Magnetic and Transport Properties of Bilayered Perovskite Sr3Ir2O7

We report magnetic and transport properties of polycrystalline samples of bilayered perovskite Sr₃Ir₂O₇, which is synthesized by using high pressure technique. Magnetic susceptibility shows weak ferromagnetism below 290K with small size of remanent moment (10^–3B/Ir). Resistivity shows insulating behavior below 290K. We discuss the magnetism and conductivity in Sr₃Ir₂O₇ comparing with those of Sr₃Ru₂O₇, which has a quite similar crystal structure to Sr₃Ir₂O₇, from the view point of rotation angle of MO₆ (M=Ir, Ru) octahedra.     

Cryogenic cavitating flow in 2D laval nozzle

Cavitation is one of the troublesome problems in rocket turbo pumps, and since most of high-efficiency rocket propellants are cryogenic fluids, so called "thermodynamic effect" becomes more evident than in water. In the present study, numerical and experimental study of liquid nitrogen cavitation in 2D Laval nozzle was carried out, so that the influence of thermodynamic effect was examined. It was revealed that temperature and cavitation have strong inter-relationship with each other in thermo-sensitive cryogenic fluids.     

Inhibitory action of emulsified sulfoquinovosyl acylglycerol on mammalian DNA polymerases

We reported previously that sulfoquinovosyl diacylglycerol and sulfoquinovosyl monoacylglycerol (SQDG/SQMG) are potent inhibitors of mammalian DNA polymerases and DNA topoisomerase II, and can be potent immunosuppressive agents and anticancer chemotherapy agents [Matsumoto, Y., Sahara, H., Fujita T., Shimozawa, K., Takenouchi, M., Torigoe, T., Hanashima, S., Yamazaki, T., Takahashi, S., Sugawara, F., et al., An Immunosuppressive Effect by Synthetic Sulfonolipids Deduced from Sulfonoquinovosyl Diacylglycerols of Sea Urchin, Transplantation 74, 261-267 (2002); Sahara, H., Hanashima, S., Yamazaki, T., Takahashi, S., Sugawara, F., Ohtani, S., Ishikawa, M., Mizushina, Y., Ohta, K., Shimozawa, K., et al., Anti-tumor Effect of Chemically Synthesized Sulfolipids Based on Sea Urchin's Natural Sulfonoquinovosylmonoacylglycerols, Jpn. J. Cancer Res. 93, 85-92 (2002)]. In those experiments, the in vivo effectiveness greatly depended on the degree of water solubility of SQDG/SQMG. In the present work, we studied the emulsification of SQDG/SQMG in terms of their use in in vivo experiments. Lipid emulsions containing SQDG/SQMG (oil-in-water emulsions) in which the particle size was smaller than 100 nm were designed and synthesized, and then the biochemical modes of emulsified SQDG/SQMG were studied in comparison with those of SQDG/SQMG solubilized by DMSO. Emulsified SQDG/SQMG are also selective mammalian DNA polymerase inhibitors and potent antineoplastic agents but do not inhibit the DNA topoisomerase II activity. The growth inhibition effect of emulsified SQMG to NUGC-3 cancer cells was twofold stronger than DMSO-soluble SQMG (69 and 151 microM, respectively). From these results, the properties of lipid emulsions containing SQDG/SQMG and their possible use in in vivo experiments including clinical use are discussed.     

Ergodicity of spike trains: when does trial averaging make sense?

Neuronal information processing is often studied on the basis of spiking patterns. The relevant statistics such as firing rates calculated with the peri-stimulus time histogram are obtained by averaging spiking patterns over many experimental runs. However, animals should respond to one experimental stimulation in real situations, and what is available to the brain is not the trial statistics but the population statistics. Consequently, physiological ergodicity, namely, the consistency between trial averaging and population averaging, is implicitly assumed in the data analyses, although it does not trivially hold true. In this letter, we investigate how characteristics of noisy neural network models, such as single neuron properties, external stimuli, and synaptic inputs, affect the statistics of firing patterns. In particular, we show that how high membrane potential sensitivity to input fluctuations, inability of neurons to remember past inputs, external stimuli with large variability and temporally separated peaks, and relatively few contributions of synaptic inputs result in spike trains that are reproducible over many trials. The reproducibility of spike trains and synchronous firing are contrasted and related to the ergodicity issue. Several numerical calculations with neural network examples are carried out to support the theoretical results.     

Structures of ozonolysis products of methyl oleate obtained in a carboxylic acid medium

High-performance liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (LC-MS) and nuclear magnetic resonance spectrometry (NMR) were applied to the analysis of organic peroxide mixtures, which were labile and tended to decompose during analysis. The ozonolysis reaction of methyl oleate gives a peroxide mixture, and, finally, mono- and dibasic acids are obtained by subsequent oxidation. In this study, methyl oleate was ozonized in a nonanoic acid medium, one of the final reaction products. The reaction products were directly analyzed by LC-MS equipped with a frit-fast atom bombardment interface. The molecular ion peak of each peroxide was clearly observed, and its molecular weight was readily determined. On the other hand, each peroxide was fractionated by high-performance liquid chromatography and submitted to structural analysis by NMR. Both results indicated that the reaction products include four peroxidic species: 1,2,4-trioxolaneI, peroxide oligomerII, 1-acyloxyalkyl-1-hydroperoxideIII, and 1-acyloxyalkyl-1′-hydroxyalkyl peroxideIV, as well as an aldehydeV. Ozonolysis of methyl oleate in the absence of solvent produces mainlyI, while that in the presence of a carboxylic acid solvent characteristically produces mainlyIII andIV derived from the solvent.Bis(1-acyloxyalkyl-1-alkyl) peroxide, which was reported previously as a ozonolysis product of methyl oleate, was concluded to beIV in this study. This work was presented at the 31th Annual Meeting of the Japan Oil Chemists’ Society, 1992, Tokyo, Japan.     

A cautious scheduler for multistep transactions

Given a classC of serializable schedules, a cautiousC-scheduler is an on-line transaction scheduler that outputs schedules in classC and never resorts to rollbacks. Such a scheduler grants the current request if and only if the partial schedule it has granted so far, followed by the current request, can be extended to a schedule inC. A suitable extension is searched among the set of all possible sequences of the pending steps, which are predeclared by the transactions whose first requests have already arrived. If the partial schedule cannot be extended to a schedule inC, then the current request is delayed. An efficient cautiousCPSR-scheduler has been proposed by Casanova and Bernstein.This paper discusses cautiousWRW-scheduling, whereWRW is the largest polynomially recognizable subclass of serializable schedules currently known. Since cautiousWRW-scheduling is, in general, NP-complete as shown in this paper, we introduce, a subclass (namedWRW ^#) ofWRW and discuss an efficient cautiousWRW ^#-scheduler. We also show that the fixed point set of the cautiousWRW ^#-scheduler properly containsCPSR. Therefore, ourWRW ^#-scheduler allows more concurrency than anyCPSR- scheduler.This work was supported in part by the Natural Sciences and Engineering Research Council of Canada under Grant No. A5240 and in part by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan under Scientific Research Grant-in-Aid.     

Central administration of saikosaponin-d increases corticotropin-releasing factor mRNA levels in the rat hypothalamus

The free radicals nitric oxide (.NO) and superoxide (O2-) are known to react to form peroxynitrite (ONOO-), a highly reactive species. Peroxynitrite has been suggested to play an important role in the cellular damage associated with the overproduction of .NO, but there are very limited data regarding its in vivo formation. Here we demonstrate that injection of endotoxin into rats leads to the expression of an inducible isoform of .NO synthase (iNOS) in the thoracic aorta at 6 h and an increase in the circulating levels of nitrite/nitrate. Moreover, at the same time point, there is a marked increase in the immunoreactivity of nitrotyrosine, a marker of peroxynitrite in the aorta. The formation of nitrotyrosine was prevented by inhibiting the activity of NOS by NG-methyl-L-arginine in vivo. Our data suggest that during endotoxin shock, part of .NO, produced following the induction of iNOS, is converted into peroxynitrite in the vicinity of large blood vessels. The demonstration of the in vivo formation of peroxynitrite at sites of .NO overproduction may necessitate the development of novel and additional approaches for limiting or preventing .NO-related cytotoxic or vasodilatory actions during circulatory shock.     

Low-temperature epitaxial growth of conductive LaNiO3 thin films by RF magnetron sputtering

Epitaxial growth of LaNiO₃ (LNO) thin films was successful on CeO₂/YSZ/Si(100), MgO(100) and SrTiO₃ (STO)(100) substrates by RF magnetron sputtering at 300 °C, although pulsed laser deposition requires 600 °C to prepare epitaxial LNO films according to the literature. Epitaxial LNO films deposited on CeO₂/YSZ/Si(100) and STO(100) had single orientation of LNO[100]//CeO₂[110]//YSZ[110]//Si[110]) and LNO[100]//STO[100], respectively. On the other hand, epitaxial LNO films deposited on MgO(100) had mixed orientations of LNO[100]//MgO[100] and LNO[100]//MgO[110]. The lattice parameter, composition and resistivity of the LNO thin films were strongly dependent on the substrate temperature. The minimum resistivity of LNO films was approximately 5×10⁻⁶ Ω m, which value almost agrees with the resistivity in the literature. It was found that the temperature to achieve minimum resistivity was 200 °C, irrespective of the type of substrate. The surface of the LNO films was smooth and flat.