Analysis of close-contact melting for octadecane and ice inside isothermally heated horizontal rectangular capsule

Close-contact melting characteristics of phase change materials (PCM) inside horizontal rectangular capsules are examined experimentally. The capsules are heated isothermally and three kinds of aspect ratios (H/W = 3, 1 and 1/3) are provided. Octadecane and ice are used, respectively, as PCM. A method of analysis applying Nusselt's liquid film theory to the close-contact melting heat transfer in the rectangular capsule is presented. The analytical results show good agreement with the experimental data. For the melting of ice, it is found that the effect of natural convection resulting from density inversion of water at 4°C becomes significant for large Stefan numbers.     

A high-speed 16-kb GaAs SRAM of less than 5 ns using triple-levelmetal interconnection

The authors have realized 16-kb SRAMs with maximum address access time of less than 5 ns and typical power dissipation of less than 2 W at temperatures ranging from 25°C to 100°C. For the RAMs, they have developed a triple-level Au-based interconnection technology that reduces the wiring length and chip size of the SRAM so as to achieve high speed and high yield. Consequently, the wiring length and chip size are reduced to 69% and 58%, respectively, of those obtained by in previous work. The authors experimentally compared the delay time incurred by double-level interconnection and that by triple-level interconnection. This ratio is found to agree well with the simulated one by a model with distributed RC delay. After successfully suppressing Au hillock generation by lowering the process temperature, yield per wafer of 10% is obtained     

Identification of interleukin-6 producing fibroblastoid cells in cerebrospinal fluid from patients with leukemic meningitis

Differences in the responses of an elderly biracial group of cognitively normal subjects to a 15-item short version of the Boston Naming Test developed for the Consortium to Establish a Registry for Alzheimer's Disease (CERAD) were examined. The subjects consisted of 103 Whites and 136 African Americans who were 70 years of age and older and living in a five-county urban and rural area of North Carolina. They were drawn from the Duke University site of the Established Populations for Epidemiologic Studies of the Elderly (EPESE). All were cognitively normal. With gender, years of education, and age controlled, White subjects performed significantly better than did African American subjects. The items in this test were selected to represent words with a high, medium, and low frequency of occurrence in English. They did not, however, show the expected gradation for either racial group. Medium and low frequency items were of comparable difficulty for the two races. Hierarchical ordering of difficulty would be improved with minor rearrangement of items.     

Characterization of a specific polyclonal antibody against 13-hydroperoxyoctadecadienoic acid-modified protein: formation of lipid hydroperoxide-modified apoB-100 in oxidized LDL

Lipid hydroperoxide may react with protein or amino phospholipid without secondary decomposition. We prepared a polyclonal antibody to lipid hydroperoxide-modified proteins using 13S-hydroperoxy-9Z, 11E-octadecadienoic acid-modified keyhole limpet hemocyanin (13-HPODE-KLH) as immunogen. The antibody recognized 13-HPODE-modified bovine serum albumin (BSA), but not aldehyde-modified proteins, such as malondialdehyde-modified BSA. The antibody also recognized adducts derived from 13-HPODE and 13S-hydroperoxy-9Z, 11E, 15Z-octadecatrienoic acid (13-HPOTRE(alpha)). The oxidized alpha-linolenic acid- and linoleate-protein adducts were recognized by the antibody. Oxidized phospholipid-protein adducts were scarcely recognized by the antibody. However, when ester bonds of phospholipids containing linoleic acid were hydrolyzed by alkaline treatment, the cross-reactivities appeared. The result suggests that a phospholipid hydroperoxide can react with a protein directly or indirectly, and a carboxyl terminal (COOH) of the lipid in an adduct was needed as an epitope. Oxidized LDL (ox-LDL) was prepared by the incubation of LDL with copper ion or 2,2'-azobis(2-amidinopropane)dihydrochloride (AAPH), and the formation of lipid hydroperoxide-modified apolipoprotein was confirmed using the antibody. A slight immunoreactivity was observed in ox-LDL without alkaline treatment. When the ox-LDL was treated with alkali to hydrolyze the ester bonds of the lipid, enhanced antigenicity appeared with time-dependency. The results suggest that lipid hydroperoxide-modified apolipoprotein was formed during the oxidation of LDL.     

All-optical bistable switching dynamics in 1.55-μm two-segmentstrained multiquantum-well distributed-feedback lasers

All-optical bistable switching dynamics of 1.55-μm two-segment strained multiquantum-well (MQW) distributed-feedback (DFB) lasers were systematically studied both experimentally and theoretically. Some fundamental optical functionalities, including all-optical set-reset (flip-flop) operations, were demonstrated. The switching responses of these bistable lasers were studied, for the first time, with optical injection from a single-mode DFB laser, indicating that the switching dynamics based on gain quenching and absorption saturation are inherently different. A theoretical model including optical injection was developed to study these all-optical bistable switching characteristics in segmented bistable lasers. It was found that the nonuniform distribution of the photon density in the bistable laser cavity induced by optical injection was essential to perform the time-domain switching operations. Simulations showed a good agreement with experimental observations and indicated design improvements. Although the switching responses in the range of tens of picoseconds can be obtained with these bistable lasers, the maximum repetition frequency of the bistable systems would still be limited to the hundreds of megahertz due to the slow carrier recovery time (5 ns) of the lasers     

Discordant splenic uptake of Tc-99m colloid and Tc-99m denatured RBC in candidiasis-endocrinopathy syndrome

The aim of this study was to estimate the incidence of melanoma in the Paris region in 1994 and analyse the main clinical and histological characteristics of these lesions. It took the form of a prospective inquiry, mailed to public and private pathology laboratories, to count as accurately as possible the number of new cases diagnosed by pathologists in the region during the 1994 calendar year. In all, 1089 newly diagnosed Clark level I to V melanomas (excluding precancerous melanosis of Dubreuilh) were studied. Parameters recorded included age, sex, Clark level and Breslow's thickness. The incidence per 100,000 inhabitants was 9.93 for melanoma and 8.62 for invasive melanoma. The female to male ratio was 1.6. Clark level I or thin (< 0.75 mm) melanomas represented 64.8% of the lesions. At the time of diagnosis, the females were significantly younger than the males (P = 0.004). Breslow's thickness increased with age and was significantly lower in women (P = 0.00005), especially those between 40 and 49 years old. The incidence of melanoma in the Paris region in 1994 was close to that observed during the preceding 5 years in England, Scotland and the French department of Haut-Rhin. It was 2.32 times higher for males and 1.69 times higher for females than the rates estimated for France for the period 1978-1982.     

Proposal of networking by PON technologies for full and ethernet services in FTTx

The construction of optical access networks is one of key issues to provide new broad-band services and emulation of legacy services. Passive optical network (PON) technologies realize sophisticated and economical optical access networks for these purposes. This paper summarizes requirements and technical and marketing trends for optical access networks. It also presents advantages of networking by PON technologies for optical access networks. Moreover, it clarifies issues to install and operate PON base optical access networks and proposes solutions for these issues.     

Principal decomposition by-products generated at variousabnormalities in gas-insulated transformers

Gas analysis provides a promising means for a diagnosis of gas-insulated equipment. Although many studies have been concentrated on SF₆ gas decomposition, they were mostly related to the faults in GIS systems and not directly applicable to gas-insulated transformers, which have much more complicated material structure. An experimental survey on decomposition by-products at various abnormal conditions was carried out by use of simulation models to develop a diagnostic method for gas-insulated transformers based on gas and ion chromatograph analyses. Major components characteristic in each abnormality, such as SO₂ on metal overheat, SO₂F ₂ on partial discharges, etc. were identified by the experiments     

A 45 nm 2-port 8T-SRAM Using Hierarchical Replica Bitline Technique With Immunity From Simultaneous R/W Access Issues

We propose a new 2-port SRAM with a single read bit line (SRBL) eight transistors (8 T) memory cell for a 45 nm system-on-a-chip (SoC). Access time tends to be slower as a fabrication is scaled down because of threshold voltage (V_t) random variations. A divided read bit line scheme with shared local amplifier (DBSA) realizes fast access time without increasing area penalty. We also show an additional important issue of a simultaneous read and write (R/W) access at the same row by using DBSA with the SRBL-8T cell. A rise of the storage node causes misreading. A read end detecting replica circuit (RER) and a local read bit line dummy capacitance (LDC) are introduced to solve this issue. A 128 bit lines - 512 word lines 64 kb 2-port SRAM macro using these schemes was fabricated by a 45 nm bulk CMOS low-standby-power (LSTP) CMOS process technology [1]. The memory cell size is 0.597 mum². This 2-port SRAM macro achieves 7 times faster access time without misreading.