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.     

Highly oriented star-like patterns observed on GaSe epilayers grown on Si(111)

Epitaxial lamellar gallium selenide (GaSe) semiconductors have been grown on trench-patterned silicon (Si) substrates by molecular beam epitaxy. An intriguing star-like patterned morphology was identified by atomic force microscopy on these epilayers. This non-trivial feature can be correlated with the accumulation of stacking faults of two concurrent epitaxial domains around self-oriented triangular pits developed earlier on the Si(111) surface by the chemical etching. Crystallographic considerations show how the stars can be formed.     

Electrochemical impedance spectroscopy of a free-standing oxide film

The corrosion of low carbon steel in natural sea-water is characterized by the formation and growth of compact and thick layers composed of oxides, insoluble salts and organic materials. These layers are the result of corrosion processes induced by local environmental conditions, water oxygen supply; ionic species; bacteria and organic matter. The exchange of various species (ions, molecules, gas) between sea-water and the rust layers or the metal depends both on the kinetics of the Faradaic reactions of the entities with either the oxides or the metal, as well as on their transport properties through the different strata of the rust layers. In this work, an impedance study was carried out using the 4-electrodes cell arrangement with corrosion products picked up on steel sheet piling immersed for 25 years and analyzed as free standing membranes. This new approach is a good way to reach the specific transport and transfer properties of the oxide without being blurred by the metal influence. The physical model developed in this work was based on a transmission line, and accurately described the experimental diagrams. The electronic resistivity of the oxide layer, its porosity, the mean pore size and the reaction kinetics parameters could be determined from the fittings.     

Electrochemical characteristics for redox systems at nano-honeycomb diamond

Electrochemical characteristics for several redox systems at diamond films with highly ordered nanometer-scale cylindrical pores (‘nano-honeycombs’) were examined with cyclic voltammetry (CV) and electrochemical impedance measurements. The cyclic voltammetric anodic-cathodic peak separations for these nano-honeycomb electrodes were in the same range as those for polished polycrystalline diamond films, indicating that the involvement of the oxygen-terminated surface of the nano-pore walls, which should give rise to large peak separations for certain redox couples was only slight. Moreover, the peak currents in the CV were not enhanced to the extent expected on the basis of the roughness factors of the nano-honeycomb films. Ac impedance plots results indicated the existence of a concentration gradient of the reactant in the nano-pores, which is in agreement with theoretical predictions for charge transfer reactions in porous electrodes. The average concentration of the reactant (Fe^2+/3+) inside the nano-pores was a factor of ca. 80 lower than that in the bulk electrolyte. The results of the impedance analysis also indicated an increase in the reaction resistances with decreasing pore diameters.     

Cu（Ac）2-Co（Ac）2-KBr催化SPC氧化对甲基苯甲醚

研究了无机复合催化剂催化SPC氧化对甲基苯甲醚的反应性能：以Cu（Ac）2-Co（Ac）2-KBr为催化剂,利用过碳酸钠氧化对甲酚甲基化产物对甲基苯甲醚,系统研究了催化剂组成比例、催化剂用量、溶剂、反应温度、反应时间等因素对反应的影响,结果表明,Cu（Ac）2-Co（Ac）2-KBr具有较高的催化活性和选择性,体现出金属离子之间的协同作用,对甲基苯甲醚在m（Cu（Ac）2）：m（Co（Ac）2）：m（KBr）=0．1：0．5：0．1（质量比）,n催化剂：n底物=0．14,冰醋酸作溶剂,稍过量的过碳酸钠,65℃条件下的转化率可达45．9％,生成对甲氧基苯甲醛的选择性为68．3％。提出了氧化反应的H原子转移机理。     

机械电器产品检验抽样方法探讨

根据机电产品生产特点,对稳定生产状态下的生产条件进行细分,提出不同生产条件下的生产质量验收抽样方法。     

Characterization of nanostructured Cr2Nx/Cu multilayers deposited by reactive DC magnetron sputtering

Nitride/metal nanostructured multilayers of Cr₂N_x/Cu were deposited by reactive DC magnetron sputtering with various bilayer periods (2.5-30 nm) and substrate temperatures (25-400 °C). All films had a total thickness of about 470 nm and the overall chemical composition of the chromium nitride layers was close to Cr₂N_0.8. The deposited films were characterized by Rutherford Backscattering (RBS), low-angle X-ray reflectivity (XRR), high-angle X-ray diffraction (XRD) and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The hardness and elastic modulus were measured by nanoindentation. The films deposited at 25 °C had a well-defined multilayer structure and the chromium nitride layers were found to crystallize into N-deficient fcc CrN_0.4 with traces of hexagonal Cr₂N_0.8. The layers were strongly textured with fcc CrN_0.4[002] and Cu[002] oriented along the growth direction — the fcc CrN_0.4 and Cu grains growing with a cube-on-cube relationship. The measured hardness values were about 8 GPa, and showed no dependence on the bilayer period. Higher deposition temperatures caused the multilayer structure to degrade, and at 400 °C the films were better described as non-textured nanocomposites with the chromium nitride crystallized entirely into the equilibrium hexagonal Cr₂N_0.8 structure. Hardness values of the high-temperature films in the range of 4-8 GPa were measured. Multilayer films deposited at 25 °C were found to be thermally stable against post-deposition annealing at temperatures up to about 400 °C. Annealing at 500 °C caused severe structural changes — the fcc CrN_0.4 phase transformed into hexagonal Cr₂N_0.8 accompanied by degradation of the periodic multilayer structure. The hardness decreased from the originally 8 GPa to about 5 GPa upon annealing.     

高碳钢快速球化退火工艺的研究

通过对高碳钢传统球化退火理论与技术的分析 ,提出了 Ac1 f温度透烧的奥氏体化新工艺。结合生产现场设备及退火质量的检测 ,制定出相适应的快速球化退火工艺 ,不仅提高了球化的质量 ,改善了机械加工性能 ,还使球化加热时间缩短到原工艺的 2 5 %～ 30 % ,球化缓冷到 6 80℃的时间缩短了 5 0 %。     

反应过程中升华型催化剂的物性变化(Ⅲ)Zn(Ac)_2 的程序升温脱附测定

用程序升温脱附法测定了乙炔在衰化程度不同的醋酸锌催化剂上的脱附峰面积。发现乙炔在纯载体活性炭上的脱附峰面积为零,证明所得峰面积表征了乙炔在醋酸锌上的化学吸附量。衰化程度不同的催化剂上乙炔的程序升温脱附峰面积与其残留量呈线性关系,证明该催化剂失活的主要原因是活性组分醋酸锌的升华流失造成的。     

Relating time complexity of protein folding simulation to approximations of folding time

Finkelstein and Badretdinov [A.V. Finkelstein, A.Y. Badretdinov, Rate of protein folding near the point of thermodynamic equilibrium between the coil and the most stable chain fold, Fold. Des. 2 (1997) 115-121] approximated the folding time of protein sequences of length n by exp(λ⋅n2/3±χ⋅n1/2/2)ns, where λ and χ are constants close to unity. Recently, Fu and Wang [B. Fu, W. Wang, A ²O(n1−1/d⋅logn) time algorithm for d-dimensional protein folding in the HP-model, in: J. Daz, J. Karhumäki, A. Lepistö, D. Sannella (Eds.), Proceedings of the 31st International Colloquium on Automata, Languages and Programming, in: Lecture Notes in Comput. Sci., vol. 3142, Springer-Verlag, Heidelberg, 2004, pp. 630-644] published an exp(O(n1−1/d)⋅lnn) algorithm for d-dimensional protein folding simulation in the HP-model, which is close to the folding time approximation by Finkelstein and Badretdinov and can be seen as a justification of the HP-model for investigating general complexity issues of protein folding. We propose a stochastic local search procedure that is based on logarithmic simulated annealing. We obtain that after (m/δ)^a⋅D Markov chain transitions the probability to be in a minimum energy conformation is at least 1−δ, where m?b(d)⋅n is the maximum neighbourhood size (b(d) small integer), a is a small constant, and D is the maximum value of the minimum escape height from local minima of the underlying energy landscape. We note that the time bound is instance-specific, and we conjecture D<n1−1/d as a worst case upper bound. We analyse experimentally on selected benchmark problems for the d=2 case.