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Production in an economy is a set of firms’ activities as suppliers and customers; a firm buys goods from other firms, puts value added and sells products to others in a giant network of ...production. Empirical study is lacking despite the fact that the structure of the production network is important to understand and make models for many aspects of dynamics in economy. We study a nation-wide production network comprising a million firms and millions of supplier-customer links by using recent statistical methods developed in physics. We show in the empirical analysis scale-free degree distribution, disassortativity, correlation of degree to firm-size, and community structure having sectoral and regional modules. Since suppliers usually provide credit to their customers, who supply it to theirs in turn, each link is actually a creditor-debtor relationship. We also study chains of failures or bankruptcies that take place along those links in the network, and corresponding avalanche-size distribution.
Cyclic phosphatidic acid (CPA) is a naturally occurring analog of the growth factor-like phospholipid mediator, lysophosphatidic acid (LPA). The
sn-2 hydroxy group of CPA forms a 5-membered ring with ...the
sn-3 phosphate. CPA affects numerous cellular functions, including anti-mitogenic regulation of the cell cycle, induction of stress fiber formation, inhibition of tumor cell invasion and metastasis, and regulation of differentiation and survival of neuronal cells. Interestingly, many of these cellular responses caused by CPA oppose those of LPA despite the activation of apparently overlapping receptor populations. Since the early 1990s, studies on CPA actions gradually developed, and we are now beginning to understand the importance of this lipid. In this review, we focus on the current knowledge about CPA, including enzymatic formation of CPA, unique biological activities and biological targets of CPA, and we also explore metabolically stabilized CPA analogs.
The transition between isotope-mixing and nonmixing states in hydrogen-deuterium mixture plasmas is observed in the isotope (hydrogen and deuterium) mixture plasma in the Large Helical Device. In the ...nonmixing state, the isotope density ratio profile is nonuniform when the beam fueling isotope species differs from the recycling isotope species and the profile varies significantly depending on the ratio of the recycling isotope species, although the electron density profile shape is unchanged. The fast transition from nonmixing state to isotope-mixing state (nearly uniform profile of isotope ion density ratio) is observed associated with the change of electron density profile from peaked to hollow profile by the pellet injection near the plasma periphery. The transition from nonmixing to isotope-mixing state strongly correlates with the increase of turbulence measurements and the transition of turbulence state from TEM to ion temperature gradient is predicted by gyrokinetic simulation.
Myxoid liposarcoma (MLS) is the second most common subtype of liposarcoma, and metastasis occurs in up to one-third of cases. However, the mechanisms of invasion and metastasis remain unclear. ...Tumour-associated macrophages (TAMs) have important roles in tumour invasion, metastasis, and/or poor prognosis. The aim of this study was to investigate the relationship between TAMs and MLS.
Using 78 primary MLS samples, the association between clinical prognosis and macrophage infiltration was evaluated by immunochemistry. The effects of macrophages on cell growth, cell motility, and invasion of MLS cell lines were investigated in vitro. In addition, clinicopathological factors were analysed to assess their prognostic implications in MLS.
Higher levels of CD68-positive macrophages were associated with poorer overall survival in MLS samples. Macrophage-conditioned medium enhanced MLS cell motility and invasion by activating epidermal growth factor receptor (EGFR), with the key ligand suggested to be heparin-binding EGF-like growth factor (HB-EGF). The phosphoinositide 3-kinase/Akt pathway was mostly involved in HB-EGF-induced cell motility and invasion of MLS. The expression of phosphorylated EGFR in MLS clinical samples was associated with macrophage infiltration. In addition, more significant macrophage infiltration was associated with poor prognosis even in multivariate analysis.
Macrophage infiltration in MLS predicts poor prognosis, and the relationship between TAMs and MLS may be a new candidate for therapeutic targets of MLS.
Although multidrug resistance protein 2 (MRP2) confers chemoresistance in some cancer types, its implication on oesophageal squamous cell carcinoma (ESCC) remains unclear.
We evaluated MRP2 ...expression by immunohistochemistry and RT-PCR using 81 resected specimens from ESCC patients who did or did not receive neo-adjuvant chemotherapy (NACT), including 5-fluorouracil, doxorubicin, and cisplatin (CDDP). Correlation between MRP2 expression and response to chemotherapy was also examined in 42 pre-therapeutic biopsy samples and eight ESCC cell lines.
MRP2-positive immunostaining was more frequently observed in ESCCs with NACT than in those without NACT (27.3 vs 5.4%). The MRP2-positive patients showed poorer prognosis than MRP2-negative patients (5-year survival rate, 25.6 vs 55.7%). Concordantly, ESCC with NACT showed 2.1-fold higher mRNA expression of MRP2 than those without NACT (P=0.0350). In pre-therapeutic biopsy samples of patients with NACT, non-responders showed 2.9-fold higher mRNA expression of MRP2 than responders (P=0.0035). Among the panel of ESCC cell lines, TE14 showed the highest MRP2 mRNA expression along with the strongest resistance to CDDP. Inhibition of MRP2 expression by small-interfering RNA reduced chemoresistance to CDDP.
Our data suggested that MRP2 is one of molecules, which regulate the sensitivity to chemotherapy including CDDP in advanced ESCC patients.
Several novel synthetic reactions of arenes and alkanes discovered and investigated in our laboratory are summarized here. These include olefin arylation, hydroarylation of alkynes, hydroxylation of ...arenes, carboxylation of arenes and alkanes, and aminomethylation and acetoxylation of alkanes. Most of these reactions are catalyzed by highly electrophilic transition metal cationic species generated in situ in an acid medium, involving electrophilic metalation of C−H bonds of arenes and alkanes which lead to the formation of aryl−metal and alkyl−metal σ-complexes.
Recently, laminated rubber bearings are widely used as seismic isolators for road bridges. Although many studies have been conducted on the dynamic model of High Damping Rubber (HDR) bearings, few ...models can reflect phenomena such as the dependency of experienced shear strain on initial history. To develop a model that can represent the dependency of the experienced shear strain of HDR and a dynamic loading test was conducted using HDR specimens. The hysteresis characteristics of HDR was measured by applying a horizontal vibration using a hybrid actuator under a constant vertical load. Based on the cyclic shear test, the mechanical properties of HDR were calculated such as absorbed energy, hysteresis loop area, equivalent stiffness, equivalent damping ratio. Dynamic analysis was also performed from the experimental results. The dynamic model applied in program analysis is a bilinear type double-target model. This model can express the nonlinear characteristics related to the initial history of HDR bearings. The parameters required for dynamic analysis were determined from the experimental results. Through this dynamic analysis, the effectiveness of the bilinear type double target model was verified. In this research, a high damping rubber specimen was used.
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