One‐Pot/Four‐Step/Palladium‐Catalyzed Synthesis of Indole Derivatives: The Combination of Heterogeneous and Homogeneous Systems

One‐pot, four‐step syntheses of indoles using both solid‐supported heterogeneous and homogeneous palladium catalysts and reagents were carried out. Such a combination of these two‐phase catalysts and reagents causes a dramatic increase in yield, and it is a simple process. The presented methodology is effective for four‐step reactions to provide various functionalized indoles.     

XPS analysis of CdS/CuInSe2 heterojunctions

CdS/CuInSe₂ (CIS) heterojunctions were investigated by XPS analysis. An In-excess layer which may form an ordered vacancy compound (OVC) was present at the as-deposited CIS surface and it remained after chemical bath deposition of a CdS layer. The In-excess layer was removed by preferential etching with NH₃ aqueous solution. This result implies that the surface of the as-deposited CIS film was converted from the OVC with n-type conductivity into the CIS with p-type by NH₃ treatment. The conduction band offsets at the CdS/p-CIS and CdS/n-OVC were determined to be 1.0 and 0.3 eV, respectively. The CIS solar cells fabricated with n-OVC surface layer exhibited higher cell efficiencies than those fabricated with p-CIS surface layer.     

Evaluating the performance of forced convection heat transfer enhancement

Two methods for assessing thermal performance were evaluated for four kinds of forced convective heat transfer augmentations. On method uses the first law of thermodynamics, i.e., the heat transfer improvement at (1) constant Reynolds number, (2) constant pressure loss, and (3) constant pumping power. The other method uses the second law of thermodynamics, i.e., the entropy generation. The first method restricts the effective region and the second method supplies the condition for achieving the minimum entropy generation rate. © 1998 Scripta Technica, Heat Trans Jpn Res, 27(2): 142–154, 1998     

Effects of CdS buffer layers on photoluminescence properties of Cu(In,Ga)Se2 solar cells

Photoluminescence (PL) have been studied on Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ (CIGS) thin films, CdS/CIGS and CIGS solar cells, to clarify the carrier recombination process. The chemical-bath deposition (CBD) of the CdS buffer layer on the CIGS thin film leads to (i) the enhancement of near-band-edge PL intensity by a factor of 2–3, (ii) change in energy of the defect-related PL and (iii) the slight change in the decay time. They are related not only to the minimization of the surface recombination but also to the modification of native defects at the Cu-poor surface of CIGS by the occupation of Cd atom at the Cu site. A donor–acceptor pair PL at low-temperature and temperature-dependent PL have been studied. They are discussed in terms of the impurity and defect levels created in the CIGS film during the CBD-CdS process.     

Fault current limiting system for 500‐kV power systems

Recently, expansion in the scale of power systems and development of localized power sources are leading to an increase in fault current of 500‐kV systems. In the future, it is quite likely that the fault current at the interconnection of such power systems may exceed the rated short‐time current of existing electric power facilities. As one of the solutions of this problem, a thyristor‐controlled series‐resonant‐type fault current limiter (FCL) is proposed to restrain the fault current. This paper deals with the FCL system configuration, the placement method of the FCL in power systems, the outline of the FCL's specification, and the operation method of the protective relay in the multimachine system. Finally, the effectiveness of the FCL is evaluated from the viewpoints of limiting the fault current by simulation analysis. The FCL is shown to be a useful protection device for large, high‐capacity power systems. © 1999 Scripta Technica, Electr Eng Jpn, 127(1): 11–22, 1999     

Rabies virus quasispecies: implications for pathogenesis

Passage of the mouse-adapted rabies virus strain CVS-24 (where CVS is challenge virus standard) in BHK cells results in the rapid selection of a dominant variant designated CVS-B2c that differs genotypically and phenotypically from the dominant variant CVS-N2c present in mouse-brain- or neuroblastoma-cell-passaged CVS-24. The glycoprotein of CVS-B2c has 10 amino acid substitutions compared with that of CVS-N2c. Because CVS-B2c can be reproducibly selected in BHK cells, it is likely to be a conserved minor subpopulation of CVS-24. CVS-N2c is more neurotropic in vitro and in vivo than CVS-B2c, which replicates more readily in nonneuronal cells in vitro and in vivo. These characteristics appear to be relevant to the pathogenicity of the two variants. CVS-N2c is more pathogenic for adult mice than CVS-B2c. In contrast, CVS-B2c is more pathogenic for neonatal mice. These differences in pathogenicity are reflected in the selection pattern when mixtures of CVS-N2c and CVS-B2c were used to infect neonatal and adult mice. Although CVS-N2c was highly selected in adult mice, no selection for either variant was seen in neonates, suggesting that certain aspects of development, such as maturation of the nervous and immune systems, may contribute to the selection process. We speculate that the existence of different variants within a rabies virus strain may facilitate the virus in overcoming barriers to its spread, both within the host and between species.     

Fatal interstitial pulmonary disease in a patient with dyskeratosis congenita after allogeneic bone marrow transplantation

Local control rate by radical radiation therapy was analyzed in 33 patients with a piriform sinus cancer. Twenty-five patients (76%) were in stage T3 + T4. Local recurrence-free survival at 3 years was 49% in T1 + T2 and 25% in T3 + T4 (p = 0.01). In T1 + T2 lesions, a biologically effective dose for an acute reaction over 80 Gy and total treatment time less than 70 days appeared to improve local control. In T3 + T4 lesions, good radiation response assessed by the regaining of laryngeal mobility affected local control favorably. An esophageal involvement and destruction of the laryngeal cartilage as well as soft tissue extension precluded the possibility of local control by radiation therapy alone. In addition to the T-stage, other tumor factors should also be considered for predicting local control with radiation therapy.     

Growth of ice crystals in frozen specimens

The formation of ice crystals, which might be the possible artefact in cryo-techniques for electron microscopy, was examined during the rewarming process of rapidly frozen erythrocytes. Intracellular ice formation, which is usually found in cells suspended in saline by rapid freezing, was inhibited by the addition of 30% glycerol. When such glycerinated cells, having no ice crystals at liquid nitrogen temperature, were rewarmed to higher temperatures above ? 80° C, recrystallization of ice occurred. Ice particles became visible within the cells even at ? 80°C and grew larger with a temperature rise. From the results obtained in the morphological and physiological investigations, it also became evident that the recrystallization of ice appeared prior to the increase in haemolysis during the rewarming process.     

Colorization of Line Drawings with Empty Pupils

Many studies have recently applied deep learning to the automatic colorization of line drawings. However, it is difficult to paint empty pupils using existing methods because the convolutional neural network are trained with pupils that have edges, which are generated from color images using image processing. Most actual line drawings have empty pupils that artists must paint in. In this paper, we propose a novel network model that transfers the pupil details in a reference color image to input line drawings with empty pupils. We also propose a method for accurately and automatically colorizing eyes. In this method, eye patches are extracted from a reference color image and automatically added to an input line drawing as color hints using our pupil position estimation network.