[The 9th Super-Different Field Conference] LIBERNESS Research Fund Award 2020 / March 7, 2020, 11:00am-@Ota-ku, Tokyo, Japan

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Ikeda Rika Regenerative Medicine Research Encouragement Award
Assistant Professor, Department of Chemistry and Bioscience, College of Science and Engineering, Aoyama Gakuin University
Mr. Makoto Kashima
"Learning from Planaria How to Handle Natural Pluripotent Stem Cells."

Pluripotent stem cells are cells with the ability to self-renew and the pluripotency to differentiate into all cell types; ES cells and iPS cells are "artificial" stem cells that can only be maintained under specific culture conditions and can easily become cancerous in vivo. Planaria, on the other hand, maintain pluripotent stem cells at all times in vivo and have a very high regenerative capacity. I am conducting research using planaria with the aim of "discovering a natural way to handle pluripotent stem cells" and "applying them to mammalian cells.

 

Japan Ham Prize.
President, Society for the Scientific Study of Edible Insects, NPO
Mr. Shinjiro Saeki
Rural Optimization of Insect Farming Technology in the Yeast Weevil Farming Project for Improving Malnutrition in Rural Laos.

Through our research on entomophagy, we have been educating people that insects are rich in nutrition. However, when we learned that "Lao people eat a lot of insects but lack nutrition," we were confronted with the fact that our research had not reached the field of food culture. 2017, together with ISAPH, a health NGO, we took the first step to link insect farming in Laos to improved nutrition. In this article, I will talk about how deepening our basic research on one of the cultivated insects, the Yashio weevil, led to the adoption of a JICA cooperation project that will begin in 2020.

 

Duskin Development Institute Award.
Project Associate Professor, Chiba University Center for Preventive Medicine
Mr. Norimichi Suzuki
Relationship between lifestyle and sick building syndrome/allergies
~Does the frequency and quality of cleaning lead to disease prevention?"

What kind of people (e.g., age, gender, disease history) live in what kind of houses (e.g., structure, insulation performance, age) and what kind of lifestyle (e.g., cleaning frequency and quality, window opening and ventilation)? A nationwide survey will be conducted to clarify the relationship with sick building syndrome and allergic diseases. The aim is to develop this survey into a longitudinal epidemiological study, and to propose evidence-based "living styles" to prevent diseases.

 

Homeostasis Regulation Research Promotion Award
D., Department of Physiology, Faculty of Medicine, Keio University/ Research Fellow of the Japan Society for the Promotion of Science (DC)
Mr. Daisuke Hisamatsu
"Potential for Novel Therapies Targeting Aging Itself in a Hyper-Aging Society."

In Japan's super-aging society, the development of novel therapies for aging-related diseases is extremely important. In recent years, it has become clear that tissue stem cells, which are the source of differentiated cells that make up organs and tissues, also change their characteristics with aging, suggesting that stem cell aging may affect aging at the organ and individual level. We have also investigated the aging phenotype of mesenchymal stem cells (MSCs), which differentiate into osteoblasts and adipocytes, and found that one of the secreted factors of MSCs can restore age-related dysfunction in various tissues. This presentation will outline the potential of this secreted factor as a novel therapeutic approach.

 

〈Japanese Research.com Awards
D. student, Graduate School of Information Science and Technology, Tohoku University
Mr. Kohji Matsuda
"Large-scale acquisition of inter-entity relational knowledge that is independent of any particular language."

If we can automatically extract structured knowledge from document data that can be used by artificial intelligence, we can achieve artificial intelligence that is deeply knowledgeable in various fields. I am researching a method to generate the necessary "teacher data" from existing databases and Wikipedia in a fully automated manner. This technology is not dependent on any specific language, such as Japanese or English, and can be applied to any language, making it possible to integrate knowledge written in various languages and handle them in a unified manner.

 

 

Taisho Pharmaceutical Healthcare and Beauty Care Award
Graduate School of Environmental and Human Studies, University of Hyogo, Department of Environmental and Human Studies
Laboratory of Nutrition Education and Nutritional Physiology, Doctoral course, 1st year
Ms. Momokina Yumen
"The Impact of Social Networking Service (SNS) Use on Young Women's Sense of Body Type and Eating Behavior."

Young Japanese women have a strong tendency to be thin, and approximately 20% of those in their 20s are classified as thin, but the development of social networking services (SNS) has increased opportunities to connect with others online, which may have further strengthened the desire to be thin. Therefore, in order to contribute to the prevention and improvement of emaciation among women, we decided to conduct a web-based survey to examine the effects of SNS use on women's sense of body shape and eating behavior. In this presentation, we will introduce our research and a part of the body image questionnaire we are developing to assess body image.