Engineering strain-sensitive yellow fluorescent protein

Various biological events including muscle contraction and vesicle transport can be described as a mechanical process. Many of the corresponding proteins are thus required to generate or sense a force. Here we describe a strain-sensitive yellow fluorescent protein (YFP) recombinant that can detect the intramolecular strains these proteins experience.     

C-C bond formation with carbon dioxide promoted by a silver catalyst

A catalytic amount of silver benzoate with 7-methyl-1,5,7-triazabicyclo[4.4.0]dec-5-ene (MTBD) was an effective catalytic system for the reaction of carbon dioxide with various ketones containing an alkyne group at an appropriate position. These reactions afforded the corresponding γ-lactone derivatives in good to high yields under mild conditions.     

Lithium ion conduction in an organoborate zwitterion-LiTFSI mixture

An organoborate zwitterion-lithium salt mixture, prepared via selective borate formation of N-ethylimidazolium salt, exhibited ionic conductivity of 3.0 x 10(-5) S cm(-1) at 50 degrees C and a lithium transference number of 0.69.     

One-Dimensional Cutting Stock Problem with a Given Number of Setups: A Hybrid Approach of Metaheuristics and Linear Programming

One-dimensional cutting stock problem (1D-CSP) is one of the representative combinatorial optimization problems, which arises in many industrial applications. Since the setup costs for switching different cutting patterns become more dominant in recent cutting industry, we consider a variant of 1D-CSP, called the pattern restricted problem (PRP), to minimize the number of stock rolls while constraining the number of different cutting patterns within a bound given by users. For this problem, we propose a local search algorithm that alternately uses two types of local search processes with the 1-add neighborhood and the shift neighborhood, respectively. To improve the performance of local search, we incorporate it with linear programming (LP) techniques, to reduce the number of solutions in each neighborhood. A sensitivity analysis technique is introduced to solve a large number of associated LP problems quickly. Through computational experiments, we observe that the new algorithm obtains solutions of better quality than those obtained by other existing approaches.     

Fabrication of nanostructures by selective growth of C60 and Si on Si(1 1 1) substrate

Using two types of selective growth, selective C₆₀ growth and selective Si growth, on a common Si(1 1 1) substrate, an array of C₆₀ nanoribbons with controlled values of width and thickness is fabricated. On a surface that has Si(1 1 1)√3 × √3R30°-Ag (referred to as Si(1 1 1)√3-Ag hereafter) and bare Si(1 1 1) regions at the same time, the preferential growth of C₆₀ multilayered film is recognized on the Si(1 1 1)√3-Ag region. The growth of Si selectively occurs on a bare Si(1 1 1) region if the substrate surface has C₆₀-adsorbed and bare Si(1 1 1) regions at the same time. As a demonstration of the use of these selective growths, we fabricate an array of well-isolated C₆₀ nanoribbons, which show a well-ordered molecular arrangement and have sizes of about 40 nm in widths and 3-4 nm in thicknesses.     

Polymerization behavior and gel properties of ethane,ethylene and acetylene-bridged polysilsesquioxanes

Soluble bridged polysilsesquioxanes with a range of molecular weight were synthesized from bis(triethoxysilyl)ethane, ethylene, and acetylene (BTES-E1, -E2, and -E3) via hydrolysis and polycondensation reaction by adjusting the water amount. Polymerization behavior of these three trialkoxysilanes was investigated by monitoring the reaction progress by GPC, and ²⁹Si NMR spectrometry of the resulting polymers, poly(BTES-E1), poly(BTES-E2), and poly(BTES-E3), showing that BTES-E1 generated cyclic oligomers at the early stage. In contrast, polymerization of BTES-E2 and BTES-E3 provided no detectable amounts of cyclic oligomers, but afforded linear polymers only. Bulk gels were also prepared by curing the polymers. The gel from poly(BTES-E3) exhibited high thermal stability derived from the rigid acetylene spacer with respect to thermogravimetric analysis. On the other hand, the polymer film of BTES-E1 showed the highest pencil hardness index among the polymers, indicating the tight siloxane network of poly(BTES-E1).     

Simple synthesis of tetra-n-butylphosphonium benzimidazolate/benzimidazole mixture as a thermally stable proton conductor

A mixture of tetra-n-butylphosphonium benzimidazolate and benzimidazole is readily prepared as a proton conductive liquid having thermal stability up to 300 °C.     

Macroscopic superconducting current through a silicon surface reconstruction with indium adatoms: Si(111)-(√7 × √3)-In

Macroscopic and robust supercurrents are observed by direct electron transport measurements on a silicon surface reconstruction with In adatoms [Si(111)-(√7 × √3)-In]. The superconducting transition manifests itself as an emergence of the zero resistance state below 2.8 K. I-V characteristics exhibit sharp and hysteretic switching between superconducting and normal states with well-defined critical and retrapping currents. The two-dimensional (2D) critical current density J(2D,c) is estimated to be as high as 1.8 A/m at 1.8 K. The temperature dependence of J(2D,c) indicates that the surface atomic steps play the role of strongly coupled Josephson junctions.