Oocytes of B6D2F1 (BDF1) mice are often used as recipients for intracytoplasmic sperm injection because of their cell membrane resistance against capillary penetration. It is assumed that oocytes of BDF1 mice have superior traits because of their hybrid vigour. However, the mechanisms of hybrid vigour are unclear. In this study, we focused on the membrane resistance of MII stage oocytes against changes in extracellular osmotic pressure. As a result, MII stage oocytes of inbred C57BL/6 and DBA/2 mice showed high tolerance in either a hypertonic or a hypotonic environment. Conversely, MII stage oocytes of hybrid BDF1 and D2B6F1 mice showed high tolerance in both hypertonic and hypotonic environments. Therefore, it is considered that MII stage oocytes of hybrid mice have superior traits than those of inbred mice. Our findings demonstrated that the hybrid vigour exists in the form of resistance to extracellular osmotic environment in hybrid MII stage oocytes.

Glucagon-like peptide-1 (GLP-1) is an incretin hormone that regulates postprandial glycaemic response by enhancing insulin secretion. We previously demonstrated that the postprandial GLP-1 response was enhanced during the development of diet-induced obesity in rats. However, the physiological relevance of the enhanced GLP-1 response remained unclear. We aimed to determine the role of endogenous GLP-1 during obesity development. Male Sprague–Dawley rats were given either a control diet or a high-fat/high-sucrose (HFS, 30 % fat and 40 % sucrose, weight basis) diet with or without continuous administration of the GLP-1 receptor antagonist, exendin (9–39) (Ex9, 100 µg/d), for 5 weeks. Meal tolerance tests (MTT) were performed to assess postprandial glucose, insulin and GLP-1 responses to a liquid diet administration (15 kcal (63 kJ)/10 ml per kg body weight) every 2 weeks. The AUC of postprandial glucose in the HFS group was similar to the control group in both MTT (P = 0·9665 and P = 0·3475, respectively), whereas AUC of postprandial GLP-1 (after 4 weeks,P = 0·0457) and of insulin (after 2 and 4 weeks, P = 0·0486 and P = 0·0110) was higher in the HFS group compared with the control group. In the Ex9 group, AUC of postprandial glucose (P = 0·0297 and P = 0·0486) was higher along with a lower insulin response compared with the HFS group (P = 0·0564 and P = 0·0281). These results suggest that enhancement of the postprandial GLP-1 response during obesity development has a role in maintaining a normal postprandial glycaemic response. Hence, enhancing endogenous GLP-1 secretion by certain materials could be a potential target for prevention of glucose intolerance.

The premiere of Puccini's La fanciulla del West at the Metropolitan Opera in 1910 inspired enthusiastic reactions from the New York audience. However, as demonstrated by Annie J. Randall and Rosalind Gray Davis's 2005 study, Puccini and the Girl: History and Reception of “The Girl of the Golden West,” the critical reception of the work highlighted the Italian composer's inability to measure up to the critics’ preconceived notions about the American West. Among the many perceived oddities of the opera was the character of Jake Wallace, a “wandering camp minstrel,” who appeared in an unconventional form of blackface and sang an aria based on a transcription of a Native American song. This essay reexamines the early American reception of La fanciulla by analyzing the coverage of the opera in Italian-language newspapers published in New York. Articles in these periodicals suggest that Jake's nostalgic song (canto nostalgico) and the sentiment of homesickness that it projected played a central role in the positive reception of the work among their readers. Acknowledging such a reaction to the opera reminds us of the difficulty of ascribing a uniformly “American” reception to any work. It also uncovers an unexpected way in which Puccini and his collaborators promoted the opera to a particular segment of the American society.

Improvements on the semiquantitative analysis in a scanning electron-probe microanalysis will be discussed. Improvements have been attained by the development of a new content mapping attachment. By using this attachment, the X-ray intensity is indicated on a cathode-ray tube in nine steps of brightness. A discrimination operation on the intensity information can be done to help the observation of fine concentration variation in the specimen. The scanning image about an element in the specimen is displayed on the screen of the cathode-ray tube or on a paper tape by a typeout recording. The image is composed of 2500 picture elements. The brightness of each picture clement corresponds to an exponentially modulated X-ray intensity emitted from the corresponding point of the specimen surface. The correct information about the X-ray intensity to the observer is given by using this kind of modulation. In the image display on typewritten paper, the X-ray intensity is indicated with numbets from 0 to 9 according to the intensity grade. Each number is printed with an individual color to present a contour map of the element distribution. The time necessary to obtain one complete contour map is about 8.5 min.

This study aimed to investigate how Japanese learners of English as a foreign language, whose first language does not have obligatory morphological number marking, process conceptual plurality. The targeted structure was reciprocal verbs, which require conceptual plurality to interpret their meanings correctly. The results of a sentence completion task confirmed that participants could use reciprocal verbs reciprocally in English. In a self-paced reading experiment, participants read sentences with reciprocal verbs and those with optionally transitive verbs (e.g., while the king and the queen kissed/left the baby read the book in the bed). There was no reading time delay for reciprocal verbs but a delay for optionally transitive verbs. Therefore, the participants succeeded in processing second language conceptual plurality in the online sentence comprehension task.

For fabricating photovoltaic BaSi2 films with controlled carrier density and suppressed oxidation by thermal evaporation, the mechanism determining the film composition from incongruently evaporated BaSi2 must be elucidated. We investigated the effects of source premelting, substrate temperature, and thickness on the structural and electrical properties of evaporated BaSi2 films. It is found by room-temperature deposition that the vapor composition continuously changes from being Ba-rich to being Si-rich. Source premelting suppresses the deposition of Ba-rich vapor. Deposition at 600–700 °C shows that BaSi2 forms through the mutual diffusion of Ba and Si, followed by surface oxidation by residual gas. Surface oxidation can be suppressed by a-axis-oriented growth. By changing the film thickness, the optimum thickness to obtain homogeneous films with suppressed oxidation is revealed. Sufficient diffusion leads to high film resistivities and low electron densities, which demonstrates a close relationship between the film composition and the electrical properties.

A new target design is presented to model high-energy radiative accretion shocks in polars. In this paper, we present the experimental results obtained on the GEKKO XII laser facility for the POLAR project. The experimental results are compared with 2D FCI2 simulations to characterize the dynamics and the structure of plasma flow before and after the collision. The good agreement between simulations and experimental data confirms the formation of a reverse shock where cooling losses start modifying the post-shock region. With the multi-material structure of the target, a hydrodynamic collimation is exhibited and a radiative structure coupled with the reverse shock is highlighted in both experimental data and simulations. The flexibility of the laser energy produced on GEKKO XII allowed us to produce high-velocity flows and study new and interesting radiation hydrodynamic regimes between those obtained on the LULI2000 and Orion laser facilities.

A novel preparation method of B-doped p-type BaSi2 (p-BaSi2) is proposed to realize heterojunction crystalline Si solar cells with p-BaSi2. The method consists of thermal evaporation of BaSi2 on B-doped amorphous Si (a-Si). In this study, the effect of a-Si interlayers and substrate temperature during BaSi2 evaporation on the electrical characteristics and crystalline quality of the evaporated films were investigated. While no cracks were found in the BaSi2 films formed using hydrogenated a-Si deposited by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD), the films formed with sputtered a-Si have cracks. In addition, BaSi2 films formed with a 600 °C substrate temperature using PECVD a-Si showed p-type characteristics. After a post-deposition anneal at 800 °C for 5 minutes, the film hole density was measured at 1.3×1019 cm-3 and boron was found to be uniformly distributed throughout the film. These results show that the proposed method using PECVD is promising to obtain p-BaSi2 thin films with high hole density for p-BaSi2/n-type crystalline Si heterojunction solar cells.

Thermal evaporation is a simple method to fabricate a BaSi2 film, a new solar cell material consisting of earth-abundant elements. In this study, we optimized the evaporation process and suppressed near-interface oxidation in evaporated BaSi2 films on Si(100) substrates, which has been detected in previous studies. Composition depth profiles determined by Auger electron spectroscopy show the decrease of oxygen concentration near the interface to the background level by optimizing the source pre-melting condition. By reducing oxygen concentration, the BaSi2 film becomes more preferentially oriented toward [100] as long as the deposition rate is not changed, as evidenced by X-ray diffraction. It is also shown that the rectification behavior of n-BaSi2/p+-Si diodes improves by suppressing the near-interface oxidation.

The Japanese VLBI project VERA (VLBI for the Earth Rotation study and Astrometry) is being designed. It will be dedicated to regular monitoring of the Earth's rotation and astrometry. VERA will be composed of two antennas spanning about 2300km and a correlator of multi-station capability. The diameters of the antennas are 35m and 15m.

Much can be learned from terrestrial planets that appear to have had the potential to be habitable, but failed to realize that potential. Mars shows evidence of a once hospitable surface environment. The reasons for its current state, and in particular its thin atmosphere and dry surface, are of great interest for what they can tell us about habitable zone planet outcomes. A main goal of the MAVEN mission is to observe Mars’ atmosphere responses to solar and space weather influences, and in particular atmosphere escape related to space weather ‘storms’ caused by interplanetary coronal mass ejections (ICMEs). Numerical experiments with a data-validated MHD model suggest how the effects of an observed moderately strong ICME compare to what happens during a more extreme event. The results suggest the kinds of solar and space weather conditions that can have evolutionary importance at a planet like Mars.

Behind the moving cosmic strings, wakes are formed from dark matter and baryon matter. The shock waves for baryon matter appear after the stage z≃790(μ/10-6). These wakes will fragment into lumps of mass M≃108(μ/10-6)3(vst/c)3/(1+z)1.5M⊙ where μ and vst~c are the line density in units of G=c=1 and the velocity of the strings.

In this study, molluscan shells housed at the University Museum, the University of Tokyo, provided a new set of region-specific correction values (ΔR) for the western Pacific, in particular for the central part of the main islands in the Japanese Archipelago and the southwest islands of Japan. The values of 40 total samples were calculated from 11 regions. North of the main islands and in the Ryukyu Islands, the mean ΔR values showed comparatively small values, 5–40 14C yr; in the central part of the main islands, these values were 60–90 14C yr.

Intestinal bacteria are involved in bile acid (BA) deconjugation and/or dehydroxylation and are responsible for the production of secondary BA. However, an increase in the production of secondary BA modulates the intestinal microbiota due to the bactericidal effects and promotes cancer risk in the liver and colon. The ingestion of Bacillus coagulans improves constipation via the activation of bowel movement to promote defaecation in humans, which may alter BA metabolism in the intestinal contents. BA secretion is promoted with high-fat diet consumption, and the ratio of cholic acid (CA):chenodeoxycholic acid in primary BA increases with ageing. The dietary supplementation of CA mimics the BA environment in diet-induced obesity and ageing. We investigated whether B. coagulans lilac-01 and soya pulp influence both BA metabolism and the maintenance of host health in CA-supplemented diet-fed rats. In CA-fed rats, soya pulp significantly increased the production of secondary BA such as deoxycholic acid and ω-muricholic acids, and soya pulp ingestion alleviated problems related to plasma adiponectin and gut permeability in rats fed the CA diet. The combination of B. coagulans and soya pulp successfully suppressed the increased production of secondary BA in CA-fed rats compared with soya pulp itself, without impairing the beneficial effects of soya pulp ingestion. In conclusion, it is possible that a combination of prebiotics and probiotics can be used to avoid an unnecessary increase in the production of secondary BA in the large intestine without impairing the beneficial functions of prebiotics.