Study of reactive diluent for air-dried alkyd paint

The conventional air-dried alkyd resin is generally used with 30% to 40% of some organic solvent which dissipates into atmosphere after painting and becomes a factor of air pollution. A reactive diluent was investigated to reduce the content of the organic solvent and to manufacture a high-solid or superhigh-solid paint. 1,1-Bis(1′-methyl-2′-vinyl-4′,6′-heptadienoxy)ethane was found to be suitable as the reactive diluent among the investigated compounds. A small addition of this compound to alkyd paint reduced the content of solvent to less than 15% with a conventional alkyd resin of high molecular weight (high-solid type); and, further, a superhigh solid paint (5% solvent) could be manufactured when this compound was added to a superlong oil-length alkyd resin of low molecular weight.     

Cracking phenomena of brittle films in nanostructure composites analysed by a modified shear lag model with residual strain

This paper proposes a modification to the shear lag model for multiple cracking of thin films in order to take into account the residual strain, and uses it to estimate the critical fracture strength of SiOx films with thicknesses from 75 to 660 nm deposited on 12 m-thick polyethylene terephthalate (PET) substrates. It was found that: (1) The difference of residual strains in the film and substrate increased as the thickness of the film decreased. (2) In both initial and multiple formation of cracks, SiOx films failed at almost constant values of a critical stress ranging from 200 to 300 MPa when the thickness was larger than 200 nm, whereas below that it failed at higher values. © 1998 Chapman & Hall     

Switchless event building farm for the belle data acquisitionsystem

We designed a switchless event building farm for the Belle experiment at the KEKB e⁺e^- collider, as a replacement of the existing event builder and the online farm systems. In the new system, PCs are directly interconnected with multiple point-to-point Fast and Gigabit Ethernet connections. The PCs build the detector data in two steps to perform distributed event processing. We set up a test system and confirmed the event building performance meets our new requirements using a realistic prototype software. The system is being installed as scheduled using the summer shutdown time in 2001     

Neuronal protection from cerebral ischemia by synthetic fibronectin peptides to leukocyte adhesion molecules

Leukocytes play an important role in the development of ischemia/reperfusion injury. Recent work in our laboratory has demonstrated that a mixture of synthetic fibronectin peptides to leukocyte adhesion molecules reduces ischemic brain damage after transient focal cerebral ischemia. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the efficacy of the individual peptides on leukocyte accumulation, infarct size, and neurological outcome in rats subjected to 1 h of cerebral ischemia and 48 h of reperfusion. Thirty-five animals were divided into five groups: transient ischemia without treatment (Group I), treatment with arginyl-glycyl-aspartic acid (RGD) peptide (Group II), connecting segment (CS)-1 peptide (Group III), fibronectin (FN)-C/H-V peptide (Group IV), and scrambled FN-C/H-V peptide (Group V). Groups III and IV showed a significant decrease in the degree of leukocyte infiltration in the lesion and in the infarct size (p < 0.05) when compared to Groups I, II, and V. The neurological grade of Groups III and IV was significantly better than in Groups I, II, and V at 48 h after reperfusion (p < 0.01). Thus, in addition to demonstrating the potential efficacy of synthetic peptides as therapeutic agents for ischemia-reperfusion, these results also offer new insights into the mechanisms of leukocyte arrest and recruitment in ischemia/reperfusion injury.     

Changes in tactile sensation, wicking and moisture content of cotton-blend textiles with washing

In the present study, we examined how wicking and moisture content and tactile sensation of textiles are altered with change in spinning rate and washing. On polyester cotton-blend textiles, moisture was found to increase with the amount of cotton. The evaluated scores of the tactile sensation for the washed textiles were different from those for the original. With the addition of cotton to the polyester textile, the scores greatly approached to the score of the cotton textile.