Cloning and sequencing of kojibiose phosphorylase gene from Thermoanaerobacter brockii ATCC35047

A gene encoding kojibiose phosphorylase was cloned from Thermoanaerobacter brockii ATCC35047. The kojP gene encodes a polypeptide of 775 amino acid residues. The deduced amino acid sequence was homologous to those of trehalose phosphorylase from T. brockii and maltose phosphorylases from Bacillus sp. and Lactobacillus brevis with 35%, 29% and 28% identities, respectively. Kojibiose phosphorylase was efficiently overexpressed in Escherichia coli JM109. The DNA sequence of 3956 bp analyzed in this study contains three open reading frames (ORFs) downstream of kojP. The four ORFs, kojP, kojE, kojF, and kojG, form a gene cluster. The amino acid sequences deduced from kojE and kojF are similar to those of the N-terminal and C-terminal regions of a sugar-binding periplasmic protein from Thermoanaerobacter tengcongensis MB4. Furthermore, the amino acid sequence deduced from kojG is similar to that of a permease of the ABC-type sugar transport systems from T. tengcongensis MB4. Each of three amino acid substitutions, D362N, K614Q and E642Q, caused a complete loss of kojibiose phosphorylase activity. These results suggest that D362, K614 and E642 play an important role in catalysis. Another mutation, D459N, increased K(m) values for kojibiose (7-fold that for the wild type), beta-G1P (11-fold) and glucose (7-fold), whereas K(m) for inorganic phosphate was minimally affected by this mutation, suggesting that D459 may be involved in the binding to saccharides.     

Microbial counts, fermentation products, and aerobic stability of whole crop corn and a total mixed ration ensiled with and without inoculation of Lactobacillus casei or Lactobacillus buchneri

Whole crop corn (DM 29.2%) and a total mixed ration (TMR, DM 56.8%) containing wet brewers grains, alfalfa hay, dried beet pulp, cracked corn, soybean meal, and molasses at a ratio of 5:1:1:1:1:1 on fresh weight basis, were ensiled with and without Lactobacillus casei or Lactobacillus buchneri in laboratory silos. The effects of inoculation on microbial counts, fermentation products, and aerobic stability were determined after 10 and 60 d. Untreated corn silage was well preserved with high lactic acid content, whereas large numbers of remaining yeasts resulted in low stability on exposure to air. Inoculation with L. casei suppressed heterolactic fermentation, but no improvements were found in aerobic stability. The addition of L. buchneri markedly enhanced the aerobic stability, while not affecting the DM loss and NH3-N production. Large amounts of ethanol were found when the TMR was ensiled, and the content of ethanol overwhelmed that of lactic acid in untreated silage. This fermentation was related to high yeast populations and accounted for a large loss of DM found in the initial 10 d. The ethanol production decreased when inoculated with L. casei and L. buchneri, but the effects diminished at 60 d of ensiling. Inoculation with L. buchneri lowered the yeasts in TMR silage from the beginning of storage; however, the populations decreased to undetectable levels when stored for 60 d, regardless of inoculation. No heating was observed in TMR silage during aerobic deterioration test for 7 d. This stability was achieved even when a high population of yeasts remained and was not affected by either inoculation or ensiling period. The results indicate that inoculation with L. buchneri can inhibit yeast growth and improve aerobic stability of corn and TMR silage; however, high stability of TMR silage can be obtained even when no treatments were made and high population (>10(5) cfu/g) of yeasts were detected.     

Robust Voice Activity Detection Based on Concept of Modulation Transfer Function in Noisy Reverberant Environments

Voice activity detection (VAD) is used to detect speech and non-speech periods from observed speech signals. It is an important front-end technique for many speech technology applications. Many VAD methods have been proposed. However most of them have been applied under clean or noisy conditions. Only a few methods have been proposed for reverberant conditions, particularly under noisy reverberant conditions. We therefore need to understand the ill effects of noise and reverberation on speech to design an accurate and robust method of VAD under noisy reverberant conditions. The ill effects of noise and reverberation for speech can be regarded as the modulation transfer function (MTF) under noisy and reverberant conditions. Therefore, our study is based on the MTF concept to reduce the ill effects of noise and reverberation on speech, and propose a robust VAD method that we obtained in this study. Noise reduction and dereverberation were first applied to the temporal power envelope of the speech signal to restore the temporal power envelope with this method. Then, power thresholding as a VAD decision was designed based on the restored temporal power envelope. A method of estimating the signal to noise ratio (SNR) was proposed to accurately estimate the SNR in the noise reduction stage. Experiments under both artificial and realistic noisy reverberant conditions were carried out to evaluate the performance of the proposed method of VAD and it was compared with conventional VAD methods. The results revealed that the proposed method significantly outperformed the conventional methods under artificial and realistic noisy reverberant conditions.     

Robustness of Spin Polarization in Graphene‐Based Spin Valves

The decrease of spin polarization in spintronics devices under the application of a bias voltage is one of a number of currently important problems that should be solved. Here, an unprecedented robustness of the spin polarization in multilayer‐graphene spin valves at room temperature is revealed. Surprisingly, the spin polarization of injected spins is constant up to a bias voltage of +2.7 V and ?0.6 V in positive‐ and negative‐bias voltage applications at room temperature, respectively, which is superior to all spintronics devices. This finding is induced by suppression of spin scattering due to an ideal‐interface formation. Furthermore, an important accordance between theory and experiment in molecular spintronics is found by observing the fact that the signal intensity in a local scheme is double that in a nonlocal scheme, as theory predicts, which provides construction of a steadfast physical basis in this field.     

Preparation of high-modulus and high-strength isotactic polypropylene fiber by zone-annealing method

The zone-annealing method was utilized to prepare a high-modulus and high-strength fiber from isotactic polypropylene. The dynamic storage modulus at room temperature of the fiber obtained reached 21 times; 10¹⁰ dyn/cm², which corresponded to 51% of the crystal modulus along the molecular chains, 41.2 × 10¹⁰ dyn/cm². The relationships between mechanical properties and superstructure were investigated based on results of measurements of orientation, crystallinity, tensile properties, and dynamic viscoelasticity. It was found that the excellent mechanical properties were directly attributed to the large number of tie molecules and to the high orientation of the amorphous chains. Further, the characteristics of this method were discussed compared with the results obtained by other investigators.     

An autopsy case of severe tuberculosis associated with anal fistula and intestinal perforation

A 55 year-old man was admitted to the department of the gastroenterology of the hospital because of severe weakness and appetite loss for the past one month. In the last two months, he has been suffering from recurrent fistula of the anus. He left his symptoms without therapy. A gastric ulcer was found out with gastric endoscopy. At the same time, chest X-ray film showed bilateral abnormal shadows, which were suspected of severe pulmonary tuberculosis by a chest physician. After the admission, the patient immediately developed respiratory failure. Both sputa and discharge from anal fistula were positive for acid fast bacillus. Despite of anti-tuberculosis therapy and mechanical ventilation, he died of respiratory failure. At the autopsy, severe pulmonary tuberculosis, tuberculous fistula of the anus, intestinal tuberculosis with perforation, miliary tuberculosis and peptic ulcer of the stomach were defined. We suspected that the extensive disease caused by hematogeneous spread and the late diagnosis of tuberculosis was owing to patient's delay.     

Carbon disulphide-pyridine mixture,a new efficient extraction solvent for coal

It has been found that carbon disulphide-pyridine mixture (1:1 vol.) is an efficient solvent for the extraction of bituminous coals at room temperature. Dimethylformamide, hexamethyl phosphoric triamide and dimethyl sulphoxide also give high extraction yields in the mixture with carbon disulphide.     

Synthesis of LaB6 from BN and lanthanum-citrate-hydrate

Lanthanum hexaboride was synthesized by reacting a powdered mixture of hexagonal boron nitride and lanthanum-citrate-hydrate carbonized substance which had been prepared by heating lanthanum-citrate-hydrate at 1000° C in a nitrogen atmosphere. The optimum conditions for the synthesis were a ratio of boron to lanthanum in the starting mixture between 5.0 and 6.0 with heating in the temperature range 1480 and 1600° C in an evacuated atmosphere.     

PARTICLE DEPOSITION CONTROL FOR VARIOUS WAFER SURFACES IN ACIDIC SOLUTION WITH SURFACTANT

Particle deposition control for various substrate surfaces was studied using acidic solution with surfactant. It has been demonstrated that particle deposition onto the various substrate surfaces in the chemicals depends on the zeta potential of particle and of the substrate surface. An anionic surfactant addition is found to make both particles and the substrate surface negatively charged, while a cationic surfactant addition is found to make both of them positively charged. The surfactant addition, therefore, can suppress particle deposition onto the substrate surface even when some particles remain in the chemicals.

When some chemical is carried over to the subsequent ultrapure water rinsing bath, this chemical carry-over triggers particle deposition in the ultrapure water rinsing stage when a cationic surfactant is used or when a hydrophilic surface is used. However, this phenomena is not observed when an anionic surfactant is used.

These results suggest that an anionic surfactant is effective in suppressing particle deposition onto the various wafer surfaces in acidic solutions.