Development of coal mine methane concentration technology for reduction of greenhouse gas emissions

In coal mines in such countries as China and Russia,most of the coal mine methane(CMM) generated during mining is emitted to the atmosphere without any effective usage,because the methane concentration of CMM is relatively low and not allowed to be used as fuel for safety reasons.Methane is one of the greenhouse gases.Therefore,if it becomes possible to concentrate CMM to an acceptable level for use as fuel,this will greatly contribute to reduction of greenhouse gas emissions.With the aim of gaining approva...     

Electrochemical oxidation of cholesterol in acetonitrile leads to the formation of cholesta-4,6-dien-3-one

Cholesterol was shown to be oxidized at the glassy carbon electrode in an acetonitrile–2-propanol mixture and this oxidation reaction was applied to the determination of serum total cholesterol by high-performance liquid chromatography with electrochemical detection (K. Hojo, H. Hakamata, A. Ito, A. Kotani, C. Furukawa, Y.Y. Hosokawa, F. Kusu, J. Chromatogr. A 1166 (2007) 135–141). To gain insight into the detection mechanisms of cholesterol, an electrolytic product of cholesterol was collected and characterized by infrared spectroscopy, one- and two-dimensional nuclear magnetic resonance, and matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization time-of-flight mass spectrometry. The three techniques, together with comparisons of literature spectral data, confirmed the formation of cholesta-4,6-dien-3-one. The conversion of cholesterol to cholesta-4,6-dien-3-one, a four-electron, four-proton electrochemical process, has been proposed as an electrochemical oxidation mechanism of cholesterol in acetonitrile.     

A hybrid modeling method for mechanical systems

In this paper, a system identification method for hybrid systems switched by the magnitude of velocity and displacement is proposed. First, it is shown that the regression vector space of a mechanical system switched by the magnitude of velocity cannot be separated by a hyperplane. Then a method based on support vector machines with a polynomial kernel is proposed. The effectiveness of the proposed method is shown by simulations and experiments.     

Comparison of the Reactivity of Carbohydrate Photoaffinity Probes with Different Photoreactive Groups

A judicious choice of photoreactive group is critical in successful photoaffinity labeling studies of small molecule–protein interactions. A set of carbohydrate‐based photoaffinity probes was prepared to compare the effects of three major photoreactive groups on the efficiency and selectivity of crosslinking a binding protein with low affinity. We showed that, despite the low crosslinking yield, the diazirine probe displayed the high ligand‐dependent reactivity consistent with the ideal mechanism of photoaffinity labeling. Moreover, we demonstrated that, among the three photoreactive groups, only the diazirine probe achieved highly selective crosslinking of a low‐affinity binding protein in cell lysate.     

Induced radioactive nuclides of 10-MeV radiotherapy accelerators detected by using a portable HP-Ge survey meter

The radioactivation of linear accelerator components for radiation therapy is interest for radiation protection in general, and particularly, when decommissioning these structures. The energy spectra of gamma rays emitted from the heads of two accelerator models, EXL-15SP and Clinac iX, after 10-MeV X-ray irradiation, were measured using a high-purity germanium semiconductor survey meter. After spectrum analyses, activities of (24)Na, (28)Al, (54)Mn, (56)Mn, (57)Ni, (58)Co, (60)Co, (64)Cu, (65)Zn, (122)Sb, (124)Sb, (181)W, (187)W, (196)Au, and (198)Au were detected. One centimetre deep dose-equivalent rate of the heads of the linear accelerator was measured using the survey meter. The dose rate decreased to ～10 % of its initial rate after 1 week. Long-term activations were few, the radioactivity level was low, and a cooling time of several days was effective for reducing dose rate to an acceptable level for decommissioning.     

Pillared carbons consisting of silsesquioxane bridged graphene layers for hydrogen storage materials

Various pillared carbons consisting of silsesquioxane bridged graphene layers were prepared from the pyrolysis of silylated graphite oxides. Pillared carbons with interlayer spacings of 1.34–1.6 nm were obtained when prepared from graphite oxide silylated with alkyltrichlorosialne and then with methyltrichlorosilane. The graphene layers of pillared carbons were not well ordered when it was obtained from graphite oxide silylated with alkyltrichlorosialne and then with 3-aminopropyltriethoxysilane. The hydrogen excess adsorption of pillared carbons at ambient temperature reached 0.6 wt% and showed relatively high total hydrogen storage of 14 g/L at 20 MPa. Moreover, pillared carbon obtained from graphite oxide repeatedly silylated with methyltrichlorosilane showed a high adsorption heat of 8–11 kJ/mol.     

Lowest-order axial and ring mode lasing in confocal quasi-stadium laser diodes

We investigated the lasing modes of quasi-stadium laser diodes that have confocal cavity geometries, with stripe electrode contacts formed either along the cavity axis or a diamond-shaped trajectory. It was clearly demonstrated that by using narrow electrode contact patterns of 2 μm width, the lowest-order axial and ring modes were excited selectively. On the other hand, the second-lowest-order axial and ring modes were excited by using broad electrode patterns of 14 μm width. Experimentally obtained far-field patterns for lasers with broad and narrow electrode contact patterns agree very well with the simulation results obtained using an extended Fox-Li mode calculation method.