The paper describes a NOAA database for a local area of Northern Japan. From receiving the NOAA satellite data to making the final image data system, no human intervention is needed. The management system of the database involves easy maintenance, and the storage medium is optical disk. TIDAS will operate for 15 years without human intervention. The search system for the user is easy without an operation manual.< >
Although serotyping is the most important method of identification of taxonomy in Salmonella, conventional serotype determination with a complete set of antisera is time consuming and laborious. Recently, rapid serotyping procedures with polymerase chain reaction (PCR) have been developed. In this study, we established a novel PCR-based rapid serotyping method that employs a unique target gene. Alignment study of Salmonella-specific gene (Salmonella enterotoxin [stn]) revealed a correlation between the stn gene sequence and the serotype of the organism. In 750 bp of stn gene, 55 nucleotides indicated single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP)-like polymorphism, and the correlation between the SNP-like polymorphism and the serotype of the organism suggests that SNP-like sequences in stn gene can serve as an index for serotyping. To develop a rapid serotyping method based on the SNP-like polymorphism, we selected serotype-associated 12 SNP-like sites in the stn gene and established a method based on high-resolution melting (HRM) and PCR, which identifies nucleotides at SNP-like sites within 1.5 h. This newly established rapid serotyping procedure (stn-HRM) could identify nine serotypes, including the frequently isolated serovar Enteritidis. These nine serotypes cover 64.3% of cases of Salmonella, as reported by the World Health Organization/Global Foodborne Infection Network (WHO/GFN) Country Databank from 2001 to 2010. In this study, we employed a unique target gene, stn, which is completely independent of the genes that were targeted in previously reported rapid serotyping procedures. Therefore, the results obtained by our newly developed stn-HRM procedure are independent of the results obtained by other procedures. Besides, stn-HRM can ensure accurate identification of the bacterial species as stn is a Salmonella-specific gene. It is expected that the combination of newly constructed stn-HRM and previously reported procedures could further improve the credibility of Salmonella isolate serotyping.
This paper treats a swarm robots system that constructs a given structure by collecting distributed materials in the field. In our proposal, the robots with simple algorithm and the materials with simple rules construct the structure cooperatively. Efficiency of our proposal is confirmed by computer simulation through the task of simple structure construction. Such as the line,the rectangle,octagon and soon.
Using the NOAA-HRPT data received at the Tohoku University, a satellite image database for regional researches is produced at the Computer Center of the university. The database is called“Tohoku Image Database: TIDAS”. The TIDAS is open for public, and can be accessed through computer networks. The albedo and brightness temperature processed from the AVHRR channel 2 and channel 4 are geocoded, and sent to the Computer Center for TIDAS production every day. The TIDAS contains the satellite images in 99.2% of the days from April, 1990 to the present. This paper describes the overall features of the TIDAStogether with the related background.
