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The present study aimed to recognize the microscopic characteristics of black aspergilli species which exhibit similar characteristics on culture media. Forty eight black aspergilli isolates were obtained from clinical wastes and purified using single spore technique on six different culture media. The ultrastructure of fungal conidiophore and spores was detected by using Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). The fungal isolates were identified within five species included A. niger, A. tubingensis, Aspergillus section Nigri, A. violaceofuscus, A. neoniger. Besides, two isolates identified as Aspergillus sp. strain no. 39, Aspergillus sp. strain no. 53 appear as new strains based on the structure of conidiophore and spores. The fungi species have similar culture characteristics. However, SEM observation demonstrated that they have quite different conidiophore and spores morphology. The study revealed that the microstructure of the fungal spores and conidiophores plays an important role in the identification of fungi species based on the phenotypic method.

Noriyuki Kanzaki,1 Yuta Otsuka,1 Takayuki Izumo,1 Hiroshi Shibata,1 Hideyuki Nagao,2 Keita Ogawara,3 Hiroshi Yamada,3 Seiji Miyazaki,3 Yutaka Nakamura3 1Institute for Health Care Science, Suntory Wellness Ltd, Seika-cho, Soraku-gun, Kyoto, Japan; 2Research Institute of Sports Medical Science, Tokai University, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, Japan; 3School of Physical Education, Tokai University, Hiratsuka, Kanagawa, Japan Background: Previously, we demonstrated that glucosamine-containing supplementation was effective for improving locomotor functions, especially walking speed. However, the biomechanical mechanism of efficacy has not been elucidated. This study aimed to address this challenge in subjects with knee pain, using a motion capture system. Methods: An open label study was conducted in 30 Japanese subjects with knee pain. The subjects were administered a daily supplement containing 1,200 mg of glucosamine hydrochloride, 60 mg of chondroitin sulfate, 45 mg of type II collagen peptides, 90 mg of quercetin glycosides, 10 mg of imidazole peptides, 1 mg of proteoglycan, and 5 µg of vitamin D (GCQID). The intervention continued for 16 weeks. Efficacy for locomotor functions involving the knee joint was evaluated mainly using the Japanese Knee Osteoarthritis Measure (JKOM) and the 5-question Geriatric Locomotive Function Scale (GLFS-5). To examine the biomechanical mechanism of efficacy for locomotor functions, motions of subjects in a normal walking state were captured. Gait analysis was conducted and efficacy for gait parameters such as normal walking speed, stride length, cadence, and angle of soles was evaluated. Results: GCQID significantly improved total scores on the JKOM and GLFS-5. In gait analysis, normal walking speed, stride length, and angle of soles at the end of the stance phase were all significantly increased, but cadence did not change significantly during the intervention period. There were significant intercorrelations of changes in normal walking speed, stride length, and angle of soles at the end of the stance phase, and between changes in stride length and total JKOM score. Conclusion: A GCQID supplement may increase walking speed through increased stride length and angle of kicking from the ground during steps, which might be mainly associated with alleviated knee pain. Keywords: locomotive syndrome, GLFS-5, normal walking speed, stride length, toe angle

Reconstruction of the distribution of ground motion due to an earthquake is one of the key technologies for the prediction of seismic damage to infrastructure. Particularly, the immediate reconstruction of the spatially continuous wavefield is valuable for decision-making of disaster response decisions in the initial phase. For a fast and accurate reconstruction, utilization of prior information is essential. In fluid mechanics, full-state recovery, which recovers the full state from sparse observation using a data-driven model reduced-order model, is actively used. In this study, the framework developed in the field of fluid mechanics is applied to seismic wavefield reconstruction. A seismic wavefield reconstruction framework based on compressed sensing using the data-driven reduced-order model (ROM) is proposed and its characteristics are investigated through numerical experiments. The data-driven ROM is generated from the data set of the wavefield using the singular value decomposition. The spatially continuous seismic wavefield is reconstructed from the sparse and discrete observation and the data-driven ROM. The observation sites used for reconstruction are effectively selected by the sensor optimization method for linear inverse problems based on a greedy algorithm. The proposed framework was applied to simulation data of theoretical waveform with the subsurface structure of the horizontally stratified three layers. The validity of the proposed method was confirmed by the reconstruction based on the noise-free observation. Since the ROM of the wavefield is used as prior information, the reconstruction error is reduced to an approximately lower error bound of the present framework, even though the number of sensors used for reconstruction is limited and randomly selected. In addition, the reconstruction error obtained by the proposed framework is much smaller than that obtained by the Gaussian process regression. For the numerical experiment with noise-contaminated observation, the reconstructed wavefield is degraded due to the observation noise, but the reconstruction error obtained by the present framework with all available observation sites is close to a lower error bound, even though the reconstructed wavefield using the Gaussian process regression is fully collapsed. Although the reconstruction error is larger than that obtained using all observation sites, the number of observation sites used for reconstruction can be reduced while minimizing the deterioration and scatter of the reconstructed data by combining it with the sensor optimization method. Hence, a better and more stable reconstruction of the wavefield than randomly selected observation sites can be realized, even if the reconstruction is carried out with a smaller number of observations with observation noise, by combining it with the sensor optimization method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A study of the intramolecular proton transfer controlled by laser pulses in which the motion of proton in a molecule was treated by one-dimensional asymmetric double-well potential while the control of the motion of a proton, pi-pulse approach, stimulated Raman adiabatic passage (STIRAP), and a chirping technique were applied to the system is presented. The results show that in the pi-pulse approach, the conditions of complete population inversion were determined for sequential and simulations irradiation of two laser fields.