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Network analysis is increasingly being used as a decision-making support tool for science and technology policy and technology management through the understanding of the trends and structure of innovation activities and the prediction of their changes. Since convergence and diversity are generally regarded as opportunities for groundbreaking innovation, analysis of interdisciplinary fusion and interorganizational collaboration using network analysis is expected to provide useful suggestions for policy formation and technology management. Nevertheless, little quantitative analysis has been conducted to date, especially for interorganizational collaboration. Meanwhile, regarding artificial intelligence research, its effectiveness has accelerated its application in various fields, and in the process, interdisciplinary fusion and interorganizational collaboration are developing. In this study, we focused on “natural language processing (NLP),” which is said to have recently surpassed human performance, and conducted a microanalysis by visualizing community formation, topic transition including technology integration with other fields and organizations, and their collaboration engaged in research front. Specifically, using the Scopus dataset, we extracted NLP papers and conducted a network analysis. As a result, we visualized these developments in the fast-changing field, and second, we showed that our method is applicable to many other fields. These results will help researchers interested in the application of NLP.

Mergers and acquisitions (M&A) are recognised as an important strategy for corporate growth. In practice, M&A business requires significant time and energy investment and often fails. Hence, scientific M&A recommendation research is needed under such conditions. This study focuses on M&A categorisation, which is fundamental for M&A recommendation. In this study, we used M&A data, financial data, and corporate data for M&A analysis. We found that the comparison of some financial indicators between the pairs of companies is informative for their relationships. We designed 14 features and used K-means clustering to categorise M&A cases. The 14 features are the features of acquirers, target features, and their relationship features. The M&A cases are categorised into clusters of distinctive characteristics such as additional consideration, high leverage, abundant experience, and more. Finally, we anticipated the M&A motivations of each cluster from these characteristics as well.

To link to full-text access for this article, visit this link: http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.technovation.2009.12.004 Byline: Yuya Kajikawa (a)(b), Yoshiyuki Takeda (a), Ichiro Sakata (a)(b), Katsumori Matsushima (b) Keywords: Interfirm network; Regional cluster; Multiscale modeling; Small world; Module Abstract: Networks within an organization and also among organizations are expected to work as a conduit of resources and knowledge. In this paper, we construct a large database of interfirm networks in eight regional clusters in Japan, and investigate their multiscale structures combining existing organizational and network theories. We found that the small world properties among regional clusters show marked differences, which intensify as the network size evolves. We also found that connector firms bridging different modules are scarce and therefore we should focus on networking activity among different modules to support the development of well-connected networks. Author Affiliation: (a) Institute of Engineering Innovation, School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, 2-11-16 Yayoi, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan (b) Department of Technology Management for Innovation, Graduate School of Engineering, the University of Tokyo, 7-3-1 Hongo, Bunkyo-ku, Tokyo 113-8656, Japan Article Note: (footnote) [star] This study was performed through Special Coordination Funds for Promoting Science and Technology of the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology, the Japanese Government.

Our intention is to verify whether or not the tax reform plan can demonstrate benefits of which an impact can be felt in macroeconomic terms. We identify the significant effects of the tax reform plan and the difference in effects between R&D tax credit and IT investment tax credit. Keywords: B-index; IT; R&D; tax credit; The Japanese tax reform plan 2003.

ABSTRACTWhile network centricity-based supplier recommendation models can make predictions with high accuracy, they do not sufficiently encompass supply chain causality, and their interpretability is controversial. We propose adding conditional probabilities from the Bayesian network to a supplier predictive model to improve interpretability while maintaining the performance of the social network approach. We construct a supplier forecasting model for 327,012 corporate transactions in the Northeast region of Japan using corporate attributes, network centrality, and conditional probabilities as features and discuss both performance and interpretability. Random forest, support vector machine, and logistic regression were applied as classifiers, and the outputs were compared. The proposed model exceeded an F1 score of 80%, and we found that conditional probabilities have resulted in the highest significance. By incorporating causal features, we were able to construct an accurate and interpretable model. Our findings have implications for companies’ choice of suppliers and for local governments’ consideration of regional industrial policy from a macro perspective.

Wire-shaped flexible supercapacitors (FSCs) have attracted tremendous attention due to their tiny volume, lightweight, high flexibility, and wearability. In the present study, we report the MnO2- or Fe2O3-loaded three-dimensional (3D) nanostructure networks of reduced graphene oxide (rGO) composite on oxidized CNT (denoted as the OCNTF/3D-rGO/MnO2and OCNTF/3D-rGO/Fe2O3) fibers as the cathode and anode, respectively, for the fabrication of a high-performance, wire-shaped, all-solid-state, flexible asymmetric supercapacitor (FASC). To this end, the 3D-rGO/OCNTF hierarchical structure was electrochemically fabricated, followed by further pulse electrodeposition of MnO2and Fe2O3, respectively, into the 3D porous graphene networks and the insides of the OCNTF. As such, they were restricted to nano-sized particles and linked by the graphene and the OCNTF. The OCNTF/3D-rGO/MnO2as the cathode was assembled with the OCNTF/3D-rGO/Fe2O3as the anode with the carboxymethyl cellulose sodium (CMC)-Na2SO4gel electrolyte, producing a wire-shaped, all-solid-state FASC that achieved a high specific capacitance of 59.2 F·cm−3(171 mF·cm−2) and an exceptional energy density of 26.7 mWh·cm−3. The FASC device also showed good flexibility and cyclability, promising to advance power sources for wearable electronics.

With increases in the amount of human trajectory data, interest in explaining or predicting human mobility is growing. Owing to the difficulty of associating mobility data with interpersonal relationship data, previous studies on the link between interpersonal relationships and mobility are limited to the specific activities of particular users. In this paper, we propose a method for detecting interpersonal relationships from mobility data, while distinguishing these relationships from those of familiar strangers such as commuters. In the method, persons who take diverse variations within the same activities are recognized as a pair. From IC card data covering the daily mobility of six million people over three years, we detected millions of frequently co-located pairs. Under certain conditions, most of the detected pairs are confirmed as not being familiar strangers, but rather to have an interpersonal relationship. Next, we analyzed the detected pairs and found that the density of the relationships between groups was divided by gender and age and was found to be asymmetric by gender. For example, an elderly male person is not likely to take trips as a pair with a same-gender elderly person, and this result is data-based evidence for the isolation of retired men. In addition, group trips are confirmed to have an extraordinal character and sometimes converge spatiotemporally. These findings indicate that interpersonal relationship is a strong factor to determine their mobility and group observation is potentially useful for event detection.

How can we remove barriers regarding the cross-border electric power trade between Myanmar and Thailand for the promotion of power integration? While Myanmar has traded electricity with China, the bilateral power trade with Thailand has made little progress. Taking some cases such as Dawei, through stakeholder meetings and focus group interviews, using the frameworks derived from a UN literature survey, we have identified the characteristics of distinctive barriers related to fuel types. While coal-fired power projects tend to experience more issues related to economic barriers, hydropower projects are likely to face social barriers, often interrelated with environmental issues. As both barriers are embedded within insufficient legal arrangements, legal technical assistances are crucially required.

We found a novel sexually dimorphic area (SDA) in the dorsal hypothalamus (DH) of mice. The SDA-DH was sandwiched between 2 known male-biased sexually dimorphic nuclei, the principal nucleus of the bed nucleus of the stria terminalis and the calbindin-sexually dimorphic nucleus, and exhibited a female-biased sex difference in neuronal cell density. The density of neurons in the SDA-DH was increased in male mice by orchidectomy on the day of birth and decreased in female mice by treatment with testosterone, dihydrotestosterone, or estradiol within 5 days after birth. These findings indicate that the SDA-DH is defeminized under the influence of testicular testosterone, which acts via both directly by binding to the androgen receptor, and indirectly by binding to the estrogen receptor after aromatization. We measured the activity of SDA-DH neurons with c-Fos, a neuronal activity marker, in female mice during maternal and sexual behaviors. The number of c-Fos-expressing neurons in the SDA-DH of female mice was negatively correlated with maternal behavior performance. However, the number of c-Fos-expressing neurons did not change during female sexual behavior. These findings suggest that the SDA-DH contains a neuronal cell population, the activity of which decreases in females exhibiting higher performance of maternal behavior, but it may contribute less to female sexual behavior. Additionally, we examined the brain of common marmosets and found an area that appears to be homologous with the mouse SDA-DH. The sexually dimorphic structure identified in this study is not specific to mice and may be found in other species.

Ghrelin was first isolated from human and rat as an endogenous ligand for the growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHS-R). In the present study, we determined the ghrelin cDNA sequence of the common marmoset ( Callithrix jacchus), a small-bodied New World monkey, and investigated the distribution of ghrelin-producing cells in the gastrointestinal tract and localization profiles with somatostatin-producing cells. The marmoset ghrelin cDNA coding region was 354 base pairs, and showed high homology to that in human, rhesus monkey, and mouse. Marmoset ghrelin consists of 28 amino acids, and the N-terminal region is highly conserved as found in other mammalian species. Marmoset preproghrelin and mature ghrelin have 86.3% and 92.9% homology, respectively, to their human counterparts. Quantitative RT-PCR analysis showed that marmoset ghrelin mRNA is highly expressed in the stomach, but it is not detected in other tissues of the gastrointestinal tract. In addition, a large number of ghrelin mRNA-expressing cells and ghrelin-immunopositive cells were detected in the mucosal layer of the stomach, but not in the myenteric plexus. Moreover, all the ghrelin cells examined in the stomach were observed to be closed-type. Double staining showed that somatostatin-immunopositive cells were not co-localized with ghrelin-producing cells; however, a subset of somatostatin-immunopositive cells is directly adjacent to ghrelin-immunopositive cells. These findings suggest that the distribution of ghrelin cells in marmoset differs from that in rodents, and thus the marmoset may be a more useful model for the translational study of ghrelin in primates. In conclusion, we have clarified the expression and cell distribution of ghrelin in marmoset, which may represent a useful model in translational study. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Motilin was discovered in the 1970s as the most important hormone for stimulating strong gastric contractions; however, the mechanisms by which motilin causes gastric contraction are not clearly understood. Here, we determined the coordinated action of motilin and ghrelin on gastric motility during fasted and postprandial contractions by using house musk shrew (Suncus murinus; order: Insectivora, suncus named as the laboratory strain). Motilin-induced gastric contractions at phases I and II of the migrating motor complex were inhibited by pretreatment with (d-Lys3)-GHRP-6 (6 mg/kg/h), a ghrelin receptor antagonist. Administration of the motilin receptor antagonist MA-2029 (0.1 mg/kg) and/or (d-Lys3)-GHRP-6 (0.6 mg/kg) at the peak of phase III abolished the spontaneous gastric phase III contractions in vivo. Motilin did not stimulate gastric contractions in the postprandial state. However, in the presence of a low dose of ghrelin, motilin evoked phase III–like gastric contractions even in the postprandial state, and postprandial gastric emptying was accelerated. In addition, pretreatment with (d-Lys3)-GHRP-6 blocked the motilin-induced gastric contraction in vitro and in vivo, and a γ-aminobutyric acid (GABA) antagonist reversed this block in gastric contraction. These results indicate that blockade of the GABAergic pathway by ghrelin is essential for motilin-induced gastric contraction.

Ghrelin, an endogenous ligand for the GH secretagogue receptor, is predominantly produced in the stomach. Little is known about the regulation mechanism of gastric ghrelin. Here, we report that estrogen synthesized in the stomach induces rat gastric ghrelin gene expression and production. We established a gastric ghrelin cell enrichment method using Percoll centrifugation and then studied the effect of estrogen and/or its antagonist on ghrelin expression and production. Treatment with estrogen for 8 h significantly increased the level of ghrelin expression, and ICI-182 780, an estrogen receptor (ER) antagonist, completely reversed this effect. Reverse transcriptase-PCR analysis clearly showed that ERα and aromatase are expressed in the female rat stomach. Moreover, treatment with an aromatase inhibitor, 4-hydro-xyandrostenedione (formestane), significantly decreased the level of ghrelin mRNA expression in minced stomach tissue. In vivostudies revealed that the ghrelin mRNA expression and production did not change in gonadectomized rat 3 weeks after surgery. These results strongly suggest that estrogen produced in the stomach directly induces ghrelin expression and production in both female and male rat stomachs.

Ghrelin, an endogenous ligand for the growth hormone secretagogue receptor (GHS-R), was isolated from the rat stomach and determined to be n-octanoylated 28-amino-acid peptide. In this study, we studied the distribution of ghrelin-producing cells (ghrelin cells) in the gastrointestinal tract of male and female rainbow trout (Oncorhynchus mykiss) by immunohistochemistry using N-terminal region-recognizing antibody and also by in situ hybridization using a trout ghrelin-specific cRNA probe. Ghrelin cells were found in the mucosal layer of the stomach but not in the myenteric plexus, and no ghrelin cells were observed in other regions of the gastrointestinal tract. Ghrelin cells could be classified into two types: closed- and opened-type cells. The density of ghrelin cells increased gradually in the direction from the cardiac to pyloric portions of the stomach in both sexes. The number of ghrelin cells per unit area seemed to be higher in females than in males. In conclusion, trout ghrelin cells exist in the stomach and are classified into two types of cells, closed- and opened-type cells. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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Alteration in the gastrointestinal (GI) motility and transit comprises an important component of the functional gastrointestinal disorders (FGID). Available animal GI motility and transit models are to study symptoms (delayed gastric emptying, constipation, diarrhea) rather than biological markers to develop an effective treatment that targets the underlying mechanism of altered GI motility in patients. Animal data generated from commonly used methods in human like scintigraphy, breath test and wireless motility capsule may directly translate to the clinic. However, species differences in the control mechanism or pharmacological responses of GI motility may compromise the predictive and translational value of the preclinical data to human. In this review we aim to provide a summary on animal models used to mimic GI motility alteration in FGID, and the impact of the species differences in the physiological and pharmacological responses on the translation of animal GI motility and transit data to human.

To build sustainability and trust, energy and environment research in Japan must become more interdisciplinary and global, say Masahiro Sugiyama and colleagues.

Scanning tunnelling microscope was successfully applied to observe self-assembled molecular images of (bis(5-dodecylsalicylidene)ethylenediaminato)nickel(ii) in the form of dimers on highly oriented pyrolytic graphite