In this era of spatially resolved observations of planet-forming disks with Atacama Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) and large ground-based telescopes such as the Very Large Telescope (VLT), Keck, and Subaru, we still lack statistically relevant information on the quantity and composition of the material that is building the planets, such as the total disk gas mass, the ice content of dust, and the state of water in planetesimals. SPace Infrared telescope for Cosmology and Astrophysics (SPICA) is an infrared space mission concept developed jointly by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and European Space Agency (ESA) to address these questions. The key unique capabilities of SPICA that enable this research are (1) the wide spectral coverage $10{-}220\,\mu\mathrm{m}$ , (2) the high line detection sensitivity of $(1{-}2) \times 10^{-19}\,\mathrm{W\,m}^{-2}$ with $R \sim 2\,000{-}5\,000$ in the far-IR (SAFARI), and $10^{-20}\,\mathrm{W\,m}^{-2}$ with $R \sim 29\,000$ in the mid-IR (SPICA Mid-infrared Instrument (SMI), spectrally resolving line profiles), (3) the high far-IR continuum sensitivity of 0.45 mJy (SAFARI), and (4) the observing efficiency for point source surveys. This paper details how mid- to far-IR infrared spectra will be unique in measuring the gas masses and water/ice content of disks and how these quantities evolve during the planet-forming period. These observations will clarify the crucial transition when disks exhaust their primordial gas and further planet formation requires secondary gas produced from planetesimals. The high spectral resolution mid-IR is also unique for determining the location of the snowline dividing the rocky and icy mass reservoirs within the disk and how the divide evolves during the build-up of planetary systems. Infrared spectroscopy (mid- to far-IR) of key solid-state bands is crucial for assessing whether extensive radial mixing, which is part of our Solar System history, is a general process occurring in most planetary systems and whether extrasolar planetesimals are similar to our Solar System comets/asteroids. We demonstrate that the SPICA mission concept would allow us to achieve the above ambitious science goals through large surveys of several hundred disks within $\sim\!2.5$ months of observing time.

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.

Recent epidemiological data suggest a link between the consumption of bovine offal products and Shiga toxin-producing Escherichia coli (STEC) infection in Japan. This study thus examined the prevalence of STEC in various types of these foods. PCR screened 229 bovine offal products for the presence of Shiga toxin (stx) gene. Thirty-eight (16·6%) samples were stx positive, of which eight were positive for rfbEO157 and three were positive for wzyO26. Four O157 and one O26 STEC isolates were finally obtained from small-intestine and omasum products. Notably, homogenates of bovine intestinal products significantly reduced the extent of growth of O157 in the enrichment process compared to homogenates of beef carcass. As co-incubation of O157 with background microbiota complex from bovine intestinal products in buffered peptone water, in the absence of meat samples, tended to reduce the extent of growth of O157, we reasoned that certain microbiota present in offal products played a role. In support of this, inoculation of generic E. coli from bovine intestinal products into the homogenates significantly reduced the extent of growth of O157 in the homogenates of bovine intestinal and loin-beef products, and this effect was markedly increased when these homogenates were heat-treated prior to inoculation. Together, this report provides first evidence of the prevalence of STEC in a variety of bovine offal products in Japan. The prevalence data herein may be useful for risk assessment of those products as a potential source of human STEC infection beyond the epidemiological background. The growth characteristic of STEC O157 in offal products also indicates the importance of being aware when to test these food products.

We present new, wide, and deep images in the AzTEC/ASTE 1.1 mm continuum and the 12 CO (J = 1–0) emission toward the northern part of the Orion-A GMC. We have found evidence for interactions between molecular clouds and the external forces that may trigger star formation. Two types of possible triggers were revealed: (1) Collisions of the diffuse gas on the cloud surface, particularly at the eastern side of the OMC-2/3 region, and (2) Irradiation of UV on the pre-existing filaments and dense molecular cloud cores. Our wide-field and high-sensitivity imaging has provided the first comprehensive view of the potential sites of triggered star formation in the Orion-A GMC.

Inadequate notification is a recognized problem of measles surveillance systems in many countries, and it should be monitored using multiple data sources. We compared data from three different surveillance sources in 2007: (1) the sentinel surveillance system mandated by the Act on Prevention of Infectious Diseases and Medical Care for Patients Suffering Infectious Diseases, (2) the mandatory notification system run by the Aichi prefectural government, and (3) health insurance claims (HICs) submitted to corporate health insurance societies. For each dataset, we examined the number of measles cases by month, within multiple age groups, and in two categories of diagnostic test groups. We found that the sentinel surveillance system underestimated the number of adult measles cases. We also found that HIC data, rather than mandatory notification data, were more likely to come from individuals who had undergone laboratory tests to confirm their measles diagnosis. Thus, HIC data may provide a supplementary and readily available measles surveillance data source.

We present the spatially-resolved polarization measurements for the disk around the Herbig Ae star, AB Aurigae. The images were obtained in J, H, and Ks bands with the coronagraphic camera HiCIAO on the Subaru Telescope. The inner region beyond 30 AU from the star was imaged, which reveals an azimuthal dip, a radial gap at around 80 AU, and complex spiral-like emission in polarized light.

In Southeast Asian tropical rainforests, two events, severe droughts associated with the El Niño-Southern Oscillation and general flowering, a type of community-wide mass flowering, occur at irregular, supra-annual intervals. The relationship between these two supra-annual events and patterns of insect population fluctuations has yet to be clearly elucidated. Leaf beetles (Chrysomelidae) are major herbivores and flower-visitors of canopy trees, affecting their growth and reproduction and, in turn, affected by tree phenology; but their population fluctuations in the Southeast Asian tropics have not been extensively investigated. We examined population fluctuation patterns of the 34 most dominant chrysomelid species in relation to the two supra-annual events by conducting monthly light-trapping over seven years in a lowland dipterocarp forest in Borneo. Our results showed large community variation in population fluctuation patterns and a supra-annual (between-year) variation in abundance for most of the dominant chrysomelids that was significantly larger than the annual (within-year) variation. Specifically, in response to a severe drought in 1998, chrysomelid species exhibited different population responses. These results show that population fluctuations of individual species, rather than the entire assemblage, must be analyzed to determine the effects of changes in environmental conditions on the structure of insect assemblages in the tropics, especially in regions where supra-annual environmental changes are relatively more important than seasonal changes.

Insect seed predators of 24 dipterocarp species (including the genera of Dipterocarpus, Dryobalanops and Shorea) and five species belonging to the Moraceae, Myrtaceae, Celastraceae and Sapotaceae were investigated. In a tropical lowland dipterocarp forest in Sarawak, Malaysia, these trees produced seeds irregularly but intensely during general flowering and seeding events in 1996 and/or 1998. Dipterocarp seeds were preyed on by 51 insect species (11 families), which were roughly classified into three taxonomic groups: smaller moths (Tortricidae, Pyralidae, Crambidae, Immidae, Sesiidae and Cosmopterigidae), scolytids (Scolytidae) and weevils (Curculionidae, Apionidae, Anthribidae, and Attelabidae). Although the host-specificity of invertebrate seed predators has been assumed to be high in tropical forests, it was found that the diet ranges of some insect predators were relatively wide and overlapped one another. Most seed predators that were collected in both study years changed their diets between general flowering and seeding events. The results of cluster analyses, based on the number of adults of each predator species that emerged from 100 seeds of each tree species, suggested that the dominant species was not consistent, alternating between the two years.

The maximum luminosity of protostars forming in molecular clouds isinvestigated as a function of the parent cloud mass on the basis of arich cloud sample searched for in the literature. In total, we gathered499 molecular clouds among the published data, out of which 243clouds are found to be associated with candidates for protostars selectedfrom the IRAS point source catalog. A diagram of the maximum stellarluminosity in each cloud and the parent cloud mass shows that theyoung stars in the clouds associated withregions are apparentlymore luminous than those in clouds away from HIIregions over theentire cloud mass range investigated (1 < MCL/M⊙ < 106).In addition, wefound that there are well-defined upper and lower limits in themaximum stellar luminosity distribution with the lower limit having asteeper dependence on the cloud mass(LMAX ∝ MCL1.5) than the upperone (LMAX ∝ MCL0.8). All these featurescould be naturally accounted forif we assume that the luminosity function of protostars is controlled by thecloud mass and the external pressure imposed on the cloud surface. Weintroduce a simple model for the stellar luminosity function as afunction of these quantities.

We have made aperture synthesis observations of 2 mm continuum emission from the dust particles around pre-main-sequence stars with the Nobeyama Millimeter Array (NMA). We observed HL Tau, DO Tau, and GM Aur in the Taurus-Auriga dark clouds. By using the sparsest configuration of the NMA, we achieved a 1” resolution which corresponds to 140 AU at the region. As a result, we have resolved disklike structures toward all the objects. The flux densities and beam deconvolved sizes of the disks are 150 mJy and 1.12”x0.82” for HL Tau, 37 mJy and 0.79”x0.38” for DO Tau, and 31 mJy and 1.39” x0.76” for GM Aur. Using the disk sizes and the inclination angles which derived from our images and past studied SEDs, we determined the physical parameters of the disks.

Before sexual differentiation occurs at seven weeks, the urological ridges develop in the embryo. These contain the primitive gonads, the mesonephros (embryonic kidneys) and the paired Wolffian (mesonephric) ducts, along with the Müllerian (paramesonephric) ducts. The fundamental mechanism of fetal sexual development was elucidated by Alfred Jost and is determined by the development of the gonad: where testes form in response to the testis-determining gene, and the male testicular hormones cause development of the male phenotype. If ovaries develop or the gonads are absent, female secondary sex characteristics are produced. Recently, the cloning of the putative human testis-determining gene on the Y-chromosome was reported. Assuming this is the true controller of testicular development, an understanding of the initiation of sexual differentiation at the genetic level should emerge in the near future. Of great importance will be the isolation of the testis-determining gene product and identification of other genes that it regulates.

Let k be a quadratic field and E an elliptic curve defined over k. The authors [8, 12, 13] [23] discussed the k-rational points on E of prime power order. For a prime number p, let n = n(k, p) be the least non negative integer such that

for all elliptic curves E defined over a quadratic field k ([15]).