Extraction of coals with CS2-N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone mixed solvent at room temperature Effect of coal rank and synergism of the mixed solvent

Coals (from lignite to anthracite) were extracted at room temperature with CS₂-N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (MP) mixed solvent (1:1 by volume), which was found to be a very efficient solvent for the extraction of bituminous coals in a previous study. High yields of 30–66% (daf) were obtained for 29 of the 49 bituminous coals (C%76.9–90.6% daf) examined. The anthracite, subbituminous coals and lignites did not give high yields. The results of the characterization of the raw coals, extracts and residues suggest that reactions between the coals and the solvents do not occur to a significant extent during the extraction. The synergistic effect, i.e. the large increase in yield and rate for the mixed solvent compared with those for CS₂ and MP alone has been explained by increasing solubility and diffusibility of the extracts and increasing swelling of the coals, in the mixed solvent. The mixed solvents of CS₂ with quinoline, pyridine and THF gave lower extraction yields than the CS₂-MP mixed solvent.     

Hypolipidemic Effects of Phospholipids (PL) Containing n-3 Polyunsaturated Fatty Acids (PUFA) Are Not Dependent on Esterification of n-3 PUFA to PL

Phospholipids (PL) containing n‐3 polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA) have beneficial effects of maintaining and promoting health compared with triacylglycerols (TAG) containing n‐3 PUFA or general PL. This study evaluated the effects of dietary PL containing n‐3 PUFA and elucidated the effects of the glycerophosphate structure and n‐3 PUFA on fatty acid (FA) metabolism in rats. Rats were fed a basal diet containing soybean oil alone, TAG containing n‐3 PUFA (1.8 %), soybean PL (2.7 %), PL containing n‐3 PUFA (2.7 %), or TAG containing n‐3 PUFA (1.8 %) + soybean PL (2.7 %). The present n‐3 PUFA‐supplemented diets had similar FA compositions, and the PL diets had similar PL compositions. TAG containing n‐3 PUFA reduced serum TAG contents, but did not affect serum cholesterol contents compared with soybean oil alone. PL diets containing n‐3 PUFA and the combination of TAG containing n‐3 PUFA and soybean PL resulted in decreased serum and liver TAG contents compared with the diet containing soybean oil alone, reflecting enhanced liver FA β‐oxidation. The results of this study show that TAG containing n‐3 PUFA with added soybean PL affects serum and liver TAG and cholesterol contents to a similar degree as PL containing n‐3 PUFA. TAG containing n‐3 PUFA and soybean PL are widely used as functional food ingredients and pharmaceutical constituents and are inexpensive compared with PL containing n‐3 PUFA. Therefore, the combination of TAG containing n‐3 PUFA and soybean PL has potential as a useful and inexpensive component of functional foods.     

Development of a Method for Scaffold-Free Elastic Cartilage Creation

Microtia is a congenital aplasia of the auricular cartilage. Conventionally, autologous costal cartilage grafts are collected and shaped for transplantation. However, in this method, excessive invasion occurs due to limitations in the costal cartilage collection. Due to deformation over time after transplantation of the shaped graft, problems with long-term morphological maintenance exist. Additionally, the lack of elasticity with costal cartilage grafts is worth mentioning, as costal cartilage is a type of hyaline cartilage. Medical plastic materials have been transplanted as alternatives to costal cartilage, but transplant rejection and deformation over time are inevitable. It is imperative to create tissues for transplantation using cells of biological origin. Hence, cartilage tissues were developed using a biodegradable scaffold material. However, such materials suffer from transplant rejection and biodegradation, causing the transplanted cartilage tissue to deform due to a lack of elasticity. To address this problem, we established a method for creating elastic cartilage tissue for transplantation with autologous cells without using scaffold materials. Chondrocyte progenitor cells were collected from perichondrial tissue of the ear cartilage. By using a multilayer culture and a three-dimensional rotating suspension culture vessel system, we succeeded in creating scaffold-free elastic cartilage from cartilage progenitor cells.     

Hydrogen gas storage in fluorinated ultramicroporous tunnel crystal

We report hydrogen storage at an ordinary pressure due to a bottle-neck effect of an ultramicroporous crystal. Stored hydrogen was kept at an ordinary pressure below -110 °C. The amounts of stored hydrogen gas linearly correlated with the initial pressures. These phenomena suggested the ultramicroporous tunnels worked as a molecular gas cylinder.     

Controlled structure and properties of silicate nanoparticle networks for incorporation of biosystem components

Inorganic nanoparticles are of technological interest in many fields. We created silicate nanoparticle hydrogels that effectively incorporated biomolecules that are unstable and involved in complicated reactions. The size of the silicate nanoparticles strongly affected both the physical characteristics of the resulting hydrogel and the activity of biomolecules incorporated within the hydrogel. We used high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (TEM) to analyze in detail the hydrogel network patterns formed by the silicate nanoparticles. We obtained clear nanostructured images of biomolecule-nanoparticle composite hydrogels. The TEM images also showed that larger silicate nanoparticles (22 nm) formed more loosely associated silicate networks than did smaller silicate nanoparticles (7 nm). The loosely associated networks formed from larger silicate nanoparticles might facilitate substrate diffusion through the network, thus promoting the observed increased activity of the entrapped biomolecules. This doubled the activity of the incorporated biosystems compared with that of biosystems prepared by our own previously reported method. We propose a reaction scheme to explain the formation of the silicate nanoparticle networks. The successful incorporation of biomolecules into the nanoparticle hydrogels, along with the high level of activity exhibited by the biomolecules required for complicated reaction within the gels, demonstrates the nanocomposites' potential for use in medical applications.     

Achievement method of high‐speed response of error prediction tracking control for optical disk system

This paper proposes the new design method of error‐prediction control systems combining the ZPET control and the robust feedback control. The error‐prediction control system based on ZPET control can reduce the tracking error caused by periodic disturbances more efficiently than the conventional repetitive control technique. However, the proposed tracking servo system does not reduce the residual tracking error caused by the low‐pass filter of the feedforward compensation and by the long sampling time. In order to overcome this problem, this paper proposes the new structure of the feedforward tracking control system. The modified ZPET control tracking servo system for optical disk recording system does not include the low‐pass filter and its sampling time becomes faster. On the other hand, the sudden disturbance observer reduces the influence of nonperiodic disturbances. The experimental results point out that the proposed tracking servo system has a precise tracking response against both the periodic disturbances and the nonperiodic disturbances. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 170(4): 51–59, 2010; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience. wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20800     

Dislocation Loop Formation in Nonstoichiometric (Ba,Ca)TiO3 and BaTiO3 Ceramics

Dislocation loops observed in nonstoichiometric and stoichiometric (Ba,Ca)TiO₃, and in stoichiometric BaTiO₃ sintered in a reducing atmosphere, were characterized by conventional transmission electron microscopy (TEM) under two-beam conditions and high-resolution TEM atomic structure analysis. Dislocation loops mostly lay on {100} planes with Burgers vectors of type 〈100〉. The dynamic behavior of these dislocation loops during the electron beam irradiation (EBI), however, was classified into two different types of dislocation loops: in A-site-excess (Ba,Ca)TiO₃, contrasts of dislocation loops faded completely away; in BaTiO₃ and B-site-excess (Ba,Ca)TiO₃, fine-line contrasts remained. Dislocation loops with Burgers vectors of type 1/2〈100〉 and the resultant crystallographic shear (CS) structure with a displacement vector of type 1/2〈110〉 after EBI were proposed to interpret residual line images. Disappearance of these line images in A-site-excess (Ba,Ca)TiO₃ strongly suggests preferential Ca ion site occupancy at the CS structure.     

Fabrication of enzyme electrodes with a polythiophene derivative and application of them to a glucose fuel cell

Two kinds of enzyme electrodes were fabricated by covalent immobilization of glucose oxidase (GOx) and bilirubin oxidase (BOx) on the films of a thiophene derivative having carboxyl groups as binding sites on their surfaces. The electrode bearing GOx (GOx/Copolymer electrode) and that bearing BOx (BOx/Copolymer electrode) were applied to a glucose fuel cell as an anode and a cathode, respectively. The open circuit voltage of 0.61 V was achieved by use of the BOx/Copolymer as the cathode, whereas the voltage became 0.41 V when a Pt black (PtB) electrode was used instead. The short circuit currents of 0.54 and 0.84 mA cm⁻² were obtained by use of the BOx/Copolymer and PtB cathodes, respectively. The biofuel cell equipped with the GOx/Copolymer anode and the BOx/Copolymer cathode gave the maximum power density of 0.15 mW cm⁻² at the cell voltage of 0.35 V, which was twice as large as that generated with the PtB cathode.     

Ruddlesden–Popper Planar Faults and Nanotwins in Heteroepitaxial Nonstoichiometric Barium Titanate Thin Films

Nonstoichiometric 10-mol%-excess-BaO–BaTiO₃ (Ba_1.1TiO_3.1) thin film grown on a (100) SrTiO₃ substrate consisted of heteroepitaxial c -axis-oriented BaTiO₃ perovskite crystals including Ruddlesden–Popper planar faults and nanometer-scale multiple (111) twin lamellae. High-resolution electron microscopy and electron energy-loss spectroscopy revealed that nanotwins with coherent (111) Σ3 coincident site lattice boundaries were terminated in the BaTiO₃ matrix to form incoherent (211) Σ3 boundaries accommodating excess barium ions. Both Ruddlesden–Popper planar fault and incoherent (211) boundary formation were proposed as possible accommodation mechanisms of excess barium ions in the perovskite film.     

Characterization of the extracts and residues from CS2-N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone mixed solvent extraction

The extracts and residues obtained by extraction of five bituminous coals with CS₂-N-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone mixed solvent (1:1 by volume) were characterized at room temperature. The extraction yields were 31.1–63.0% (daf) and the extracts were fractionated into acetone soluble (AS), acetone insoluble-pyridine soluble (PS) and pyridine insoluble-mixed solvent soluble (MS) fractions. The MS fraction, which was the heaviest fraction examined, had higher values of % oxygen, f_a, molecular weight and spin concentration than the corresponding AS and PS fractions, but a similar degree of aromatic condensation. The quantities of volatile matter (daf) in the residues were similar or slightly less than those in the extracts.