Landau's collision term in time-dependent density matrix formalism

Landau's expression for the spreading widths of giant resonances is derived, based on the small-amplitude limit of the time-dependent density-matrix theory. It is pointed out that a consistent treatment of the groundstate correlations is essential to obtain the expression.     

Eigenfrequency spacing analysis and eigenmode breakdown for semi-stadium-type 2-D fields

This paper describes eigenfrequency statistics including modal patterns and degrees of freedom for a semi-stadium-type 2-D field. The authors numerically investigated sound fields surrounded by 2-D semi-stadium-type boundaries as examples of boundaries where chaotic properties are hidden, in order to understand the characteristics of complex sound fields and to gain new insight into sound-field design. One limit of the semi-stadium boundaries is a rectangular boundary that gives a regular field, while another limit is a stadium boundary in which the chaotic property emerges. The numerical results show that eigenfrequency spacing in all the cases can be expressed as a family of Γ distributions extended to a non-integer degree of freedom. This fractal degree of freedom can be interpreted as the degree of freedom of the sound field. For the regular limit case, i.e., a rectangular case, the distribution is the exponential distribution with the freedom of unity, while in the chaotic case, i.e., the stadium case, it is the Wigner distribution with a degree of freedom of two. The authors, however, analyze the semi-stadium sound fields. The analysis of the fluctuations in the distribution function for the eigenfrequencies showed that the skewness decreases as the boundary approaches the stadium condition. Modal patterns also clearly showed breaks of the regular pattern of nodal lines in a rectangular case as the boundary was deformed from the rectangular to the stadium condition. The breaks of the modal pattern could be also confirmed by decreasing of the skewness for the sound pressure distribution.     

M-Mode Color Doppler Ultrasonic Imaging of Vertical Tongue Movement During Articulatory Movement

To observe and estimate the movement of the tongue, ultrasonic investigation is the most harmless real-time monitoring procedure for analyzing articulatory movements. Color Doppler ultrasonic imaging is special in that it can only sample a moving target, and it can indicate the velocity and direction of the target by color and brightness in real time. This study assessed and demonstrated the validity of M-mode color Doppler ultrasonic imaging to observe the movements of the tongue during syllable repetition tasks performed by normal subjects and dysarthric patients, those affected by amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, cerebellar ataxia, Parkinsonism, and polymyopathy. When the transducer was set below the jaw, upward movement was indicated by a blue signal and downward movement was indicated by a red one on the screen of the ultrasound machine. We also measured the velocity of the tongue by contrast scale classified by 15 degrees. Thus, we could observe vertical tongue movement by a color-coded pattern after quantitative analysis. The Doppler signal patterns of normal subjects were verified by simultaneous video x-ray fluorography recordings. The findings for dysarthric patients corresponded well with previously reported features analyzed by other methods. Therefore, color Doppler ultrasonic imaging of the tongue is a useful procedure to researchers for clinical speech and voice studies.     

Physiological Studies of Retrusive Movements of the Human Tongue

SUMMARY: This study identified that physiologically the superior pharyngeal constrictor muscle at the level of the base of the tongue contributes to retrusive movement of the tongue with constriction of the mid-pharyngeal cavity and possesses unique properties in terms of motor speech control along with the genioglossus muscle. From a kinematic study involving trans-nasal fiberscopy and lateral X-ray fluorography, retrusive movement of the tongue was highly correlated with constrictive movement of the mid-pharyngeal cavity. An electromyographic study revealed that the superior pharyngeal constrictor muscle at the level of the base of the tongue contributes to retrusive movement of the tongue and that the genioglossus muscle contributes to protrusive movement. We also noted that this relationship between the activities of these two muscles were in response to postural changes during vowel productions without changes in the acoustic features. These findings suggest that these two muscles act not only antagonistically to produce retrusive and protrusive movement of the tongue, but also they complement each other to conserve the shape of the vocal tract for speech production. The functional relationship between these two muscles could contribute the consecutive movement of human speech production under various conditions and might be useful when applying rehabilitation approaches for the patients with neurological speech and swallowing disorders.     

Stereoselective tris-glycosylation to introduce beta-(1-->3)-branches into gentiotetraose for the concise synthesis of phytoalexin-elicitor heptaglucoside

Dodecyl thioglycosides (3, 4, 5) were prepared by conventional transformation of d-glucose and used as new glycosyl donors for a short-step synthesis of phytoalexin elicitor heptaglucoside. A gentio-tetraoside derivative (6) having three hydroxyl groups was synthesized by NIS-TfOH promoted glycosylate in more than 90% yield followed by selective removal of temporary protective groups. Undesired formation of alpha-glycosides at the introduction of beta-(1-->3)-branches into gentio-oligosaccharides was found to be suppressed by use of a thiophilic reagent system, BSP (1-benzenesulfinyl piperidine)-Tf2O, giving the heptaglucoside in only four glycosylation steps.     

Detection of modified tyrosines as an inflammation marker in a photo-aged skin model

Reactive nitrogen species, produced during the process of inflammation induced by various factors including UV radiation, modify amino acids in crucial proteins. It is assumed that skin tissue is more likely to be modified, as it is located at the outer layer of a body that is exposed to UV radiation on a daily basis. To investigate the influence of the modified tyrosine on UV-exposed skin, we detected the nitrotyrosine or halogenated tyrosine and dityrosine in photo-aged model mice. The back skin of mice was exposed to a dose of 10 J cm(-2) day(-1) every day for 15 weeks. Samples exhibiting typical symptoms of photo aging were provided to the immunofluorescence study. The quantification of modified proteins was accomplished through a chemical analytical method known as HPLC-tandem mass spectrometry. Analysis of the irradiated skin samples showed that all modified tyrosine except nitrotyrosine demonstrated statistically significant increases. The molecular weights of major modified proteins, confirmed as 25-50 kDa, were measured using Western blot analysis with an anti-nitrotyrosine antibody. Furthermore, the immunofluorescence study verified that the localization of myeloperoxidase conformed to that of nitrotyrosine. This result suggests that the modified tyrosine was produced during the process of inflammation by UV irradiation. In this study, we used a low dose of UV irradiation to which we are exposed in daily life. Our results suggest that UV exposure in daily life may induce the production of modified tyrosines and skin aging.     

Density-matrix formalism with three-body ground-state correlations

A density-matrix formalism which includes the effects of three-body ground-state correlations is applied to the standard Lipkin model. The reason to consider the complicated three-body correlations is that the truncation scheme of reduced density matrices up to the two-body level does not give satisfactory results to the standard Lipkin model. It is shown that the inclusion of the three-body correlations drastically improves the properties of the ground states and excited states. It is pointed out that lack of mean-field effects in the standard Lipkin model enhances the relative importance of the three-body ground-state correlations. Formal aspects of the density-matrix formalism such as a relation to the variational principle and the stability condition of the ground state are also discussed. It is pointed out that the three-body ground-state correlations are necessary to satisfy the stability condition.     

Application of a time-dependent density-matrix formalism

An extended time-dependent Hartree-Fock theory which includes the effects of nucleon-nucleon collisions is presented and applied to the small-amplitude quadrupole motions of¹⁶O and⁴⁰Ca. The collision term of the theory includes not only the Born term but also higher-order terms. It is found that the higher-order terms are essential to the damping of the motions.