[Commute mode - physical activity and the possibility of change to active commuting among Japanese workers: a descriptive study by region].

Objectives: Changing the mode of commuting from nonactive by car or motorcycle to active by walking, cycling, or public transport is expected to benefit health. However, the proportion of nonactive commuters who can change their commute mode to active forms remains unclear. The aim of this study was to determine the proportions of nonactive commuters and of those who can change their commute mode to an active form in various regions in Japan.

The relationship of single-family detached house prices with neighborhood walkability and disaster risk.

People's preferences regarding their neighborhood environment can vary depending on their socioeconomic status and the cities where they live. This study aims to discern the relationship between neighborhood environment factors and single-family detached house sales by sale price and by central and noncentral cities. We analyzed sale prices in the Tokyo Metropolitan Area from 2015 to 2020.

Associations between older adults' going-out frequency and land price of neighbourhoods: Potency of land price as an indicator of homebound tendency.

The aim of this study is to identify the potency of land price as a general indicator of the homebound tendency of neighbourhoods. For this purpose, we focus on the associations between land price and older adults' going-out frequency, while considering the similarities and differences from factors associated with walkability. The study targets are 19,270 individuals living in the Tokyo metropolitan area who are aged 65 years or older who are not certified as needing public long-term care insurance.

Urban agriculture in walkable neighborhoods bore fruit for health and food system resilience during the COVID-19 pandemic.

Urban agriculture is the key to creating healthy cities and developing resilient urban food systems in uncertain times. However, relevant empirical evidence is limited. This study quantitatively verified the association of access to local food through urban agriculture with subjective well-being, physical activity, and food security concerns of neighborhood communities in the context of the COVID-19 pandemic.

Identifying neurocognitive disorder using vector representation of free conversation.

In recent years, studies on the use of natural language processing (NLP) approaches to identify dementia have been reported. Most of these studies used picture description tasks or other similar tasks to encourage spontaneous speech, but the use of free conversation without requiring a task might be easier to perform in a clinical setting. Moreover, free conversation is unlikely to induce a learning effect.

Associations of neighborhood built, safety, and social environment with walking to and from school among elementary school-aged children in Chiba, Japan.

Background: Although it is globally known that Japan has high prevalence of active school travel among children, there are few international studies on Japanese children's school travel. Moreover, only few studies have focused on the differences in their mode of travel between to-school and from-school. This study examined the associations of neighborhood built, safety, and social environments with walking to/from school among elementary school-aged children in Chiba, Japan.

A simulation of allocation of participants engaging in group activities at community salons: Accessibility and self-stigma.

Community salons are places where older adults receive preventive healthcare and enjoy recreational activities. In Japan, some older adults are reluctant to attend group activity programs at community salons because they do not want to be seen by their neighbors as being elderly who need support from others, even though those activities are meant to prevent functional decline. The phenomenon can be conceptualized as self-stigma of community salon participation, which is a factor explaining why older adults hesitate to participate and some opt for activities at facilities farther away.

Change in walking steps and association with built environments during the COVID-19 state of emergency: A longitudinal comparison with the first half of 2019 in Yokohama, Japan.

In Japan, a state of emergency (SoE) was declared in early April 2020 until late May in response to the first wave of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19). This longitudinal study analyzed the step counts of 18,817 citizens in Yokohama city in the first half of 2020 compared to the previous year, and investigated the association between the change in step counts and the individuals' neighborhood environment by sex and age using generalized linear mixed models. Step counts decreased especially in women and non-elderly people during the SoE.

How Does Urban Farming Benefit Participants' Health? A Case Study of Allotments and Experience Farms in Tokyo.

In Japan, the world's most rapidly aging country, urban farming is attracting attention as an infrastructure for health activities. In Tokyo, urban residents generally participate in two types of farming programs: allotments and experience farms. The availability of regular interaction among participants distinguishes these two programs.

Deep Neural Network for Reducing the Screening Workload in Systematic Reviews for Clinical Guidelines: Algorithm Validation Study.

Background: Performing systematic reviews is a time-consuming and resource-intensive process.

Objective: We investigated whether a machine learning system could perform systematic reviews more efficiently.

Methods: All systematic reviews and meta-analyses of interventional randomized controlled trials cited in recent clinical guidelines from the American Diabetes Association, American College of Cardiology, American Heart Association (2 guidelines), and American Stroke Association were assessed.

Three-Year Longitudinal Association Between Built Environmental Factors and Decline in Older Adults' Step Count: Gaining insights for Age-Friendly Urban Planning and Design.

This study examined the longitudinal association between the change in the step count of older adults and the neighborhood-built environment (BE) in Yokohama, Japan. We analyzed pedometer data in March 2016 and March 2019 that were acquired from 21,557 older adults aged 65-79 years at baseline, who lived in 758 neighborhoods in Yokohama City and participated in the Yokohama Walking Point Program (YWPP). Six BE variables were computed, for each of which neighborhoods were classified into quartiles.

Modal Shift from Cars and Promotion of Walking by Providing Pedometers in Yokohama City, Japan.

Mobility management is a transportation policy aiming to change travel behavior from car use to sustainable transportation modes while increasing people's physical activity. Providing pedometers and visualizing step counts, popular interventions in public health practice, may constitute a mobility management program. However, the ease of modal shifts and changeability of walking habits differ across neighborhood environments.

Step Counts of Middle-Aged and Elderly Adults for 10 Months Before and After the Release of Pokémon GO in Yokohama, Japan.

Background: Smartphones have been integrated into our society and are expected to serve as tools to improve health outcomes. In the summer of 2016, Pokémon GO, a location-based augmented reality game for smartphones was released; it attracted attention from the perspective of health, especially with its potential to increase physical activity (PA). A few studies have compared objectively measured step counts before and after the release of the game; however, they were conducted over a short study period and evaluated only young people.

Associations between seasonal meteorological conditions and the daily step count of adults in Yokohama, Japan: Results of year-round pedometer measurements in a large population.

People's year-round interpersonal step count variations according to meteorological conditions are not fully understood, because complete year-round data from a sufficient sample of the general population are difficult to acquire. This study examined the associations between meteorological conditions and objectively measured step counts using year-round data collected from a large cohort ( = 24,625) in Yokohama, Japan from April 2015 to March 2016. Two-piece linear regression analysis was used to examine the associations between the monthly median daily step count and three meteorological indices (mean values of temperature, temperature-humidity index (THI), and net effective temperature (NET)).

CRISPRdirect: software for designing CRISPR/Cas guide RNA with reduced off-target sites.

Unlabelled: CRISPRdirect is a simple and functional web server for selecting rational CRISPR/Cas targets from an input sequence. The CRISPR/Cas system is a promising technique for genome engineering which allows target-specific cleavage of genomic DNA guided by Cas9 nuclease in complex with a guide RNA (gRNA), that complementarily binds to a ∼ 20 nt targeted sequence. The target sequence requirements are twofold.

A-to-I editing in the miRNA seed region regulates target mRNA selection and silencing efficiency.

Hydrolytic deamination of adenosine to inosine (A-to-I) by adenosine deaminases acting on RNA (ADARs) is a post-transcriptional modification which results in a discrepancy between genomic DNA and the transcribed RNA sequence, thus contributing to the diversity of the transcriptome. Inosine preferentially base pairs with cytidine, meaning that A-to-I modifications in the mRNA sequences may be observed as A-to-G substitutions by the protein-coding machinery. Genome-wide studies have revealed that the majority of editing events occur in non-coding RNA sequences, but little is known about their functional meaning.

Downregulation of Nipah virus N mRNA occurs through interaction between its 3' untranslated region and hnRNP D.

Nipah virus (NiV) is a nonsegmented, single-stranded, negative-sense RNA virus belonging to the genus Henipavirus, family Paramyxoviridae. NiV causes acute encephalitis and respiratory disease in humans, is associated with high mortality, and poses a threat in southern Asia. The genomes of henipaviruses are about 18,246 nucleotides (nt) long, which is longer than those of other paramyxoviruses (around 15,384 nt).

Stability of miRNA 5'terminal and seed regions is correlated with experimentally observed miRNA-mediated silencing efficacy.

MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are key regulators of sequence-specific gene silencing. However, crucial factors that determine the efficacy of miRNA-mediated target gene silencing are poorly understood. Here we mathematized base-pairing stability and showed that miRNAs with an unstable 5' terminal duplex and stable seed-target duplex exhibit strong silencing activity.

Efficient oligonucleotide-mediated degradation of nuclear noncoding RNAs in mammalian cultured cells.

Recent large-scale transcriptome analyses have revealed that large numbers of noncoding RNAs (ncRNAs) are transcribed from mammalian genomes. They include small nuclear RNAs (snRNAs), small nucleolar RNAs (snoRNAs), and longer ncRNAs, many of which are localized to the nucleus, but which have remained functionally elusive. Since ncRNAs are only known to exist in mammalian species, established experimental systems, including the Xenopus oocyte system and yeast genetics, are not available for functional analysis.

Inducible expression of microRNA-194 is regulated by HNF-1alpha during intestinal epithelial cell differentiation.

Maintenance of the intestinal epithelium is based on well-balanced molecular mechanisms that confer the stable and continuous supply of specialized epithelial cell lineages from multipotent progenitors. Lineage commitment decisions in the intestinal epithelium system involve multiple regulatory systems that interplay with each other to establish the cellular identities. Here, we demonstrate that the microRNA system could be involved in intestinal epithelial cell differentiation, and that microRNA-194 (miR-194) is highly induced during this process.

Regulatory interaction of HNF1-alpha to microRNA-194 gene during intestinal epithelial cell differentiation.

Maintenance of intestinal epithelium is based on well-balanced molecular mechanisms that confer the stable and continuous supply of specialized epithelial cell lineages from multipotent progenitors. Lineage commitment decisions in intestinal epithelium system involve multiple regulatory systems that interplay each other to establish the cellular identities. Here, we demonstrate that the microRNA system could be involved in intestinal epithelial cell differentiation and that microRNA-194 (miR194) is highly induced during this process and controlled by a transcription factor, HNF-alpha, that is well known to regulate gene expression in intestinal epithelial cells.

An evolutionarily conserved mechanism for microRNA-223 expression revealed by microRNA gene profiling.

Many microRNAs (miRNAs) are evolutionarily conserved and have intriguing expression patterns. Tissue and/or time-specific expressions of some miRNAs are presumably controlled by unique cis-acting regulatory elements that coevolved with the miRNA sequences. Exploiting bioinformatics, we identified several miRNAs whose primary transcripts could be regulated by conserved genomic elements proximal to their transcription start sites.

Identification of the DNA binding specificity of the human ZNF219 protein and its function as a transcriptional repressor.

The ZNF219 gene is a member of the Kruppel-like zinc finger gene family that is involved in a diverse range of biological processes. The ZNF219 gene encodes a 77-kDa nuclear protein containing nine sets of C2H2 zinc finger structures. By using a random oligonucleotide selection assay and the electromobility gel shift assay, we have revealed that the ZNF219 protein recognizes two copies of CCCCCA.