Production of functional substances from black rice bran by its treatment in subcritical water

Black rice bran was treated by water and subcritical water at temperatures ranging from 20 to 260 °C for 5 min and at 200 and 260 °C for 5-120 min. The bran extracts were analyzed for their radical scavenging activity, protein and carbohydrate contents, molecular-mass distribution, antioxidation activity, emulsifying activity, and emulsion-stabilizing activity. The radical scavenging activity and the protein content of the extract were higher at higher treatment temperature. The carbohydrate content also increased with increasing temperature up to 200 °C, then steeply decreased at the temperatures higher than 200 °C. The bran extracts treated at 260 °C for 5 min exhibited a suppressive activity toward autoxidation of linoleic acid with the increasing the weight ratio of the bran extract to linoleic acid. The bran extracts prepared at 40-200 °C for 5 min showed the emulsifying- and emulsion-stabilizing activities, while the extracts prepared at 220-260 °C were low in the activities.     

Inverse scattering method for one-dimensional inhomogeneous layered media

An inverse scattering method to reconstruct simultaneously the permittivity profile and the conductivity profile of one-dimensional inhomogeneons medium which makes use of the transverse electric (TE) wave and/or transverse magnetic (TM) wave, is proposed. The medium is illuminated by the TE and/or TM plane wave at oblique incidence, and the data are taken as the reflection coefficients for a set of discrete frequencies and/or a finite number of incident angles. Furthermore, the reflection coefficient data contain the Gaussian noise. The nonlinear integral equation relating the unknown constitutive parameter of the medium to the reflection coefficient for TE wave and/or TM wave is solved by the Newton iteration method. The inverse operator in the Newton method is determined by the regularization method. It is demonstrated in terms of the numerical examples that this method utilizing both polarizations and the incident angle of the incident plane wave is very effective even if the reflection coefficient contains the practical measurement error, or the phase of the reflection coefficient is unknown. Moreover, the relationships between the errors of reconstructed profile and the measured reflection coefficient are also discussed.     

Selected mapping technique for reducing PAPR of single‐carrier signals

Single‐carrier transmission with frequency‐domain equalization (SC‐FDE) is widely known as a promising transmission technique providing low error probability with low peak‐to‐average power ratio (PAPR) of transmit signal. However, the low‐PAPR property of SC‐FDE cannot be maintained if multi‐level data modulation is introduced. The low‐PAPR property of SC‐FDE can be maintained by applying transmit filtering with roll‐off factor at the expense of spectrum efficiency. In this paper, we propose two types of selected mapping (SLM) to reduce the PAPR of SC‐FDE transmit signal. The first SLM technique is conducted in the frequency domain, where the phase rotation is applied to subcarriers similar to the SLM technique for orthogonal frequency division multiplexing transmission. The second SLM technique is conducted in the time domain, where the phase rotation is applied directly to data‐modulated symbol sequence. Computer simulation confirms that both SLM techniques are able to reduce the PAPR of SC‐FDE signal without significant degradation of bit‐error rate performance and spectrum efficiency. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Multicopy suppressors of the sly1 temperature-sensitive mutation in the ER-Golgi vesicular transport in Saccharomyces cerevisiae

Saccharomyces cerevisiae Sly1 protein is a member of the Sec1/Munc18-family proteins, which are essential for vesicular trafficking, but their exact biological roles are yet to be determined. A temperature-sensitive sly1 mutant arrests the vesicular transport from the ER to Golgi compartments at 37 degrees C. We screened for multicopy suppressor genes that restore the colony formation of the sly1(ts) mutant to discover functionally interacting components. The suppressor genes obtained were classified as: (1) those that encode a multifunctional suppressor, SSD1; (2) heat shock proteins, SSB1 and SSB2; (3) cell surface proteins, WSC1, WSC2 and MID2; (4) ER-Golgi transport proteins, USO1 and BET1; and (5) an as-yet-uncharacterized protein, HSD1 (high-copy suppressor of SLY1 defect 1). By epitope tagging of the gene product, we found that Hsd1 protein is an ER-resident membrane protein. Its overproduction induced enlargement of ER-like membrane structures.     

Isolation and structural analysis of efficient autonomously replicating sequences (ARSs) of the yeast Candida utilis

The industrially important yeast Candida utilis is widely used in production of food and medical materials, but its host-vector system has not been well developed. We screened for compact and efficient ARSs to construct practically useful vectors. The C. utilis strain AHU3053 was found to be efficiently transformed by the conventional lithium acetate method and was used as the host. The C. utilis IAM4264 genomic library was constructed by inserting the partial Sau3AI digests in pRI51, which has a kanMX gene expressible in C. utilis. By examining 98 C. utilis G418-resistant transformants, five plasmids had the highest ARS activity. By trimming of the inserts, the 1490 and 552 bp fragments with transformation activity of over 10(3)/microg DNA were obtained from ARS3 and ARS4, respectively. Although several sequences identical to S. cerevisiae ARS consensus sequences (ACSs) were found in ARS3 and ARS4, our deletion analysis indicated that these were not essential for the activity. Because the minimal functional ARS fragment was also several-fold larger than that of S. cerevisiae, the C. utilis ARSs have some unique characteristics resembling the Sz. pombe ARSs. These ARSs were functional in other C. utilis strains tested and useful for constructing practical vectors.     

Some taxonomical characteristics of encapsulated Lactobacillus sp. KPB-167B isolated from kefir grains and characterization of its extracellular polysaccharide

A capsular polysaccharide-producing strain KPB-167B isolated from kefir grains was identified as a homofermentative Lactobacillus. The carbohydrate fermentation pattern and DNA base composition of the strain were different from those of other capsular Lactobacillus species previously isolated from kefir grains. The polysaccharide produced by Lactobacillus sp. KPB-167B was found similar to kefiran by 13C-NMR and methylation analysis. Lactobacillus sp. KPB-167B could grow and produce capsular polysaccharide in MRSL medium with better yield than L. kefiranofaciens, which suggested that it is suitable for kefiran production.     

Constant-gap spectrometer design for the electron/ion collider ELISe

For the study of electron-scattering off radioactive nuclei, the ELISe spectrometer will be constructed as a part of the Facility of Antiprotons and Ion Research (FAIR) in Darmstadt. A conceptional design of a spectrometer with a “clam-shell” gap was presented before. Here, we will present an improved design with a pre-deflector with a constant gap. Such a pre-deflector is not only simpler to construct but also provides larger angle acceptances in the forward-angle range compared to those with the “clam-shell” design.     

Experiments on fast cell search algorithm for intercellasynchronous W-CDMA mobile radio

Laboratory and field experiment results for a two-step cell search algorithm using scramble code masking for intercell asynchronous W-CDMA mobile radio are presented. The scramble code is masked at different time positions during each scramble period in the forward link common control channel (CCH) for scramble code timing detection at the mobile receiver. 16 scramble codes are used. The cell search time achievable with the authors' recently proposed three-step cell search algorithm is estimated from the experimental results; cell search can be accomplished within ~960 ms at a probability of 93% in the case of 512 scramble codes and 16 scramble code groups     

Mechanical stress effect on oxygen ion mobility in 8 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia electrolyte

In the present study, the effect of mechanical tensile stress on oxygen mobility in 8 mol% yttria-stabilized zirconia (8YSZ) was investigated. The experimental results show that the ionic conductivity increases with stress and saturates. The maximum improvement in the conductivity was about 18% observed at 973 K. The simulation results show that the diffusion coefficient increases with stress and decreases with excessive stress. The maximum improvement was about 40% observed at 973 K. The improvement was larger at lower temperatures in both the experiment and the simulation. The strain caused by the stress is considered to have caused the gradient in the potential energies of the neighbouring oxygen sites, especially around the yttrium ions, which probably facilitated the migration of the oxygen ions.