Metallothionein as a biomarker for mercury in tissues of rat fed orally with cinnabar

Cinnabar, as one of the most widely used mineral drugs in traditional Chinese medicines, has been proven to have prominent curative effects in clinical use for more than 2000 years. But the safety and toxicity of the drug has been under constant debate in clinic usage. Metallothionein (MT) contains about 30% of cysteine in the molecule, and plays an important detoxification role against heavy metals. In this study, it was used as a biomarker to assess mercurial accumulation in rats fed orally with cinnabar. After feeding rats with cinnabar by gastric gavage at different dosages and at different times, the distribution of heavy metals (including mercury, copper and zinc) and MT was investigated among rat tissues, including liver, kidney, heart, brain, testis and blood. Metals and MT determinations were carried out using inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry (ICP‐MS) and a modified mercury saturation assay technique respectively. The results indicated that mercury was easily accumulated in the tissues of rats exposed to cinnabar, especially in kidney. For example: at a feeding dosage of 5 g kg^?1 (bw) for 4 weeks, the mercury concentrations in kidney were 13, 8.7, 21.6 and 26 times those in liver, testis, brain and heart respectively; and at 2.5 g kg^?1 (bw) for 2 weeks, the mercury concentrations in kidney were 21, 2.1, 3 and 21 times those in liver, testis, brain and heart respectively. In addition, mercury in kidney and liver of all cinnabar groups was significantly higher than that of the control group (P < 0.01). A high positive correlation observed between MT concentrations and mercury levels in both liver and kidney (R² = 0.9299, P < 0.02 for liver; R² = 0.9923, P < 0.0008 for kidney) indicated that MT could be used as a biomarker for mercury in tissues. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

等厚双层涂层材料受集中力作用的平面问题理论解

界面应力的正确评价是分析薄膜涂层材料力学特性的难题之一。利用镜像点法和Dirichlet等值性原理，本文推导了等厚双层薄膜涂层材料受表面集中力作用的平面问题理论解。该显式理论解是以固定在各镜像点上的局部坐标系下的Goursat应力函数的形式给出的。对应于高阶镜像点的应力函数，可通过递推的方法，从对应于低阶镜像点的应力函数求得，而且也易于计算机编程。随着镜像点阶数的增大，它与界面的距离也越来越大，因而相对应的应力函数对界面应力的影响越来越小。最后的算例表明，只需考虑前面有限个镜像点，便可获得足够精度的解。该理论解可作为格林函数，以求解复杂问题的理论解，也可用作边界元法的基本解，提高数值计算的精度和效率。     

Power scaling of printed-circuit-board preionized TEA CO2 laser up to 3.6 kW

A high average power, high-repetition-rate TEA CO₂ laser employing printed-circuit-board preionizer is described. The power scaling of this preionization configuration has been demonstrated. The average output power reaches 3.6 kW at pulse repetition rate of 180 pps. Furthermore, the scaling-up ability of the rotating spark gap as high-voltage switch for high-average-power gas laser has been validated.     

用点正则变换方法求解双原子分子的双曲型Poschl-Teller势的束缚态

采用在点正则变换下形状不变势的映射方法,给出了将Poschl-Teller Ⅰ势映射至Poschl-Teller Ⅱ势的点正则变换,并从Poschl-TellerI势的束缚态能级和波函数求得了Poschl-Teller Ⅱ势的束缚态能级和波函数.     

丝瓜种子萌芽及子叶生长过程中谷氨酰胺合成酶同工酶的变化

测定了丝瓜种子萌芽及子叶不同生长阶段的谷氨酰胺合成酶(GS)的活性及其同工酶的变化．除了发育上的变化外，光和外源氮对GS活性及其同工酶影响也是显著的．无论外源氮(N)是否存在，GS活性在种子萌芽和子叶生长初期是逐渐升高的，于第6天达到最大，其后活性逐步降低．在光照下，外源氮对GS1诱导作用大于GS2；在无氮下，光对GS2的刺激大于GS1；在暗处，外源氮对GS1和GS2两者都有诱导作用．     

Ultrasonic investigation of amorphous carbon in various frequencies at low temperatures from 2.1 to 300 K

Using pulse echo overlap measurement, the elastic behavior of amorphous carbon has been studied at ambient and low temperatures. The smaller ratio B/G of the bulk modulus to shear modulus and smaller Poisson's ratio σ at room temperature indicate that there is an intrinsic stiffening of transverse acoustic phonons in the amorphous carbon. The acoustic velocity and attenuation for longitudinal modes have been measured between 2.1 and 300 K at three frequencies of 7, 21 and 35 MHz, respectively. Their frequency and temperature dependence are observed. The elastic constant C₁₁ increases with decreasing temperature and show enhanced stiffening at low temperatures. In the 130-220 K region, the abnormal change and effect of longitudinal velocity and attenuation with temperature and frequency, and a phase transition associated with structure relaxations are discussed.     

A structured light-based system for human heads

The 3-D modeling of heads by using optical triangulation techniques is of great interest in the context of virtual reality, telecommunication and computer animation. This paper presents a structured light-based system mainly for human heads. It is named “3-D Laser Color Scanner” (3DLCS). A 3-D model is obtained with a cylindrical scan. The laser beam is switched on and off using a “light valve” and two successive CCD frames are captured, one with the laser line showing and one without. We can simplify the laser line extracting by subtracting these two images.In this system, two CCD cameras are used to avoid occlusion problems. Color information is read from the CCD when the laser light is absent. Since traditional laser scanner will miss the range data in the low-reflectance areas such as the hair area of human head, a shape from silhouette algorithm is presented to overcome this problem. Finally, we give some results using our system. The resulting model is suitable for many applications.     

Nonlinear rheological behavior of silica filled solution‐polymerized styrene butadiene rubber

The reinforcement and nonlinear viscoelastic behavior have been investigated for silica (SiO₂) filled solution‐polymerized styrene butadiene rubber (SSBR). Experimental results reveal that the nonlinear viscoelastic behavior of the filled rubber is similar to that of unfilled SSBR, which is inconsistent with the general concept that this characteristic comes from the breakdown and reformation of the filler network. It is interesting that the curves of either dynamic storage modulus (G′) or loss tangent (tan δ) versus strain amplitude (γ) for the filled rubber can be superposed, respectively, on those for the unfilled one, suggesting that the primary mechanism for the Payne effect is mainly involved in the nature of the entanglement network in rubbery matrix. It is believed there exists a cooperation between the breakdown and reformation of the filler network and the molecular disentanglement, resulting in enhancing the Payne effect and improving the mechanical hysteresis at high strain amplitudes. Moreover, the vertical and the horizontal shift factors for constructing the master curves could be well understood on the basis of the reinforcement factor f(φ) and the strain amplification factor A(φ), respectively. The surface modification of SiO₂ causes a decrease in f(φ), which is ascribed to weakeness of the filler–filler interaction and improvement of the filler dispersion. However, the surface nature of SiO₂ hardly affects A(φ). © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part B: Polym Phys 45: 2594‐2602, 2007     

用于光学神经网络硬件系统误差纠正的虚拟神经网络

提出了一种用于修正光学神经网络硬件系统误差的虚拟神经网络模型，光学实验结果表明该网络能够有效地消除硬件系统误差对实验结果的影响。     

SOLVABILITY OF FORWARD-BACKWARD SDES AND THE NODAL SET OF HAMILTON-JACOBI-BELLMAN EQUATIONS

The solvability of a class of forward-backward stochastic differential equations (SDEs for short) over an arbitrarily prescribed time duration is studied. The authors design a stochastic relaxed control problem, with both drift and difftusion all being controlled, so that the solvability problem is converted to a problem of finding the nodal set of the viscosity solution to a certain Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation. This method overcomes the fatal difficulty encountered in the traditional contraction mapping approach to the existence theorem of such SDEs.