Osaka University

In recent years, considering throughput, a simple quantitative method using normal-phase liquid chromatography (NP-HPLC) has been established for the assessment of foods with functional claims that contain plasmalogens. To certify the content of functionally related ingredients, we aimed to verify the validity of the analytical values obtained with this method. We built a simple quantitative method using NP-HPLC equipped with Charged aerosol detector (NP-HPLC simple method) to quantify Phosphatidylethanolamine, Phosphatidylcholine, and their subclasses in a soft capsule product which is classified as a food with functional claims. The amount of plasmalogens per 2 soft capsules, which is the recommended daily intake, was determined and compared with value obtained using the 2D-HPLC method. As a result, the validity of the analytical value was confirmed. We believe that the NP-HPLC simple method can be used to assess plasmalogens in not only soft capsules but also other foods.

Purpose Body shape satisfaction has drawn attention as a factor related to dietary behavior. However, the association between body shape satisfaction and nutrient intake during pregnancy has not been fully elucidated. Therefore, this study aimed to examine the association between body shape satisfaction and nutrient intake among Japanese pregnant women. Methods This cross-sectional study was conducted at a general hospital in Osaka, Japan, between March and November 2020. We recruited women with singleton pregnancies in their second or third trimesters. Information on demographic characteristics, body shape satisfaction, fetal attachment, and depression was assessed using a self-administered questionnaire. Based on the responses regarding body shape satisfaction, participants were classified into three groups: “satisfied,” “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” and “dissatisfied.” Nutrient intake was assessed using a validated diet history questionnaire. Covariance analysis was performed with energy-adjusted intake based on the density method as the dependent variable. Second- and third-trimester analyses were conducted separately to account for gestational age-related differences in nutritional recommendations. Results A total of 99 and 101 women in their second and third trimesters, respectively, were included in the analysis. Among those in the second trimester, 18 (18.2%), 42 (42.5%), and 39 (39.4%) constituted the “satisfied,” “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” and “dissatisfied” groups, respectively. Of those in the third trimester, 26 (25.7%), 32 (31.7%), and 43 (42.6%) occupied the “satisfied,” “neither satisfied nor dissatisfied,” and “dissatisfied” groups, respectively. In the second trimester, no association was observed between body shape satisfaction and nutrient intake. However, among women in the third trimester, the “dissatisfied” group had significantly lower intakes of the following nutrients: fat, dietary fiber, potassium, calcium, iron, magnesium, α-tocopherol, vitamin B1, vitamin B6, and folate. Conclusion Body shape dissatisfaction was associated with a lower energy-adjusted intake of several key nutrients in the third trimester. Healthcare professionals may need to consider body shape dissatisfaction when providing nutritional guidance to pregnant women.

Energy transition has brought widespread attentions to the concept of coupled utilization of the geothermal and solar energy. This paper provides an integrated assessment on developing a nanofluid geothermal-photovoltaic hybrid system that addresses the multi-objective optimization and multi-criteria evaluation difficulties. The coupling system design and dispatch are optimized by considering the multiple objectives from the microscopic particles to the system. The life cycle cost, levelized cost of energy, levelized cost of heat, and the irreversibility are introduced in the optimization stage. The optimization parameters include the pipe arrangement, type of nanoparticles, and the concentration of the nanoparticles in nanofluids. A combined analysis including the energy, exergy, economy, and the environment is proposed to evaluate the various objectives and cases. The results show that the combination of 2% Al 2 O 3 nanofluid and spiral pipe has the optimum performance. The monocrystalline solar panels with the nanofluids-aided heat pump create the least CO 2 emissions (550 kg/year), the least LCOE (198.18 $), and the highest exergy efficiency. However, the LCOH (211.78 $/MWh) is still much high. Only when the electricity cost is higher than 0.11$/kWh, the proposed coupling system would show competitiveness. In summary, these results effectively prove the robustness and superiority of the hybrid system.

Purpose: Sperm DNA fragmentation (SDF) has been associated with male infertility and poor outcomes of assisted reproductive technology (ART). The purpose of this study was to investigate global practices related to the management of elevated SDF in infertile men, summarize the relevant professional society recommendations, and provide expert recommendations for managing this condition. Materials and methods: An online global survey on clinical practices related to SDF was disseminated to reproductive clinicians, according to the CHERRIES checklist criteria. Management protocols for various conditions associated with SDF were captured and compared to the relevant recommendations in professional society guidelines and the appropriate available evidence. Expert recommendations and consensus on the management of infertile men with elevated SDF were then formulated and adapted using the Delphi method. Results: A total of 436 experts from 55 different countries submitted responses. As an initial approach, 79.1% of reproductive experts recommend lifestyle modifications for infertile men with elevated SDF, and 76.9% prescribe empiric antioxidants. Regarding antioxidant duration, 39.3% recommend 4-6 months and 38.1% recommend 3 months. For men with unexplained or idiopathic infertility, and couples experiencing recurrent miscarriages associated with elevated SDF, most respondents refer to ART 6 months after failure of conservative and empiric medical management. Infertile men with clinical varicocele, normal conventional semen parameters, and elevated SDF are offered varicocele repair immediately after diagnosis by 31.4%, and after failure of antioxidants and conservative measures by 40.9%. Sperm selection techniques and testicular sperm extraction are also management options for couples undergoing ART. For most questions, heterogenous practices were demonstrated. Conclusions: This paper presents the results of a large global survey on the management of infertile men with elevated SDF and reveals a lack of consensus among clinicians. Furthermore, it demonstrates the scarcity of professional society guidelines in this regard and attempts to highlight the relevant evidence. Expert recommendations are proposed to help guide clinicians.

Active gate drive (AGD) is one of the key techniques to utilize SiC power devices' fast-switching capability without compromising the drawbacks. However, the increasing complexity in the circuit design makes it hard to have an optimized operation without expert know-hows or considerable design efforts. This paper demonstrates a digital-twin-compatible metaheuristic optimization system for a digital AGD. It offers a totally-digital control of switching characteristics of power devices through genetic-algorithm-based optimization. An individually developed digital AGD is adopted to generate a genetically expressed gate-voltage waveform by a multi-bit gate signal sequence. The optimization system is verified in simulation and experiment by successfully obtaining the optimum Pareto-front solutions, which clarify the relationship between the selected gate voltage levels and the device characteristics. The optimization is also performed for variable operating conditions and for different SiC MOSFETs. The results of this paper offer feasibility for a software-based optimization of gate drive design.

Arc efficiencies of gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW) were measured using two different methods, liquid nitrogen calorimetry and water-cooled copper anode calorimetry, across a range of welding currents from 98 A to 302 A. Arc efficiencies determined with water-cooled copper anode calorimetry remained constant throughout the entire current range, while those measured with liquid nitrogen calorimetry exhibited a concave curve. A hypothesis was proposed to explain the changes in arc efficiency with varying welding currents. Accordingly, a decrease in arc efficiency at 149 A welding current was caused by reduced Joule heating due to increased electrical conduction from iron-vapor contamination in an arc. For welding currents above 227 A, a decrease in arc efficiency was attributed to increased penetration depth, leading to more uniform heating in the base metal beneath the arc column, thereby preventing heat conduction within the metal. Thereafter, the relationship between penetration depth and arc efficiency was experimentally confirmed. Comparing with the arc efficiency of gas metal arc welding (GMAW), it was found that the mechanism in which arc efficiency changes with welding current in GTAW was different from that in GMAW.

Although the association between gestational diabetes mellitus (GDM) and maternal postpartum depression has been reported, the association between these two factors during pregnancy has not been sufficiently examined. We compared pregnant women with and without GDM to clarify the association and examined factors related to depression in pregnant women with GDM. Questionnaires were administered longitudinally to pregnant Japanese women in the third trimester and at 2 and 4 weeks postpartum. One hundred and five and 108 pregnant women with and without GDM, respectively, were included in the study. Of the 105 women with GDM, 20 (19.0%) reported being depressed during pregnancy, which was significantly higher than that among those without GDM (9.3%). Binomial logistic regression analysis revealed that depression was significantly positively associated with diet‐related distress and negatively associated with social support among women with GDM. Diet‐related distress and social support are important factors in managing depression in pregnant women with GDM.

Single-atom catalysis of carbon monoxide oxidation on metal-oxide surfaces is crucial for greenhouse recycling, automotive catalysis, and beyond, but reports of the atomic-scale mechanism are still scarce. Here, using scanning probe microscopy, we show that charging single gold atoms on oxidized rutile titanium dioxide surface, both positively and negatively, considerably promotes adsorption of carbon monoxide. No carbon monoxide adsorption is observed on neutral gold atoms. Two different carbon monoxide adsorption geometries on gold atoms are identified. We demonstrate full control over the redox state of adsorbed gold single atoms, carbon monoxide adsorption geometry, and carbon monoxide adsorption/desorption by the atomic force microscopy tip. On charged gold atoms, we activate Eley-Rideal oxidation reaction between carbon monoxide and a neighboring oxygen adatom by the tip. Our results provide unprecedented insights into carbon monoxide adsorption and suggest that the gold dual activity for carbon monoxide oxidation after electron or hole attachment is also the key ingredient in photocatalysis under realistic conditions.

Pesticide seed treatment provides efficient crop protection in the early season and enables a reduction in the quantity of fungicides used later. Hence, it has been a practical application for crop protection in major crop sectors such as corn, soybean, wheat, and cotton. The chemicals on pesticide-treated seeds may show different distributions depending on the structure of the seeds and the physical properties of the chemicals, but they have not been well studied because of a lack of versatile analytical tools. Here, we used mass spectrometry imaging to visualize the distribution of a fungicide (ethaboxam) in corn and soybean seeds coated with it. Contrasting distribution patterns were noted, which are likely dependent on the seed structure. We also obtained information on fungicide distribution after the seedings, which will contribute to a better understanding of the fungicide delivery pathway within plants. Using this new analytical method, we were able to obtain hitherto unavailable time-dependent, dynamic information on the ethaboxam. We expect that this method will be a useful tool with widespread applications in pesticide development and use.

Fake news commonly exists in various domains (e.g., education, health, finance), especially on the Internet, which cost people much time and money to distinguish. Recently, previous researchers focused on fake new detection with the help of a single domain label because fake news has different features in different domains. However, one problem is still solved: A piece of news may have semantics even in one domain source and these meanings have some interactions with other domains. Therefore, detecting fake news with only one domain may lose the contextual semantics of global sources (e.g., more domains). To address this, we propose a novel model, FuzzyNet, which addresses the limitations above by introducing the fuzzy mechanism. Specially, we use BERT and mixture-of-expert networks to extract various features of input news sentences; Then, we use domain-wise attention to make the sentence embedding more domain-aware; Next, we employ attention gate to extract the domain embedding to affect the weight of corresponding expert’s result; Moreover, we design a fuzzy mechanism to generate pseudo domains. Finally, the discriminator module uses the total feature representation to discriminate whether the news item is fake news. We conduct our experiment on the Weibo21 dataset and the experimental results show that our model outperforms the baselines. The code is open at https://anonymous.4open.science/r/fakenewsdetection-D2F4.

Iron-based heterogeneous catalysts are ideal metal catalysts owing to their abundance and low-toxicity. However, conventional iron nanoparticle catalysts exhibit extremely low activity in liquid-phase reactions and lack air stability. Previous attempts to encapsulate iron nanoparticles in shell materials toward air stability improvement were offset by the low activity of the iron nanoparticles. To overcome the trade-off between activity and stability in conventional iron nanoparticle catalysts, we developed air-stable iron phosphide nanocrystal catalysts. The iron phosphide nanocrystal exhibits high activity for liquid-phase nitrile hydrogenation, whereas the conventional iron nanoparticles demonstrate no activity. Furthermore, the air stability of the iron phosphide nanocrystal allows facile immobilization on appropriate supports, wherein TiO2 enhances the activity. The resulting TiO2-supported iron phosphide nanocrystal successfully converts various nitriles to primary amines and demonstrates high reusability. The development of air-stable and active iron phosphide nanocrystal catalysts significantly expands the application scope of iron catalysts.

We report a sizable Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction (DMI) originating at an epitaxial Fe3Si/Ge interface. Using spin-wave spectroscopy, we show that the magnitude of the interfacial DMI of the Heusler-ferromagnet/semiconductor hybrid structure is comparable to that of ferromagnet/Pt structures, despite the absence of heavy elements. We find that the observed DMI at the Fe3Si/Ge interface is consistent with the prediction of an antisymmetric exchange interaction induced by the interfacial Bychkov-Rashba spin-orbit interaction. These results demonstrate that ferromagnet/semiconductor hybrid structures are a promising class of systems for chiral spintronics.

Discrimination, which arose during the coronavirus disease 2019 outbreak, is a global public health issue. This study aimed to provide fundamental knowledge in proposing control measures to mitigate discrimination. We focused on two psychological variables: belief in just deserts (BJD, i.e. , the belief that the infected individual deserves to be infected), a psychological factor that potentially promotes discrimination and prejudice, and human rights restrictions (HRR; i.e. , the degree of individuals’ agreement with government restrictions on citizens’ behavior during emergencies). Differences in these items, as well as their annual trends from 2020 to 2022, were examined in Japan, the United States (US), the United Kingdom (UK), Italy, and China. In addition, the associations between BJD and HRR by country and year and the direction of the associations between them in Japan and Italy were analyzed. Online surveys were conducted annually, with 392–518 participants per country and year. The BJD was higher in Japan and lower in the UK. BJD increased significantly from 2020 to 2021 in all countries, except in China. Meanwhile, HRR was higher in China and lower in Japan. The HRR decreased from 2020 to 2021 in Japan and decreased from 2020 to 2022 in the US, the UK, and Italy. There were significant positive associations between BJD and HRR in Japan and Italy. Cross-lagged panel models revealed positive bidirectional associations between BJD and HRR in Japan and Italy, respectively, indicating that the HRR declined among those with weak BJD and that the BJD increased among those with high HRR. In Japan and Italy, the dissemination of public messages targeting those with a high HRR in the early stages of an infectious disease outbreak could potentially mitigate the adverse impact of the BJD, eventually reducing discrimination, especially when the infection is not attributed to the fault of the infected individuals.

The reducibility and mechanical properties of iron ore sinter in blast furnace is critical to effective plant operation. The reduction reaction of sinters progresses heterogeneously owing to microstructures with various mineral phases and pore networks. The reduction process was investigated by semi-microbeam synchrotron X-ray multimodal analysis. Heterogeneous chemical state evolution of Fe and trigger sites of crack formation were visualized using two-dimensional Fe K-edge X-ray absorption near-edge structure analysis and were discussed based on reduction gas transfer. The elemental composition map and X-ray diffraction microanalysis were also combined to reveal the microprocesses during the reduction, such as calcium ferrite decomposition and crystal grain growth.

This study aims to develop a numerical simulation-based method for predicting ductile crack growth resistance curve (R-curve) for pre-strained components for rational assessment of ductile crack growth controlling fracture for pre-strained structural component with any plastic constraint. Experiments on R-curve of 3-point bend specimen with a shallow crack for steel pre-strained by 6% over uniform elongation provides that the pre-strain does not significantly reduce ductile crack initiation and growth resistance, even though the pre-strain induces disappearance of uniform elongation and work hardening together with drastic reduction in elongation. Observations of damage evolution in terms of micro-void formation indicate that ductile crack growth behaviors in both virgin and pre-strained steels are based on a micro-void nucleation-controlled ductile fracture mechanism. These experimental results demonstrate that the ductile damage model that we have already proposed for predicting R-curve for virgin steel that exhibits micro-void nucleation-controlled ductile fracture behaviors can be applicable for these virgin and pre-strained steels used. Thus, based on the previously proposed ductile damage model, a simulation-based method to predict the R-curve of pre-strained specimens only from the properties of virgin steel is proposed taking material degradation (change in strength and damage properties) due to pre-strain into account. The applicability of the proposed method is verified by showing the predicted R-curve for pre-strained steel are in good agreement with experimental results.