Effect of intracellular free calcium mobilization on aggregation of umbilical cord blood platelets.

&#60;P&#62;Aggregation activity of platelets in umbilical blood is lower than that in adult blood, but the reason for this is not well understood. It has recently been clarified that calcium plays a role as a second messenger of platelet aggregation, and that glycoproteins of platelet surface membrane such as glycoprotein I b and IIb/IIIa are receptors for agonists inducing aggregation. We examined the concentrations of intracellular calcium and the membrane glycoproteins of platelets in umbilical and adult blood. The increase of intracellular calcium in umbilical platelets was lower than that in adult platelets when the aggregation was induced by ADP, collagen, thrombin and epinephrine. Only calcium ionophore A23187 induced aggregation of both umbilical and adult platelets. On the other hand, there were no qualitative differences between glycoproteins I b and IIb/IIIa of these two groups. Therefore, the low aggregation activity of umbilical platelets seems to be due to low responsiveness of the intracellular calcium system, not to the disorder of functional surface membrane glycoprotein.&#60;/P&#62;</p

Development of Radiation Hard N+-on-P Silicon Microstrip Sensors for Super LHC

Radiation tolerance up to 1015 1-MeV neq/cm2 is required for the silicon microstrip sensors to be operated at the Super LHC experiment. As a candidate for such sensors, we are investigating non-inverting n+-on-p sensors. We manufactured sample sensors of 1 times 1 cm in 4" and 6" processes with implementing different interstrip electrical isolation structures. Industrial high resistive p-type wafers from FZ and MCZ growth are tested. They are different in crystal orientations lang100rang and lang111rang with different wafer resistivities. The sensors were irradiated with 70-MeV protons and characterized in views of the leakage current increase, noise figures, electrical strip isolation, full depletion voltage evolution, and charge collection efficiency

Diet of the mesopelagic fish Notoscopelus japonicus (Family: Myctophidae) associated with the continental slope off the Pacific coast of Honshu, Japan

The diet of Notoscopelus japonicus, one of the dominant mesopelagic fishes in the transitional waters of the western North Pacific, was examined in 106 specimens collected over the continental slope off the Pacific coast of northern Japan during April and October 1996. The prey comprised mainly crustaceans, such as copepods, ostracods, euphausiids and amphipods. Euphausia pacifica was the dominant prey, representing 83.1% by number and 72.4% by wet weight of the total diet. Between April and October, there was no shift in prey species consumed, but prey size decreased significantly and prey number per fish stomach increased in October. These results indicate that, in October, N. japonicus consumed larger numbers of smaller E. pacifica, rather than shifting to other prey taxa. The pronounced importance of E. pacifica in the diet was ascribed to its co-occurrence with N. japonicus at night in the surface layer and during the daytime in the near-bottom layer

Performance of anaerobic membrane bioreactor during digestion and thickening of aerobic membrane bioreactor excess sludge

To investigate interactions between oppositely charged fluorescent dyes and dissolved humic substances, fluorescence quenching of fluorescein and rhodamine 6G with dissolved humic substances was performed. Binding coefficients were obtained by the Stern–Volmer equation. The fluorescence of rhodamine 6G was largely quenched by the addition of humic acid and a non-linear Stern–Volmer plot was obtained. This strong quenching may be caused by the electrostatic interaction between cationic rhodamine 6G and humic acid and strengthened by the hydrophobic repulsion. In contrast, the quenching and interactive effects of dissolved humic substances for fluorescein were relatively weak

Ultrafast spin tunneling and injection in coupled nanostructures of InGaAs quantum dots and quantum well

We investigate the electron-spin injection dynamics via tunneling from an In0.1Ga0.9As quantum well (QW) to In0.5Ga0.5As quantum dots (QDs) in coupled QW-QDs nanostructures. These coupled nanostructures demonstrate ultrafast (5 to 20 ps) spin injection into the QDs. The degree of spin polarization up to 45% is obtained in the QDs after the injection, essentially depending on the injection time. The spin injection and conservation are enhanced with thinner barriers due to the stronger electronic coupling between the QW and QDs. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC

Growth-temperature dependence of optical spin-injection dynamics in self-assembled InGaAs quantum dots

The growth-temperature dependence of the optical spin-injection dynamics in self-assembled quantum dots (QDs) of In0.5Ga0.5As was studied by increasing the sheet density of the dots from 2 x 10(10) to 7 x 10(10) cm(-2) and reducing their size through a decrease in growth temperature from 500 to 470 degrees C. The circularly polarized transient photoluminescence (PL) of the resulting QD ensembles was analyzed after optical excitation of spin-polarized carriers in GaAs barriers by using rate equations that take into account spin-injection dynamics such as spin-injection time, spin relaxation during injection, spin-dependent state-filling, and subsequent spin relaxation. The excitation-power dependence of the transient circular polarization of PL in the QDs, which is sensitive to the state-filling effect, was also examined. It was found that a systematic increase occurs in the degree of circular polarization of PL with decreasing growth temperature, which reflects the transient polarization of exciton spin after spin injection. This is attributed to strong suppression of the filling effect for the majority-spin states as the dot-density of the QDs increases. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC