Publications by authors named "Akito Watanabe"

The limited availability of conventional He proportional counters provides impetus for developing novel neutron detectors. As a candidate, lithium-6-loaded liquid scintillators with neutron/gamma pulse shape discrimination (n-γ PSD) capabilities have been developed. However, the trade-off relationship between the Li-loading amount and scintillation light yield is a significant problem.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The observation of neutrinoless double beta decay is an important issue in nuclear and particle physics. The development of organic liquid scintillators with high transparency and a high concentration of the target isotope would be very useful for neutrinoless double beta decay experiments. Therefore, we propose a liquid scintillator loaded with metal oxide nanoparticles containing the target isotope.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Background: Recent development of genetic analyses enabled us to reveal underlying genetic causes of the patients with epileptic encephalopathy in infancy. Mutations of voltage-gated sodium channel type I alpha subunit gene (SCN1A) are to be causally related with several phenotypes of epilepsy, generalized epilepsy with febrile seizure plus (GEFS+), Dravet syndrome, and other infantile epileptic encephalopathies. In addition to SCN1A, contiguous genes such as SCN2A and SCN3A in 2q24.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Brain hypoperfusion observed on single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) is a typical finding in the acute phase of human herpesvirus-6 (HHV-6) encephalopathy. However, from 2004 to 2010, we encountered three cases of HHV-6 encephalopathy in which hyperperfusion in the area of the brain lesion was observed on SPECT performed within 48 hours after disease onset. The hyperperfusion in the brain was followed by hypoperfusion in the recovery phase.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

The mammalian target of rapamycin complex 1 (mTORC1: mTOR-raptor interaction) and heat shock protein 70 (Hsp70) regulate various cellular processes and are crucial for the progression of many cancers and metabolic diseases. In the recent study, we reported that interaction of Hsp70 with tuberous sclerosis complex 1 (TSC1) regulated apoptosis. This study was designed to elucidate the underlying mechanism in Cos-1 cells.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

Glycyrrhizin (GL) has been used to treat chronic hepatitis in Japan and Europe. It is thought to induce pseudoaldosteronism via inhibition of type 2 11beta-hydroxysteroid dehydrogenase (11beta-HSD2) by glycyrrhetinic acid (GA), a major metabolite of GL. A previous clinical study suggested that 3-monoglucuronyl-glycyrrhetinic acid (3MGA), another metabolite of GL, might play a more important role in the pathogenesis of pseudoaldosteronism.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF

An 80-year-old man presented to the internist with fever, fatigue and leukocytosis up to 66.8 x 10(3)/microl. Although a chronic myelogenous leukemia was initially suspected, he was diagnosed as metastatic bone marrow tumor with bone marrow necrosis from primary prostate cancer on the basis of the clinical and pathological findings.

View Article and Find Full Text PDF