A bioreactor with an internal contactor for primary recovery of bovine serum albumin from yeast suspension

In this paper the internal contactor is a newly developed device for the primary recovery of protein from crude feedstock. Ion exchanges (DEAE-Streamline) are confined inside the internal contactor in a stirred tank. Interactions between the ion exchange in the internal contactor and protein (BSA) in yeast suspension have been studied. For better performance, two strategies are considered: to determine the ion conductivity of a simulated yeast suspension, and to select the optimum process time for adsorption. In this system, advantages of both batch adsorption and expanded bed adsorption were obtained. Furthermore, in denser cell concentration (50 g/L) where EBA cannot be operated, the primary recovery was carried out in 1–2 hr. The efficiency of yield is higher than 80% in this condition.     

SET/CMOS hybrid process and multiband filtering circuits

We have developed an integration technology for the single electron transistor (SET)/CMOS hybrid systems. SET and CMOS transistors can be optimized without any possible degradation due to mixing dissimilar devices by adopting just one extra mask step for the separate gate oxidation (SGOX). We have confirmed that discrete devices show ideal characteristics required for the SET/CMOS hybrid systems. An SET shows obvious Coulomb oscillations with a 200-mV period and CMOS transistors show high voltage gain. Based on the hybrid process, new hybrid circuits, called periodic multiband filters, are proposed and successfully implemented. The new filter is designed to perform a filtering operation according to the periodic multiple blocking bands of which a period is originated from the SET. Such a novel function was implemented efficiently with a few transistors by making full use of the periodic nature of SET characteristics.     

Analysis of the HVAC system’s sound quality using the design of experiments

Human hearing is very sensitive to sound, so a subjective index of sound quality is required. Each situation of sound evaluation is composed of Sound Quality (SQ) metrics. When substituting the level of one frequency band, we could not see the tendency of substitution at the whole frequency band during SQ evaluation. In this study, the Design of Experiments (DOE) is used to analyze noise from an automotive Heating, Ventilating, and Air Conditioning (HVAC) system. The frequency domain is divided into 12 equal parts, and each level of the domain is given an increase or decrease due to the change in frequency band based on the “loud” and “sharp” sound of the SQ analyzed. By using DOE, the number of tests is effectively reduced by the number of experiments, and the main result is a solution at each band. SQ in terms of the “loud” and “sharp” sound at each band, the change in band (increase or decrease in sound pressure) or no change in band will have the most effect on the identifiable characteristics of SQ. This will enable us to select the objective frequency band. Through the results obtained, the physical level changes in arbitrary frequency domain sensitivity can be determined.     

Monolithically integrated grating cavity tunable lasers

A novel grating cavity tunable laser is proposed and experimentally demonstrated. It is realized by monolithically integrating a semiconductor optical amplifier, a dispersive element, a phase-control section, and an etched diffraction grating in a single chip. Tuning operation is based on electrically controlled beam deflection provided by dispersive element and phase matching by phase-control section. With the electrical control, the wavelength tuning of 8.5 nm with a sidemode suppression ratio of about 35 dB has been successfully achieved.     

Ontology-driven hypothesis generation to explain anomalous patient responses to treatment

Within the medical domain there are clear expectations as to how a patient should respond to treatments administered. When these responses are not observed it can be challenging for clinicians to understand the anomalous responses. The work reported here describes a tool which can detect anomalous patient responses to treatment and further suggest hypotheses to explain the anomaly. In order to develop this tool, we have undertaken a study to determine how Intensive Care Unit (ICU) clinicians identify anomalous patient responses; we then asked further clinicians to provide potential explanations for such anomalies. The high level reasoning deployed by the clinicians has been captured and generalised to form the procedural component of the ontology-driven tool. An evaluation has shown that the tool successfully reproduced the clinician’s hypotheses in the majority of cases. Finally, the paper concludes by describing planned extensions to this work.     

Visible PL Phenomenon at Room Temperature in Disordered Structure of SrWO4 Powder

The SrWO₄ (SWO) powders were synthesized by the polymeric precursor method and annealed at different temperatures. The SWO structure was obtained by X-ray diffraction and the corresponding photoluminescence (PL) spectra was measured. The PL results reveal that the structural order–disorder degree in the SWO lattice influences in the PL emission intensity. Only the structurally order–disordered samples present broad and intense PL band in the visible range. To understand the origin of this phenomenon, we performed quantum-mechanical calculations with crystalline and order–disordered SWO periodic models. Their electronic structures were analyzed in terms of band structure. The appearance of localized levels in the band gap of the order–disordered structure was evidenced and is a favorable condition for the intense PL to occur.     

Surface copper enrichment by reduction of copper chromite catalyst employed for carbon monoxide oxidation

The effect of prereduction on CO oxidation activity of unsupported copper-chromite oxide catalysts was examined. Results were found to be in good agreement with two mechanisms for a surface copper enrichment due to CO prereduction which produced an activity increase in the copper-chromite catalyst.