Recovery of deuterium from H–D gas mixture by thermal diffusion in the Frazier scheme

The separation equation for predicting the deuterium recovery from H–D gas mixture by thermal diffusion in the cocurrent-flow Frazier schemes has been derived. The degrees of separation, as well as separation factors, for deuterium recovery in the Frazier scheme of cryogenic wall thermal-diffusion columns were estimated, with the use of the experimental data obtained by Arita et al. and the transport coefficients correlated in the previous work. Considerable enhancement in deuterium recovery is achievable if the number of thermal diffusion columns in a Frazier scheme is continuously increased, especially for the operation under higher volume flow rate and/or lower operating pressure.     

The p38 and NFκB signaling protein activation involved in glycitein protective effects on isoproterenol-treated H9c2 cardiomyoblast cells

Heart disease (HD) is greatly associated with gender and clinical evidence shows that increased serum norepinephrine levels are found in patients with HD. This study investigates the cardio-protective effect of glycitein, a selective estrogen receptor modulator (SERM) from soy bean extract, on H9c2 cardiomyoblast cells treated with isoproterenol (ISO, a norepinephrine analog). The image data and results from western blotting showed that ISO treatment was capable of inducing cellular apoptosis, especially the mitochondrial dependent pathway. Glycitein treatment could suppress mitochondrial pro-apoptotic proteins expression including caspase-9 and caspase-3 in H9c2 treated with ISO. In contrast, several survival proteins were expressed in H9c2 cells treated with glycitein, such as phosphor (p)-Akt, p-Bad and Akt. We confirmed that the protective role of glycitein was partially mediated through the expression of p-38 and NFκB proteins by adding several pathway inhibitors.     

Performance Comparison of Rectangular and Air-Foil Shapes Offset Strip Flow Paths Micro-Heat Exchangers

This study designed and tested eight micro-heat exchangers with rectangle-, air-foil-, and shuttle-type strips for use in the liquid cooling system. The effects of strip length, strip type, and strip arrangement were considered for heat transfer performance comparison. The test results show that the heat exchangers with shorter strip length and narrower strip space provide better heat transfer performance. The short air-foil strips heat exchanger with 1.0 mm strip length performed the lowest thermal resistance among all types of heat exchangers. Because of its narrow flow paths, the performance of the overlapped shuttle strip heat exchanger is better than that of the offset shuttle, long air-foil, and rectangle strip heat exchangers. However, the space between strips is limited by the fabrication techniques and is difficult to be made narrower by the method of chemical etching.     

1‐Arylsulfonyl‐5‐(N‐hydroxyacrylamide)indolines Histone Deacetylase Inhibitors Are Potent Cytokine Release Suppressors

A series of 1‐arylsulfonyl‐5‐(N‐hydroxyacrylamide)indolines ( 7 – 15 ) has been developed; the compounds exhibited potent histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitory activities. Notably, almost all of this series exhibited better HDAC‐inhibitory and antiproliferative activities than 3‐(1‐benzenesulfonyl‐1H‐indol‐5‐yl)‐N‐hydroxyacrylamide ( 6 ), as reported in a previous study. Among these compounds, 3‐[1‐(4‐methoxybenzenesulfonyl)‐2,3‐dihydro‐1H‐indol‐5‐yl]‐N‐hydroxyacrylamide ( 9 ) showed a two‐ to tenfold increase in activity compared to SAHA ( 1 ) in the suppression of lipopolysaccharide‐induced cytokine production. Compound 9 also caused a marked reduction in carrageenan‐induced acute inflammation in a rat model. Taken together, these data indicated that 1‐arylsulfonyl‐5‐(N‐hydroxyacrylamide)indolines HDAC inhibitors exhibit potent anti‐inflammatory activity.     

Development of a Digital-Convolution-Based Process Emulator for Three-Dimensional Microstructure Fabrication Using Electron-Beam Lithography

Although electron-beam lithography has been demonstrated to be feasible in creating 3-D micropolymer structures, the proximity effect due to forward and backward scatterings usually makes it difficult to precisely determine the distribution of electron irradiation. The process design for creating the desired shape still largely depends on a trial-and-error basis. Therefore, in order to reduce the cost and to accelerate product development, it is important to utilize computer-aided design tools. A method, called as element growth method, which is based on digital convolution approach, is developed and presented under an OpenGL environment to reduce the cost and the developmental period for fabrication. By using such a convolution approach, this emulator converts the processing parameters into a final spatial-dosage distribution and subsequently into the final geometry of structures. In addition, a physically based kernel function is also proposed and used. Examples of 3-D microstructures such as the microlens are presented. By these tools, it is possible to provide guidelines for optimizing the fabrication process and to reduce the cost for the related e-beam lithography-based 3-D fabrication.     

Novel contact hole fabrication using selective liquid-phasedeposition instead of reactive ion etching

This work forms a contact hole utilizing the selectively liquid-phase deposited (S-LPD) silicon-oxide technique instead of the conventional reactive ion etching (RIE). The n⁺/p junction diode with contact hole formed by S-LPD exhibits an order of magnitude less reverse current, larger forward current, smaller ideality factor, and better thermal stability than that formed by RIE. A Schottky junction with S-LPD contact hole also possesses several excellent characteristics, including ideality factor, reverse current and barrier height, even without sintering treatment. These characteristics confirm the effectiveness of the S-LPD technique in replacing conventional RIE to form contact holes, particularly for future ultra-shallow junctions     

Performance of random-access-memory-based equalizers in magneticrecording

We discuss two algorithms for mitigating the deleterious effects of nonlinear intersymbol interference in PR4- and EPR4-equalized magnetic recording channels. We call these algorithms RAM-Search algorithm because they borrow the idea of employing random-access memory (RAM) from the RAM decision-feedback equalizer (DFE) and because they involve a search. The RAM-Search algorithms have been devised to mitigate the error propagation problem that arises in making feedforward decisions (for precursor terms) in intersymbol interference (ISI) cancellers used in combination with partial-response signaling. We adopt a simple partial-erasure model for the nonlinear write process and a third-order polynomial model for the nonlinear read process, and show that improvements of about 2.5 dB are possible. We also demonstrate the efficacy of the algorithms on captured spinstand signals that suffer from a significant amount of nonlinear ISI     

Enrichment of heavy water in flat‐plate thermal diffusion columns of the frazier scheme with the optimal plate aspect ratio for best performance

The solutions of the optimum plate aspect ratio as well as the corresponding maximum separation, maximum production rate and minimum plate surface area in thermal diffusion columns of the Frazier scheme for enrichment of heavy water have been obtained, analogous to those obtained in the previous work for separation of a binary system. It was found that all the optimum plate aspect ratios do not depend on feed concentration, while the corresponding best performances do. It is found that considerable improvement in performance is obtained when the operation is carried out with the optimal plate aspect ratio.