In this study, to develop the room-temperature shipping of unstable liposomal drugs, we experimentally investigated the desiccation tolerance of Large Unilamellar Vesicle (LUV; φ200-300nm) which is the main component of liposomal drugs. LUVs loaded with trehalose or ε-poly-L-lysine(PLL) as dry protective agents was dispersed in the thin film of the protective agent solution. The film was vacuum-dried and rehydrated to measure the LUV diameter distribution. The diameter distribution of the LUV including PLL kept nearly the same dimeter distribution as that before the vacuum-drying. This suggests that LUV obtains desiccation tolerance by the addition of PLL.

The tumor suppressor protein p53 is activated in response to cellular stress and plays a role in suppressing cancer by promoting transcription of downstream genes. MDM2 normally binds to p53 and prevents unnecessary cell death, but its overexpression in cancer cells can interfere with p53 function. Therefore, research and development of drugs that inhibit the binding of p53 to MDM2 and activate p53 to suppress cancer is underway. In this study, we focused on an inhibitor that mutates the p53-derived peptide at the MDM2 binding site and analyzed the electronic structure of the complex with MDM2 by canonical molecular orbital calculations. It is found that the charge rearrangements associated with the complex formation and the loss and gain in the mutant peptide is mainly due to the Coulomb interaction energy.

Hydrosilylation of alkenes is an important transformation reaction in the production of a series of functional silicone materials. In the conventional system, platinum compounds have been widely used as catalyst for the hydrosilylation of alkenes. However, development of alternative catalysts that do not rely on the use of platinum is highly desired. In this work, we focused on the introduction of the chelating organosilyl ligands on the cobalt and iron centers to construct new catalysts, and it was found that cobalt disilyl complex can act as the highly active as well as selective catalyst for the hydrosilylation of various alkenes.

Toward realizing global sustainability, there is an increasing need to reproduce and evaluate the complex interactions between the environment and economic activities on a computer system. In this study, we focused on land use change and its impact on the water cycle and observed the change in water stress by coupling the integrated land simulator ILS and the integrated assessment model GCAM. Consequently, our system has the potential to suggest the timing and location of severe environmental impacts in terms of water resource use with a spatiotemporal resolution that could not be predicted when ILS and GCAM were run independently.

In dynamic environments where synchronization between the real and digital worlds is required, game engines are useful for agents’ pathfinding, and the navigation mesh system is one of its features. In the architectural and geographic fields, static descriptions which include spatial topology information, such as IFC and IndoorGML, have been implemented, but they have not been fully utilized for pathfinding. In this study, we examine the possibility of improving the efficiency of pathfinding in real space by using a navigation system in a game engine while using it in conjunction with existing spatial descriptions in the architectural field. We also show that the method can be used for scale-crossing pathfinding and decision making, and for clustering of node relationship graphs which is consistent with human intuitive understanding of space.

In order to improve the design quality of building projects, it is useful to reproduce the study process of good practice. However, it is difficult to reproduce the process because the important information of the functions performed by the building elements and the study process is not explicitly shown in the drawing artifacts. Therefore, in this paper, an attempt is made to create “Semantic Data Model” of the transition of functional relationships from design case study issues, and a methodology to make the study process explicit is investigated. Then, a prototype design case study reference system was developed and discussed.