The Function of Sialidase Revealed by Sialidase Activity Imaging Probe

Sialidase cleaves sialic acid residues from glycans such as glycoproteins and glycolipids. In the brain, desorption of the sialic acid by sialidase is essential for synaptic plasticity, learning and memory and synaptic transmission. BTP3-Neu5Ac has been developed for sensitive imaging of sialidase enzyme activity in mammalian tissues. Sialidase activity in the rat hippocampus detected with BTP3-Neu5Ac increases rapidly by neuronal depolarization. It is presumed that an increased sialidase activity in conjunction with neural excitation is involved in the formation of the neural circuit for memory. Since sialidase inhibits the exocytosis of the excitatory neurotransmitter glutamate, the increased sialidase activity by neural excitation might play a role in the negative feedback mechanism against the glutamate release. Mammalian tissues other than the brain have also been stained with BTP3-Neu5Ac. On the basis of information on the sialidase activity imaging in the pancreas, it was found that sialidase inhibitor can be used as an anti-diabetic drug that can avoid hypoglycemia, a serious side effect of insulin secretagogues. In this review, we discuss the role of sialidase in the brain as well as in the pancreas and skin, as revealed by using a sialidase activity imaging probe. We also present the detection of influenza virus with BTP3-Neu5Ac and modification of BTP3-Neu5Ac.     

Time reversibility of the discrete element method

An algorithm is presented for discrete element method simulations of energy-conserving systems of frictionless, spherical particles in a reversed-time frame. This algorithm is verified, within the limits of round-off error, through implementation in the LAMMPS code. Mechanisms for energy dissipation such as interparticle friction, damping, rotational resistance, particle crushing, or bond breakage cannot be incorporated into this algorithm without causing time irreversibility. This theoretical development is applied to critical-state soil mechanics as an exemplar. It is shown that the convergence of soil samples, which differ only in terms of their initial void ratio, to the same critical state requires the presence of shear forces and frictional dissipation within the soil system.     

Effects of SO2 on selective catalytic reduction of NO with NH3 over a TiO2 photocatalyst

The effect of SO₂ gas was investigated on the activity of the photo-assisted selective catalytic reduction of nitrogen monoxide (NO) with ammonia (NH₃) over a TiO₂ photocatalyst in the presence of excess oxygen (photo-SCR). The introduction of SO₂ (300 ppm) greatly decreased the activity of the photo-SCR at 373 K. The increment of the reaction temperature enhanced the resistance to SO₂ gas, and at 553 K the conversion of NO was stable for at least 300 min of the reaction. X-ray diffraction, FTIR spectroscopy, thermogravimetry and differential thermal analysis, x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS), elemental analysis and N₂ adsorption measurement revealed that the ammonium sulfate species were generated after the reaction. There was a strong negative correlation between the deposition amount of the ammonium sulfate species and the specific surface area. Based on the above relationship, we concluded that the deposition of the ammonium sulfate species decreased the specific surface area by plugging the pore structure of the catalyst, and the decrease of the specific surface area resulted in the deactivation of the catalyst.     

Damage evolution in polymer due to exposure to high-pressure hydrogen gas

The use of hydrogen as a fuel is increasing exponentially, and the most economical way to store and transport hydrogen for fuel use is as a high-pressure gas. Polymers are widely used for hydrogen distribution and storage systems because they are chemically inert towards hydrogen. However, when exposed to high-pressure hydrogen, some hydrogen diffuses through polymers and occupies the preexisting cavities inside the material. Upon depressurization, the hydrogen trapped inside polymer cavities can cause blistering or cracking by expanding these cavities. A continuum mechanics–based deformation model was deployed to predict the stress distribution and damage propagation while the polymer undergoes depressurization after high-pressure hydrogen exposure. The effects of cavity size, cavity location, and pressure inside the cavity on damage initiation and evolution inside the polymer were studied. The stress and damage evolution in the presence of multiple cavities was also studied, because interaction among cavities alters the damage and stress field. It was found that all these factors significantly change the stress state in the polymer, resulting in different paths for damage propagation. The effect of adding carbon black filler particles and plasticizer on the damage was also studied. It was found that damage tolerance of the polymer increases drastically with the addition of carbon black fillers, but decreases with the addition of the plasticizer.     

Evaluating the Use of Daily Care Notes Software for Older People with Dementia

There has been little research to investigate the impact of software to support the care for older people with dementia care. This article reports the evaluation of software adapted to support one key person-centered task for the care of older residents with dementia – recording and sharing daily care notes. The evaluation on the dementia wing of 1 residential home for over 6 months revealed that use of the software on mobile devices carried by the carers increased the number and volume of daily care notes recorded, but only for the types of content that were already being recorded by carers. Carers reported more advantages that resulted from daily care notes once in digital form than from the documenting task, as well as barriers to the use of mobile digital software to record daily care notes.     

Differences between oculomotor and perceptual artifacts for temporally limited head mounted displays

We used perceptual and oculomotor measures to understand the negative impacts of low (phantom array) and high (motion blur) duty cycles with a high‐speed, AR‐likehead‐mounted display prototype. We observed large intersubject variability for the detection of phantom array artifacts but a highly consistent and systematic effect on saccadic eye movement targeting during low duty cycle presentations. This adverse effect on saccade endpoints was also related to an increased error rate in a perceptual discrimination task, showing a direct effect of display duty cycle on the perceptual quality. For high duty cycles, the probability of detecting motion blur increased during head movements, and this effect was elevated at lower refresh rates. We did not find an impact of the temporal display characteristics on compensatory eye movements during head motion (e.g., VOR). Together, our results allow us to quantify the tradeoff of different negative spatiotemporal impacts of user movements and make subsequent recommendations for optimized temporal HMD parameters.     

Hydrogel photocatalysts for efficient energy conversion and environmental treatment

Photocatalysts have attracted great research interest owing to their excellent properties and potential for simultaneously addressing challenges related to energy needs and environmental pollution. Photocatalytic particles need to be in contact with their respective media to exhibit efficient photocatalytic performances. However, it is difficult to separate nanometer-sized photocatalytic materials from reaction media later, which may lead to secondary pollution and a poor recycling performance. Hydrogel photocatalysts with a three-dimensional (3D) network structures are promising support materials for photocatalysts based on features such as high specific surface areas and adsorption capacities and good environmental compatibility. In this review, hydrogel photocatalysts are classified into two different categories depending on their elemental composition and recent progresses in the methods for preparing hydrogel photocatalysts are summarized. Moreover, current applications of hydrogel photocatalysts in energy conversion and environmental remediation are reviewed. Furthermore, a comprehensive outlook and highlight future challenges in the development of hydrogel photocatalysts are presented.     

A concept for the generation of out-of-plane distortion from tailored FRP laminates

The phenomenon of thermally induced distortions in unsymmetrical laminates is well understood, and it may be shown that a square, unsymmetrical 0.90 laminate will tend to form two stable geometries with a snap-through phenomenon between them. This paper discusses laminates in which at each point the lay-up is symmetrical across the laminate mid-plane, but which still exhibit multiple stable geometries. The number of stable geometries can be controlled by the details of the lay-up from the minimum of two to, in principle, an unlimited number. In addition it will be shown how a similar process can be used to generate multiple stable stress states and geometries in unidirectional laminates. This paper represents a very preliminary experimental investigation of the design space available for such composite laminates. Possible applications of composites with multiple stable geometries are noted.     

High performance liquid chromatographic separation of diacylglycerol acetates to quantitate disaturated species of lung phosphatidylcholine

A high-performance liquid chromatographic (HPLC) separation of diacylglycerol acetates to quantitatite disaturated species of lung phosphatidylcholine (PC) was studied. The diacylglycerol acetates were applied on a reversed phase column, eluted by an isocratic solvent, acetonitrile/isopropanol/water (35:15:1, v/v/v) at a flow rate of 1 ml/min, and detected by differential refractometry (RI). This isocratic HPLC method was useful to separate disaturated species from the others of lung PC. The quantitative analysis of the molecular species separated by HPLC was studied by RI detection. Chroamtograms obtained by RI detection and radioactivity determination of diacylglycerol [³H]acetates prepared by [³H]acetic anhydride were almost identical. The RI detector responsed in the same degree for different, authentic standards of diacylglycerol acetates. The detection limit with RI detection was about 30 nmoles. Molecular species of PCs from human lung and carcinoma tissues were analyzed by this HPLC method. The contents of disaturated species were very similar to those reported previously. These results indicate that RI detection is very useful in the nmole range for the quantitative analysis among the molecular species containing disaturated species.     

A Built-in Self-Test Scheme with Diagnostics Support for Embedded SRAM

In this paper we propose a novel built-in self-test (BIST) design for embedded SRAM cores. Our contribution includes a compact and efficient BIST circuit with diagnosis support and an automatic diagnostic system. The diagnosis module of our BIST circuit can capture the error syndromes as well as fault locations for the purposes of repair and fault/failure analysis. In addition, our design provides programmability for custom March algorithms with lower hardware cost. The combination of the on-line programming mode and diagnostic system dramatically reduces the effort in design debugging and yield enhancement. We have designed and implemented test chips with our BIST design. Experimental results show that the area overhead of the proposed BIST design is only 2.4% for a 128 KB SRAM, and 0.65% for a 2 MB one.