The helium and oxygen gas barrier properties of poly(lactide) were investigated as a function of stereochemistry and crystallinity degree. Poly(L-lactide) and poly(D,L-lactide) films were obtained by extrusion and thermally cold crystallized in either a0or a-crystalline form with increasing crystallinity degree. Annealing of the films at low temperatures yielded to a0-crystals as well as the cr...

A novel determination method for urea using an acid urease column-FIA system was developed, and the system was applied to the determination of urea in rice wine. This novel FIA system was characterized by CO2 detection due to the property of acid urease and by a microfluidic gas-diffusion device with the use of an ultra-thin hollow fiber membrane. A biosensing system fabricated in this study wa...

Resent observations of a number of galaxy clusters using the Sunyaev-Zel’dovich effect indicate that about 1/3 of baryonic mass is missing from the hot intracluster medium (ICM), which is significantly larger than the fraction of stars and cool gas, which account for only about 10%. Here we address the question whether the remaining 22± 10% can be accounted for by thermal evaporation of gas fro...