Functional metal-porphyrazine derivatives and their polymers, 10. Secondary fuel cells based on oxygen reduction on platinum electrode modified by polymers and metal-phthalocyanines

Secondary fuel cells based on oxygen reduction of platinum electrode modified by polymers and metal-phthalocyanine (Mt = Fe(III), Co(II), Ni(II), and Cu(II)) were studied. The discharge curves for the platinum electrode modified by poly(2-vinylpyridine) (or polystyrene) and Co-phthalocyanine in 30% KOH aqueous solution, for a 30 min charge at 500 μA, followed by a 100 μA discharge showed a stable plateau at about ?0.24 V SCE (Saturated Calomel Electrode). The open circuit voltage (vs. Zn) of the cell was 1.2 V, and the discharge capacity was of 46 A · h/kg. For this battery there was no significant decay in its characteristics after more than 30 charge-discharge cycles. In Mt-phthalocyanines, the values decreased in the order of Co(II) > Fe(III) > > Cu(II) > Ni(II). From a cyclic voltammogram for the electrode modified by the polymer and Co-Pc, the cathodic reactions were discussed.     

Immunochemical and biochemical identification of the rice seed protein encoded by cDNA clone A3-12

Previously isolated cDNA clone A3-12 that was expressed in E. coli as the fusion protein with Trp E showed immunoreactivity with the mouse antibody raised against isolated alpha-globulin from rice seed. The N-terminal amino acid sequences determined for the purified alpha-globulin and its tryptic peptides were identical with the deduced amino acid sequence reported, except for two residues at the protein N terminus. An error in the reported sequence was confirmed by re-sequencing the cDNA, the nucleotide sequence for the two N-terminal residues being shown to be CAGCTG and not CACGTG. Thus, the protein encoded by cDNA clone A3-12 was identified to be the major rice seed globulin, alpha-globulin, with an apparent molecular mass of 26kDa.     

Source-synchronization and timing vernier techniques for 1.2-GB/sSLDRAM interface

This paper describes a validation system for an SLDRAM interface. The SLDRAM system utilizes two techniques to achieve a high data-transfer rate with a conventional module mounting style. The first technique is a source-synchronization scheme. Since the chip that transmits data also supplies the data clock, the clock and data are completely synchronous. The second is the timing vernier technique. A wait time for output data is programmable in each SLDRAM. Therefore, the time at which data arrive at the controller from any SLDRAM can be set by the controller with a 200-ps step size. The validation chip is designed to emulate these operations. The chip is fabricated using a 0.35-μm CMOS process technology and packaged in a conventional 0.65-mm pitch thin small out-line package, mounted on a single-chip module, and put into an eight-module system. A stub series terminated logic (SSTL)-like interface is adopted for high-speed signals. From system-level measurements, the data eye width of 600 ps is obtained at a data rate of 600 Mbps. Errorless data transmission is observed in both read and write operations in a bit-error rate testing. The validation system has successfully demonstrated a data-transmission rate of 1.2 GB/s (600 Mbit/s/pin) using source-synchronization and timing vernier techniques at the supply voltage of 2.5 V     

A 600-MHz 54×54-bit multiplier with rectangular-styledWallace tree

This paper presents an efficient layout method for a high-speed multiplier. The Wallace-tree method is generally used for high-speed multipliers. In the conventional Wallace tree, however, every partial product is added in a single direction from top to bottom. Therefore, the number of adders increases as the adding stage moves forward. As a result, it generates a dead area when the multiplier is laid out in a rectangle. To solve this problem, we propose a rectangular Wallace-tree construction method. In our method, the partial products are divided into two groups and added in the opposite direction. The partial products in the first group are added downward, and the partial products in the second group are added upward. Using this method, we eliminate the dead area. Also, we optimized the carry propagation between the two groups to realize high speed and a simple layout, We applied it to a 54×54-bit multiplier. The 980 μm×1000 μm area size and the 600 MHz clock speed have been achieved using 0.18 μm CMOS technology     

The application of robustness analysis to the conflict withincomplete information

When players with different interests try to achieve a better state, conflicts among players arise. Conflicts may arise also among public players. For example, a local government may insist on the interest of the region while the national government represents the interests of the whole country. Conflict analysis is one of the methods to model such conflicts mathematically. Its stability analysis specifies stable states based on the ordinal information on players' preferences. However, if the preference of a player is private, stability of states is not known. In such a case, players or third parties have to collect additional information on other players' preference. It is necessary to specify the minimum information to collect. In this paper, graph model for conflict resolution (GMCR) is extended for the cases with incomplete information. Then, the generalized robustness analysis is proposed to specify the minimum conditions for stability of states. Finally, robustness analysis is applied to the conflict on water resources development     

Occurrence of introns in the 16S rRNA genes of members of the genus Thermoproteus

Cervical smears (n = 150) from five departments showing high-grade dyskaryosis were examined by three cytologists. All the smears came from patients with biopsy-proven CIN III. One hundred had been correctly reported (true positives) but 50 had originally been reported as negative and had been found to be positive only on review (false negatives). There were significant differences between the two sets in the characteristics of the dyskaryotic cell population. The false-negative smears tended to have fewer than 200 dyskaryotic cells. The nuclei of the dyskaryotic cells tended to have fine rather than coarse nuclear chromatin. A smear with fewer than 50 dyskaryotic cells is 26 times more likely to be reported as negative than one with more than 200 dyskaryotic cells. The results suggest that there is a type of severely dyskaryotic smear that is inherently likely to be missed on routine screening.     

Distributed memory implementation of KLIC

This paper describes external reference management and distributed unification in a distributed implementation of a concurrent logic programming language KL1. This implementation is based on the KLIC system. KLIC has a feature calledgeneric objects that enable easy modification and extension of the system without changes in the core implementation. This distributed implementation is built upon the same core and external references are represented using generic objects. Unification operations are defined as methods of generic objects. Since creation of interprocessor reference loops cannot be avoided, we studied a new unification scheme that can cope with interprocessor reference loops. We built several experimental distributed systems that all demonstrate reasonable efficiency.     

Long-term follow-up study of "epileptic type" moyamoya disease in children

Twenty-three patients with epileptic type moyamoya disease are reviewed among 200 moyamoya disease patients. Ten boys and 13 girls aged 5 months to 12 years were followed over 6 months to 17.3 years. Six had generalized seizure and 17 had focal seizure. Operations were performed within 1 year in eight patients, within 1-3 years in five, and more than 3 years after onset in 10. Nineteen patients improved and suffered no seizure without receiving antiepileptic drugs, but four patients developed true epilepsy and three of these suffered cerebral infarction. Multivariate analyses showed that toddlers aged less than 1 year and mild or severe abnormal computed tomographic (CT) findings correlated with a bad outcome. This study showed that epileptic type moyamoya disease has the same clinical features as transient ischemic attack or infarction type. Age under 1 year and CT abnormalities indicate a poor prognosis and necessity for early reconstructive surgery.     

CoCl(2) inhibits neural differentiation of retinoic acid-treated embryoid bodies

The effects of CoCl(2) on retinoic acid (RA)-treated embryoid bodies (EBs) were investigated. Four-day EBs were treated with 5x10(-6) M of RA for 4 d, then subjected to attached culturing for 7 d in the presence of CoCl(2) at 0, 20, and 100 microM. Differentiation into MAP2- and GFAP-immunopositive cells was inhibited by CoCl(2) in a dose-dependent manner. Next, RA-treated EBs were dissociated into single cells and cultured for 7 d at an initial cell density of 1x10(3)/cm(2). The number of cells increased in a CoCl(2)-dose dependent fashion. In cultures with 100 microM of CoCl(2), more than 90% of the cells were immunopositive for nestin and nestin-immunopositive cells formed clusters, while there were few cells immunopositive for MAP2 or GFAP. These results suggest that CoCl(2) inhibits neural differentiation of RA-treated EB cells and promotes the proliferation of nestin-immunopositive cells, i.e., embryonic stem (ES)-derived neural stem-like cells.