The COllaborative project of Development of Anthropometrical measures in Twins (CODATwins) project is a large international collaborative effort to analyze individual-level phenotype data from twins in multiple cohorts from different environments. The main objective is to study factors that modify genetic and environmental variation of height, body mass index (BMI, kg/m2) and size at birth, and additionally to address other research questions such as long-term consequences of birth size. The project started in 2013 and is open to all twin projects in the world having height and weight measures on twins with information on zygosity. Thus far, 54 twin projects from 24 countries have provided individual-level data. The CODATwins database includes 489,981 twin individuals (228,635 complete twin pairs). Since many twin cohorts have collected longitudinal data, there is a total of 1,049,785 height and weight observations. For many cohorts, we also have information on birth weight and length, own smoking behavior and own or parental education. We found that the heritability estimates of height and BMI systematically changed from infancy to old age. Remarkably, only minor differences in the heritability estimates were found across cultural–geographic regions, measurement time and birth cohort for height and BMI. In addition to genetic epidemiological studies, we looked at associations of height and BMI with education, birth weight and smoking status. Within-family analyses examined differences within same-sex and opposite-sex dizygotic twins in birth size and later development. The CODATwins project demonstrates the feasibility and value of international collaboration to address gene-by-exposure interactions that require large sample sizes and address the effects of different exposures across time, geographical regions and socioeconomic status.

We initiated a long-term and highly frequent monitoring project toward 442 methanol masers at 6.7 GHz (Dec >−30 deg) using the Hitachi 32-m radio telescope in December 2012. The observations have been carried out daily, monitoring a spectrum of each source with intervals of 9–10 days. In September 2015, the number of the target sources and intervals were redesigned into 143 and 4–5 days, respectively. This monitoring provides us complete information on how many sources show periodic flux variations in high-mass star-forming regions, which have been detected in 20 sources with periods of 29.5–668 days so far (e.g., Goedhart et al. 2004). We have already obtained new detections of periodic flux variations in 31 methanol sources with periods of 22–409 days. These periodic flux variations must be a unique tool to investigate high-mass protostars themselves and their circumstellar structure on a very tiny spatial scale of 0.1–1 au.

Extensive reflection nebulae have been discovered around GGD27 IRS and around W75N IRS by mapping the infrared polarization in the K band.

It was found that the infrared radiation from both objects is extended at λ = 2.2 μm, by using the Agematsu 1-m, the UH 2.2-m, and the UKIR 3.8-m telescopes. We have carried out polarization mapping with the Kyoto polarimeter on the UKIRT in August 1985.

The magnetic field geometry in the central regions of two dark clouds has been mapped by measuring the polarization at 2.2 μm of background stars and of stars embedded in the clouds. The observations were done with the Kyoto polarimeter on the Agematsu 1m IR telescope in December 1984 for Heiles Cloud 2 in the Taurus dark cloud complex, and on the UKIRT 3.8m in May and July 1985 for the ρ Ophiuchus dark cloud core. The main results are:

1. i)Most of the stars in both regions show polarization and their maxima are 2.7% in Heiles Cloud 2 and 7.6% in ρ Oph, respectively. There are similar positive relations between polarization degree and extinct ion Av's.
2. ii)The distribution of position angles for Heiles Cloud 2 shows a single mode at about 50° and that for ρ Oph shows a bimode, at about 50° and 150°.
3. iii)The magnetic fields, as delineated by the infrared polarization, appear perpendicular to the flattened elongations of the molecular clouds.

We report the discovery of physical contact between the Galactic circumnuclear disk (CND) and an adjacent giant molecular cloud. The central 10 pc of our Galaxy has been imaged in molecular lines at millimeter wavelength using the Nobeyama Radio Observatory 45 m radio telescope. In the position-velocity maps of several high-density probe lines, we have found an emission “bridge” connecting the +20 km s−1 cloud (M–0.13–0.08) and the negative longitude extension of the CND. The collision between the +20 km s−1 cloud and the CND may be responsible for the formation of the bridge. This event can promote mass accretion onto the CND and/or into the inner cavity.

High-velocity compact cloud (HVCC) is a peculiar category of molecular clouds detected in the central molecular zone of our Galaxy (Oka et al. 1998, 2007, and 2012). They are characterized by compact appearances (d < 5 pc) and very large velocity widths (Δ V > 50 km s−1). Some of them show high CO J=3–2/J=1–0 intensity ratios (≥ 1.5), indicating that they consist of dense and warm molecular gas. Dispite a number of efforts, we have not reached a comprehensive interpretation of HVCCs. Recently, we detected an extraordinaly broad velocity width feature, the ‘Bullet’, in the molecular cloud interacting with the W44 supernova remnant. The Bullet shares essential properties with HVCCs. Because of its proximity, a close inspection of the Bullet must contribute to the understanding of HVCCs.

Atomic carbon (C0) is one of the most abundant carbon-bearing species in the interstellar molecular gas, and its submillimeter lines are good tracers of low-density molecular clouds which are often dark in CO rotational lines. We present a new map of the central 150 pc region of the Milky Way in the 500 GHz [CI] line, which has been recently obtained with the ASTE 10-m telescope. The [CI] emission is brightest toward the central 5-pc region, where massive GMCs are absent. This [CI]-bright region is approximately centered toward Sgr A*, covering the entire circum-nuclear ring (CND) and the western part of the 50-km/s cloud. The C0/CO abundance ratio is 0.5–2 there, and the highest ratio is observed toward the CND but just outside of the 2-pc ring of dense gas. This discovery may suggest that the CO-dark component occupies a significant fraction of the molecular gas in the circumnuclear region.

The overview of the recent results for discovery and investigations of a very exotic phenomenon – optical mirage in the X-ray spectral range – is presented. It was found that the mirage could be created in the form of coherent virtual point source, emerging in the vicinity of the second plasma in two-stage oscillator-amplifier X-ray laser. The X-ray source-mirage, rigidly phased with the initial radiation of generator, occurs only when amplification takes place in the amplifier plasma and leads to the appearance of the interference pattern in the form of concentric rings in the spatial profile of the output X-ray laser beam. The equation describing the emergence of X-ray mirage was found, numerical solution of which shows that its formation is similar to that of the optical mirages observed at propagation of light rays through an inhomogeneously heated air. Obtained results have already demonstrated novel comprehension into the physical nature of amplification of X-ray radiation, opening additional opportunities for X-ray interferometry, holography, and other applications, which require multiple rigidly phased sources of coherent radiation.

Since the discovery of fading X-rays from Gamma-Ray Bursts (GRBs) with BeppoSAX (Piro et al. 1997, Costa et al. 1997), world-wide follow-up observations in optical band have achieved the fruitful results. The case of GRB 970228, there was an optical transient, coincides with the BeppoSAX position and faded (Paradijs et al. 1997, Sahu et al. 1997). These optical observations also confirmed the extended component, which was associated with the optical transient. The new transient are fading with a power-law function in time and the later observation of HST confirmed the extended emission is stable (Fruchter et al. 1997). This extended object seems to be a distant galaxy and strongly suggests to be the host.

We investigated the environment of the radio-loud quasar 1335.8+2834 at z = 1.086 where an excess surface number density of galaxies was reported by Huthings et al. (1993). By obtaining near-infrared and new deep optical images of the field, we found a clustering of objects with very red optical-NIR color, 4 < R - K < 6 and 3 < I - K < 5 near the quasar. The colors and magnitude of the reddest objects are consistent with those predicted for old (2–4 Gyr) passively evolving elliptical galaxies at z = 1.1.

We obtained near-infrared and new deep optical images of the field near the radio-loud quasar 1335.8+2834 at z=1.086 where excess of galaxy surface number density was reported by Huthings et al. [AJ, 106, 1324]. We found a clustering of objects with very red optical-NIR color, 4 < R–K < 6 and 3 < I–K < 5 near the quasar. The colors and magnitude of the reddest objects are consistent with those predicted for luminous (> 0.5L ∗) and old (2-4 Gyr old) passively evolving elliptical galaxies at z=1.1.

Stothers and Chin (1972) examined numerically thermal instability of H burning shells in very massive stars. They reported the discovery of the thermal pulses in the shell on a stage of the contracting core just after the core exhaustion. Their results, however, are inconsequential because the pulses are very feeble and the mechanism of such feeble pulses is not well known at the shell burning phases. In this note, we summarize our analytical method and the results on the possibility of such feeble pulses in H burning shells, of which detailed procedure is described in another paper(Tanaka et al., 1980).

The Following design of a Pulsar Survey System with a Huge Interferometric Array is discussed. (1) A Huge Array of 320m × 320m with 256(= 16 × 16) spherical dishes of 20m in diameter, (2) RF is 1.4 GHz, (3) Receivers are frequency modified GPS(1.57542, 1.2276GHz) ones, (4) Phase and Delay Tracking, (5) Phase Calibration using Differential GPS(GPS signal × 2 → CW), (6) (2+1+2)D FFT /256 pixel Imaging + 256 ch Filtering + Dispersion Removal and Period finding(17M point floating 2DFFT by DSP), (8) Observing time required for the same sensitivity to Arecibo τ/τA: 0.88(Timing), 0.003(Survey).

The Solar Flare Telescope was constructed at Mitaka in 1989. This instrument comprises four telescopes which respectively observe (a) Hα images, (b) continuum images, (c) vector magnetic fields, and (d) velocity fields in the photosphere. The instrument aims at the study of energy build-up and energy release in solar flares, in cooperation with the Solar-A satellite. The whole system has been in regular operation since 1992 July. The methods of measuring the magnetic and velocity fields are described.

A cosmic ray detector, sensitive to γ-Rays with energies greater than 500 MeV is being flown on board the OGO-5 satellite. The spacecraft was launched into a highly eccentric orbit, apogee 145000 km, on March 4, 1968. γ-Ray observations are restricted to altitudes higher than 80000 km, thereby excluding interference from the radiation belts and reducing the influence from the earth albedo flux. A description of the instrument is published in the literature (Rogowski et al., 1969).

Heptavalent pneumococcal conjugate vaccine (PCV7) was introduced to Japan in 2010. We investigated the impact of PCV7 on childhood community-acquired pneumonia (CAP) and pneumococcal pneumonia (PP). Children aged <5 years living in Chiba city, Japan, who were admitted to hospitals were enrolled to estimate the incidence of CAP based on the mid-year population. PP was determined by the presence of Streptococcus pneumoniae in cultured blood and/or sputum samples of CAP patients. The incidence of CAP and S. pneumoniae isolated from PP patients was compared before (April 2008–March 2009) and after (April 2012–March 2013) the introduction of PCV7 immunization. The annual incidence of CAP was reduced [incidence rate ratio 0·81, 95% confidence interval (CI) 0·73–0·90]. When comparing post-vaccine with pre-vaccine periods, the odds ratio for PP incidence was 0·60 (95% CI 0·39–0·93, P = 0·024). PCV7-covered serotypes markedly decreased (66·6% in pre-vaccine vs. 15·6% in post-vaccine, P < 0·01), and serotypes 6C, 15A, 15C and 19A increased. Multidrug-resistant international clones in the pre-vaccine period (Spain6B-2/ST90, Taiwan19F-14/ST236) decreased, while Sweden15A-25/ST63 was the dominant clone in the post-vaccine period. A significant reduction in the incidence of both CAP hospitalizations and culture-confirmed PP of vaccine serotypes was observed at 2 years after PCV7 vaccination.