Reconstitution of hepatic tissue architectures from fetal liver cells obtained from a three-dimensional culture with a rotating wall vessel bioreactor

Reconstitution of tissue architecture in vitro is important because it enables researchers to investigate the interactions and mutual relationships between cells and cellular signals involved in the three-dimensional (3D) construction of tissues. To date, in vitro methods for producing tissues with highly ordered structure and high levels of function have met with limited success although a variety of 3D culture systems have been investigated. In this study, we reconstituted functional hepatic tissue including mature hepatocyte and blood vessel-like structures accompanied with bile duct-like structures from E15.5 fetal liver cells, which contained more hepatic stem/progenitor cells comparing with neonatal liver cells. The culture was performed in a simulated microgravity environment produced by a rotating wall vessel (RWV) bioreactor. The hepatocytes in the reconstituted 3D tissue were found to be capable of producing albumin and storing glycogen. Additionally, bile canaliculi between hepatocytes, characteristics of adult hepatocyte in vivo were also formed. Apart from this, bile duct structure secreting mucin was shown to form complicated tubular branches. Furthermore, gene expression analysis by semi-quantitative RT-PCR revealed the elevated levels of mature hepatocyte markers as well as genes with the hepatic function. With RWV culture system, we could produce functionally reconstituted liver tissue and this might be useful in pharmaceutical industry including drug screening and testing and other applications such as an alternative approach to experimental animals.     

Benzobisthiazole as Weak Donor for Improved Photovoltaic Performance: Microwave Conductivity Technique Assisted Molecular Engineering

New donor–acceptor‐type copolymers comprised of benzobisthiazole (BBTz) as a weak donor rather than acceptor are proposed. This approach can simultaneously lead to deepening the HOMO and LUMO of the polymers with moderate energy offset against fullerene derivatives in bulk heterojunction organic photovoltaics. As a proof‐of‐concept, BBTz‐based random copolymers conjugated with typical electron acceptors: thienopyrroledione (TPD) and benzothiadiazole (BT) based on density functional theory calculations are synthesized. Laser‐flash and Xe‐flash time‐resolved microwave conductivity (TRMC) evaluations of polymer:[6,6]‐phenyl C₆₁ butyric acid methyl ester (PCBM) blends are conducted to screen the feasibility of the copolymers, leading to optimization of processing conditions for photovoltaic device application. According to the TMRC results, alternating BBTz‐BT copolymers are designed, exhibiting extended photoabsorption up to ca. 750 nm, deep HOMO (–5.5 to –5.7 eV), good miscibility with PCBM, and inherent crystalline nature. Moreover, the maximized PCE of 3.8%, the top‐class among BBTz‐based polymers reported so far, is realized in an inverted cell using TiO_x and MoO_x as the buffer layers. This study opens up opportunities to create low‐bandgap polymers with deep HOMO, and shows how the device‐less TRMC evaluation is of help for decision‐making on judicious molecular design.     

Theory for Slightly Doped Antiferromagnetic Mott Insulators

Trial wavefunctions, constructed explicitly from the unique 2-dimensional Mott insulating state with antiferromagnetic order, are proposed to describe the low-energy states of a Mott insulator slightly doped with holes or electrons. With the state behaving like charged quasi-particles with well-defined momenta, a rigid band is observed. These states have much less pairing correlations than previously studied ones. Small Fermi patches obtained are consistent with recent experiments on high T _c cuprates doped lightly with holes or electrons. States showing the incoherent and spin-bag behaviors are also discussed. Using these wavefunctions, a number of results obtained by exact calculations are reproduced.     

Optimal planned maintenance with salvage cost for a two-unit standby redundant system

This paper considers the optimal spare ordering policies for a cold standby redundant system with two dissimilar units. Especially, the planned maintenance schedule with salvage cost is discussed. The failure time distributions for respective units are assumed to be arbitrary. By applying the expected cost per unit time in the steady-state and the stationary availability as criteria of optimality, the optimal ordering policy minimizing or maximizing each criterion is obtained under some economical and/or physical assumptions. Finally, numerical examples are presented, and the effect of the failure time distributions for the optimal ordering policy is examined in detail.     

Characteristics of laser diodes with a partially intermixedGaAs-AlGaAs quantum well

Laser diodes (LD's) with a partially intermixed quantum-well (QW) active layer are fabricated by Zn out-diffusion from a p-cladding layer to the QW region. The dependencies of the degree of intermixing, measured by the photoluminescence (PL) shift, on Zn concentration of the p-cladding layer (P_clad) and the Al content of the guiding layer (X_g) in a separate-confinement-heterostructure (SCH) are investigated. P_clad changes in the range from 1×10 ¹⁸ cm^-3 to 4×10¹⁸ cm^-3 and X_g changes in the range from 0.21-0.37. When P_clad is 2×10¹⁸ cm^-3 and X_g is 0.37, large bandgap energy shift of 96.1 meV is observed. The lasing wavelengths of the LD's, with the partially intermixed QW, are blue-shifted linearly with increasing P_clad and X_g. For the bandgap energy shift of 66.8 meV by PL, the threshold current density is increased by 33% from that of the nonintermixed LD. Reliability of LD's with the partially intermixed QW is investigated for the first time. In spite of a large degree of intermixing the reliability of the LD with the partially intermixed QW of 66.8 meV energy shift by PL is the same as the nonintermixed one, which is confirmed by the aging test of 2500 hours at 45°C with the output power of 1 W under CW operation     

Performance of gas turbine-based plants during frequency drops

A combined cycle power plant, which combines a gas turbine and a steam turbine, can achieve high energy efficiency. Many combined cycle plants have been installed in the world. However, a large-scale blackout occurred in Malaysia in 1996. Combined cycle and gas turbine plants sequentially tripped out. The cause of this chain trip was thought to be a system frequency drop. Considering these backgrounds, it is important to study dynamic behavior of combined cycle plants. Several dynamic models of the combined cycle plant have been proposed. In our analysis, we use some of them and build a model for a single-shaft combined cycle plant. We execute numerical simulations to see how the combined cycle behaves when the system frequency drops.     

Development of automatic fault point locating and sectional isolating system for power distribution line

This paper describes the development of the Automatic Fault Point Locating and Sectional Isolating System. This system locates a single-line-to-ground fault point at each pole by using ground-current sensors, and isolates the faulted section by controlling pole switches with no outage of unfaulted sections. The ground-current sensor is connected to the line between allied ground terminals of pole devices and grounded conductor. It detects a ground fault current of more than 0.64 amperes that is determined so as to avoid an unexpected operation by stray current, but to detect the fault current accurately, and sends out an emergency signal with time delay of 0.1 s. Sectional isolation starts when both the emergency signal from the sensor and relay operation signals from a substation are received and ends within a feeder circuit-breaker tripping time of 1.5 s.     

Achieving broad-area laser diodes with high output power andsingle-lobed far-field patterns in the lateral direction by loading amodal reflector

A modal reflector, which consists of a high-reflectivity region surrounded by low-reflectivity regions, is added to the front facet of two types of broad-area laser diodes (LD's) to control the lateral modes. One type of LD is the self-aligned laser with a bent active layer (SBA LD) that has a real index-guiding mechanism. The other is a planar-stripe LD that consists of a Zn-diffused region to confine the current flow and has a gain-guiding mechanism. For the SBA LD's with a modal reflector, stable single-lobed far-field patterns (FFP's) are obtained at up to 0.3 and 0.4 W output powers in continuous wave (CW) operation and pulsed operation, respectively. In addition, for planar-stripe LD's with a modal reflector, stable single-lobed FFP's are obtained at up to 0.4 W in CW operation. The lateral modes inside the cavity are analyzed by utilizing a slit model and FFP's are calculated. Good agreement is found between experimental and calculated FFP's for a large Fresnel number