Chiba Institute of Technology

About: Chiba Institute of Technology is a education organization based out in Narashino, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: RNA & Magnet. The organization has 2663 authors who have published 4999 publications receiving 56870 citations. The organization is also known as: Chiba kōgyō daigaku & Kōa Institute of Technology.

Silicate dust size distribution from hypervelocity collisions: implications for dust production in debris disks

Abstract: Fragments generated by high-velocity collisions between solid planetary bodies are one of the main sources of new interplanetary dust particles. However, only limited ranges of collision velocity, ejecta size, and target materials have been studied in previous laboratory experiments, and the collision condition that enables the production of dust-sized particles remains unclear. We conducted hypervelocity impact experiments on silicate rocks at relative velocities of 9 to 61 km s{sup -1}, which is beyond the upper limit of previous laboratory studies. Sub-millimeter-diameter aluminum and gold spheres were accelerated by laser ablation and were shot into dunite and basalt targets. We analyzed the surfaces of aerogel blocks deployed near the targets using an electron probe micro analyzer and counted the number of particles that contained the target material. The size distributions of ejecta ranged from five to tens of microns in diameter. The total cross-sectional area of dust-sized ejecta monotonically increased with the projectile kinetic energy, independent of impact velocity, projectile diameter, and projectile and target material compositions. The slopes of the cumulative ejecta-size distributions ranged from -2 to -5. Most of the slopes were steeper than the -2.5 or -2.7 that is expected for a collisional equilibrium distribution in a collisionmore » cascade with mass-independent or mass-dependent catastrophic disruption thresholds, respectively. This suggests that the steep dust size-distribution proposed for the debris disk around HD172555 (an A5V star) could be due to a hypervelocity collision.« less

Hepatitis C virus utilizes VLDLR as a novel entry pathway

Abstract: Various host factors are involved in the cellular entry of hepatitis C virus (HCV). In addition to the factors previously reported, we discovered that the very-low-density lipoprotein receptor (VLDLR) mediates HCV entry independent of CD81. Culturing Huh7.5 cells under hypoxic conditions significantly increased HCV entry as a result of the expression of VLDLR, which was not expressed under normoxic conditions in this cell line. Ectopic VLDLR expression conferred susceptibility to HCV entry of CD81-deficient Huh7.5 cells. Additionally, VLDLR-mediated HCV entry was not affected by the knockdown of cellular factors known to act as HCV receptors or HCV entry factors. Because VLDLR is expressed in primary human hepatocytes, our results suggest that VLDLR functions in vivo as an HCV receptor independent of canonical CD81-mediated HCV entry.