Texture,sensory and swallowing characteristics of high-pressure-heat-treated pork meat gel as a dysphagia diet

To develop a soft meat product for a dysphagia diet, high-pressure technology was applied. Pressure-heat-treated ground pork meat (PH) was prepared from ground pork mixed with water (ground meat: water, 1:0.5 or 1:1) and salt (1.5%). PH-gels were made from these meat homogenates by treatment at 400 MPa for 20 min, followed by heat treatment. Heat-treated pork meat homogenates (H) were also prepared. The hardness and adhesiveness of the 1:1PH-gel was lower than those of the 1:1H-gel. The PH-gel scored higher in sensory evaluations of elasticity, smoothness and ease of swallowing. Scanning electron micrographs indicated that the superior textural property of the 1:1PH-gel was caused by a network of myosin filaments. Videofluoroscopic examination of swallowing revealed that the 1:1PH-gel was easy to swallow and left little residue in the oropharynx. These results proved the utility of pressurization in creating a dysphagia meat diet.     

Preparation and biological evaluation of hydroxyapatite-coated nickel-free high-nitrogen stainless steel

Calcium phosphate was formed on nickel-free high-nitrogen stainless steel (HNS) by chemical solution deposition. The calcium phosphate deposition was enhanced by glutamic acid covalently immobilized on the surface of HNS with trisuccinimidyl citrate as a linker. X-ray diffraction patterns and Fourier transform infrared spectra showed that the material deposited on glutamic acid-immobilized HNS within 24 h was low-crystallinity calcium-deficient carbonate-containing hydroxyapatite (HAp). The biological activity of the resulting HAp-coated HNS was investigated by using a human osteoblast-like MG-63 cell culture. The HAp-coated HNS stimulated the alkaline-phosphate activity of the MG-63 culture after 7 days. Therefore, HAp-coated HNS is suitable for orthopedic devices and soft tissue adhesion materials.     

An approach to the formal analysis of license interoperability

With recent advances in information and telecommunications technologies, a large range of digital content is distributed over the Internet. Whereas diverse licenses are provided to protect the content legally and have the advantage of offering authors many choices, the obstruction of smooth content distribution may occur if the relationships between licenses are not revealed because of differences between the restrictions imposed by each license. To activate digital content distribution, license interoperability must be revealed. In this paper, we propose a framework for formally examining license interoperability by using many-sorted first-order logic. We formalize five actual licenses and examine their interoperability to prove the effectiveness of our proposed framework. The results show that the framework reveals the relationships between licenses.     

Depth from Refraction Using a Transparent Medium with Unknown Pose and Refractive Index

In this paper, we introduce a novel method for depth acquisition based on refraction of light. A scene is captured directly by a camera and by placing a transparent medium between the scene and the camera. A depth map of the scene is then recovered from the displacements of scene points in the images. Unlike other existing depth from refraction methods, our method does not require prior knowledge of the pose and refractive index of the transparent medium, but instead can recover them directly from the input images. By analyzing the displacements of corresponding scene points in the images, we derive closed form solutions for recovering the pose of the transparent medium and develop an iterative method for estimating the refractive index of the medium. Experimental results on both synthetic and real-world data are presented, which demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Simple long-pulse XeCl laser with narrow-line output

Long-pulsed operation of a capacitive transfer driven XeCl laser using inductors has been demonstrated with no degradation of the laser performance. Spectral narrowing to a 0.003 Å bandwidth with an output energy of 4 mJ was also achieved using a grating and etalon combination.     

Reactivities of feline calicivirus field isolates with monoclonal antibodies detected by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

Reactivities of feline calicivirus (FCV) field isolates with monoclonal antibodies (MAbs) were examined by enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA). The reactivities of the viruses in ELISA were different from our previous results using the neutralization tests (NT). Many isolates were positive in ELISA with MAbs which recognized neutralizing epitope 3B and/or 4. However, most were negative in NT in our previous study. After absorption of two FCV strains with host cells, the non-infectious virus fluid still reacted with MAb, which recognized epitope 3B and/or 4 in ELISA. These results indicated the possibility that neutralizing epitopes are expressed on non-infectious virus particles or exist as proteinaceous molecules in virus fluid.     

Transient stability limit issues at three-phase short-circuit in parallel running of both a superconducting generator and a conventional one

Experimental studies using20-kVA superconducting generators (SCG) have been performed in an attempt to understand some of the characteristics of SCG in power systems. It is necessary to investigate the characteristics for the parallel operations of both an SCG and a conventional generator (CG) when an SCG is installed in a present power station. Some of the results of the authors' studies on parallel running of the 20-kVA SCG and the 20-kVA CG are described in this paper. In the experimental system, the SCG is connected to a regional power system (infinite bus) through reactors (artificial transmission lines) and the CG is connected to the terminal of the SCG. Using experiments and computer simulations, the transient characteristics at three-phase short-circuit faults are investigated: 1) when the CG is not disconnected; and 2) when the CG is disconnected after reclosing the line with the fault cleared. Two kinds of stable limit curves are obtained for output power at three-phase short-circuit fault for the aforementioned two cases.     

Controlled degradation of cured natural rubber by encapsulated benzophenone as a photosensitizer

The photodegradation of raw natural rubber and natural rubber compound film were studied using an artificial solar energy simulator. The properties of degraded rubber sheets containing benzophenone (BP) were determined by solution viscosity, ¹H‐NMR, and FTIR analyses. In the case of rubber compounds containing BP, the changes of tensile strength and crosslinking density were determined. It was found that BP could amply accelerate the photodegradation of rubber. To control the release rate of BP, it was necessary to encapsulate BP with urea–formaldehyde as a matrix. The encapsulated BP or capsule was formed by an interfacial polycondensation reaction between formaldehyde and urea. The kinetic of release rate of BP from urea–formaldehyde capsule was markedly observed within 15 days of release time; after that the rate of BP released from urea–formaldehyde microcapsule was very slow. At the same concentration of BP, the degradation rate of rubber compound by adding BP directly was faster than that of the rubber containing encapsulated BP. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 90: 297–305, 2003     

High-efficiency XeCl discharge laser with high-brightnessSrTiO3 corona preionizer

An XeCl discharge laser with a high-brightness corona preionizer using a segmented columnar SrTiO₃ dielectric is discussed. A high overall efficiency of 2.35% with a laser output energy of 350 mJ was obtained using a SrTiO₃ doorknob capacitor cut by a diamond cutter as the dielectric. These characteristics are almost the same value as that obtained with an UV-spark-preionized XeCl laser using the same laser tube