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During transfer experimental autoimmune encephalomyelitis (tEAE), myeline specific autoreactive CD4+ T cells cross the blood brain barrier at the blood vessels of the 5th lumber (L5) cord in a manner dependent on anti-gravity responses via the soleus muscles. This crossing leads to a transient development of neural inflammation. Because the pathology does not last long, negative factors at the region may be present. To investigate the existence of these negative regulators, we performed metabolite analysis of the L5 cord with or without gravity load or electrical stimulation of the soleus muscles and identified flavin-adenine dinucleotide (FAD). The amount of FAD in the L5 cord was decreased in mice suspended by their tails, which reduced the anti-gravity response from the hindlimbs, but recovered in mice with the tail suspension plus electrical stimulation in the soleus muscles. Moreover, FAD administration suppressed the EAE pathology. Thus, FAD was induced by antigravity responses in the spinal cord and suppressed the development of neuroinflammation. Therefore, FAD could be a therapeutic candidate for diseases with neuroinflammation, particularly those involving pathogenic T cells including multiple sclerosis. Funding Statement: This work was supported by KAKENHI (M. M.), the Joint Usage/Research Center Institute for Genetic Medicine, Hokkaido University (M. M.), Takeda Science Foundation (M. M.), Institute for Fermentation Osaka (M. M.), Mitsubishi Foundation (M. M.), Naito Foundation (M. M.) and Uehara Memorial Foundation (M. M.). Declaration of Interests: The authors of this manuscript have no conflicts of interest to disclose. Ethics Approval Statement: The animal experiments used in this study were approved by the Institutional Animal Care and Use Committees of Hokkaido University.

Small living insects often attach in a raspberry hole, and Japanese customers hate them. Therefore farmers in Japan are manually checking all harvested raspberries and removing ones with insects before shipping them to fresh markets. It is difficult to find them even with human eyes. Such situation cause high cost and farmer's hard work on the cultivation. In this study, machine vision to detect insects in a hole of raspberry fruit automatically was developed for substitution of human manual work. As the result of the test, insects were identified with high success rate. Although there were several failure cases, it can be considered that they are improved by taking video inside a room with a stable artificial light.

Fission-track (FT) thermochronologic analysis was performed on zircon separates from rocks in and around the Nojima fault, which was activated during the 1995 Kobe earthquake. Samples were collected from the University Group 500 m (UG-500) borehole and nearby outcrops. FT lengths in zircons from localities > 25 m away from the fault plane as well as one 0.1 m away from the fault in the footwall are characterized by concordant mean values of ∼ 10–11 μm and unimodal distributions with negative skewness, which showed no signs of appreciable reduction in FT length. In contrast, those adjacent (

We remodel the annealing kinetics of fission tracks (FTs) in zircon to fit data from 43 laboratory experiments in three earlier publications using spontaneous FT lengths in zircon from the Nisatai Dacite. Heating temperature and time are in the ranges of 350–912 °C and 10− 3–104 h, respectively. The data sets illustrate a transition in annealing process at a certain temperature zone. In order to express the annealing behavior involving the possible transitional process with improved goodness of fit, two types of models are constructed; the hybrid-linear model that consists of the fanning-linear model at high temperature and the parallel-linear model at low temperature, connected with a transitional temperature zone, and the parallel-curvilinear model that approximates smoothly the transition in the annealing process. The validity of the extrapolation of the model to geological time scale is confirmed by comparison with some deep borehole core data. The length estimates by the hybrid-linear model agree well with the borehole data, whilst the estimates by the parallel-curvilinear model show a significant disagreement with highly annealed borehole samples although this model provides good agreement with the experimental data. For the hybrid-linear model, estimates of the partial annealing zone corresponding to isothermal heating for 106 and 107 years are 281–352 °C and 262–330 °C where the top and bottom of the partial annealing zone are defined by the mean length reduction ratio of 0.4 and 0.8, respectively.

Zircon fission-track (FT) and U–Pb analyses were performed on zircon extracted from a pseudotachylyte zone and surrounding rocks of the Asuke Shear Zone (ASZ), Aichi Prefecture, Japan. The U–Pb ages of all four samples are ∼ 67–76 Ma, which is interpreted as the formation age of Ryoke granitic rocks along the ASZ. The mean zircon FT age of host rock is 73 ± 7 (2 σ ) Ma, suggesting a time of initial cooling through the zircon closure temperature. The pseudotachylyte zone however, yielded a zircon FT age of 53 ± 9 (2 σ ) Ma, statistically different from the age of the host rock. Zircon FTs showed reduced mean lengths and intermediate ages for samples adjacent to the pseudotachylyte zone. Coupled with the new zircon U–Pb ages and previous heat conduction modeling, the present FT data are best interpreted as reflecting paleothermal effects of the frictional heating of the fault. The age for the pseudotachylyte coincides with the change in direction of rotation of the Pacific plate from NW to N which can be considered to initialize the NNE–SSW trending sinistral–extensional ASZ before the Miocene clockwise rotation of SW Japan. The present study demonstrates that a history of fault motions in seismically active regions can be reconstructed by dating pseudotachylytes using zircon FT thermochronology.

This paper presents a formal model of concurrent systems to represent scopes of communication channel names precisely. The model presented here is an extension of a multiset rewriting system. A bipartite directed acyclic graph represents a concurrent system consisting of a number of processes and messages. Each process or message corresponds to a source node of the graph. Names used for communication channel in the system are sink nodes. The edges of the graph represent the scopes of the names in the system. The operational semantics of the system is given as a labeled transition system. The model presented here makes it possible to represent local names that their scope are not nested. We define an equivalence relation that two systems are equivalent not only in their behavior but extrusions of scopes of names.

Thermal annealing behavior of fission tracks (FT) has not yet been documented under short-term (

This paper presents a formal model of concurrent processes whose functions can be modified from the environments during execution. In many applications, it takes too much cost to stop the whole of the concurrent system working in distributed environments to update its components. Features of dynamic evolution that make it possible to modify functions of processes without termination are important. In this paper, a formal model of evolvable concurrent processes is presented using logical formulas of linear logic. The operational semantics is defined using a formal proof in a fragment of the sequent calculus of linear logic. A method for replacing the continuations of working processes by applications of inference rules of linear logic is presented.

Background: Acute graft-versus-host disease still represents the major factor that limits successful allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. Cytokines released by type 1 T-helper cells are thought to play a pivotal role in acute graft-versus-host disease. Objective: This study was performed to investigate whether the serum levels of soluble IL-2 receptor, IL-12, IL-18, and IFN-γ were associated with the manifestation of acute graft-versus-host disease. Methods: Serum cytokine levels were measured by sandwich ELISA in 18 patients who underwent allogeneic bone marrow transplantation. Results: Serum levels of soluble IL-2 receptor, IL-12, IL-18, and IFN-γ were increased in patients in whom acute graft-versus-host disease developed. However, only serum soluble IL-2 receptor levels were significantly related to disease severity. Serum levels of IL-12 and IL-18, both of which are mainly produced by activated macrophages, were increased in different phases of acute graft-versus-host disease, especially grade I. Serum levels of soluble IL-2 receptor and IFN-γ were significantly elevated in patients with fever. Conclusion: Serum levels of soluble IL-2 receptor were more closely related to the severity of acute graft-versus-host disease than those of IL-12, IL-18, and IFN-γ. (J Allergy Clin Immunol 2000;106:S45-50.)