Undrained Shear Strength of Granular Soils with Different Particle Gradations

A series of undrained tests were performed on granular soils consisting of sand and gravel with different particle gradations and different relative densities reconstituted in laboratory. Despite large differences in grading, only a small difference was observed in undrained cyclic shear strength or liquefaction strength defined as the cyclic stress causing 5% double amplitude axial strain for specimens having the same relative density. In a good contrast, undrained monotonic shear strength defined at larger strains after undrained cyclic loading was at least eight times larger for well-graded soils than poorly graded sand despite the same relative density. This indicates that devastating failures with large postliquefaction soil strain are less likely to develop in well-graded granular soils compared to poorly graded sands with the same relative density, although they are almost equally liquefiable. However, if gravelly particles of well-graded materials are crushable such as decomposed granite soils, undrained monotonic strengths are considerably small and almost identical to or lower than that of poorly graded sands.     

Database migration: a new architecture for transaction processingin broadband networks

Due to recent developments in network technologies, broader channel bandwidth is becoming prevalent in worldwide networks. As one of the new technologies making good use of such broadband channels, dynamic relocation of databases through networks, database migration, will soon be used in practice as a powerful and basic database operation. We propose two transaction processing methods to take advantage of database migration in broadband networks. These methods choose the most efficient transaction processing method between the conventional method, based on the two-phase commit protocol, and our method, using database migration. We also propose a concurrency control mechanism and a recovery mechanism for our proposed methods. Simulation results are presented comparing the performance of our proposed methods and the conventional transaction processing method based on the two-phase commit protocol. The results demonstrate that the effective use of database migration produces better performance than the conventional method     

Liquid-crystal luminaire consisting of an optical shutter and a metal halide lamp

We made a liquid-crystal (LC) luminaire for the first time to our knowledge by combining a metal halide lamp and an optical shutter composed of a compound of a very high nematic-isotropic point (172 degrees C) LC and a polymer (CLCP). The shutter can modulate high-power light independently of the state of polarization because the CLCP film becomes transparent or opalescent when either sufficiently high or no voltage is applied to it. To solve the problem, which is peculiar to CLCP films, that the color temperature of light modulated by the film changes with the film's transmittance, a pulse-width modulation method that varies the time ratio of the on and off states of the shutter was developed. The performance characteristics of the luminaire were as follows: illuminance range, 192 to 10,400 lx at a distance of 5 m from the luminaire; rise and decay times, 1.4 and 1.5 ms; color temperature, 4060-5600 K; operation room temperature, ~150 degrees C; stable operation time, more than 2000 h. Experimental results show the feasibility of applications of this luminaire in various fields, including television, movie, and stage lighting.     

Influence of amino acid content in seed mash on peptide uptake by yeast cells in main mash in sake brewing process

It was found that the peptide content of the main mash in the sake brewing process, seeded with kimoto, was higher than in that seeded with sokujo-moto, although the peptide content in kimoto was lower than in sokujo-moto. We investigated the underlying reasons. As a result, we found that the high concentration of free amino acids originating from kimoto decreased the peptide uptake ability of yeast cells in the main mash seeded with kimoto.     

INTERNAL FLOW IN CROSS-FLOW FAN FOR AIR CONDITIONER

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PET imaging of brain tumor with [methyl-11C]choline

This article describes a new method of [11C]choline synthesis for intravenous injection. We aimed at the utilization of this compound for brain tumor imaging with PET. METHODS: After [11C]carbon dioxide production in a cyclotron and the subsequent [11C]methyl iodide synthesis, [methyl-11C]choline was synthesized by the reaction of [11C]methyl iodide with "neat" dimethylaminoethanol at 120 degrees C for 5 min. Purification was achieved by evaporation of the reactants followed by passage of the aqueous solution of the product through a cation-exchange resin cartridge. The time required for overall chemical processing, excluding the cyclotron operation, was 15 min. Radiochemical yield was > 98%. Radiochemical purity was > 98%. Chemical purity was > 90% (dimethylaminoethanol was the only possible impurity). Specific radioactivity of the product was > 133 GBq/mumol. The whole body distribution was examined in rabbits with PET. Clinical studies were performed in patients with brain tumor using PET after intravenous injection of 370 MBq of [11C]choline. RESULTS: In rabbits,[11C]choline was taken up from blood by various tissues very rapidly, and the radioactivity remaining in blood became almost negligible 5 min after intravenous injection. Taking advantage of this characteristic, we obtained stable tissue distribution images of human brain using PET. In patients with brain tumor, PET produced clearly delineated positive images of the tumors. CONCLUSION: Carbon-11-choline can be used for obtaining clear images of brain tumor in PET.     

Surgical treatment of obstructive jaundice

Genetically engineered structural variants of human beta2-microglobulin (beta2m) were produced by sequence exchange with mouse beta2m for the purpose of examining species-specific antigenic determinant expression. For aggregate mapping, mouse and human beta2m, which differ by 30% in their primary sequence of 99 amino acids, were prepared as chimeric (human X mouse) molecules and expressed in the FO-1 beta2m-null human melanoma cell line. A chimera containing residues 1-69 from human beta2m (and residues 70-99 from mouse beta2m) induced expression of the epitopes defined by the anti-beta2m monoclonal antibodies (mAb) BBM.1, NAMB-1, and L368; the reverse chimera did not, although HLA class I heavy chain was evident on the cell surface as determined with the TP25.99 mAb. For fine dissection of the epitopes defined by these mAbs, site-directed mutants of beta2m were prepared by replacement of individual amino acids in human beta2m with the dimorphic residue from mouse beta2m. Substitutions were made at each divergent residue between positions 1 and 66 and, as controls for COOH-terminal modification, a series of residues between positions 75 and 94. Replacement of amino acids 38, 44, and 45, but not 16 other dimorphic residues in the linear stretch from residue 1 to residue 66, resulted in the loss of, or gross reduction in, binding by mAbs BBM.1 and NAMB-1. A reduction in binding was also observed for mAb L368. These data provide strong evidence that the antigenic epitopes defined by these mAb map to a region including S3 and its adjacent intra-beta-strand turn of the three-stranded beta-pleated sheet of beta2m. The mapping of these epitopes is consistent with their accessibility in the assembled major histocompatibility complex class I molecule and indicates that the region from amino acid 38 to 45 is an important structural feature in the "foreignness" of human and mouse beta2m.     

Minimum Cost Partitions of Trees with Supply and Demand

Let T be a given tree. Each vertex of T is either a supply vertex or a demand vertex, and is assigned a positive integer, called the supply or the demand. Every demand vertex v of T must be supplied an amount of ??power,?? equal to the demand of v, from exactly one supply vertex through edges in T. Each edge e of T has a direction, and is assigned a positive integer which represents the cost required to delete e from T or reverse the direction of e. Then one wishes to obtain subtrees of T by deleting edges or reversing the directions of edges so that (a)?each subtree contains exactly one supply vertex whose supply is no less than the sum of all demands in the subtree and (b)?every edge is directed away from the supply vertex in each subtree. One wishes to minimize the total cost to obtain such subtrees from T. In the paper, we first show that this minimization problem is NP-hard, and then give a pseudo-polynomial-time algorithm to solve the problem. We finally give a fully polynomial-time approximation scheme (FPTAS) for the problem.     

Effect of excess Li2S on electrochemical properties of amorphous li3ps4 films synthesized by pulsed laser deposition

Amorphous Li₃PS₄ films were synthesized by pulsed laser deposition (PLD) at room temperature using Li₃PS₄ targets with excess lithium and sulfur. Raman and X‐ray photoemission spectroscopies indicated that the Li₃PS₄ film synthesized with a stoichiometric amount of Li₃PS₄ target contained lithium‐deficient phases such as Li₄P₂S₆, Li_2?xS and sulfur due to composition deviation caused during the ablation process. The film synthesized with a 14% Li₂S‐excess target (Li_3.42PS_4.21) contained fewer impurities, and exhibited a higher ionic conductivity of 5.3 × 10^?4 S/cm at 298 K than the lithium‐deficient film (3.1 × 10^?4 S/cm). The target composition is an important factor for the fabrication of highly conductive Li₃PS₄ films for electrolytes in thin‐film batteries.