Effects of bile acid feeding on hepatic deoxycholate 7α-hydroxylase activity in the hamster

In order to investigate the effects of bile acid feeding on hepatic microsomal deoxycholate 7α-hydroxylase activity, three different bile acids were administered (0.2% w/w in chow) to hamsters for two weeks. Deoxycholate 7α-hydroxylase activity was increased markedly by feeding of cholic acid (CA) and slightly by deoxycholic acid (DCA) Chenodeoxycholic acid (CDCA) had little effect on the enzyme activity. Feeding each of the bile acids significantly inhibited the activity of cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase in the order CDCA≥ DCA>CA. There was no correlation between deoxycholate 7α-hydroxylase activity and cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase activity. It is concluded that the activity of deoxycholate 7α-hydroxylase is up-regulated by feeding DCA and CA and that the mechanism seems to be different from that of cholesterol 7α-hydroxylase. The increased activity of hepatic deoxycholate 7α-hydroxylase by CA and DCA should be beneficial in minimizing the toxic effects of DCA in the hamster.     

Development of reel-to-reel microchip mounting system for fabrication of meter-long LED lighting tapes

We have developed a reel-to-reel microchip mounting system that continuously mounts LED chips and other microchips on meter-long flexible printed circuit board (PCB) tape for 1.2-m-long standard LED light tubes. Mounting microchips on meter-long PCBs is difficult because a large chip mounter is expensive and the chip positioning stage is difficult to move in a meter-wide area with an accuracy of hundreds of micrometers. Hence, we developed a new microchip mounting system that utilizes a small chip mounter and reel winding machines. The system repeatedly moves the long PCB tape by a certain length with the reel winding machines and mounts the chips on it. The PCB tape (which is 5 mm wide) is made by fabricating long PCB tapes which are 25 cm × 26.6 m through a roll-to-roll PCB process and slitting them into meter-long tapes. The reel-to-reel system repeatedly mounts chips by adjusting their positions through image processing of the copper wiring pattern on the PCBs. Our constructed system mounted 24 LED chips with a pitch of 5 cm with an accuracy of 0.082 mm to form a 1.2-m-long LED tape. The luminance of the tape is 12.4 lx at a distance of 1 m, which is the luminance of outdoor corridor lighting. Therefore, this system can be used for meter-long tape lighting.     

Systematic analysis of glycosphingolipids in the human gastrointestinal tract: Enrichment of sulfatides with hydroxylated longer-chain fatty acids in the gastric and duodenal mucosa

The composition of the glycosphingolipids of the human gastrointestinal tract was studied. The major neutral glycosphingolipids were ceramide monohexosides (e.g., GalCer, GlcCer), LacCer, Gb₃Cer, Gb₄Cer and more polar ones with more than four sugars, whereas neither Gg₃Cer nor Gg₄Cer were present. The acidic glycosphingolipids consisted of sulfatides and gangliosides such as G_M3, G_M1, G_D3 and G_D1a. Also a large amount of sulfatides was found in the gastric mucosa and duodenum. The concentrations of sulfatides in the fundic mucosa, antral mucosa and duodenum amounted to 416.0, 933.8 and 682.9 nmol/g of dry weight, respectively, exceeding those in the gastric mucosa and kidney of other mammals. The major molecular species of the sulfatides were identified as I³SO₃-GalCer with hydroxylated longer-chain fatty acids based on the analyses by gas-liquid chromatography and negative ion fast-atom bombardment mass spectrometry. In contrast, gangliosides in these regions showed a tendency to be lower than sulfatides, and the molar ratios of sulfatides to gangliosides were about 2.0, whereas those in other parts were less than 0.5. A high content of sulfatides in the gastric and duodenal mucosa, where mucosa is easily insulted by acid, pepsin and bile salts, may be closely related to their roles in mucosal protection. The nomenclature used for gangliosides and other glycosphingolipids follows the system of Svennerholm (Ref. 1) and the recommendation of the IUPAC-IUB Commission (Ref. 2), respectively.     

Alteration of substrate specificity of cholesterol oxidase from Streptomyces sp. by site-directed mutagenesis

Despite the structural similarities between cholesterol oxidasefrom Streptomyces and that from Brevibacterium, both enzymesexhibit different characteristics, such as catalytic activity,optimum pH and temperature. In attempts to define the molecularbasis of differences in catalytic activity or stability, substitutionsat six amino acid residues were introduced into cholesteroloxidase using site-directed mutagenesis of its gene. The aminoacid substitutions chosen were based on structural comparisonsof cholesterol oxidases from Streptomyces and Brevibacterium.Seven mutant enzymes were constructed with the following aminoacid substitutions: L117P, L119A, L119F, V145Q, Q286R, P357Nand S379T. All the mutant enzymes exhibited activity with theexception of that with the L117P mutation. The resulting V145Qmutant enzyme has low activities for all substrates examinedand the S379T mutant enzyme showed markedly altered substratespecificity compared with the wild-type enzyme. To evaluatethe role of V145 and S379 residues in the reaction, mutantswith two additional substitutions in V145 and four in S379 wereconstructed. The mutant enzymes created by the replacement ofV145 by Asp and Glu had much lower catalytic efficiency forcholesterol and pregnenolone as substrates than the wild-typeenzyme. From previous studies and this study, the V145 residueseems to be important for the stability and substrate bindingof the cholesterol oxidase. In contrast, the catalytic efficiencies(k_cat/K_m) of the S379T mutant enzyme for cholesterol and pregnenolonewere 1.8- and 6.0-fold higher, respectively, than those of thewild-type enzyme. The enhanced catalytic efficiency of the S379Tmutant enzyme for pregnenolone was due to a slightly high k_catvalue and a low K_m value. These findings will provide severalideas for the design of more powerful enzymes that can be appliedto clinical determination of serum cholesterol levels and assterol probes.     

Studies of tetrazoles as rubber chemicals. II. Reactivities and antioxidation activities of reactive antioxidants based on tetrazoles

The chemical reactivities of novel reactive antioxidants based on tetrazoles for carbon–carbon double bonds of liquid polybutadiene and their antioxidation activities toward isoprene rubber were evaluated. These antioxidants, i.e., 2-substituted phenyl-5-(3′,5′ -di-tert-butyl-4′-hydroxyphenyl)tetrazoles (PHPT), were pyrolyzed in liquid polybutadiene at 160–170°C for 30 min to attach to rubber in extents of 61–85% of the nitrileimines formed from PHPT by 1,3-dipolar addition reaction. The reactivities of PHPT followed the order p-Cl > m-Cl > H > p-CH₃ > m-CH₃, p-OC₂H₅, suggesting that PHPT reacts with diene rubber in electrophilic reaction and p-derivatives exhibit higher contents of binding than m-derivatives due to steric hindrance. From oxygen absorption data, the antioxidation activities of PHPT for isoprene rubber vulcanizates followed the order m-Cl, m-CH₃ > H, p-Cl, p-Cl, p-CH₃ > p-OC₂H₅. Isoprene rubber vulcanizates, obtained after pretreatment with PHPT by heating, were extracted with acetone, followed by aging to show that there was good retention and appreciable antioxidation activities of PHPT, especially, p-CH₃ and p-Cl substituted PHPT.     

Effects of soaking soybeans in dilute acids on biologically active components

Soaking soybeans in dilute acids affected activities of lipoxygenase, trypsin inhibitor and urease. Effects of soaking time, acid concentration and soaking temperature were investigated. Lipoxygenase activity was completely eliminated by soaking in 0.3 M HC1 at either 23°C or 40°C for 8 hr. Less than 50% trypsin inhibitor remained and urease was inactivated to an acceptable level (0.04 ΔpH).     

旋转流中预混合火焰的高速传播现象——Ⅰ.稳燃特性及燃烧效率的提高

旋转流中预混合火焰高速传播特性的研究为强化低热值燃气的稳定燃烧提供了新的开发思路.针对圆管内强制涡作用下的甲烷/空气预混合火焰,本工作采用数值模拟方法分析了混合气的进口速度和旋转角速度对预混合火焰稳定燃烧的影响.结果表明,在不同当量比条件下,使火焰稳定的混合气进口速度和旋转角速度之间存在线性关系,但随着旋转角速度的增大,火焰半径变小,燃烧效率减小.改变混合气进口速度的分布形式是提高燃烧效率的有效方法.研究结果为实际的稳燃燃烧器设计提供了理论指导.     

k-NN classification of handwritten characters via accelerated GAT correlation

This paper addresses the problem of reinforcing the ability of the k-NN classification of handwritten characters via distortion-tolerant template matching techniques with a limited quantity of data. We compare three kinds of matching techniques: the conventional simple correlation, the tangent distance, and the global affine transformation (GAT) correlation. Although the k-NN classification method is straightforward and powerful, it consumes a lot of time. Therefore, to reduce the computational cost of matching in k-NN classification, we propose accelerating the GAT correlation method by reformulating its computational model and adopting efficient lookup tables. Recognition experiments performed on the IPTP CDROM1B handwritten numerical database show that the matching techniques of the simple correlation, the tangent distance, and the accelerated GAT correlation achieved recognition rates of 97.07%, 97.50%, and 98.70%, respectively. The computation time ratios of the tangent distance and the accelerated GAT correlation to the simple correlation are 26.3 and 36.5 to 1.0, respectively.     

Comparative study of lipogenic enzymes in several vertebrates

The liver lipogenic enzymes are compared among rats, chickens, frogs and fish. Although the apparent Km values of glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase for glucose-6-phosphate are not much different among all the species, those of malic enzyme for malate are much higher in chickens and fish than in rats and frogs. Glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase showed very high activities compared with malic enzyme in fish liver, and malic enzyme showed high activities in chicken liver. Although the apparent Km values of acetyl-CoA carboxylase and fatty acid synthetase for substrates are in the same range among all the animals, the activity of acetyl-CoA carboxylase seems to be extremely low in fish and frog livers, and that of fatty acid synthetase is low in frog livers only. In addition, the apparent Km values of α-glycerophosphate acyltransferase of fish liver are very high, and the enzyme activity appears to be extremely low compared to the others. Therefore, the enzymes at the first steps of both fatty acid and glycerolipid syntheses of poikilothermos animals appear to be very low. On the other hand, the Ouchterlony double-diffusion patterns showed that the lipogenic enzymes of chickens, frogs and fish are immunologically different from those of rats, with the exception of acetyl-CoA carboxylase in chickens. Therefore, it is suggested that the fatty acid and glycerolipid forming systems of poikilothermos animals are quite different from those of homoiothermos and the lipogenesis is very low in poikilothermos.     

Assessing the capability of code smells to explain maintenance problems: an empirical study combining quantitative and qualitative data

Code smells are indicators of deeper design problems that may cause difficulties in the evolution of a software system. This paper investigates the capability of twelve code smells to reflect actual maintenance problems. Four medium-sized systems with equivalent functionality but dissimilar design were examined for code smells. Three change requests were implemented on the systems by six software developers, each of them working for up to four weeks. During that period, we recorded problems faced by developers and the associated Java files on a daily basis. We developed a binary logistic regression model, with “problematic file” as the dependent variable. Twelve code smells, file size, and churn constituted the independent variables. We found that violation of the Interface Segregation Principle (a.k.a. ISP violation) displayed the strongest connection with maintenance problems. Analysis of the nature of the problems, as reported by the developers in daily interviews and think-aloud sessions, strengthened our view about the relevance of this code smell. We observed, for example, that severe instances of problems relating to change propagation were associated with ISP violation. Based on our results, we recommend that code with ISP violation should be considered potentially problematic and be prioritized for refactoring.