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Renewable vinyl compounds itaconic acid (IA) and its derivative 10-hydroxyhexylitaconic acid (10-HHIA) are naturally produced by fungi from biomass. This provides the opportunity to develop new biobased polyvinyls from IA and 10-HHIA monomers. In this study, we copolymerized these monomers at different ratios through free radical aqueous polymerization with potassium peroxodisulfate as an initiator, resulting in poly(IA-co-10-HHIA)s with different monomer compositions. We characterized the thermal properties of the polymers by thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy (FT-IR). The nuclear magnetic resonance analysis and the gel permeation chromatography showed that the polymerization conversion, yield, and the molecular weights (weight-averaged Mw and number-averaged Mn) of the synthesized poly(IA-co-10-HHIA)s decreased with increasing 10-HHIA content. It is suggested that the hydroxyhexyl group of 10-HHIA inhibited the polymerization. The TGA results indicated that the poly(IA-co-10-HHIA)s continuously decomposed as temperature increased. The FT-IR analysis suggested that the formation of the hydrogen bonds between the carboxyl groups of IA and 10-HHIA in the polymer chains was promoted by heating and consequently the polymer dehydration occurred. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first time that biobased polyvinyls were synthesized using naturally occurring IA derivatives.

We study Schwarz's map for Appell's second system $\cF_2$ of hypergeometric differential equations in two variables with parameters $a=c_1=c_2=\frac{1}{2}$, $b_1=b_2=\frac{1}{4}$. By using theta functions with characteristics, we give a defining equation of an analytic set in $\C^2\times \H$ of its image, and express its inverse., 38 pages 4 figures

Juvenile hormone (JH) plays a pivotal role in many aspects of insect physiology. Although its presence was first reported in a blood-sucking bug belonging to the suborder Heteroptera (true bugs), JH species in the group has long been controversial. Although some recent studies proposed a putative JH molecular species in several Heteropteran species, it is not conclusive because physicochemical analyses were insufficient in most cases. Here, we studied this issue with an ultraperformance liquid chromatography-tandem mass spectrometer (UPLC-MS/MS) equipped with C18 and chiral columns in the bean bug Riptortus pedestris (Heteroptera, Alydidae), in which the JH species has long been controversial. Although a recent study describes JHSB3 as the major JH of this species, that finding was not conclusive because its chirality has not been clarified. In the present study, we detected methyl (2R,3S,10R)-2,3;10,11-bisepoxyfarnesoate, commonly named juvenile hormone III skipped bisepoxide (JHSB3), in the culture media of the corpora cardiaca-corpus allatum (CC-CA) complex and in the hemolymph of this species by a chiral ultraperformance liquid chromatography- tandem mass spectrometer (UPLC-MS/MS). Other JHSB3 stereoisomers were not detected. Topical application of JHSB3 effectively averted diapause. These results indicate that JHSB3 is the major JH of R. pedestris. The present study further revealed that JHSB3 and its (2R,3S,10S) isomer are more potent than (2S,3R,10R) and (2S,3R,10S) isomers, which suggests that there is a significance to the configuration of the 2,3-epoxide moiety in JH action. We further found a supplemental significance to the configuration of the 10-position.

It has been suggested that pain control during intracavitary brachytherapy for cervical cancer is insufficient in most hospitals in Japan. Our hospital began using caudal epidural anesthesia during high-dose-rate (HDR) intracavitary brachytherapy in 2011. The purpose of the present study was to retrospectively investigate the effects of caudal epidural anesthesia during HDR intracavitary brachytherapy for cervical cancer patients. Caudal epidural anesthesia for 34 cervical cancer patients was performed during HDR intracavitary brachytherapy between October 2011 and August 2013. We used the patients' self-reported Numeric Rating Scale (NRS) score at the first session of HDR intracavitary brachytherapy as a subjective evaluation of pain. We compared NRS scores of the patients with anesthesia with those of 30 patients who underwent HDR intracavitary brachytherapy without sacral epidural anesthesia at our hospital between May 2010 and August 2011. Caudal epidural anesthesia succeeded in 33 patients (97%), and the NRS score was recorded in 30 patients. The mean NRS score of the anesthesia group was 5.17 ± 2.97, significantly lower than that of the control group's 6.80 ± 2.59 (P = 0.035). The caudal epidural block resulted in no side-effects. Caudal epidural anesthesia is an effective and safe anesthesia option during HDR intracavitary brachytherapy for cervical cancer.

We study the monodromy representation of the generalized hypergeometric differential equation and that of Lauricella's $F_C$ system of hypergeometric differential equations. We use fundamental systems of solutions expressed by the hypergeometric series. We express non-diagonal circuit matrices as reflections with respect to root vectors with all entries $1$. We present a simple way to obtain circuit matrices., 25 pages

In this paper, we give a transformation formula for Appell's hypergeometric function $F_1$. As applications of this formula, we show that some common limits of triple sequences given by mean iterations of 3-terms can be expressed by $F_1$.

Disposal of organic wastes is a social problem of high importance. We previously reported on a decomposition system of organic wastes by the use of thermally excited holes in TiO2 at high temperatures. An appealing feature of our system is that it makes use of a great number of holes formed at, for example, 350°C. In the present investigation, characterization has been carried out on various TiO2 powders that have nearly the same composition but differ in specific surface and particle size in an attempt to screen and select the most powerful powder. The decomposition ability of TiO2 has been evaluated using previously investigated polycarbonate (PC)-coated TiO2 as the model system, with special attention to the interaction between the adsorbate (PC) and the adsorbent (TiO2). As a result, the specific surface was found to play the most important role, and is closely linked to the adsorption amount of PC on TiO2, released energy, spin concentration, deep coloration, as well as to the Raman peak-shift. In addition, the crystallinity is also found to be effective in connection with the lifetime of holes.

We previously reported on a decomposition system of organic wastes by the use of thermally excited holes in TiO2 at high temperatures. A good feature of our system is that it makes use of a large number of holes formed, for example, at 350 °C for the oxidation of organic wastes. In this investigation, we aim at applying this technology to the complete decomposition of benzene, toluene, and particulate matter (PM) included in the exhaust of diesel engines. Special attention has been paid to the adsorption process of benzene and toluene onto the surface of TiO2, as well as to their subsequent decomposition, as studied by thermal analysis, Raman spectroscopy, and ESR in consideration of the specific surface of TiO2 powders. Both benzene and toluene are found to completely decompose into H2O and CO2 at about 350 °C, via fragments of ethylene, butene, propene, and butadiene. On the other hand, PM appears more difficult to decompose due to its powdered form. However, PM was finally confirmed to be decomposed when the mixture of PM and TiO2 was heated under a pressure of about 280 N/m2 at about 350 °C.

This paper proposes a model that can estimate filter resistance using estimated air-conditioner indoor unit air flow rate, which is tightly related to filter fouling conditions. Two sorts of value are used as inputs to estimate air flow rate. One is the power consumed by the fan in the indoor unit of a room air-conditioner and the other is the thermal performance of a room air-conditioner. For the room air-conditioners that the real-time indoor unit fan power consumption is available, fan power consumptions are used as inputs to estimate filter resistance. For the room air-conditioners that are equipped with refrigerant pressure and temperature sensors, this model estimates filter resistance using refrigerant pressure and temperature, air temperature or enthalpy difference between supply and indoor air. This model was validated using a really running multi-evaporator Gas-engine Heat Pump (GHP) system. The maximum and average difference between estimated and measured filter resistance are 12.72% and 5.89% when using the fan power consumption as inputs. When using the air-conditioner thermal performance data, the maximum and average estimation errors are 13.12% and 5.96%. The validation results show that this model is accurate enough for estimating filter resistance. Based on this model, the method for commissioning filters in air-conditioner is discussed. This method is useful for automatically estimating filter resistance and reminding users timely to clean or replace a filter to prevent wasting energy and to maintain desirable indoor environment.

It is important for proton therapy to calculate dose distributions accurately in treatment planning. Dose calculations in the body for treatment planning are converted to dose distributions in water, and the converted calculations are then generally evaluated by the dose measurements in water. In this paper, proton dose calculations were realized for a phantom simulating a clinical heterogeneity. Both dose calculations in the phantom calculated by two dose calculation methods, the range-modulated pencil beam algorithm (RMPBA) and the simplified Monte Carlo (SMC) method, and dose calculations converted to dose distributions in water by the same two methods were verified experimentally through comparison with measured distributions, respectively. For the RMPBA, though the converted calculations in water agreed moderately well with the measured ones, the calculated results in the actual phantom produced large errors. This meant that dose calculations in treatment planning should be evaluated by the dose measurements not in water but in the body with heterogeneity. On the other hand, the results calculated in the phantom, even by the less rigorous SMC method, reproduced the experimental ones well. This finding showed that actual dose distributions in the body should be predicted by the SMC method.

Background The anti-influenza virus activity of green tea catechins has been demonstrated in experimental studies, but clinical evidence has been inconclusive. School-aged children play an important role in the infection and spread of influenza in the form of school-based outbreaks. Preventing influenza infection among students is essential for reducing the frequency of epidemics and pandemics. As a non-pharmaceutical intervention against infection, gargling is also commonly performed in Asian countries but has not yet been extensively studied. Methods and Findings A randomized, open label, 2-group parallel study of 757 high school students (15 to 17 years of age) was conducted for 90 days during the influenza epidemic season from December 1st, 2011 to February 28th, 2012, in 6 high schools in Shizuoka Prefecture, Japan. The green tea gargling group gargled 3 times a day with bottled green tea, and the water gargling group did the same with tap water. The water group was restricted from gargling with green tea. The primary outcome measure was the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza using immunochromatographic assay for antigen detection. 757 participants were enrolled and 747 participants completed the study (384 in the green tea group and 363 in the water group). Multivariate logistic regression indicated no significant difference in the incidence of laboratory-confirmed influenza between the green tea group (19 participants; 4.9%) and the water group (25 participants; 6.9%) (adjusted OR, 0.69; 95%CI, 0.37 to 1.28; P = 0.24). The main limitation of the study is the adherence rate among high school students was lower than expected. Conclusions Among high school students, gargling with green tea three times a day was not significantly more efficacious than gargling with water for the prevention of influenza infection. In order to adequately assess the effectiveness of such gargling, additional large-scale randomized studies are needed. Trial Registration ClinicalTrials.gov NCT01225770

We consider the system $\mathcal{F}_4(a,b,c)$ of differential equations annihilating Appell's hypergeometric series $F_4(a,b,c;x)$. We find the integral representations for four linearly independent solutions expressed by the hypergeometric series $F_4$. By using the intersection forms of twisted (co)homology groups associated with them, we provide the monodromy representation of $\mathcal{F}_4(a,b,c)$ and the twisted period relations for the fundamental systems of solutions of $\mathcal{F}_4$., 22+1 pages, 5 figures

We consider the limit of the iteration of a map z ↦ m(z) from a complex domain D to D. For two kinds of maps m, we show that each iteration mn(z) of m(z) converges for any z ∈ D as n → ∞ and that this limit is expressed by the hypergeometric function. These are analogs of the expression of the arithmetic-geometric mean by the Gauss hypergeometric function.

In this paper, we give Thomae type formula for \KK surfaces $\cS$ given by double covers of the projective plane branching along six lines. This formula gives relations between theta constants on the bounded symmetric domain of type $I_{22}$ and period integrals of $X$. Moreover, we express the period integrals by using the hypergeometric function $F_S$ of four variables. As an application of our main theorem, we define $\R^4$-valued sequences by mean iterations of four terms, and express their common limits by the hypergeometric function $F_S$., 42 pages, 2 figures

A central problem in quantum computational complexity is how to prevent entanglement-assisted cheating in multi-prover interactive proof systems. It is well-known that the standard oracularization technique completely fails in some proof systems under the existence of prior entanglement. This paper studies two constructions of two-prover one-round interactive proof systems based on oracularization. First, it is proved that the two-prover one-round interactive proof system for PSPACE by Cai, Condon, and Lipton still achieves exponentially small soundness error in the existence of prior entanglement between dishonest provers (and more strongly, even if dishonest provers are allowed to use arbitrary no-signaling strategies). It follows that, unless the polynomial-time hierarchy collapses to the second level, two-prover systems are still advantageous to single-prover systems even when only malicious provers can use quantum information. Second, it is proved that the two-prover one-round interactive proof system obtained by oracularizing a three-query probabilistically checkable proof system becomes sound in a weak sense even against dishonest entangled provers with the help of a dummy question. As a consequence, every language in NEXP has a two-prover one-round interactive proof system of perfect completeness, albeit with exponentially small gap between completeness and soundness, in which each prover responds with only two bits. In other words, it is NP-hard to approximate within an inverse-polynomial the value of a classical two-prover one-round game, even when provers are entangled and each sends a two-bit answer to a verifier., 26 pages

We construct the optimal 1 to 2 cloning transformation for the family of displaced thermal equilibrium states of a harmonic oscillator, with a fixed and known temperature. The transformation is Gaussian and it is optimal with respect to the figure of merit based on the joint output state and norm distance. The proof of the result is based on the equivalence between the optimal cloning problem and that of optimal amplification of Gaussian states which is then reduced to an optimization problem for diagonal states of a quantum oscillator. A key concept in finding the optimum is that of stochastic ordering which plays a similar role in the purely classical problem of Gaussian cloning. The result is then extended to the case of n to m cloning of mixed Gaussian states., 8 pages, 1 figure; proof of general form of covariant amplifiers added

It is known that the additivity conjecture of Holevo capacity, output minimum entoropy, and the entanglement of formation (EoF), are equivalent with each other. Among them, the output minimum entropy is simplest, and hence many researchers are focusing on this quantity. Here, we suggest yet another entanglement measure, whose strong superadditivity and additivity are equivalent to the additivity of the quantities mentioned above. This quantity is as simple as the output minimum entropy, and in existing proofs of additivity conjecture of the output minimum entropy for the specific examples, they are essentially proving the strong superadditivity of this quantity., corrections of typo, etc. minor revision

We study how well answer to the question ``Is the given quantum state equal to a certain maximally entangled state?'' using LOCC, in the context of hypothesis testing. Under several locality and invariance conditions, optimal tests will be derived for several special cases by using basic theory of group representations. Some optimal tests are realized by performing quantum teleportation and checking whether the state is teleported. We will also give a finite process for realizing some optimal tests. The performance of the tests will be numerically compared.

Entanglement concentration from many copies of unknown pure states is discussed, and we propose the protocol which not only achieves entropy rate, but also produces the perfect maximally entangled state. Our protocol is induced naturally from symmetry of $n$-tensored pure state, and is optimal for all the protocols which concentrates entanglement from unknown pure states, in the sense of failure probability. In the proof of optimality, the statistical estimation theory plays a key role, for concentrated entanglement gives a natural estimate of the entropy of entanglement.

We provide a quantum gambling protocol using three (symmetric) nonorthogonal states. The bias of the proposed protocol is less than that of previous ones, making it more practical. We show that the proposed scheme is secure against non-entanglement attacks. The security of the proposed scheme against entanglement attacks is shown heuristically., no essential correction, 4 pages, RevTex

We report the generation of polarization-entangled photons by femtosecond-pulse-pumped spontaneous parametric down-conversion in a cascade of two type-I crystals. Highly entangled pulsed states were obtained by introducing a temporal delay between the two orthogonal polarization components of the pump field. They exhibited high-visibility quantum interference and a large concurrence value, without the need of post-selection using narrow-bandwidth-spectral filters. The results are well explained by the theory which incorporates the space-time dependence of interfering two-photon amplitudes if dispersion and birefringence in the crystals are appropriately taken into account. Such a pulsed entangled photon well localized in time domain is useful for various quantum communication experiments, such as quantum cryptography and quantum teleportation., 12 pages, 11 figures, REVTEX

We construct an optimal quantum universal variable-length code that achieves the admissible minimum rate, i.e., our code is used for any probability distribution of quantum states. Its probability of exceeding the admissible minimum rate exponentially goes to 0. Our code is optimal in the sense of its exponent. In addition, its average error asymptotically tends to 0., LaTeX2e and revetx4 with aps,superscriptaddress,showpacs,pra,amssymb,amsmath

We compute certain polynomial invariants for the finite reflection groups of the types {\small $H_3$, $H_4$ and $F_4$}. Using this result, we explicitly determine the solution space of functions satisfying a mean value property related to the exceptional regular polytopes, namely, the icosahedron and dodecahedron in three dimensions and the 24-cell, 600-cell, and 120-cell in four dimensions.

We discuss long code problems in the Bennett-Brassard 1984 (BB84) quantum key distribution protocol and describe how they can be overcome by concatenation of the protocol. Observing that concatenated modified Lo-Chau protocol finally reduces to the concatenated BB84 protocol, we give the unconditional security of the concatenated BB84 protocol., 4 pages, RevTex

The optimal N to M ($M>N$) quantum cloning machines for the d-level system are presented. The unitary cloning transformations achieve the bound of the fidelity., Revtex, 4 pages

Physical Review Letters

Thermoplastic as well as thermosetting polymers are found to be completely decomposed in the presence of titanium dioxide due to thermally excited holes at high temperatures. The decomposition mechanism has therefore been investigated in terms of thermal analysis, electron-spin resonance, and infrared spectra, using polycarbonate (PC) as the model substance. The initial stage of the decomposition is the electron capture from PC by means of thermally generated holes at the TiO2/PC interface to create radicals in PC. Then, the radicals propagate throughout the PC chains to rupture the chemical bond between monomer units, leading to the remarkable reduction in molecular weight. Finally, the decomposition within the monomer unit takes place at the CH3 site to give small fragments. These fragments end up with complete combustion in the presence of oxygen to give H2O and CO2. (c) 2005 American Institute of Physics.