Patients with delayed sleep phase syndrome (DSPS) experiencea chronic mismatch between the usual daily schedule required by the individual'senvironment and their circadian sleep-wake pattern, ...resulting in major academic,work, and social problems. Although functional abnormalities of the circadianpacemaker system have been reported in patients with DSPS, the etiology ofDSPS has not been fully elucidated. One hypothesis proposed to explain whypatients with DSPS fail to synchronize their 24h sleep-wake cycle to theirenvironment is that they might have reduced sensitivity to environmental timecues, most notably light-dark cycles. Therefore, we compared the sensitivityof melatonin suppression in response to light in patients with DSPS and normalcontrol subjects. Fifteen patients with DSPS and age- and sex-matched healthycontrols were studied. As the melatonin secretion rhythm in patients withDSPS was expected to be delayed compared to the controls, the time of peakmelatonin secretion was determined in each subject in the first session. Inthe second session, each subject was exposed to light with an intensity of1000 lux for 2h beginning 2h prior to his or her peak melatonin secretion.Melatonin was measured by radioimmunoassay in saliva sampled every 30 minutesduring the period of light exposure. Suppression of the melatonin concentrationin saliva was dependent on duration of light exposure. In addition, the suppressiveeffect of light on the melatonin concentration was significantly greater inpatients with DSPS than in control subjects. The results suggest hypersensitivityto nighttime light exposure in patients with this syndrome. Our findings thereforesuggest that evening light restriction is important for preventing patientswith DSPS from developing a sleep phase delay. (ChronobiologyInternational, 18(2), 263-271, 2001)
Imaging observations of faint meteors were carried out on April 11 and 14, 2016 with a wide-field CMOS mosaic camera, Tomo-e PM, mounted on the 105-cm Schmidt telescope at Kiso Observatory, the ...University of Tokyo. Tomo-e PM, which is a prototype model of Tomo-e Gozen, can monitor a sky of ∼1.98deg2 at 2 Hz. The numbers of detected meteors are 1514 and 706 on April 11 and 14, respectively. The detected meteors are attributed to sporadic meteors. Their absolute magnitudes range from +4 to +10mag in the V-band, corresponding to about 8.3×10−2 to 3.3×10−4g in mass. The present magnitude distributions we obtained are well explained by a single power-law luminosity function with a slope parameter r=3.1±0.4 and a meteor rate log10N0=−5.5±0.5. The results demonstrate a high performance of telescopic observations with a wide-field video camera to constrain the luminosity function of faint meteors. The performance of Tomo-e Gozenis about two times higher than that of Tomo-e PM. A survey with Tomo-e Gozenwill provide a more robust measurement of the luminosity function.
•More than 2000 faint meteors were recorded in two days with a newly-developed wide-field CMOS mosaic camera, Tomo-e PM.•The visual magnitudes of the detected meteors range from +4 to +10 mag.•The present magnitude distribution is consistent with a power-law function with a slope parameter r = 3.1 ± 0.4 and a meteor rate log10 N0 = −5.5 ± 0.5.•Tomo-e Gozen, a successor to Tomo-e PM, will provide a practical tool to investigate the luminosity function of faint meteors.
We examined differences in cellular responses to multi-walled carbon nanotubes (MWCNTs) using malignant pleural mesothelioma cells (MESO-1), bronchial epithelial cells (BEAS-2B), neuroblastoma cells ...(IMR-32), and monoblastic cells (THP-1), before and after differentiation. MESO-1, BEAS-2B and differentiated THP-1 cells actively endocytosed MWCNTs, resulting in cytotoxicity with lysosomal injury. However, cytotoxicity did not occur in IMR-32 or undifferentiated THP-1 cells. Both differentiated and undifferentiated THP-1 cells exhibited an inflammatory response. Carbon blacks were endocytosed by the same cell types without lysosomal damage and caused cytokine secretion, but they did not cause cytotoxicity. These results indicate that the cytotoxicity of MWCNTs requires not only cellular uptake but also lysosomal injury. Furthermore, it seems that membrane permeability or cytokine secretion without cytotoxicity results from several active mechanisms. Clarification of the cellular recognition mechanism for MWCNTs is important for developing safer MWCNTs.
We developed a liquid chromatography/electrospray ionization tandem mass spectrometry method for the simultaneous quantitative determination of C18 sphingosine (Sph), C18 dihydrosphingosine (dhSph), ...C18 phytosphingosine (pSph), C18 sphingosine-1-phosphate (S1P), C18 dihydrosphingosine-1-phosphate (dhS1P), and C18 phytosphingosine-1-phosphate (pS1P). Samples were prepared by simple methanol deproteinization and analyzed in selected reaction monitoring modes. No peak tailing was observed on the chromatograms using a Capcell Pak ACR column (1.5 mm i.d. × 250 mm, 3 μm, Shiseido). The calibration curves of the sphingoids showed good linearity (
r
> 0.996) over the range of 0.050–5.00 pmol per injection. The accuracy and precision of this method were demonstrated using four representative biological samples (serum, brain, liver, and spleen) from mice that contained known amounts of the sphingoids. Samples of mice tissue such as plasma, brain, eye, testis, liver, kidney, lung, spleen, lymph node, and thymus were examined for their Sph, dhSph, pSph, S1P, dhS1P, and pS1P composition. The results confirmed the usefulness of this method for the physiological and pathological analysis of the composition of important sphingoids.
Figure
Analysis of the biological distribution of seven sphingoids and their phosphates
We report on a lattice fermion formulation with a curved domain-wall mass term to nonperturbatively describe fermions in a gravitational background. In our previous work in 2022, we showed under the ...time-reversal symmetry that the edge-localized massless Dirac fermion appears on one and two-dimensional spherical domain-walls and the spin connection is induced on the lattice in a consistent way with continuum theory. In this work, we extend our study to the Shamir type curved domain-wall fermions without the time-reversal symmetry. We find in the free fermion case that a single Weyl fermion appears on the edge, and feels gravity through the induced spin connection. With a topologically nontrivial \(U(1)\) gauge potential, however, we find an oppositely chiral zero mode at the center where the gauge field is singular.
Background. In hepatitis B virus- (HBV-) positive patients, the relationship between the metabolic variables and histological degree of liver fibrosis has been poorly investigated. Methods. A total ...of 176 HBV-positive patients were assessed in whom the ratios of glycated albumin-to-glycated hemoglobin (GA/HbA1c) were calculated in order to investigate the relationship with the degree of liver fibrosis. Results. The GA/HbA1c ratio increased in association with the severity of fibrosis (METAVIR scores: F0-1: 2.61 ± 0.24, F2: 2.65 ± 0.24, F3: 2.74 ± 0.38, and F4: 2.91 ± 0.63). The GA/HbA1c ratios were inversely correlated with four variables of liver function: the prothrombin time (PT) percentage (P<0.0001), platelet count (P<0.0001), albumin value (P<0.0001), and cholinesterase value (P<0.0001). The GA/HbA1c ratio was positively correlated with two well-known markers of liver fibrosis, FIB-4 (P<0.0001) and the AST-to-platelet ratio index (APRI) (P<0.0001). Furthermore, the GA/HbA1c showed better correlations with two variables of liver function (PT percentage and cholinesterase value) than did FIB-4 and with all four variables than did the APRI. Conclusion. The GA/HbA1c ratio is associated with the degree of liver fibrosis in HBV-positive patients.
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