The nucleotide sequence reported for the Dictyostelium discoideum ceramidase is available on the DNA Data Bank of Japan (DDBJ). Ceramidases (CDases) are currently classified into three categories (acid, neutral and alkaline) based on their optimal pHs and primary structures. Here, we report the first exception to this rule. We cloned the CDase cDNA, consisting of 2142 nucleotides encoding 714 a...

Acellular slime mould Physarum polycephalum is a popular now user-friendly living substrate for designing of future and emergent sensing and computing devices. P. polycephalum exhibits regular patterns of oscillations of its surface electrical potential. The oscillation patterns are changed when the slime mould is subjected to mechanical, chemical, electrical or optical stimuli. We evaluate fea...

[1] Observations of snow water equivalent (SWE) in the Pacific Northwest are examined and compared with variability and trends in temperature and precipitation at nearby climate stations. At most locations, especially below about 1800 m, substantial declines in SWE coincide with significant increases in temperature, and occur in spite of increases in precipitation.

Allelic variation at 46 simple sequence repeat (SSR) marker loci well distributed across the sorghum genome was used to assess genetic diversity among 92 sorghum lines, 74 resistant and 18 susceptible to grain mould. Of the 46 SSR markers, 44 were polymorphic, with the number of alleles ranging from 2 to 20 with an average of 7.55 alleles per locus. Genetic diversity among the sorghum lines was...

A key issue in nanoimprint lithography (NIL) is determining the ultimate pitch resolution achievable for various pattern shapes and their critical dimensional control. To this end, we demonstrated the fabrication of 6 nm half-pitch gratings and 0.04 μm2 cell area SRAM metal interconnects with 20 nm line half-pitch in resist by NIL. The mould for the 6 nm half-pitch grating was fabricated by cle...

Use of conventional flexible polymeric mould materials yields to longer solidification time of (wax/plastic) patterns in soft tooling process, thereby reducing the rapidity of the process to a great extent, which is not desirable in present competitive market. In this work, approach of particle-reinforcement with mould materials is introduced to reduce the cycle time of Soft tooling process and...

Abstract: structures in alloys. This method is based on pouring the melt through a small sized nozzle into a mould located at acertain height under the crucible. This simple method generates globular structures without using equipments such asimpellers, electromagnetic stirrers, ultrasonic probes and cooling slopes. Therefore it is cost effective. In the presentstudy, the effect of casting size...

Continuous casting is a critical step in the steel manufacturing process where molten metal is solidified in the form of slabs of rectangular cross-section. Minor variations in this step can impact the production process widely – from excellent product quality to breakdown in the production chain. In continuous casting the liquid steel from a ladle is first poured into a buffer vessel called a ...