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Background: Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) are an emerging threat in healthcare settings worldwide. Objectives: We evaluated the presence of carbapenemase genes in CPE in a tertiary care university hospital in Tokyo, Japan. Methods: Carbapenem-resistant clinical isolates were collected in 2018 at Teikyo University Hospital (Tokyo, Japan). Bacterial species were identified using MALDI-TOF MS. Carbapenemase production was evaluated using a carbapenemase inactivation method. The presence of carbapenemase genes was confirmed by multiplex PCR and DNA sequencing. Results: Four CPE isolates were identified: two Enterobacter cloacae complex strains and Klebsiella oxytoca and Klebsiella pneumoniae strains. Three of the isolates (E. cloacae complex and K. oxytoca) were IMP-1-type producers, including IMP-10 in their produced metallo-β-lactamase, and are epidemic in East Japan. The IMP-10-producing E. cloacae complex strain also produced CTX-M ESBL. The other CPE isolate (K. pneumoniae) is a VIM-1 producer. VIM-1-producing K. pneumoniae is epidemic in Europe, especially in Greece. Accordingly, the VIM-1 producer was isolated from a patient with a medical history in Greece. Conclusions: This study revealed the emergence of E. cloacae complex co-producing IMP-1-type carbapenemase and CTX-M ESBL, and K. pneumoniae producing VIM-1 carbapenemase in clinical isolates in Japan. Metallo-β-lactamase was the most prevalent type of carbapenemase at Teikyo University Hospital, especially IMP-1-type carbapenemase. The detection of VIM-1-producing K. pneumoniae suggests that epidemic CPE from overseas can spread to countries with low CPE prevalence, such as Japan, highlighting the need for active surveillance.

This work introduces the spectrum sensing-based deep learning approach to overcome the wireless interference in the communication-based train control application. The fourlevel- SNR classification problem in this application is defined. Recently, several works applied the end-to-end learning approach using convolutional neural networks for spectrum sensing. However, the present work points out that the over-fitting problem easily occurs if only the limited frequency selective fading conditions of a data set are considered for the training process in the end-to-end learning approach on the multiple-SNR classification. This over-fitting problem cannot be solved simply by adding more frequency selective fading conditions into the training data set because there are many possible conditions in real communication transmission. This paper then proposes a new learning network, including a new input feature that has a strong relationship with the multiple-SNR classification problem. The evaluation results suggest that the proposed approach can solve such an over-fitting problem.

Background: Carbapenemase-producing Enterobacteriaceae (CPE) are an emerging threat in healthcare settings worldwide. Objectives: We evaluated the presence of carbapenemase genes in CPE in a tertiary care university hospital in Tokyo, Japan. Methods: Carbapenem-resistant clinical isolates were collected in 2018 at Teikyo University Hospital (Tokyo, Japan). Bacterial species were identified using MALDI-TOF MS. Carbapenemase production was evaluated using a carbapenemase inactivation method. The presence of carbapenemase genes was confirmed by multiplex PCR and DNA sequencing. Results: Four CPE isolates were identified: two Enterobacter cloacae complex strains and Klebsiella oxytoca and Klebsiella pneumoniae strains. Three of the isolates (E. cloacae complex and K. oxytoca) were IMP-1-type producers, including IMP-10 in their produced metallo-β-lactamase, and are epidemic in East Japan. The IMP-10-producing E. cloacae complex strain also produced CTX-M ESBL. The other CPE isolate (K. pneumoniae) is a VIM-1 producer. VIM-1-producing K. pneumoniae is epidemic in Europe, especially in Greece. Accordingly, the VIM-1 producer was isolated from a patient with a medical history in Greece. Conclusions: This study revealed the emergence of E. cloacae complex co-producing IMP-1-type carbapenemase and CTX-M ESBL, and K. pneumoniae producing VIM-1 carbapenemase in clinical isolates in Japan. Metallo-β-lactamase was the most prevalent type of carbapenemase at Teikyo University Hospital, especially IMP-1-type carbapenemase. The detection of VIM-1-producing K. pneumoniae suggests that epidemic CPE from overseas can spread to countries with low CPE prevalence, such as Japan, highlighting the need for active surveillance.

Schizophrenia patients often manifest semantic processing deficits. It has been proposed that these deficits stem from disorganized semantic representations in the brain. However, no study has yet examined the neural correlates of semantic disorganization by directly evaluating semantic representations in the brain. We used voxelwise modeling on functional magnetic resonance imaging signals to evaluate the semantic representations associated with several thousand words in individual patient brains. We then compared the structural properties of semantic representations to those in healthy controls. The variability of semantic representations was smaller both within individual patients and across patients compared to controls. Surrogate data analysis suggests that the observed reduction in representational variability is associated with disorganization of categorical information. To our knowledge, these findings provide the first evidence for sematic disorganization in schizophrenia at the level of brain representations.

The subjective features of psychological phenomena have been studied intensively in experimental science in recent years. Although various methods have been proposed to identify subjective features of psychological phenomena, there are elusive subjective features such as the spatiotemporal structure of experience, which are difficult to capture without some additional methodological tools. We propose a new experimental method to address this challenge, which we call the contrast-based experimental phenomenological method (CEP). CEP proceeds in four steps: (i) front-loading phenomenology, (ii) online second-personal interview, (iii) questionnaire survey, and (iv) hypotheses testing. It differs from other experimental phenomenological methods in that it takes advantage of phenomenal contrasts in collecting phenomenological data. In this paper, we verify the validity and productivity of this method by applying it to binocular rivalry (BR). The study contributes to empirical research on BR in three respects. First, it provides additional evidence for existing propositions about the subjective features of BR: e.g. the proposition that the temporal dynamics of the experience depend upon subject-dependent parameters such as attentional change. Second, it deepens our understanding of the spatiotemporal structures of the transition phase of BR. Third, it elicits new research questions about depth experience and individual differences in BR. The presence of such contributions demonstrates the validity and productivity of CEP.

Introduction The pathogenicity of fatal-outbreak Acinetobacter baumannii isolates has not been fully investigated. This study aimed to compare the pathogenicity between A. baumannii clinical isolates, including multidrug-resistant A. baumannii (MDRA). Materials and methods Antibiotic susceptibility was determined by the broth microdilution method, and drug-resistant genes were characterized by PCR and sequencing. The pathogenicity of A. baumannii and antibiotic responses were evaluated using the Galleria mellonella infection model. Clinical isolates from an A. baumannii outbreak at our hospital were categorized using the pulse-field gel electrophoresis. Of the 16 isolated A. baumannii clones, 12 clones were resistant to carbapenems (meropenem and imipenem), of which 10 clones were also resistant to amikacin and ciprofloxacin (MDRAs). MDRAs had OXA-51-like β-lactamase gene harboring an insertion sequence in the promoter region and armA gene encoding 16S rRNA methyltransferase. Results Carbapenem- and/or amikacin-resistant A. baumannii were more pathogenic than carbapenem- and/or amikacin-sensitive A. baumannii in G. mellonella. MDRA isolate TK1033 was more virulent than other A. baumannii isolates. However, TK1033 was sensitive to the fourth-generation cephalosporin cefozopran in addition to minocycline, tigecycline, and polymyxins (colistin and polymyxins B) in vitro and in vivo in the MDRA-G. mellonella infection model. Conclusion Differences in pathogenicity among carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii clones are consistent with heterogeneous clinical outcomes. Strain TK1033, isolated frequently during the outbreak, was the most virulent, whereas preoutbreak isolate TK1032 was less virulent than other A. baumannii isolates. Infection by high-virulence isolates may be more prevalent during outbreaks. These strains may prove valuable for investigating MDRA virulence and novel therapeutics.

Natural visual scenes induce rich perceptual experiences that are highly diverse from scene to scene and from person to person. Here, we propose a new framework for decoding such experiences using a distributed representation of words. We used functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to measure brain activity evoked by natural movie scenes. Then, we constructed a high-dimensional feature space of perceptual experiences using skip-gram, a state-of-the-art distributed word embedding model. We built a decoder that associates brain activity with perceptual experiences via the distributed word representation. The decoder successfully estimated perceptual contents consistent with the scene descriptions by multiple annotators. Our results illustrate three advantages of our decoding framework: (1) three types of perceptual contents could be decoded in the form of nouns (objects), verbs (actions), and adjectives (impressions) contained in 10,000 vocabulary words; (2) despite using such a large vocabulary, we could decode novel words that were absent in the datasets to train the decoder; and (3) the inter-individual variability of the decoded contents co-varied with that of the contents of scene descriptions. These findings suggest that our decoding framework can recover diverse aspects of perceptual experiences in naturalistic situations and could be useful in various scientific and practical applications.

Neutrophils play a critical role in the innate immune response. Recently, a new neutrophilic biological defense mechanism, termed neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), has been attracting attention. Neutrophils have been observed to release both lysosomal enzymes and their nuclear contents, including unfolded chromatin, which together trap and inactivate bacteria. The environment in tissues where neutrophils act is thought to be different from that of the blood serum. In this study, we assessed the effect of serum on NET formation. We found that neutrophils spontaneously form NETs in serum-free cultivation conditions at early times. These NETs functioned properly to trap bacteria. Furthermore, we demonstrated that reactive oxygen species play a critical role in the spontaneous formation of NETs. These results suggest that the serum condition must be considered in studies on neutrophils, including the formation and mechanism of action of NETs.

Vegetables are eaten as part of a healthy diet throughout the world, and some are also applied topically as a traditional medicine. We evaluated the innate immunostimulating activities of hot water extracts of various vegetables using the silkworm muscle contraction assay system, and found that broccoli, Brassica oleracea var. italica, contains a strong innate immunostimulant. We purified the innate immunostimulant from broccoli, and characterized the chemical structure by chemical analyses and NMR spectroscopy. The innate immunostimulant comprised galacturonic acid, galactose, glucose, arabinose, and rhamnose, and had a pectic-like polysaccharide structure. To determine the structural motif involved in the innate immunostimulating activity, we modified the structure by chemical and enzymatic treatment, and found that the activity was attenuated by pectinase digestion. These findings suggest that a pectic-like polysaccharide purified from broccoli has innate immune-stimulating activity, for which the polygalacturonic acid structure is necessary.

Leuconostoc carnosum #7-2, L. gelidum #4-2, and L. mesenteroides 8/11-3, which were isolated from fermented plant foods, are lactic acid bacteria. We previously reported that these bacteria are functional lactic acid bacteria whose innate immunity-stimulating activities are high based on a silkworm muscle contraction assay. The concentrations of these three lactic acid bacteria increased to more than 1 × 106 colony forming units (cfu)/mL in various vegetable and fruit juices when the pH values were appropriately adjusted. As the bacteria grew in the vegetable and fruit juices, the pH decreased and the concentrations of total sugars and glucose also decreased. These findings suggest that these functional lactic acid bacteria can be used to produce vegetable and fruit juices with reduced sugar levels, which is expected to be beneficial for human health.

We screened lactic acid bacteria that exhibited high innate immunity-stimulating activity by monitoring muscle contraction activity in silkworms. Heat-treated fractions of lactic acid bacteria, Leuconostoc carnosum #7-2, Leuconostoc gelidum #4-2, and Leuconostoc mesenteroides 8/11-3, had high (250-460 units/mg) innate immunity-stimulating activity. These lactic acid bacteria proliferated in milk to concentrations of 1 × 106 colony forming unit/mL. The present findings suggest that the silkworm muscle contraction assay is useful for screening lactic acid bacteria with high innate immunity-stimulating activity, and that the assay can be used for the production of fermented foods made from milk.

The human brain can effectively learn a new task from a small number of samples, which indicates that the brain can transfer its prior knowledge to solve tasks in different domains. This function is analogous to transfer learning (TL) in the field of machine learning. TL uses a well-trained feature space in a specific task domain to improve performance in new tasks with insufficient training data. TL with rich feature representations, such as features of convolutional neural networks (CNNs), shows high generalization ability across different task domains. However, such TL is still insufficient in making machine learning attain generalization ability comparable to that of the human brain. To examine if the internal representation of the brain could be used to achieve more efficient TL, we introduce a method for TL mediated by human brains. Our method transforms feature representations of audiovisual inputs in CNNs into those in activation patterns of individual brains via their association learned ahead using measured brain responses. Then, to estimate labels reflecting human cognition and behavior induced by the audiovisual inputs, the transformed representations are used for TL. We demonstrate that our brain-mediated TL (BTL) shows higher performance in the label estimation than the standard TL. In addition, we illustrate that the estimations mediated by different brains vary from brain to brain, and the variability reflects the individual variability in perception. Thus, our BTL provides a framework to improve the generalization ability of machine-learning feature representations and enable machine learning to estimate human-like cognition and behavior, including individual variability.

Background and aims Clinical data regarding alendronate jelly are limited. We compared the efficacy and safety of once‐weekly alendronate oral jelly with once‐weekly alendronate tablet formulations in the context of primary osteoporosis. Methods In this 6‐month, open‐label, prospective, observational study, Japanese patients aged ≥60 years with primary osteoporosis were included from 14 primary care centres in Japan. The effects of once‐weekly alendronate oral jelly and tablet formulations on bone mineral density (BMD), bone turnover markers, and quality of life related to gastrointestinal symptoms were assessed at baseline and 6 months. Treatment was allocated by patient preference. This potentially confounding factor was adjusted for statistically. Results In total, 170 patients were enrolled (jelly, n = 97; tablet, n = 73). Mean percent changes in radius, lumbar spine, femoral neck, and hip BMD were similar in both treatment groups at 6 months. Both formulations decreased tartrate‐resistant acid phosphatase 5b (TRACP‐5b) and procollagen 1 N‐terminal peptide (P1NP) between baseline and 6 months (by about 50% and 60%, respectively); no significant differences in mean changes were noted in these markers between groups. At 6 months, no significant differences were noted in visual analogue scale or EuroQOL five‐dimension questionnaire scores between groups. The jelly group had significantly lower scores than the tablet group in the Izumo scale domains of heartburn (−0.81, P = 0.0040), epigastralgia (−0.94, P = 0.0003), and epigastric fullness (−0.49, P = 0.044). During treatment, more patients discontinued for upper gastrointestinal symptoms in the tablet group (n = 4) than the jelly group (n = 1). Conclusions Once‐weekly alendronate oral jelly 35 mg may be a suitable alternative therapeutic agent for primary osteoporosis in Japan.

At present, railway signalling systems in which control information is transmitted via track circuits (rails) have been deployed in many applications, such as automatic train control (ATC) systems in Japan. In these systems, it is difficult to increase the transmission speed due to the transmission characteristics of rails. To overcome this problem, we have proposed a new transmission method using orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) and evaluated a configuration in which data judgment using majority decision was applied for improving the bit error rate (BER) characteristics. In this paper, we describe an FPGA implementation of our proposed method and the performance of the implemented devices.

Expertise enables humans to achieve outstanding performance on domain-specific tasks, and programming is no exception. Many studies have shown that expert programmers exhibit remarkable differences from novices in behavioral performance, knowledge structure, and selective attention. However, the underlying differences in the brain of programmers are still unclear. We here address this issue by associating the cortical representation of source code with individual programming expertise using a data-driven decoding approach. This approach enabled us to identify seven brain regions, widely distributed in the frontal, parietal, and temporal cortices, that have a tight relationship with programming expertise. In these brain regions, functional categories of source code could be decoded from brain activity and the decoding accuracies were significantly correlated with individual behavioral performances on a source-code categorization task. Our results suggest that programming expertise is built upon fine-tuned cortical representations specialized for the domain of programming. Significance Statement The expertise needed for programming has attracted increasing interest among researchers and educators in our computerized world. Many studies have demonstrated that expert programmers exhibit superior behavioral performance, knowledge structure, and selective attention; but how their brain accommodates such superiority is not well understood. In this paper we have recorded brain activities from subjects covering a wide range of programming expertise. The results show that functional categories of source code can be decoded from their brain activity and the decoding accuracies on the seven brain regions in frontal, parietal, temporal cortices are significantly correlated with individual behavioral performances. This study provides evidence that outstanding performances of expert programmers are associated with domain-specific cortical representations in these widely distributed brain areas.

This study performed an acute oral toxicity test of 59 compounds in silkworms. These compounds are listed in OECD guidelines as standard substances for a cytotoxicity test, and median lethal dose (LD(50)) werecalculated for each compound. Acute oral LD(50) values in mammals are listed in OECD guidelines and acute oral LD(50) values in silkworms were determined in this study. R(2) for the correlation between LD(50) values in mammals and LD(50) values in silkworms was 0.66. In addition, the acute oral toxicity test in silkworms was performed by two different facilities, and test results from the facilities were highly reproducible. These findings suggest that an acute oral toxicity test in silkworms is a useful way to evaluate the toxicity of compounds in mammals.

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have been thought to be helpful for human heath in the gut as probiotics. It recently was noted that activity of LAB stimulating immune systems is important. Innate immune systems are conserved in mammals and insects. Silkworm has innate immunity in response to microbes. Microbe-associated molecular pattern (ex. peptidoglycan and β-glucan) induces a muscle contraction of silkworm larva. In this study, we established an efficient method to isolate lactic acid bacteria derived from natural products. We selected a highly active LAB to activate the innate immunity in silkworm by using the silkworm muscle contraction assay, as well. The assay revealed that Lactococcus lactis 11/19-B1 was highly active on the stimulation of the innate immunity in silkworm. L. lactis 11/19-B1 solely fermented milk with casamino acid and glucose. This strain would be a starter strain to make yogurt. Compared to commercially available yogurt LAB, L. lactis 11/19-B1 has higher activity on silkworm contraction. Silkworm normally ingested an artificial diet mixed with L. lactis 11/19-B1 or a yogurt fermented with L. lactis 11/19-B1. Interestingly, silkworms that ingested the LAB showed tolerance against the pathogenicity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These data suggest that Lactococcus lactis 11/19-B1 would be expected to be useful for making yogurt and probiotics to activate innate immunity.

Background Klebsiella pneumoniae (K. pneumoniae) carbapenemase (KPC)-producing K. pneumoniae has rapidly expanded and is associated with severe nosocomial infections. Last-line antibiotics, such as colistin and tigecycline, remain the only treatment option. This study described the genetic background of a novel pan-resistant KPC-producing K. pneumoniae isolate from Tokyo, Japan. Methods The antibiotic susceptibility of clinical isolates from a patient hospitalised in 2016 was tested using a MicroScan WalkAway instrument and the broth microdilution method. Susceptibility was defined according to breakpoints provided by the Clinical and Laboratory Standards Institute. Whole-genome sequencing was performed to detect acquired resistance genes and gene mutations. Results The isolates were identified as part of a laboratory stool and swab surveillance-screening program for infection control. The carbapenem-resistant strain was resistant to β-lactams, including broad-spectrum cephalosporins and carbapenems, and to aminoglycosides, chloramphenicol, fosfomycin, fluoroquinolones, polymyxins, tetracyclines, and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole. The K. pneumoniae isolate harboured a plasmid carrying fosA3, rmtB, blaCTX-M-65, blaSHV-12, and blaKPC-2 in a non-Tn4401 mobile element. Colistin resistance was associated with a mutation in the mgrB gene, which regulates PhoP/PhoQ. The K. pneumoniae isolate belongs to sequence type 11, which is a successful epidemic-type strain. Conclusion This study identified molecular resistance markers in a pan-resistant isolate and provided a genomic description of the pan-resistance and origins of the isolate and plasmid. The isolate is closely related to a recent highly pathogenic carbapenem-resistant K. pneumoniae identified in China; however, it lacks a virulence plasmid (but it could still act as a reservoir for a virulence plasmid). This K. pneumoniae isolate is of concern in hospital and community care settings.

We discuss our attempts to develop a short-term phenomenological training program for training naive participants in phenomenological skills. After reviewing existing methodologies for collecting phenomenological data and clarifying the benefit of the short-term training approach, we present two training programs and two experiments that tested their effectiveness. Experiment 1 tested the two-stage training program, which consists of (i) the illusion training which instructs participants to describe the experience of a visual illusion and (ii) the guidance training which offers individualized feedbacks for improving their description. This program proved effective, but also excessively skill-demanding. Experiment 2 tested the one-stage training program, consisting only of the illusion training; it was easier to use, but exhibited a smaller training effect. The paper concludes by delineating methodological lessons from the experiments focusing on three themes: (i) Individual difference in phenomenological aptitude; (ii) Bounded transferability of phenomenological skills; (iii) Active intervention in the learning process.

Introduction The pathogenicity of fatal-outbreak Acinetobacter baumannii isolates has not been fully investigated. This study aimed to compare the pathogenicity between A. baumannii clinical isolates, including multidrug-resistant A. baumannii (MDRA). Materials and methods Antibiotic susceptibility was determined by the broth microdilution method, and drug-resistant genes were characterized by PCR and sequencing. The pathogenicity of A. baumannii and antibiotic responses were evaluated using the Galleria mellonella infection model. Clinical isolates from an A. baumannii outbreak at our hospital were categorized using the pulse-field gel electrophoresis. Of the 16 isolated A. baumannii clones, 12 clones were resistant to carbapenems (meropenem and imipenem), of which 10 clones were also resistant to amikacin and ciprofloxacin (MDRAs). MDRAs had OXA-51-like β-lactamase gene harboring an insertion sequence in the promoter region and armA gene encoding 16S rRNA methyltransferase. Results Carbapenem- and/or amikacin-resistant A. baumannii were more pathogenic than carbapenem- and/or amikacin-sensitive A. baumannii in G. mellonella. MDRA isolate TK1033 was more virulent than other A. baumannii isolates. However, TK1033 was sensitive to the fourth-generation cephalosporin cefozopran in addition to minocycline, tigecycline, and polymyxins (colistin and polymyxins B) in vitro and in vivo in the MDRA-G. mellonella infection model. Conclusion Differences in pathogenicity among carbapenem-resistant A. baumannii clones are consistent with heterogeneous clinical outcomes. Strain TK1033, isolated frequently during the outbreak, was the most virulent, whereas preoutbreak isolate TK1032 was less virulent than other A. baumannii isolates. Infection by high-virulence isolates may be more prevalent during outbreaks. These strains may prove valuable for investigating MDRA virulence and novel therapeutics.

Hospital-acquired infections caused by Acinetobacter baumannii have become problematic because of high rates of drug resistance. A. baumannii is usually harmless, but it may cause infectious diseases in an immunocompromised host. Although neutrophils are the key players of the initial immune response against bacterial infection, their interactions with A. baumannii remain largely unknown. A new biological defense mechanism, termed neutrophil extracellular traps (NETs), has been attracting attention. NETs play a critical role in bacterial killing by bacterial trapping and inactivation. Many pathogenic bacteria have been reported to induce NET formation, while an inhibitory effect on NET formation is rarely reported. In the present study, to assess the inhibition of NET formation by A. baumannii, bacteria and human neutrophils were cocultured in the presence of phorbol 12-myristate 13-acetate (PMA), and NET formation was evaluated. NETs were rarely observed during the coculture despite neutrophil PMA stimulation. Furthermore, A. baumannii prolonged the lifespan of neutrophils by inhibiting NET formation. The inhibition of NET formation by other bacteria was also investigated. The inhibitory effect was only apparent with live A. baumannii cells. Finally, to elucidate the mechanism of this inhibition, neutrophil adhesion was examined. A. baumannii suppressed the adhesion ability of neutrophils, thereby inhibiting PMA-induced NET formation. This suppression of cell adhesion was partly due to suppression of the surface expression of CD11a in neutrophils. The current study constitutes the first report on the inhibition of NET formation by a pathogenic bacterium, A. baumannii, and prolonging the neutrophil lifespan. This novel pathogenicity to inhibit NET formation, thereby escaping host immune responses might contribute to a development of new treatment strategies for A. baumannii infections.

In this study, we investigate whether sparse coding helps explain the semantic representation in human cerebral cortex. We show this by using sparse coding to model semantic representation in the cerebral cortex. We propose three methods for estimating semantic representation from brain activity data. For estimating a new semantic representation, in the first method, we use only a semantic representation dictionary obtained via sparse coding. The semantic representation estimated using this method is more similar to the actual semantic representation of the cerebral cortex than that estimated without sparse coding. In the second method, we use only a brain activity dictionary obtained via sparse coding. The semantic representation estimated using this method is also better than that estimated without sparse coding. In addition, in the third method, we estimate semantic representation by applying sparse coding to both semantic representation and brain activity data. The semantic representation estimated by using this third method is better than that estimated by the first or second methods. Through the above three experiments, we have confirmed that sparse coding helps explain the semantic representation in human cerebral cortex.

Lactic acid bacteria (LAB) have high immune system-stimulating activity and are considered beneficial for human health as probiotics in the gut. The innate immune system is highly conserved between mammals and insects. Microbe-associated molecular patterns (e.g., peptidoglycan and β-glucan) induce cytokine maturation, which, in silkworm larvae, leads to muscle contraction. The purpose of this study is to find a novel probiotic by using silkworm muscle contraction assay. In the present study, we isolated LAB derived from rice bran pickles. We selected highly active LAB to activate the innate immune system of the silkworm, which was assayed based on silkworm muscle contraction. Of various LAB, L. paraplantarum 11-1 strongly stimulated innate immunity in the silkworm, leading to stronger silkworm contraction than a dairy-based LAB. Silkworms fed a diet containing L. paraplantarum 11-1 exhibited tolerance against the pathogenicity of Pseudomonas aeruginosa. These findings suggest that L. paraplantarum 11-1 could be a useful probiotic for activating innate immunity.

We screened lactic acid bacteria that exhibited high innate immunity-stimulating activity by monitoring muscle contraction activity in silkworms. Heat-treated fractions of lactic acid bacteria, Leuconostoc carnosum #7-2, Leuconostoc gelidum #4-2, and Leuconostoc mesenteroides 8/11-3, had high (250-460 units/mg) innate immunity-stimulating activity. These lactic acid bacteria proliferated in milk to concentrations of 1 × 10

Surface rolling experiments and surface durability tests were carried out using Cr−Mo and Ni−Mo pre-alloyed sintered steel spur pinion gears with different densities fabricated by powder metallurgy (P/M). The P/M gear specimens were machined from sintered packs made from the single-press single-sinter route and some were surface-rolled using a high-precision CNC form-rolling machine of two roller-dies transverse-type. A fully densified surface layer less than 2% porosity was obtained on the tooth flank approximately 0.5 mm thick when P/M pinions with a density of 7.4 Mg/m 3 or more were surface-rolled using the amount of stock rolled at 0.15 mm. The load bearing capacity of P/M pinions were estimated by gear running tests using a power re-circulating type testing rig. A counter gear was made of standard grade Cr−Mo wrought steel. All test gears were case-carburized under identical conditions and finished by grinding. The representative damages for every P/M pinion were pitting near the pitch point. The experimental results show that the load bearing capacity of surface-rolled pre-alloyed P/M gears with a density 7.40 Mg/m 3 or more completely matches that of a case-carburized Cr−Mo wrought steel gear.

During visual search, neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) discriminate the target from distractors by exhibiting stronger activation when the target appears within the receptive field than when it appears outside the receptive field. It is generally thought that such target-discriminative activity is produced by the combination of target-related facilitation and distractor-related suppression. However, little is known about how the target-discriminative activity is constituted by these two types of neural modulation. To address this issue, we recorded activity from LIP of monkeys performing a visual search task that consisted of target-present and target-absent trials. Monkeys had to make a saccade to a target in the target-present trials, whereas they had to maintain fixation in the target-absent trials, in which only distractors were presented. By introducing the activity from the latter trials as neutral activity, we were able to separate the target-discriminative activity into target-related elevation and distractor-related reduction components. We found that the target-discriminative activity of most LIP neurons consisted of the combination of target-related elevation and distractor-related reduction or only target-related elevation. In contrast, target-discriminative activity composed of only distractor-related reduction was observed for very few neurons. We also found that, on average, target-related elevation was stronger and occurred earlier compared with distractor-related reduction. Finally, we consider possible underlying mechanisms, including lateral inhibitory interactions, responsible for target-discriminative activity in visual search. The present findings provide insight into how neuronal modulations shape target-discriminative activity during visual search.

High rates of localized silicon deposition on a low temperature (473 K) substrate impinged by an under-expanded supersonic jet in a conventional non-equilibrium-plasma chemical vapor deposition process at different excitation frequencies were observed. A single 0.3-mm internal diameter nozzle was used as one of the electrodes for the capacitively coupled plasma. A SiH 4 /H 2 gas mixture at a pressure of 65 kPa was injected through the nozzle into the vacuum chamber at a pressure of 800 Pa. An under-expanded supersonic jet was generated and exhibited turbulence in the vicinity of the substrate surface. A maximum deposition rate of 4.5 μm/s was obtained 10 mm downstream from the nozzle with 0.8 W/cm 2 of 100 MHz VHF power.

During visual detection with saccades, a target with higher luminance is detected with reduced reaction times. In such visual detection behaviors, luminance-related sensory signals should be converted into movement-related signals for saccade initiation. At the site where the visuomotor transformation takes place, there is the possibility that visual activity not only encodes the target luminance but also affects the generation of an upcoming saccade. To assess this possibility, we recorded single-cell activity from visually responsive neurons in the lateral intraparietal area (LIP) when monkeys made a saccade to an isolated target over five luminance levels. We found that as stimulus luminance increased, visual response strength increased, and response onset latency decreased. These luminance-related changes in activity were significantly correlated with changes in reaction time. In particular, changes in response onset latency accounted for a substantial part of the observed changes in reaction time, suggesting that luminance-related changes in response onset latency may propagate to the saccade generation process. However, the length of time from response onset to saccade onset was not constant but increased as luminance was reduced, suggesting the existence of other luminance-dependent processing in downstream and/or parallel pathways before saccade generation. Additionally, we failed to find strong covariance between response strength or latency and reaction time when the effect of luminance changes was removed. Thus, the present results reveal how visually responsive LIP neurons contribute to saccade generation in visual detection.

The resource saving of various electronic devices and advancement are demanded. Research and development of the MEMS device are briskly done from viewpoints of a miniaturization and highly-efficient. However, tip-shaped device manufacture is easy by the MEMS, but is hard to manufacture the tertiary structure. Therefore, as nanofabrication technology aiming at the mass production of the tertiary structure, LIGA process to make a microstructure body by copying it attracts attention of resin. In this research, the electric capacity type inclination sensor which used the LIGA process is produced. By using resin molding for a manufacturing step, a production cost can be low held down compared with the existing sensor. Former, the silicon mold which has a pattern of the size of 7×7 mm and structure height 100µm using ICP dry etching was produced. In addition, we performed resin molding using the silicon mold and succeeded in the manufacture and evaluation of the angle of inclination sensor. We expect that if techniques using resin-molded parts are introduced to the low-cost mass-production of MEMS devices (including sensors), the range of applications will further expand to new areas of technology and industry.

Characteristics of very high frequency plasma produced by a balanced power feeding method were experimentally and numerically investigated by comparison with those of a conventional power feeding method. The measurement results of the plasma parameters in H 2 or SiH 4 /H 2 plasma showed that the electron density was a few times higher and the gas pressure at which the plasma was stably sustained was much higher than that in the conventional power feeding. In addition, the electron temperature and the sheath potential near a substrate were lower by about 30%. The numerical simulation in accordance with the experimental condition suggested that the completely floating electrodes cause the decrease of the sheath potential. These characteristics of the plasma parameters seem to be effective for the decrease of ion bombardment damage. As a result of the microcrystalline silicon thin film fabrication, it was showed that the defect density in the balanced power feeding was lower.

Current models of the functional architecture of human cortex emphasize areas that capture coarse-scale features of cortical topography but provide no account for population responses that encode information in fine-scale patterns of activity. Here, we present a linear model of shared representational spaces in human cortex that captures fine-scale distinctions among population responses with response-tuning basis functions that are common across brains and models cortical patterns of neural responses with individual-specific topographic basis functions. We derive a common model space for the whole cortex using a new algorithm, searchlight hyperalignment, and complex, dynamic stimuli that provide a broad sampling of visual, auditory, and social percepts. The model aligns representations across brains in occipital, temporal, parietal, and prefrontal cortices, as shown by between-subject multivariate pattern classification and intersubject correlation of representational geometry, indicating that structural principles for shared neural representations apply across widely divergent domains of information. The model provides a rigorous account for individual variability of well-known coarse-scale topographies, such as retinotopy and category selectivity, and goes further to account for fine-scale patterns that are multiplexed with coarse-scale topographies and carry finer distinctions.

Hospital-acquired infections as a result of Acinetobacter baumannii have become problematic because of high rates of drug resistance. Although neutrophils play a critical role in early protection against bacterial infection, their interactions with A. baumannii remain largely unknown. To elucidate the interactions between A. baumannii and human neutrophils, we cocultured these cells and analyzed them by microscopy and flow cytometry. We found that A. baumannii adhered to neutrophils. We next examined neutrophil and A. baumannii infiltration into Matrigel basement membranes by an in vitro transmigration assay. Neutrophils were activated by A. baumannii, and invasion was enhanced. More interestingly, A. baumannii was transported together by infiltrating neutrophils. Furthermore, we observed by live cell imaging that A. baumannii and neutrophils moved together. In addition, A. baumannii-activated neutrophils showed increased IL-8 production. The transport of A. baumannii was suppressed by inhibiting neutrophil infiltration by blocking the effect of IL-8. A. baumannii appears to use neutrophils for transport by activating these cells via IL-8. In this study, we revealed a novel bacterial transport mechanism that A. baumannii exploits human neutrophils by adhering to and inducing IL-8 release for bacterial portage. This mechanism might be a new treatment target.

Drugs are commonly used in combinations larger than two for treating bacterial infection. However, it is generally impossible to infer directly from the effects of individual drugs the net effect of a multidrug combination. Here we develop a mechanism-independent method for predicting the microbial growth response to combinations of more than two drugs. Performing experiments in both Gram-negative ( Escherichia coli) and Gram-positive ( Staphylococcus aureus ) bacteria, we demonstrate that for a wide range of drugs, the bacterial responses to drug pairs are sufficient to infer the effects of larger drug combinations. To experimentally establish the broad applicability of the method, we use drug combinations comprising protein synthesis inhibitors (macrolides, aminoglycosides, tetracyclines, lincosamides, and chloramphenicol), DNA synthesis inhibitors (fluoroquinolones and quinolones), folic acid synthesis inhibitors (sulfonamides and diaminopyrimidines), cell wall synthesis inhibitors, polypeptide antibiotics, preservatives, and analgesics. Moreover, we show that the microbial responses to these drug combinations can be predicted using a simple formula that should be widely applicable in pharmacology. These findings offer a powerful, readily accessible method for the rational design of candidate therapies using combinations of more than two drugs. In addition, the accurate predictions of this framework raise the question of whether the multidrug response in bacteria obeys statistical, rather than chemical, laws for combinations larger than two.

Humans and animals seek appropriate solutions to novel problems through trial-and-error (TE) actions and observation of their outcomes. Once an individual has obtained the knowledge (rule) to solve a problem, knowledge-based (KB) actions may be applied in a stereotypical manner. Solutions can thus be based on TE or KB actions. To characterize this learning process at the behavioral level, we developed a new cognitive task for a laboratory monkey (Macaca fuscata) to perform. In this task, a search array consisting of six elements of different colors was presented, one of which was the behaviorally relevant target. The target color was changed unpredictably with no instruction or signal, requiring the monkey to use a TE search strategy to find the target color. We found that once the monkey identified the relevant color by chance after a color change, correct performance increased in a step-like manner and at the same time, other response properties (reaction time and color-choice tendency) also changed discontinuously. These step-like alternations in behavioral performance may be attributed to the subject's switching between TE and KB search strategies in the two phases. The present study has therefore provided behavioral evidence for the timing and manner of switching between search strategies during the process of updating knowledge.