Effect of 5-fluorouracil and UFT on experimental liver metastasis model of colorectal cancer using mouse colon 26 cells

Effects of 5-fluorouracil (5-FU) and UFT on an experimental liver metastasis model were compared at equi-effective dosage levels against subcutaneous tumor of mouse colon 26. 5-FU at the dosage level of 40 mg/kg suppressed the subcutaneous tumor growth by 70.0% and 45.0% on day 13 and day 18, respectively, and UFT at 20 mg/kg provided almost equal suppression (63.0% and 48.0%). In the liver metastasis model, 5-FU at 40 mg/kg showed more potent prevention of the formation of metastatic foci (94.9%) than did UFT (60.4%) at 20 mg/kg. 5-FU at 40 mg/kg produced a much higher peak serum level of 5-FU than did UFT at 20 mg/kg and also showed a much higher AUC (area under the curve) level in the portal blood. These results suggest that oral administration of 5-FU might be useful in prevention of liver metastasis of colorectal cancer.     

Research and development of electrical insulation ofsuperconducting cables by extruded polymers

This is a review to show the importance of electrical insulation in ac superconducting cables. An attractive superconducting cable has to be designed for the voltage range of 60-270 kV. Therefore, a reliable insulation design is imperative. Two types of insulation have been compared. One is composite insulation, namely laminar paper or plastic tape, impregnated with coolant. The other is solid insulation of extruded polymer on the conductor. The composite insulation has a lengthy history and, in the constructions to date, has been the insulation design used for superconducting cables. Some prototype superconducting cables with this type of insulation have been developed and successfully tested. However, the partial discharge in butt gaps may affect their long-term reliability. The solid insulation, on the other hand, can separate the coolant from the electrical insulation and can exploit the benefit of the super electrical insulation characteristics of polymers in the cryogenic region. Some attempts have been made to use this design with liquid nitrogen and liquid helium. One example incorporating extruded ethylenepropylene rubber (EPR) for insulation was found to satisfactorily go through the cool-down to a liquid helium temperature and to endure the simultaneous voltage and current tests. EPR, and possibly some other polymers, seem to be promising materials for solid insulation in the cryogenic region     

Choice and contingency in the development of behavioral autonomy during instrumental conditioning.

In two experiments hungry rats received extensive training to lever press for food outcomes before one outcome was devalued by aversion conditioning and responding tested in extinction. If the rats were trained on a concurrent schedule in which two responses yielded different outcomes, performance during the extinction test was reduced by devaluation of the associated outcome. By contrast, if a single response was trained concurrently with the noncontingent presentations of the other outcome, test performance was insensitive to devaluation of the contingent outcome. This finding demonstrates that training on a schedule that offers a choice between responses that yield different outcomes prevents the onset of behavioral autonomy. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

ac treeing of ethylene-propylene rubber in cryogenic temperature region

The authors have proved that ethylene-propylene rubber (EPR) is suitable for the solid electrical insulating material of superconducting and cryoresistive cables due to its excellent mechanical and good electrical properties. It is imperative to study the treeing resistivity of EPR in view of long-term reliability as a cable insulator. The objectives of this paper are to establish an ac treeing test method of opaque EPR samples with fillers and to examine the treeing resistivity of EPR at both liquid-nitrogen and room temperatures and the effect of fillers on treeing resistivity. It was found that EPR has enough resistance to ac treeing at liquid-nitrogen temperature and that fillers improve ac treeing resistivity slightly. High reliability of EPR insulation is expected during long-term operation at cryogenic temperature.     

Backing control problem of a mobile robot with multiple trailers:fuzzy modeling and LMI-based design

The paper presents backing control of computer simulated mobile robots with multiple trailers by fuzzy modeling and control. We deal with two kinds of mobile robots: a mobile robot with five trailers and a mobile robot with ten trailers. To design fuzzy controllers, nonlinear models of the mobile robots with multiple trailers are represented by Takagi-Sugeno fuzzy models (TS fuzzy model). Before making TS fuzzy models, we simplify the nonlinear dynamics of the mobile robots. Under an assumption, TS fuzzy models are made from the simplified nonlinear models. The so-called parallel distributed compensation (PDC) is employed to design fuzzy controllers from the TS fuzzy models. Next, we derive a stability condition based on the Lyapunov approach. The stability condition of the designed fuzzy control system is cast in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMI's) since it is reduced to a problem of finding a common Lyapunov function for a set of Lyapunov inequalities. Convex optimization techniques based on LMI's are utilized to solve the problem of finding stable feedback gains and a common Lyapunov function for the designed fuzzy control system. The simulation results show the effects of the fuzzy modeling, the controller design via the PDC, and the stability analysis based on LMIs     

Dielectric loss behavior of liquid nitrogen in uniform fields:Millimeter gap

Liquid nitrogen is a simple molecular liquid having no internal dipole moment. Thus it is not expected to show any dielectric loss below microwave frequencies. However, measurements carried out on liquid nitrogen at uniform fields in millimeter gap show that it exhibits measurable loss even at power frequency. Interestingly, this loss shows a tendency to decrease with increasing electric stress over a certain range, the so-called Garton effect. Data on dielectric loss of liquid nitrogen in uniform electric field and millimeter gap, both as a function of stress as well as pressure, are presented and the origin of this loss discussed     

Measurement of AC dissipation current in oil-film composite insulating system

The electric field dependence of tanδ in oil-film composite insulating system sometimes has a peak and then decreases. This is known as the Garton effect. It is caused by the fact that at high voltages, the contribution of carriers in oil to the conduction loss does not last through an entire alternating field cycle. Since the separation of the loss current from the extremely large capacitive current is usually very difficult, the nonlinear ac dissipation current waveform caused by the Garton effect has not been measured. The authors developed a new method for the measurement of high-field ac dissipation current in polymeric insulating materials. This technique was applied to the detection of nonlinear dissipation current and its waveform in oil-film composite insulating system associated with the Garton effect. We measured the variation of dissipation current with applied field and its frequency.