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Purpose: The present study aimed to longitudinally clarify differences in physical fitness between Japanese kindergarteners who experienced school closure due to COVID-19 (COVID-19 pandemic group) and those who did not (control group). Methods: For the COVID-19 pandemic group, 51 three-year-old children underwent physical fitness measurements at three years old in November 2019, four years old in November 2020, and five years old in November 2021. In the control group, 52 three-year-old children underwent similar measurements at three years old in November 2017, four years old in November 2018, and five years old in November 2019. For physical fitness measurements, we performed an analysis of variance (ANOVA) of group × time for each gender. Results: Regarding body support duration, the COVID-19 pandemic group performed significantly lower than the control group at four and five years old. Conclusion: The present study longitudinally revealed that muscle endurance among Japanese kindergarteners who experienced school closure due to COVID-19 was impaired.

This study investigates the effect of spatial receive diversity on specific absorption rate (SAR) reduction based on outage probability analysis for wireless capsule endoscope (WCE). The communication performance of WCE depends much on the transmit power, which is strictly regulated in order to satisfy a safety guideline in terms of SAR, whereas WCE requires high communication performance due to its real-time data transmission. For the purpose of SAR reduction for a WCE scenario, the authors pay attention to the expectation that applying spatial diversity reception to WCE systems can not only improve the wireless communication performance but also reduce SAR. To begin with, based on finite-difference time-domain simulations with a numerical human body model, the outage probability is calculated under this implant propagation channel and the required transmit power is derived to secure a permissible outage probability. Then, the local peak SAR is calculated under the required transmit power when the WCE moves through the digestive organs. Finally, the simulation results demonstrate that applying spatial diversity reception can significantly reduce SAR for WCE.

SUMMARY One of promising application offered by implant body area networks (BANs) is a capsule endoscope localization system. To begin with, this paper performs finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations on implant BAN propagation with a numerical human model, and investigates the propagation characteristics of implant BAN signals at 400 MHz medical implant communication service (MICS) band. Then, the paper presents a capsule endoscope localization system which utilizes only received signal strength indicator (RSSI) and two estimation methods, such as a maximum likelihood (ML) estimation method and a least squares (LS) method. Furthermore, we evaluate the two localization methods by two computer simulation scenarios. Our computer simulation results demonstrate that the ML localization can improve the location estimation accuracy as compared with the LS localization, that is, our performance comparison reveals that a careful consideration the propagation characteristics of implant BANs signals is efficient in terms of estimation performance improvement in capsule endoscope localization.

The (pro)renin receptor [(P)RR] is a single transmembrane protein with a large N-terminal extracellular domain and a short C-terminal cytoplasmic domain. Three molecular forms of (P)RR are known: a full-length form, a C-terminal truncated soluble form [s(P)RR], and an N-terminal truncated transmembrane form (M8-9 fragment). It has been reported that (P)RR forms homodimer, but the region participating in dimerization is unknown. Here we report that the extracellular domain of (P)RR participate in dimerization. Using secretory glutathione S-transferase (GST) as a fusion tag, we developed an in vivo pull-down assay to investigate (P)RR dimerization in the cell. GST-tagged extracellular domain (amino acid residues 17-304) of human (P)RR [GST-ECD], as well as full-length (P)RR [GST-Full] and M8-9 fragment [GST-M8-9], was retained in the cell, while GST alone was efficiently secreted into the culture medium when transiently expressed in COS-7 cells. Consistent with this observation, immunofluorescence microscopy showed prominent localization of GST-ECD to the ER. In vivo GST pull-down experiments revealed that GST-ECD as well as GST-Full bound FLAG-tagged full-length (P)RR, whereas GST-M8-9 bound it little, if any, when transiently coexpressed in HEK293T cells. To investigate whether s(P)RR can form heterodimer with full-length (P)RR, we established a CHO cell line stably expressing human (P)RR with C-terminal 10His-tag. All three forms of (P)RR were detected in the cell lysate and only s(P)RR was detected in the culture medium. Full-length (P)RR and s(P)RR were prominently localized to the ER as observed by immunofluorescence microscopy. Pull down experiment using His-tag affinity resin showed coprecipitation of s(P)RR with full-length (P)RR. These results indicate that the extracellular domain of (P)RR participates in dimerization.