So-called swine flu

It became clear that the swine flu was not a new flu from swine. It was not new at all but a revival.
Ignoring recommendations from WHO and CDC, Japan and China have done useless and nasty treatment on the patients and people who came with the patients or from countries in which this flu happened. The screening at the airport was all rubbish with no meaning to do so. The bio-terrorism-fighter-like officials examining the plain passengers have frighten and made people almost in panic. Schools were closed in some places with no reasonable merit. High performance face masks were sellout and disappeared from any pharmacy to be worn with no preventing effect.
These are what happened in Japan, done by majority of Japanese people. So stupid and shame.
A few weeks ago, the Minister of health shouted about the flu, now the Prime Minister is asking in TV to keep calm, looking so frustrated. Japan as a whole got a flu with fever.

Smoking and being fat have become a kind of crime; now, getting flu too.

Side Effects of H1N1 Flu in Japan

In Japan, as the H1N1 (so called Swine) flu become popular (expanded), we easily see its side effects in terms of social and behavioral matter.
-Masks are now very popular with much demand and shortage of stocks, because they are recommended to be put and changed daily. I read that WHO does not any preventional effect of masks against flu infection.
-Many social activities (meeting, concerts, group tour of school students, sports competitions and so on) are now suddenly canceled, to avoid gathering people.
-In Osaka area, many primary, jonior high and high schools are closed. It was bit funny to read a small news reporting that Karaoke room became popular in the students to kill time.
-Travels are recommended to be cancelled if not essential.

It is even interesting who made a large profit by this flu incidence.

Kyushu Univ. Philharmonic Orchestra

One of the undergraduate students in my department sent me an announcement e-mail for a concert of the Philharmonic Orchestra of Kyushu University, in which she is playing a bass trombone. The concert is a 100th anniversary one held in June. Unfortunately I can not attend it because of my travel to Prague for the ISDCI congress, but I distributed this information to my family and other people. The ticket is just 1000 JPY. According to the past several concert I attended, their performance was fairly nice, enough enjoyable, with occasional good guest players. So the ticket fare is really cheap, I think, even considering that the orchestra is a kind of student activity, with some alumni members.

I'm not so familiar with classic music, but real sound of orchestra is always nice to listen, much better than the same music from small audio speakers in my room.

Ken's seminar

The day before yesterday (May 12), we had a chance to attend a seminar by Dr. Kenneth Soderhall (University of Uppsala) held in Dr. Kawabata's Lab. The topic was crustacean immune system, with many interesting findings on ProPO system and hematopoietic cytokines.
I was also invited to have a dinner with them in a Japanese restaurant in Tenjin (the city center of Fukuoka). Actually the Japanese dishes were very nice and Kenn looked very satisfied about that.
We had fun hours with beer and rice wine, resulting in heavy hangover at least on me.

*Ken is the President of International Society of Developmental and Comparative Immunology; I will start a service as the President Elect of the society from July 2009.

Hypersensitivity against the new flu in Japan

In spite of WHO recommendation not to restrict human immigrations between countries so strictly, Japanese society is responding too much, I think, against the expansion of the flu. The first Japanese patients of the flu was found to be high school students and teachers came back from Canada. Not only them, but also 30-40 flight passengers sitting around them are now caged in a hotel to see what happens for a week or so.
Many universities including mine recommend not to visit countries where the flu patients are recognized, though I'm not quite sure what will happen if we neglect it; we may have obvious or undocumented penalty.
Some Japanese companies commanded their employees who took their holidays overseas last week to stay at their home for a week or two, to prevent any possible expansion of the flu from anyone of the employee. This is an extreme too-much hypersensitivity, on my feeling. Even it could happens, who think that's the company's responsibility? Stupid attitude. It should be even true that the companies are quite insensitive to the human rights of their employee.
Perhaps, this kind of sensitiveness towards wrong direction is a typical to Japan society?

The Recording Diet

I'm not sure if this type of diet (trial to reduce weight) is known even in foreign countries, but this method is famous in Japan, originally introduced by Mr. Toshio Okada, a commentator for modern Japanese culture, Otaku. This does not need any special drug, food stuff, or equipments. You need only a notebook or small memo pad and a pen.
You can start this method by recording everything (very strictly) you ate, on the notebook. Try it for two week or so. You can loose 2-3 kg easily. This is just a beginning or an approach. Then you start to sum the calories of all stuff you ate. These are bit tedious, but you can find such calorie values by google search quite easily. After a week or two, you will loose additional 1-2 kg.
Then you start your actual performance. Everyday, you calculate your sum of the calories and keep the sum around 1500 kcal, perhaps you have to restrict some foods or snacks and sweets between meals. But what you have to care is only the daily calorie value. You do not care what kind of nutritional elements you should take. Just mind calorie. Your weight will decrease by 1 kg a week. This exactly happened to me. Do not restrict the food too much. Take it easy.
I tried this method last year, from just a year before, and continued for 6 month, resulting in loss of 18 kg (86 kg to 68 kg).
The chart below is a record of that progress.
(Blue plot shows weight in Kg, left Y-axis; Red plot shows fat content in %, and the yellow indicated total fat weight in Kg. X-axsis is dates starting from May 10, 2008 to Oct 10. The gap of the plots in the middle, missing data, was because of my travel to Oxford, UK, where the scales were not available.)


This method is also mentioned in other's blog.

My research topics

It seems stupid not to have mentioned my research topics, as a scientist. (Thanks Jp, for reminding me this matter!)

I was educated in Department of Fisheries Science, Kyushu University, and started to study Fish Immunology (clarifying immune system of fish) as a PhD student. Especially my major study subject is the complement system, a multi-component humoral system in the blood, fighting against microbial invasion.
In the medical research field, or even in a general immunology, the complement system has been regarded as something complicated with many components with just numbers, such as C1, C2 ,,,, down to C9. The fact that the numbered components do not always react in the numbered order, for example C1 is followed by C4, then C2, C3.
Nevertheless, the complement system has been very interesting for me. It is a kind of harmonized system composed of diverse range of protein families, it show wide variety of biological functions, and it is very well conserved over evolution.

I spent two years of my master course period for attempts to purify C4 protein from carp serum, resulting in vain. I also spent six years to purify and clone C3, factor B, and factor D, the essential components in an antibody-independent activation pathway of the complement system, from carp, this time fortunately resulting in acquisition of PhD but far later in 2001. Furthermore I also spent several years to work on other components with students and international collaborators, using mainly carp fish.

The most interesting and exciting feature of FISH complement system is that the fish system is much more complex than that of mammals, which has been regarded as a most sophisticated and developed one. Fish complement components are present as multiple copies of isotypes/isoforms, with significant sequence and, possibly functional, divergence. We have hypothesized the diversity as an evolutionary strategy to expand innate immune ability to recognize wide range of pathogens which should be more densely present and abundant in aqueous environment around fish.

Now research on innate immunity is a big trend, but this trend is mainly driven by Toll-like receptors, lectins, and so on, but not so much by the complement (pity though). But the complement system is there and everywhere in the body, and also in almost every animal species including vertebrates and invertebrates. Why not study more! That's the one crucial to live.

My dream is to make my lab as a Mecca for the complement research for lower vertebrates, and accordingly for comparative immunology, of Japan and even worldwide.

You may find a recent review of fish complement system as follows: one from me, and another from my friend, Oriol.
If you would like to have their PDF, please let me know.

Diversified components of the bony fish complement system: more genes for robuster innate defense?
Nakao M, Kato-Unoki Y, Nakahara M, Mutsuro J, Somamoto T.
Adv Exp Med Biol. 2006;586:121-38. Review.

Expansion of genes encoding complement components in bony fish: biological implications of the complement diversity.
Nakao M, Mutsuro J, Nakahara M, Kato Y, Yano T.
Dev Comp Immunol. 2003 Oct;27(9):749-62. Review.

Recent advances on the complement system of teleost fish.
Boshra H, Li J, Sunyer JO.
Fish Shellfish Immunol. 2006 Feb;20(2):239-62.

My motto (but not easy to adopt)

(I do not know its origin, but Dr. Haruhisa Wago, Saitama Med Univ. introduced me.)

Be a leader, not a boss.

A boss knows everything.
A learder admits mistakes.
　
A boss tells people what must be done.
A leader shows how to do things.
　
A boss criticises.
A leader gives advices.
　
A boss talks first.
A leader listens first.
　
A boss gives orders.
A leader gives directions.
　
A boss demands respect.
A leader earns and deserves respect.
　
A boss rules with law.
A leader shows human-kindness.
　
So, be a leader, not a boss.

A temporary pub

This is one of my favorite places to drink near my home. It could be called as a stall. But it's actually pub, serving grilled meat (chicken, pork, beef, and fish) on the stick (like small BBQ), soup noodle, grilled cheese, vegetables, and off course drinks including rice wine, spirits, beer and wine. It operates from 6 pm to 2 am, throughout the year. During daytime, the stall units are absent, disappearing somewhere secret. The stall units are well equipped with charcoal grill, table and refrigerator to keep stuffs for a night. It gets electricity and tap water from a building next to the place with exclusive meters. You can smoke using the ground under your seat as an ashtray.
If you order a mug of beer with a snack, several sticks of the grilled meat, and a bowl of soup noodle to spend an hour, you will pay about $20 or less. Not so cheap, but not too expensive.

Public Baths in Fukuoka City

I found public bath facilities, Sen-toe in Japanese pronunciation, one in the cenral Fukuoka City (upper photo) and one more near my University (the lower). (One of the two doors is for men, and another is for women.) They charge about 400JPY (~$4) a time, which I feel bit expensive. When I was a student here, we had several public bath places even only around the University, but now only a few survived. After taking bath, it is very relaxing and refreshing to drink a small bottle of milk or coffee-flavored milk. Now I have few chance to use public bath in the city, but sometimes enjoy public hot spring bath in particular places near the city.

What You'll Wish You'd Known

This is a manuscript of a talk by Mr. Paul Graham. I like this opinion, a kind of essay, and would like to introduce it to my children, a 16 years old son and a 20 years old daughter.

It contains some issues that I do not agree, but the essay would be a very nice stimulator for teenager to think their way to live.

The University guideline how to act against the new flu pandemic

A couple of days ago, the risk management office of my University issued an official guideline for students and other stuffs about how to act on a possible pandemic of the new flu, which is now expanding worldwide.

To make the long story short, when the flu become epidemic but still outside Fukuoka prefecture, in which my University stands, all the classes will be canceled and direct students to stay home. Stuffs in charge of minimum maintenance or doing very important experiments which cannot be paused may come to the office or lab.

After the flu become epidemic in Fukuoka prefecture, the University will be shut down, except for strictly minimum maintenance, such as security and feeding experimental animals.

All the announcements about the University acts, will be broadcasted by e-mail and web page, containing some information portal site for students.

I hope this system works fine, even on a possible worst situation. But perhaps, the A-type new flu would lead to such a situation based on its relatively weak virulency. (Is it too optimistic?)

Worst case for me would be prohibition of travel, domestic or international. I have already registered in ISDCI meeting in Prague, where we have a very important business meeting and sessions including one which I will chair.