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.     

Numerical analysis of the rotating viscous flow approaching a solid sphere

A numerical simulation is performed to investigate the flow induced by a sphere moving along the axis of a rotating cylindrical container filled with the viscous fluid. Three‐dimensional incompressible Navier–Stokes equations are solved using a finite element method. The objective of this study is to examine the feature of waves generated by the Coriolis force at moderate Rossby numbers and that to what extent the Taylor–Proudman theorem is valid for the viscous rotating flow at small Rossby number and large Reynolds number. Calculations have been undertaken at the Rossby numbers (R_o) of 1 and 0.02 and the Reynolds numbers (R_e) of 200 and 500. When R_o=O(1), inertia waves are exhibited in the rotating flow past a sphere. The effects of the Reynolds number and the ratio of the radius of the sphere and that of the rotating cylinder on the flow structure are examined. When R_o ? 1, as predicted by the Taylor–Proudman theorem for inviscid flow, the so‐called ‘Taylor column’ is also generated in the viscous fluid flow after an evolutionary course of vortical flow structures. The initial evolution and final formation of the ‘Taylor column’ are exhibited. According to the present calculation, it has been verified that major theoretical statement about the rotating flow of the inviscid fluid may still approximately predict the rotating flow structure of the viscous fluid in a certain regime of the Reynolds number. Copyright © 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Damage and fracture evaluation of granular composite materials by digital image correlation method

This paper presents the applications of digital image correlation technique to the mesoscopic damage and fracture study of some granular based composite materials including steelfiber reinforced concrete, sandstone and crystal-polymer composite. The deformation fields of the composite materials resulted from stress localization were obtained by the correlation computation of the surface images with loading steps and thus the related damage prediction and fracture parameters were evaluated. The correlation searching could be performed either directly based on the gray levels of the digital images or from the wavelet transform (WT) coefficients of the transform spectrum. The latter was developed by the authors and showed higher resolution and sensitivity to the singularity detection. Because the displacement components came from the rough surfaces of the composite materials without any coats of gratings or fringes of optical interferometry, both surface profiles and the deformation fields of the composites were visualized which was helpful to compare each other to analyze the damage of those heterogeneous materials. The project supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (10125211 and 10072002), the Scientific Committee of Yunnan Province for the Program of Steel Fiber Reinforced Concrete, and the Institute of Chemical Materials, CAEP at Mianyang     

<Emphasis FontCategory="NonProportional">L</Emphasis>-Matrices and solvability of linear complementarity problems by a linear program-Matrices and solvability of linear complementarity problems by a linear program

The classes ofL ₁-matrices,L ₂-matrices,L ₃-matrices andW-matrices are introduced to study solvability of a linear complementarity problem via solving a linear program. Three sufficient conditions are presented to guarantee that a linear complementarity problem is solvable via a linear program. The new sufficient conditions are weaker than the ones introduced by Mangasarian. This fact is also illustrated by an example. Partially supported by NSFC. This author is also with College of Business Administration of Human University as a Lotus chair professor.     

Flow-injection spectrophotometric determination of sulfadiazine and sulfamethoxazole in pharmaceuticals and urine.

A rapid and sensitive flow-injection spectrophotometric method is proposed for the determination of sulfadiazine and sulfamethoxazole. This method is based on the diazotization of sulfonamide with sodium nitrite, and a coupling reaction of the diazo-compound with alpha-naphthylamine. The optimum experimental conditions are obtained by using the controlled and weighted centroid simplex method. The linear ranges for the determination of sulfadiazine and sulfamethoxazole are 0.2-20 microg ml(-1) and 0.1-20 microg ml(-1), and their detection limits are 0.06 microg ml(-1) and 0.05 microg ml(-1), respectively, and the sampling frequency is 130 samples per hour. The method has been used to determine sulfadiazine and sulfamethoxazole in pharmaceuticals and urine without separation. The results are in agreement with those obtained by a high-performance liquid chromatograph technique at the 95% confidence level.     

Noncollinear optical parametric amplification in lithium triborate seeded by a cw Ti:sapphire laser

Experimental investigations of a type-I noncollinear phase-matched optical parametric amplification based on lithium triborate, which was pumped by a 5-ns second-harmonic pulses from a Q-switched Nd:YAG, seeded by a cw Ti:sapphire laser at 800 nm, was presented. The experiments generated 2-ns signal output pulses at 800 nm, the maximum signal output pulse energy reached 19 μJ, the corresponding parametric gain was 44 dB. Furthermore, the experiments demonstrate that the 65 nm-FWHM parametric fluorescence gain spectrum could also be observed. A quantitative account of the ultrabroadband parametric fluorescence gain spectrum was given with our theory. The experimental measurements are in agreement with theoretical calculations.     

一种基于代价函数和模糊熵的图像分割方法

提出了一种基于代价函数和模糊熵的图像分割方法.该方法先用代价函数最小化法对退化的图像作预处理,之后,利用模糊熵作进一步的处理.实验结果表明:新方法和一般的阈值分割方法相比,不但分割图像的错分率较小,而且图像的视觉效果也有较大的改善.     

Synthesis of side‐chain liquid‐crystalline homopolymers and triblock copolymers with p‐methoxyazobenzene moieties and poly(ethylene glycol) as coil segments by atom transfer radical polymerization and their thermotropic phase behavior

A series of side‐chain liquid‐crystalline (LC) homopolymers of poly[6‐(4‐methoxy‐4′‐oxy‐azobenzene) hexyl methacrylate] with different degrees of polymerization were synthesized by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP), which were prepared with a wide range of number‐average molecular weights from 5.1 × 10³ to 20.6 × 10³ with narrow polydispersities of around 1.17. Thermal investigation showed that the homopolymers exhibit two mesophases, a smectic phase, and a nematic phase, and the phase‐transition temperatures of the homopolymers increase clearly with increasing molecular weights. A series of novel LC coil triblock copolymers with narrow polydispersities was synthesized by ATRP, and their thermotropic phase behavior was investigated with differential scanning calorimetry and polarized optical microscopy. The LC coil triblocks were designed to have an LC conformation of poly[6‐(4‐methoxy‐4′‐oxy‐azobenzene) hexyl methacrylate] with a wide range of molecular weights from 3.5 × 10³ to 1.7 × 10⁴ and the coil conformation of poly(ethylene glycol) (PEG) (number‐average molecular weight: 6000 or 12,000) segment. Their characterization was investigated with ¹H NMR, Fourier transform infrared spectra, and gel permeation chromatography. Triblock copolymers exhibited a crystalline phase, a smectic phase, and a nematic phase. The phase‐transition temperatures from the smectic to nematic phase and from the nematic to isotropic phase increased, and the crystallization of PEG depressed with increasing molecular weight of the LC block. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 41: 2854–2864, 2003     

新型菲涅尔线聚焦聚光太阳电池组件研究

以聚甲基丙烯酸甲脂为材料,采用热压成型工艺加工成型线聚焦菲涅尔聚光透镜(8×),可用于空间、地面光伏系统太阳电池组件的聚光系统,并对在其聚光条件下,太阳电池的电流电压特性进行测试,结果表明,该菲涅尔线聚焦棱镜能有效提高太阳电池的单位输出功率.模具的机械加工精度和光学抛光精度低,是造成其部分聚光率损失的原因.     

Probing proton halo of the exotic nucleus28S by elastic electron scattering

Elastic electron scattering on the exotic light nucleus²⁸S is investigated in the plane wave Born approximation. The variation of the squared form factors of²⁸S with momentum transfer is compared with that of³²S. It is found that the behavior of the form factors near the second minimum (with a moderate momentum transfer) is sensitive to the alteration of the charge density distribution of halo protons in²⁸S. This indicates that elastic electron scattering can be a good probe of the structure of proton-halo nuclei.