pH-Sensitive Oscillatory Motion of a Urease Motor on the Urea Aqueous Phase

A self-propelled object coupled with an enzyme reaction between urease and urea was investigated at the air/aqueous interface. A plastic object that was fixed to a urease-immobilized filter paper was used as a self-propelled object, termed a urease motor, placed on an aqueous urea solution. The driving force of the urease motor is the difference in the surface tension around the object. Oscillatory motion or no motion was triggered depending on the initial pH of the urea solution. Both the frequency and maximum speed of the oscillatory motion varied depending on the initial pH of the water phase. The mechanisms underlying the oscillatory motion and no motion were discussed in relation to the bell-shaped enzyme activity of urease in the enzyme reaction and the surface tension around the urease motor.     

When does the subadditivity theorem for multiplier ideals hold?

Demailly, Ein and Lazarsfeld proved the subadditivity theorem for multiplier ideals on nonsingular varieties, which states the multiplier ideal of the product of ideals is contained in the product of the individual multiplier ideals. We prove that, in the two-dimensional case, the subadditivity theorem holds on log terminal singularities. However, in the higher dimensional case, we have several counterexamples. We consider the subadditivity theorem for monomial ideals on toric rings and construct a counterexample on a three-dimensional toric ring.

     

Utilization of carbohydrates by radiation processing

Upgrading and utilization of carbohydrates such as chitosan, sodium alginate, carrageenan, cellulose, pectin have been investigated for recycling these bio-resources and reducing the environmental pollution. These carbohydrates were easily degraded by irradiation and various kinds of biological activities such as anti-microbial activity, promotion of plant growth, suppression of heavy metal stress, phytoalexins induction, etc. were induced. On the other hand, some carbohydrate derivatives, carboxymethylcellulose and carboxymethylstarch, could be crosslinked under certain radiation condition and produce the biodegradable hydrogel for medical and agricultural use.     

Compact directed acyclic word graphs for a sliding window

Suffix trees are a well-known and widely-studied data structure highly useful for string matching. The suffix tree of a string w can be constructed in O(n) time and space, where n denotes the length of w. Larsson achieved an efficient algorithm to maintain suffix trees for a sliding window. It contributes to prediction by partial matching (PPM) style statistical data compression scheme. Compact directed acyclic word graphs (CDAWGs) are a more space-economical data structure for indexing strings. In this paper we propose a linear-time algorithm to maintain CDAWGs for a sliding window.     

Current R & D activities at TRCRE in polymer processing by EB

The current status of the R & D activities is presented on electron beam processing of polymers being carried out at TRCRE. Topics included are sterilization of medical products, graft polymers for selective separation or absorbents and curing of liquid prepolymer-monomer systems.     

Quasi-monocyclic near-infrared pulses with a stabilized carrier-envelope phase characterized by noncollinear cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating.

Precise characterization of noncollinear optical parametric amplifier idler pulses that have bandwidths of more than an octave with a center wavelength at 990 nm was demonstrated. The method employed was cross-correlation frequency-resolved optical gating with broadband sum-frequency mixing to take advantage of the idler's angular dispersion. Compression to near the transform limit was achieved to produce quasi-monocyclic near-infrared pulses by use of a deformable membrane mirror.     

Chemically modified proton‐conducting membranes based on sulfonated polyimides: Improved water stability and fuel‐cell performance

A series of branched/crosslinked sulfonated polyimide (B/C‐SPI) membranes were prepared and evaluated as proton‐conducting ionomers based on the new concept of in situ crosslinking from sulfonated polyimide (SPI) oligomers and triamine monomers. Chemical branching and crosslinking in SPI oligomers with 1,3,5‐tris(4‐aminophenoxy)benzene as a crosslinker gave the polymer membranes very good water stability and mechanical properties under an accelerated aging treatment in water at 130 °C, despite their high ion‐exchange capacity (2.2–2.6 mequiv g^?1). The resulting polymer electrolytes displayed high proton conductivities of 0.2–0.3 S cm^?1 at 120 °C in water and reasonably high conductivities of 0.02–0.03 S cm^?1 at 50% relative humidity. In a single H₂/O₂ fuel‐cell system at 90 °C, they exhibited high fuel‐cell performances comparable to those of Nafion 112. The B/C‐SPI membranes also displayed good performances in a direct methanol fuel cell with methanol concentrations as high as 50 wt % that were superior to those of Nafion 112. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 44: 3751–3762, 2006     

Simultaneous determination of hypoxanthine,inosine, inosine-5′-phosphate and adenosine-5′-phosphate with a multielectrode enzyme sensor

A multielectrode enzyme sensor for the simultaneous determination of adenosine-5′-phosphate (AMP), inosine-5′-phosphate (IMP), inosine (HXR) and hypoxanthine (HX)in fish meat was developed by assembling four enzyme sensors for AMP, IMP, HXR and HX in a flow cell. These compounds were determined from oxygen consumption according to the following reactions: AMP $\text{AD}$ IMP $\text{NT}$ HXR $\text{NP, PO}{}^{\mathrm{3?}}{}_4$ HX $\text{XO, O}{}_2$ Uric acid where AD is AMP deaminase, NT is 5′-nucleotidase, NP is nucleoside phosphorylase and XO is xanthine oxidase. Enzymes were covalently bound to a membrane prepared from cellulose triacetate, 1,8-diamino-4-aminomethyloctane and glutaraldehyde. Sensors for HX, HXR, IMP and AMP were prepared by attaching membranes of XO, XONP, XO NPNT, and of XONPNT and AD, respectively, to four oxygen electrodes. Samples extracted from sea bass, bream, flounder, abalone and arkshell were analyzed within 5 min, from the simultaneous response curves of the four electrodes. Results obtained by the multisensor system were in good agreement with those determined by each single electrode.     

Stochastic phase lockings in a relaxation oscillator forced by a periodic input with additive noise: A first-passage-time approach

Noise effects on phase lockings in a system consisting of a piecewise-linear van der Pol relaxation oscillator driven by a periodic input are studied. The problem of finding the period of the oscillator is reduced to the first-passage-time problem of the Ornstein-Uhlenbeck process with time-varying boundary. The probability density functions of the first-passage time are used to define the operator which governs a transition of an input phase density after one cycle of the oscillator. Phase lockings in a stochastic sense are investigated on the basis of the density evolution by the operator.     

Prolonged release of drug from triacetyl-β-CyD complex for oral and rectal administration

Triacetyl--cyclodextrin (TA--CyD), a hydrophobic cyclodextrin derivative, that is insoluble in water, was used to form a complex with flufenamic acid (FA). FA-TA--CyD complex formation was demonstrated by differential scanning calorimetry and powder X-ray diffractometry. The release rate of FA from the FA-TA--CyD complexes in phosphate buffer pH 6.8 was significantly retarded compared to that of FA from the FA and glucose mixture. When the FA-TA--CyD complexes were administered directly into the intraduodenal lumen, the plasma concentration of FA remained at a plateau level (10-18 g/ml) for 6–8 h. An increased mean residence time of FA following FA-TA--CyD complexes administration was observed. These results indicate that TA--CyD may serve as a hydrophobic carrier in prolonged-release preparations of FA.