Osaka University

About: Osaka University is a education organization based out in Osaka, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Laser & Population. The organization has 83778 authors who have published 185669 publications receiving 5158122 citations. The organization is also known as: Ōsaka daigaku.

Interleukin 6: from bench to bedside.

Abstract: Interleukin (IL)-6 is a pleiotropic cytokine that has important roles in the regulation of the immune response, inflammation, and hematopoiesis Disruption of IL-6 regulation might, however, affect the immune response and consequently induce immune-mediated inflammatory diseases such as rheumatoid arthritis, systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Castleman disease, and Crohn's disease Overproduction of IL-6 also contributes, through its roles as a growth factor or an antiapoptotic factor, to the development of malignant diseases such as multiple myeloma and renal cancer Progress in the study of IL-6 has increased our understanding of the pathological roles of this cytokine in these diseases and provided key evidence that antagonizing its activities can be used as a therapeutic strategy The application of molecular biology techniques to design monoclonal antibodies as therapeutic agents has made it possible to regulate the IL-6 signal to successfully treat diseases that have so far proved refractory to conventional therapies Blocking IL-6 actions by use of a humanized antibody, tocilizumab, which targets the IL-6 receptor, has been proven to be therapeutically effective for rheumatoid arthritis, systemic juvenile idiopathic arthritis, Castleman disease and Crohn's disease In this review, we discuss a paradigm of IL-6 from basic science to clinical use

Twitter Catches The Flu: Detecting Influenza Epidemics using Twitter

Abstract: With the recent rise in popularity and scale of social media, a growing need exists for systems that can extract useful information from huge amounts of data. We address the issue of detecting influenza epidemics. First, the proposed system extracts influenza related tweets using Twitter API. Then, only tweets that mention actual influenza patients are extracted by the support vector machine (SVM) based classifier. The experiment results demonstrate the feasibility of the proposed approach (0.89 correlation to the gold standard). Especially at the outbreak and early spread (early epidemic stage), the proposed method shows high correlation (0.97 correlation), which outperforms the state-of-the-art methods. This paper describes that Twitter texts reflect the real world, and that NLP techniques can be applied to extract only tweets that contain useful information.

Activation of Rac and Cdc42 video imaged by fluorescent resonance energy transfer-based single-molecule probes in the membrane of living cells

Abstract: Rho family G proteins, including Rac and Cdc42, regulate a variety of cellular functions such as morphology, motility, and gene expression. We developed fluorescent resonance energy transfer-based probes which monitored the local balance between the activities of guanine nucleotide exchange factors and GTPase-activating proteins for Rac1 and Cdc42 at the membrane. These probes, named Raichu-Rac and Raichu-Cdc42, consisted of a Cdc42- and Rac-binding domain of Pak, Rac1 or Cdc42, a pair of green fluorescent protein mutants, and a CAAX box of Ki-Ras. With these probes, we video imaged the Rac and Cdc42 activities. In motile HT1080 cells, activities of both Rac and Cdc42 gradually increased toward the leading edge and decreased rapidly when cells changed direction. Under a higher magnification, we observed that Rac activity was highest immediately behind the leading edge, whereas Cdc42 activity was most prominent at the tip of the leading edge. Raichu-Rac and Raichu-Cdc42 were also applied to a rapid and simple assay for the analysis of putative guanine nucleotide exchange factors (GEFs) and GTPase-activating proteins (GAPs) in living cells. Among six putative GEFs and GAPs, we identified KIAA0362/DBS as a GEF for Rac and Cdc42, KIAA1256 as a GEF for Cdc42, KIAA0053 as a GAP for Rac and Cdc42, and KIAA1204 as a GAP for Cdc42. In conclusion, use of these single-molecule probes to determine Rac and Cdc42 activity will accelerate the analysis of the spatiotemporal regulation of Rac and Cdc42 in a living cell.

Improved Understanding of the Electronic and Energetic Landscapes of Perovskite Solar Cells: High Local Charge Carrier Mobility, Reduced Recombination, and Extremely Shallow Traps

Abstract: The intriguing photoactive features of organic–inorganic hybrid perovskites have enabled the preparation of a new class of highly efficient solar cells. However, the fundamental properties, upon which the performance of these devices is based, are currently under-explored, making their elucidation a vital issue. Herein, we have investigated the local mobility, recombination, and energetic landscape of charge carriers in a prototype CH3NH3PbI3 perovskite (PVK) using a laser-flash time-resolved microwave conductivity (TRMC) technique. PVK was prepared on mesoporous TiO2 and Al2O3 by one or two-step sequential deposition. PVK on mesoporous TiO2 exhibited a charge carrier mobility of 20 cm2 V–1 s–1, which was predominantly attributed to holes. PVK on mesoporous Al2O3, on the other hand, exhibited a 50% lower mobility, which was resolved into balanced contributions from both holes and electrons. A general correlation between crystal size and mobility was revealed irrespective of the fabrication process and und...

Gold Nanoparticles Located at the Interface of Anatase/Rutile TiO2 Particles as Active Plasmonic Photocatalysts for Aerobic Oxidation

Abstract: Visible-light irradiation (λ > 450 nm) of gold nanoparticles loaded on a mixture of anatase/rutile TiO2 particles (Degussa, P25) promotes efficient aerobic oxidation at room temperature. The photocatalytic activity critically depends on the catalyst architecture: Au particles with <5 nm diameter located at the interface of anatase/rutile TiO2 particles behave as the active sites for reaction. This photocatalysis is promoted via plasmon activation of the Au particles by visible light followed by consecutive electron transfer in the Au/rutile/anatase contact site. The activated Au particles transfer their conduction electrons to rutile and then to adjacent anatase TiO2. This catalyzes the oxidation of substrates by the positively charged Au particles along with reduction of O2 by the conduction band electrons on the surface of anatase TiO2. This plasmonic photocatalysis is successfully promoted by sunlight exposure and enables efficient and selective aerobic oxidation of alcohols at ambient temperature.