Organic farming aims to reduce the effect on the ecosystem and enhance biodiversity in agricultural areas, but the long-term effectiveness of its application is unclear. Assessments have rarely ...included various taxonomic groups with different ecological and economic roles. In paddy fields with different numbers of years elapsed since the transition from conventional to organic farming, we investigated changes in the abundance of insect pests, generalist predators, and species of conservation concern. The abundance of various arthropods exhibited diverse trends with respect to years elapsed since the transition to organic farming. Larval lepidopterans, Tetragnatha spiders, and some planthoppers and stink bugs showed non-linear increases over time, eventually reaching saturation, such as the abundance increasing for several years and then becoming stable after 10 years. This pattern can be explained by the effects of residual pesticides, the lag time of soil mineralization, and dispersal limitation. A damselfly (Ischnura asiatica) did not show a particular trend over time, probably due to its rapid immigration from source habitats. Unexpectedly, both planthoppers and some leafhoppers exhibited gradual decreases over time. As their abundances were negatively related to the abundance of Tetragnatha spiders, increased predation by natural enemies might gradually decrease these insect populations. These results suggest that the consideration of time-dependent responses of organisms is essential for the evaluation of the costs and benefits of organic farming, and such evaluations could provide a basis for guidelines regarding the length of time for organic farming to restore biodiversity or the economic subsidy needed to compensate for pest damage.
Although interleukin-18 is structurally homologous to IL-1 and its receptor
belongs to the IL-1R/Toll-like receptor (TLR) superfamily, its function is
quite different from that of IL-1. IL-18 is ...produced not only by types of
immune cells but also by non-immune cells. In collaboration with IL-12, IL-18
stimulates Th1-mediated immune responses, which play a critical role in the
host defense against infection with intracellular microbes through the
induction of IFN-γ. However, the overproduction of IL-12 and IL-18
induces severe inflammatory disorders, suggesting that IL-18 is a potent
proinflammatory cytokine that has pathophysiological roles in several
inflammatory conditions. IL-18 mRNA is expressed in a wide range of cells
including Kupffer cells, macrophages, T cells, B cells, dendritic cells,
osteoblasts, keratinocytes, astrocytes, and microglias. Thus, the
pathophysiological role of IL-18 has been extensively tested in the organs that
contain these cells. Somewhat surprisingly, IL-18 alone can stimulate Th2
cytokine production as well as allergic inflammation. Therefore, the functions
of IL-18 in vivo are very heterogeneous and complicated. In principle, IL-18
enhances the IL-12-driven Th1 immune responses, but it can also stimulate Th2
immune responses in the absence of IL-12.
A superconducting azimuthally varying field (AVF) cyclotron, SC230, was developed for proton therapy by Sumitomo Heavy Industries, Ltd. in 2021. This isochronous cyclotron is compact owing to the ...high magnetic field generated by NbTi superconducting coils. The average magnetic field is 3.9 T at the outer region, and the extraction radius is 0.6 m. Its yoke weight is 65 t. Currently, it is the most compact isochronous cyclotron for this purpose. The coils are cryogen-free and cooled by conduction cooling using four 4 K-GM cryocoolers. The system is highly safe and easy to maintain, which reduces the effects of unstable helium supply. Thus, cryogen-free magnets have various advantages; however, in isochronous cyclotrons, the heat inputs to the coils during beam operation are larger owing to the leakage radio frequency (RF) and beam loss. The magnet is designed to have a sufficient temperature margin for stable operation. The coil temperature during the RF excitation and its dependence on the beam loss were measured to verify the stability of operations. Subsequently, it was confirmed that the coil cools sufficiently at the critical temperature.
At Kyoto University Research Reactor Institute (KURRI), 275 clinical trials of boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) have been performed as of March 2006, and the effectiveness of BNCT has been ...revealed. In order to further develop BNCT, it is desirable to supply accelerator-based epithermal-neutron sources that can be installed near the hospital. We proposed the method of filtering and moderating fast neutrons, which are emitted from the reaction between a beryllium target and 30-MeV protons accelerated by a cyclotron accelerator, using an optimum moderator system composed of iron, lead, aluminum and calcium fluoride. At present, an epithermal-neutron source is under construction from June 2008. This system consists of a cyclotron accelerator, beam transport system, neutron-yielding target, filter, moderator and irradiation bed.
In this article, an overview of this system and the properties of the treatment neutron beam optimized by the MCNPX Monte Carlo neutron transport code are presented. The distribution of biological effect weighted dose in a head phantom compared with that of Kyoto University Research Reactor (KUR) is shown. It is confirmed that for the accelerator, the biological effect weighted dose for a deeply situated tumor in the phantom is 18% larger than that for KUR, when the limit dose of the normal brain is 10 Gy-eq. The therapeutic time of the cyclotron-based neutron sources are nearly one-quarter of that of KUR. The cyclotron-based epithermal-neutron source is a promising alternative to reactor-based neutron sources for treatments by BNCT.
Earlier studies showed environmentally friendly farming (EFF) increased the populations of various organisms in agricultural landscapes, but the mechanisms of these increases were not well studied, ...due to a lack of knowledge on their temporal dynamics. Here, we examined spatio-temporal dynamics of
Tetragnatha
spiders, natural enemies of rice pests, in EFF and conventional farming (CF). Field surveys were conducted in 15 paddy fields under CF and 18 under EFF during three seasons in Tochigi Prefecture, central Japan. The results showed that
Tetragnatha
spiders were more abundant in paddy fields than in ditches during the growing season, but this tendency was reversed during the non-crop season. Thus, complementary utilization of ditches and paddy fields during different seasons appeared to maintain
Tetragnatha
populations. Both
Tetragnatha
spider and flying insect abundance increased in paddy fields under only EFF when the surrounding forest cover was high. There was a significant positive correlation between the density of flying insects and the population growth rate of
Tetragnatha
spiders, suggesting a bottom-up effect of flying insects emerging from paddy fields. We concluded that the high potential productivity in paddy fields, coupled with the presence of ditches as important habitats, maintained the high abundance of
Tetragnatha
spiders in paddy-dominated landscapes.
Abstract
Background and aim
Heart failure (HF) is a growing healthcare problem worldwide. This study aimed to describe clinical characteristics and long-term outcomes of HF patients in Japan.
Methods ...and results
JROADHF (the Japanese Registry Of Acute Decompensated Heart Failure) is a retrospective, multicentre, nationwide observational database of 13,238 patients hospitalized due to HF in 128 hospitals randomly selected from Japanese Circulation Society (JCS)-certified teaching hospitals during 2013. At inclusion, demographic and clinical data were collected from medical records with linkage to a nationwide claim-based database, the Japanese Diagnosis Procedure Combination (DPC). Patients were followed up to 5 years after discharge at each participating site. Patients were old as the median age of 81 years and women were older (74.8±12.8 vs 81.6±11.1 y.o). Mean left ventricular ejection fraction (LVEF) was 47%, and 45% were HF with preserved ejection fraction of >50% (HFpEF). Causes of HF included ischemic in 27%, valvular in 19%, arrhythmia in 17%, and hypertensive in 16%. Median length of hospital stay was 18 days and in-hospital mortality was 7.7%. All-cause mortality during 1 and 4 years were 22.3% and 48.4%, respectively. Hospitalization rates due to HF within 1 and 4 years were as high as 30.5 and 48.4%, respectively.
Conclusions
Contemporary nationwide registry revealed that hospitalized HF patients were elder and had more HFpEF, and their prognosis was still poor compared to the data shown in prior registries.
Funding Acknowledgement
Type of funding source: Public grant(s) – National budget only. Main funding source(s): Japan Agency for Medical Research and Development (AMED) Practical Research Project for Life-Style related Diseases including Cardiovascular Diseases and Diabetes Mellitus
High-temperature superconductor power applications are still expected to be the main players in reducing carbon footprints. In superconducting magnetic energy storage, increasing the stored energy ...also increases the electromagnetic force, which generally requires heavier support structure. In terms of the force applied to conductors, it causes the extra bending and/or torsional strain of the REBCO tapes. To minimize the applied stress and to reduce the amount of electromagnetic force support structures, a force-balanced coil (FBC) that has a helical-like structure has been proposed. In this type of magnets, the superconducting thin tape experiences complex strains that come from flatwise and edgewise bending and tensile stress before coil operation. It is necessary to assess the applied strain distribution on the YBCO layer to fabricate an FBC. A newly developed experimental device to apply various strains to the tape and evaluate the strain distributions is presented. The results show that localized large strain will degrade the overall superconducting property.
Deformation behavior of a coarse-grained AZ31 magnesium alloy was investigated at elevated temperatures using commercial rolled sheet. The as-received material had equiaxed grains with an average ...grain size of 130 μm. The tensile tests revealed that the material exhibited high ductility of 196% at 648 K and 3×10
−5 s
−1. Stress exponent, grain size exponent and activation energy were characterized to clarify the deformation mechanism. It was suggested from the data analysis that the high ductility was attributed to the deformation mechanism of glide-controlled dislocation creep. In addition, constitutive equation was developed for the present alloy.
Numerical techniques for parallel dynamics in electromagnetic gyrokinetic simulations are introduced to regulate unphysical grid-size oscillations in the field-aligned coordinate. It is found that a ...fixed boundary condition and the nonlinear mode coupling in the field-aligned coordinate, as well as numerical errors of non-dissipative finite difference methods, produce fluctuations with high parallel wave numbers. The theoretical and numerical analyses demonstrate that an outflow boundary condition and a low-pass filter efficiently remove the numerical oscillations, providing small but acceptable errors of the entropy variables. The new method is advantageous for quantitative evaluation of the entropy balance that is required for obtaining a steady state in gyrokinetic turbulence.
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