Fabrication of Microporous Films Utilizing Amphiphilic Block Copolymers and Their Use as Templates in Poly(aniline) Preparation

Summary Ordered microporous films were fabricated on the process of solvent evaporation for the solution of amphiphilic poly(acrylic acid)-block-polystyrene under a humid atmosphere. Pore size and its distribution are strongly dependent on the nature of polymers and the evaporation conditions. Poly(aniline) dots were also successfully fabricated via electropolymerization of aniline using a microporous film on indium tin oxide electrode as a template.     

Molecular and structural characterization of the spindle pole bodies in the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces japonicus var japonicus

The structure and localization of the microtubule organization centres (MTOCs) of the fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces japonicus var. japonicus were examined by fluorescence microscopy and electron microscopy. Spindle pole bodies (SPBs), which are the fungal equivalent of centrosomes, of Sz. japonicus were visualized by immunofluorescent staining using a monoclonal anti-gamma-tubulin antibody. The behaviour of the SPBs during the cell cycle mostly coincided with previous reports on the most widely used fission yeast Schizosaccharomyces pombe. We cloned the gamma-tubulin gene from Sz. japonicus by PCR using redundant sets of primers corresponding to conserved regions of known gamma-tubulins. The predicted amino acid sequence of Sz. japonicus gamma-tubulin was most similar to the Sz. pombe gamma-tubulin. Under the electron microscope, the SPBs of Sz. japonicus were detected as electron-dense multilayered structures located just outside the nuclear envelope. The SPBs of Sz. japonicus were composed of three electron-dense layers and were surrounded by fuzzy material. Each layer showed structural changes according to the progression of the cell cycle. In mitotic cells, the SPBs were located on the fenestrae of the nuclear envelopes through which the mitotic spindle microtubules ran into the nucleoplasm. Our results show that Sz. japonicus is a very potent and attractive organism for the investigation of the microtubule nucleation system and morphogenesis in yeasts. The Accession No. for the nucleotide sequence of the Sz. japonicus gtb1(+) gene is AF159163.     

Invited Paper: Depth reproducibility of multiview depth‐fused 3‐D display

Abstract— A multi‐view depth‐fused 3‐D (DFD) display that provides smooth motion parallax for wide viewing angles is proposed. A conventional DFD display consists of a stack of two transparent emitting screens. It can produce motion parallax for small changes in observation angle, but its viewing zone is rather narrow due to the split images it provides in inclined views. On the other hand, even though multi‐view 3‐D displays have a wide viewing angle, motion parallax in them is discrete, depending on the number of views they show. By applying a stacked structure to multi‐view 3‐D displays, a wide‐viewing‐angle 3‐D display with smooth motion parallax was fabricated. Experimental results confirmed the viewing‐zone connection of DFD displays while the calculated results show the feasibility of stacked multi‐view displays.     

Epidemiological comparisons of problems and positive qualities reported by adolescents in 24 countries.

In this study, the authors compared ratings of behavioral and emotional problems and positive qualities on the Youth Self-Report (T. M. Achenbach & L. A. Rescorla, 2001) by adolescents in general population samples from 24 countries (N = 27,206). For problem scales, country effect sizes (ESs) ranged from 3% to 9%, whereas those for gender and age ranged from less than 1% to 2%. Scores were significantly higher for girls than for boys on Internalizing Problems and significantly higher for boys than for girls on Externalizing Problems. Bicountry correlations for mean problem item scores averaged .69. For Total Problems, 17 of 24 countries scored within one standard deviation of the overall mean of 35.3. In the 19 countries for which parent ratings were also available, the mean of 20.5 for parent ratings was far lower than the self-report mean of 34.0 in the same 19 countries (d = 2.5). Results indicate considerable consistency across 24 countries in adolescents' self-reported problems but less consistency for positive qualities. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

White polymer light emitting diodes with multi-layer device structure

White polymer light emitting diodes (WPLEDs) were fabricated with multi-layer device structure using crosslinked poly[2-methoxy-5-(2-ethylhexyloxy)-1,4-phenylene-vinylene] (MEHPPV) as a red emitting layer (EML) and crosslinked poly[(9,9-dioctylfluorene-2,7-diyl)-co-(4″,4?-tertbutyl-tetraphenyl diamine-4,4′-diyl) (PF8-tTPD) as a blue emitting layer. The multi-layer device structure was realized by crosslinking the emitting layers through ultra-violet (UV) irradiation. The results showed that the crosslinking of the emitting layer affected the carrier mobility of the polymer layer and the recombination site of the electrons and holes, therefore affected the emission of the devices. The devices with crosslinked MEHPPV as red emitting layer and crosslinked PF8-tTPD as blue emitting layer showed good white emission with C.I.E. coordinates (X: 0.364; Y: 0.290) at about 500 cd/m² and showed good color stability with increasing applied voltages. UV irradiation method was found to be an effective way to crosslink the emitting layer and fabricate multi-layer polymer light emitting diodes (PLEDs).     

Factors affecting the optical properties of Pd-free Au–Pt-based dental alloys

The optical properties of experimental Au-Pt-based alloys containing a small amount of In, Sn, and Zn were investigated by spectrophotometric colorimetry to extract factors affecting color of Au-Pt-based high-karat dental alloys. It was found that the optical properties of Au-Pt-based alloys are strongly affected by the number of valence electrons per atom in an alloy, namely, the electron:atom ratio, e/a. That is, by increasing the e/a-value, activities of reflection in the long-wavelength range and absorption in the short-wavelength range in the visible spectrum apparently increased. As a result, the maximum slope of the spectral reflectance curve at the absorption edge, which is located near 515 nm (approximately 2.4 eV), apparently increased with e/a-value. Due to this effect, the b*-coordinate (yellow-blue) in the CIELAB color space considerably increased and the a*-coordinate (red-green) slightly increased with e/a-value. The addition of a third element with a higher number of valence electrons to the binary Au-Pt alloy is, therefore, effective in giving a gold tinge to the parent Au-Pt alloy. This information may be useful in controlling the color of Au-Pt-based dental alloys.     

Latent structure modeling underlying theophylline tablet formulations using a Bayesian network based on a self-organizing map clustering

The “quality by design” concept in pharmaceutical formulation development requires the establishment of a science-based rationale and design space. In this article, we integrate thin-plate spline (TPS) interpolation, Kohonen’s self-organizing map (SOM) and a Bayesian network (BN) to visualize the latent structure underlying causal factors and pharmaceutical responses. As a model pharmaceutical product, theophylline tablets were prepared using a standard formulation. We measured the tensile strength and disintegration time as response variables and the compressibility, cohesion and dispersibility of the pretableting blend as latent variables. We predicted these variables quantitatively using nonlinear TPS, generated a large amount of data on pretableting blends and tablets and clustered these data into several clusters using a SOM. Our results show that we are able to predict the experimental values of the latent and response variables with a high degree of accuracy and are able to classify the tablet data into several distinct clusters. In addition, to visualize the latent structure between the causal and latent factors and the response variables, we applied a BN method to the SOM clustering results. We found that despite having inserted latent variables between the causal factors and response variables, their relation is equivalent to the results for the SOM clustering, and thus we are able to explain the underlying latent structure. Consequently, this technique provides a better understanding of the relationships between causal factors and pharmaceutical responses in theophylline tablet formulation.     

Use of fine-grained shredder dust as a cement admixture after a melting, rapid-cooling and pulverizing process

Shredder dust is a residue, which is removed from valuable ferrous metals found in scrap automobile and electronic waste. It is also an industrial waste byproduct which, under legislation in place since April 1996, must be disposed of in landfill sites. One method of disposing shredder dust is by scorification, however, this is a costly process and therefore impractical. Costs could be reduced if the shredder dust had a valuable use, and, in this paper, the authors examine its effectiveness as a cement admixture.

First, molten shredder dust was crushed for use as a cement admixture. However, it was difficult to crush it completely because metallic grains were mixed in with molten shredder dust. These particles were removed by sifting and the molten shredder dust was crushed once again. Eventually, a fine 75 μm and less powder type of slag was obtained. This slag was mixed with Ordinary Portland Cement (OPC) to form a cement mortar and subsequently a mortar test was conducted. From the test results, it was found that the long-term strength of the cement did not deteriorate even when it included 30% by weight of the pulverized molten shredder dust.