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The relationship between the type of retinal ganglion cell (RGC) and the retinoreceptive layer of the tectum is investigated by the immunostaining of RGCs with nicotinic acetylcholine receptor β2 (nAChR β2) antibody and intracellular staining by DiI and also by anterograde degeneration and biotinylated dextran amine labeling of retinotectal fibers in chicks. The results strongly suggest that many of the RGCs that express immunoreactivity to nAChR β2 send axons to tectal layer 7 and are mainly classified into the simple-type of Groups II and III, which contain the cells providing middle-sized to large dendritic fields with simple dendritic arborization. These nAChR β2-immunoreactive RGCs receive visual information via the multiple sublayers of the inner plexiform layer. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cultivating preservice teachers' shutaisei has been the focus of Japanese university-based teacher education since the late 1990s. This article contains the self-study of three teacher educators at different Japanese universities. All three of us believe that helping students cultivate their shutaisei should be an important part of our teaching practices; however, framing shutaisei and pursuing it in practice poses complex dilemmas. In this article, we explore our individual understandings of shutaisei's meaning in theory and practice, and reflect on how and why we considered it in these ways. We discussed our practices every two weeks online; all the conversations were videotaped and analyzed. Ultimately, through this self-study, we (teacher educators) found: (1) We had defined what shutaisei means based on our own educational experiences; and (2) We had suggested our own shutaisei to the students without being aware that it is based on our own educational experience. Teacher education institutions, we recommend, should provide opportunities for faculty members to explore themselves and their practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We describe the desymmetrization of meso-glutaric anhydrides to chiral hemiesters using a bench-stable homodinuclear Ni2-(Schiff base) complex as the catalyst in good to excellent yield (up to 99%) and enantioselectivity (up to 94%). Using the opposite enantiomer of the catalyst, we obtained the same yield and enantioselectivity with the opposite configuration, thereby gaining access to both hemiester enantiomers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: The 70S Escherichia coli ribosome dimerizes to form an inactive 100S ribosome during stationary phase, which is called “ribosome hibernation”. The hibernation promoting factor HPF plays a crucial role in 100S ribosome formation. However, YfiA, a known paralog of HPF inhibits 100S formation, although it shares high sequence similarity. Here, we report the first solution structure of HPF as determined by multi-dimensional NMR. HPF adopts βαβββα-fold and the overall structure is similar to YfiA as expected. However, detailed structure comparison based on the determined structure in this study revealed that there are remarkable differences around the C-terminal portion of helix α2, which is not predicted by homology modeling. Furthermore, some acidic residues conserved only in HPF are located at the rim of the common basic patch. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

The article presents a study which aims to identify the inducer of sexual differentiation in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. It states that the mitochondrial glutamy's tRNA synthetas (mGluRS) and cytoplastic glutamyl tRNA synthetase (cGluRS) interacts with Moc3. It notes that the disruption of the two indicates that they are essential to the cell growth of S. pombe. The study found out that amino acids induced sexual differentiation in S. pombe.

Abstract: Rietveld analysis of the powder X-ray diffraction of a new layered oxyarsenide, LaNiOAs, which was synthesized by solid-state reactions, revealed that LaNiOAs belongs to the tetragonal ZrCuSiAs-type structure (P4/nmm) and is composed of alternating stacks of La–O and Ni–As layers. The electrical and magnetic measurements demonstrated that LaNiOAs exhibits a superconducting transition at 2.4K, and above this, LaNiOAs shows metallic conduction and Pauli paramagnetism. The diamagnetic susceptibility measured at 1.8K corresponded to ∼20% of perfect diamagnetic susceptibility, substantiating that LaNiOAs is a bulk superconductor. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Reverse transcription–polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR) identified the expression of calcium-binding protein S100A5 in the noncancerous parts of resected samples from renal cell carcinoma (RCC) patients (n = 7) but not in the carcinoma lesions. Rabbit anti-S100A5 antibody immunohistochemically detected the antigen in the thick ascending limb of Henle, distal convoluted tubule, and collecting duct system. No apparent immunopositivity was observed in the glomerulus, proximal tubules, interstitial cells, or RCC cells. Thus, it was suggested that S100A5 protein plays an inherent functional role to the post-thick ascending limb of Henle portion in the nephron. Further, the carcinomas tested were originated probably not in the S100A5-positive distal epithelium but in the -negative epithelium of proximal tubules. Then, total RNA was extracted by phenol/chloroform from 1 ml urine of healthy volunteers, and S100A5 was amplified by RT-PCR from all samples (n = 12), indicating that the transcript of S100A5 is detectable even in the cells released into urine. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

We achieved a formal total synthesis of scytophycin C. The synthesis demonstrates the utility of the catalytic asymmetric direct thioamide-aldol reaction for the preparation of polyketide structures, and was accomplished via diastereoselective allylation, and allylative cyclization as other key transformations. The reported process accesses Miyashita’s key fragment corresponding to the C7–C18 framework in fewer steps (14 steps) than in previously reported syntheses. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) are known to have beneficial effects on immune responses when they are orally administered as bacterial products. Although the beneficial effects of LAB have been reported for the genera Lactobacillus and Lactococcus, little has been uncovered on the effects of the genus Enterococcus on skin wound-healing. In this study, we aimed to clarify the effect of heat-killed Enterococcus faecalis KH2 (heat-killed KH2) strain on the wound-healing process and to evaluate the therapeutic potential in chronic skin wounds. We analyzed percent wound closure, re-epithelialization, and granulation area, and cytokine and growth factor production. We found that heat-killed KH2 contributed to the acceleration of re-epithelialization and the formation of granulation tissue by inducing tumor necrosis factor-α, interleukin-6, basic fibroblast growth factor, transforming growth factor (TGF)-β1, and vascular endothelial growth factor production. In addition, heat-killed KH2 also improved wound closure, which was accompanied by the increased production of TGF-β1 in diabetic mice. Topical administration of heat-killed KH2 might have therapeutic potential for the treatment of chronic skin wounds in diabetes mellitus. In the present study, we concluded that heat-killed KH2 promoted skin wound-healing through the formation of granulation tissues and the production of inflammatory cytokines and growth factors. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Boronic acid derivatives of tyropeptin were synthesized with TP-110 as the lead compound. Due to the lability of the aminoboronic acid moiety, careful design of the deprotection and coupling sequence was required. Liquid–liquid partition chromatography was found to be a powerful tool for purification of compounds of this class. The obtained derivatives showed potent inhibitory activities against the human 20S proteasome in vitro. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

A layered oxyphosphide, LaNiOP, was synthesized by solid-state reactions. This crystal was confirmed to have a layered structure composed of an alternating stack of (La3+O2-)+ and (Ni2+P3-)-. We found that the resulting LaNiOP shows a superconducting transition at ~3 K. This material exhibited metallic conduction and Pauli paramagnetism in the temperature range of 4-300 K. The resistivity sharply dropped to zero and the magnetic susceptibility became negative at <4 K, indicating that a superconducting transition occurs. The volume fraction of the superconducting phase estimated from the diamagnetic susceptibility reached ~40 vol % at 1.8 K, substantiating that LaNiOP is a bulk superconductor. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Titelbild: Hydrophobic Monomers Recognize Microenvironments in Hydrogel Microspheres during Free-Radical-Seeded Emulsion Polymerization (Angew. Keywords: cryo-electron microscopy; hydrogel microspheres; microgels; nanocomposite materials; seeded emulsion polymerization EN cryo-electron microscopy hydrogel microspheres microgels nanocomposite materials seeded emulsion polymerization 8809 8809 1 05/27/20 20200602 NES 200602 B Kryo-Elektronenmikrographie b wurde verwendet, um die dreidimensionale Struktur von Mikrogelen präzise zu bestimmen und Einblick in die Wechselwirkung zwischen kleinen hydrophoben Molekülen und den Mikrogelen zu gewinnen. Cryo-electron microscopy, hydrogel microspheres, microgels, nanocomposite materials, seeded emulsion polymerization. [Extracted from the article]

Host‐guest conjugate is a promising strategy for providing outstanding molecules. Herein, we designed host‐guest conjugate HG1, which comprises a hydrophilic host unit, tetraaza[2.2.1.2.2.1]paracyclophane CPX2 with a microhydrophobic cavity, and a guest unit, 2,3‐naphthalimide fused with two benzothiophenes G1 exhibiting fluorosolvatochromism, linked with an oxyethylene chain. HG1 initially showed a fluorescence band at 585 nm in MeOH/H2O (1/499 v/v); however, this band decreased with time, and instead, a new band at 430 nm appeared. The CIE chromaticity diagram showed that the fluorescent color changed from yellow‐orange to blue via white. NMR analysis of HG1 in methanol‐d4 exhibited different signals of the G1 unit between the blue and yellow fluorescent structures. The blue fluorescent structures showed asymmetrical signals assigned as the G1 unit, affected by the cavity environment of the CPX2 unit. Consequently, HG1 can form two conformations: In‐form and Out‐form. In In‐form, the G1 unit is inside the hydrophobic cavity of the CPX2 unit and shows blue fluorescence. In Out‐form, the G1 unit is outside the CPX2 unit and shows yellow fluorescence in an aqueous solvent. Therefore, HG1 performs as a ratiometric fluorophore depending on the in/out isomerism of the host‐guest conjugate. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have previously identified Ertredin (3-(2-amino-5-bromophenyl) quinoxalin-2(1H)-one) as a compound that suppresses 3D spheroid formation and tumorigenesis in NIH3T3 cells induced by Epidermal Growth Factor Receptor variant III (EGFRvIII) transduction. One of its targets has been shown to be NDUFA12 (NADH Dehydrogenase (Ubiquinone) 1 Alpha Subcomplex Subunit 12), a component protein of oxidative phosphorylation complex I. In this report, we compared the growth inhibitory activity of Ertredin with its methylated analogue 7MeERT (3-(2-amino-5-bromophenyl)-7-methylquinoxalin-2(1H)-one) on human cancer cells. 7MeERT induced the inhibition of the proliferation of various cancer cells similarly to Ertredin and showed higher activity in glioblastoma cells, A431 cells overexpressing EGFR (wild type), and multiple myeloma cells. Molecular docking analysis and a Cellular Thermal Shift Assay (CETSA) suggested that 7MeERT binds to NDUFA12 similarly to Ertredin. The binding of 7MeERT and Ertredin to NDUFA12 in glioblastoma was further supported by the inhibition of the oxygen consumption rate. These results suggest that 7MeERT also binds to NDUFA12, inhibits oxidative phosphorylation, and has a higher anti-cancer cell growth inhibitory activity than Ertredin. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Providing accessibility information about sidewalks for people with difficulties with moving is an important social issue. We previously proposed a fully supervised machine learning approach for providing accessibility information by estimating road surface conditions using wheelchair accelerometer data with manually annotated road surface condition labels. However, manually annotating road surface condition labels is expensive and impractical for extensive data. This paper proposes and evaluates a novel method for estimating road surface conditions without human annotation by applying weakly supervised learning. The proposed method only relies on positional information while driving for weak supervision to learn road surface conditions. Our results demonstrate that the proposed method learns detailed and subtle features of road surface conditions, such as the difference in ascending and descending of a slope, the angle of slopes, the exact locations of curbs, and the slight differences of similar pavements. The results demonstrate that the proposed method learns feature representations that are discriminative for a road surface classification task. When the amount of labeled data is 10% or less in a semi-supervised setting, the proposed method outperforms a fully supervised method that uses manually annotated labels to learn feature representations of road surface conditions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent expansion of intelligent gadgets, such as smartphones and smart watches, familiarizes humans with sensing their activities. We have been developing a road accessibility evaluation system inspired by human sensing technologies. This paper introduces our methodology to estimate road accessibility from the three-axis acceleration data obtained by a smart phone attached on a wheelchair seat, such as environmental factors, e.g., curbs and gaps, which directly influence wheelchair bodies, and human factors, e.g., wheelchair users' feelings of tiredness and strain. Our goal is to realize a system that provides the road accessibility visualization services to users by online/offline pattern matching using impersonal models, while gradually learning to improve service accuracy using new data provided by users. As the first step, this paper evaluates features acquired by the DCNN (deep convolutional neural network), which learns the state of the road surface from the data in supervised machine learning techniques. The evaluated results show that the features can capture the difference of the road surface condition in more detail than the label attached by us and are effective as the means for quantitatively expressing the road surface condition. This paper developed and evaluated a prototype system that estimated types of ground surfaces focusing on knowledge extraction and visualization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mechanistic target of rapamycin (mTOR) is a serine/threonine kinase that regulates cell growth, metabolism and survival. In cardiomyocytes, mTOR is inhibited by oxidative stress partly through intermolecular disulfide bond formation at Cysteine 1483, which negatively regulates cell survival and mitochondrial function. However, the mechanism by which the disulfide bond formation inhibits mTOR remains unknown. Deptor is a component of the mTOR complex 1 (mTORC1) and an endogenous inhibitor of mTOR. Here we show that Deptor forms an intermolecular disulfide bond with mTOR. In the presence of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2, 100 nM), both Deptor and mTOR exhibited a band shift to a high molecular weight in Western blot analyses using non-reducing SDS-PAGE, suggesting that Deptor and mTOR are subjected to oxidative posttranslational modifications. The band shift was not observed in other components of mTORC1, such as Raptor, MLST8 and Pras40. H2O2 promoted the binding of Deptor to mTOR, which was inhibited by dithiothreitol, a reducing agent that cleaves disulfide bonds, or in the presence of mTOR-Cys1483Phe mutant. Knockdown of Deptor with short hairpin RNA (shDeptor) abolished the H2O2-induced band shift of mTOR. Thus, Deptor forms a disulfide bond with mTOR at Cys1483 in response to oxidative stress. In addition, shDeptor normalized H2O2-induced decreases in phosphorylation of mTORC1 substrates, such as S6 kinase and 4EBP1, suggesting that Deptor mediates H2O2-induced inhibition of mTORC1. shDeptor also inhibited H2O2-induced cardiomyocyte death, an effect which was diminished in the presence of rapamycin, an inhibitor of mTORC1 (relative cell viability: control: 1; control H2O2: 0.45; shDeptor H2O2: 0.81; Rapamycin/H2O2: 0.48; Rapamycin/shDeptor/H2O2: 0.48*, P<0.05 vs shDeptor H2O2). These results suggest that Deptor mediates oxidative stress-induced mTOR inhibition through formation of a disulfide bond with mTOR at Cys1483, which in turn negatively regulates cardiomyocyte survival. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we fabricated a photoelectrochemical circuit using GaInAsP photonic crystal nanolasers as a working electrode. Then, we controlled the emission intensity and lasing wavelength of these nanolasers by applying a bias voltage in an ionic solution. The electrochemical working points for the emission intensity and wavelength were observed for the backward and forward biases, respectively. We confirmed that the emission intensity is primarily changed by the surface recombination, which is enhanced by the Schottky barrier near the solid–liquid interface. The wavelength shift is also assumed to be caused by the Pockels effect in the electric double layer of the solution. This control method can maximize and stabilize the performance of photonic biochemical sensors and also become an option in controlling the laser diode characteristics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article reports on the iron-based layered superconductor LaOFeAs with transition temperature (Tc). It discusses the superconducting transition of the chemical compound under doping with negatively charged fluorine ions at the negatively charged oxygen site, in which it exhibits Curie-Weiss-like behavior in the normal conducting state.