CARASIL is associated with mutations in the HTRA1 gene. Our findings indicate a link between repressed inhibition of signaling by the TGF-beta family and ischemic cerebral small-vessel disease, alopecia, and spondylosis.

We feel really honoured to give a talk before active researchers in this frontier field of physics, gauge theory and gravity. Although the member of our group are not familiar with the details of concepts and theoretical approachs in this field, we understand the importance of the Aharonov-Bohm effect in the electromagnetism, i.e. the first example of gauge fields. I) 2)-4) Since the theoretical work by Aharonov and Bohm in 1959, several experiments have been performed to prove this effect and these experiments have been fairly famous also among electron-microscopist.We thought the effect has the sound basis beyond doubt but we noticed also that a few people5)still insisted on its non-existance or doubted the validity of the experiments and that the controversy still continued. 6j' Therefore it seemed worth while to try an experiment in a newly designed form to confirm the effect again. This was our motivation.Before going into our experiment, let us explain briefly about those in the past.The schematic diagram in Fig.l shows the idea of the elaborate experiment by M~llenstedt group. 2} ' The lens and bi-prism are, of cource, electro-magnetic ones in fact. They fabricated a fine solenoid coil whose diameter was unbelievably small, 4.7 pm.Two electron waves from the same source travel around the solenoid and are overlapped coherently to cause interference fringes on the film below. Even if the waves never touch the magnetic flux inside the solenoid, the fringe must be shifted with the change in the phase difference between the waves owing to the Aharonov-Bohm effect when the coil current ~ changes. In order to confirm the fringe shift, they set a slit over the recoreding film and moved the film with changing the coil current i.The result is reproduced in Fig.2. The fringe shift is clearly recorded.'3j-4Lre~ " sl i art Other experiments a "m'l o this one in principle except that ferromagnetic needles were used instead of solenoids.All these experiments were very elaborate ones for the technology of those days but we must admit that they have one defect in common. That is, the lack of experimental verifications that there is no magnetic flux leakage into the electron paths.To improve this points, Kuper7)proposed in 1980 the idea of perfect confinement of magnetic fluxon by a hollow torus of super-conductive material, as shown in Fig.3.

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Single-crystal Fe16N2 films have been grown epitaxially on Fe(001)/InGaAs(001) and InGaAs(001) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Saturation flux density Bs of Fe16N2 films has been demonstrated to be 2.8–3.0 T at room temperature, which is very close to the value obtained by Kim and Takahashi using polycrystalline evaporated Fe–N films. Temperature dependence of Bs has been measured. Bs changed with temperature reversibly up to 400 °C, while beyond 400 °C, Bs decreased irreversibly. X-ray diffraction showed that Fe16N2 crystal is stable up to 400 °C, while beyond 400 °C, Fe16N2 dissolves into Fe and Fe4N, and also some chemical reactions between Fe16N2 and the substrate occurs. This caused the temperature dependence of Bs mentioned above. From the temperature dependence of Bs up to 400 °C, the Curie temperature of Fe16N2 is estimated to be around 540 °C by using the Langevin function. The above mentioned Bs of 2.9 T at room temperature and 3.2 T at −268 °C corresponded to an average magnetic moment of 3.2μB per Fe atom and 3.5μB, respectively. These values of the magnetic moment of Fe atoms are literally giant, far beyond the Slater–Pauling curves. The origin of the giant magnetic moment has been discussed based on the calculation carried out by Sakuma. However, there was a significant disagreement between experimental values and calculated ones, so the origin remained to be clarified. Also, magneto-crystalline anisotropy of Fe16N2 films has been investigated.