A facile non-oxidative method for synthesizing 1,3-disubstituted pyrroles from pyrrolidine and aldehydes

ArticleTETRAHEDRON LETTERS. 48(52): 9159-9162 (2007)journal articl

DDBJ dealing with mass data produced by the second generation sequencer

DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ) (http://www.ddbj.nig.ac.jp) collected and released 2 368 110 entries or 1 415 106 598 bases in the period from July 2007 to June 2008. The releases in this period include genome scale data of Bombyx mori, Oryzas latipes, Drosophila and Lotus japonicus. In addition, from this year we collected and released trace archive data in collaboration with National Center for Biotechnology Information (NCBI). The first release contains those of O. latipes and bacterial meta genomes in human gut. To cope with the current progress of sequencing technology, we also accepted and released more than 100 million of short reads of parasitic protozoa and their hosts that were produced by using a Solexa sequencer

βdecay of the 21/2^+ isomer in ^<93>Mo and level structure of ^<93>Nb

The γ rays associated with β decay of the 21/2^+ isomer in ^Mo (Ex=2.425 MeV, T_=6.85 h) were measured with a selective sensitivity to long-lived isomer decays. A new 1262-keV transition was found in the γ-γ coincidence measurement, and it was attributed to a transition in ^Nb, which is the daughter nucleus of the β decay of the ^Mo isomer, from the 2.753- to the 1.491-MeV levels. Accurate γ-ray intensity balances have determined the β-decay intensity from the ^Mo isomer to the 2.753-MeV level in ^Nb and placed no appreciable intensity for the previously reported β-decay branching to the 2.180-MeV level, for which a recent in-beam γ-ray experiment assigned to be I^π = 17/2^-. Based on the γ-ray intensities from the 2.753-MeV level, spin-parity assignment of this level was revised from 21/2^+ to 19/2^+. The observed β-decay intensity and the spin-parity assignment were explained by the jj-coupling shell model calculations

Probing electrochemistry at the nanoscale: in situ TEM and STM characterizations of conducting filaments in memristive devices

Memristors or memristive devices are two-terminal nanoionic systems whose resistance switching effects are induced by ion transport and redox reactions in confined spaces down to nanometer or even atomic scales. Understanding such localized and inhomogeneous electrochemical processes is a challenging but crucial task for continued applications of memristors in nonvolatile memory, reconfigurable logic, and brain inspired computing. Here we give a survey for two of the most powerful technologies that are capable of probing the resistance switching mechanisms at the nanoscale – transmission electron microscopy, especially in situ, and scanning tunneling microscopy, for memristive systems based on both electrochemical metallization and valence changes. These studies yield rich information about the size, morphology, composition, chemical state and growth/dissolution dynamics of conducting filaments and even individual metal nanoclusters, and have greatly facilitated the understanding of the underlying mechanisms of memristive switching. Further characterization of cyclic operations leads to additional insights into the degradation in performance, which is important for continued device optimization towards practical applications

The GTOP database in 2009: updated content and novel features to expand and deepen insights into protein structures and functions

The Genomes TO Protein Structures and Functions (GTOP) database (http://spock.genes.nig.ac.jp/~genome/gtop.html) freely provides an extensive collection of information on protein structures and functions obtained by application of various computational tools to the amino acid sequences of entirely sequenced genomes. GTOP contains annotations of 3D structures, protein families, functions, and other useful data of a protein of interest in user-friendly ways to give a deep insight into the protein structure. From the initial 1999 version, GTOP has been continually updated to reap the fruits of genome projects and augmented to supply novel information, in particular intrinsically disordered regions. As intrinsically disordered regions constitute a considerable fraction of proteins and often play crucial roles especially in eukaryotes, their assignments give important additional clues to the functionality of proteins. Additionally, we have incorporated the following features into GTOP: a platform independent structural viewer, results of HMM searches against SCOP and Pfam, secondary structure predictions, color display of exon boundaries in eukaryotic proteins, assignments of gene ontology terms, search tools, and master files