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Time series data for blood hemoglobin and plasma protein observed in 31 chronic hemodialysis patients for periods of three to seven years were analyzed by Akaike's method of multivariate autoregressive modeling. The results of the analysis were rather uniform among the patients and suggested that this approach can consistently identify the dynamic system of individual patients. >

A detailed current switch output overshoot mechanism for a digital-to-analog converter (DAC) is analyzed, using a gate-level two-dimensional device simulator with input risetime and device topology as parameters. The importance of the carrier behavior around the emitter sidewall is stressed. The following conclusions are reached: (1) Output overshoot for a turn-on transistor rises in two steps. First the turn-on base-emitter voltage increases faster than input change and exceeds the final state value; then the emitter sidewall and corner regions become overcharged. Excess stored holes are discharged to the base center, which affects the settling time. (2) When the input risetime is too fast, the sidewall and the corner are further overcharged. When it is too slow, a fat region also becomes overcharged. In both cases, the settling time becomes long. (3) In the scaled transistor case, the settling time becomes shorter even if the input risetime is short and emitter-base voltage becomes higher, because the lateral potential transition delay in the flat region is shortened. >

The design study for the 8 GeV high-brilliance synchrotron radiation X-ray source ring in Japan is outlined. The facility consists of a main storage ring, a full-energy injector booster synchrotron, and a 1.5 GeV preinjector electron linac. The storage ring is optimized for insertion devices. The designed energy of the ring is raised from 6 to 8 GeV. The ring has 48 unit cells, a circumference of 1428.9 m, and 6.5 m long straight sections for insertion devices. The low emittance and sufficiently large dynamic aperture are achieved in a Chasman-Green-type lattice structure, R&D work on the vacuum system, magnetic system, and RF system are also in progress. >

Speed-limiting factors in 0.1- mu m MOSFETs are examined through detailed analyses combining two dominant factors in miniaturized MOSFETs. One is the drivability increase due to the energy transport effect, such as velocity overshoot. The other is the drivability degradation due to substantial parasitic resistances and mobility degradation. Various analyses from the process to switching speed incorporating energy transport and parasitic resistance were carried out. It is shown that unbalanced contributions of the pentode and triode regions limit the 0.1- mu m MOSFET switching speed. Since the triode region operation begins to dominate the propagation delay time with miniaturization, it is important to reduce the degradation of triode region drivability. >

The authors propose a novel model for band-to-band tunneling caused by a nonuniform electric field, which is expressed in terms of the local field and its spatial variation rate and gives tunneling probabilities in magnitude and electric field dependence that are different from those given by conventional models. The proposed model can be incorporated into device simulators, and the results show the reasonable coincidence with experimental findings without any fitting parameter. >

A 100 Mb/s*2 optical dual ring system called Pana-Lan-100 has been developed which supports both packet switching and circuit switching service on a slotted ring. The circuit switching slots, which can be used for telephone and high-speed facsimile, are assigned dynamically on demand. The MAC (memory access controller) sublayer packet switching is done by a one-chip VLSI called the TRP (token ring processor), which executes a proprietary token protocol using all the remaining slots of the frame except circuit switching slots at the rate of 100 Mb/s. As the maximum packet size of the TRP is designed as 64 Kbyte it is suited to bulk data transmission. >

In this paper, a practical design method of a FinFET is presented with :in example of a scaled DRAM device. The electric properties of the FinFET are analyzed by means of three-dimensional process and device simulations. The analysis reveals that the short channel effects depend strongly on not only the thickness but also the taper angle of the silicon pillar. The device is optimized successfully assuming the tapered shape for the silicon pillar. The simulated characteristics (0.1fA off-leak current and 62/spl mu/A drive current per unit cell @ 85C) well agree with experimental results.

Extended abstract of a paper presented at Microscopy and Microanalysis 2012 in Phoenix, Arizona, USA, July 29 – August 2, 2012.

Oral gold compound, auranofin (AF), is clinically useful for the treatment of patients with rheumatoid arthritis (RA) as one of the disease modifying anti-rheumatic drugs, although its mechanism of action is not determined yet. In the present study, the effects of auranofin on the production of IgG rheumatoid factor (IgGRF), IgMRF, IL-1β and TNF-α by mononuclear cells (MNC) .MNC were isolated from 6 RA patients. MNC of each patients were cultured with or without AF for 24 hrs and the supernatants obtained by centrifuga-tion were measured for IL-1β and TNF-α by ELISA kit. The supernatants obtained after 7 day' culture were measured for IgGRF and IgMRF by ELISA.AF significantly inhibited IgGRF, IgMRF and IL-1β production at its final concentration of 0.375 and 0.75 μg/ml. TNF-α production was also significantly inhibited by physiological concentration of AF. The inhibition by AF of IgGRF, IgMRF, IL-1β and TNF-α production by RA MNC may be one of the mechanisms by which AF shows clinical efficacy.

A segmentation and classification method for separating a document image into printed character, handwritten character, photograph, and painted image regions is presented. A document image is segmented into rectangular areas. Each of which contains a cluster of image elements. A layered feed-forward neural network is then used to classify each segmented area using the histograms of gradient vector directions and luminance levels. A high classification performance was obtained, even with a small number of training samples. It is confirmed that the histograms of gradient vector directions and luminance levels are significantly effective features for the classification of the four kinds of image regions. Increasing the number of the discrimination areas improves the classification performance sufficiently even using a small number of training samples for the neural network. >

SOI/MOSFETs are widely known to have some advantages such as reduction of parasitic capacitance, improvement of subthreshold characteristics and increased drive current, compared with bulk-Si/MOSFETs. Moreover, this structure provides the reduction in the substrate-bias effect because the back-gate bias (Si substrate) is applied to the channel region through thick buried oxide. In the present paper, we propose the best choice of operation mode of SOI/MOSFETs in a high-resistivity load SRAM cell to improve the stability in the memory cell and to obtain sufficient static noise margin providing non-destructive reading of cell data at low supply voltage. >

An ill-conditioned process is one in which there exists equipment with unmeasurable variables between the input and output data to be modeled. The identification of closed-loop systems is investigated using actual closed-loop data. Optimization calculation techniques are used to identify the closed-loop system, and the small gain theorem is used to verify the model. The targeted control loop is the temperature control loop of a TW303 distillation tower. The only measurable process variable which greatly affects the TW303 bottom temperature is the reboiler flow rate. Hence, input and output variables of the heat exchanger cannot be measured. The temperature and reboiler flow rate data has a periodic oscillation of 12 minutes. Even though the periodic oscillation is caused by the equipment, the controllers must be able to control any type of disturbance. We investigate the cause of these problems by focusing on poor PID settings.

Extensions of the results of the model reference adaptive control (MRAC) to nonlinear systems have been attempted. In particular, designs of MRAC for nonlinear mechanical systems, such as a manipulator and or an inverted pendulum, have been studied with much interest. For this purpose, we propose a design method for model following control systems (MFCS) as a first step towards MRACS for nonlinear mechanical systems affine in the control. First, we consider Hirschorn's algorithm concerning the invertibility of nonlinear control systems. However, it is difficult to apply the algorithm directly to the control objective with the small number of inputs. Secondly, we propose an alternative MFCS design, based on a kind of generalized-inverse technique which makes it possible to assign any following characteristics. Thirdly, we consider an example of the application to the inverted pendulum to demonstrate the feasibility and efficiency of the proposed control design strategy. Finally, we discuss two extensions of the present method to both cases of modeling error and of non-affine type control.

In this paper, we discuss a non-coherent reception of M-ary spread-spectrum multiple-access (M-ary/SSMA) signals in the presence of large Doppler frequency shift. The Hadamard Codes (H-codes) is applied as orthogonal codes. The influence of Doppler frequency shift has a particular characteristic according to the property of H-codes. Making use of this property, we, first, propose an initial carrier frequency acquisition method which can estimate the value of large Doppler frequency shift. We, then, proposed a M-ary/SSMA scheme that is based on the simultaneous transmission of two distinctive H-codes.

DBF (digital beam forming) radars using T/R(transmit/receive) modules were developed. For realizing DBF, there are three important technologies, phase detection technology, multi-beam forming technology and adaptive beam forming technology. In order to establish these key technologies, the DBF array test equipment was manufactured. These technologies and the data of the test equipment are presented. In order to realize high DBF performance, it is necessary to convert antenna element signals to digital signals with high accuracy. In order to solve this problem, an IF (intermediate frequency) direct sampling phase detection method is used with uniquely developed LSI. Regarding multi-beam forming, very high speed circuits are necessary in a radar application. The systolic array method is applied. In the systolic array, arbitrary and independently controlled multi-beams can be formed by controlling complex weights of each beam. In the DBF technology, an adaptive technique can easily be applied. The systolic array using the Gram-Schmidt transformation method is applied. This adaptive circuit was developed and tested in an open site. The jammers were transmitted and the antenna patterns were measured before and after adaptation.

The intramolecular charge transfer through n-electron conjugation gives large optical nonlinearities in the molecular level, i.e., the third-order susceptibility /spl chi//sup (3)//sub ijkl/(-/spl omega//sub 4/; /spl omega//sub 1/,/spl omega//sub 2/,/spl omega//sub 3/) depends on the microscopic third-order polarizability /spl gamma//sub ijkl/(-/spl omega//sub 4/; /spl omega//sub 1/,/spl omega//sub 2/,/spl omega//sub 3/) of constituent molecular unit. We have focused our researches for long on the development of one-dimensional conducting polymers such as polythiophenes, polydiacetylenes and substituted polyphenylacetylenes, and of two-dimensional macrocyclic conjugated compounds such as annulenes and metallophthalocyanine derivatives. In this paper we will discuss the key factors for designing molecular structures and nonlinear optical properties; that is, the dimensionality and symmetry of molecules and/or molecular aggregates. >

A novel restoration method for X-ray images with quantum mottles is proposed by considering the physical formation process of X-ray images. More specifically, as a restoration method for quantum mottles, a digital filter of the stochastic type considering the property of quantum mottles with varying variance is derived on the basis of the Bayes theorem matched to recursive image processing. In order to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed method, it is applied to an actual medical image. >

The influence of ion-implantation damage on the formation of emitter and base in advanced bipolar technologies is studied. A novel nonequilibrium diffusion model has been developed to analyze this issue. By comparing simulation and experiments on a 0.5- mu m BiCMOS technology, transient-enhanced diffusion phenomena for rapid thermal anneal and furnace annealing are discussed. Two-dimensional effects are reported. >

The authors introduce a self-generating neural network model based on Kohonen self-organizing feature maps for solving combinatorial optimization problems better than other neural network models. The model is called learning vector quantization (LVQ). In this model, the best matching neuron of the self-organizing feature maps is calculated with an energy function. The performance of this model was examined through two problems, the traveling salesman's problem and the n-queen problem. Simulations of the traveling salesman problem have been carried out for 10 and 30 cities. The optimum solutions for the 10 and 30 cities were obtained with a probability of 100% and 52% respectively. Simulations of the n-queen problem have been obtained within 90 steps of the self-organizing cycle. The 1000-queen problem has been solved within an average of 14 minutes on a SPARCstation1. >

A high-speed workstation network system which interconnects distributed workstations and servers through a 100 Mbps optical LAN employing the OSI protocol is developed. The network throughput is maximized by employing a newly developed intelligent high-speed network controller consisted of a 100 Mbps token-ring processor(TRP) and 32-bit MPU which executes all the 7-layered OSI protocol. The remote retrieval capability of database of the system is theoretically confirmed and is experimentally proved. >

Results of a study of electromigration at interconnect vias with respect to lifetime of the vias are presented. It is shown that the dependence of the lifetime of the vias on current and on temperature as well as the effect of copper doping is similar to that found in the aluminum stripe. The lifetime is nearly inversely proportional to the number of vias in a chain and the failure occurs in random vias. It is also found that lifetime is affected both by the number of vias and by the total metal length. The lifetime depends on the size of the vias. >

It is shown that the lifetime due to electromigration is affected by the barrier metal under the first aluminum layer. The reliability of interconnect vias and contacts is greatly improved by using Ti/TiN barrier metal. The effect of barrier metals can be explained by the presence of Si nodules and hillocks at vias. In aluminum with MoSi, many Si nodules induced by MoSi were observed. These Si nodules degrade the reliability of interconnect vias. On the other hand, in aluminum with a Ti/TiN barrier, Si nodules and hillocks were extremely few. >

Akaike's method of multivariate autoregressive (AR) modeling is applied to time-series analysis of clinical data. The present approach successfully demonstrated the peculiar power spectrum in various time-series data, which failed to be detected by FFT analysis because of abundant noise. Once AR coefficients are computed from the observed time-series of the relevant variables they can be used to describe the peculiar behavior of the system under study in two different ways: impulse response (IR) curves and Akaike's relative power contribution. The original program of Akaike is modified for exclusive uses in the analysis of clinical data. >

The photorefractive properties of the carbazole films were characterized by two-beam coupling and four-wave mixing. We have demonstrated the optical image reconstruction of distorted images due to phase conjugation using a four-wave mixing setup, the optical associative memory based on phase conjugation and the angle multiplexed holographic recording. We present an example of the optical associative memory using a conjugated carbazole trimer film. The film stores the hologram images by multiple exposure in the bulk. When the imperfect image is introduced to the film, the beam is diffracted to the direction of strongest interaction with the perfect image and behave as a probe beam. The reference beam is reflected by the phase conjugation mirror and produces the perfect image.

Groups and group communication are powerful abstractions that offer many benefits to programmers in distributed computing environments. Nevertheless only a few object-oriented programming languages or systems support these kinds of abstractions. In this paper we introduce a framework into DOOCE for handling multiple number of objects as a group and accessing it with group communication. DOOCE is our distributed computing environment which aims to integrate an object-oriented programming language and a distributed computing environment. With DOOCE, programmers can utilize object groups briefly and effectively in a program. Groups can be represented by object lists or Group classes which are added to DOOCE to use abstractions of groups. All messages to groups are transmitted by group communication. To hide consistency problems among group messages from the programmer DOOCE runtime system indivisibly delivers these messages, and messages can also be delivered atomically DOOCE also provides some methods to receive multiple replies from a group in order to ease description for acceptance of replies.

We describe the depolarization of photorefractive polymers by means of thermally stimulated current (TSC) and electro-optic responses. The film was prepared by spin-coating from a chloroform solution onto an ITO substrate, and dried overnight at 500 C under vacuum. For TSC measurements, the poled polymer samples were heated at a constant heating rate of 3 C/min. The resulting depolarization current was measured using a Keithley 6512 electrometer. The EO response of the poled photorefractive polymer was measured by the reflection method.

We have developed series-connected amorphous silicon (a-Si) solar cells with plastic film substrates named SCAF (series-connection through apertures formed on film). The pattern of SCAF cells was optimized by a simulation taking into account area losses and joule losses. Process technologies for large-area devices were developed, and uniformity of photovoltaic performances obtained on the 40 cm/spl times/80 cm area was sufficient for large-area SCAF structure cells. Mass productivity for the SCAF cells was also studied, and it was confirmed that a number of SCAF cells were fabricated with a good reproducibility. We have also carried out a light-soaking test of the SCAF cells and it was proved that reliability for light degradation of SCAF cells formed on film substrates was as high as that of glass substrate cells.

We propose a novel SRAM cell, a Bipolar Bitline Contact (BBC) cell, for low-voltage and high-speed operation of high-density SRAMs. In the BBC cell, a bipolar transistor is formed between an access transistor and a bitline to amplify the cell current; it operates at high-speed even at a low voltage of 1.5 V. Although the number of elements in the cell is increased from six to eight, we have achieved a 16% smaller cell size.

The reliability of a new amorphous silicon/dielectric antifuse is characterized and modeled. Unprogrammed antifuse leakage and time-to-breakdown are functions not only of applied voltage but also of stressing polarity and temperature. Both breakdown and leakage criteria are used to investigate their effects on time-to-fail. A thermal model incorporates the effects of programming and stress currents, ambient temperature, and variation of antifuse resistance with temperature. The measured temperature dependence of antifuse resistance is used for the first time to derive key physical parameters in the model.

In this paper, we deal with the reception of M-ary spread-spectrum (M-ary/SS) signals in the presence of the carrier frequency-offset. The influence of frequency-offset on reception of M-ary/SS signals is investigated and it is shown that frequency-offset may degrade the symbol-error-rate performance remarkably, yet, the influence has a distinctive property. Making use of this property, we propose a new scheme that can mitigate the influence of the frequency-offset. The scheme is based on the assignment of the two distinctive Hadamard codes to in-phase and quadrature components of the transmitted signal. The selection of the set of Hadamard codes and the power ratio of the in-phase and quadrature component of the transmitted signal is evaluated in terms of symbol-error-rate and carrier frequency offset. As a result we found that the scheme shows the satisfactory symbol-error-rate in the presence of carrier frequency offset up to a half of symbol rate.

A new test structure was developed for a nondestructive method. The purpose of this test structure is to detect the influence of thermomechanical stress between silicon chip and plastic resin. In this structure, detection of the failure is very easy, because the influence of thermomechanical stress can be detected electrically. By using this new structure, the following results were found: (1) Dependence on chip size; (2) Influence of layout of package; (3) Acceleration between heat shock and temperature cycle tests.

Coated metal substrates for use in electronic applications were developed. The glass-ceramic insulating coatings were applied to stainless steel bases using thick film and tape processing techniques. Properties of these substrates and compatible 850/spl deg/C firing thick film conductors, resistors and dielectrics are given along with initial data on these materials in various heater configurations.

Crosstalk Transfer Logic (XTL) is a digital-signal interface that uses directional couplers to form parallel lines within a circuit board. An advantage of the XTL is that it provides a multi-drop and high-speed system that is a one-to-many connection that can be used as a memory bus. To evaluate the signal integrity of an XTL to be applied to a DRAM bus, a test chip and boards were developed. We describe the design of the bus and report the results of its evaluation in this paper. The test chip was designed using a 0.15-/spl mu/m CMOS process and it had a controllable offset of the hysteresis receiver. A folding coupler was applied to the motherboard to condense the wiring and to reduce the noise from adjacent signals. The mother-board had only two coupler layers, with a four-byte data width, and it was capable of having eight modules mounted on the bits. The experimental results showed that the WRITE and READ operation reached speeds of at least 500 Mbps when eight modules were mounted on the bus.

The purpose of this paper is to suppress the reverse short channel effect (RSCE) of 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS, which leads to the increase in standby current in PLL and output buffer circuits. RSCE is due to the transient enhanced diffusion of the channel profile induced by source/drain (S/D) implantation. We propose a new process in which the boron for nMOS threshold voltage (V/sub th/) adjustment is implanted through the gate electrode after S/D activation annealing over the blanket wafer. It enables nMOS transistor to have less than 0.1 V V/sub th/ roll-up without increasing wafer cost. It can also be applied effectively in the case of less than 0.13 /spl mu/m devices, not being limited to the case of 0.18 /spl mu/m CMOS devices.

We have systematically studied the effects of oxygen impurities on the crystal quality and electrical properties of hydrogenated microcrystalline Si films (/spl mu/c-Si:H) grown at 200/spl deg/C. Two threshold oxygen concentrations [0]s are observed: crystal quality does not deteriorate below /spl ap/1/spl times/10/sup 20/ cm/sup -3/ of [0], while carrier density increase rapidly above /spl ap/1/spl times/10/sup 18/ cm/sup -3/ of [0]. The electron carrier density obeys 1.4 th power law of [0] in the range between 1/spl times/10/sup 18/ and 1/spl times/10/sup 20/ cm/sup -3/. This superlinear relationship implies that oxygen aggregates act as donors. Lower temperature (/spl ap/200/spl deg/C) formation of oxygen aggregates is discussed.

Experiments involving 750 keV electron beam doping (EBD) of Si and Zn atoms into GaAs were performed for systems of GaAs (layer 3)/Si(Zn)//Si(Zn)/GaAs (layer 1). The Si(Zn)/GaAs consists of Si(Zn) evaporation-deposited layers on GaAs wafers. The overlying layer is in contact only with one other Si(Zn) layer. The surface of layer 3 (GaAs) was irradiated with a fluence of (∼3.7–5.0)×1017 electrons·cm-2 at 750 keV and at 100°C in a N2 gas atmosphere at a mean current density of 8.1 µA·cm-2 using a Van de Graaff accelerator. After irradiation, the remaining unreacted Si and Zn layers were carefully removed by chemical etching. It was confirmed by Auger electron spectroscopy that no Si or Zn layer remained on the wafer after etching. The unannealed GaAs crystals were measured by secondary ion mass spectrometry (SIMS) and photoluminescence (PL). The diffusion depth of Zn atoms increased with the thicknesses of the deposited layers.

A simple but accurate and stable system for realizing a high performance large capacitance capacitor is studied. By compensating a usual 100.3 nF capacitor with a 100.0 pF standard capacitor using a microprocessor, a 100.0 nF capacitor, with performance as good as the standard capacitor, has been obtained.

We have developed a total interconnect simulation system including a CMP model. The capacitance variation due to pattern width difference from focus effects on a globally nonuniform surface by CMP is simulated with this system. The paper also shows a way to reduce the capacitance variation due to CMP processes derived from these simulations.

In the era of 22-oxacalcitriol (OCT), newly synthesized 1 alpha,25-dihydroxyvitamin D(3) analogue, against secondary hyperparathyroidism, the indications of parathyroidectomy (PTx) has been restricted. Recent investigations on animal models have revealed the inhibitory effects on PTH secretion after OCT treatment, whereas there has been no evidence about human parathyroid glands. A 38-year-old man with a 19-year history of hemodialysis was performed PTx after the failure of OCT treatment. Expressions of proliferative nuclear cell antigen (PCNA), calcium-sensing receptor (CaSR), vitamin D receptor (VDR), p53 and p21(WAF1/Cip1) were analyzed by Western blotting and immunohistochemistry on resected parathyroid glands. We confirmed up-regulations of CaSR and VDR, which contribute the reduction of serum PTH, by OCT treatment. Concomitant up-regulation of p21(WAF1/Cip1) but not p53, especially in nodular hyperplasia, can be considered to induce cell cycle arrest of the parathyroid cells, but not cytocidal effect of OCT.

We present here how medical practice is managed at the patients home. Medical care at home is conducted in conjunction with a variety of professionals who provide health care in the community. The use of computers allows us to easily download information, and transfer it from the clinic to community services. Fluid replacement, total parenteral nutrition, palliative treatment of pain in cancer patients, management of urethral catheters, and other skills that are carried out at home would be stated.

The common extrahepatic manifestation of hepatitis C virus(HCV) infection is mixed cryoglobulinemia. We have analyzed serum cryoglobulin, IgM and various antibody activities from a patient with chronic hepatitis C and type II cryoglobulinemia. Cryoprecipitates were consisted of polyclonal IgG and monoclonal IgM-kappa with rheumatoid factor activity. About 20% of total IgM was found to be low molecular weight IgM by gel-filtration and SDS-PAGE. The anti-streptolysin O(ASO) activity measured by Latex agglutination method was found to be markedly elevated despite normal activity by Rantz-Randell method. The patient's serum has revealed to react against bovine gamma globulin, which crosslinked streptolysin O to Latex particles, in a nonspecific manner. Phenotypic analysis of the surface markers on abnormal lymphoid cells from peripheral blood and bone marrow showed monoclonal expansion of B-cell lineage by flow cytometry. The patient was treated with interferon-alpha, which resulted in an improvement of liver dysfunction, decreased amounts of cryoglobulin and IgM. It was concluded that the patient has suffered from lymphoproliferative disorder, namely HCV infection-associated primary macroglobulinemia.

TCAD has contributed to processldevice design and prediction of the device performances for decades. This role is still very important in very deep submicron process; however, new aspect in the semiconductor industry has arisen. Interconnect issue becomes more critical in SoC timing closure. ITRS roadmap predicts future of processldevices and interconnects, which lead to a standardized process and device. TCAD seems to be requested to contribute in the new situation of SoC era. The panel addresses topics such as: What is the new role of TCAD in SoC era? How TCAD can contribute towards the ultimate-solution in timing closure problem. How to attack SI(Signa1 Integrity) Physical Design by TCAD. Can TCAD make innovation on Process & Device, which changes the ITRS2001?

Heat capacity and ultrasonic measurements have been made on triangular lattice antiferromagnets CsNi0.98M0.02Cl3 (M=Co, Fe, Mg). CsNiCl3 has an intermediate magnetic phase between TN1 and TN2. Adding Co atoms makes TN1 higher and TN2 lower, adding Fe atoms makes TN1 lower and TN2 higher, and adding Mg atoms makes both TN1 and TN2 lower. These results are reasonably explained by the idea that the interaction between Ni2+ ions becomes more Ising-like in Co-doped specimen, less Ising-like in Fe-doped specimen, and weaker in Mg-doped specimen. These results are also compared with the Miyashita-Kawamura theory.

pregnancy is defined by ultrasonographic demonstration of fetal cardiac activity. Implantation rate is defined as total gestational sacs divided by total embryos transferred in each category. CONCLUSION: These data suggest that extended embryo culture to day 5 does not adversely affect embryo efficiency in a select group of women with only 6 zygotes and does not pose a detrimental effect on cumulative live birth rate. Additionally, a significant decrease in cumulative twin delivery rate is achieved by this strategy if single embryo transfer is used frequently for day 5 ETs. This may translate to a safer IVF practice strategy in prevention of multiple pregnancies, including twins.

The Josephson plasma resonance has been investigated in Bi$_2$Sr$_2$CaCu$_2$O$_{8+\delta}$ single crystals in parallel magnetic fields to the $ab$-plane. We found two resonance modes; one appears at higher frequency in high fields above the plasma frequency $\omega_p$ at zero field and absolute zero, and the other lies below $\omega_p$ and is observed only in magnetic fields without considerable field dependence. Two resonance lines were also found in numerical simulations in a single junction model with randomness of the critical current. The higher frequency mode is attributed to the Josephson plasma mode modified by the periodic structure of Josephson vortices, while the lower frequency mode is interpreted as oscillations of Josephson vortices., Comment: Submitted to Proceedings of ISS 2001, Kobe, Japan