13197 research outputs found
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The Role of Growth Factors during Early Gastric Ulcer Regeneration
Get PDF奈良先端科学技術大学院大学博士（バイオサイエンス）doctoral thesi
Enhancing Account Information Anonymity in Blockchain-Based IoT Access Control Using Zero-Knowledge Proofs
Get PDFBlockchain and smart contracts are widely used in IoT access control to create decentralized, trustworthy environments for secure access and record management. However, their application introduces a dual challenge: The transparency of blockchain and the use of addresses as identifiers can expose account privacy. To tackle this issue, this paper proposes a blockchain-based IoT access control system that enhances account anonymity and preserves privacy, particularly regarding user behavior, habits, and access records through the use of zero-knowledge proofs. The system incorporates an access control mechanism that combines access control lists with capability-based access control, enabling ownership verification of access rights without disclosing identity information. To evaluate the system’s feasibility, we conduct experiments in a smart building scenario, including both qualitative comparisons with existing methods and quantitative analyses of performance in terms of time, space, and gas consumption. The results indicate that our scheme achieves the best time efficiency in the proof generation and authorization phases, completing them in just 7 and 10 s, respectively—representing half the time required by the second-best approach. These findings underscore the system’s superior cost efficiency and enhanced security compared to existing solutions.journal articl
Vascular access dysfunction incidence among Japanese dialysis patients from NDB Open Data Japan
No full textVascular access (VA) dysfunction affects the quality of care in end-stage renal disease (ESRD) patients undergoing hemodialysis. However, comprehensive nationwide data in Japan are limited. Therefore, we estimated VA dysfunction and recurrence and examined their associations with sex, age, and regional variation using the National Database Open Data Japan (NDB Open). We conducted a population-based observational study using the NDB Open for fiscal years 2020–2022. We identified ESRD patients who underwent VA-related procedures based on claims codes. We also calculated annual VA dysfunction rates and 3-month recurrence rates. We used multiple regression models, adjusted for sex, age, and the fiscal year, to examine associations; the regional differences were also evaluated. The average annual VA dysfunction rate was 74.0% (standard error [SE], 1.7%), with a 3-month recurrence rate of 16.9% (SE, 0.5%). Females and older patients showed higher rates. Age correlated positively with the VA dysfunction rate (ρ = 0.827–0.941). VA dysfunction rates varied across prefectures. In Japanese ESRD patients, VA dysfunction showed sex- and age-related differences, along with regional variations. These findings may inform future prevention strategies and research utilizing detailed clinical data.journal articl
Biocontrol of Bacterial Wilt Disease Using Plant-Associated Bacterial Communities in Tomato
No full textHost-protective or disease-suppressive microorganisms are emerging as sustainable solutions for controlling crop diseases, such as bacterial wilt. However, the efficacy of biocontrol strategies is often constrained by limited resilience under varying environmental conditions and interactions with native microbial communities in the field. One major challenge is that introduced biocontrol microbes often face suppression by indigenous microbes due to competitive interactions. Synthetic communities (SynComs) offer a promising alternative strategy. However, conventional approaches to assembling SynComs by combining different microbial isolates often result in antagonism and competition among strains, leading to ineffective and inconsistent outcomes. In this study, we assembled a bacterial wilt-suppressive SynCom for tomato, composed of bacterial isolates derived from co-cultured microbial complexes associated with healthy plants. This SynCom demonstrates significant disease-suppressive effects against Ralstonia pseudosolanacearum in tomato seedlings under both axenic and soil conditions. Additionally, our findings suggest the presence of an optimal SynCom colonization level in plants, which is crucial for effective disease suppression. The SynCom also exhibits direct antibiotic activity and modulates the plant-associated microbiome. Our results provide an effective approach to constructing SynComs with consistent and effective disease-suppressive properties within microbial community contexts.journal articl
Knowledge-Enhanced Specific-Domain Reasoning for Pre-Training Language Models
Get PDF奈良先端科学技術大学院大学博士（工学）doctoral thesi
Generalizable and transportable resting-state neural signatures characterized by functional networks, neurotransmitters, and clinical symptoms in autism
No full textAutism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a lifelong condition with elusive biological mechanisms. The complexity of factors, including inter-site and developmental differences, hinders the development of a generalizable neuroimaging classifier for ASD. Here, we developed a classifier for ASD using a large-scale, multisite resting-state fMRI dataset of 730 Japanese adults, aiming to capture neural signatures that reflect pathophysiology at the functional network level, neurotransmitters, and clinical symptoms of the autistic brain. Our adult ASD classifier was successfully generalized to adults in the United States, Belgium, and Japan. The classifier further demonstrated its successful transportability to children and adolescents. The classifier contained 141 functional connections (FCs) that were important for discriminating individuals with ASD from typically developing controls. These FCs and their terminal brain regions were associated with difficulties in social interaction and dopamine and serotonin, respectively. Finally, we mapped attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD), schizophrenia (SCZ), and major depressive disorder (MDD) onto the biological axis defined by the ASD classifier. ADHD and SCZ, but not MDD, were located proximate to ASD on the biological dimensions. Our results revealed functional signatures of the ASD brain, grounded in molecular characteristics and clinical symptoms, achieving generalizability and transportability applicable to the evaluation of the biological continuity of related diseases.journal articl
Zero-Shot Cross-Lingual Text-to-Speech With Style-Enhanced Normalization and Auditory Feedback Training Mechanism
No full textIn an increasingly globalized and interconnected world, the ability to communicate in more than one language is a vital skill that can reduce language barriers and promote cultural interaction. However, mastering multiple languages requires a significant investment of time and effort. Here, zero-shot cross-lingual text-to-speech synthesis (TTS) offers benefits to augment human communication by producing high-quality speech in multiple languages while preserving the original speaker's vocal characteristics. However, building such a system presents several challenges, including ensuring high-quality synthesis and achieving similarity between the synthesized speaker and the reference speaker, especially when training a model for low-resource languages. In this study, we propose a novel technique known as Style-Enhanced Normalization TTS (STEN-TTS) to achieve two objectives: preserving synthesis quality while simultaneously enhancing the ability of zero-shot adaptation with just a few seconds of reference for the purpose of cross-lingual synthesis. The model itself can also be trained with low-resource data, but using data of only 10 or 20 minutes is a major challenge. To improve the quality of synthesized audio in low-resource languages, we propose a combination of STEN-TTS with different training methods, including unsupervised text encoding, knowledge distillation, and an auditory feedback mechanism. An experimental evaluation was conducted in five languages (English, Chinese, Indonesian, Japanese, and Vietnamese), considering high- and low-resource training data as well as seen and unseen speakers. The proposed approach has shown its effectiveness in a high-resource setting, achieving a remarkable similarity (SMOS) of 3.44±0.17 for cross-lingual conversion as well as verification scores of 93.4% and 80.5% for seen and unseen speakers, respectively. The results in a low-resource setting, measured by phoneme error rates, also indicate a substantial improvement, with enhancements of approximately 3-4% . In this case, the quality of speaker verification remains consistently high, achieving scores of 90.0% and 78.0% for seen and unseen speakers.journal articl