Simulation of Lag Phenomena and Pulsed I-V Curves of Compound Semiconductor FETs as Affected by Impact Ionization

Turn-on characteristics of GaAs MESFETs are simulated when the gate and the drain voltages are changed abruptly, and quasi-pulsed I-V curves are derived from them. It is discussed how the slow current transients (lag phenomena) and the pulsed I-V curves are affected by the existence of substrate traps and surface states. It is also discussed how the characteristics are influenced by impact ionization of carriers.     

Mars14 Monte Carlo simulation for the shielding studies of the J-PARC 3 GeV ring

MARS14 Monte Carlo simulations were performed for collimation and shielding studies of the J-PARC 3 GeV synchrotron ring. The beam line module locations in the 348.3 m ring and the curved tunnel sections were described by the 'MAD-MARS beam line builder' tool. A 400 MeV proton beam loss distribution, calculated with the STRUCT code, was used as a 4 kW source term in the collimator region, with 1 kW source terms in the injection and extraction regions at 400 MeV and 3 GeV, respectively. Deep penetration calculations were carried out with good statistics using a newly developed three-dimensional multi-layer technique. Prompt dose-rate distributions were calculated inside and outside the concrete and soil shield up to the ground level. Using the calculation results obtained thus, an effective shielding design was made.     

Single cell reporter assay using cell surface displayed Vargula luciferase

Reporter genes such as firefly luciferase are common tools to monitor gene expression in various systems. As reporter gene represents the expression level of the gene of interest with its enzyme activity, firefly luciferase is most frequently used because its luminescent activity is highly sensitive and less time consumable for assay. However, since firefly luciferase is expressed internally in the cell, lysis of the cell is a critical step, and thus it is difficult to monitor the gene expression level continuously. In this report, we utilized secretive Vargula hilgendorfii luciferase modified to cell surface displayed one by fusing with human EGFR transmembrane sequence. This modified Vargula luciferase was expressed on cell surface without losing its bioluminescent activity. Co-transfection with secretive alkaline phosphatase showed that the behaviors of cell surface displayed Vargula luciferase and secretive alkaline phosphatase are comparable to each other. Furthermore, the luminescence of a single cell expressing cell surface displayed Vargula luciferase can be monitored by using photon counting CCD camera, which indicates that this reporter gene can monitor gene expression in a single cell without cell lysis.     

Truncation of Vargula luciferase still results in retention of luminescence

Significant amino acid sequence homology in two regions of Vargula hilgendorfii to one in apoaequorin was reported. The intra-amino acid homology in Vargula luciferase between residues 81-312 and 321-540 was 19.3%, and each of this intra-homologous region contained the region homologous to apoaequorin. In order to prove the possibility that only one of the homologous regions is sufficient for luminescence, we have produced a chimeric protein comprising of only the N-terminal homologous region of Vargula luciferase fused to protein A. Comparison of the luminescence of this truncate luciferase indicated that there was 38.5% retention in the bioluminescence of luciferase when compared to that of the mature form of luciferase. This fact may have interesting implications for further study of engineering luciferase.     

Evaluation of a high-performance magnetically shielded room forbiomagnetic measurement

A spherical magnetically shielded room called COSMOS and a method for measuring the shielding factor of well-shielded rooms have been developed. A dc-superconducting quantum interference device is used to detect faint magnetic fields, and the detected signals are averaged to increase the signal-to-noise ratio. The measured magnetic shielding factor for COSMOS is 420000 at 1 Hz