Quantifying MnS Inclusion Evolution Behaviors During 1473 K Heating in EH36 Shipbuilding Steel with Zr Addition

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B - The evolution behaviors of MnS inclusions during 1473 K heating have been systematically investigated for EH36 shipbuilding steel with Zr addition. It...     

Occurrence and sources of perfluorinated surfactants in rivers in Japan

We analyzed perfluorinated surfactants (PFSs) in 20 river samples and 5 wastewater secondary effluent samples in Japan to reveal their occurrence and sources. Nine PFS species were determined: perfluorooctanesulfonate (PFOS), perfluorooctane sulfonamide (FOSA), perfluoroheptanoate (PFHpA), perfluorooctanoate (PFOA), perfluorononanoate (PFNA), perfluorodecanoate (PFDA), perfluoroundecanoate (PFUA), perfluorododecanoate (PFDDA), and perfluorotridecanoate (PFTDA). PFSs were detected in all rivers, revealing nationwide contamination of rivers. In particular, 11 out of 20 river samples exceeded New Jersey guidance for PFOA in drinking water (40 ng/L). PFOS, PFHpA, PFOA, and PFNA were major species in Japan. Concentrations of PFOS, PFHpA, and PFNA in rivers were strongly correlated with population density, suggesting that the chemicals were derived from urban activities. PFOA showed a significant but weak correlation. We used crotamiton, a marker of sewage effluent, for further source analysis. Concentrations of PFOS, PFHpA, and PFNAwere strongly correlated with those of crotamiton, and plots of secondary effluents fell near the regression lines of rivers, indicating that the PFOS, PFHpA, and PFNA in rivers were derived from sewage effluent. On the other hand, PFOA was found at remarkably high levels (54-192 ng/L) in seven river samples containing low levels of crotamiton, suggesting that it was derived from nonsewage point sources, as well as sewage effluent. The total fluxes of sewage-derived PFOS, PFHpA, PFOA, and PFNA from Japan were estimated to be 3.6, 2.6, 5.6, and 2.6 t/year, respectively. This is the first report to identify PFOA in several rivers, derived from nonsewage point sources, by using a marker of sewage effluent.     

Synchronous firing and higher-order interactions in neuron pool

The stochastic mechanism of synchronous firing in a population of neurons is studied from the point of view of information geometry. Higher-order interactions of neurons, which cannot be reduced to pairwise correlations, are proved to exist in synchronous firing. In a neuron pool where each neuron fires stochastically, the probability distribution q(r) of the activity r, which is the fraction of firing neurons in the pool, is studied. When q(r) has a widespread distribution, in particular, when q(r) has two peaks, the neurons fire synchronously at one time and are quiescent at other times. The mechanism of generating such a probability distribution is interesting because the activity r is concentrated on its mean value when each neuron fires independently, because of the law of large numbers. Even when pairwise interactions, or third-order interactions, exist, the concentration is not resolved. This shows that higher-order interactions are necessary to generate widespread activity distributions. We analyze a simple model in which neurons receive common overlapping inputs and prove that such a model can have a widespread distribution of activity, generating higher-order stochastic interactions.     

Minimal design for human–agent communication

Robots have been envisaged as both workers and partners of humans from the earliest period in their history. Therefore, robots should become artificial entities that can socially interact with human beings in social communities. Recent advances in technology have added various functions to robots. The development of actuators and grippers show us infinite possibilities for factory automation, and robots can now walk and perform very smoothly. All of these functions have been developed as solutions for improving robot movement and performance. However, there are many remaining problems in the communication between robots and humans. Communication robots provide one approach to the realization of embodied interfaces. Furthermore, the unsolved problems of human–robot communication can be clarified by adopting the concept of subtractive methods. In this article, we consider the minimal design of robots from the viewpoint of designing communication. By minimal design, we mean eliminating the nonessential portions and keeping only the most fundamental functions. We expect that the simple and clean nature of minimally designed objects will allow humans to interact with these robots without becoming uninterested too quickly. By exploiting the fact that humans have “a natural dislike for the absence of reasoning,” artificial entities built according to minimal design principles can extract the human drive to relate with others. We propose a method of designing a robot that has “character” and is situated in a social context from the viewpoint of minimal design. This work was presented in part at the 10th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, February 4–6, 2005     

Metastatic Voyage of Ovarian Cancer Cells in Ascites with the Assistance of Various Cellular Components

Epithelial ovarian cancer (EOC) is the most lethal gynecologic malignancy and has a unique metastatic route using ascites, known as the transcoelomic root. However, studies on ascites and contained cellular components have not yet been sufficiently clarified. In this review, we focus on the significance of accumulating ascites, contained EOC cells in the form of spheroids, and interaction with non-malignant host cells. To become resistant against anoikis, EOC cells form spheroids in ascites, where epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition stimulated by transforming growth factor-β can be a key pathway. As spheroids form, EOC cells are also gaining the ability to attach and invade the peritoneum to induce intraperitoneal metastasis, as well as resistance to conventional chemotherapy. Recently, accumulating evidence suggests that EOC spheroids in ascites are composed of not only cancer cells, but also non-malignant cells existing with higher abundance than EOC cells in ascites, including macrophages, mesothelial cells, and lymphocytes. Moreover, hetero-cellular spheroids are demonstrated to form more aggregated spheroids and have higher adhesion ability for the mesothelial layer. To improve the poor prognosis, we need to elucidate the mechanisms of spheroid formation and interactions with non-malignant cells in ascites that are a unique tumor microenvironment for EOC.     

Change of orientation by thermal contraction of polyacrylonitrile fiber

Polyacrylonitrile polymer powder was dissolved in 70% nitric acid and spun into isotropic filament through a glass nozzle of 0.5 mm. diameter in a coagulating bath of 30% nitric acid. Stretching was carried out in two stages: the first stretching was done in water at 20°C. followed by drying, and the second stretching was done in a boiling saturated solution of ammonium sulfate. The total stretching ratio was 23. These filaments were shrunk freely in water at 70–180°C. The change in orientation factors was traced by x-ray, infrared dichroism, visible dichroism, and sonic modulus methods. The relation between the reciprocal absolute temperature of thermal contraction and the logarithm of fiber length is a straight line which has two inflection points at 93 and 175°C. The orientation factors by x-ray and infrared dichroism remain unchanged up to 175°C. On the contrary, the orientation factors by visible dichroism and sonic modulus drop suddenly at about 90°C. This indicates the occurrence of relaxation of the amorphous chain at the glass transition temperature and shows the polymer is not perfect single-phase material. Orientation of crystalline and amorphous phases is stable from 100 to 170°C. in spite of considerable thermal contraction. The stability of orientation can be explained by the growth of a folded structure in the polymer.     

Novel flexible network polymers consisting of oligomeric primary polymer chains originated in the mechanistic discussion of multiallyl crosslinking polymerization

Summary It is well known that allyl monomers polymerize only with difficulty and yield polymers having low molecular weights, i.e., oligomers. Inevitably, free-radical multiallyl crosslinking polymerization provides network polymers consisting of oligomeric primary polymer chains, i.e., having abundant dangling chains. This led to the development of novel flexible network polymers such as amphiphilic network polymers (I) consisting of short primary polymer chains and long crosslink units with opposite polarities, simultaneous interpenetrating networks (II) consisting of both polyurethane (PU) and polymethacrylate (PM) networks with oligomeric primary polymer chains, and network polymers (III) consisting of centipede-type primary polymer chains. Thus, the solution copolymerizations of benzyl methacrylate with tricosaethylene glycol dimethacrylate in the presence of lauryl mercaptan yielded I consisting of nonpolar, short primary polymer chains and polar, long crosslink units. The opposite type of I was prepared by the copolymerization of 2-hydroxyethyl methacrylate, a polar monomer having a hydroxyl group, with heneicosapropylene glycol dimethacrylate, a nonpolar monomer having a poly(oxypropylene) unit. The equimolar polyaddition crosslinking reaction of poly(methyl methacrylate-co-2-methacryloyloxyethyl isocyanate) with tri(oxytetramethylene) glycol, leading to PU networks, and the free-radical crosslinking copolymerization of methyl methacrylate with tri(oxytetramethylene) dimethacrylate in the presence of CBr₄, leading to PM networks, were progressed simultaneously, providing II formed via the topological crosslink between PU and PM network structures. The post-copolymerizations of oligomeric allyl methacrylate/alkyl methacrylate precopolymers, having different amounts of pendant allyl groups and different molecular weights, with allyl benzoate/vinyl benzoate monomer mixtures were conducted to give III.     

Preparation of Matrix-Type Nickel Oxide/Samarium-Doped Ceria Composite Particles by Spray Pyrolysis

Matrix-type nickel oxide (NiO)/samarium-doped ceria (SDC) composite particles, in which NiO and SDC nano-particles were homogeneously dispersed, were synthesized by spray pyrolysis (SP) for an anode precursor of intermediate-temperature solid oxide fuel cells (IT-SOFCs). SP of an aqueous solution containing Ni, Ce, and Sm salts resulted in capsule-type composite particles that had NiO enveloped with SDC. The capsule-type composite particles actually prevent Ni aggregation between particles, but they cannot have a large contact area between nickel (Ni) and SDC. A matrix-type composite particle is expected to have a large contact area because the matrix-type composite is comprised of nanometer-sized Ni and SDC particles. An adequate addition of ethylene glycol successfully resulted in matrix-type NiO/SDC composite particles. The matrix-type composite particles also showed higher anode performance than the capsule-type composite particles in these experiments and they were effective as precursors of high-performance IT-SOFC anodes.     

Relationship between local structure and stability in hen egg white lysozyme mutant with alanine substituted for glycine

We prepared five mutant lysozymes in which glycines whose dihedralangles are located in the region of the left-handed helix, Gly49,Gly67, Gly71, Gly102 and Gly117, were mutated to an alanineresidue. From analyses of their thermal stabilities using differentialscanning calorimetry, most of them were more destabilized thanthe native lysozyme, except for the G102A mutant, which hasa stability similar to that of the native lysozyme at pH 2.7.As for the destabilized mutant lysozymes, their X-ray crystallographicanalyses showed that their global structures did not changebut that the local structures changed slightly. By examiningthe dihedral angles at the mutation sites based on X-ray crystallographicresults, it was found that the dihedral angles at these mutationsites tended to adopt favorable values in a Ramachandran plotand that the extent and direction of their shifts from the originalvalue had similar tendencies. Therefore, the change in dihedralangles may be the cause of the slight local structural changesaround the mutation site. On the other hand, regarding the mutationof G102A, the global structure was almost identical with thatof the native structure but the local structure was drasticallychanged. Therefore, it was suggested that the drastic localconformational change might be effective in releasing the unfavorableinteraction of the native state at the mutation site.     

Dynamic Mechanical Properties and Adhesive Joint Strengths of Emulsion Polymers Produced by Power Feed Technique. III. Adhesive Joint Strengths of Grafted Power Feed Copolymer

Power feed copolymers were synthesized using styrene and n-butyl acrylate through non-uniform feeding emulsion polymerization. Poly(vinyl alcohol) (PVA) was used as a protective colloid, onto which vinyl monomers were grafted. Power feed copolymer had a very broad glass transition temperature compared with random copolymer, even if grafting and/or crosslinking were introduced to the system. This tendency was almost the same as the non-grafted power feed copolymer where only low molecular weight surfactant was used.

Adhesive joint strengths of power feed copolymers were evaluated compared with random copolymers. In the case of usual linear power feed copolymer, the adhesive joint strengths were not higher than those of random copolymer, which was considered to be due to the lower film strengths of the power feed copolymer. Power feed copolymer having grafting showed slightly higher adhesive joint strengths over a wide range of temperatures than random copolymer. When crosslinking was introduced to the system, power feed copolymer showed much higher adhesive joint strengths over a wide temperature range.