Steam reforming on Ni-samaria-doped ceria cermet anode for practical size solid oxide fuel cell at intermediate temperatures

Direct internal and external reforming operations on Ni-samaria-doped ceria (SDC) anode with the practical size solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) at intermediate temperatures from 600 to 750 °C are carried out to reveal the reforming activities and the electrochemical activities, being compared with the hydrogen-fueled power generation. The cell performance with direct internal and external steam reforming of methane and their limiting current densities were almost the same irrespective of the progress of reaction in the methane reformate at 700 and 750 °C. The durability test for 5.5 h at 750 °C with direct internal reforming operation confirmed that the cell performance did not deteriorate. The operation temperature of the cell controlled the reforming activities on the anode, and the large size electrode gave rise to high conversion due to the slow space velocity of the steam reforming. Direct internal steam reforming attained sufficient level of conversion for SOFC power generation with methane at 700 and 750 °C on the large Ni-SDC cermet anode.     

Liver phosphatidylcholine hydroperoxidation provoked by ethionine-containing choline-deficient diet in mice

It is shown that peroxidation of phosphatidylcholine (PC) is enhanced in liver of mice fed a hepatocarcinogenic choline-deficient diet containing 0.1% w/w ethionine. Mice were divided into 4 groups and fed for 3 weeks one of the following diets: choline-supplemented; choline-supplemented containing ethionine; choline-deficient; and choline-deficient containing ethionine. Phosphatidylcholine hydroperoxide (PCOOH) of liver lipids was measured by high performance liquid chromatography using a chemiluminescence detector. Mice fed a choline-deficient diet containing ethionine showed 6-fold higher PCOOH levels than the choline-supplemented control mice: the PCOOH/PC molar ratios of liver lipids were 32.3×10⁻⁵ and 5.6×10⁻⁵, respectively. In addition to this remarkable degree of lipid peroxidation in liver of mice fed the choline-deficient diet containing ethionine, we also observed a significant liver fatty infiltration, a decrease in plasma and liver α-tocopherol, and an increase in liver injury-indicative enzyme activities. Also, marker enzymes for hepatocarcinogenesis, glucose-6-phosphatase and γ-glutamyl transpeptidase were affected. These data suggest that enhanced hydroperoxidation of phosphatidylcholine may participate in hepatocarcinogenesis provoked by choline deficiency in the presence of ethionine.     

Tocopherol Content and Fatty Acid Distribution of Peas (<Emphasis Type="Italic">Pisum sativum</Emphasis> L.)

The positional distribution of fatty acids (FA) of triacylglycerols (TAG) and major phospholipids (PL) prepared from four cultivars of peas (Pisum sativum L.) were investigated as well as their tocopherol contents. The lipids extracted from these peas were separated by thin-layer chromatography (TLC) into seven fractions. The major lipid components were PL (52.2–61.3%) and TAG (31.2–40.3%), while the other components were also present in minor proportions (5.6–9.2%). γ-Tocopherol was present in the highest concentration, and α- and δ-tocopherols were very small amounts. The main PL components isolated from the four cultivars were phosphatidylcholine (42.3–49.2%), followed by phosphatidylinositol (23.3–25.2%) and then phosphatidylethanolamine (17.7–20.5%). Small but significant differences (P < 0.05) in FA distribution existed when different pea cultivars were determined. However, the principal characteristics of the FA distribution in the TAG and the three PL were evident among the four cultivars; unsaturated FA were predominantly located in the sn-2 position, and saturated FA primary occupied the sn-1 or sn-3 position in the oils of the peas. These results suggest that the regional distribution of tocopherols and fatty acids in peas is not dependent on the climatic conditions and the soil characteristics of the cultivation areas during the growing season.     

Infrared study of catalytic reduction of lean NOx with alcohols over alumina-supported silver catalyst

Two intense IR absorption bands due to surface isocyanate (-NCO) species have been observed at 2262 and 2232 cm^–1 when an alumina-supported silver catalyst is exposed to a mixture of NO, O₂ and ethanol at 150°C and subsequently heated to > 300°C in vacuum. The intensity of the isocyanate band is hardly affected by the water existing in the mixture. Methanol is less reactive than ethanol for the formation of isocyanate species. The reaction mechanism of catalytic reduction of lean NOx with alcohols is discussed based on these IR spectroscopic findings.     

Double-action bending for eliminating springback in hat-shaped bending of advanced high-strength steel sheet

The International Journal of Advanced Manufacturing Technology - This paper presents a novel technology called ‘double-action bending (DAB)’ to eliminate springback in hat-shape forming...     

Generation of pedestal-free 22-fs ultrashort pulse using highly nonlinear fiber and reverse-dispersion fiber

We present an all-fiber system for generating pedestal-free 22-fs ultrashort pulses with a single-peak spectrum. High-power Raman soliton pulses and a normally dispersive highly nonlinear fiber are used to generate a smooth, broadened single-peak spectrum. Then, the higher order dispersion is compensated for using a hybrid fiber composed of a reverse-dispersion fiber and a standard single-mode fiber, which allows pedestal-free ultrashort pulses to be successfully generated. To our knowledge, this is the first demonstration of pedestal-free 20-fs-class ultrashort pulse generation without spectral distortion using an all-fiber configuration.     

Creation of Superhydrophobic Electrospun Nonwovens Fabricated from Naturally Occurring Poly(Amino Acid) Derivatives

Creation of superhydrophobic materials bio‐inspired by nature fascinates many scientists. One of the most intriguing challenges in this field is the fabrication of these materials using biopolymers from the viewpoint of green chemistry and environmental chemistry. Here, superhydrophobic and biodegradable nonwovens are constructed by electrospinning from a naturally occurring poly(amino acid), poly(γ‐glutamic acid) (γ‐PGA), modified with a hydrophobic α‐amino acid, l ‐phenylalanine. The contact angle of a water droplet on the materials is 154°, and the droplet remains stuck to the material surface even if it is inverted, clearly indicating a petal‐type superhydrophobic property. Biodegradability and post‐functionalization of the nonwovens as well as cell adhesion on the superhydrophobic materials are also evaluated. As far as we know, this is the first report on biodegradable materials exhibiting a petal‐type superhydrophobicity. The material design and processing shown here can be applied to various bioresources and such functional materials will become a new class of functional materials satisfying some of the requirements in green science.     

Extremely narrow spectral linewidth and low chirping of theMQW-DFB-PPIBH laser diode

The low threshold current of 9 mA, the high side-mode suppression ratio of more than 45 dB, the extremely narrow spectral linewidth of 1.1 MHz, and the low chirping of 2.8 Å at -20 dB at 2 Gb/s nonreturn to zero (NRZ) modulation have been achieved in the multiple quantum well (MQW) distributed feedback (DFB) p-substrate partially inverted buried heterostructure (PPIBH) laser diode. The spectral linewidth of 1.1 MHz is the narrowest value among 300-μm-length solitary laser diodes. These results suggest that the MQW-DFB laser diodes are a promising light source for longer distance and higher bit-rate optical communication systems and coherent optical communication systems     

Using ontology to improve precision of terminology extraction from documents

In this paper, we proposed a new approach using ontology to improve precision of terminology extraction from documents. Firstly, a linguistic method was used to extract the terminological patterns from documents. Then, similarity measures within the framework of ontology were employed to rank the semantic dependency of the noun words in a pattern. Finally, the patterns at a predefined proportion according to their semantic dependencies were retained and regarded as terminologies. Experiments on Retuers-21578 corpus has shown that WordNet ontology, that we adopted for the task of extracting terminologies from English documents, can improve the precision of classical linguistic method on terminology extraction significantly.