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This study examined the effects of birth weight on body composition, physical fitness, and sarcopenia in adulthood among young Japanese women. Seventy young adult women (birth weight <2500 g classified as low-birth-weight group [L-BW, n = 13] and ≥2500 g classified as not low-birth-weight group [NL-BW, n = 57]) were evaluated for body composition, physical fitness, and sarcopenia. Skeletal muscle mass was significantly greater (p<0.05) in the NL-BW group than in the L-BW group for all body sites. Effect sizes for the differences in skeletal muscle mass between the two groups were all larger in the NL-BW group than in the L-BW group (0.86–1.44). Knee extension muscle strength was higher in the NL-BW group than in the L-BW group (p = 0.04), but there were no differences between groups with respect to other physical fitness indicators (p>0.05). Except for SMI (p<0.05), other sarcopenia diagnostic evaluations did not differ between the two groups (p>0.05). In conclusion, L-BW female infants were shorter in standing height and smaller in skeletal muscle mass in terms of morphology at the time of young adulthood compared to NL-BW female infants. In addition, in terms of physical fitness, those with L-BW also had a lower-limb power score and a higher proportion of low skeletal muscle mass. Thus, it was suggested that low birth weight infants may be at risk of needing nursing care in old age (i.e., a high predicted incidence of sarcopenia) as well as thinness problems in the fertile generation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Magnetization control by electric current or spin current is an attractive technology with potential applications in memory and logic devices, and Mn4N has attracted much attention in recent years as a candidate material for current-induced magnetization switching and magnetic domain wall motion, as well as a skyrmion material. For these applications, a bilayer structure of Mn4N and heavy metals must be formed with high crystalline quality. In this study, we have achieved the epitaxial growth of Mn4N thin films on MgO(001) with a Pt underlayer. The reflection high-energy electron diffraction images and x-ray diffraction ω-rocking curves show that the Mn4N films fabricated on the Pt underlayers exhibit higher crystalline quality than the Mn4N films directly formed on the MgO. Furthermore, anomalous Hall effect loops with bump-like structures were observed. This is considered to be due to the topological spin texture. The Mn4N/Pt epitaxial bilayer structure has potential for use in spin–orbit torque applications and is a candidate configuration for topological spin textures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The antiperovskite ferrimagnet Mn4N has perpendicular magnetic anisotropy and small spontaneous magnetization, both of which are favorable properties for current induced domain wall motion. Previously we have investigated the magnetic structure of 3d-element-doped Mn4N thin films and demonstrated ultrafast domain wall velocities reaching 3000 m s−1 in the vicinity of the magnetic compensation composition of Ni-doped Mn4N at the current density of j = 1.2 × 1012 A m−2 at room temperature (RT). In this study, we investigate the effect of Au doping on the magnetic structure of Mn4N films, and present a composition ratio-dependent sign reversal of the anomalous Hall effect at RT. X-ray magnetic circular dichroism measurement revealed that the magnetic moment of the face-centered Mn atoms of Mn4−xAuxN reversed between x = 0.1 and 0.2, and became parallel to that of the corner-site Mn atoms for x = 0.2 and 0.3. This result suggests that the ferrimagnetic-ferromagnetic phase transition occurred in Au-doped Mn4N epitaxial films as in the In-doped Mn4N epitaxial films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Rare-earth-free Mn4N has attracted increasing attention as a spintronic material thanks to its ferrimagnetism, perpendicular magnetic anisotropy, and controllability of magnetic properties by partial replacement of Mn atoms with other elements. Here, we grew ∼25-nm-thick Mn4−xSnxN epitaxial films (x = 0–1.4) on MgO(001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy and investigated their lattice constants and magneto-transport properties. The ratio of the out-of-plane lattice constant c to the in-plane lattice constant a in the Mn4−xSnxN films, c/a, was less than 1 for x < 0.9, but it changed to more than 1 for x = 1.0. Amazingly, the sign of the anomalous Hall effect changed twice with increasing x. These results suggest that the magnetic structure of the Mn4−xSnxN films varies with Sn composition. Possible mechanisms of the magnetic structure change include magnetic compensation, ferrimagnetic–ferromagnetic phase transition, and the formation of noncollinear magnetic structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract Background Structural variations (SVs) change the structure of the genome and are therefore the causes of various diseases. Next-generation sequencing allows us to obtain a multitude of sequence data, some of which can be used to infer the position of SVs. Methods We developed a new method and implementation named ClipCrop for detecting SVs with single-base resolution using soft-clipping information. A soft-clipped sequence is an unmatched fragment in a partially mapped read. To assess the performance of ClipCrop with other SV-detecting tools, we generated various patterns of simulation data – SV lengths, read lengths, and the depth of coverage of short reads – with insertions, deletions, tandem duplications, inversions and single nucleotide alterations in a human chromosome. For comparison, we selected BreakDancer, CNVnator and Pindel, each of which adopts a different approach to detect SVs, e.g. discordant pair approach, depth of coverage approach and split read approach, respectively. Results Our method outperformed BreakDancer and CNVnator in both discovering rate and call accuracy in any type of SV. Pindel offered a similar performance as our method, but our method crucially outperformed for detecting small duplications. From our experiments, ClipCrop infer reliable SVs for the data set with more than 50 bases read lengths and 20x depth of coverage, both of which are reasonable values in current NGS data set. Conclusions ClipCrop can detect SVs with higher discovering rate and call accuracy than any other tool in our simulation data set.