Tokyo Denki University

Background: Eating alone has been significantly associated with psychological distress. However, there is no research that evaluates the effects or relation of eating together online to autonomic nervous system functions. Methods: This is a randomized, open-label, controlled, pilot study conducted among healthy volunteers. Participants were randomized into either an eating together online group or an eating-alone group. The effect of eating together on autonomic nervous functions was evaluated and compared with that of the control (eating alone). The primary endpoint was the change in the standard deviation of the normal-to-normal interval (SDNN) scores among heart rate variabilities (HRV) before and after eating. Physiological synchrony was investigated based on changes in the SDNN scores. Results: A total of 31 women and 25 men (mean age, 36.6 [SD = 9.9] years) were included in the study. In the comparison between the aforementioned groups, two-way analysis of variance revealed interactions between time and group on SDNN scores. SDNN scores in the eating together online group increased in the first and second halves of eating time (F[1,216], P < 0.001 and F[1,216], P = 0.022). Moreover, high correlations were observed in the changes in each pair before and during the first half of eating time as well as before and during the second half of eating time (r = 0.642, P = 0.013 and r = 0.579, P = 0.030). These were statistically significantly higher than those in the eating-alone group (P = 0.005 and P = 0.040). Conclusions: The experience of eating together online increased HRV during eating. Variations in pairs were correlated and may have induced physiological synchrony. Trial registration: The University Hospital Medical Information Network Clinical Trials Registry, UMIN000045161. Registered September 1, 2021. https://center6.umin.ac.jp/cgi-open-bin/icdr/ctr_view.cgi?recptno=R000051592 .

People explore specific services or information to accomplish their goals within a web system. Efficient visitors’ exploration routes must be defined as requirements to guide them through a good experience. In order to define these requirements, we focused on links from one object to another and developed a method named Traverser to guide the visitors from the starting point to the destination. In our study, these links are within the ontology of a service domain. The set of links to guide visitors from a certain object to the destination is referred to as a “traverse.” A traverse is inferred from the ontology by tracing associations and inheritance relationships between domain items, taking the rights of each user group into account. The ontology for extracting traverses is developed as a conceptual model with a class diagram of UML, while the roles of an association are diverted as a user group’s permissions. We also developed a tool to define the conceptual model and extract traverses. The effectiveness of Traverser is evaluated by comparing the requirements derived by Traverser with those of the use case approach.

In this study, a series of carbazole-based derivatives were designed, synthesized, and characterized. When the conjugation length of the acene was increased, charge-transfer-type intermolecular transitions occurred, and as a result, low-energy light emission was achieved.

There are two types of elliptic curves, ordinary elliptic curves and supersingular elliptic curves. In 2012, Sutherland proposed an efficient and almost deterministic algorithm for determining whether a given curve is ordinary or supersingular. Sutherland's algorithm is based on sequences of isogenies started from the input curve, and computation of each isogeny requires square root computations, which is the dominant cost of the algorithm. In this paper, we reduce this dominant cost of Sutherland's algorithm to approximately a half of the original. In contrast to Sutherland's algorithm using j-invariants and modular polynomials, our proposed algorithm is based on Legendre form of elliptic curves, which simplifies the expression of each isogeny. Moreover, by carefully selecting the type of isogenies to be computed, we succeeded in gathering square root computations at two consecutive steps of Sutherland's algorithm into just a single fourth root computation (with experimentally almost the same cost as a single square root computation). The results of our experiments using Magma are supporting our argument; for cases of characteristic p of 768-bit to 1024-bit lengths, our proposed algorithm for characteristic p ≡ 1 (mod 4) runs in about 61.5% of the time and for characteristic p ≡ 3 (mod 4) also runs in about 54.9% of the time compared to Sutherland's algorithm.

This paper presents a design of high slot fill aluminum winding in permanent magnet machines for reducing winding losses. Generally, there is a trade-off between the winding weight and the winding losses. The winding DC loss is reduced with an increase of cross-sectional areas of conductors. In general, the aluminum winding is effective for reducing the winding weight, on the other hand, the winding loss is high because the electrical conductivity is low. In this paper, a high slot fill aluminum winding of 83.8% is proposed. It overcomes the trade-off, as a result, the winding losses are significantly reduced. In particular, reducing winding DC loss contributes the decrease of the whole winding loss including winding AC losses. Two prototype machines with the proposed aluminum winding and comparable round copper winding are fabricated and tested. In experiments, both winding DC loss and whole winding losses are measured in the proposed aluminum winding and the round copper winding machines. Consequently, it is demonstrated that the proposed aluminum winding machine can reduce the whole winding losses in wide frequency region. Furthermore, efficiency improvements can be also demonstrated in the proposed aluminum winding.

Among the major egg allergens, ovomucoid (OVM) is very stable against heat and digestive enzymes, making it difficult to remove physiochemically and inactivate allergens. However, recent genome editing technology has made it possible to generate OVM-knockout chicken eggs. To use this OVM-knockout chicken egg as food, it is important to evaluate its safety as food. Therefore, in this study, we examined the presence or absence of mutant protein expression, vector sequence insertion, and off-target effects in chickens knocked out with OVM by platinum TALENs. The eggs laid by homozygous OVM-knockout hens showed no evident abnormalities, and immunoblotting showed that the albumen contained neither the mature OVM variant nor the OVM truncated variant. Whole genome sequencing (WGS) revealed that the potential TALEN-induced off-target effects in OVM-knockout chickens were localized in the intergenic and intron regions. The WGS information confirmed that plasmid vectors used for genome editing were only transiently present and did not integrate into the genome of edited chickens. These results indicate the importance of safety evaluation and reveal that the eggs laid by this OVM knockout chicken solve the allergy problem in food and vaccines.

Voice-based depression detection methods have been studied worldwide as an objective and easy method to detect depression. Conventional studies estimate the presence or severity of depression. However, an estimation of symptoms is a necessary technique not only to treat depression, but also to relieve patients’ distress. Hence, we studied a method for clustering symptoms from HAM-D scores of depressed patients and by estimating patients in different symptom groups based on acoustic features of their speech. We could separate different symptom groups with an accuracy of 79%. The results suggest that voice from speech can estimate the symptoms associated with depression.

N -Acetyl-( R )-β-phenylalanine acylase is an enzyme that hydrolyzes the amide bond of N -acetyl-( R )-β-phenylalanine to produce enantiopure ( R )-β-phenylalanine. In previous studies, Burkholderia sp. AJ110349 and Variovorax sp. AJ110348 were isolated as ( R )-enantiomer-specific N -acetyl-( R )-β-phenylalanine acylase-producing organisms and the properties of the native enzyme from Burkholderia sp. AJ110349 were characterized. In this study, structural analyses were carried out in order to investigate the structure–function relationships of the enzymes derived from both organisms. The recombinant N -acetyl-( R )-β-phenylalanine acylases were crystallized by the hanging-drop vapor-diffusion method under multiple crystallization solution conditions. The crystals of the Burkholderia enzyme belonged to space group P 4 1 2 1 2, with unit-cell parameters a = b = 112.70–112.97, c = 341.50–343.32 Å, and were likely to contain two subunits in the asymmetric unit. The crystal structure was solved by the Se-SAD method, suggesting that two subunits in the asymmetric unit form a dimer. Each subunit was composed of three domains, and they showed structural similarity to the corresponding domains of the large subunit of N , N -dimethylformamidase from Paracoccus sp. strain DMF. The crystals of the Variovorax enzyme grew as twinned crystals and were not suitable for structure determination. Using size-exclusion chromatography with online static light-scattering analysis, the N -acetyl-( R )-β-phenylalanine acylases were clarified to be dimeric in solution.

The potential of using Phase Change Material (PCM) in wooden house has been investigated. Since the cost of the PCM is high, searching for a laying position with high heat absorption and dissipation efficiency has been shown as a problem to solve. At the same time, the internal screen also causes changes in the room surface temperature, which in turn affects the heat absorption effect of PCM. In this study, we focused on how the internal screen affects the thermal storage effect of PCM and discuss the means to improve the thermal storage effect.

As a characteristic result of the verification, the negative reaction to the room after the environment creation on a five-point scale was remarkable among male visitors, and the score evaluation was also low, suggesting that males tend to have more difficulty accepting environmental changes than females. Since it is thought that the load from the environmental change and the adaptability differ among users, it is appropriate to consider the load from the environmental change of users and to create the environment gradually in the place where care is involved, especially in the place where mental health is concerned.

The impact on the stability of power systems is also increasing with the rapid spread of distributed power-supply systems. Consequently, the performance requirements for grid-tied inverters are increasing. However, MW-level grid-connected inverters have limited carrier frequency. This paper proposes a disturbance compensation deadbeat control with a 1 MHz multi-sampling method that can respond to changes in state variables between carrier intervals by increasing the sampling frequency even at low carrier frequencies. An FPGA-based hardware controller is used to implement all control calculations in the FPGA circuit. In addition, controller hardware-in-the-loop (C-HIL) is used to verify the control performance solving the difficulty of experimental verification in a megawatt-class grid-tied inverter. The control system can be verified using the controller used in an actual system. The effectiveness of the proposed method is demonstrated by verifying the control system with the C-HIL platform, and its superior characteristics are confirmed.

We propose the Delta ISMS method that strengthens the company-wide information security management system (ISMS) through incident learning. International standards of ISMS have been established to provide useful guidelines for information security risk management to organisations so they can respond appropriately to information security incidents. When the ISMS is first introduced to an organisation, the organisation is strengthened by introducing standard requirements. However, predicting everything and implementing a perfect ISMS may not be possible for each organisation. Thus, even in ISMS-certified organisations, information security incidents do not always diminish. This indicates that these organisations do not effectively carry out the PDCA cycle of the ISMS. We recognise that ISMS requires feedback and learning from incidents, while a sufficient explanation of learning procedures is not provided. Also, the Cyber Security Incident Response Team guidelines do not provide specific procedures for ‘incident learning’ explicitly. For incident learning, regularising informal knowledge (the formalisation of experience data) and double-loop learning (acquisition of company-wide knowledge from incident responses) is effective. Therefore, this study aims to develop detailed procedures for incident learning to run the second and subsequent rounds of the ISMS’s PDCA cycles. We propose an incident database operation method for regularising informal knowledge and a gold–silver–bronze communication method for implementing double loops. The procedures are routinely applied by headquarters under the supervision of the Chief Information Security Officer. By changing the safety factor in the damage reduction rate, it is possible to obtain multiple countermeasure candidate sets by considering the investment effect.

The number of patients with heat illness transported by ambulance has been gradually increasing due to global warming. In intense heat waves, it is crucial to accurately estimate the number of cases with heat illness for management of medical resources. Ambient temperature is an essential factor with respect to the number of patients with heat illness, although thermophysiological response is a more relevant factor with respect to causing symptoms. In this study, we computed daily maximum core temperature increase and daily total amount of sweating in a test subject using a large-scale, integrated computational method considering the time course of actual ambient conditions as input. The correlation between the number of transported people and their thermophysiological temperature is evaluated in addition to conventional ambient temperature. With the exception of one prefecture, which features a different Köppen climate classification, the number of transported people in the remaining prefectures, with a Köppen climate classification of Cfa, are well estimated using either ambient temperature or computed core temperature increase and daily amount of sweating. For estimation using ambient temperature, an additional two parameters were needed to obtain comparable accuracy. Even using ambient temperature, the number of transported people can be estimated if the parameters are carefully chosen. This finding is practically useful for the management of ambulance allocation on hot days as well as public enlightenment.

Various halogenated mesoionic-carbene-coordinated palladium complexes (denoted as TAPs and e-TAPs) were prepared using triazolylidene precursors that were synthesized in only two steps via a click reaction. Among the prepared complexes, Br-e-TAP showed optimal catalytic activity for the arylation of aldehydes with arylboronic compounds. Additionally, the Br-e-TAP catalyst assisted in synthesizing a wide range of functionalized diarylmethanols and arylmethanols in 29%95% yields with loadings of 0.2–0.6 mol% Pd.