Formation and Characterization of Reversed Micelles Composed of Phospholipids and Fatty Acids

The formation of reversed micellar systems composed of phosphatidylcholine (PC) and fatty acid was newly demonstrated by a significant increase in water content in the organic ethyl oleate phase when the micelles were prepared by the contact method. The solubilized water concentration in the reversed micellar organic phase reached 3 wt%. The new systems are expected to be used as highly biocompatible reversed micellar systems. The structure of the reversed micelles composed of PC and oleic acid was characterized by determining the water concentration and by small-angle X-ray scattering analysis. The reversed micelles composed of PC and oleic acid formed in ethyl oleate were spherical. The radius of gyration was between 30 and 50 Å. The size of the reversed micelles decreased with an increase in the oleic acid concentration and was independent of the PC concentration. Experimental results indicated that the structure of the reversed micellar system was determined by the oleic acid concentration. An increase in the PC concentration caused an increase in the number of reversed micelles of the same size. These reversed micellar systems are expected to be used as solubilization media in pharmaceutical and food industries because they are not toxic.     

Highly refractive polymer resin derived from sulfur‐containing aromatic acrylate

New sulfur‐containing polymers with high‐refractive indices and low birefringences have been developed as UV‐curable high‐refractive polymer resins. The polymers derived from 2,7‐bis[(2‐acryloylethyl)sulfanyl]thianthrene (2,7‐BAST) and 4,4′‐bis[(acryloyloxyethylthio)diphenylsulfide (4,4′‐BADS) were prepared by photopolymerization under UV irradiation. Transparent UV‐cured films were obtained in both cases. Both polymers showed good thermal stability, such as a 5% weight‐loss temperature at 355 °C under nitrogen and glass transition temperatures (T_g) in the range of 94–143 °C. They also showed high‐refractive indices of 1.6531 and 1.6645 at 632.8 nm and low birefringences of 0.0039 and 0.0069 in addition to high transparency in the visible region. © 2010 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Polym Sci Part A: Polym Chem 48: 2604–2609, 2010     

Intramolecular Friedel-Crafts type reaction of vinyloxiranes linked to an ester group

The 7-endo Friedel-Crafts cyclization of arylpropyl vinyloxiranes was found to proceed regio- and stereoselectively to afford polyfunctional seven-membered carbocycles in excellent yields.     

ULTRA-LOW-LIGHT LEVEL CAMERA FOR PHOTON COUNTING IMAGING

Abstract— A new ultra-low-light level camera svstem has been developed to detect a single photon. Operation principles and some characteristics are presented.     

PVTx relationships and solid-liquid equilibria for the m-xylene-p-xylene system under high pressures

PVTx relationships of the m-xylene-p-xylene system have been measured with a glass piezometer at 283.15 and 298.15 K and pressures up to 200 MPa, or up to the point of solidification of m-xylene where this occurred at a lower pressure. Freezing pressures of m-xylene were observed as a discontinuity in the volume at increasing pressure. Approximate solid-liquid equilibria under high pressures were obtained from the freezing pressure measurement. The Carnahan-Starling-van der Waals (CS-vdW) equation of state was used to correlate the PVTx data. The solid-liquid equilibria under high pressures were calculated with the CS-vdW equation of state for the liquid phase and a simple equation of state for the solid phase. In order to test the validity of the calculation method, the solid-liquid equilibrium relationships of the benzene-cyclohexane system were also calculated. It was found that the solid molar volume should be treated as a function of temperature and/or pressure to fit the experimental data.     

Fundamental imaging properties of transillumination laser computed tomography based on coherent detection imaging method.

The coherent detection imaging (CDI) method uses the optical heterodyne detection technique. CW and single frequency lasers having long coherence lengths are used to exploit the maximum advantages of heterodyne detection, such as high directionality, selectivity and sensitivity. The CDI method based on optical heterodyne detection enables selective filtering of the directional coherence-retaining emergent photons, which leads to image reconstruction from projections, similar to X-ray computed tomography (CT). So far we have demonstrated the advantages and capabilities of the measurement technique for transillumination optical computed tomography in biomedicine. Here, we investigate the fundamental imaging properties of CDI method, such as its high directionality and quantitativeness, with preliminary physical phantom experiments. The results show that the CDI method satisfies the requirements for CT reconstruction under the first order approximation, and enables quantitative measurements in the sense that the relationship between estimated and actual concentration retains a satisfactory linearity.     

An application of fragment interaction analysis based on local MP2

We have developed a method named ‘fragment interaction analysis based on local MP2’ (abbreviated as FILM). This method enables us to decompose the interaction energy associated with dispersion interactions into contributions of localized occupied orbitals. In this study, the basis set dependence of the results derived from FILM was examined. The results suggested that the individual ratio of pair correlation energies of selected orbital pairs to the total dispersion interaction was almost independent of the basis set size. As an illustrative example, detailed analysis was performed on the human immunodeficiency virus type 1 protease complexed with lopinavir molecule.     

Dedekind symbols with plus reciprocity laws

Dedekind symbols are generalizations of the classical Dedekind sums (symbols), and the symbols are determined uniquely by their reciprocity laws, up to an additive constant. For Dedekind symbols D and F, we can consider two kinds of reciprocity laws: D(p,q)−D(q,−p)=R(p,q) and F(p,q)+F(q,−p)=T(p,q). The first type, which we call minus reciprocity laws, have been studied extensively. On the contrary, the second type, which we call plus reciprocity laws, have not yet been investigated. In this note we study fundamental properties of Dedekind symbols with plus reciprocity law F(p,q)+F(q,−p)=T(p,q). We will see that there is a fundamental difference between Dedekind symbols with minus and plus reciprocity laws.