Liquid–Liquid Extraction of Lithium Ions Using a Slug Flow Microreactor: Effect of Extraction Reagent and Microtube Material

Lithium ions were extracted from aqueous solutions into cyclohexane containing di-(2-ethylhexyl)phosphoric acid (D2EHPA) through slug flow in millimeter-diameter glass and polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE) tubes. The PTFE tube produced a higher initial mass transfer coefficient than the glass tube by increasing internal circulation in the organic phase, and maintained its specific surface area. Slug flow occurred in the PTFE tube when the interfacial tension between the aqueous and organic phases exceeded 50–55 mN/m, which increased the rate of extraction owing to increased circulation in both phases. The addition of tributyl phosphate (TBP) enhanced the extraction efficiency, but did not affect the extraction rate.     

Reproducibility of Aluminum Foam by Combining Sintering and Dissolution Process with Precursor Foaming Process

A preliminary study of the reproducibility of aluminum foam was performed. Aluminum foam was fabricated by a sintering and dissolution process. It was found that aluminum foam containing a blowing agent can be fabricated without the decomposition of the blowing agent, namely, the densified aluminum foam can be used as a foamable precursor for refoaming. By heat treatment of the densified aluminum foam containing the blowing agent, pores were reproduced in the aluminum.     

High‐quality direct‐view display combining multiple integral 3D images

This paper proposes a method for combining multiple integral three‐dimensional (3D) images using direct‐view displays to obtain high‐quality results. A multi‐image combining optical system (MICOS) is used to enlarge and combine multiple integral 3D images without gaps. An optical design with a simple lens configuration that does not require a diffuser plate prevents the deterioration in resolution resulting from lens arrangement errors and the diffuser plate. An experiment was performed to compare a previously developed method with the proposed method, and the latter showed a significant improvement in image quality. A method for expanding the effective viewing angle of the proposed optical design was also developed, and its effectiveness was confirmed experimentally. A prototype device of the proposed optical design was constructed using a high‐density organic light‐emitting diode (OLED) panel with 8K resolution and 1058 ppi pixel density to achieve 311 (H) × 175 (V) elemental images, a viewing angle of 20.6° in both the horizontal and vertical directions, and a display size of 9.1 in. In addition, the proposed optical design enabled making device considerably thinner, ie, with a thickness of only 47 mm.     

Superconducting Proximity Effect and Charging Effect on the Normal-Metal(Semiconductor) Wire

We theoretically investigated superconducting proximitycorrections of the conductance of a mesoscopic metal wire interms of the Kubo-formula. In diagrammatic expression, theelectromagnetic response kernel is quite similar to that ofreproducible conductance fluctuation. However, the proximitycorrection modifies the average conductance of the wire eventhough the latter gives a mesoscopic fluctuation.This Kubo-formula expression is applicable to the analysis ofcharging effects on the proximity correction in asuperconductor(S)/Mesoscopic-normalmetal-wire(N) hybrid systemwith a very small S/N interface. Although the chargingeffect exponentially suppresses Andreev reflections at theS/N interface, the proximity correction survives.We propose an experiment to confirm this charging effect,where a degenerated semiconductor is used as the normal-metalwire. The proximity correction can be picked from the entireconductance as the magnetoconductance of an interferometer,and the charging effect is depicted by a gate control of thesuperconducting island. The semiconductor interferometer ismore promising than a metallic one because the conductancewithout the proximity effect is bigger.     

Safe Removal of the Allyl Protecting Groups of Allyl Esters using a Recyclable,Low‐Leaching and Ligand‐Free Palladium Nanoparticle Catalyst

A safe, facile and low‐leaching (up to 0.04 ppm) method has been developed for the removal of allyl, prenyl and benzyl protecting groups from the corresponding esters, using a sulfur‐modified gold‐supported palladium (SAPd) nanoparticle catalyst, which is known to be non‐flammable. The catalyst itself was found to be recyclable and the reaction appeared to proceed on the surface of the SAPd.

     

Surface chemical/binding reaction of coated Li layer by lithium vapor injectors in LIGHT-1

The Lithium Injection Gettering of Hydrogen and its Transport (LIGHT-1) experiment has begun at the NIFS. To study the material probes installed in the cylindrical vacuum chamber, the chemical characteristics for lithium are analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The characteristics of chemical binding between lithium and other impurities are shown to be oxide bindings. In addition, the influence of the vacuum vent effect due to exposure to air was determined in both solid lithium and lithium-coated probes in LIGHT-1. Using the peak positions of Li₂O and pure lithium, the thickness of the coated lithium is estimated. For the SS316 target, the coated lithium shows two different peaks, Li1s and Fe3p, located at a similar binding energy region. Thus, the real lithium intensities can be measured by the separation of the peaks. After this analysis, the coated thickness of lithium is estimated to be from 8 to 20 nm, and it is not uniform in the Z-axis direction, probably due to erosion by glow discharge.     

Osteopontin on the Dental Implant Surface Promotes Direct Osteogenesis in Osseointegration

After dental implantation, osteopontin (OPN) is deposited on the hydroxyapatite (HA) blasted implant surface followed by direct osteogenesis, which is significantly disturbed in Opn-knockout (KO) mice. However, whether applying OPN on the implant surface promotes direct osteogenesis remains unclarified. This study analyzed the effects of various OPN modified protein/peptides coatings on the healing patterns of the bone-implant interface after immediately placed implantation in the maxilla of four-week-old Opn-KO and wild-type (WT) mice (n = 96). The decalcified samples were processed for immunohistochemistry for OPN and Ki67 and tartrate-resistant acid phosphatase histochemistry. In the WT mice, the proliferative activity in the HA binding peptide-OPN mimic peptide fusion coated group was significantly higher than that in the control group from day 3 to week 1, and the rates of OPN deposition and direct osteogenesis around the implant surface significantly increased in the recombinant-mouse-OPN (rOPN) group compared to the Gly-Arg-Gly-Asp-Ser peptide group in week 2. The rOPN group achieved the same rates of direct osteogenesis and osseointegration as those in the control group in a half period (week 2). None of the implant surfaces could rescue the direct osteogenesis in the healing process in the Opn-KO mice. These results suggest that the rOPN coated implant enhances direct osteogenesis during osseointegration following implantation.     

Pattern recognition in multilinear space and its applications: mathematics,computational algorithms and numerical validations

We clarify the mathematical equivalence between low-dimensional singular value decomposition and low-order tensor principal component analysis for two- and three-dimensional images. Furthermore, we show that the two- and three-dimensional discrete cosine transforms are, respectively, acceptable approximations to two- and three-dimensional singular value decomposition and classical principal component analysis. Moreover, for the practical computation in two-dimensional singular value decomposition, we introduce the marginal eigenvector method, which was proposed for image compression. For three-dimensional singular value decomposition, we also show an iterative algorithm. To evaluate the performances of the marginal eigenvector method and two-dimensional discrete cosine transform for dimension reduction, we compute recognition rates for six datasets of two-dimensional image patterns. To evaluate the performances of the iterative algorithm and three-dimensional discrete cosine transform for dimension reduction, we compute recognition rates for datasets of gait patterns and human organs. For two- and three-dimensional images, the two- and three-dimensional discrete cosine transforms give almost the same recognition rates as the marginal eigenvector method and iterative algorithm, respectively.     

Dimension Reduction and Construction of Feature Space for Image Pattern Recognition

We mathematically and experimentally evaluate the validity of dimension-reduction methods for the computation of similarity in image pattern recognition. Image pattern recognition identifies instances of particular objects and distinguishes differences among images. This recognition uses pattern recognition techniques for the classification and categorisation of images. In numerical image pattern recognition techniques, images are sampled using an array of pixels. This sampling procedure derives vectors in a higher-dimensional metric space from image patterns. To ensure the accuracy of pattern recognition techniques, the dimension reduction of the vectors is an essential methodology since the time and space complexities of processing depend on the dimension of the data. Dimension reduction causes information loss of topological and geometrical features of image patterns. Through both theoretical and experimental comparisons, we clarify that dimension-reduction methodologies that preserve the topology and geometry in the image pattern space are essential for linear pattern recognition. For the practical application of methods of dimension reduction, the random projection works well compared with downsampling, the pyramid transform, the two-dimensional random projection, the two-dimensional discrete cosine transform and nonlinear multidimensional scaling if we have no a priori information on the input data.