It is widely accepted that vitamin E (VE) acts as an antioxidant and is involved in various metabolic systems including the regulation of gene expression and inhibition of cell proliferation. The most predominant isoform of VE in the living body is α-tocopherol. However, the influence of α-tocopherol on bone marrow mesenchymal cells (BMMCs) in a background of type II diabetes mellitus (DM) has not been investigated.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFParkinson's disease (PD) is a chronic, progressive neurodegenerative disease characterized by both motor and nonmotor features. The diagnose of PD is based on a review of patients' signs and symptoms, and neurological and physical examinations. So far, no tests have been devised that can conclusively diagnose PD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFCrystal lattices with tetragonal or hexagonal structure often exhibit structural transitions in response to external stimuli. Similar behaviour is anticipated for the lattice forms of topological spin textures, such as lattices composed of merons and antimerons or skyrmions and antiskyrmions (types of vortex related to the distribution of electron spins in a magnetic field), but has yet to be verified experimentally. Here we report real-space observations of spin textures in a thin plate of the chiral-lattice magnet CoZnMn, which exhibits in-plane magnetic anisotropy.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFFour thermally cleavable polythiophene derivatives containing carbonate and solubilizing groups were synthesized for noncovalent modification of single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs). A well-dispersed polythiophene/SWCNTs composite was obtained by adsorption of the polymer at the SWCNT surface. The solution-processed composite film exhibited solid-state thermal cleavage of the insulating solubilizing group through decarboxylation, producing an insoluble composite film.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFOptical properties of aqueous colloidal dispersions of 2D electrolytes, if their aspect ratios are extra-large, can be determined by their orientation preferences. Recently, we reported that a colloidal dispersion of diamagnetic titanate(IV) nanosheets (TiNSs), when placed in a magnetic field, is highly anisotropic because TiNS anomalously orients its 2D plane orthogonal to the magnetic flux lines due to its large anisotropic magnetic susceptibility. Herein, we report a serendipitous finding that TiNSs can be in situ photochemically reduced into a paramagnetic species (TiNSs), so that their preference of magnetic orientation changes from orthogonal to parallel.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFArtificial RING fingers (ARFs) are created by transplanting active sites of RING fingers onto cross-brace structures. Human hydroxymethylglutaryl-coenzyme A reductase degradation protein 1 (HRD1) is involved in the degradation of the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) proteins. HRD1 possesses the RING finger domain (HRD1_RING) that functions as a ubiquitin-ligating (E3) enzyme.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe authors reported a rare case of young women with neurofibromatosis type I (NF-I) who were successfully treated from the traumatic dislocation of a thoracic vertebra caused by a simple fall, and the relevant literature was reviewed. Due to various spinal dystrophic changes, the conventional posterior spinal fusion surgery was modified for the treatment. Spinal deformity is a common feature of NF-1, and a dystrophic lesion, like dural ectasia, provokes weakness in spinal structural.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIntroduction: A myelolipoma is a rare benign tumor that is composed of adipose tissue and hematopoietic elements. Myelolipomas most commonly occur in the unilateral adrenal gland. Posterior mediastinal myelolipomas are extremely rare.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMagnetic skyrmions are vortex-like topological spin textures often observed to form a triangular-lattice skyrmion crystal in structurally chiral magnets with the Dzyaloshinskii-Moriya interaction. Recently, β-Mn structure-type Co-Zn-Mn alloys were identified as a new class of chiral magnet to host such skyrmion crystal phases, while β-Mn itself is known as hosting an elemental geometrically frustrated spin liquid. We report the intermediate composition system CoZnMn to be a unique host of two disconnected, thermal-equilibrium topological skyrmion phases; one is a conventional skyrmion crystal phase stabilized by thermal fluctuations and restricted to exist just below the magnetic transition temperature , and the other is a novel three-dimensionally disordered skyrmion phase that is stable well below .
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: The significance of the nutritional status in idiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is largely unknown. Temporal body weight (BW) change, a dynamic index of nutrition status, can detect the malnutrition more accurately than the conventional single-point body mass index evaluation.
Objective: To investigate how the temporal BW change influences the clinical courses of IPF.
An optofluidic diffusion sensor using laser-induced dielectrophoresis in a device with a sputtered a-Si:H layer is presented. Diffusion sensors enabling high-speed measurement have important potential uses as bio-sensors and for quantitative analysis of nano-sized products. The present sensor was developed for measurement in a few seconds by optic observations of the sample diffusion from transient grating formed by laser-induced dielectrophoresis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe ultimate goal of multiferroic research is the development of a new-generation nonvolatile memory devices, where magnetic bits are controlled via electric fields with low energy consumption. Here, we demonstrate the optical identification of magnetoelectric (ME) antiferromagnetic (AFM) domains in the LiCoPO_{4} exploiting the strong absorption difference between the domains. This unusual contrast, also present in zero magnetic field, is attributed to the dynamic ME effect of the spin-wave excitations, as confirmed by our microscopic model, which also captures the characteristics of the observed static ME effect.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDynamics of string-like objects is an important issue in a broad range of physical systems, including vortex lines in superconductors, viscoelastic polymers, and superstrings in elementary particle physics. In noncentrosymmetric magnets, string forms of magnetic skyrmions are present as topological spin objects, and their current-induced dynamics has recently attracted intense interest. We show in the chiral magnet MnSi that the current-induced deformation dynamics of skyrmion strings results in transport response associated with the real-space Berry phase.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFDiclofenac is widely distributed in freshwater environments. To support a robust aquatic risk assessment, medaka (Oryzias latipes) were exposed to diclofenac at sublethal concentrations of 0.608, 2.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFIdiopathic pulmonary fibrosis (IPF) is a disease of unknown etiology which accounts for a large proportion of cases of idiopathic interstitial pneumonia. It has a very poor prognosis with a 5-year survival rate of 30% or below, and so far there has been no guideline in Japan offering an established effective therapy based on evidence. In addition to the establishment of basic therapies, there is also an urgent need to establish therapies to deal with complications, as death occurs in many cases due to acute exacerbation or comorbid lung cancer.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFSingle embryo culture is useful for assessing the developmental competence of an embryo in detail. Recently, a device made of poly(dimethylsiloxane) (PDMS), which is biocompatible and nontoxic, has been widely used for culture various types of cells. However, PDMS plates are porous, causing the serious osmolality increment of the medium (over 600 mOsm/kg from Day 4 to Day 7).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFPrions are composed solely of the pathological isoform (PrP) of the normal cellular prion protein (PrP). Identification of different PrP structures is crucially important for understanding prion biology because the pathogenic properties of prions are hypothesized to be encoded in the structures of PrP However, these structures remain yet to be identified, because of the incompatibility of PrP with conventional high-resolution structural analysis methods. Previously, we reported that the region between the first and the second α-helix (H1∼H2) of PrP might cooperate with the more C-terminal side region for efficient interactions with PrP From this starting point, we created a series of PrP variants with two cysteine substitutions (C;C-PrP) forming a disulfide-crosslink between H1∼H2 and the distal region of the third helix (Ctrm).
View Article and Find Full Text PDFObjectives: Primary meningiomas arising outside the intracranial component are rather rare and have been termed primary extradural meningiomas(PEMs). We present a case of an intraosseous-type PEM occurring at a high convexity location and discuss the clinical characteristics of PEMs.
Case: An 80-year-old woman presented with a soft and painless subcutaneous mass of approximately 10 cm in diameter in the right parietal region, which had appeared 1 year previously.
The selective vulnerability of distinct regions of the brain is a critical factor in neurodegenerative disorders. In Alzheimer's disease (AD), neurons in hippocampus situated in medial temporal lobe are immensely damaged. Identifying tissue-specific variants is essential in order to perceive the selective vulnerability in AD.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFMicroRNA (miRNA) transfection is known to degrade target mRNAs and to decrease mRNA expression. In contrast to the notion that most of the gene expression alterations caused by miRNA transfection involve downregulation, they often involve both up- and downregulation; this phenomenon is thought to be, at least partially, mediated by sequence-nonspecific off-target effects. In this study, I used tensor decomposition-based unsupervised feature extraction to identify genes whose expression is likely to be altered by miRNA transfection.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe recent discovery of topological Dirac semimetals (DSMs) has provoked intense curiosity not only regarding Weyl physics in solids but also about topological phase transitions originating from DSMs. One specific area of interest is controlling the dimensionality to realize two-dimensional quantum phases such as quantum Hall and quantum spin Hall states. For investigating these phases, the Fermi level is a key controlling parameter.
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