Effect of Pd Precursor Salts on the Chemical State, Particle Size, and Performance of Activated Carbon-Supported Pd Catalysts for the Selective Hydrogenation of Palm Biodiesel.

To improve the oxidative stability of biodiesel fuel (BDF), the polyunsaturated fatty acid methyl esters (poly-FAME) presented in commercial palm oil-derived biodiesel fuel (palm-BDF) were selectively hydrogenated to monounsaturated fatty acid methyl esters (mono-FAME) under a mild condition (80 °C, 0.5 MPa) using activated carbon (AC)-supported Pd catalysts with a Pd loading of 1 wt.%.

Reliability and Validity of the Japanese Version of the Mini-balance Evaluation Systems Test in Patients with Subacute Stroke.

Objective: The objective of the current study was to evaluate the reliability and validity of the Japanese version of the Mini-Balance Evaluation Systems Test (J-Mini-BESTest) in patients with subacute stroke.

Methods: Eighteen patients who had suffered a first hemiplegic stroke (mean age, 59.1 ± 27.

Surplus adsorption of bromide ion into π-conjugated carbon nanospaces assisted by proton coadsorption.

Nanoporous carbons can preferentially adsorb bromide ions from an aqueous solution of alkali metal bromides, even on π-conjugated surfaces. Our results show a new adsorption mechanism whereby coadsorption of protons enhances the adsorption of the anions onto the carbons.

High-power supercapacitor electrodes from single-walled carbon nanohorn/nanotube composite.

A novel composite is presented as a supercapacitor electrode with a high maximum power rating (990 kW/kg; 396 kW/l) exceeding power performances of other electrodes. The high-power capability of the electrode stemmed from its unique meso-macro pore structure engineered through the utilization of single-walled carbon nanotubes (20 wt %) as scaffolding for single-walled carbon nanohorns (80 wt %). The novel composite electrode also exhibited durable operation (6.

Inhibition of N-acetylgalactosamine 4-sulfate 6-O-sulfotransferase by beta-D-4-O-sulfo-N-acetylgalactosaminides bearing various hydrophobic aglycons.

N-acetylgalactosamine 4-sulfate 6-O-sulfotransferase (GalNAc4S-6ST) transfers sulfate to position 6 of GalNAc(4SO4) residues of chondroitin sulfate to yield chondroitin sulfate E (CS-E). We have previously demonstrated that phenyl-beta-D-GalNAc(4SO4) could serve as an acceptor for GalNAc4S-6ST, thereby inhibiting GalNAc4S-6ST competitively. In this paper we compared the inhibitory effects of various glycosides in which various hydrophobic aglycons were attached to D-GalNAc(4SO4) via ss anomeric configuration.

Analysis and modeling of naturalness in handwritten characters.

In this paper, we define the naturalness of handwritten characters as being the difference between the strokes of the handwritten characters and the archetypal fonts on which they are based. With this definition, we mathematically analyze the relationship between the font and its naturalness using canonical correlation analysis (CCA), multiple linear regression analysis, feedforward neural networks (FFNNs) with sliding windows, and recurrent neural networks (RNNs). This analysis reveals that certain properties of font character strokes do not have a linear relationship with their naturalness.

Improving the performance of predicting users' subjective evaluation characteristics to reduce their fatigue in IEC.

Users' fatigue is the biggest technological hurdle facing Interactive Evolutionary Computation (IEC). This paper introduces the idea of "absolute scale" and "neighbour scale" to improve the performance of predicting users' subjective evaluation characteristics in IEC, and thus it will accelerate EC convergence and reduce users' fatigue. We experimentally evaluate the effect of the proposed method using two benchmark functions.

Proposal for a framework for optimizing artificial environments based on physiological feedback.

We propose and then evaluate a new framework for finding the physical parameters of an artificial environment which give rise to given target physiological characteristics. We assume that a human is a system that takes as inputs the physical parameters of an artificial environment and outputs physiological parameters in response. We define our task as the inverse problem; we must find the best inputs from given target outputs.

Virtual reality environment design of managing both presence and virtual reality sickness.

It is difficult to design the Virtual Reality (VR) Environment which controls VR sickness and promotes presence. This is because the relationship between the user's susceptibility to VR sickness and a sense of presence, determined by velocity and visual angle of the visual information, involves a trade-off between the two. Then we propose the optimal value search system which computes efficiently the velocity and visual angle which control VR sickness and do not impair presence by taking account of a subject's characteristic.

Synthesis of calix[4]arene and porphyrin tethering four chiral five-membered cyclic carbonates.

Calix[4]arene tethering four chiral five-membered cyclic carbonates 1c was synthesized by O-glycidylation of p-tert-butylcalix[4]arene 1a with (R)-glycidyl tosylate, followed by carbonation with carbon dioxide catalyzed by lithium bromide. Porphyrin tethering chiral five-membered cyclic carbonates 2c was similarly synthesized.