Fluorescent aplyronine a: intracellular accumulation and disassembly of actin cytoskeleton in tumor cells

Nonstick: Aplyronine A (ApA) is an antitumor and apoptogenic macrolide of marine origin. We prepared a fluorescent derivative of ApA that accumulated strongly throughout the cytoplasm and caused the rapid disassembly of the actin cytoskeleton in tumor cells. We also established that ApA caused malfunction of cell adhesion and dephosphorylation of focal adhesion kinase with apoptosis.     

Formation of nanometer-sized Au particles on USY zeolites under hydrogen atmosphere

Gold was deposited on ultrastable Y (USY) zeolite using a newly developed method: just mixing an aqueous solution of HAuCl₄ and zeolite at 353 K in which the NH₄⁺ cation reacted with the Cl⁻ in HAuCl₄. Treatment of the Au-loaded USY zeolite in the atmosphere of hydrogen resulted in the formation of Au⁰ nanoclusters with 1.8 nm diameter at 773 K. The size of Au particle was dependent on the type of zeolite support, composition of gas atmosphere, and temperature of calcination, which was correlated with catalytic performance. This study demonstrated the potential use of zeolites with strong Br?nsted acid character as gold supports.     

Numerical simulation of asymmetrical flow and heat transfer behind a hill in shear flows

Three‐dimensional numerical simulations of asymmetrical flows and heat transfer around a hill in shear flows were performed. When shear velocity distributions are introduced at the inlet, a vortex pair is formed asymmetrically to the spanwise direction behind the hill. Further, an asymmetrical hairpin vortex is periodically generated downstream. The leg of the asymmetrical hairpin vortex on the high‐speed side collapses first. Further downstream, the asymmetrical hairpin vortex breaks down earlier than the symmetrical hairpin vortex, and streamwise vortices appear on the high‐speed side. These streamwise vortices increase the heat transfer downstream. In contrast, no hairpin vortex appears in the case of a strong shear velocity distribution, but instead a streamwise vortex appears. The heat transfer decreases downstream since the turbulence generated by streamwise vortices is weak. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Heat Trans Asian Res; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/htj.20223     

Enhancement of the Catalytic Activity of a Dawson-type Heteropoly Acid Induced by the Loading on a Silica Support

The Friedel–Crafts alkylation, benzylation of anisole with benzyl alcohol, was carried out over heteropoly acids (HPAs) supported on SiO₂. A Dawson-type HPA, in which Nb atoms were partially substituted with W atoms, exhibited the highest activity among various kinds of HPAs. The catalyst was reusable in the reaction after the filtration and it kept high activity even after the washing with hot water when the catalyst was calcined at 743 K. In contrast, the unsupported catalyst was almost inactive after the thermal treatment. The change in the activity was in good agreement with the degree in the acid amount measured by NH₃-TPD. Unlike the Dawson-type heteropoly acid, the activity of the Keggin-H₃PW₁₂O₄₀/SiO₂ remarkably dropped through the repeated use for the reaction. Based on the structural analysis of Dawson-type HPAs, the partially decomposed HPA on the support of SiO₂ was ascribed to the active species.     

Propagation of various tooth impacts in the human body

The purpose of this study was to investigate how far tooth impacts were propagated in the body and whether the propagation would be influenced by posture. The impacts were propagated to all recording sites on the head and neck of the 10 examinees tested. In the recordings on the limbs, even at the most distal site, the number of examinees detecting the vibration was seven out of nine examinees. These results showed that the impacts exerted on the tooth were propagated to distal sites of limbs through the bones and soft tissues and implied that the propagated vibration would influence the whole of the body. On the other hand, as the amplitude of propagated vibration was influenced by posture and recording site, the posture during jaw functioning appears to be important.     

Toluene combustion over palladium supported on various metal oxide supports

Metal–support interaction in the catalytic combustion of toluene was studied using metal oxides with different acid–base properties as supports for Pd. The catalytic performance was correlated with XPS data and the reaction order for oxygen. These studies revealed that the affinity for oxygen of Pd surface changed according to the acid–base character of metal oxide over MgO, Al₂O₃, SiO₂, SnO₂, Nb₂O₅, and WO₃. However, ZrO₂ exhibited exceptional character in that metal Pd was unusually stabilized, which was derived from the weak interaction between Pd and support surface. The reason for high toluene combustion activity of Pd/ZrO₂ was ascribed to the stabilization of metal Pd on ZrO₂.     

Pd loaded on high silica beta support active for the total oxidation of diluted methane in the presence of water vapor

Total oxidation of diluted methane was carried out over palladium loaded on H-beta and H-ZSM-5 having different Al concentration in order to reveal the support effect of zeolites. It was found that the Al concentration had significant influence on the methane combustion activity of Pd. Especially, Pd loaded on H-beta having the lowest concentration of Al exhibited the most striking performance in that it showed superior durability and the highest activity in the presence of 10% water vapor. In marked contrast to the zeolite-supported Pd catalysts, Pd loaded on SiO₂ was substantially inactive under the same reaction conditions. Based on the Pd K-edge EXAFS coupled with TG analysis, the reason for the superior nature of high silica H-beta was attributed to the hydrophobic character of supports and the formation of agglomerated PdO, which was active in the methane combustion.     

Drawing human hair using the Wisp model

This paper presents a new powerful method for hair-image generation. A simplified computer graphics (CG) model of human hair is presented to describe and render various kinds of hair images with a small number of parameters. Practical methods for handling hair styles and for generating realistic images are presented. A notable feature of the proposed method is that it is run on the conventional z-buffer algorithm. Experiments have proven that the proposed algorithm is very useful for generating various human-hair images.