Objective: Recently, the importance of non-pharmacological therapies for dementia has come to the fore. In the present study, we examined the curative effects of aromatherpay in dementia in 28 elderly people, 17 of whom had Alzheimer's disease (AD). Methods: After a control period of 28 days, aromatherapy was performed over the following 28 days, with a wash out period of another 28 days. Aromatherapy consisted of the use of rosemary and lemon essential oils in the morning, and lavender and orange in the evening. To determine the effects of aromatherpay, patients were evaluated using the Japanese version of the Gottfries, Brane, Steen scale (GBSS-J), Functional Assessment Staging of Alzheimer's disease (FAST), a revised version of Hasegawa's Dementia Scale (HDS-R), and the Touch Panel-type Dementia Assessment Scale (TDAS) four times: before the control period, after the control period, after aromatherpay, and after the washout period. Results: All patients showed significant improvement in personal orientation related to cognitive function on both the GBSS-J and TDAS after therapy. In particular, patients with AD showed significant improvement in total TDAS scores. Result of routine laboratory tests showed no significant changes, suggesting that there were no side-effects associated with the use of aromatherapy. Results from Zarit's score showed no significant changes, suggesting that caregivers had no effect on the improved patient scores seen in the other tests. Conclusions:In conclusion, we found aromatherapy an efficacious nonpharmacological therapy for dementia. Aromatherapy may have some potential for improving cognitive function, especially in AD patients.

SUMMARYMotile cilia generate constant fluid flow over epithelial tissue, and thereby influence diverse physiological processes. Such functions of ciliated cells depend on the planar polarity of the cilia and on their basal bodies being oriented in the downstream direction of fluid flow. Recently, another type of basal body planar polarity, characterized by the anterior localization of the basal bodies in individual cells, was reported in the multiciliated ependymal cells that line the surface of brain ventricles. However, little is known about the cellular and molecular mechanisms by which this polarity is established. Here, we report in mice that basal bodies move in the apical cell membrane during differentiation to accumulate in the anterior region of ependymal cells. The planar cell polarity signaling pathway influences basal body orientation, but not their anterior migration, in the neonatal brain. Moreover, we show by pharmacological and genetic studies that non-muscle myosin II is a key regulator of this distribution of basal bodies. This study demonstrates that the orientation and distribution of basal bodies occur by distinct mechanisms.

Spin pumping refers to the microwave-driven spin current injection from a ferromagnet into the adjacent target material. We theoretically investigate the spin pumping into superconductors by fully taking account of impurity spin-orbit scattering that is indispensable to describe diffusive spin transport with finite spin diffusion length. We calculate temperature dependence of the spin pumping signal and show that a pronounced coherence peak appears immediately below the superconducting transition temperature T c , which survives even in the presence of the spin-orbit scattering. The phenomenon provides us with a new way of studying the dynamic spin susceptibility in a superconducting thin film. This is contrasted with the nuclear magnetic resonance technique used to study a bulk superconductor.

Sox2 is universally expressed in the neural and placodal primordia in early stage embryos, and this expression depends on various phylogenetically conserved enhancers having different regional and temporal specificities. The enhancer N-3 was identified as a regulator of the Sox2 gene active in the diencephalon, optic vesicle, and after the contact of the vesicle with the ectoderm, in the lens placodal surface area, suggesting its involvement in embryonic visual system development. A 36-bp minimal essential core sequence was defined in the 568-bp-long enhancer N-3, which in a tetrameric form emulates the original enhancer activity. The core sequence comprises a SOX-binding sequence and a non-canonical PAX6 (Paired domain) binding sequence, and is activated by the synergistic action of SOX2 and PAX6 in transfected cells. The SOX and PAX6 binding sequences of the N-3 core are arranged with the same orientation and spacing as the DC5 sequence of the δ δ δ δ -crystallin enhancer previously demonstrated to be cooperatively bound by SOX2 and PAX6. The N-3 core sequence was also bound by these factors in a cooperative fashion, but with a higher threshold of these factors' levels than DC5, and the enhancer effect of the tetrameric sequence activated by exogenous SOX2 and PAX6 was less pronounced than that of DC5. The observations suggest that gene activation mechanisms that depend on the cooperative interaction of SOX2 and PAX6 but with different thresholds of the factor levels are crucial for the regulation of visual system development.

We believe the battery is very useful for routine clinical and community-based settings.