particularly focuses on the effect of securitization on the source–impact asymmetry, one of the intrinsic features identified as a major obstacle to effective climate governance. From this standpoint, the article measures the extent to which the issue of climate change has been securitized in Japan, and also the extent to which the Japanese business community has come to share the securitizers’ sense of exigency. In so doing, this article employs the text-mining method called KH Coder to analyze relevant government documents as well as statements issued by Keidanren (also known as Japan Business Federation). The analysis shows that the Ministry of the Environment together with other governmental actors has collectively securitized the issue within the context of Japanese society, but that its impact on industry has been indirect, pointing to the complexity of its causal impact.
Water is essential for living organisms. Terrestrial organisms are incessantly exposed to the stress of losing water, desiccation stress. Avoiding the mortality caused by desiccation stress, many ...organisms acquired molecular mechanisms to tolerate desiccation. Larvae of the African midge, Polypedilum vanderplanki, and its embryonic cell line Pv11 tolerate desiccation stress by entering an ametabolic state, anhydrobiosis, and return to active life after rehydration. The genes related to desiccation tolerance have been comprehensively analyzed, but transcriptional regulatory mechanisms to induce these genes after desiccation or rehydration remain unclear. Here, we comprehensively analyzed the gene regulatory network in Pv11 cells and compared it with that of Drosophila melanogaster, a desiccation sensitive species. We demonstrated that nuclear transcription factor Y subunit gamma-like, which is important for drought stress tolerance in plants, and its transcriptional regulation of downstream positive feedback loops have a pivotal role in regulating various anhydrobiosis-related genes. This study provides an initial insight into the systemic mechanism of desiccation tolerance.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
This study investigates the long-term causal effects of U.S. bombing missions during the Vietnam War on later economic development in Laos. Following an instrumental variables approach, we use the ...distance between the centroid of village-level administrative boundaries and heavily bombed targets, namely, the Ho Chi Minh Trail in southern Laos and Xieng Khouang Province in northern Laos, as an instrument for the intensity of U.S. bombing missions. We use three datasets of mean nighttime light intensity (1992, 2005, and 2013) and two datasets of population density (1990 and 2005) as outcome variables. The estimation results show no robust long-term effects of U.S. bombing missions on economic development in southern Laos but show negative effects in northern Laos, even 40 years after the war. We also found that the results do not necessarily support the conditional convergence hypothesis within a given country, although this result could be unique to Laos.
•Investigates the long-term causal effects of bombings on later economic development.•Focus on Laos that is one of the most intensely bombed countries per capita in history.•Use granular grid data, nightlights or population, as proxies of economic development.•No robust effects of bombings in southern Laos, but some effects in northern Laos.•No within-country conditional economic convergence, which could be Lao specific.
Liver cancer is the fourth leading cause of cancer-related death. Hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) is a primary liver cancer that results from chronic hepatitis caused by multiple predisposing factors ...such as viral infection, alcohol consumption, and non-alcoholic fatty liver disease. Accumulating studies have indicated that dysfunction of the gut epithelial barrier and hepatic translocation of gut microbes may be implicated in the pathogenesis of HCC. However, the translocated bacteria in HCC patients remains unclear. Here, we characterised tumour-associated microbiota in patients with liver cancer and focused on HCC. We observed that the number of amplicon sequence variants in tumour-associated microbiota was significantly higher compared with that in non-tumour regions of the liver. The tumour-associated microbiota consisted of Bacteroidetes, Firmicutes, and Proteobacteria as the dominant phyla. We identified an unclassified genus that belonged to the Bacteroides, Romboutsia, uncultured bacterium of Lachnospiraceae as a signature taxon for primary liver cancer. Additionally, we identified Ruminococcus gnavus as a signature taxon for HCC patients infected with hepatitis B and/or hepatitis C viruses. This study suggests that tumour microbiota may contribute to the pathology of HCC.
Nanoparticle coating is a potential technique for conferring functional properties to solid surfaces. The application of a titanium oxide (TiO2) nanoparticle coating to polymethyl methacrylate (PMMA) ...open flow channels was investigated herein. Open flow channels with the widths of 0.5–1 mm were fabricated by milling. The effect of TiO2 coating on the wettability of PMMA surface was examined by water contact angle measurements. The data show that nanoparticle coating was applicable to both square and round flow channels. The particle concentration of TiO2 affected the evenness of the coating layer. Using TiO2-coated channels, spontaneous water flow was demonstrated, whereas the bare PMMA channel did not allow water flow. The spontaneous flow conditions observed here were summarized using the generalized Cassie angle. Finally, the possibility of selective liquid transport was demonstrated using parallel TiO2-coated and uncoated flow channels stemming from a single fluid inlet. This work offers a potential technique of nanoparticle coating for extending the applications of open flow channels.
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•TiO2 nanoparticle coating of PMMA open flow channel was investigated.•Surface wettability was controlled by TiO2 nanoparticle coating.•Water transport was demonstrated in TiO2 coated PMMA channels.•Spontaneous flow conditions were discussed referring to generalized Cassie angle.•Potential technique of selective liquid transport was suggested.
Image-based deep learning systems, such as convolutional neural networks (CNNs), have recently been applied to cell classification, producing impressive results; however, application of CNNs has been ...confined to classification of the current cell state from the image. Here, we focused on cell movement where current and/or past cell shape can influence the future cell movement. We demonstrate that CNNs prospectively predicted the future direction of cell movement with high accuracy from a single image patch of a cell at a certain time. Furthermore, by visualizing the image features that were learned by the CNNs, we could identify morphological features, e.g., the protrusions and trailing edge that have been experimentally reported to determine the direction of cell movement. Our results indicate that CNNs have the potential to predict the future direction of cell movement from current cell shape, and can be used to automatically identify those morphological features that influence future cell movement.
Celotno besedilo
Dostopno za:
DOBA, IZUM, KILJ, NUK, PILJ, PNG, SAZU, SIK, UILJ, UKNU, UL, UM, UPUK
Antibiotics and dietary habits can affect the gut microbial community, thus influencing disease susceptibility. Although the effect of microbiota on the postnatal environment has been well ...documented, much less is known regarding the impact of gut microbiota at the embryonic stage. Here we show that maternal microbiota shapes the metabolic system of offspring in mice. During pregnancy, short-chain fatty acids produced by the maternal microbiota dictate the differentiation of neural, intestinal, and pancreatic cells through embryonic GPR41 and GPR43. This developmental process helps maintain postnatal energy homeostasis, as evidenced by the fact that offspring from germ-free mothers are highly susceptible to metabolic syndrome, even when reared under conventional conditions. Thus, our findings elaborate on a link between the maternal gut environment and the developmental origin of metabolic syndrome.
In this manuscript, we present the guideline for use of meta-
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At astatobenzylguanidine (
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At MABG), a newly introduced alpha emitting radiopharmaceutical to the up-coming World’s first ...clinical trial for targeted alpha therapy (TAT) at Fukushima Medical University in Japan, focusing on radiation safety issues in Japan. This guideline was prepared based on a study supported by the Ministry of Health, Labour, and Welfare, and approved by the Japanese Society of Nuclear Medicine on Oct. 5th, 2021. The study showed that patients receiving
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At MABG do not need to be admitted to a radiotherapy room and that TAT using
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At MABG is possible on an outpatient basis. The radiation exposure from the patient is within the safety standards of the ICRP and IAEA recommendations for the general public and caregivers or patient’s family members. In this guideline, the following contents are also included: precautions for patients and their families, safety management associated with the use of
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At MABG, education and training, and disposal of medical radioactive contaminants. TAT using
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At MABG in Japan should be carried out according to this guideline. Although this guideline is based on the medical environment and laws and regulations in Japan, the issues for radiation protection and evaluation methodology presented in this guideline are useful and internationally acceptable as well.
Summary
The authors proposed a quadrilateral shell element enriched with degrees of freedom to represent thickness‐stretch. The quadrilateral shell element can be utilized to consider large ...deformations for nearly incompressible materials, and its performance is demonstrated in small and large deformation analyses of hyperelastic materials in this study. Formulation of the proposed shell element is based on extension of the MITC4 shell element. A displacement variation in the thickness direction is introduced to evaluate the change in thickness. In the proposed approach, the thickness direction is defined using the director vectors at each midsurface node. The thickness‐stretch is approximated by the movements of additional nodes, which are placed along the thickness direction from the bottom to the top surface. The transverse normal strain is calculated using these additional nodes without assuming the plane stress condition; hence, a three‐dimensional constitutive equation can be employed without any modification. In this work, the authors apply an assumed strain technique to the special shell element to alleviate volumetric locking for nearly incompressible materials. Several numerical examples are presented to examine the effectiveness of the proposed element.
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