Ubiquitous preferential water adsorption to electrodes in water/1-propanol mixtures detected by electrochemical impedance spectroscopy

The electric double layer is an important structure that appears at charged liquid interfaces, and it determines the performance of various electrochemical devices such as supercapacitors and electrokinetic energy converters. Here the double-layer capacitance of the interface between aluminum electrodes and water/1-propanol electrolyte solutions is investigated using electrochemical impedance spectroscopy. The double-layer capacitances of mixture solvents are almost the same as those of water-only electrolyte solutions, and the double-layer capacitance of 1-propanol-only solutions are significantly smaller than those of other volume fractions of water. The qualitative variation of the double-layer capacitances with the water volume fraction is independent of the electrolyte types and their concentrations. Therefore, these results can be explained by ubiquitous preferential water adsorption caused by the hydrophilicity of the electrode surface.Comment: 7 pages, 5 figure

Moorella thermoaceticaにおける遺伝子組換え技術の開発及び有用物質生産への応用

内容の要旨 , 審査の要旨広島大学(Hiroshima University)博士(工学)Doctor of Engineeringdoctora

Similarities and differences between simultaneous and successive bilingual children: Acquisition of Japanese morphology

This paper compares the acquisition of Japanese morphology of two bilingual children who had different types of exposure to Japanese language in Australia: a simultaneous bilingual child who had exposure to both Japanese and English from birth, and a successive bilingual child who did not have regular exposure to Japanese until he was six years and three months old. The comparison is carried out using Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann 1998, 2005) as a common framework, and the corpus for this study consists of the naturally spoken production of these two Australian children. The results show that both children went through the same developmental path in their acquisition of the Japanese morphological structures, indicating that the same processing mechanisms are at work for both types of language acquisition. However, the results indicate that there are some differences between the two children, including the rate of acquisition, and the kinds of verbal morphemes acquired. The results of this study add further insight to an ongoing debate in the field of bilingual language acquisition: whether simultaneous bilingual children develop their language like a first language or like a second language

Similarities and differences between simultaneous and successive bilingual children : acquisition of Japanese morphology

This paper compares the acquisition of Japanese morphology of two bilingual children who had different types of exposure to Japanese language in Australia: a simultaneous bilingual child who had exposure to both Japanese and English from birth, and a successive bilingual child who did not have regular exposure to Japanese until he was six years and three months old. The comparison is carried out using Processability Theory (PT) (Pienemann 1998, 2005) as a common framework, and the corpus for this study consists of the naturally spoken production of these two Australian children. The results show that both children went through the same developmental path in their acquisition of the Japanese morphological structures, indicating that the same processing mechanisms are at work for both types of language acquisition. However, the results indicate that there are some differences between the two children, including the rate of acquisition, and the kinds of verbal morphemes acquired. The results of this study add further insight to an ongoing debate in the field of bilingual language acquisition: whether simultaneous bilingual children develop their language like a first language or like a second language

Cold Air Mass Analysis of the Record-Breaking Cold Surge Event over East Asia in January 2016

An extreme cold surge event caused record-breaking low temperatures in East Asia during 20-25 January 2016. The planetary- and synoptic-scale feature of the event is investigated quantitatively using the isentropic cold air mass analysis with a threshold potential temperature of 280 K. Because cold air mass is an adiabatically conservative quantity, it is suitable for tracing and examining the extreme cold surges. We further introduced a metric named mean wind of cold air mass, which divides the factor of cold air mass evolution into convergence and advection parts. The new metric allowed us to trace the evolution of the cold air mass with dynamic consistency for a period of more than a week.  A thick cold air mass built up over southern Sakha by a convergent cold air mass flow during 16-18 January. It migrated westward and reached Lake Baikal. On 20 January, an intense Siberian High developed, with an eastward-moving mid-upper-level ridge, producing a strong surface pressure gradient over the coastal regions of the Asian continent. This ridge and a cutoff low to the adjacent east formed a northerly flow in the mid-upper troposphere. The resultant southward flow through the troposphere blew the cold air mass over 480 hPa in thickness to the subtropical region of East Asia, causing strong cold surges there on 24 and 25 January.  The abnormality of the event is further quantified using extreme value theory. The cold air mass gradually became rare along the path of the cold air mass from Lake Baikal to eastern China, which experienced as thick a cold air mass as once in 200 years. The cold air mass itself shows little change in thickness. Therefore, the migration of a cold air mass over 540 hPa in thickness from northern Siberia is the major cause of this cold surge extreme

Encapsulation of mRNA into Artificial Viral Capsids via Hybridization of a β-Annulus-dT20 Conjugate and the Poly(A) Tail of mRNA

Messenger RNA (mRNA) drugs have attracted considerable attention as promising tools with many therapeutic applications. The efficient delivery of mRNA drugs using non-viral materials is currently being explored. We demonstrate a novel concept where mCherry mRNA bearing a poly(A) tail is encapsulated into capsids co-assembled from viral β-annulus peptides bearing a 20-mer oligothymine (dT20) at the N-terminus and unmodified peptides via hybridization of dT20 and poly(A). Dynamic light scattering measurements and transmission electron microscopy images of the mRNA-encapsulated capsids show the formation of spherical assemblies of approximately 50 nm. The encapsulated mRNA shows remarkable ribonuclease resistance. Further, modification by a cell-penetrating peptide (His16) on the capsid enables the intracellular expression of mCherry of encapsulated mRNA

Indicators and trends of polar cold airmass

Trends and variations in the amount of cold airmass in the Arctic and the Northern Hemisphere are evaluated for the 60 year period, 1959–2018. The two indicators are (1) polar cold air mass (PCAM), which is the amount of air below a potential temperature threshold, and (2) negative heat content (NHC), which includes a weighting by coldness. Because the metrics of coldness are based on multiple layers in the atmosphere, they provide a more comprehensive framework for assessment of warming than is provided by surface air temperatures alone. The negative trends of PCAM and NHC are stronger (as a % per decade) when the threshold is 245 K rather than 280 K, indicating that the loss of extremely cold air is happening at a faster rate than the loss of moderately cold air. The loss of cold air has accelerated, as the most rapid loss of NHC has occurred in recent decades (1989–2018). The spatial patterns of the trends of PCAM and NHC provide another manifestation of Arctic amplification. Of the various teleconnection indices, the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation shows the strongest correlations with the spatially integrated metrics of moderate coldness. Several Pacific indices also correlate significantly with these indicators. However, the amount of extremely cold air mass does not correlate significantly with the indices of internal variability used here.publishedVersio

Necessity for Reassessment of Patients with Serogroup 2 Hepatitis C Virus (HCV) and Undetectable Serum HCV RNA

We encountered a patient positive for anti-hepatitis C virus (HCV) whose serum HCV RNA was undetectable with the Roche AmpliPrep/Cobas TaqMan HCV assay (CAP/CTM) version 1 but showed a high viral load with the Abbott RealTime HCV assay (ART). Discrepancies in the detectability of serum HCV RNA were investigated among 891 consecutive patients who were positive for anti-HCV. Specific nucleotide variations causing the undetectability of HCV RNA were determined and confirmed by synthesizing RNA coding those variations. Serum samples with the discrepancies were also reassessed by CAP/CTM version 2. Among the 891 anti-HCV-positive patients, 4 patients had serum HCV RNA levels that were undetectable by CAP/CTM version 1 despite having levels of > 5 log IU/ml that were detected by ART. All four patients had HCV genotype 2a and high titers of anti-HCV. Sequencing of the HCV 5' noncoding regions revealed 2 common variations, A at nucleotide (nt) 145 and T at nt 151. Synthesized RNAs of the HCV 5' noncoding region with standard (NCR145G151C) and variant nucleotides at nt 145 and nt 151 were quantified with CAP/CTM. RNAs of NCR145G151C and NCR145G151T were quantifiable with CAP/CTM version 1, while those of NCR145A151T and NCR145A151C went undetected. The substitution from G to A at nt 145 specifically conferred this undetectability, while this undetectability was reverted in synthesized HCV RNA with correction of this variation. Reassessment of these samples by CAP/CTM version 2 resulted in similar levels of HCV RNA being detected by ART. We conclude that HCV patients with undetectable HCV RNA by CAP/CTM version 1 should be reassessed for viral quantification

Interaction between compressible fluid and sound in a flue instrument

In order to study the generation of (aerodynamic) sound in flue instruments, we numerically apply Howe’s energy corollary for a 2D model of flue instrument. Howe’s energy corollary enables us to estimate the energy transfer between fluid flow and acoustic field. To implement it, separating the acoustic field from the fluid flow is needed. However the complete method to numerically achieve it has not been established yet. In this work, we develop an approximate method, which has been recently proposed in their experimental studies by Yoshikawa et al (2012 J. Sound Vib. 331 2558-2577) and others, and we apply it to the simulation of the model instrument. We first calculate fluid flow and acoustic oscillation simultaneously by a compressible fluid solver. Next referring to the information on the acoustic oscillation obtained we set up a pressure source on an acoustic solver and reproduce almost the same acoustic oscillation with it. Combining those results, we are able to calculate Howe’s energy corollary. The numerical result shows that the aerodynamic sound is generated from the oscillating jet rather than the vortices shed by the collision of it with the edge of the mouth opening, namely vortex shedding