Two-dimensional multiarray formation of hepatocyte spheroids on a microfabricated PEG-brush surface

A two-dimensional microarray of ten thousand (100 x 100) hepatocyte heterospheroids, underlaid with endothelial cells, was successfully constructed with 100 microm spacing in an active area of 20 x 20 mm on microfabricated glass substrates that were coated with poly(ethylene glycol) brushes. Cocultivation of hepatocytes with endothelial cells was essential to stabilize hepatocyte viability and liver-specific functions, allowing us to obtain hepatocyte spheroids with a diameter of 100 microm, functioning as a miniaturized liver to secret albumin for at least one month. The most important feature of this study is that these substrates are defined to provide an unprecedented control of substrate properties for modulating cell behavior, employing both surface engineering and synthetic polymer chemistry. The spheroid array constructed here is highly useful as a platform of tissue and cell-based biosensors and detects a wide variety of clinically, pharmacologically, and toxicologically active compounds through a cellular physiological response.     

Simulation of characteristics of a SiO2/c-axis-oriented LiNbO3/diamond surface acoustic wave

High-frequency surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices based on diamond that have been realized to date utilize c-axis-oriented ZnO as the piezoelectric thin film. This material, with SiO2 overlay, shows excellent characteristics of a high phase velocity of over 10,000 m/s and a zero temperature coefficient, and it has been successfully applied to high-frequency SAW filters and resonators. To expand on materials used on diamond, the theoretical calculation has been carried out for LiNbO3/diamond, and a high electromechanical coupling coefficient up to 9.0% is expected. In this work, the characteristics of SiO2/LiNbO3/diamond were studied by computer simulation, emphasizing a zero temperature coefficient with a high coupling coefficient. Calculations are carried out for the phase velocity, the electromechanical coupling coefficient, and the temperature coefficient of the Rayleigh wave and its higher mode Sezawa wave. As a result, SiO2/IDT/LiNbO3/diamond is found to offer a zero temperature coefficient with a very high coupling coefficient up to 10.1% in conjunction with a high phase velocity of 12,100 m/s.     

Pulsed laser irradiation impact on two marine diatoms Skeletonema costatum and Chaetoceros gracilis

The ability of pulsed laser irradiations to cause damage on the biofouling organisms is recently being investigated. If this technique is employed in industries such as power generation wherein a large quantity of water is being used for the cooling purpose, many organisms other than the targeted would get affected. In this study, we have investigated the damage caused by the pulsed laser irradiations from an Nd:YAG laser (fluence 0.1J/cm(2)) for varying durations such as 2, 5, 10, 30, 60 and 300 s on two marine diatom species namely Skeletonema costatum and Chaetoceros gracilis. Upon exposure to low power laser irradiations, these diatom species showed mortalities between 52.6+/-9.3% to 97.7+/-3.1% in the case of S. costatum and 57.8+/-2.5% to 98.9+/-0.6% in the case of C. gracilis for 2 and 300 s of irradiations, respectively. The mortality increased with the increase in the duration of laser irradiation. The estimation of the chlorophyll a concentration in the irradiated samples showed a considerable reduction varying between 9.8% and 57% in C. gracilis and 3% and 70.3% in S. costatum for 2 and 300 s of irradiations, respectively. The laser-survived cells grew as the non-irradiated (control) samples. C. gracilis frustules were broken by the laser whilst, the cell materials were drained out of the frustules in the case of S. costatum. The study therefore showed that the low power pulsed laser irradiations could cause significant damage on the two species of planktonic diatoms.     

Developmental word acquisition and grammar learning by humanoid robots through a self-organizing incremental neural network.

We present a new approach for online incremental word acquisition and grammar learning by humanoid robots. Using no data set provided in advance, the proposed system grounds language in a physical context, as mediated by its perceptual capacities. It is carried out using show-and-tell procedures, interacting with its human partner. Moreover, this procedure is open-ended for new words and multiword utterances. These facilities are supported by a self-organizing incremental neural network, which can execute online unsupervised classification and topology learning. Embodied with a mental imagery, the system also learns by both top-down and bottom-up processes, which are the syntactic structures that are contained in utterances. Thereby, it performs simple grammar learning. Under such a multimodal scheme, the robot is able to describe online a given physical context (both static and dynamic) through natural language expressions. It can also perform actions through verbal interactions with its human partner.     

Significant improvement of magnetic properties and corrosion resistance in evaporated Co-Ni recording media

An addition of a very small amount of Pr in Co-Ni films of a recording medium improves both corrosion resistance and frequency response. The columnar grains, which are induced by oblique incidence of evaporation, becomes remarkably finer by the addition of rare-earth elements. The TEM image of the cross section of the films shows a dense packed structure. High magnetization and a better corrosion resistance are considered to be due to the dense packed structure. The fine grain improves the frequency response. Among several rare-earth elements, especially Pr doping yields a best recording performance.     

A new recovery process of carbon dioxide from alkaline carbonate solution via electrodialysis

Bipolar membrane electrodialysis is applied to CO₂ recovery from alkaline carbonate solution. CO₂ in flue gas is captured by an alkaline hydroxide absorbing solution to form an alkaline carbonate solution. The captured CO₂ is recovered from the alkaline carbonate solution via bipolar membrane electrodialysis, and the alkaline solution is regenerated simultaneously. To reduce the power requirement for CO₂ recovery, this study considers optimal design and operation. Three membrane arrangements were compared, and the results indicate the membrane arrangement comprising a bipolar membrane and cation exchange membrane is the most energy saving. With further optimization of operation conditions, the minimum power requirement for CO₂ recovery was reduced to 2.1 MJ/kg‐CO₂ (or 2.1 GJ/t‐CO₂). © 2009 American Institute of Chemical Engineers AIChE J, 2009     

Adsorption properties of amphiphilic polyoxyalkylenated dimethylpolysiloxane derivatives on keratin

Adsorption properties of two types of dimethylpolysiloxane backbone derivatives, perfluoroalkyl polyoxyethylenated dimethylpolysiloxane (FPD) and polyoxyethylenated dimethylpolysiloxane (PD), onto keratin surfaces were investigated. Both polymers are amphiphilic, since they possess hydrophilic polyoxyethylene groups. FPD contains a perfluoroalkyl group that provides both water-and oil-repellent properties, whereas PD lacks these groups. Adsorption properties of these polymers onto keratin surfaces are considered a good index to evaluate these compounds as nonionics used in hair-coating agents, since keratin is a major component of hair. FPD was more likely to be adsorbed and less likely to be eliminated from the keratin surface than PD. Once FPD had been adsorbed onto the keratin surface, it was very slowly washed from the surface when it was immersed in stationary water, whereas PD polymers were quickly washed from the keratin surface. Even in running water, rapid elimination of FPD was not observed. The strong resistance to loss of FPD after washing with a large quantity of water may be due to the water-repellent nature of the perfluoroalkyl groups. As a comparison, FPD adsorption onto a glass surface was also investigated. The affinity to the glass surface was found to be less than to the keratin surface.     

An inference method for the complete inverse of relative subsumption

We propose in this paper an inference method called Bottom Generalization for Inductive Logic Programming (ILP, for short). We give an inference procedure based on it, and prove that a hypothesis clauseH is derived by the procedure from an exampleE under a background theoryB iffH subsumesE relative toB in Plotkin’s sense. The theoryB can be any clausal theory, and the exampleE can be any clause which is not implied byB. The derived hypothesisH is a clause, but is not always definite. The result is proved by defining a declarative semantics for arbitrary consistent clausal theories, and showing that SB-resolution, which was originally introduced by Plotkin, gives their complete procedural semantics. We also show that Bottom Generalization is more powerful than both Jung’s method based on theV-operator and Saturant Generalization by Rouveirol, but not than Inverse Entailment by Muggleton. At the ILP ’97 workshop we called our inference method “Inverse Entailment,” but we have renamed it “Bottom Generalization” because we found that it differs from the original definition of Inverse Entailment. The main part of this work was accomplished while the author was visiting the Artificial Intelligence Group, Department of Computer Science, Technical University Darmstadt, Germany. Akihiro Yamamoto, Dr.: He is an Associate Professor of the Division of Electronics and Information Engineering at Hokkaido University. He received the B.S. degree from Kyoto University in 1985, and the M.S. and Dr.Sci. degrees from Kyushu University in 1987 and 1990 respectively. He was a guest researcher of Oxford University Computing Laboratory, the United Kingdom, from January 1996 to March 1996, and of Department of Computer Science at Technical University Darmstadt, Germany, from June 1996 to May 1997. His present interests include the application of Logic Programming and Theorem Proving to Machine Learning.