Control of the Solid‐State Chiral Optical Properties of a Supramolecular Organic Fluorophore Containing 4‐(2‐Arylethynyl)‐Benzoic Acid

The solid‐state chiral optical properties of a 4‐(2‐arylethynyl)‐benzoic acid/amine supramolecular organic fluorophore can be controlled by changing the arylethynyl group of the achiral 4‐(2‐arylethynyl)‐benzoic acid component molecule rather than the chirality of the amine component molecule.     

The LHCf experiment at LHC

The LHCf experiment will be installed in 2007 on the LHC collider in the forward direction at ±140m from the ATLAS interaction point. The purpose of LHCf is to precisely measure the pion production cross section near zero degrees through the measurement of the photons produced in neutral pion decay. This measurement is crucial for the simulation of the showers induced in the atmosphere by very high energy cosmic rays; the 14 TeV energy available in the center of mass frame corresponds in fact to an equivalent energy of 10¹⁷ eV in the laboratory system. The paper focus on the proposed experiment and on the physics results that we expect from it.     

Characterization of cross-linking structures in UV-cured acrylic ester resin by MALDI-MS combined with supercritical methanolysis.

The cross-linking structure of the ultra violet (UV)-cured resin prepared from dipentaerithritol hexacrylate (DPHA) was characterized by matrix-assisted laser desorption/ionization mass spectrometry (MALDI-MS) combined with supercritical methanolysis. The MALDI-mass spectrum of the decomposition products obtained by supercritical methanolysis contained a series of peaks of sodium-cationized methyl acrylate (MA) oligomers up to around m/z = 4000 formed through selective cleavage and methylation occurred at ester linkages in UV-cured DPHA. Furthermore, in order to observe widely distributed sequence lengths in the cross-linking junctions, the decomposed products of the cured resin were then fractionated using size exclusion chromatography followed by the MALDI-MS measurements of the individual fractions. The MALDI-mass spectra of the lower molar mass fractions mainly consisted of a series of peaks of MA oligomers around m/z values of several thousands, whereas those of higher molecular weight showed a broad peak up to m/z ca. 180000. The observed distributions of the supercritical methanolysis products suggested that the network junctions in the given UV-cured resin were composed of up to around 2000 acrylate units.     

Grazing-exit and micro X-ray fluorescence analyses for chemical microchips.

Grazing-exit x-ray fluorescence (GE-XRF) and micro x-ray fluorescence (micro-XRF) methods were applied to chemical microchips as a detection method. Since an energy-dispersive x-ray detector was used, the simultaneous detection of multiple elements was possible. An analyzing region was especially designed on the microchip so that a sample solution could be dried and concentrated in a suitable area corresponding to the size of the primary x-ray beam. Finally, it was confirmed that both analytical methods could be combined well for use with a microchip. In GE-XRF, the background intensity in the XRF spectrum was reduced at grazing-exit angles. In addition, a good relationship between the x-ray fluorescence intensities and the concentrations of standard solutions that were introduced into the microchip was obtained. This indicates that the GE-XRF method is feasible for trace elemental analysis in chemical microchip systems. In micro-XRF, an attempt was made to concentrate and dry the analyte within a small analyzing region. The preliminary results indicated that the micro-XRF method could be applied for the analysis of microchips.     

Bayesian analysis of lymphatic spreading patterns in cancer of the thoracic esophagus

For the treatment of patients with cancer of the thoracic esophagus, lymphatic spreading is one important factor to infer how advanced their cancer is. We introduced a one-dimensional scale based on lymphatic spreading patterns, the stage of cancer, to express how advanced their cancer is, and we proposed a method to infer each patient's stage from his lymphatic spreading pattern by applying a Bayesian model. Our Bayesian model was built based on the assumption that lymphatic spreading in cancer could be explained as what was brought about by the advance of stage. In the modeling, we introduced the probability of what stage each patient was in as a prior distribution. We also introduced distribution functions of Weibull distributions to express the relation between the advance of stage and the increase of the probability of metastasis. Our model was applied to the data of nodal involvement obtained from 103 patients with cancer of the thoracic esophagus and the parameters were estimated with the maximum likelihood method. AIC was used to check that the data had enough information to be divided into the stages of a clinically reasonable number. With the estimated parameters, we inferred the probability of metastasis to each lymph node in each stage and calculated by Bayes' theorem with 31 new patients the probability of what stage they were in. The results well represented some characteristics of the lymphatic spreading and suggested the appropriateness of our approach.The present study was carried out under the ISM Cooperative Research Program (91-ISM·CRP-18).     

A charge-transfer host system composed of a chiral 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol cluster and benzylviologen

Chiral charge-transfer (CT) complexes composed of a chiral 1,1′-bi-2-naphthol cluster as the electron donor and 1,1′-dibenzyl-4,4′-bipyridinium dichloride as the electron acceptor serve as a host system for molecular recognition. CT complexes that include guest alcohols show different diffuse reflectance spectra (DRS) depending on the included guest.