1,366,347 research outputs found
Oral history interview with Paul Satoh, 2015 August 23
No full textBorn in Osaka, Japan, in 1936, Paul Satoh spent a happy childhood as the only child of a chemist and a homemaker. Satoh's extended family included an uncle who had studied at the University of California, Los Angeles, and his wife, a US-born Nikkei from Hawaii who occasionally had received a "care pack from the United States" that she shared with the Satohs. Although the couple was not affected by the bomb as they were in Tokyo, one of Satoh's other aunts who was in Hiroshima died of radiation sickness. Satoh himself, too, was in Hiroshima as his family's house in Osaka was burned in an air raid early in 1945. Living in his relative's house in Koi, which was about six kilometer from the hypocenter, Satoh remembers hearing a "real big sound" at the moment of the explosion. His family decided to take refuge in his grandmother's house in the countryside, and as they walked through Hiroshima, they witnessed people dying on the street from severe burns and injuries. Many years later, his mother died of leukemia, while Satoh himself suffered from thyroid cancer. Immediately after the war, though, Satoh recalled only silence around the bomb, even as many of his classmates passed away because of the delayed radiation effect. He came to the United States in 1960 to study chemistry at Wayne State University in Detroit, Michigan. He married a Polish American woman who was his classmate, and experienced racial discrimination in the era when interracial marriages were still illegal in many US states. Satoh also found that his brother-in-law had worked as a maintenance crew for Enola Gay, the airplane that dropped the bomb on Hiroshima. Satoh worked as a chemist in the for-profit sector, and he occasionally lectured at colleges on applied chemistry. Although he was not part of any U.S. survivors' groups, he was interested in issues of nuclear weaponry and bomb victims. He has assisted research for a book written by his acquaintance about U.S. prisoners of war who died of the bomb in Hiroshima in 1945
Accumulation of stress in constrained assemblies: novel Satoh test configuration
No full textA common test used to study the response of a transforming material to external constraint is due to Satoh and involves the cooling of a rigidly constrained tensile specimen while monitoring the stress that accumulates. Such tests are currently common in the invention of welding alloys which on phase transformation lead to a reduction in residual stresses in the final assembly. The test suffers from the fact that the whole of the tensile specimen is not maintained at a uniform temperature, making it difficult to interpret the data. To eliminate this problem, the authors report here a novel Satoh test in which the material investigated is a part of a composite sample. It is demonstrated that this helps avoid some of the complications of the conventional tests and gives results which are consistent with independent tests
Finding secure curves with the Satoh-FGH algorithm and an early-abort strategy
No full textAbstract. The use of elliptic curves in cryptography relies on the ability to count the number of points on a given curve. Before 1999, the SEA algorithm was the only efficient method known for random curves. Then Satoh proposed a new algorithm based on the canonical p-adic lift of the curve for p ≥ 5. In an earlier paper, the authors extended Satoh’s method to the case of characteristics two and three. This paper presents an implementation of the Satoh-FGH algorithm and its application to the problem of finding curves suitable for cryptography. By combining Satoh-FGH and an early-abort strategy based on SEA, we are able to find secure random curves in characteristic two in much less time than previously reported. In particular we can generate curves widely considered to be as secure as RSA-1024 in less than one minute each on a fast workstation.
Design of Sliding Mode Techniques for a CMG-based Testbed Attitude Control System
No full textPrecise pointing accuracy and rapid maneuvering are two key features for attitude control missions of small spacecraft. Control moment gyroscopes (CMGs) are applied as ideal actuator for large torque output capability but are usually limited due to the problem of inherent mechanical singularity. This paper proposes a robust attitude control methodology, based on Sliding Mode Control (SMC) techniques, in presence of CMG practical restrictions and disturbances. Two second-order SMC techniques are designed, to guarantee accuracy and limited convergence time. Moreover, attitude control torques are generated by means of four single gimbal CMGs in pyramidal configuration, considering the design of an experimental testbed. The effectiveness of the proposed methodologies are shown in simulations, for different mission scenarios, including singularity points
Role of environmental factors in autoantibody production-importance of a detailed analysis in a small cohort
No full textIn the previous issue of Arthritis Research & Therapy, Muro and colleagues reported a detailed epidemiologic analysis in central Japan on one of the new myositis-specific autoantibodies to MDA-5 (melanoma differentiation-associated gene 5), which is associated with clinically amyopathic dermatomyositis accompanying interstitial lung disease. The increasing prevalence of anti-MDA-5, higher prevalence in small rural towns, and geographical clustering in two areas along the Kiso River suggest a role of environmental factors associated with rural communities or the river/water system or both. A detailed analysis of a small cohort may offer clues, which is ignored in multi-center studies, to the pathogenesis of systemic rheumatic diseases and autoantibody production. © 2012 BioMed Central Ltd
A new immunoprecipitation-real time quantitative PCR assay for anti-Th/To and anti-U3RNP antibody detection in systemic sclerosis
No full textIntroduction: Classic anti-nucleolar antibodies anti-Th/To and U3 ribonucleoprotein (-U3RNP) can help in the diagnosis, prediction of organ involvement and prognosis in systemic sclerosis (SSc); however, no validated commercial assay is available. We aimed at establishing a novel quantitative real time PCR (qPCR) method to detect these antibodies.Methods: Standard immunoprecipitation (IP) was performed using K562 cell extract and RNA components were extracted. cDNA was reverse transcribed from RNA components and Th RNA and U3 RNA were detected by qPCR using custom primers. Cycle threshold (Ct) values were compared in a titration experiment to determine the assay efficacy. The new assay was evaluated by testing 22 anti-Th/To and 12 anti-U3RNP positive samples in addition to 88 controls, and the results were compared with IP as a gold standard.Results: By testing serial 1:8 dilutions of cell lysate as the substrate in the IP step, RNA extracted after IP, and its derived cDNA, linear dose response curves were noted for both anti-Th/To and -U3RNP. With every dilution, Ct values changed approximately three as expected, reflecting the eight-fold difference of cDNA. The Ct difference between positive and negative samples was 8 to 13, which was similar throughout the dilutions. In the specificity analysis, the Ct values of positive samples were clearly different from the negative groups and the results by qPCR had a near perfect correlation with IP.Conclusions: Our new method readily detects these two clinically important antibodies in SSc. Making tests for anti-Th/To and -U3RNP antibodies widely available to clinicians should be helpful in the diagnosis and follow-up of SSc patients. © 2012 Ceribelli et al.; licensee BioMed Central Ltd
MicroRNAs and autoimmunity
No full textThe role of microRNAs (miRNAs) in the regulation of many physiological and pathological processes has been intensely studied in recent years. Some miRNAs, such as miR-146a and miR-182, play a dominant role in the regulation of the innate and adaptive immune responses, respectively. Many miRNAs are reportedly deregulated in autoimmune diseases, but miR-146a in particular seems to be consistently altered. The overexpression or underexpression of miRNAs can influence specific targets and pathways, leading to autoimmune disease phenotypes, and this is supported also by some in vivo studies. Targeting miRNAs could represent a valid future therapeutic option for autoimmune diseases. © 2012 Elsevier Ltd
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
No full textThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Common pathways of autoimmune inflammatory myopathies and genetic neuromuscular disorders
No full textIt has been shown that many hereditary motor neuron diseases are caused by mutation of RNA processing enzymes. Survival of motor neuron 1 (SMN1) is well-known as a causative gene for spinal muscular atrophy (SMA) and mutations of glycyl- and tyrosyl-tRNA synthetases are identified as a cause of distal SMA and Charcot-Marie-Tooth disease. Why and how the dysfunction of these ubiquitously expressed genes involved in RNA processing can cause a specific neurological disorder is not well understood. Interestingly, SMN complex has been identified recently as a new target of autoantibodies in polymyositis (PM). Autoantibodies in systemic rheumatic diseases are clinically useful biomarkers associated with a particular diagnosis, subset of a disease, or certain clinical characteristics. Many autoantibodies produced in patients with polymyositis/dermatomyositis (PM/DM) target RNA-protein complexes such as aminoacyl tRNA synthetases. It is interesting to note these same RNA-protein complexes recognized by autoantibodies in PM/DM are also responsible for genetic neuromuscular disease. Certain RNA-protein complexes are also targets of autoantibodies in paraneoplastic neurological disorders. Thus, there are several interesting associations between RNA-processing enzymes and neuromuscular disorders. Although pathogenetic roles of autoantibodies to intracellular antigens are generally considered unlikely, understanding the mechanisms of antigen selection in a particular disease and specific neurological symptoms caused by disruption of ubiquitous RNA-processing enzyme may help identify a common path in genetic neuromuscular disorders and autoimmunity in inflammatory myopathies. © 2011 Springer Science+Business Media, LLC
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