Polymorphic behavior of gondoic acid and phase behavior of its binary mixtures with asclepic acid and oleic acid

Molecular properties of polymorphic forms of gondoic acid [cis-C_20:1Δ11ω9 (GOA)] have been studied by X-ray diffraction (XRD), differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), optical microscopy, and Raman scattering, in comparison to those of six principal unsaturated fatty acids: oleic acid [cis-C_18:1Δ9ω9 (OA)], erucic acid [cis-C_22:1Δ13ω9 (ERA)], petroselinic acid [cis-C_18:1Δ6ω12 (PSA)], asclepic acid [cis-C_18:1Δ11ω7 (APA)], palmitoleic acid [cis-C_16:1Δ9ω7 (POA)], and elaidic acid [trans-C_18:1Δ9ω9 (ELA)]. In addition, phase behavior of binary mixtures of GOA and APA and OA was examined by XRD and DSC. The polymorphic structures of GOA are quite similar to those of APA, ERA, POA, and partly to OA. In particular, DSC and Raman scattering studies have shown that gondoic acid exhibits conformational disordering on heating at the ω-chain, a chain segment between the double bond and CH₃ group, as a transition from all-trans (γ form) to gauche-rich (α form) conformations. A miscible mixing phase was observed in the mixture of GOA and APA, yet eutectic phases were observed in the GOA and OA mixtures. This is a remarkable contrast because the binary mixture systems of varying combinations of cis-unsaturated fatty acids examined so far exhibited either eutectic nature or molecular compound formation. It is expected that specific molecular interactions between GOA and APA that originate from the equivalence of the length of the Δ-chain, the chain segment between the cis-double bond and COOH group, and also from the presence of the γ-α order-disorder transformation would be operating to form the miscible mixing phase.     

Oral Squamous Cell Carcinoma Contributes to Differentiation of Monocyte-Derived Tumor-Associated Macrophages via PAI-1 and IL-8 Production

Tumor-associated macrophages (TAMs) promote cancer cell proliferation and metastasis, as well as anti-tumor immune suppression. Recent studies have shown that tumors enhance the recruitment and differentiation of TAMs, but the detailed mechanisms have not been clarified. We thus examined the influence of cancer cells on the differentiation of monocytes to TAM subsets, including CD163⁺, CD204⁺, and CD206⁺ cells, in oral squamous cell carcinoma (OSCC) using immunohistochemistry, flow cytometry, and a cytokine array. Furthermore, we investigated the effect of OSCC cells (HSC-2, SQUU-A, and SQUU-B cells) on the differentiation of purified CD14⁺ cells to TAM subsets. The localization patterns of CD163⁺, CD204⁺, and CD206⁺ in OSCC sections were quite different. The expression of CD206 on CD14⁺ cells was significantly increased after the co-culture with OSCC cell lines, while the expressions of CD163 and CD204 on CD14⁺ cells showed no change. High concentrations of plasminogen activator inhibitor-1 (PAI-1) and interleukin-8 (IL-8) were detected in the conditioned medium of OSCC cell lines. PAI-1 and IL-8 stimulated CD14⁺ cells to express CD206. Moreover, there were positive correlations among the numbers of CD206⁺, PAI-1⁺, and IL-8⁺ cells in OSCC sections. These results suggest that PAI-1 and IL-8 produced by OSCC contribute to the differentiation of monocytes to CD206⁺ TAMs.     

Evaluation of the ATCA fast controller standard for ITER diagnostics

ITER project's long time span and the nature of the instrumentation and control (I&C) procurement procedures for the Plant Systems require that the ITER Organization defines and follows well recognized standards which are used both by the industry and in physics experiments. The ITER I&C standards are defined in the Plant Control Design Handbook (PCDH) [1]. The ITER Organization has selected PCI Express and Ethernet for IO intercommunication to be used for plant system instrumentation for fast controllers. The decision on the usage of serialized I/O bus protocols is based on the impressive performance and the commercial availability. The form factors that will be supported by CODAC include PXIe, MicroTCA, and AdvancedTCA platforms. While the PXIe form factor is already well established for instrumentation purposes through the PXI Systems Alliance (www.pxisa.org), the AdvancedTCA and MicroTCA platforms which were originally targeted for the telecommunications market (www.picmg.org) are currently optimized and specified for instrumentation use through the xTCA extensions for physics [2]. The objective of this study is the evaluation of an integrated ATCA controller design using only commercial components.     

Improving the detection of requirements discordances among stakeholders

This paper introduces a technique to identify requirements discordances among stakeholders. This technique is validated in experiments. An extended version of the goal-oriented requirements elicitation method, named attributed goal-oriented analysis (AGORA), and its supporting tool are used. Two types of requirements discordances among stakeholders are defined: the first arises from the different interpretations by the stakeholders and the second is the result of different evaluations of preferences. Discordances are detected by the preference matrices in AGORA. Each preference matrix represents both preferences of each stakeholder and the estimated preferences of other stakeholders. A supporting tool for the AGORA method was developed. This tool is a groupware that seamlessly combines face-to-face meetings for goal elicitation and distributed individual sessions for scoring preference values. The experimental results showed that the proposed classification of discordances was sound and that the occurrences of the requirements discordances could be detected by preference matrices.     

Application of SPRT to an image data sequence for a remote monitoring system

Recently, remote monitoring camera systems have been widely used for security. In such systems, one important function is that the system automatically detects any change in the scenes from the monitoring cameras. In wireless remote monitoring camera systems, the images of the scenes are generally transmitted as compressed data (e.g., JPEG file), because of the capacity of the wireless channel. This article shows the automated detection of the change point in time-series data of compressed JPEG file quantity (Kbytes) from the monitoring camera by applying the sequential probabilistic ratio test (SPRT) and the Chow test, which is well known as a standard method for detecting structural change in time-series data.     

A master-slave control system for a semi-autonomous underwater vehicle-manipulator system

Underwater vehicle-manipulator systems (UVMS) are expected to play an important role in ocean exploration. It is considered that UVMS will be operated by both automatic and manual control. We have proposed an automatic control method. In this article, we propose a master-slave system for a UVMS. The effectiveness of the proposed master-slave control system is demonstrated by using a floating underwater robot with a 2-link manipulator.     

Information gathering and searching approaches on the Web

The information accessible through the Internet is increasing explosively as the Web is getting more and more widespread. In this situation, the Web is indispensable information resource for both of information gathering and information searching. Though traditional information retrieval techniques have been applied to information gathering and searching in the Web, they are insufficient for this new form of information source. Fortunately some Al techniques can be straightforwardly applicable to such tasks in the Web, and many researchers are trying this approach. In this paper, we attempt to describe the current state of information gathering and searching technologies in the Web, and the application of AI techniques in the fields. Then we point out limitations of these traditional and AI approaches and introduce two aapproaches: navigation planning and a Mondou search engine for overcoming them. The navigation planning system tries to collect systematic knowledge, rather than Web pages, which are only pieces of knowledge. The Mondou search engine copes with the problems of the query expansion/modification based on the techniques of text/web mining and information visualization. Seiji Yamada, Dr. Eng.: He received the B.S., M.S. and Ph.S. degrees in control engineering and artificial intelligence from Osaka University, Osaka, Japan, in 1984, 1986 and 1989, respectively. From 1989 to 1991, he served as a Research Associate in the Department of Control Engineering at Osaka University. From 1991 to 1996, he served as a Lecturer in the Institute of Scientific and Industrial Research at Osaka University. In 1996, he joined the Department of Computational Intelligence and Systems Science at Tokyo Institute of Technology, Yokohama, Japan, as an Associate Professor. His research interests include artificial intelligence, planning, machine learning for a robotics, intelligent information retrieval in the WWW, human computer interaction, He is a member of AAAI, IEEE, JSAI, RSJ and IEICE. Hiroyuki Kawano, Dr.Eng.: He is an Associate Professor at the Department of Systems Science, Graduate School of Informatics, Kyoto University, Japan. He obtained his B.Eng. and M.Eng. degrees in Applied Mathematics and Physics, and his Dr.Eng. degree in Applied Systems Science from Kyoto University. His research interests are in advanced database technologies, such as data mining, data warehousing, knowledge discovery and web search engine (Mondou). He has served on the program committees of several conferences in the areas of Data Base Systems, and technical committes of advanced information systems.     

IKONOS image fusion process using steepest descent method with bi-linear interpolation

There are many image fusion processes to produce a high-resolution multispectral (MS) image from low-resolution MS and high-resolution panchromatic (PAN) images. But the most significant problems are colour distortion and fusion quality. Previously, we reported a fusion process that produced a1 m resolution IKONOS fused image with minimal spectral distortion. However, block distortion appeared at the edge of the curved sections of the fused image, which was reduced by performing the wavelet transformation as a post-process. Here, we propose an image fusion process using the steepest descent method with bi-linear interpolation, which can remove block distortion without using wavelet transformation. Bi-linear interpolation provides the proper initial values of the fused image, and then the steepest descent method produces the optimum results of the fusion process. These results achieve improvement on the spectral as well as spatial quality of a1 m resolution fused image when compared with other existing methods and remove block distortion completely.     

Large aperture superconducting magnet (benkei)

Benkei, which was a large window frame conventional magnet at KEK has been converted to a superconducting magnet. In the conversion, the pole gap has been doubled from 0.5 m to 1.0 m retaining an analysing power at 2 T m. Several new techniques were applied to coil windings and cryostat fabrication. The superconducting Benkei has shown satisfactory performances for long term operation.     

Adaptive backstepping control of wheeled inverted pendulum with velocity estimator

In this paper, we introduce a backstepping control design of a wheeled inverted pendulum. Based on a second-order motion equation of the body angle, an adaptive integral backstepping controller is designed to stabilize the body angle. It is shown that the σ-modification rule in the adaptive update law guarantees the boundedness of the errors in estimating the time-varying signal that is an output of a linear system with every bounded input signal. Then, the stabilizing controller for the wheel angle is constructed by a PD-type positive feedback. The derived controller requires the full-state measurements. In the output feedback case, the K filter or the observer backstepping is needed. However, the structure of the controller becomes complicated. We propose a non-model-based differentiator based on the adaptive update law. Since the non-model-based differentiator does not require any knowledge of the dynamic structure of the signal, we can use it as a velocity estimator for unknown nonlinear systems. Therefore, we replaced the velocity measurement with the estimates by the non-model-based differentiator. Finally, simulation results for the proposed controller are presented.