Nagoya University
  • Nagoya, Japan
Recent publications
Photosynthates are translocated into the plant tissue mainly in the form of sucrose. To determine whether there are differences in translocation between internally produced photosynthates and externally applied sucrose, ¹⁴CO2 or ¹⁴C-sucrose was supplied to specific soybean leaves and the ¹⁴C activity distribution was compared. The distribution rates were almost the same among the above-ground tissues, but different in the roots. Care should be taken when using ¹⁴C-sucrose as a photosynthate, especially when focusing on roots.
  • Shiho Kuji
    Shiho Kuji
  • Keiko Nozawa
    Keiko Nozawa
  • Shoko Toma
    Shoko Toma
  • [...]
  • Nao Suzuki
    Nao Suzuki
Appearance care enables cancer patients to maintain social connections during treatment, but it remains an unmet need in Japan. We surveyed healthcare professionals in Japan to collect information on their awareness of appearance care and their institutions’ appearance care systems. From November 1 to December 13, 2022, we performed an online survey of 16,838 members of the Japan Society of Clinical Oncology. We received responses from 807 members (671(83%) physicians; 65(8%) pharmacists; 45(6%) nurses; 22(3%) dentists; and 4(0.5%) others), 72% of whom were men and 28%, women. Among respondents, 93% (n = 749//807) had been asked by patients about appearance care, and 46% (n = 318/693) of the physicians and dentists had refused to perform treatment or changed it because of its effects on physical appearance. Only 59% (n = 410) of physicians and dentists were familiar with the term appearance care, but 100% (n = 45) of nurses and 97% (n = 63) of pharmacists were. Among all respondents, 26% reported that their institution had a specialized department and specific personnel for appearance care. In some cases, physicians and dentists had difficulty communicating correct information to patients, and other healthcare professionals compensated for this deficit. The survey revealed that physicians have low awareness of appearance care. It was suggested that communication and a team approach between physicians and other healthcare professionals is recommended. Each medical facility may be encouraged to establish a sustainable system for providing information on appearance care in that patients or medical personnel themselves can easily consult. Activities are also needed to raise awareness about appearance care among physicians.
The growing importance of high‐speed and energy‐efficient photodetectors in broadband communication has sparked widespread interest in organic materials owing to their tunable optical characteristics and ease of production. However, this Schottky‐type organic photodetector (OPD) has low detectivity and a high dark current, requiring additional voltage biasing. Herein, the development of a highly sensitive self‐powered OPD with metal‐semiconductor‐insulator‐metal (MSIM) structure (ITO/PEDOT:PSS/Organic photoactive layer/dielectric/silver) is presented, using polymer PM6, acceptor Y6, and its blend with parylene as a dielectric layer for broadband spectral detection spanning the visible to near‐infrared (NIR) range at high speeds. Such a new class of devices can produce fast transient photocurrent signals with opposite polarity both under light ON/OFF cycles in response to pulsed optical stimuli, which makes the signals inherently more distinguishable. The detailed transient photocurrent measurements are performed for fabricated MSIM OPD with different illumination conditions at various operational frequencies, and the PM6:Y6‐based devices are found to be most sensitive compared to the single‐component devices due to increased charge generation and accumulation without voltage biasing. Further, the faster response time (≈nanosecond) of both the positive and negative peaks with a remarkably high cutoff frequency of 5.6 MHz outperformed most of the state‐of‐the‐art OPD. The extraordinary performance of the MSIM photodetector demonstrated by the real‐time NIR communication of various ASCII codes suggests its potential for infrared communication. The tunable polarity of the signal offers a novel platform for next‐generation transient‐type MSIM photodetectors, enhancing their detectivity and response time without the need for additional biasing across a wide range of applications.
Approximate query processing (AQP) has gained traction as an effective technique for executing queries on big data. Bounded approximate query processing (BAQ) is a recently proposed framework that stores a summary of an original table as a synopsis and ensures that its approximation errors remain below a user-specified threshold. Based on the BAQ framework, we have extended it to BAQ± to guarantee strictly bounded errors for more diverse data. However, BAQ and BAQ± still have problems when constructing synopses. They require time-consuming data sorting for each numerical attribute and cannot summarize high-cardinality categorical attributes, such as spatiotemporal data. To overcome these problems, we propose a novel framework called Hierarchical BAQ (HBAQ) and a synopsis construction method in this paper. HBAQ constructs multiple synopses based on the dimension tables of several categorical attributes and uses them to answer OLAP queries efficiently. We also introduce a new bucket definition to summarize numerical attributes effectively and support incremental updates for synopses. We conducted extensive experiments with several datasets. The experimental results show that HBAQ achieved half the construction time of BAQ with lower memory consumption. Furthermore, HBAQ could answer OLAP queries more efficiently than BAQ using hierarchically constructed synopses.
Background Anemonefish association with sea anemones is a prime example of mutualistic symbiosis. These fish live inside the sea anemone, benefitting from the protection of its toxic nematocysts, and in return, protect the anemone from its own predators. How anemonefish manage to avoid their host toxic stings remains unclear. One hypothesis suggests that low levels of sialic acids in anemonefish mucus prevent nematocyst discharge. Results This study verified four predictions: (i) anemonefish mucus has lower sialic acid levels than non-symbiotic damselfish; (ii) this reduction is specific to mucus; (iii) during development, sialic acid levels inversely correlate with protection; (iv) sea anemone mucus has minimal sialic acids. Conclusions We conclude that anemonefish regulates the level of sialic acids in their mucus to avoid nematocyst discharge. We also highlight several genes implicated in sialic acid removal that could explain the protection mechanisms in place. This mechanism, potentially used by Dascyllus trimaculatus juveniles, suggests a convergent strategy for mutualistic associations with sea anemones.
The genome in the cell nucleus is organized by a dynamic process influenced by structural memory from mitosis. In this study, we develop a model of human genome dynamics through cell cycles by extending the previously developed whole-genome model to cover the mitotic phase. With this extension, we focus on the role of mitotic and cell cycle memory in genome organization. The simulation progresses from mitosis to interphase and the subsequent mitosis, leading to successive cell cycles. During mitosis, our model describes microtubule dynamics, showing how forces orchestrate the assembly of chromosomes into a rosette ring structure at metaphase. The model explains how the positioning of chromosomes depends on their size in metaphase. The memory of the metaphase configuration persists through mitosis and into interphase in dimensions perpendicular to the cell division axis, effectively guiding the distribution of chromosome territories over multiple cell cycles. At the onset of each G1 phase, phase separation of active and inactive chromatin domains occurs, leading to A/B compartmentalization. Our cycling simulations show that the compartments are unaffected by structural memory from previous cycles and are consistently established in each cell cycle. The genome model developed in this study highlights the interplay between chromosome dynamics and structural memory across cell cycles, providing insights for the analyses of cellular processes.
Bimetallic metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) offer unique synergistic properties and improved conductivity due to the integration of multiple metal components. However, their electrical and dielectric properties remain underexplored, and their charge transport mechanisms are not fully understood. This study investigates the electrical and dielectric properties of Mn‐BTC (BTC = benzene‐1,3,5‐tricarboxylic acid), Co‐BTC, and bimetallic Mn–Co BTC MOFs with varying Mn/Co ratios. Charge transport in these MOFs occurs via hopping at low frequencies, transitioning to lattice response at higher frequencies. While Mn incorporation typically reduces alternating current (AC) conductivity, the 1:2 Mn:Co MOF exhibits a unique conduction mechanism, enhancing AC conductivity by 25%. As electrocatalysts for oxygen evolution reaction (OER), the 1:2 Mn:Co MOF outperforms Mn‐BTC, Co‐BTC, and other Mn‐Co BTC variants, achieving a lower overpotential (359 mV) and Tafel slope (71 mV dec⁻¹). The correlation between AC conductivity and electrocatalytic performance underscores the critical role of electrical properties in MOF functionality. This study highlights the potential of tailoring the electrical properties of bimetallic MOFs to optimize their electrocatalytic performance, offering valuable insights for future catalyst design.
In the field of infrastructure maintenance and management, the practical application of deep learning-based anomaly detection models utilizing images or videos as input is advancing to enhance the efficiency of anomaly detection. However, training a supervised image classification model requires substantial amount of data, which is often unavailable. This lack of sufficient training data frequently limits model performance practical application. Data augmentation is often performed as a method to improve accuracy with limited data. In recent years, technology for image generation based on diffusion models has rapidly advanced, and it has been shown that increasing the amount of training data through data generation using diffusion models can improve model performance. However, only general label generation is typically performed, posing challenges in generating rare anomaly data that exist in the real-world scenarios. This study proposes a new data augmentation method combining geometric pattern mask images and diffusion models to address this gap. By capturing the features of the original image in the unmasked areas and generating the masked regions, new images can be generated while preserving the features of the original labels, facilitating the generation of rare anomaly data. The experimental data uses a dataset of tomato leaf lesion images. The change in model performance when training image classification models with limited data using the proposed method is confirmed experimentally. Experimental results showed up to a 19.50% improvement in accuracy with the proposed data augmentation method. Furthermore, additional experiments demonstrated even greater accuracy improvements when combined with other data augmentation techniques. Notably, as this method does not require text prompts for generation, it holds potential for utility across diverse datasets.
Influenza A viruses with fewer amino acids in the neuraminidase (NA) stalk domain are primarily isolated from chickens rather than wild ducks, indicating that a shortened NA stalk is considered an adaptation marker of avian influenza viruses (AIVs) to chickens. Experimental passages of an H7N7 nonpathogenic AIV (rgVac2-P0) in chickens resulted in a highly pathogenic variant (Vac2-P3L4) with a 34-amino-acid deletion in the NA stalk, encompassing five potential N -glycosylation sites. To investigate how amino acid truncation and deglycosylation in the NA stalk contribute to increased pathogenicity, a virus with glycosylation-deficient mutations at these sites (rgVac2-P3L4/P0NAΔGlyco) was constructed. Contrary to expectations, chickens inoculated with rgVac2-P3L4/P0NAΔGlyco exhibited variable clinical outcomes, attributed to the genetic instability of the virus. A single mutation stabilized the virus, and the mutant (rgVac2-P3L4/P0NAΔGlyco-Y65H) resulted in higher pathogenicity compared with a virus with restored glycosylation (rgVac2-P3L4/P0NA-Y65H). Glycan occupancy analysis revealed 3–4 glycans at the five potential sites. In functional analysis, glycosylation-deficient mutants, similar to the short-stalk NA virus, showed significantly reduced erythrocyte elution activity. Additionally, mutational analysis indicated variable contributions of N -glycans to elution activity across the sites. Moreover, the functionally most contributing sites of the five potential N -glycosylation motifs were consistently included in the amino acid deletions of the stalk-truncated NA in N7-subtyped field isolates, despite the varying truncation position or length. These findings suggest that the loss of glycosylation is functionally equivalent to a reduction in amino acids, and it plays a crucial role in enhancing pathogenicity in chickens and affecting NA function. IMPORTANCE Avian influenza poses significant economic challenges to the poultry industry and presents potential risks to human health. Understanding the molecular mechanisms that facilitate the emergence of chicken-adapted avian influenza viruses (AIVs) from non-pathogenic duck-origin influenza viruses is crucial for improving AIV monitoring systems in poultry and controlling this disease. Amino acid deletions in the neuraminidase (NA) stalk domain serve as one of the molecular markers for AIV adaptation to Galliformes. This study highlights the critical role of N -glycosylation in the NA stalk domain in the pathogenesis of high pathogenicity avian influenza viruses in chickens. The findings propose a novel theory that the loss of glycosylation at the NA stalk domain, rather than a reduction in stalk length, is responsible for both NA function and increased virus pathogenicity in chickens.
Auxin is a core phytohormone regulating plant elongation growth. While auxin typically promotes hypocotyl elongation, excessive amounts of auxin inhibit elongation. Moreover, auxin usually promotes light-grown, but inhibits dark-grown hypocotyl elongation. How dosage and light condition change the plant’s response to auxin, also known as auxin’s biphasic effect or dual effect, has long been mysterious. Auxin induces cell expansion primarily through apoplastic acidification and the subsequent ‘acid growth’ mechanism. Here we show that this pathway operates for both stimulatory and inhibitory auxin doses and under both dark and light conditions. Regardless of the dosage, more auxin induces more transcripts of SAURs (Small Auxin-Up RNAs), leading to a stronger activation of plasma membrane H⁺-ATPases (AHAs) and progressive acidification of the apoplast in hypocotyl epidermis. Apoplastic acidification promotes growth but only above a certain pH threshold, below which excessive acidification inhibits elongation. Auxin overdosage-triggered hypocotyl inhibition can be alleviated by suppressing the AHA activity or raising the apoplastic pH. Light-grown hypocotyls exhibit a higher apoplastic pH, which impedes cell elongation and counteracts auxin-induced over-acidification. Auxin and light antagonistically regulate the SAUR-PP2C.D-AHA pathway in the hypocotyl and influence plant elongation growth. Our findings suggest that the biphasic effect of auxin results from the biphasic response of hypocotyl cells to decreasing apoplastic pH.
The SiO2/Si interface oxidation and defects are studied in a low-pressure capacitively-coupled oxygen (O2) plasma. The interface oxidation is clearly observed for a thinner SiO2 layer under a high-energy ion’s irradiation condition for a long period of processing. The oxidation thickness is changed from several angstroms to a few nanometers, depending on the processing period and ion’s energy. Associated with the oxidation, a large number of the interface defects are generated; the density is estimated to be an order of 10¹² cm⁻² or more. The defects are recovered mostly by hydrogen annealing, however some of them remain as residual.
In this study, we focus on the early stages of the Hartmann–Sprenger tube operation in the jet regurgitant mode to investigate three key relationships: (1) between the nozzle dynamic pressure and the start time of temperature rise at the resonance tube end, (2) between the nozzle dynamic pressure and the resonance tube end pressure, and (3) between the distance l from the resonance tube end to the contact surface and the rise in the end gas temperature of the resonance tube. The results showed that the condition for the rise in the resonance tube end gas temperature after the gas jet from the nozzle reached sonic flow was the stabilization of the average fluctuation pressure value at the resonance tube end in conjunction with the nozzle dynamic pressure. At the time of operation stabilization of the Hartmann–Sprenger tube, the average fluctuation pressure at the resonance tube end converged to a constant value almost equal to the nozzle dynamic pressure. This result means that the nozzle dynamic pressure is almost equivalent to the fluctuation pressure at the resonance tube end. Moreover, the distance l did not significantly increase with the resonance tube length L and remained nearly constant. The gas temperature at the resonance tube end obtained from the experimental results generally agreed with the temperature calculated from compression through an adiabatic and isentropic process from L to l.
Squamous cell carcinoma arising from mature teratoma (SCC‐MT) is a rare ovarian malignancy. The detailed molecular pathology of SCC‐MT is not well understood. Moreover, the prognosis of the patients remains poor because no standard treatment has been established. In this study, we performed single‐nucleus RNA sequencing and spatial transcriptomics using clinical SCC‐MT samples to identify novel therapeutic candidates. snRNA‐seq revealed three epithelial cell clusters, of which one was significantly associated with epidermis and keratinocyte development. Moreover, spatial transcriptomics revealed that the epithelial‐mesenchymal transition was significantly inhibited, and the MYC and E2F targets were significantly activated in cancer spots on specimen sections. We focused on KLF5, which was one of the upregulated genes in cancer cells, and performed a functional analysis using NOSCC‐1, a cell line derived from an SCC‐MT. KLF5 downregulation significantly decreased cell proliferation and increased apoptosis. Furthermore, we previously identified miR‐145‐5p as a downregulated miRNA in SCC‐MT. We demonstrated that miR‐145‐5p overexpression attenuated cell proliferation and decreased KLF5 expression. In conclusion, through multi‐omics analyses, we identified unique gene expression profiles of SCC‐MT and determined a role for KLF5 in SCC‐MT development. Therefore, KLF5‐related factors may be novel therapeutic targets, and further studies are needed to improve the diagnosis and treatment of SCC‐MT.
INTRODUCTION There is an unmet need for tools to quantify dementia risk during its multi‐decade preclinical/prodromal phase, given that current biomarkers predict risk over shorter follow‐up periods and are specific to Alzheimer's disease. METHODS Using high‐throughput proteomic assays and machine learning techniques in the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study (n = 11,277), we developed the Dementia SomaSignal Test (dSST). RESULTS In addition to outperforming existing plasma biomarkers, the dSST predicted mid‐life dementia risk over a 20‐year follow‐up across two independent cohorts with different ethnic backgrounds (areas under the curve [AUCs]: dSST 0.68–0.70, dSST+age 0.75–0.81). In a separate cohort, the dSST was associated with longitudinal declines across multiple cognitive domains, accelerated brain atrophy, and elevated measures of neuropathology (as evidenced by positron emission tomography and plasma biomarkers). DISCUSSION The dSST is a cost‐effective, scalable, and minimally invasive protein‐based prognostic aid that can quantify risk up to two decades before dementia onset. Highlights The Dementia SomaSignal Test (dSST) predicts 20‐year dementia risk across two independent cohorts. dSST outperforms existing plasma biomarkers in predicting multi‐decade dementia risk. dSST predicts cognitive decline and accelerated brain atrophy in a third cohort. dSST is a prognostic aid that can predict dementia risk over two decades.
To determine whether convolutional neural networks (CNN) can classify the severity of central vision loss using fundus autofluorescence (FAF) images and color fundus images of retinitis pigmentosa (RP), and to evaluate the utility of those images for severity classification. Retrospective observational study. Medical charts of patients with RP who visited Nagoya University Hospital were reviewed. Eyes with atypical RP or previous surgery were excluded. The mild group was comprised of patients with a mean deviation value of > − 10 decibels, and the severe group of < − 20 decibels, in the Humphrey field analyzer 10-2 program. CNN models were created by transfer learning of VGG16 pretrained with ImageNet to classify patients as either mild or severe, using FAF images or color fundus images. Overall, 165 patients were included in this study; 80 patients were classified into the severe and 85 into the mild group. The test data comprised 40 patients in each group, and the images of the remaining patients were used as training data, with data augmentation by rotation and flipping. The highest accuracies of the CNN models when using color fundus and FAF images were 63.75% and 87.50%, respectively. Using FAF images may enable the accurate assessment of central vision function in RP. FAF images may include more parameters than color fundus images that can evaluate central visual function.
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5,910 members
Carlos Mendez
  • Department of International Development(DID)
Takaya Arita
  • Graduate School of Information Science
Ryuichi Nakajima
  • Academic Research & Industry-Academia-Government Collaboration
Akira Kanamori
  • Department of Biological Science
Sudarsan Raj
  • Institute of Materials and System for Sustainability (IMaSS)
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Nagoya, Japan
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Seiichi Matsuo