Effect of static pressure on intracellular pH of adhesive Chinese hamster ovary cells

The effect of static pressure on the intracellular pH of the Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cell line DR1000L4N was investigated. In cultivation of CHO cells at 0.9 MPa, two distinct populations were observed in the histogram of a flow cytometer, while single population was observed in cultivation at 0.1 MPa. The intracellular pH of the major population at 0.9 MPa was markedly lower than that of the single population at 0.1 MPa.     

Photo-induced valence tautomerism in Co complexes

A number of photofunctional molecular compounds have been developed recently. Typical examples of these are phototunable valence tautomeric compounds, which are now attracting great attention. When the charge-transfer bands of some Co valence tautomeric compounds are excited at low temperature, metastable redox isomers can be created after irradiation. The lifetimes of the metastable states can be more than several hours. These transformations can involve changes in the magnetic properties of the compounds, as well as their color. Hence, these compounds can be regarded as novel photomagnetic materials. The photoresponsive behaviors of these valence tautomeric compounds are similar to those of spin-crossover complexes (light-induced excited spin-state trapping effects).     

Dehydration of d-glucose in high temperature water at pressures up to 80 MPa

Reaction of d-glucose in water to yield 5-hydroxymethylfurfural (5-HMF), 1,2,4-benzenetriol (BTO) and furfural was studied at high temperatures (up to 400 °C) and high pressures (up to 80 MPa) using a continuous flow reactor. Maximum temperature and pressure conditions gave maximum furfural yield. Increasing pressure from 40 to 70 and 80 MPa enhanced dehydration reactions to 5-HMF, but also enhanced hydrolysis of 5-HMF leading to the production of BTO and thus lead to lower yields of 5-HMF (below 10%). Remarkably, the dehydration reaction to 5-HMF and the hydrolysis of 5-HMF were both enhanced by the increase in water density at 400 °C.     

Fabrication of magnetic nanodot arrays for patterned magnetic recording media

Fabrication processes of arrayed magnetic nanodots for the use of patterned magnetic recording media were reviewed. One candidate for the patterned media is ordered assemble of magnetic nanoparticles, and the other is patterned magnetic thin films fabricated using various micro/nano scale machining processes. For the formation of patterned masks and molds, lithography processes as well as self-organized pattern formation are utilized. For the deposition processes of magnetic dots, electrochemical deposition processes were widely used. These fabrication processes are reviewed mainly from recent reports. The recording systems for the patterned media including probe-type-recording are also overviewed.     

Universal Test Interface for embedded-DRAM testing

Because the configurations of embedded DRAM macros vary for each product, designers normally must customize the test circuitry for each product. The authors have developed circuitry (Universal Test Interface) that unifies testing regardless of the DRAM configuration and the number of macros on a chip. The Universal Test Interface alleviates the contradiction inherent in embedded DRAM testing     

Lung abscess caused by Paecilomyces lilacinus

AIM: To present characteristics of heart and great vessel injuries in patients wounded during the 1992-1994 war in Bosnia and Herzegovina and their management in conditions of lack of complex diagnostic and therapeutic procedures. METHODS: Retrospective analysis was performed on the medical records of 31 patients treated for cardiac and great vessel injuries at the Department of Surgery, Tuzla University Hospital, between January 1992 and December 1994. RESULTS: The most frequent localization of the injuries was the right and left ventricles (each 10 cases), left atrium in 5, superior caval vein in 5, and inferior caval vein in 5 cases. Isolated pericardial injury was found in 5 cases. Immediately after injury, 22 injured suffered from shock, 7 from pericardial tamponade, and 2 were in a stable state. The mortality rate was 58%. Eight patients died during the operation as a consequence of bleeding. The highest mortality rate was recorded in the injuries of the left ventricle followed by the injuries of the in right ventricle and of superior caval vein. All 4 patients with multiple heart and great vessel injuries died. Mortality rate was significantly higher in patients who suffered from shock than in those who suffered from tamponade. CONCLUSIONS: Penetrating war injuries of heart and great vessels are among the most serious injuries in war. These injuries require prompt treatment to save life, but this is hardly manageable in hospitals without cardiopulmonary bypass facilities.     

All-optical discrimination based on nonlinear transmittance of MQWsemiconductor optical gates

This paper proposes an all-optical regenerator utilizing a novel all-optical discriminator. The impacts of nonlinearity of optical gates on discrimination performance are estimated. The evaluation of discrimination performance shows that amplified spontaneous emission noise and wave form distortion in optical signals can be effectively suppressed. We experimentally demonstrate the suppression using a low-temperature-grown optical switch up to 10 Gb/s     

A new hydrodealkylation process with fluid-beds to produce high purity naphthalene and methylnaphthalenes from heavy aromatic oils

By use of fluid-bed technology, direct hydrodealkylation of heavy oils was studied and a new process to produce high purity naphthalene and 2-methylnaphthalene was developed. As a basic research, catalyst activity, selectivity and stability for hydrodealkylation of heavy oil, hydrodealkylation reaction scheme and kinetics and coke formation kinetics and mechanism were investigated. Reaction rate constants were theoretically analyzed with fluid-bed consecutive reaction model. These research and analyses were utilized for optimization and design of the process. Pilot operation provided high yield and quality of the products which were suitable for synthesis of monomers for high performance polymers.     

Design and implementations of Ninf: towards a global computing infrastructure

The world-wide computing infrastructure on the growing computer network technology is a leading technology to make a variety of information services accessible through the Internet for every user from the high-performance computing users through many of personal computing users. The important feature of such services is location transparency; information can be obtained irrespective of time or location in virtually shared manner. In this article, we overview Ninf, an ongoing global network-wide computing infrastructure project which allows users to access computational resources including hardware, software and scientific data distributed across a wide area network. Preliminary performance result on measuring software and network overhead is shown, and that promises the future reality of world-wide network computing.     

A real-time digital VCR encode/decode and MPEG-2 decode LSIimplemented on a dual-issue RISC processor

A real-time system large-scale-integrated circuit (LSI) for digital video cassette recorder (DVCR) encoding/decoding and MPEG-2 decoding is implemented on a dual-issue RISC processor (DRISC) with dedicated hardware optimized for video-block processing. The DRISC achieves 972-MOPS software performance and can execute fixed-length data processing at the block level as well as processing at the macro-block level and above for the DVCR/MPEG-2. The dedicated hardware for variable-length coding/decoding can encode and decode codes for both the DVCR and the MPEG-2 by changing translation tables. The dedicated hardware for video-block loading can process video-block data transfers with half-pel operations. The LSI size is 7.7×7.2 mm² in a 0.25-μm CMOS process