Micro machining for control of wettability with surface topography

A micro fabrication is presented to manufacture hydrophobic surfaces with micro-scale structures. Hydrophobicity is controlled with the shape and the alignment of micro pillars in the structure. The structures are manufactured in large areas at high production rates in the following processes: (1) the structure is fabricated on a tool by focused ion beam sputtering; (2) the reverse structure is formed on a metal plate by incremental stamping using the structured tool; and (3) the structure is transferred onto plastic plates by molding. A consecutive stamping is also proposed to fabricate several structures on a surface accurately with a structured tool, in which the moving pitch of the structured tool is numerically controlled. The effect of the surface topography on hydrophobicity is discussed with measuring contact angles on the structured surfaces in the water droplet tests. Hydrophobicity on the plastic plate is associated with the solid fraction on the structured surface based on the Cassie–Baxter model. A larger contact angle is observed for a smaller solid fraction of the surface.     

Design,Synthesis, and Biological Evaluation of Lysine Demethylase 5 C Degraders

Lysine demethylase 5 C (KDM5C) controls epigenetic gene expression and is attracting great interest in the field of chemical epigenetics. KDM5C has emerged as a therapeutic target for anti-prostate cancer agents, and recently we identified triazole 1 as an inhibitor of KDM5C. Compound 1 exhibited highly potent KDM5C-inhibitory activity in in vitro enzyme assays, but did not show strong anticancer effects. Therefore, a different approach is needed for the development of anticancer agents targeting KDM5C. Here, we attempted to identify KDM5C degraders by focusing on a protein-knockdown strategy. Compound 3 b , which was designed based on compound 1 , degraded KDM5C and inhibited the growth of prostate cancer PC-3 cells more strongly than compound 1 . These findings suggest that KDM5C degraders are more effective as anticancer agents than compounds that only inhibit the catalytic activity of KDM5C.     

Preliminary spectrum shifter design for intermediate energy nuclear data benchmark experiments with DT neutrons

Integral benchmark experiments with DT neutrons are not always sufficient for nuclear data benchmarking in the MeV region, below 10 MeV. A neutron spectrum shifter, which will be placed between a sample and a DT neutron source, is effective to moderate DT neutrons incident to the sample. In order to estimate effects of the spectrum shifter, the ratio of the contribution of 14 MeV neutrons in the leakage neutron and gamma-ray spectra was calculated with MCNP-4C for an experimental configuration at FNS of JAEA, Japan. The calculations were carried out for a Li₂TiO₃ sample with a Be, D₂O, or ⁷LiD spectrum shifter. It was found out that the Be shifter was superior to others and the Be shifter was effective to decrease the contribution of 14 MeV neutrons especially for secondary gamma-ray spectrum measurements.     

Effects of scatter and attenuation correction on quantitative assessment of regional cerebral blood flow with SPECT

The pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC) plays a key role in the anaerobic mitochondrial metabolism of the parasitic nematode Ascaris suum. A cDNA coding for an A. suum pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (APDK) has been cloned and sequenced from poly(A)+ RNA isolated from adult A. suum muscle.2 APDK exhibited significant sequence identity to mammalian PDKs. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the APDK cDNA revealed a 22-nucleotide spliced leader, characteristic of many nematode mRNAs, a 5'-UTR of 6 nucleotides, an open reading frame of 1197 nucleotides, and a 3'-UTR of 101 nucleotides that included a putative polyadenylation signal. The open reading frame predicted a protein of 399 amino acids with a molecular weight of 45,402 that included a putative 18-aminoacid leader peptide. Recombinant APDK (rAPDK) was functionally expressed in Escherichia coli with a his tag at its N-terminus and purified to apparent homogeneity on Ni-NTA-agarose. Recombinant APDK was a dimer and was not autophosphorylated and its activity was stimulated in the presence of APDK-deficient adult A. suum muscle PDC presumably by the binding of APDK to the dihydrolipoyl transacetylase (E2) core of the complex. After binding to the core, rAPDK activity was stimulated by elevated NADH/NAD+ and acetyl CoA/CoA ratios within the same ranges as observed for the native APDK. Immunoblotting suggested that native APDK focused as a series of 43-kDa spots (pI 6.1-6.8) on two-dimensional gels of the purified adult A. suum muscle PDC.     

Direct-vision-based reinforcement learning in a real mobile robot

It was confirmed that a real mobile robot with a simple visual sensor could learn appropriate motions to reach a target object by direct-vision-based reinforcement learning (RL). In direct-vision-based RL, raw visual sensory signals are put directly into a layered neural network, and then the neural network is trained using back propagation, with the training signal being generated by reinforcement learning. Because of the time-delay in transmitting the visual sensory signals, the actor outputs are trained by the critic output at two time-steps ahead. It was shown that a robot with a simple monochrome visual sensor can learn to reach a target object from scratch without any advance knowledge of this task by direct-vision-based RL. This work was presented in part at the 7th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 16–18, 2002     

Analysis of main pigments and other ingredients in lac color product

The contents of the main pigments and other ingredients in commercial lac color products were determined by HPLC using an RP-18 column with 0.1 mol/L citric acid buffer solution-methanol (16:5) as the mobile phase, and a photodiode array (PDA) detector set at 280 nm and 490 nm. The main pigments were confirmed by PDA and electrospray ionization mass spectrometry. Laccaic acids A, B, C and E were detected in all lac color products, and the ratio of content of laccaic acid A in all products was over 50%. The total contents of laccaic acids A, B and C in lac color food additive products and reagent products were 775-858, 797 and 779 g/kg, respectively. As for the contents of ingredients except pigments in commercial food additive products, the maximum moisture content was about 10%, and ether-soluble substances amounted to 0.5-3.6%.     

Exact Analysis of a One-Dimensional Attractive δ-Function Fermi Gas with Arbitrary Spin Polarization

We study a one-dimensional integrable system of N spin-1/2 fermions with attractive δ-function interaction at zero temperature. The Gaudin integral equation describing the ground state with arbitrary spin polarization is solved in the form of power series. We also study the ground state energy as a function of the coupling constant and the polarization.     

Application of electrospray ionization ion trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometry for chemically-synthesized small RNAs

In this study, we have demonstrated an accurate and rapid small RNA analytical method with both sequence determination and detailed modification analysis by electrospray ionization-ion trap/time-of-flight mass spectrometry (ESI-IT/TOFMS). To develop this ideal method, we have examined the performance of ESI-IT/TOFMS using various chemically-synthesized model sequences of modified or unmodified microRNAs (miRNAs). The deconvoluted mass of a 22-nucleotide (nt) miRNA was obtained from a multiply charged precursor ion (MS(1)). The ion exhibited high mass accuracy (< 7 ppm) and high mass resolution (a value of m/Δm=10,000) and was therefore very useful in RNA composition assignment. The optimized MS(2) method using ion trap collision-induced dissociation, as well as automatic annotation analysis of product ions based on the accurate mass information, enabled the precise sequencing determination of intact miRNAs. Further, the detailed structural analysis of 3'-terminal modified nucleic acid in intact methylated miRNA was carried out using the MS(3) capability of the hybrid IT/TOFMS. The direct infusion method also provided a high throughput and good sensitivity because the analytical time and sample concentration needed in a series of experiments with reliable data were only 3 min and 100 nM, respectively. This study provides a novel approach for characterizing the intact chemically-synthesized small RNA without chemical and enzymatic digestions and would be widely applicable for the structural analysis of complicated modified small RNAs.