A 48 kilodalton enterotoxin-related protein from Clostridium perfringens vegetative and sporulating cells

Sporulating and vegetative cell extracts of enterotoxin-positive and enterotoxin-negative strains of Clostridium perfringens were examined by Western blotting using enterotoxin antiserum. A 48-kDa enterotoxin-related protein was found in vegetative and sporulating cell extracts of both toxin types. The results question previous reports about the ability of vegetative cells and presumptive enterotoxin-negative strains of this organism to produce enterotoxin, a protein with a molecular weight of 34 kDa.     

Piperonyl butoxide and acenaphthylene induce cytochrome P450 1A2 and 1B1 mRNA in aromatic hydrocarbon-responsive receptor knock-out mouse liver

Simultaneous or secondary pancreatic metastases of primary renal cancer are exceptional and usually delayed. The clinical signs of symptomatic lesions are varied and nonspecific. Computed tomography allows complete investigation and CT angiography visualizes typical hypervascularization, which can be correlated to angiographic examinations. In the light of 3 cases treated surgically with a significant clinical follow-up, the authors review the data of the literature.     

Performance comparison between the preferred right and preferred left hands in text entry using Qwerty touch keyboard smartphones

In one-handed text entry with a smartphone, we investigate whether the use of the preferred hand presents better performance than when the non-preferred hand is used. In particular, we study whether the performance of a skilled left hand is worse than that of a skilled right hand among right-handers. A total of 30 young, male, right-handed undergraduate students participated in the experiment. Half of the participants preferred to use their right hands for the smartphone text entry when only one hand was available, whereas the other half preferred to use their left hands. The participants were instructed to type a text message using a Qwerty touch keyboard with both hands, with right hand only, and left hand only through three different experiments. The text completion time and number of errors were measured, and words per minute and keystrokes per minute were calculated to compare the performance among the text entry tasks. In entering a text message with only one hand, approximately 70% of the 15 participants who preferred to use their right hands and approximately 30% of the other 15 participants who preferred to use their left hands have shown to perform better when using their preferred hand than when using their non-preferred hand. The performance of the participants with a skilled left hand was not worse than that of those with a skilled right hand in smartphone text entry.     

Aroundplot: Focus+context interface for off-screen objects in 3D environments

In exploring 3D environments from a first-person viewpoint, the narrow field-of-view makes it difficult to search for an off-screen object, a task that becomes even harder if the user is looking through the small screen of a mobile phone. This paper presents Aroundplot, a novel focus+context interface for providing multiple location cues for off-screen objects in an immersive 3D environment. One part of this technique is a mapping method from 3D spherical coordinates to 2D orthogonal fisheye, which tackles the problems of existing 3D location cue displays such as occlusion among the cues and discordance with the human frame of reference. The other part is a dynamic magnification method that magnifies the context in the direction the view is moving to alleviate the distortion of the orthogonal fisheye and thus to support precise movement. In an evaluation, the participants could find the target object for a given location cue faster and more accurately with Aroundplot than with a top-down 2D radar. They were more accurate with Aroundplot than with a 3D arrow cluster when the number of objects was large; however, accuracy with a small number of objects and the search speed with any number of objects were not significantly different.     

Microscopic and macroscopic approaches of Cu(II) removal by FSM-16

The removal of Cu(II) by a mesoporous material, FSM-16, was studied using electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectroscopy and surface complexation modeling (SCM). Free copper ions, adsorbed and precipitated Cu(II) species were qualitatively identified by in situ EPR spectroscopy of Cu-FSM-16 suspensions at room temperature and at 77 K. In addition, the adsorbed species was identified as a Cu(II) species with an axial symmetry from an analysis of the EPR spectra of "dry" Cu-FSM-16 at 77 K. On the basis of the EPR results, the removal of Cu(II) as a function of pH under various experimental conditions was successfully simulated by assuming two removal mechanisms such as surface complexation and surface precipitation. In the acidic pH range (< pH 6), free copper ions were predominant, and surface complexed then surface precipitated species became dominant as the pH increased.     

Nonvolatile Memory Characteristics of NMOSFET With Ag Nanocrystals Synthesized via a Thermal Decomposition Process for Uniform Device Distribution

This paper presents nonvolatile memory characteristics using Ag nanocrystals (NCs) formed by a thermal decomposition and size-selective precipitation technique for Flash memory application. In the NC formation process, the size of NCs and the space NC-to-NC were precisely controlled by a size-selective precipitation technique and the length of the self-assembled monolayer surrounding the NCs, respectively. The size and density of the Ag NCs synthesized were typically 3-5 nm and , respectively. Due to the regularly distributed Ag NCs with high density, uniform memory characteristics and high program efficiency were achieved from NMOSFETs embedded with the Ag NCs, which were fabricated by the gate-last process.