Controlled production of monodisperse double emulsions by two-step droplet breakup in microfluidic devices

A microfluidic device having both hydrophobic and hydrophilic components is exploited for production of multiple-phase emulsions. For producing water-in-oil-in-water (W/O/W) dispersions, aqueous droplets ruptured at the upstream hydrophobic junction are enclosed within organic droplets formed at the downstream hydrophilic junction. Droplets produced at each junction could have narrow size distributions with coefficients of variation in diameter of less than 3%. Control of the flow conditions produces variations in internal/external droplet sizes and in the internal droplet number. Both W/O/W emulsions (with two types of internal droplets) and oil-in-water-in-oil emulsions were prepared by varying geometry and wettability in microchannels.     

The first samarium(II)-mediated aryl radical cyclisation onto an aromatic ring

Intramolecular arylation of aryl radicals was mediated by SmI(2)/HMPA in the presence of i-PrOH to give spirocycles and/or reduced cine-cyclised products, while the reaction in the absence of i-PrOH gave the rearomatised fused rings.     

Gluonic excitation of the three-quark system in SU(3) lattice QCD

We present the first study of the gluonic excitation in the three-quark (3Q) system in SU(3) lattice QCD with beta=5.8 and 16(3) x 32 at the quenched level. For the spatially fixed 3Q system, we measure the gluonic excited-state potential, which is responsible for the properties of hybrid baryons. The lowest gluonic-excitation energy in the 3Q system is found to be about 1 GeV in the hadronic scale. This large gluonic-excitation energy is expected to bring about the success of the simple quark model without gluonic modes.     

Synthesis and evaluation of 6-nitro-7-(1-piperazino)quinazolines: dual-acting compounds with inhibitory activities toward both tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) production and T cell proliferation

We investigated the chemical modifications of the nitroquinazoline derivative (1) through the replacement of the NH group at the C(4)-position with several N-alkyl groups to increase the lipophilicity at the C(4)-position. Among them, we found that the N-methyl analogue (5a) showed a 2-fold loss in the inhibitory activity toward tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF-alpha) production in vitro as compared with the NH analogue (1); however, 5a exhibited an oral inhibitory activity on TNF-alpha production with an ED50 value of 26 mg/kg, whereas 1 did not. Moreover, the oral bioavailability of 5a was higher than that of 1 (1, F=1%; 5a, F=21%), and the calculated ClogP value for 5a was higher than that for 1. These results suggest that the improved lipophilicity of 5a compared with that of 1 reflects its greater inhibitory activity on TNF-alpha production in vivo as well as oral bioavailability.     

Total curvatures of Kaehler manifolds in complex projective spaces

Teufel showed that total absolute curvature of a submanifold in a sphere or a hyperbolic space equals to the mean value of the number of critical points of level functions. This is an extension of the classical work of Chern and Lashof. In this paper we shall prove a similar result holds for the total absolute curvature of Kaehler manifold in a complex projective space. We shall also express the total curvature by the Euler numbers.The present research was supported by Grant in Aid for Scientific Research No. 5754005.