Out‐of‐Plane Strain Induced in a Moiré Superstructure of Monolayer MoS2 and MoSe2 on Au(111)

Making contact of transition metal dichalcogenides (TMDCs) with a metal surface is essential for fabricating and designing electronic devices and catalytic systems. It also generates strain in the TMDCs that plays significant role in both electronic and phonon structures. Therefore, detailed understanding of mechanism of the strain generation is important to fully comprehend the modulation effect for the electronic and phonon properties. Here, MoS₂ and MoSe₂ monolayers are grown on Au surface by chemical vapor deposition and it is demonstrated that the contact with a crystalline Au(111) surface gives rise to only out‐of‐plane strain in both MoS₂ and MoSe₂ layers, whereas no strain generation is observed on polycrystalline Au or SiO₂/Si surfaces. Scanning tunneling microscopy analysis provides information regarding consequent specific adsorption sites between lower S (Se) atoms in the S? Mo? S (Se? Mo? Se) structure and Au atoms via unique moiré superstructure formation for MoS₂ and MoSe₂ layers on Au(111). This observation indicates that the specific adsorption sites give rise to out‐of‐plane strain in the TMDC layers. Furthermore, it also leads to effective modulation of the electronic structure of the MoS₂ or MoSe₂ layer.     

Feasibility of zeolites in converting butyric acid into propylene for biorefineries

The biorefinery has been recognized as a new industry to produce both energy and chemical materials such as olefins and BTX from renewable resources. In this context the conversion of butyric acid over zeolites was investigated for establishing a new production route of propylene. Propylene was mainly generated by decarbonylation and dehydration of butyric acid. Our study proved that H-ZSM-5 (750) and silicalite were the best industrial catalyst among the tested ones. For H-ZSM-5 (750), the selectivity of propylene reached 64.2 C% and the ratio of the yield for propylene to theoretical yield (75 C%) became 85.6%.     

Impact of Dynamic Interlayer Interactions on Thermal Conductivity of Ca3Co4O9

The phonon thermal conductivity of misfit-layered Ca₃Co₄O₉ has been calculated by perturbed molecular dynamics using a classical force field. Detailed numerical analyses reveal that, in spite of its smaller cross-sectional area, the CoO₂ layer transports more heat than the thicker rock salt (RS) layer, although its local thermal conduction is more suppressed than in another layered cobaltite, Na _x CoO₂. The origins of these differences have been elucidated through careful examination of the atomic arrangements in each layer. Since thermal conduction in the RS layer can be reduced without deteriorating electronic properties for which the CoO₂ layer is responsible, it is suggested that the RS layer should be modified to further suppress the overall in-plane thermal conductivity. Computational experiments with increasing number of Ca–O planes in the RS layer showed the opposite trend to what can be predicted based on the misfit between two dissimilar layers. Further analyses to reveal the origin of these unexpected results provide yet another strategy to further decrease the thermal conductivity, namely to control the dynamic interference between atoms across the interface between two layers.     

Operation Assist by Vibration Suppression Control Using Impulse‐Shaped Signals for Power Assist Conveyance System

This paper presents an assist control method for a flexible parts conveyance task using a power assist conveyance system. The assist control method should be designed so as not only to suppress vibration but also to reduce the degradation of operating feel. For this purpose, multiple impulse‐shaped signals are used as feedforward signals in order to reduce the vibration of flexible parts during conveyance. In addition, the adjustment time is introduced to adjust the input timing of the impulse‐shaped signal and to suppress vibration. In order to improve the degradation of operating feel, the smaller amplitudes of the three impulse‐shaped signals are used and input repeatedly. The effectiveness of the proposed system was verified experimentally. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 186(2): 31–39, 2014; Published online in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.22476     

Detection of Leuconostoc strains at a meat processing plant using polymerase chain reaction

To simplify the labor-intensive conventional routine testing of samples to detect Leuconostoc at a meat processing plant, we developed polymerase chain reaction (PCR) primers specific for Leuconostoc from 16S rRNA gene sequences. These primers did not detect other common lactic acid bacteria such as Lactobacillus plantarum, Lact. sake, Lact. fermentum, Lact. acidophilus and Weissella viridescens. PCR with this primer detected all Leuconostoc species tested (Leu. mesenteroides subsp. mesenteroides, Leu. pseudomesenteroides, Leu. carnosum, Leu. lactic, Leu. citreum, Leu. amelibiosum, Leu. gelidum), except for Leu. fallax, and no other lactic acid bacteria on agarose gel electrophoresis. The method could identify areas contaminated with Leuconostoc in a large-scale industrial meat processing plant. Of 69 samples analyzed, 34 were positive for Leuconostoc according to the conventional culture method (isolation of LAB producing dextran) and PCR, whereas 29 were negative according to both. Six samples were culture-negative but positive by PCR. No false negative results were generated by PCR. The method is rapid and simple, is useful for routinely monitoring areas contaminated with Leuconostoc in meat processing plants, and could help to prevent the spoilage of meat products.     

Analysis of Plasmalogen Species in Foodstuffs

Ethanolamine plasmalogen (PlsEtn), which is present at high levels in brains, is believed to be involved in neuronal protection. The present study was performed to search for PlsEtn resources in foodstuffs. The foodstuffs examined showed a wide range of PlsEtn contents from 5 to 549 μmol/100 g wet wt. The marine invertebrates, blue mussel, and ascidian had high PlsEtn contents (over 200 μmol/100 g wet wt). Profiling of the molecular species showed that the predominant fatty acids of PlsEtn species were 20:5 (EPA) and 22:6 (DHA) at the sn‐2 position of the glycerol moiety in marine foodstuffs, whereas major PlsEtn species in land foodstuffs were 20:4. Following quantitative analysis by multiple reaction monitoring, the ascidian viscera were shown to contain the highest levels of 18:0/20:5‐PlsEtn and 18:0/22:6‐PlsEtn (86 and 68 μmol/100 g wet wt, respectively). In order to evaluate a neuronal antiapoptotic effect of these PlsEtn species, human neuroblastoma SH‐SY5Y cells were treated with ethanolamine glycerophospholipid (EtnGpl), purified from the ascidian viscera, under serum starvation conditions. Extrinsic EtnGpl from ascidian viscera showed stronger suppression of cell death induced by serum starvation than with bovine brain EtnGpl. The EtnGpl from ascidian viscera strongly suppressed the activation of caspase 3. These results suggest that PlsEtn, especially that containing EPA and DHA, from marine foodstuffs is potentially useful for a therapeutic dietary supplement preventing neurodegenerative diseases, such as Alzheimer's disease (AD).     

Microbial degradation of cyanobacterial cyclic peptides

Bacterial strain B-9 possesses hydrolytic enzymes capable of degrading microcystins (MCs) and nodularin that are toxic cyclic peptides produced by cyanobacteria. In the present study, the degradation activities of the cell extract of B-9 against non-toxic cyanobacterial cyclic peptides other than the MCs and nodularin were investigated, and the degradation products were analyzed by liquid chromatography/ion trap tandem mass spectrometry (LC/ITMS). It was confirmed that B-9 could also degrade these cyanobacterial cyclic peptides by hydrolysis of their peptide bonds. These results indicated that this bacterium possesses a very unique hydrolytic activity that can degrade structurally different cyclic peptides and that this may be effective for the detoxification of hazardous cyclic peptides.     

A Thermo-Elastic Analysis of the Parallel Surface Thrust Washer

An optical interference method was used to display the distorted film shape in nominally parallel surface thrust washers. The bearings were made of aluminium to accentuate thermal expansion and were carefully lapped flat before use. Both the experimental results and an analysis of the coupled elasticity, Reynolds and energy equations confirm that these bearings operate by the formation of a slightly converging film over the leading 80 percent (or less) of the pad. Fair agreement was obtained between the analysis and previously developed multiple regression equations. Thrust washers for industrial use with random waviness are likely lo perform better than lapped bearings.     

A Study on the Effect of Air on the Dynamic Motion of a MEMS Device and Its Shape Optimization

The authors propose a new design concept for controlling the deflection of a micro-membrane with the aid of its thickness distribution for realizing a prescribed design in the MEMS. As an example, the authors treat a micro air pump that comprises a micro-membrane. The membrane is actuated by an electrostatic force. The membrane deflects and thus the deflection is influenced by the air pressure and the electrostatic field. This is a highly complicated system. To find out a proper thickness distribution, the authors use the genetic algorithm that is appropriate to reduce the searching space of solution.     

Probabilistic enhancement of approximate indexing in metric spaces

Some approximate indexing schemes have been recently proposed in metric spaces which sort the objects in the database according to pseudo-scores. It is known that (1) some of them provide a very good trade-off between response time and accuracy, and (2) probability-based pseudo-scores can provide an optimal trade-off in range queries if the probabilities are correctly estimated. Based on these facts, we propose a probabilistic enhancement scheme which can be applied to any pseudo-score based scheme. Our scheme computes probability-based pseudo-scores using pseudo-scores obtained from a pseudo-score based scheme. In order to estimate the probability-based pseudo-scores, we use the object-specific parameters in logistic regression and learn the parameters using MAP (Maximum a Posteriori) estimation and the empirical Bayes method. We also propose a technique which speeds up learning the parameters using pseudo-scores. We applied our scheme to the two state-of-the-art schemes: the standard pivot-based scheme and the permutation-based scheme, and evaluated them using various kinds of datasets from the Metric Space Library. The results showed that our scheme outperformed the conventional schemes, with regard to both the number of distance computations and the CPU time, in all the datasets.