The expression of the gene for zebrafish fibroblast growth factor receptor 4 (fgfr4) in a 3‐somite stage embryo was stained (blue) together with pax2a expression (red), which was seen mainly at the midbrain‐hindbrain boundary, by two‐color in situ hybridization. At this stage, fgfr4 is expressed in the midbrain, anterior hindbrain, and posterior hindbrain, in addition to the paraxial and lateral mesoderm. See the article by Ota et al. in this issue.

In this research, we present a system that enables independent walking in individuals with visual impairment by recognizing tactile paving. The system warns the user about dangers posed by deviations from the walking path or possible collisions. Therefore, the tactile paving itself and obstacles on it must be detected. This paper discusses problems related to detecting tactile paving. To address these problems, a new camera-based method is introduced, which detects tactile paving automatically. The method relies on a dynamic threshold approach in the HSV color space, making the image processing more robust against varying lighting conditions, environments, and differences in color. Such an approach is not possible using the methods based on fixed thresholds reported in the literature. The results of our experiments confirm that high rates of tactile paving detection were achieved under various conditions.

We aimed to synthesize novel liver X receptor (LXR) agonists with potent agonist activity and subtype selectivity. Our synthetic scheme started with naphthoquinone derivatives, such as menadione and 2,3-dichloro-1,4-naphthoquinone. We introduced different substituents into the naphthoquinone structures, including aniline, piperidine, pyrrolidine, and morpholine, in one or two steps, and thus, we produced 14 target compounds. All 14 synthetic ligands were tested to determine whether they mediated LXR-mediated transcriptional activity. We investigated the transcriptional activity of each compound with two types of receptors, LXRα and LXRβ. Among all 14 compounds, two showed weak LXRβ-agonist activity, and two others exhibited potent LXRα-agonist activity. We also performed docking studies to obtain a better understanding of the modes of compound binding to LXR at the atomic level. In conclusion, we successfully synthesized naphthoquinone derivatives that act as LXRα/β agonists and selective LXRα agonists.

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