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The Borromean halo nucleus 6He has been studied by a kinematically complete measurement of Coulomb and nuclear breakup into α + 2n on Pb and C targets at 70 MeV/nucleon. Fully quantum-mechanical four-body breakup calculations reproduce the energy and angular differential cross sections below E rel ∼ 1 MeV for both targets. The model used here reproduces the 6He ground-state properties as well as α-n and n-n scattering data and predicts an average opening angle 〈 θ n n 〉 of 68∘ between the two halo neutrons. However, the model underestimates the breakup cross sections for higher E rel , indicating a possible contribution from the inelastic breakup. Alternatively, we examine the empirically modified calculations that reproduce the energy-differential cross sections for a wide range of scattering angles for both targets. The extracted B(E1) peaks at E rel ∼ 1.4 MeV and amounts to 1.6(2) e2 fm2 for E rel ≤ 20 MeV, resulting 〈 θ n n 〉 = 56 − 10 + 9 degrees. In either interpretation, the current results show evidence of the dineutron spatial correlation in 6He.

Background: Japan had a tuberculosis (TB) notification rate of 13.9 per 100 000 population in 2016. Objectives: To characterise TB-related enquiries received by the Research Institute of Tuberculosis, Tokyo, Japan, between January 2014 and December 2016. Design: A descriptive study of the time, place and other attributes of the enquiries. Results: A total of 1864 enquiries were listed for analysis. On average, 51.8 enquiries (range 30-77) were received per month. The enquiry rates were highest for Yamanashi (5.87/100 000) and Kochi (5.77) Prefectures, and lowest in Miyazaki (0.45) and Saga (0.48) Prefectures. Enquirers belonged mostly to local governments (n = 1212, 65%) and health care facilities (n = 386, 21%), and included medical doctors (n = 412, 22%), nurses (n = 926, 50%) and the general public (n = 150, 8.0%). Most enquiries concerned TB diagnosis and treatment (n = 475, 25%), including diagnosis in general (n = 38, 2.0%), laboratory diagnosis (n = 83, 4.5%), anti-tuberculosis treatment in general (n = 62, 3.3%) and the management of comorbidities or adverse events (n = 60, 3.2%), followed by contact investigations (n = 371, 20%). Conclusions: As most enquiries concerned the diagnosis and treatment of TB, the Ministry of Health of Japan should maintain a number of specialised TB institutions with TB clinicians to provide technical assistance.

In this paper, the design of symmetric bandpass filters with cross-coupled trisections is discussed. The analysis and synthesis is done by well-known matrix manipulation of the lumped element equivalent circuit. The susceptance of the admittance matrix is split up into two separate matrices for capacitive and inductive contributions, which gives more insight into the manipulation of the matrix. Emphasis is put on design of a three-pole bandpass filter with two transmission zeros at the lower side of the passband. Novel solutions for the symmetric topology are derived, having either resonant main coupling or resonant cross-coupling. The potential of the novel topology is demonstrated by a compact realization of a wireless local area network filter at 2450 MHz in low-temperature co-fired ceramic technology. Good agreement between measured and computed results is obtained.

Production and measurement of active nitrogen atoms (N+N*), which consist of ground state nitrogen atoms N and excited state nitrogen atoms N*, in an inductively coupled radio frequency discharge for the growth of group III nitrides and their alloys using a molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) were studied. Two discharge modes of the low brightness (LB) and the high brightness (HB) used in this study to produce excited nitrogen molecules (N 2 *) and dissociated active nitrogen atoms (N+N*). The flux of (N+N*) was measured by a Langumuir-like electrode due to the self-ionization of adsorbed (N+N*) on a negatively biased electrode. The self-ionization, which emits electrons from (N+N*), forms an atom current and is confirmed using different electrodes such as Pt and CuBe and different electrode area. The atom current was calibrated by the grown GaN thickness in a VG80H MBE machine. The calibrated flux of (N+N*) per atom current in the VG80H machine is 5.5×10 −4 ML/s/nA, where ML is monolayer. The atom current is useful to monitor the flux of chemically active nitrogen atoms N+N* for growth of group III nitrides and their alloys. Activity modulation migration enhanced epitaxial growth (AM-MEE) was demonstrated as an application of the measurement of atom current for the growth of the group III nitrides.

Using various nitrogen active species with different chemical and physical activities, nitridation of Si(111) was studied for the growth of group III nitrides and their alloys using a radio frequency molecular beam epitaxy. Nitrogen inductive coupling discharge produced dissociated active nitrogen atoms (N+N * ), which are ground state atom N and excited atom N * , excited molecules N2, and molecule ions N 2 + . The surface morphology of β-Si 3 N 4 was affected by the kind of nitrogen species. Flat surface was obtained by using only (N+N * ) with slow nitridation of 0.02 ML/s. When nitridation was performed by (N+N * ) and N 2 *, many steps and many 10 nm height spikes were observed. It was essential for nitridation to eliminate nitrogen ions (N 2 + ). In comparison with this result, when N* 2 were used, the island size of β-Si 3 N 4 became bigger without detachment from upper terrace. This island size affected successive surface structure of AIN. It is a key technique to achieve flat surface of β-Si 3 Ne 4 that N+N * flux was used for nitridation. The growth of 2H-AIN(0 0 01)/β-Si3N 4 /Si( 111 ) structure was also performed. RMS value of AIN grown on β-Si 3 N 4 which was formed by (N+N * ) became 0.88 nm.

The aims of this phase I/II study of docetaxel and S-1 were to determine the dose-limiting toxicity (DLT), maximum-tolerated dose (MTD), and recommended dose (RD) in the phase I part and to explore the tumour response, survival and safety in the phase II part. Patients with histologically- or cytologically confirmed unresectable or recurrent gastric cancer were eligible. Treatment consisted of intravenous docetaxel on day 1 (starting dose 50 mg m(-2)) and oral S-1 at a fixed dose of 40 mg m(-2) twice daily on days 1-14, every 4 weeks up to six cycles. Nine patients took part in the phase I portion of the study. The MTD of docetaxel was determined to be 50 mg m(-2), with the DLTs of grade 3 infection associated with grade 3 neutropenia and grade 4 neutropenia during S-1 administration. The RD of docetaxel was 40 mg m(-2) in combination with S-1 40 mg m(-2) b.i.d. The efficacy and safety of this regimen was therefore assessed in 46 patients with at least one measurable lesion. The overall response rate and estimated median overall survival were 46% (95% CI, 31-61%) and 14.0 months (8.3-17.3 months), respectively. The most common grade 3/4 toxicity was neutropenia (67% of patients), which was predictable and manageable. This regimen showed promising activity with moderate toxicities in advanced gastric cancer.

In this letter, we propose a new method of time delay interpolation based on the finite impulse response (FIR) filter coefficient ratios and derived from the Lagrange interpolation coefficients. The proposed method gives an explicit formula for the time delay that requires no frequency-domain transformations, making it suitable for entirely time-domain applications. Simulation results confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method.

In this letter, a noise estimation method for spectral subtraction is proposed by using low-frequency regions of noisy speech. The method allows tracking the time variation of noise without complicated computation. The performance of a spectral subtraction method based on the new noise estimation is investigated, and its effectiveness is shown in practical experiments.

Disalignment of neon excited atoms in the fine-structure 2p i levels (in Paschen notation) of the 2p 5 3p configuration is investigated in a helium–neon glow discharge at temperatures between 15 and 77 K. At several temperatures, we plot the disalignment rate as a function of the helium atom density for Ne ∗ (2p2 or 2p7 )+H e(1s 2 ) collisions. The slope of this dependence gives the disalignment rate coefficient. For both collisions, the experimental data for the disalignment rate coefficient show a more rapid decrease with the decrease in temperature below 40 K than our quantum close-coupling calculations based on the model potential of Hennecart and Masnou-Seeuws (1985J. Phys. B: At. Mol.Phys. 18 657). This finding suggests that the disalignment cross section rapidly decreases below a few millielectronvolts, in disagreement with our theoretical quantum calculations which predict a strong increase below 1 meV. The disagreement suggests that the long-range electrostatic potentials are significantly more repulsive than in the aforementioned model.

A novel glycoprotein, dysadherin, has an anti-cell - cell adhesion function through downregulating E-cadherin. In this study, we investigated the expressions of dysadherin and E-cadherin in 82 patients with stage II and III colorectal carcinomas to determine the correlation between the two molecules and the clinicopathologic features of each tumour. Dysadherin was not expressed in normal colorectal epithelium. Fifty-one per cent of tumours showed dysadherin immunopositivity in over 50% of cancer cells. Thirty-eight per cent of tumours showed reduced E-cadherin immunopositivity. The increased expression of dysadherin was significantly associated with lung metastasis (P=0.003). The increased expression of dysadherin had a significant impact on patient survival (P=0.0099 and 0.0036, log-rank test for overall and recurrence-free survival rate, respectively). Furthermore, tumour with increased expression of dysadherin and reduced expression of E-cadherin showed the worst prognosis (P=0.0043 and 0.0028, log-rank test for overall and recurrence-free survival rate, respectively). These results suggest that increased dysadherin expression is a significant indicator of poor prognosis for patients with advanced colorectal carcinoma.

Purpose. To evaluate the serial changes in clinical results and the intradural and extradural spaces on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) after bilateral fenestration in 48 patients with lumbar spinal canal stenosis (LSCS). Methods. A prospective interventional study was performed to study the clinical results, magnetic resonance imaging scans among patients who were followed up for more than 3 years. Results. All patients showed improvement in clinical symptoms after operation, but clinical results deteriorated in 9 (19%) patients. Postoperative MRI scans showed that poor dural tube expansion, grouping of the cauda equina, and decrease in the cross-sectional area of the dural tube were factors associated with poor outcomes. The cross-sectional area of the dural tube and images of the cauda equina observed by MRI, before and after fenestration and during follow-up, reflected changes in clinical symptoms involving decompressed segments. Conclusion. Serial changes in the cross-sectional area of the dural tube and images of the cauda equina observed preoperatively, postoperatively, and on follow-up by MRI may be useful when evaluating patients' condition before and after operation. It is also useful for predicting outcomes.

In this paper, we propose a modified version of the autocorrelation pitch extraction method well known to be robust against noise. Utilizing that the average magnitude difference function (AMDF) has similar characteristics with the autocorrelation function, the autocorrelation function is weighted by the reciprocal of the AMDF. By simulation experiments, it is shown that the proposed pitch extraction method is useful in noisy environments.

A quantum-dot-like positron state is demonstrated in the ``defect-free'' particles using coincidence Doppler broadening of positron annihilation radiation. The wave functions of all positrons are entirely confined spatially in all three directions within the embedded nanosize and subnanosize Cu particles in a dilute Fe-Cu alloy. With use of this probe, the ultrafine particles are revealed to have nearly the same electron momentum distribution as bulk Cu, to be free from Fe atoms and defects, three dimensional, and to have no open-volume defects at the interfaces which can trap the positron. These successes indicate that this positron state promises to be a powerful tool for the studies of mesoscopic systems in metals and semiconductors.

A high-power 1.3-mu m electroabsorption modulator integrated laser diode was developed for 100 - Gb/s Ethernet applications. The average output power exceeding 6.5 dBm and clear eye opening with dynamic extinction ratio over 7.6 dB were realized at 35 degC.

皮膚筋炎は癌腫の高危険群とされ, 種々の癌腫との合併が報告されているが, 癌手術後の皮膚筋炎の病勢は軽快するとの報告としないとする報告がある.今回著者らは, 皮膚筋炎に合併した大腸癌肝転移症例で, 大腸手術, 肝手術と段階をおって皮膚筋炎の症状が軽快した1例を経験した.その後再発し, 2年間の経過を観察したが, 癌の病勢とともに皮膚筋炎症状も推移する傾向があった.1990年以降の皮膚筋炎に合併した大腸癌手術症例の報告例は自験例を含め検索し得た限りでは17例で, 1例を除き, すべての症例でなんらかの術後皮膚筋炎症状の軽快が見られている.

Vector analyzing powers for proton elastic scattering from 8He at 71 MeV/nucleon have been measured using a solid polarized proton target operated in a low magnetic field of 0.1 T. The spin-orbit potential obtained from a phenomenological optical model analysis is found to be significantly shallower and more diffuse than the global systematics of stable nuclei, which is an indication that the spin-orbit potential is modified for scattering involving neutron-rich nuclei. A close similarity between the matter radius and the root-mean-square radius of the spin-orbit potential is also identified., Comment: 6 pages, 4 figures, accepted for publication in Physical Review C Rapid Communication

While investigating an involvement of other factors aside from endogenous IL-3 and prostaglandin E (PGE) in mast cell induction from mouse splenocytes, we found that the mast cell induction was inversely proportional to IL-4 levels and tended to directly proportionate IFN-gamma levels in the supernatants recovered on days 2 and 4. Thereafter, we examined the effects of rIFN-gamma, rIL-4, and rIL-10 on mast cell induction. IFN-gamma and IL-10 dose-dependently induced mast cells. Time course study showed an importance of adding rIFN-gamma into the cultures at the early phase (on days 0 and 2 of a 12-day culture). When endogenous IFN-gamma at the early phase was neutralized by anti-IFN-gamma Ab, all stimulants, including rIFN-gamma, rIL-10, and PGE1, failed to induce mast cells. On the contrary, rIL-4 dose-dependently suppressed the mast cell induction by rIFN-gamma, rIL-10, LPS, PGE, and dibutyryl cAMP. The inhibitory effect of IL-4 was observed when IL-4 was added into the cultures at the early phase, but not after day 4. The suppressive action of IL-4 was diminished completely by the addition of neutralizing anti-IL-4 Ab. IL-12, a key regulator of IFN-gamma and IL-4 production, also induced mast cells. These results revealed, for the first time, that IFN-gamma is crucial for the survival and/or differentiation of splenic mast cell precursors and that IL-4 is a key inhibitor for the precursors, although IFN-gamma is not a mast cell growth factor and IL-4 is a growth factor for immature and mature mast cells.

We previously established a system for induction of mucosal-type mast cells from mouse spleen cells by long term culture without exogenous IL-3. FCS was important and was able to be divided into mast cell-inducible and non-mast cell-inducible sera. LPS contaminated in FCS was responsible for the mast cell induction. However, we unexpectedly found that both supernatants recovered from the cultures with mast cell-inducible and non-mast cell-inducible sera contained endogenous IL-3. Furthermore, addition of rIL-3 to the cultures with non-mast cell-inducible sera had no effect or induced only a small number of mast cells. This indicates that IL-3 alone is not enough for mast cell induction and that some inflammatory factor(s) induced by LPS is also essential. Prostaglandin E1 (PGE1) and PGE2 induced mast cells in a dose-dependent manner when added into the cultures. The activity of LPS for mast cell induction was inhibited by indomethacin. However, indomethacin failed to inhibit the mast cell induction by exogenous PGE. Exogenous PGE antagonized the indomethacin-induced inhibition of mast cell induction by LPS. Cholera toxin and dibutyryl cyclic AMP (cAMP) also induced mast cells. The A and B subunits of cholera toxin, PGF2 alpha, PGD2, and dibutyryl cGMP failed to induce mast cells. Furthermore, mast cell induction by PGE was dose-dependently suppressed by inhibitors for cAMP-dependent A kinase. The above results show that for mast cell induction, IL-3 needs the cooperation of PGE or other stimulants that can elevate the production of the second messenger cAMP in mast cell precursors.

This paper presents the design and simulation of an Adaptive receiver structure using the Normalized Least-mean-square (NLMS) for impulsive noise reduction in Additive White Gaussian Noise (AWGN) based communication systems. The NLMS algorithm is applied for the adaptive control mechanism in order to reduce the impact of impulsive noise. An AWGN system model that uses BPSK, QPSK and 16-QAM modulation schemes was designed, simulated, and tested. The Bit-Error-Rate (BER) performance of the proposed system with and without Impulsive noise was evaluated and compared with the conventional receiver. The proposed system has shown to give improved performance under the same impulsive noise environment.

We have previously reported a new spontaneous recessive mutation that induces a generalized lack of lymph nodes (LNs) and Peyer's patches (PPs) accompanied by immunodeficiency in mice (gene symbol, aly). In this study, we have analyzed gut-associated lymphatic tissues of the mutant aly/aly mice and have compared the intestinal intraepithelial T lymphocytes (IEL) in aly/aly and normal aly/+ littermate mice. Immunohistochemical studies revealed that colonization of IEL and lamina propria T cells takes place in the absence of PPs and IgA-producing B cells in the lamina propria. Absolute numbers of Thy-1- IEL-alpha beta and -gamma delta are not altered in aly/aly mutant mice, whereas absolute numbers of Thy-1+ IEL-alpha beta and -gamma delta in aly/aly mice are about half of those in aly/+ mice. In IEL-alpha beta from aly/aly mice, the major CD8 alpha alpha+ and CD8 alpha beta+ subsets are maintained, whereas CD4+ and CD4+, CD8+ subsets are reduced. Although the population size of major CD8 alpha alpha+ and CD4-, CD8- IEL-gamma delta subsets is slightly reduced, the use of TCR-gamma- and -delta-chain variable gene segments by IEL-gamma delta remains almost the same in aly/aly mice. The constitutive cytolytic activity of IEL-alpha beta and -gamma delta is attenuated sharply in the aly/aly condition. This activity is, however, augmented significantly after in vitro stimulation with anti-CD3 mAb. These results indicate that most of the IEL subpopulations develop independently of passage through PPs and mesenteric LNs and that the aly mutation interrupts cytotoxic IEL development during relatively late differentiation steps that convert cytotoxic precursors to the constitutively cytolytic state.

To perform safer hepatic resection for hepatobiliary-pancreatic cancer, the possibility of preoperative prediction of postoperative reserve hepatic function was assessed using hepatobiliary scintigraphy. After intravenous administration of Tc-99m-pyridoxyl-5-methyltryptophan in 23 patients, the time-activity curves of region of interest over the heart and liver were generated, and peak and one-fourth clearance times were calculated, which were compared with biochemical data. The parameters were significantly related to protein syntheses (prothrombine time and hepaplastin test) and indocyanine-green dye excretion, but not to hepatobiliary enzymes. So we hypothesized 'when the curve left by subtracting the resected area from the whole liver was larger than one-third of the total liver curve, the surgery would be safe', which we applied to another eight patients, clarifying the hypothesis. Hepatobiliary scintigraphy can be a promising procedure in the assessment of partial liver function, and the study will contribute to a safer liver surgery.

Five anti-Id mAb (Ab2) were prepared from a BALB/c mouse immunized with anti-carcinoembryonic Ag (CEA) mAb MA208 (Ab1) in a syngeneic system. These anti-Id mAb appear to recognize unique idiotopes at the combining site of mAb MA208, because they were specifically reactive with mAb MA208 and showed the inhibitory activity against the binding of mAb MA208 to CEA. These anti-Id mAb were divided into three groups: group 1 (M7-625), group 2 (M7-413, M7-914), and group 3 (M7-049, M7-418), according to the analysis of anti-anti-Id antibodies (Ab3) induced with each anti-Id mAb (Ab2). Anti-anti-Id mAb M7-625 antisera (Ab3) reacted with purified CEA in binding assay and in Western blot analysis, and competed with Ab1 binding to CEA. Furthermore, the binding of anti-Id mAb M7-625 (Ab2) to mAb MA208 (Ab1) was inhibited with CEA, indicating that Ab2 mimicks the structure of the epitope in CEA which was recognized with Ab1. These serologic findings suggest that anti-Id mAb M7-625 carries the internal image of the Ag. According to the amino acid sequences of CDR 1, 2, and 3 of the mAb M7-625 variable region, there exists a homology of amino acid sequences between CDR2 in the H chain (5 amino acids of 10) and CDR3 in the L chain (3 amino acids of 9) of mAb M7-625 and domain III of CEA (545-554).

A new and simple method to adjust the step-size (μ) of the standard Normalized Least Mean Square (NLMS) adaptive algorithm is proposed here. The value of μ is totally controlled by the use of a Pseudorandom Noise (PRN) uniform distribution that is defined by values from 0 to 1. Randomizing the step-size parameter eliminates much of the trade-off between residual error and convergence speed compared with the fixed step-size. The mean-square error (MSE) of using the new algorithm in the adaptation process of system identification over a defined communication channel is investigated here. The proposed uniformly distributed step-size variation in the adaptation process of the NLMS algorithm makes it possible to have similar convergence rate but lower steady state error compared with fixed µ.

In this paper, a new denoising method for images degraded by white noise in blind condition using the Wiener filter has been proposed. The Wiener filter is a well-known denoising technique, but the performance comparison of the Wiener filter in different domains is not clear. This paper investigates and evaluates the Wiener filter implemented in the frequency, time and wavelet domains in an ideal case. It is shown that the frequency domain Wiener filter outperformes the Wiener filter implemented in the other domains. In addition, this paper proposes a power spectrum estimation method?? to be employed with the frequency domain Wiener filter. The performance is studied and found that the proposed method is capable to denoise noisy images in a wide range of noise levels and provides improved or equivalent performance relative to conventional methods.

The aim of this study was to examine in vivo gelatinolytic activity of rheumatoid arthritis (RA) synovium using a newly developed in situ zymography (ISZ) method and pathological image analyzer, and to evaluate the relationship between this activity and several features on RA.A total of 8 samples of synovium were obtained from RA patients during surgery, and 8 samples from osteoarthritis (OA) patients were examined as controls. Furthermore, total 14 samples of syovium were obtained for comparison among radiographical classifications as Larsen grade (4 cases of grade III, 5 cases of grade IV and 5 cases of grade V). These specimens were frozen with OCT compound immediately after surgery. Frozen sections were applied to a newly developed gelatin-coated FIZ film (Fuji Film Co.Tokyo.Japan) designed for use ISZ, and incubated at 37 degrees C for 6 hours. Using an image analyzer (image processor for analytical pathology; IPAP), two variables were measured as indicators of in vivo gelatynolytic activity: optical density of gelatinolyzed area (ODG), and ratio of gelatinolyzed area (RGA). Also, we investigated the relationship between these indicators and the following variables: radiographic changes (Larsen grades), clinical data (C-reactive protein concentration), histological score of synovial tissue (modified Rooney's score), and expression of matrix metalloproteinase (MMP)-2, MMP-9, tissue inhibitor of metalloproteinase (TIMP)-1 and TIMP-2 (assessed by immunohistochemistry).RA synovium had significantly higher RGA and lower ODG than OA, indicating higher gelatinolytic activity in RA. Synovium from cases with Larsen grade IV or V had significantly lower ODG than cases with grade III, but there was no significant difference in RGA between grades. There was no significant correlation between gelatinolytic activity (ODG or RGA) and either CRP or modified Rooney's Histological Score. The results of ISZ indicate that the gelatinolyzed areas were mainly localized in the lining area, with a small amount scattered throughout the stroma. The results of immunohistochemistry indicate that MMP-2, MMP-9, TIMP-1 and TIMP-2 were expressed in areas of gelatinolysis.The present results indicate that in vivo gelatinolytic activity of synovium is stronger in RA than in OA. They also indicate that gelatinolytic activity of RA synovial cells is stronger in cases with Larsen grade IV or V than in cases with grade III, although the gelatinolyzed area is similar. Gelatinolytic activity, as indicated by optical density and the gelatinolyzed area, differed between regions, even within the same specimen, suggesting an imbalance between production of proteinases and their inhibitors. We believe that the present zymography method can contribute to the elucidation of biological enzymatic activity of RA synovium.

Natural suppressor cells were induced by culturing spleen cells from normal adult mice for 2 to 3 wk. The suppressor cells were large in size, nonadherent and nonspecifically suppressed the plaque-forming cells response of fresh spleen cells to SRBC in vitro. The suppressive activity of the cells was not affected by treatment with indomethacin or anti-Thy-1, anti-Ig, anti-Ia, or anti-asialoGM1 plus complement. Phenotype analysis by FACS showed that Thy-1, L3T4, Ly-2, CD3-epsilon, TCR-alpha beta, Ig, B220, Ia, and asialoGM1 Ag were all absent in the suppressor cells, although they were wheat germ agglutinin receptor positive. The suppressor cells did not demonstrate cytotoxicity against either YAC-1 or P-815 cells. Enriched large cell populations from fresh normal spleens expressed the same phenotypes and also exhibited the suppressive activity. These findings suggest that a minor population of natural suppressor cells exist in the normal adult mouse spleen and they proliferate during the in vitro culture of spleen cells.

The least-mean-squares (LMS) algorithm which updates the filter coefficients by gradient-based method is the most popular adaptive filtering one. In this paper we propose a novel amplitude banded (AB) technique with LMS on Godard (ABGodard) and Sato (ABSato) algorithms for the equalization of communication channels. The nonlinear properties of the AB technique with LMS algorithm are inherited into the ABGodard and ABSato algorithms, resulting in an improvement of equalization performance in favor of the ABSato algorithm. Mean square error (MSE) as well as bit error rate (BER) are investigated on a simple communication channel model. Observations on simulations show that ABGodard and ABSato algorithms provide better performance than the standard Godard and Sato algorithms, respectively. The parallel structure of the Sato and ABSato algorithms provides a further performance improvement. This is also observed from MSE and BER performances.

Using the least-mean-square (LMS) and the normalized LMS (NLMS) algorithms, the adaptive filter usually results in a trade-off between the convergence speed and adaptation precision. Recently, in order to resolve this problem, several variable step size NLMS (VSS-NLMS) algorithms that provide faster convergence than the LMS and NLMS have been proposed. This paper presents a new VSS-NLMS algorithm that is simple, but possesses, good characteristics. In the proposed algorithm, the input power and error signals are used to design the step size parameter at each iteration. Simulation results demonstrate that in the scenario of channel equalization, the proposed algorithm accomplishes faster start-up and gives better precision than the conventional algorithms.

We have been developing wireless communication technologies for industrial applications. In industrial plants, there are many radio obstacles such as metal pipes and walls. Even in the severe environment, wireless communication has to be reliable and time has to be scheduled to maintain plant stability. For easy-to-use management, features of ad-hoc construction and low power management are also required. Our research is to develop architecture and technologies that satisfy these features. In this demonstration, we will explain core technologies and industrial applications that we developed.

A simple and robust variable step-size normalized switching adaptive algorithm is proposed here. The use of variable step-size in the adaptation process of least mean switched error (LMSE) algorithm (VSS-LMSE) is investigated. The switching algorithm consists of applying the least mean fourth (LMF) algorithm and switching to the least mean square (LMS) algorithm when the absolute value of error is greater than 1. The LMSE algorithm with a fixed step-size usually results in a trade-off between the residual error and the convergence speed of the algorithm. The VSS-LMSE algorithm presented here will eliminate much of this trade-off. In this paper the MSE of using the VSS-LMSF algorithm in the adaptation process of system identification over a dispersive channel is investigated. The step-size variation makes it possible for the VSS-LMSE algorithm to converge faster and to a lower steady state error than in the fixed step-size case. Moreover the proposed VSS-LMSE algorithm has a much lower steady state error than that in the case of VSS-NLMS algorithm.

To be published in Journal of the Physical Society of Japan; A search for new isotopes using in-flight fission of a 345 MeV/nucleon $^{238}$U beam has been carried out in the commissioning experiment of the next-generation in-flight radioactive beam separator BigRIPS at the RI beam factory at the RIKEN Nishina Center. Two neutron-rich palladium isotopes $^{125}$Pd and $^{126}$Pd were observed for the first time, which demonstrates the great potential of the RIKEN RI beam factory.

In this paper we propose a novel non-linear blind adaptive algorithm called the Amplitude Banded Sato (ABSato) algorithm for equalization of communication channels. The ABSato algorithm is derived as a modified version of the Amplitude Banded Least Mean Square (ABLMS) algorithm addressed by Shimamura et al. recently. The capability of nonlinear classification the ABLMS algorithm inherently possesses is kept in the ABSato algorithm, resulting in an improvement of equalization performance. Mean square error as well as bit error rate performances are investigated on simple communication channel models. Observation of simulation results show that the ABSato algorithm provides better performance than the standard Sato algorithm on all the communication channel models.

In this paper, we assume speech corrupted by white Gaussian noise and propose a technique of adaptive bias suppression. A linear predictor is used as the basic filter and gamma-NLMS (normalized least mean square) algorithm, which is useful for suppressing bias, is adopted for the predictor adaptation. In addition, for suppressing bias more effectively we apply a weighting parameter and filter banks to the predictor. Experiments on continuous speech result in that the proposed predictor provides superior performances

Volatile compounds of highly marbled and cooked Wagyu (Japanese Black cattle) meat were analysed during mastication using proton transfer reaction mass spectrometry (PTR-MS) by collecting breath from the oral and nasal cavities. Twelve compounds were monitored. Ethyl acetate showed the highest ion counts in the oral cavity, followed by acetic acid, butanol, pentanol, and diacetyl. The counts of all lactones were very low. Ethyl acetate, butanol, and hexanol were also detected in the nasal cavity. Principal component analysis revealed that the release degree related to logP values and did not depend on the amount of aroma in the solvent extraction.