Waseda University

About: Waseda University is a education organization based out in Tokyo, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Large Hadron Collider & Catalysis. The organization has 24220 authors who have published 46859 publications receiving 837855 citations. The organization is also known as: Waseda daigaku & Sōdai.

Hydrogen Thermal Desorption Relevant to Delayed-Fracture Susceptibility of High-Strength Steels

Abstract: The susceptibility to hydrogen embrittlement (HE) of martensitic steels has been examined by means of a delayed-fracture test and hydrogen thermal desorption analysis. The intensity of a desorptionrate peak around 50 °C to 200 °C increased when the specimen was preloaded and more remarkably so when it was loaded under the presence of hydrogen. The increment appeared initially at the low-temperature region in the original peak. As hydrogen entry proceeded, the increment then appeared at the high-temperature region, while that in the low-temperature region was reduced. The alteration occurred earlier in steels tempered at lower temperatures, with a higher embrittlement susceptibility. A defect acting as the trap of the desorption in the high-temperature region was assigned to large vacancy clusters that have higher binding energies with hydrogen. Deformation-induced generation of vacancies and their clustering have been considered to be promoted by hydrogen and to play a primary role on the HE susceptibility of high-strength steel.

Ethanol opens G-protein-activated inwardly rectifying K+ channels

Abstract: Ethanol affects many functions of the brain and peripheral organs. Here we show that ethanol opens G-protein-activated, inwardly rectifying K + (GIRK) channels, which has important implications for inhibitory regulation of neuronal excitability and heart rate. At pharmacologically relevant concentrations, ethanol activated both brain-type GIRK1/2 and cardiac-type GIRK1/4 channels without interaction with G proteins or second messengers. Moreover, weaver mutant mice, which have a missense mutation in the GIRK2 channel, showed a loss of ethanol-induced analgesia. These results suggest that the GIRK channels in the brain and heart are important target sites for ethanol.

Rapid hepatic fate specification of adipose-derived stem cells and their therapeutic potential for liver failure

Abstract: Background and Aim: Multipotential mesenchymal stem cells (MSC), present in many organs and tissues, represent an attractive tool for the establishment of a successful stem cell-based therapy in the field of regeneration medicine. Adipose tissue mesenchymal stem cells (AT-MSC), known as adipose-derived stem cells (ASC) are especially attractive in the context of future clinical applications because of their high accessibility and minimal invasiveness during the procedure to obtain them. The goal of the present study was to induce human ASC into functional hepatocytes in vitro within a very short period of time and to check their therapeutic potential in vivo. Methods: In vitro generated ASC-derived hepatocytes were checked for hepatocyte-specific markers and functions. Afterwards, they were transplanted into nude mice with liver injury. Twenty-four hours after transplantation, biochemical parameters were evaluated in blood serum. Results: We have shown here that ASC can be differentiated into hepatocytes within 13 days and can reach the functional properties of primary human hepatocytes. After transplantation into mice with acute liver failure, ASC-derived hepatocytes can restore such liver functions as ammonia and purine metabolism. Markers of liver injury, alanine aminotransferase, aspartate aminotransferase, as well as ammonia, were decreased after ASC-derived hepatocyte transplantation. Conclusions: Our data highlight the properties of ASC as having a special affinity for hepatocyte differentiation in vitro and liver regeneration in vivo. Thus, ASC may be a superior choice for the establishment of a therapy for injured liver.

Dihadron azimuthal correlations in Au+Au collisions at √SNN = 200 GeV

Abstract: Azimuthal angle (Delta phi) correlations are presented for a broad range of transverse momentum (0.4 < p(T) < 10 GeV/c) and centrality (0-92%) selections for charged hadrons from dijets in Au+Au collisions at root s(NN) = 200 GeV. With increasing p(T), the away-side Delta phi distribution evolves from a broad and relatively flat shape to a concave shape, then to a convex shape. Comparisons with p + p data suggest that the away-side distribution can be divided into a partially suppressed "head" region centered at Delta phi similar to pi, and an enhanced "shoulder" region centered at Delta phi similar to pi +/- 1.1. The p(T) spectrum for the associated hadrons in the head region softens toward central collisions. The spectral slope for the shoulder region is independent of centrality and trigger p(T). The properties of the near-side distributions are also modified relative to those in p + p collisions, reflected by the broadening of the jet shape in Delta phi and Delta eta, and an enhancement of the per-trigger yield. However, these modifications seem to be limited to p(T)less than or similar to 4 GeV/c, above which both the hadron pair shape and per-trigger yield become similar to p + p collisions. These observations suggest that both the away- and near-side distributions contain a jet fragmentation component which dominates for p(T) greater than or similar to 5 GeV/c and a medium-induced component which is important for p(T) less than or similar to 4 GeV/c. We also quantify the role of jets at intermediate and low p(T) through the yield of jet-induced pairs in comparison with binary scaled p + p pair yield. The yield of jet-induced pairs is suppressed at high pair proxy energy (sum of the p(T) magnitudes of the two hadrons) and is enhanced at low pair proxy energy. The former is consistent with jet quenching; the latter is consistent with the enhancement of soft hadron pairs due to transport of lost energy to lower p(T).

A genetic algorithm for two-stage transportation problem using priority-based encoding

Abstract: Supply Chain Management (SCM) describes the discipline of optimizing the delivery of goods, services and information from supplier to customer. Transportation network design is one of the most important fields of SCM. It offers great potential to reduce costs and to improve service quality. In this paper, we consider an extension version of two-stage transportation problem (tsTP) to minimize the total logistic cost including the opening costs of distribution centers (DCs) and shipping cost from plants to DCs and from DCs to customers. To solve the problem, we developed a priority-based Genetic Algorithm (pb-GA), in which new decoding and encoding procedures were used to adapt to the characteristic of tsTP, and proposed a new crossover operator called as Weight Mapping Crossover (WMX). An experimental study was carried out into two-stages. While the effect of WMX on the performance of pb-GA was investigated in the first stage, pb-GA and another GA approach based on different representation method were compared according to solution quality and solution time in the second stage.