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The incidence of heatstroke has been increasing in Japan, and future climate change is likely to increase heatstroke risk. We therefore developed a method to quantify the spatial distribution of outdoor heatstroke risk and predicted future changes in this risk considering the predicted climate change in Sendai, Japan. Heatstroke risk was quantified by assessing hazard, vulnerability and exposure. Daily maximum wet-bulb globe temperature (WBGT) was selected as the hazard index. The distribution of WBGT was predicted by mesoscale meteorological simulations using the Weather Research and Forecasting (WRF) model. The relationship between daily maximum WBGT and the daily incidence rate was approximated by analyzing emergency transport data. This relationship was selected as the vulnerability index. Using the hazard and vulnerability indices, a spatial distribution of the monthly incidence rate was obtained. Finally, the total number of heatstroke patients per month was estimated by multiplying the monthly incidence rate by the population density. The outdoor heatstroke risk for August was then estimated for current (2000s) and near-future (2030s) climatic conditions in Sendai. WBGT at coastal areas in the 2030s increased owing to increases in humidity, while WBGT at inland areas increased owing to increases in air temperature. This increase in WBGT drove increases in heatstroke risk.

Disaster-originated placename is a kind of disaster subculture that is used for a practical purpose of identifying a location while reminding the past disaster experience. They are expected to transmit the risks and knowledge of high-risk low-frequency natural hazards, surviving over time and generations. This paper compares the perceptions to tsunami-originated placenames in local communities having realistic and exaggerated origins in Sanriku Coast, Japan. The reality of tsunami-originated placenames is first assessed by comparing the tsunami run-ups indicated in the origins and that of the tsunami in the Great East Japan Earthquake 2011 using GIS and digital elevation model. Considerable proportions of placenames had exaggerated origins, but the group interviews to local communities revealed that origins indicating unrealistic tsunami run-ups were more believed than that of the more realistic ones. We discuss that accurate hazard information will be discredited if it contradicts to the people’s everyday life and the desire for safety, and even imprecise and ambiguous information can survive if it is embedded to a system of local knowledge that consistently explains the various facts in a local area that requires explanation.

This article builds on recent work entitled The Spirit Level by Richard Wilkinson and Kate Pickett suggesting that Japan is one of the most harmonious affluent countries in the world, whereas the United Kingdom (UK) is one of the most unequal and hence disharmonious. In particular, the article revisits The Spirit Level evidence according to which Japan is a more equitable society in terms of income than any other industrialised country, but especially contrasts with a country such as the UK. The article provides a brief review of appropriate data in both Japan and the UK that could be used for the analysis of income inequality and identifies the best available microdata that would be most suitable for this purpose: the Japanese National Survey of Family Income and Expenditure microdata and the UK Family Resources Survey and Household Below Average Income survey microdata. It then presents a comparative analysis of income inequality measures in Japan and the UK and a discussion of the income distribution in both countries based on these data sets over the past twenty years. The findings suggest that the UK is much more unequal than Japan in terms of income distribution.

Although the disaggregation of consumers is crucial in understanding the fragmented markets that are dominant in many developed countries, it is not always straightforward to carry out such disaggregation within conventional retail modelling frameworks due to the limitations of data. In particular, consumer grouping based on sampled data is not assured to link with the other statistics that are vital in estimating sampling biases and missing variables in the sampling survey. To overcome this difficulty, we propose a useful combination of spatial interaction modelling and microsimulation approaches for the reliable estimation of retail interactions based on a sample survey of consumer behaviour being linked with other areal statistics. We demonstrate this approach by building an operational retail interaction model to estimate expenditure flows from households to retail stores in a local city in Japan, Kusatsu City. [PUBLICATION ABSTRACT]

Given the close interaction between tumor cells and stromal cells in the tumor microenvironment (TME), TME‐targeted strategies would be promising for developing integrated cancer immunotherapy. Cancer‐associated fibroblasts (CAFs) are the dominant stromal component, playing critical roles in generation of the pro‐tumorigenic TME. We focused on the immunosuppressive trait of CAFs, and systematically explored the alteration of tumor‐associated immune responses by CAF‐targeted therapy. C57BL/6 mice s.c. bearing syngeneic E.G7 lymphoma, LLC1 Lewis lung cancer, or B16F1 melanoma were treated with an anti‐fibrotic agent, tranilast, to inhibit CAF function. The infiltration of immune suppressor cell types, including regulatory T cells and myeloid‐derived suppressor cells, in the TME was effectively decreased through reduction of stromal cell‐derived factor‐1, prostaglandin E2, and transforming growth factor‐β. In tumor‐draining lymph nodes, these immune suppressor cell types were significantly decreased, leading to activation of tumor‐associated antigen‐specific CD8+ T cells. In addition, CAF‐targeted therapy synergistically enhanced multiple types of systemic antitumor immune responses such as the cytotoxic CD8+ T cell response, natural killer activity, and antitumor humoral immunity in combination with dendritic cell‐based vaccines; however, the suppressive effect on tumor growth was not observed in tumor‐bearing SCID mice. These data indicate that systemic antitumor immune responses by various immunologic cell types are required to bring out the efficacy of CAF‐targeted therapy, and these effects are enhanced when combined with effector‐stimulatory immunotherapy such as dendritic cell‐based vaccines. Our mouse model provides a novel rationale with TME‐targeted strategy for the development of cell‐based cancer immunotherapy. This study shows critical roles of CAFs in generating the immunosuppressive and pro‐tumorigenic TME through supporting the infiltration of immune suppressor cells. CAFs‐targeted therapy improves the regional and systemic antitumor immune responses, thereby enhancing the potency of the DC‐based vaccine immunotherapy.

Mast cell (MC) activation contributes considerably to immune responses, such as host protection and allergy. Cell surface immunoreceptors expressed on MCs play an important role in MC activation. Although various immunoreceptors on MCs have been identified, the regulatory mechanism of MC activation is not fully understood. To understand the regulatory mechanisms of MC activation, we used gene expression analyses of human and mouse MCs to identify a novel immunoreceptor expressed on MCs. We found that Tek, which encodes Tie2, was preferentially expressed in the MCs of both humans and mice. However, Tie2 was not detected on the cell surface of the mouse MCs of the peritoneal cavity, ear skin, or colon lamina propria. In contrast, it was expressed on mouse bone marrow–derived MCs and bone marrow MC progenitors (BM-MCps). Stimulation of Tie2 by its ligand angiopoietin-1 induced tyrosine phosphorylation of Tie2 in MEDMC-BRC6, a mouse embryonic stem cell-derived mast cell line, and enhanced MEDMC-BRC6 and mouse BM-MCp adhesion to vascular cell adhesion molecule-1 (VCAM-1) through α4β1 integrin. These results suggest that Tie2 signaling induces α4β1 integrin activation on BM-MCps for adhesion to VCAM-1.

The open burning of agricultural crop residues poses a sizable threat to Southeast Asia’s near-term prosperity and long-term sustainability. Though Southeast Asia’s policymakers have adopted burning bans and other solutions to curb this threat, few studies have systematically assessed their implementation prospects. This study offers a novel data-driven assessment of those prospects in Thailand. More concretely, it estimates how much economic, technological, institutional, and social barriers could slow the implementation of burning restrictions featured in Thailand’s PM2.5 control plan. This study finds that institutional/social barriers delay implementation more than technical/economic barriers, resulting in about twice the level of PM2.5 emissions relative to an effectively implemented policy scenario over a 10- to 20-year period. This study also demonstrates that the costs of overcoming social/institutional barriers are approximately 14 million US dollars annually over a ten-year period. This figure is equivalent to about a 70% increase on the 21 million US dollars planned for controlling burning in 2026 in Thailand. The approach employed in this study—though not free of imperfections—can also be used for finer-grained comparison of the barriers/costs of managing different crop residues in Thailand and beyond.

BackgroundThe paradoxical association of obesity with mortality, named the “obesity paradox”, has been inconsistent, possibly due to a difference between body mass index (BMI) and central obesity, estimated by waist circumference (WC) as patterns of adiposity.Subjects/methodsWe enrolled 8513 participants from the Kumamoto Intervention Conference Study, a multicenter registry that included consecutive patients undergoing percutaneous coronary intervention (PCI) at 18 centers between 2008 and 2017 in Japan. Patients were divided into quartiles in ascending order of the BMI or WC. The primary endpoints were all-cause mortality and cardiovascular death within a year.ResultsThere were 186 deaths (case fatality rate, 22.1/1000 person-years) during the follow-up period. The lowest group (1st quartile) of BMI or WC had the worst prognosis among the quartiles (1st quartile, 4.2%; 2nd quartile, 1.9%; 3rd quartile, 1.5%; 4th quartile, 1.1%; P < 0.001 (χ2) and 1st quartile, 4.1%; 2nd quartile, 2.3%; 3rd quartile, 1.2%; 4th quartile, 1.5%; P < 0.001 (χ2), respectively). Similar results were obtained for cardiovascular death. In a multivariable analysis adjusted by nine conventional factors, the lowest group (1st quartile) of BMI (hazards ratio, 2.748; 95% confidence interval [CI], 1.712–4.411) and WC (hazards ratio, 2.340; 95% CI, 1.525–3.589) were independent prognostic factors for all-cause mortality. By dividing the participants into two groups according to either the BMI or WC based on the National Cholesterol Education Program Adult Treatment Panel III and World Health Organization classification, the highest mortality was observed in the lower group. However, the C-statistic after adding BMI (quartile) to conventional factors was found to be slightly higher than BMI (two categories) and WC (two categories) (0.735 vs. 0.734).ConclusionsThe obesity paradox was observed in patients after PCI, and single-use of BMI (or WC) was sufficient to predict the prognosis of patients after PCI.

Research has yielded increasingly robust estimates of the co-benefits from mitigating climate change while reducing air pollution, improving health, and meeting other development needs. Though quantifying these often hidden benefits could ease cost concerns and lower technological constraints for development-friendly climate solutions, achieving co-benefits frequently requires overcoming difficult-to-measure social and institutional barriers. This study extends insights from research focusing on quantitatively assessing the feasibility of a 1.5 °C future to build a multidimensional framework for measuring different barriers to achieving co-benefits. The framework offers a novel yet generalizable approach for bringing context-appropriate assessments of different dimensions of feasibility into the integrated assessment modelling that underpins work on co-benefits. It then outlines five steps for applying that framework to evaluate the size of different barriers for transport, agricultural and residential energy co-benefit solutions in Thailand. The results demonstrate that the sum of the delays from social/institutional barriers exceed economic/technological barriers for four out of six studied solutions. These delays also lead to increases of 24% to 31% in PM 2.5 emissions relative to a no-barriers effective implementation scenario between 2015 and 2030 and 2040. The feasibility framework can be integrated into not only national policy scenarios but also project assessments, following trends in carbon finance. An international barriers database as well as strengthening links to work on barriers and technological diffusion, transaction costs, and multi-level transitions can also help spread multi-dimensional feasibility assessments across countries and scales.

Inflammatory monocytes play an important role in host defense against infections. However, the regulatory mechanisms of transmigration into infected tissue are not yet completely understood. Here we show that mice deficient in MAIR-II (also called CLM-4 or LMIR2) are more susceptible to caecal ligation and puncture (CLP)-induced peritonitis than wild-type (WT) mice. Adoptive transfer of inflammatory monocytes from WT mice, but not from MAIR-II, TLR4 or MyD88-deficient mice, significantly improves survival of MAIR-II-deficient mice after CLP. Migration of inflammatory monocytes into the peritoneal cavity after CLP, which is dependent on VLA-4, is impaired in above mutant and FcRγ chain-deficient mice. Lipopolysaccharide stimulation induces association of MAIR-II with FcRγ chain and Syk, leading to enhancement of VLA-4-mediated adhesion to VCAM-1. These results indicate that activation of MAIR-II/FcRγ chain by TLR4/MyD88-mediated signalling is essential for the transmigration of inflammatory monocytes from the blood to sites of infection mediated by VLA-4. Inflammatory monocytes play an important role in host defense against infections. Here the authors provide insights into the mechanism behind the recruitment of inflammatory monocytes to sites of infection by demonstrating the involvement of Toll-like receptor 4 and MAIR-II immunoreceptors in this process.