Tohoku Techno Arch Co., Ltd. List of Products and Services

　Periodontitis, which causes resorption of alveolar bone, affects most adults and causes tooth loss as it progresses. In recent years, dental Cone Beam CT has become popular, enabling three-dimensional confirmation of the morphology of alveolar bone. However, in most cases, only visual qualitative morphological evaluation was performed, and there was no method to detect minute morphological changes over time or to quantitatively analyze the amount of changes. The present invention makes it possible to visualize and quantify changes in the surrounding bone morphology by performing precise alignment using morphological information of only the root portion of any tooth.　 　FIG. A shows alveolar bone CT images of the same patient taken at different times, but it is difficult to confirm at a glance the exact area where bone was absorbed (yellow arrow) and the amount of bone resorption over a period of two years. By performing a semi-automatic analysis of about 10 seconds using the program of this invention, it is possible to display the resorbed bone in red (FIG. B) and calculate the amount of bone resorption by volume. As shown in FIG. C, it is also possible to color the root surface of the tooth to discriminate the areas where bone is still covered (green) and where bone is lost due to resorption (red).

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　Helium is difficult to obtain and expensive, so cooling systems that use helium are expected to be difficult to continue using. 　 The invention enables rapid cooling without helium by continuously spraying a two-phase flow of cryogenic gaseous N2 and solid N2 (SN2 ). Specifically, it is characterized by continuously generating slush N2 by spraying at transonic speed using a Laval nozzle. 　In an example of cell freezing, a 23% improvement in cell survival rate during thawing was achieved compared to liquid nitrogen immersion. This invention has the potential for application in various cooling systems beyond this specific example. Additionally, its application for resist removal in semiconductor cleaning without harmful chemicals is also under consideration.

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Helium is difficult to obtain and expensive, so cooling systems that use helium are expected to be difficult to continue using. 　 The invention enables rapid cooling without helium by continuously spraying a two-phase flow of cryogenic gaseous N2 and solid N2 (SN2 ). Specifically, it is characterized by continuously generating slush N2 by spraying at transonic speed using a Laval nozzle. 　In an example of cell freezing, a 23% improvement in cell survival rate during thawing was achieved compared to liquid nitrogen immersion. This invention has the potential for application in various cooling systems beyond this specific example. Additionally, its application for resist removal in semiconductor cleaning without harmful chemicals is also under consideration.

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Oxide dispersion strengthened alloy is an alloy where the hard oxide particles are dispersed inside the crystal grains of the metal matrix. By having more oxide particles inside the crystal grains of the matrix phase with uniform dispersion, it is difficult for the oxide particles to agglomerate or coarse even when exposed to a high-temperature environment for a long period of time, which makes difficult for the material to deteriorate its strength property. 　In the casting method, metallic liquid and oxide solids having different density are difficult to mix homogeneously, and oxide particles are pushed by the solid-liquid interface of solidification and agglomerate in the final solidified part, which prevents them from being uniformly dispersed in the matrix. In addition, the laser and electron beam additive manufacturing methods involve the powder particles melting process which causes the agglomeration of fine oxide particles and makes it difficult to disperse them uniformly inside the matrix. 　This invention solves the above problem and provides a technology that can fabricate oxide dispersion strengthened alloys with fine oxide particles uniformly dispersed inside the crystal grains of the matrix phase when using the additive manufacturing method.

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Effect At room temperature, a superb computing ability is fulfilled by using MTJ, comparable with quantum annealing. Background Quantum annealing has been intensively investigated recent years. However, it requires a superconductivity condition (at extreme low temperature), and complicate system like quantum bit connection. Meanwhile, magnetic tunnel junction (MTJ), a solid-state component gives probability output in MRAM, has been noticed among those research. This invention applies MTJ’s property and successfully provides a probability information processing computer system, which is comparable with quantum annealing’s computing ability but much simpler to use.

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In recent years, with the rapid development of high-performance IT products and electric vehicle batteries, the demand for small capacitors with high capacity having high function such as memory is increasing. Solid, non-toxic and inexpensive materials are required for such capacitors. However, solid-state electric double layer capacitors are not yet in use. In addition, amorphous titania and amorphous fluorine polymers with nano sized irregularities on their surfaces have been developed to create quantum size effect-based energy storage materials. However, amorphous titania-based energy storage materials have low electricity storage capacity. 　This invention is able to provide ultracapacitor materials and ultracapacitors capable to store a larger quantity of electricity using amorphous titania. This invention includes Ti and a valve metal and has a plurality of irregularities on its surface comprising an amorphous ultracapacitor material composed mainly of TiO6.

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Biomaterials such as artificial joints are made of Ti (titanium), which can adhere directly to the bone. It is known that biomaterials can be coated with ACP film (amorphous calcium phosphate) to improve osteogenic potential. However, ACP film dissolves in vivo in a short period of time, so the improvement is required to retain for a long time. One idea is to add Ta (tantalum) to prevent dissolution but this method does not have antibacterial properties. It is possible to add Ag (silver) to the ACP film to give antibacterial properties, but the dissolution is not possible to control. 　This invention is about a biomaterial and its manufacturing method that can prevent the ACP film dissolution of the surface while having excellent antibacterial properties. The biomaterial is characterized by an ACP film with Ag and Ta dopped on the substrate surface. The coating film is formed by RF magnetron sputtering method. The addition of Ta suppresses the ACP film dissolution while having an excellent antibacterial properties due to the Ag addition. This invention has made possible to sustain an excellent antimicrobial properties over a long period of time.

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The gas permeability in the blast furnace deteriorates due to excessive coke degradation during the low coke rate operation in order to reduce CO2 emission. The coke strength after reaction (CSR) is a parameter to evaluate coke quality and is used as an indicator of permeability in blast furnace operation. 　However, CSR is an index that averages the high-temperature deformation behavior of each cokes, and can’t estimate the complex deformation behavior of individual coke particles. Existing method for flow phenomena visualization and clogging prediction using kinetic model is computationally demanding and limited in the ability to analyze stochastic deformation behavior in a scaling manner. 　This invention applied deep learning using Deep Neural Network (DNN), which is a typical AI method, to the coke 3D deformation process. Machine learning was performed to estimate of the deformation process using DNN. As shown in fig.1, the loss function (deviation from the “estimated value”) decreased with the number of learning sessions, and the recognition accuracy shows over 97%. This indicates that DNN can classify the deformation of every CSR accurately and reduce the computational load for coke deformation prediction remarkably. Therefore, machine learning can easily recognize the coke 3D shape deformation which is difficult to recognize intuitively.

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　Currently, further improvement of memory storage density is required with the information society development. The magnetoresistive random-access memory (MRAM), which can record information nonvolatilely for a long time, is expected to replace semiconductor memory as the next-generation memory. However, the performance is lower than semiconductor memory in term of power consumption, operating speed and signal delay, and has a low compatibility with optical information technology. 　This invention is able to provide an optical spin device that can store information non-volatilely and operate at high speed with low power consumption, and to provide an information storage device using this device. This invention has a magnetic material layer and a spin defect layer. It can store magnetic information non-volatilely and can operate at high speed with low power consumption. In addition, the information storage device equipped with this optical spin device is able to write and read information at high speed and high sensitivity, and is highly compatible with optical information technology, which is expected to develop rapidly in the future.

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TMR sensor is known to be a high sensitivity magnetic sensor which uses the tunnel magnetoresistance effect (TMR) in magnetic tunnel junctions (MTJs). The TMR sensor performance can be controlled by controlling the magnetic anisotropy (HK) of the free layer. Therefore, it is expected to be applied to the bio-magnetic measurement device that detects the weak magnetic field of a living body at room temperature, the battery level detector for electric vehicle, non-destructive inspection to detect the rupture or deterioration of reinforcing steel bar in concrete structure, etc.　　 　NiFe alloy, CoFeB alloy and CoFeSiB alloys have been conventionally developed as free layer of MTJ devices for TMR sensor, but higher sensitivity and lower cost are required. 　This invention focused on FeSiAl alloy (Sendust) to produce the Sendust thin film of nanometer order thickness which was not able to fabricate. Therefore, this alloy is applied to the free layer to fabricate the MTJ devices that achieve the same level of sensor sensitivity as NiFe alloy, etc. It has been also revealed that the soft magnetic property is excellent over a wider range of composition compared with conventional Sendust.

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　Optical fiber has been put into practical use by using the parallelism and multiplexing characteristics of the light as a wave. However, the corresponding photoelectric conversion equipment is required with the increase of the information to be transmitted, resulting in larger device and higher electric power consumption. On the other hand, unlike light, electron cannot incorporate parallelism and multiplexing characteristics, so in principle, electronic device such as semiconductor integrated circuit can not transmit multiple pieces of information simultaneously.　 　This invention can perform multiplex transmission of information with solid-state electronic device, which has been performed with optical fiber so far, by focusing on "electron spin wave" having wave characteristic, that is to say using its wavelength as information and superimposing electron spin wave on each other. This eliminates the need for sequential calculation when processing multiplex information, and it is expected to replace existing photoelectric conversion device by its miniaturization and electric power consumption reduction, potentially contributing to the vast increase in information processing in the future. Also, the device that collectively transmits, processes and records multi-state information using multiplex electron spin wave could be realized.

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There are various schemes to electrically control magnetic materials. Several functional elements such as random number generation, oscillator, wave detection and memory based on the previously discovered phenomena have been proposed so far. However, elements that use ferromagnetic material is sensitive to magnetic field noise caused by external magnetic field, needs magnetic field control by an external mechanism to control oscillator and wave detector frequency, and requires miniaturization.　 　This technology solves the above issues based on the new phenomenon, so called continuous rotation of chiral spin structure in non-collinear antiferromagnetic materials, and provides ultra compact, low power consumption and highly stable elements.

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Recycled smelting using steel scrap can significantly reduce carbon usage and CO2 emission compared to current method, and it is an effective mean to reduce the actual increasing amount of steel scrap.　 　However, the contamination of tramp elements, such as Cu/Ni/Sn, which are difficult to remove by oxidation and evaporation, causes the property and workability deterioration of steel material. In addition, since tramp elements are concentrated each time the steel scrap is recycled, they become the cause of the inability to increase recycling rate. The conventional method of copper removal using sulfide flux has been considered, but this is a batch process using a large amount of sulfide. 　This invention is about a technology to promote ion separation of Cu in molten iron into molten slag using electrochemical method, which enables in principle continuous processing. Moreover, not only purification of molten iron but also recycling of recovered electrodeposited copper can be considered.

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Conventionally, for porous metals (Nano-microporous metals) having micropores of nano or micrometer size, a dealloying (deconditioning) method has been used to obtain porous bodies by corrosion-removing only noble metals from alloys of noble and noble metals in aqueous solution. However, there is a problem that the target metals are limited in that it is possible to fabricate nano-microporous metals only in noble metals and their alloys with respect to the standard hydrogen electrode potential.　　 　The present invention can easily fabricate nano-microporous bodies in vulgar metals and their alloys that could not be fabricated in principle by conventional methods. As one specific example, the nano-porous bodies were successfully fabricated in pure metals such as titanium, niobium, and molybdenum, alloys such as beta titanium and stainless steel (austenitic and ferritic), and carbon.

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　The superconducting quantum bit is composed of a single or multiple superconducting tunnel junctions (Josephson junctions). Research and development of typical charge type and magnetic flux type qubits are active. The current mainstream of high integration is Transmon, a modified version of the charge type, which has advantage of long coherence time, but has disadvantage of small anharmonicity, which can cause error. On the other hand, the magnetic flux type has advantage of large anharmonicity, but has disadvantage of short coherence time. Adding a shunt capacitor to increase coherence time causes increased footprint (the area occupied by a single qubit).　 　This invention solves above problem, and it is about a technology that can achieve high integration with a small footprint while maintaining a practically tolerable coherence time and anharmonicity.

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Phenyl sulfate (PS) is known to be a renal disease marker. After its ingestion, phenol is produced from tyrosine due to the intestinal bacteria action and it is absorbed in the intestines, then metabolized to PS in the liver. For healthy individuals, PS is excreted from the body as urine, but when kidney function is impaired, PS is not excreted and accumulates in the body. 　So far, PS detection was done using LC-MS or TOFMS equipment so the conventional method was not done simply. The inventor succeeded to product an antibody against PS. Using this antibody, it may be possible to easily detect PS, such as by ELISA method.

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Rotavirus is a major cause of acute enteritis in infants and young livestock. It kills 500,000 people per year, mainly in developing countries, and also causes enormous economic losses to livestock production. Inventors focus on immunobiotics and found that new Ligilactobacillus and Lactiplantibacillus strains enhance anti-viral immune activity. ・Isolation of several anti-virus immune-enhancing Ligilactobacillus and Lactiplantibacillus strains from the small intestine of Wakame-fed pigs. ・These strains are deposited in NITE in Japan.

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　Microneedles with lots of painless needles are expected to spread rapidly in the beauty field and be used more for self-medication and simple vaccine administration, which are the cornerstones of remote medical treatment. However, conventional methods of applying (or encapsulating) a drug or vaccine to a microneedle and eluting them after skin prick have limited injection volume and speed. The inventors have developed a porous microneedle (PMN), which imparts an electrical "flow" (electroosmotic flow) that allows for high volume and high speed injection with an electric "microneedle pump" and rapid collection of subcutaneous tissue fluid.　

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Electrochemical strain microscopy (ESM) is known as a technique for probing ion mobility, ion conductivity, etc. in a solid material at a nanoscale. The ESM method is a method for detecting a signal of a local volume change (electrochemical distortion) of a solid generated with the movement of ions by applying a voltage, and for imaging and outputting the detected signal. 　The ESM method provides an image showing the distribution of ion motion states, but the sharpness of the image depends on the ionic conductivity of the solid material. Therefore, in a solid material having a relatively low ionic conductivity, sufficient S/N ratio cannot be obtained, and it is difficult to evaluate the motion state of ions with high accuracy. 　The present invention has been made in view of the above circumstances, and by applying a high-frequency bias voltage, it is possible to dramatically enhance a response signal generated in accordance with a motion state of ions. According to the present invention, even in a material having a relatively low ionic conductivity, a distribution image can be obtained with sufficient sharpness.

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Since the invention of the electron microscope (EM), electrostatic and magnetic round lenses (with cylindrically symmetric lensing action) have been used in the field of charged particle optics. These lenses in principle incapable of producing negative spherical aberration, which had long limited the spatial resolution of EMs. Modern EMs are equipped with spherical aberration correctors consisting of multipole lenses and achieve angstrom-scale resolution. However, such devices are expensive (over a million dollars) and complicated systems. This invention solves above problems in order to have high precision, simple and low-cost electron beam focusing device. It claims the configuration of electron round lens, including concave lens with positive spherical aberration and convex lens with negative spherical aberration due to cylindrically symmetric polarized light beam.

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The inventors have previously developed G-CaMP and R-CaMP (CaMP) as proteinaceous fluorescent calcium sensors. By introducing CaMP into a cell, the location of the cell can be identified and changes in calcium ion concentration can be observed as changes in CaMP fluorescence intensity. ・G-CaMP7, G-CaMP7.09: Displays green fluorescence. ・R-CaMP1.07: Displays red fluorescence and can be used in combination with the photo-stimulation probe Channelrhodopsin-2, which is commonly used for cell function manipulation.

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In general, the near-infrared band (multispectral band) has worse spatial resolution than the panchromatic band, so its data volume is smaller. In the future, artificial satellites will be able to take images of almost the entire Earth once a day, accumulating a huge amount of data. Analyzing all of these images will require an enormous time and an improvement of computer performance. 　This invention is about a method which reduces the analysis time and computer processing power by identifying area 1 where objects are floating on sea using the near-infrared band with low data volume, then making object-based analysis by creating panchromatic band images of the neighborhood area 2. In addition, spatial information such as the floating object size, quantity, location, etc. can be extracted with high accuracy.

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It is known that if a person’s posture is maintained in a sitting position for an excessively long period of time, it can be harmful to his/her health. For example, it is known that there is a correlation between abovementioned period of time and the probability of suffering from diseases such as musculoskeletal disorder, heart failure, or lifestyle-related disease. 　In this invention, the chair seat is slightly inclined in order to guide the person to standing position naturally. Another key feature is the realization of a tilt method that does not interfere with the user's original task, such as desk work. 　In addition, various applications can be envisioned by linking with functions provided by smartdevices such as reminder function, etc.

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This invention is related to the eye gaze detection and eye gaze input device. 　In conventional eye gaze detection and eye gaze input device, the device needs to be installed in the environment or mounted on a wearable device. However, those devices have certain limitation, such as the position range where the function can be used for the former, while the latter requires the user to wear the device. 　This invention uses only a smartphone, and it is possible to run the function of eye gaze detection and eye gaze input with 6 degrees of freedom regardless of the user's standing position or the environment area if the user holds the smartphone naturally [1]. 　In detail, the system estimates where the user is looking in the environment by combining the user's gaze direction detection using the smartphone's front camera and self-position estimation using the back camera/depth sensor and 3D map of the environment (acquired in advance).

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　Pulmonary function imaging has been reported to provide valuable information for radiation therapy, and methods have been implemented to minimize dose deposition in high-functioning lung regions. Currently, most lung ventilation and perfusion imaging methods are based on the use of radioisotopes or contrast agents, such as single-photon emission computed tomography (SPECT) and positron-emission tomography (PET). Although these imaging techniques provide much useful information for local lung function, they have disadvantages such as radiation exposure, high cost, and requirement of special equipment. The inventors aimed to obtain lung function images from only 3DCT images taken at each treatment session. 　In recent years, it has become common to use deep learning (DL) for some tasks in radiotherapy, especially convolutional neural networks (CNN) for image processing. In the past, there have been attempts to convert 4DCT images into SPECT images, but they have not been sufficiently successful. In this study, the inventors developed a DL-based method to directly convert 3DCT images into krypton -81M gas (81mKr-gas) SPECT V images for the first time in the world. The present invention shows the possibility of predicting lung function from CT images alone with high accuracy and is expected to contribute to radiotherapy.

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To develop novel and effective diagnostic/therapeutic solutions against pathogenic viruses like SARS-Cov-2 in which the mutation frequencies are high, the technologies which enables to predict possible mutations before the spread of pathogenic variants with said mutations is required. In SARS-Cov-2, a trend in mutations was found by the analysis of various genomes from variants reported so far (reference 1), suggesting that this may be useful to identify possible mutation sites. 　This invention disclose the methods and programs to predict the site and the mutations therein in virus genome in the future by AI-based model developed by using above trend for leaning.

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Hemolysis is one of the major blood trauma in extracorporeal circulation. The occlusion is a parameter to eliminate deteriorative blood trauma as well as to improve assisted circulation efficacy during cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB). The strength of occlusion is adjusted manually in common method currently used, so the variation or deterioration of roller pumps or tubes causes hemolysis or multiple organ failure. The present invention relates to a new occlusion simulation model for evaluating the occlusion by the thickness of the flow in the tubing compressed with the CPB roller and raceway. The red-colored densitometry images were used to calculate the thickness of occluded flow channel.

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Cationic polymers are known to be used as nucleic drug delivery carrier because they are ease to be introduced into cells. However, it has been reported that the cationic polymers may inhibit cell proliferation by unspecific binding to intracellular proteins. This invention provides cationic polymer nanoparticles (nanogels) for intracellular delivery without inhibiting cell proliferation, by conducting radical polymerization reaction using a cationic polymerization initiator ADIP.　 Properties of NIPAM-based cationic nanogels synthesizing through ADIP: ・Can be delivered into many kinds of cells (e.g. HeLa) simply by mixing cells and the nanogels without special treatment ・In cells, nanogels do not effect the cell division or the differentiation of the brown adipocyte ・Intracellular temperature can be measured because of the heat-sensitive unit NIPAM

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Inflammatory bowel disease (IBD) is a general term for disease in which inflammation occurs in the colon, such as ulcerative colitis. The number of patients with ulcerative colitis is said to be 170,000 in Japan. Ulcerative colitis is an intestinal canal chronic inflammation that occurs in a relatively young aged people and it is an intractable disease with repeated recurrence and remission. 　The ulcerative colitis diagnosis is made through inflammatory findings and endoscopy. The presence of autoantibody such as anti-neutrophil cytoplasmic antibody and anti-smooth muscle cell antibody has been reported in ulcerative colitis, but the positivity rate is low with less than 50%. 　This invention is about a new marker with a positive rate of nearly 70% in patient with ulcerative colitis: anti-endothelial cell protein C receptor antibody (anti-EPCR antibody). This invention could be a new diagnostic marker for ulcerative colitis.

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The smart contract is one of applications of the blockchain technology which realizes transaction of confidential data. The smart contract enables a seller directly to make a contract with a buyer. And when a contract to provide some confidential data is established between them, the seller him/herself needs to send it to the buyer. So the buyer cannot receive the data while the seller is offline. One approach for solving the problem is as follows: The seller stores the data on some cloud storage in advance, and then permits the buyer to download it only after the completion of the contract. In this case, the seller needs to tell the buyer which storage the data is stored in. However, one cannot include any information about the storage in the contract document because it opens to the public via the blockchain. 　The information processing system we have invented enables buyer safely and automatically to receive confidential data even when seller is offline. Let us consider a situation that a seller has some confidential data and that a buyer makes a contract with the seller to get the data. In the situation, the system works as follows: First node (the seller) stores the data in Storage node. Then Second node (the buyer) write, in the contract document, an address to receive the data. The document including the address opens to the public, but no information about the storage where the data is stored does. When the contract is completed, the data is sent to the address by Storage node, and Second node can finally get it.

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When an organic electrochemical transistor (OECT) is modified with an enzyme such as glucose oxidase, it can be applied to a biosensor capable of detecting a sugar such as a blood sugar-level. The development of a non-enzymatic OECT biosensor has been promoted because of the instability and high price of enzymes. In the non-enzymatic OECT biosensor, phenylboronic acid (PBA), a glucose-sensing functional moiety, is generally used instead of enzymes. However, the electropolymerization reaction is essential for the application of PBA, and the complicated manufacturing process has been a problem.　 　The present invention relates to a glucose sensor that does not use an enzyme or PBA. The glucose sensor is driven by using a membrane containing a polysaccharide mixed with a conductive polymer as a glucose sensing site. The simplicity of the manufacturing process is also a major advantage because the entire process can be produced by printing if various metal inks are used as electrodes. The figure shows the result of measuring a glucose solution using the sensor. It can be seen that the low concentration of glucose can be detected without using enzyme or PBA.

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The number of dialysis patients continues to increase, and it is known that applox. 40% of the patients requiring dialysis in Japan were ordinally those with diabetic nephropathy (DN). The treatment for DN is often symptomatic by controling blood sugar and blood pressure, and to date, no effective therapeutic agent for curative treatment has been developed.　 　This invention discloses a 1, 3-dioxolane compounds D-532 and the derivertives thereof, which inhibits the function of the glucose-responsive transcription factor ChREBP (Carbohydrate responsive element binding protein), for DN treatment. 　D-532 was found by ordinally constructed high-throughput screening based on ChREBP reporter assay with applox. 7,000 of compound library in Tohoku University (Fig.1). Synthesized analogs and isomers thereof were also tested and showed inhibitory effect against ChREBP function, although D-532 showed the highest activity (Data not shown). 　The expression of ChREBP target genes were suppressed by D-532 administration for DN animal model (Fig.2). Urinary albumin excretion and blood creatinine were also improved in DN animals with D-532 (Fig.3). Further, the disappearance of foot process in glomerulus, which is often observed in DN kidney, was suppressed (Data not shown), suggesting that D-532 may act directly to renal tissue and show the effects above.

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Transition metal doping is one of the solution to colorize inorganic pigments. This method is adoptive to TiO2 pigments, however, transition metal-doped pigments are not sufficient for cosmetic products as transition metals have ecotoxicity. 　This invention realized wide variety of colored TiO2 pigments without transition metal doping, such as RGB as shown right half of this paper. 　This invention is expected to expand cosmetic product applications, or replace traditional organic and inorganic materials.

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Conventionally, diagnosis of Takayasu's arteritis has been made by angiography, etc., and a simple method for diagnosis by blood or other means has not been established. The inventors have identified two types of anti-vascular endothelial antibodies (AECA) that appear in patients with Takayasu's arteritis. These antibodies are considered useful as diagnostic markers for Takayasu's arteritis.

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Conventional growing device of seaweed is hung down from near the sea surface into the sea and light up the seaweed from the upper side. So that reason, they are often broken by driftage. Sunlight also come up them from the upper side, only one side of seaweeds is lighted and their growth efficiency is not good. This invention is about the light which has fixation property and able to illuminate from below the seaweed.

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Phenyl sulfate(PS) and indoxyl sulfuric(IS) are factor of Diabetic nephropathy(DN). Decreasing PS and IS in blood is important for DN treatment.　 　This is PS and IS reducing agent with L-metatyrosine and 2-azatyrosine as active ingredients.

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Ferroptosis is a form of regulated cell death associated with neurodegenerative diseases (e.g. Alzheimer's disease) and organ damage and is attracting attention as a therapeutic target. In this study, we found that vitamin K (especially the reduced form), a functional food ingredient, has a potent preventing effect on ferroptosis. Although a higher intake of vitamin K than those from the diet would be required to exert the anti-ferroptotic effect, vitamin K can be safely used even at high doses due to the no harmful effect reported. Thus, high-dose vitamin K supplementation is expected to be commercialized as a dietary supplement, functional food, and medicine.

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Causes of fatal diseases such as cerebral infarction and myocardial infarction include vessel diseases such as arteriosclerosis, vascular stenosis, or aneurysm. Early non-invasive detection of such vessel diseases can prevent the development of fatal diseases. Conventional PWV tests can only determine vascular stiffness. The present invention is a novel method that combines viscoelastic analysis of blood vessels and irregular vibration analysis of blood vessel walls. 　It is a noninvasive diagnostic method that can cope with various causes of arteriosclerosis. Aneurysms in the trunk, which are distant from the measurement site, can also be determined. ★The software patent was filed jointly with Rise Corporation, and the software will be manufactured by the company. ★A prototype of the equipment has been completed, and it is available for loan upon request.

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PI3K / AKT pathway is known as the major signaling pathway involved in survival and proliferation of cells. This is also known as the therapeutic target for cancer because this is aberrantly-activated for various cancer cells. 　Therefore, the inventors screened compounds with PI3K inhibitory activity from hundreds of compound. The results show that FK228 (a.k.a. Istodax（C）), HDAC inhibitor, and its analogs have PI3K inhibitory activity.

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　In conventional titanium nitride coating, sputtering method, a method in which titanium ions and nitrogen gas ions are irradiated on a substrate, and a plasma CVD method are known. 　Compared with these methods, the present invention uses nitrogen in air as a nitrogen source and does not require vacuum process. Therefore, the coating of titanium nitride can be performed at a low cost by a simple process, sliding property heat resistance and hardness can be easily added. The same effect can be obtained for ceramics as well as metals. In addition to titanium, nitrides such as chromium and manganese can be produced as coating materials.

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This invention is for a permanent magnet reluctance generator(PMRG) employing the ferrite magnet instead of the rare-earth magnet, which has almost the same output power and efficiency in comparison with the one employed rare-earth magnet in spite of lower cost. 　The optimum shape for the rotor pole-tip was designed to reduce torque ripple, which enables noiseless running.

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Understanding gene functions in marine invertebrates has been limited, largely due to the lack of suitable assay systems.　 　The inventors discovered a strong viral promoter derived from a bivalve-infectious virus, ostreid herpesvirus-1 (OsHV-1). 　This promoter showed 24.7-fold and 16.1-fold higher activity than the cytomegalovirus immediate early (CMV IE) promoter and the endogenous EF1α promoter, the two most commonly used promoters in bivalves so far (Fig.1). 　GFP assays showed that the OsHV-1 promoter is active not only in scallop cells (Fig.2) but also in HEK293 cells (Fig.3) and zebrafish embryos.

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Alcohol oxidation is one of fundamental reactions in organic chemistry. This reaction is especially useful for synthesizing high-valueadded compounds such as medicine, pesticide, perfume and so on. Although, TEMPO and the related compounds featuring AZADO skeleton (e.g. AZADO, 1-Me-AZADO, and ABNO) are often used as alcohol oxidation catalyst , there are some problems concerning catalytic activity and reaction efficiency. This invention provides novel alcohol oxidation catalyst “Nor-AZADO” which can effectively oxidize sec-alcohol as well as n-alcohol using air as the terminal oxidant.

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Blue light irradiation has been shown to be effective in killing more than 10 species of pests. Previous studies have used light-emitting diodes, but large facilities have had problems with their light intensity.　 　Therefore, the inventors have developed a device that effectively emits blue laser light as a device that exerts insecticidal effects over a wide area. (Usefulness) ・Safe compared to methods using ultraviolet light to kill insects. ・Suitably designed to kill multiple species and objects at different stages of development. ・At the same time as killing, growth can be promoted by shining a favorable light on plant growth.

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Injection device of liquid with active species have been developed in order to disinfect and extermine pathogens and pests using plasma. This device is configured to create plasma to generate the active species, and to inject the liquid containing the active species through a jet. However, the heat of plasma raises temperature of the liquid in the reaction vessel, and the short-lived active species may be deactivated if the plasma discharge time is too long so the sterilization effect may be reduced. 　This invention can provide an injection device of liquid containing active species and sterilization & extermination method that can maintain a high disinfection effect even when the plasma discharge time is long. This invention has a dissolution injection means containing active species which is obtained by dissolving plasma-active gas into liquid and a cooling means to prevent the temperature rise in order to maintain a high sterilization effect.

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