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.     

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.     

Surface strain sensing with polymer piezoelectric film

A sensing technique for surface strain distributions of a structural component using piezoelectric polymer films is demonstrated. A piezoelectric polymer (polyvinylidene fluoride, PVDF) film is mounted onto the structure surface, and the electric potential induced by the surface deformation is measured with the aid of a non-contact electrostatic voltmeter. The measured potentials are converted into surface strain components using a theoretical formula derived on the basis of linear piezoelectricity. The validity and accuracy of the procedure are illustrated for (i) a plate with a penetrating circular hole and (ii) a plate with a non-penetrating slit-like groove on the back-surface, under in-plane compressive loading. Also, an alternative method for visualization of surface strain patterns using electrically charged powders is demonstrated for plates with back-surface defects.     

Prolog-ELF incorporating fuzzy logic

Prolog-ELF incorporating fuzzy logic and several useful functions into Prolog has been implemented as a basic language for building knowledge systems with uncertainty or fuzziness. Prolog-ELF inherits all the desirable basic features of Prolog. In addition to assertions with truth-values between 1.0 and 0.5 (0 for exceptional cases), fuzzy sets can be very easily manipulated. An application of fuzzy logical database is illustrated.     

Coordination control design of heterogeneous swarm robots by means of task-oriented optimization

This paper is concerned with a framework to design self-organizing, self-reconfigurable robotic systems. We focus our attention on the algorithm of a multi-agent system called Swarm Chemistry, proposed by Sayama (Artif Life 15:105–114, 2009). In this model, a number of agents that have non-uniform kinetic properties coalesce into an excellent diversity of spatial structures and/or emergent behaviors, depending on the kinetic parameters provided. However, such bottom-up nature cannot be easily applied to the conventional and top-down design of artifacts. This paper presents a method of designing heterogeneous robotic swarms and finding solutions through a genetic algorithm. Simulation results with a few simple task examples demonstrate that the proposed framework allows us to acquire appropriate sets of kinetic parameters, i.e. recipes, creating swarm structures to perform a given task more effectively and efficiently. Such autonomous robots can be deployed for the purposes like disaster prevention, geographical survey, and subsea exploration.     

Tracer-encapsulated solid pellet injection system

The method of tracer-encapsulated solid pellet (TESPEL) is now flourishing in various fields. The original purpose to study impurity transport without giving substantial perturbation on the plasma is implemented successfully for years. In addition to this, TESPEL is being intensively applied to study thermal (especially non-local) transport, high energy particles with the use of TESPEL ablation cloud, and spectroscopy from the viewpoint of atomic data. It is now further growing up to the utilization of multiple tracer methods which was not planned at the initial phase of the project. The proof-of-principle experiment using triple tracers has been successfully implemented. This opens a way to compare the Z dependence or mass dependence of impurity transport. In this article, as TESPEL is used in a variety of fields, the TESPEL injection system is summarized together with the method of TESPEL production, TESPEL storage disk, TESPEL guide system, and the differential pumping system. Also, the observation system for TESPEL flight and TESPEL ablation is explained.     

Computational wave optics library for C++: CWO++ library

Diffraction calculations, such as the angular spectrum method and Fresnel diffractions, are used for calculating scalar light propagation. The calculations are used in wide-ranging optics fields: for example, Computer Generated Holograms (CGHs), digital holography, diffractive optical elements, microscopy, image encryption and decryption, three-dimensional analysis for optical devices and so on. However, increasing demands made by large-scale diffraction calculations have rendered the computational power of recent computers insufficient. We have already developed a numerical library for diffraction calculations using a Graphic Processing Unit (GPU), which was named the GWO library. However, this GWO library is not user-friendly, since it is based on C language and was also run only on a GPU. In this paper, we develop a new C++ class library for diffraction and CGH calculations, which is referred to as a CWO++ library, running on a CPU and GPU. We also describe the structure, performance, and usage examples of the CWO++ library.Program summaryProgram title: CWO++Catalogue identifier: AELL_v1_0Program summary URL: http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/summaries/AELL_v1_0.htmlProgram obtainable from: CPC Program Library, Queen?s University, Belfast, N. IrelandLicensing provisions: Standard CPC licence, http://cpc.cs.qub.ac.uk/licence/licence.htmlNo. of lines in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 109 809No. of bytes in distributed program, including test data, etc.: 4 181 911Distribution format: tar.gzProgramming language: C++Computer: General computers and general computers with NVIDIA GPUsOperating system: Windows XP, Vista, 7Has the code been vectorized or parallelized?: Yes. 1 core processor used in CPU and many cores in GPU.RAM: 256 M bytesClassification: 18External routines: CImg, FFTWNature of problem: The CWO++ library provides diffraction calculations which are useful for Computer Generated Holograms (CGHs), digital holography, diffractive optical elements, microscopy, image encryption and decryption and three-dimensional analysis for optical devices.Solution method: FFT-based diffraction calculations, computer generated holograms by direct integration.Running time: The sample runs provided take approximately 5 minutes for the C++ version and 5 seconds for the C++ with GPUs version.     

Improvement of motion accuracy and energy consumption of a mechanical feed drive system using a Fourier series-based nonlinear friction model

Friction occurring in all mechanical systems, such as computer numerical controlled (CNC) machine tools, is an important issue in achieving the high accurate performance. Friction adversely affects not only motion accuracy of drive axes but also excessively consumes energy. Feed drives of CNC machines normally operate all day and night around the world, and therefore consumed energy reduction is highly expected. The motivation behind this work is to construct a novel friction model that can comprise many unknown friction sources in both low and high velocity regions and enable a friction compensator to precisely describe actual frictional behavior. A sliding mode control (SMC) is designed to verify the effectives of the proposed friction model in a biaxial feed drive system. Experimental results confirm that a combination of SMC and the proposed friction can effectively improve tracking accuracy and further achieve significant reduction of consumed energy compared to combining with the conventional model. Results show that the proposed approach can largely decrease the mean tracking error to less than 5 µm for each axis. The new friction also achieved effective reduction of control variance by 7.62%. Consequently, consumed energy of feed drives was significantly improved by 12.83% compared to using the conventional model.     

The allowable spacing for lattice data sampling by a round stylus tip and an assessment of the envelope surface

This paper deals with surface waviness assessment by a commercial three-dimensional stylus instrument. To measure macroscopic waviness curve on an engineering surface, it was proposed to use a round stylus tip of relatively large radius. Developed in this paper, is a method to obtain the appropriate stylus tip radius in accordance with the sample surface texture and the corresponding discrete spacing for lattice data sampling. On condition that any two adjacent height data points are well-correlated, the statistical mean height and the overall deviation of the 3-D undulation summit height are also presented for a functional evaluation of waviness curves or envelope surface.     

Autonomous and distributed mobility management in mobile core networks

The 5th generation mobile and wireless communication systems are expected to accommodate exploding traffic, increasing number of devices, and heterogeneous applications driven by proliferation of IoT and M2M technologies. However, the centralized mobility management architecture in a current mobile core network would face critical problems such as excessive concentration of load on specific servers and considerable increase in C-plane overhead. To solve the problems we first consider a novel architecture of distributed mobility management in C-plane in the mobile core network, which employs virtualized mobility management entity called ADMMEs (Autonomous Distributed Mobility Management Entity) in this paper. In addition, to assign an appropriate ADMME to a UE in accordance with mobility characteristics of the UE and a management policy, we propose an autonomous and adaptive ADMME selection scheme. We adopt a biologically-inspired algorithm, called attractor selection, to accomplish adaptive selection taking into account multiple objectives. Through simulation experiments, we confirmed our proposal could accomplish more than 63 % performance improvement comparing to the current method from viewpoints of delay, load balancing, and C-plane overhead under a dynamic mobility scenario.