Extracellular signal-regulated kinases (ERKs) play important physiological roles in proliferation, differentiation, and gene expression. ERK5 is approximately twice the size of ERK1/2, and its amino-terminal half contains the kinase domain that shares homology with ERK1/2 and TEY activation motif, whereas the carboxyl-terminal half is unique. In this study, we examined a physiological role of ERK5 in rat pheochromocytoma cells (PC12), comparing it with ERK1/2. Nerve growth factor (NGF) induced phosphorylation of both ERK5 and ERK1/2, whereas the cAMP analog dibutyryl cAMP (Bt 2 cAMP) caused only ERK1/2 phosphorylation. U0126, at 30 M, that blocks ERK1/2 signaling selectively attenuated neurite outgrowth induced by NGF and Bt 2 cAMP, but BIX02188 and BIX02189, at 30 M, that block ERK5 signaling and an ERK5 dominant-negative mutant suppressed only NGF-induced neurite outgrowth. Next, we examined the expression of tyrosine hydroxylase, a rate-limiting enzyme of catecholamine biosynthesis. Both NGF and Bt 2 cAMP increased tyrosine hydroxylase gene promoter activity in an ERK1/2-dependent manner but was ERK5-independent. However, when both ERK5 and ERK1/2 signalings were inhibited, tyrosine hydroxylase protein up-regulation by NGF and Bt 2 cAMP was abolished, because of the loss of stabilization of tyrosine hydroxylase protein by ERK5. Taking these results together, ERK5 is involved in neurite outgrowth and stabilization of tyrosine hydroxylase in PC12 cells, and ERK5, along with ERK1/2, plays essential roles in the neural differentiation process.

This paper describes the Adaptive Cruise Control system (ACC), a system which reduces the driving burden on the driver. The ACC system primarily supports four driving modes on the road and controls the acceleration and deceleration of the vehicle in order to maintain a set speed or to avoid a crash. This paper proposes more accurate methods of detecting the preceding vehicle by radar while cornering, with consideration for the vehicle sideslip angle, and also of controlling the distance between vehicles. By making full use of the proposed identification logic for preceding vehicles and path estimation logic, an improvement in driving stability was achieved.

Hydraulic fractures are produced in the earth to extract material from the earth or to inject material into the earth more efficiently. A method using free and forced seismic oscillations to investigate the geometry of hydraulically generated fractures is described.--SAC 4,758,964 43.40.

This study explains that a method utilizing the eigen spaces obtained by the KL transform for automatic recognition by camera of the speed on a speed limit sign has the following advantages: it is robust in response to changes in intensity patterns caused by the direction the sign is facing and by the amount of light striking the sign, and it is able to reduce the recognition processing time by reducing the number of feature vector dimensions during analysis. The method for recognition of traffic signs previously proposed by the authors of this study was a method for recognition based on extracting geometric shapes from the sign and recognizing them based on their aspect ratios. As such, this method was not able to identify the numbers on a speed limit sign, all of which have identical aspect ratios. It will be shown that the method in this study is able to recognize nearly all speed limits indicated on traffic signs within several 100s of ms after image acquisition. This method was applied to still images and its effectiveness was verified from the perspective of the following requirements for providing accurate information concerning the vehicle surroundings to the driver: high processing speed, high recognition accuracy, detection of all detectable objects without omission, and robustness in response to changes in the surrounding environment.

Electric power assist steering (EPAS) is popular in the market due to its superior fuel economy. The electric motor inertia, friction and their fluctuations of EPAS, however, often deteriorate steering characteristics and vehicle dynamics. Elaborate parameter tuning for assist torque control based on vehicle velocity and steering wheel velocity has been made to improve them, but it is still difficult to achieve good performances in various driving situations such as load condition, road surface friction and gradual vehicle characteristics change due to time. In this paper, a feedback strategy applying the disturbance observer, "steering velocity observer", is proposed to compensate for the adverse influences of vehicle mass change. The satisfactory effects of the proposed control strategy are observed through the simulation and field tests by using a prototype vehicle with a pinion type EPAS.