Effect of crosslinked core on minimum film formation temperature and morphology of composite microspheres

Effect of crosslinking on minimum film formation temperature (MFT) and particle morphology was investigated using the latices composed by the combination of crosslinked soft core-hard shell. n-Butyl acrylate (nBA) and ethylene glycol dimethacrylate (EGDMA) were used to prepare crosslinked rubber with methylmethacrylate (MMA) or styrene (ST) as a hard plastic component. Ordinary batch (flooded with secondary monomer) and semicontinuous (starved feed) operations were employed to compare the thermal properties of composite latices resulting from the different mode of secondary polymerization. As the degree of crosslinking increases, MFT of the latices obtained by batch operation became higher than those by semibatch operation. Observation of microtomed sections of particles stained with RuO₄ did not reveal much difference in particle morphologies between the two operations. There was a definite relationship between MFT and molecular weight of THF soluble fraction of composite polymers regardless the mode of operation.     

Construction of a plasmid vector for the regulatable high level expression of eukaryotic genes in Escherichia coli: an application to overproduction of chicken lysozyme

A novel expression vector pKPl500 for synthesizing unfused proteinin Escherichia coli was constructed. pKP1500 perserves the tacpromoter, the lacZ SD sequence, unique restriction sites (EcoRI,SmaI, BamHI, SalI, PstI and HindIII) and the rrnB terminatorsof pKK223-3, but the replication origin is replaced with thatof pUC9. Construction of this plasmid is based upon the observationthat the copy number control of pUC9 is temperature dependent.At 28°C, the copy number of pKP1500 is less than 25 perchromosome, approximately the same copy number as that of pKK223-3,which contains the replication origin of pBR322, whereas at42°C, the copy number increases about 10 times and reachesup to 230 copies per chromosome. The main advantage of thissystem is that the temperature-dependent copy control and regulatableexpression of the tac promoter make cells car rying pKPl500derivatives stable against selective pressure by detrimentaloverproduction of foreign proteins at a low temperature andpermits high expression of cloned DNAs at a high temperature.When chicken lysozyme cDNA carrying the initiation codon (ATG)immediately upstream from the Lys¹ codon was inserted downstreamfrom the tac promoter and the SD sequence, the pKP1500 derivativeproduced lysozyme at about 25% of the total cellular proteins.This value is more than 10 times higher than that obtained withthe pKK223-3 derivative carrying the same lysozyine cDNA. Bycomparison, the expression of eukaryotic genes from the tacpromoter reported by others has usually been less than a few% of the total cellular protein. pKPl500 would therefore beuseful for the high level production of unfused proteins fromeukaryotic cDNAs in E. coli.     

Processing of the molecular dynamics model by the parallel computer pax

Molecular dynamics model is processed by a parallel array type computer PAX, that has an architecture of nearest neighbor meash connection of processors. Two parallel schemes, named Lagrangian and Eulerian, are implemented, execution time and efficiency are analyzed and expressed in terms of the basic parameters such as problem size and array size. The Lagrangian scheme realizes high efficiency close to 1, which assures the linear speedup proportional to the size of the processor array. Parallel programming technique is also presented.     

Detection of gyrA mutations among 335 Pseudomonas aeruginosa strains isolated in Japan and their susceptibilities to fluoroquinolones

The authors report two elderly men with diffuse meningeal enhancement 13 and 21 years following insertion of ventriculojugular shunts. Lumber puncture documenting low CSF pressures suggests that diffuse meningeal enhancement in patients with long-standing ventricular shunts may be secondary to dural venous dilatation rather than meningeal fibrosis. The authors theorize that these elderly patients, neither of whom had postural headache, may be less subject to brain "sag" because of decreased brain weight.     

Exponential family tensor factorization: an online extension and applications

In this paper, we propose a new probabilistic model of heterogeneously attributed multi-dimensional arrays. The model can manage heterogeneity by employing individual exponential family distributions for each attribute of the tensor array. Entries of the tensor are connected by latent variables and share information across the different attributes through the latent variables. The assumption of heterogeneity makes a Bayesian inference intractable, and we cast the EM algorithm approximated by the Laplace method and Gaussian process. We also extended the proposal algorithm for online learning. We apply our method to missing-values prediction and anomaly detection problems and show that our method outperforms conventional approaches that do not consider heterogeneity.     

Low‐temperature fabrication of 5‐in. QVGA flexible AMOLED display driven by OTFTs using olefin polymer as the gate insulator

Abstract— A 5‐in. QVGA flexible AMOLED display driven by OTFTs has been fabricated at a low temperature of 130°C. A polyethylene naphthalate film was used as the flexible substrate and an olefin polymer was used as the gate insulator for the OTFT. This layer was formed by spin‐coating and baking at 130°C. Pentacene was used as the organic semiconductor layer. The OTFT performance to drive the flexible display with QVGA pixels in terms of current on/off ratio, carrier mobility, and spatial uniformity on the backplane have been obtained. Phosphorescent and fluorescent OLEDs were used as light‐emitting devices on a flexible display. Those layers were formed by vacuum deposition. After the flexible display was fabricated, a clear and uniform moving image was obtained on the display. The display also showed a stable moving image even when it was bent.     

Broadband method for precise microwave spectroscopy of superconducting thin films near the critical temperature

We present a high-resolution microwave spectrometer to measure the frequency- dependent complex conductivity of a superconducting thin film near the critical temperature. The instrument is based on a broadband measurement of the complex reflection coefficient, S 11, of a coaxial transmission line, which is terminated to a thin film sample with the electrodes in a Corbino disk shape. In the vicinity of the critical temperature, the standard calibration technique using three known standards fails to extract the strong frequency dependence of the complex conductivity induced by the superconducting fluctuations. This is because a small unexpected difference between the phase parts of S 11 for a short and load standards gives rise to a large error in the detailed frequency dependence of the complex conductivity near the superconducting transition. We demonstrate that a new calibration procedure using the normal-state conductivity of a sample as a load standard resolves this difficulty. The high quality performance of this spectrometer, which covers the frequency range between 0.1 and 10 GHz, the temperature range down to 10 K, and the magnetic field range up to 1 T, is illustrated by the experimental results on several thin films of both conventional and high temperature superconductors.     

Stabilization of lysozyme by the introduction of Gly-Pro sequence

Three mutant lysozymes where the Asp¹⁰¹ – Gly¹⁰² sequenceof lysozyme was converted to Asp¹⁰¹–Pro¹⁰², Gly¹⁰¹–Pro102and Pro¹⁰¹–Gly¹⁰² were prepared to investigate the effectof proline residues on the stabilization of proteins. The freeenergy changes of lysozymes for the unfolding in aqueous solutionat pH 5.5 and 35°C were 10.0, 10.1, 11.0 and 7.7 kcal/molfor wild type, Asp¹⁰¹Pro¹⁰², Gly¹⁰¹Pro¹⁰² and Pro¹⁰¹Gly¹⁰² lysozymerespectively. When the energy level in the unfolded state ofwild type lysozyme was fixed at a standard level, the energylevels in the folded state of Asp¹⁰¹Pro¹⁰² and Pro¹⁰¹Gly¹⁰²lysozymes were found to be higher than that of wild type lysozymeon the basis of G_D(H₂O) and entropy losses of their polypeptidechains in the unfolded state. The presence of some strain inthe folded state of these lysozymes was supported by both thecalculation of conformational energy for a trans-L-prolyl residue[Schimmel, P.R. and Flory,P.J. (1968) J. Mol. Biol, 34, 105–120] and the analysis of structures of energy-minimizedmutant lysozymes. Therefore, it is concluded that the formationof the Gly-Pro sequence is effective in avoiding possible strainin the folded state of a protein caused by the introductionof proline residue(s).     

Development of Nanoporous Alumina Catalyst Support by Anodic Oxidation of Thermally and Kinetically Sprayed Aluminum Coatings

Of the various catalyst supports that have been developed, nanoporous alumina prepared by anodic oxidation of aluminum layers has attracted particular interest because of its extremely high specific area, easy controllability of porosity, coating thickness, and high bond strength with substrates. In the present study, kinetic- and plasma-spraying methods are employed to deposit aluminum, and the effect of the deposition method on the nanopore density after anodic oxidation is examined through scanning electron microscopy, transmission electron microscopy, and electron backscatter diffraction observations. It is found that nanopore densities in the kinetically sprayed aluminum layers are much denser than in plasma-sprayed layers. It is hypothesized that this is attributed to the dense dislocation because of large internal stress during the deposition process.     

Long-term prognostic value of PCNA labeling index in primary operable breast cancer

Cell proliferation was evaluated in 167 tissue specimens obtained from primary breast cancer patients who had undergone radical surgery between 1984 and 1988. Formalin-fixed and paraffin-embedded tissue specimens were used in the immunohistochemical study. The immunohistochemical method was carried out using the avidin-biotin immunoperoxidase technique, and anti-proliferating cell nuclear antigen (PCNA) monoclonal antibody was used for primary antibody. Based upon the PCNA labeling index (LI), the patients were divided into two groups: low PCNA, <25% and high PCNA, >/= 25%. The PCNA LI ranged from 1% to 76% (mean, 23.9%). Patients aged 50 years. There was no relationship between the PCNA LI and tumor size, lymph node involvement and hormone receptors. The survival curves of 146 invasive breast cancer patients showed that the high PCNA group had poor overall survival compared with the low PCNA group. A significant difference in the overall survival between the high and low PCNA groups was observed in lymph node-positive patients, however, no significant difference was found between the two groups in lymph node-negative patients. PCNA LI was identified as an independent predictor in primary breast cancer patients.