Am1 MO Study of Benzene Nitro Derivatives

Molecular properties of benzene nitro derivatives were investigated by using semi-empirical MO calculations. As the results, the molecular structures and the rotational barrier of the nitro group calculated by AM1 showed a good agreement with the experimental values. The heats of formation in gaseous and condensed phases were obtained by considering isodesmic reactions. By this procedure, the heat of formation of hexanitrobenzene in solid phase was calculated to be +22.7 kcal/mol. The detonation parameters were also calculated by using four equations of state. The predicted detonation velocities showed a good agreement with the experimental values.     

High Intensity Operation at Naoshima Smelter

This paper describes the successful test operation of a 50 t/h concentrate feed rate (or on the anode copper basis 9000 tlm) with the Mitsubishi Process. Particular emphasis is given to the analyses of the furnace capacity by the measurement of flow pattern and oxygen potential. Smelting rate on the unit hearth area of the smelting furnace is now one-ton of concentrate/m²·h. The results of the analyses show the further potential of the furnace capacity of the process.     

Design of Fully Balanced Analog Systems Based on Ordinary and/or Modified Single-Ended Opamps

The system architectures, which allow a high performance fully balanced (FB) system based on ordinary/modified single-ended opamps to be implemented, are investigated and the basic and general requirements are formulated. Two new methods of an FB analog system design, which contribute towards achieving both a high performance IC system implementation and a great reduction of the design time are presented. It is shown that a single-ended system based on any type of opamp (rail-to-rail, constant g _m , etc.), realized in any technology (CMOS, bipolar, BiCMOS, GaAs), can be easily and effectively converted to its FB counterpart in a very practical way. Using the proposed rules, any FB system implementation with opamps (data converter, modulator, filter, etc.) requires only a single-ended system version design and the drawbacks related to a conventional FB system design are avoided. The principles of the design are pointed out and they are verified by experimental results.     

Ion beam modification of TiO2 films prepared by Cat-CVD for solar cell

The effects of nitrogen ion bombardment on TiO₂ films prepared by the Cat-CVD method have been studied to improve the optical and electrical properties of the material for use in Si thin film solar cells. The refractive index n and the dark conductivity of the TiO₂ film increased with irradiation time. The refractive index n of the TiO₂ film was changed from 2.1 to 2.4 and the electrical conductivity was improved from 3.4 × 10^− 2 to 1.2 × 10^− 1 S/cm by the irradiation. These results are due to the formation of Ti-N bonds and oxygen vacancies in the film.     

A fast method for the determination of the efficiency coefficient of bare CR-39 detector

A fast and simple method for the determination of the efficiency coefficient (η) of bare CR-39 detector is presented and discussed. The efficiency coefficient of bare CR-39 detector is then calculated by different ways and the obtained values are found to be comparable to each other. The average value of η of bare CR-39 is found to be 0.20 ± 0.01 tracks cm⁻² day⁻¹ per Bq m⁻³.     

Micro machining for control of wettability with surface topography

A micro fabrication is presented to manufacture hydrophobic surfaces with micro-scale structures. Hydrophobicity is controlled with the shape and the alignment of micro pillars in the structure. The structures are manufactured in large areas at high production rates in the following processes: (1) the structure is fabricated on a tool by focused ion beam sputtering; (2) the reverse structure is formed on a metal plate by incremental stamping using the structured tool; and (3) the structure is transferred onto plastic plates by molding. A consecutive stamping is also proposed to fabricate several structures on a surface accurately with a structured tool, in which the moving pitch of the structured tool is numerically controlled. The effect of the surface topography on hydrophobicity is discussed with measuring contact angles on the structured surfaces in the water droplet tests. Hydrophobicity on the plastic plate is associated with the solid fraction on the structured surface based on the Cassie–Baxter model. A larger contact angle is observed for a smaller solid fraction of the surface.     

Intra-gap Absorption in Superconducting Ba(Fe1−x Co x )2As2 Thin Films Studied by a Fabry–Pérot Resonant Technique

For superconducting films, the optical intra-gap conductivity provides valuable information on the superconductivity mechanism, in particular on the gap symmetry, quasiparticles, and superconducting carrier dynamics. Experimentally, however, it is extracted with rather large uncertainty caused by the huge negative value of the dielectric constant. We have performed systematic numerical analysis of Fabry–Pérot resonators, which consist of two identical superconducting iron pnictide thin films on dielectric substrates that are positioned face-to-face to each other and are separated by a spacer. We demonstrate that such a Fabry–Pérot arrangement can significantly enhance the accuracy to the dynamical conductivity σ ₁ of the films, as the efficiency of interaction of the probing radiation with the superconducting films is improved. Using a coherent source terahertz spectrometer (4–45 cm^?1) with a Mach–Zehnder interferometer, we have measured the complex transmissivity of three Fabry–Pérot resonators composed by identical pairs of Ba(Fe_0.9Co_0.1)₂As₂ films with the thicknesses: 25, 30, and 50 nm. We show that the experimental spectra can be well described by a corresponding five-layer model based on Fresnel’s equations and analyze the advantages and challenges of the Fabry–Pérot resonant technique for iron pnictide films.     

Preliminary spectrum shifter design for intermediate energy nuclear data benchmark experiments with DT neutrons

Integral benchmark experiments with DT neutrons are not always sufficient for nuclear data benchmarking in the MeV region, below 10 MeV. A neutron spectrum shifter, which will be placed between a sample and a DT neutron source, is effective to moderate DT neutrons incident to the sample. In order to estimate effects of the spectrum shifter, the ratio of the contribution of 14 MeV neutrons in the leakage neutron and gamma-ray spectra was calculated with MCNP-4C for an experimental configuration at FNS of JAEA, Japan. The calculations were carried out for a Li₂TiO₃ sample with a Be, D₂O, or ⁷LiD spectrum shifter. It was found out that the Be shifter was superior to others and the Be shifter was effective to decrease the contribution of 14 MeV neutrons especially for secondary gamma-ray spectrum measurements.     

Effects of scatter and attenuation correction on quantitative assessment of regional cerebral blood flow with SPECT

The pyruvate dehydrogenase complex (PDC) plays a key role in the anaerobic mitochondrial metabolism of the parasitic nematode Ascaris suum. A cDNA coding for an A. suum pyruvate dehydrogenase kinase (APDK) has been cloned and sequenced from poly(A)+ RNA isolated from adult A. suum muscle.2 APDK exhibited significant sequence identity to mammalian PDKs. Nucleotide sequence analysis of the APDK cDNA revealed a 22-nucleotide spliced leader, characteristic of many nematode mRNAs, a 5'-UTR of 6 nucleotides, an open reading frame of 1197 nucleotides, and a 3'-UTR of 101 nucleotides that included a putative polyadenylation signal. The open reading frame predicted a protein of 399 amino acids with a molecular weight of 45,402 that included a putative 18-aminoacid leader peptide. Recombinant APDK (rAPDK) was functionally expressed in Escherichia coli with a his tag at its N-terminus and purified to apparent homogeneity on Ni-NTA-agarose. Recombinant APDK was a dimer and was not autophosphorylated and its activity was stimulated in the presence of APDK-deficient adult A. suum muscle PDC presumably by the binding of APDK to the dihydrolipoyl transacetylase (E2) core of the complex. After binding to the core, rAPDK activity was stimulated by elevated NADH/NAD+ and acetyl CoA/CoA ratios within the same ranges as observed for the native APDK. Immunoblotting suggested that native APDK focused as a series of 43-kDa spots (pI 6.1-6.8) on two-dimensional gels of the purified adult A. suum muscle PDC.