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The porous structure of anodes in SOFCs is the key factor to improve its performance and the manufacturing method to control its design needs to be established. Additive manufacturing, so-called 3D printing technology can be a prospective method for the fabrication of electrodes of SOFCs. In this experiment, stereolithography, which is a form of 3D printing technology using UV-light with approximately 365nm wavelength and photo-curable resin, is applied. The UV-light that goes through pinholes enables the production of multiple cylindrical objects at once. As a result, the objects and the empty spaces between them make the porous structure. Moreover, by changing the size and the number of holes and distance between them, the fabrication of an anode with the desired microstructure can be expected.

MEG II experiment is an upgrade of MEG experiment to search for charged lepton flavor violating decay of muon, $\mu \rightarrow e\gamma$. Target sensitivity of MEG II is $6 \times 10^{-14}$ at 90% C.L., which is one order of magnitude better than MEG. Liquid xenon detector was used to detect $53 \,\mathrm{MeV}$ signal $\gamma$-ray in MEG, and this detector has been upgraded for MEG II. Replacement of 216 PMTs on the entrance face with 4092 newly developed VUV-sensitive MPPCs has been carried out to have better granularity and uniformity of the scintillation readout. In 2017, commissioning of this detector has been started. Sufficient performance has been confirmed for most of the MPPCs. Pilot run of this detector with muon beam was performed, and $\gamma$-ray near signal energy has been successfully detected. By the even-odd analysis of the obtained data, good timing resolution ($44 \,\mathrm{ps}$ for $50 \,\mathrm{MeV}$ $\gamma$-ray) has been achieved.

Patients with dry mouth have been treated with salivary substitutes and/or medications such as pilocarpine or cevimeline hydrochloride. These treatments temporarily relieve their symptoms and induce salivation from residual tissue. However, no treatment is available for the purpose of regenerating an atrophic gland. In this study, the feasibility of a cell transplantation therapy for the atrophic submandibular glands was investigated in rats. Further, the potential of cell differentiation into a useful phenotype was assessed by immunohistochemistry together with cell tracking with the fluorescent dye PKH 26. Rat submandibular glands were excised, and the salivary gland epithelial cells were cultured for 3 weeks with 3T3 cells as a feeder layer. Ductal ligation of the submandibular gland was employed to generate an atrophic gland. One week after the operation, the ligation was removed, and the cultured cells labeled with PKH 26 were injected into the atrophic submandibular glands. As a control, the cultured cells were also injected into normal submandibular glands. Two weeks after cell transplantation, the transplanted cells were detectable in both the experimental and control groups. The cells were clustered in the connective tissue between the lobules. Four weeks after transplantation, the labeled cells were detectable in the experimental group but not in the control group. In the atrophic glands, the scattered transplanted cells were observed over a broad area of the gland but localized mainly around the acini and ductal region. Immunostaining results showed a possible involvement of the transplanted cells in ductal regeneration, while neither myoepithelial nor acinar differentiations were observed within the 4 weeks since transplantation. This study demonstrated that cell transplantation to the salivary gland is feasible, and that the transplanted cells were selectively attracted to and remained in the damaged area without affecting normal tissue.

The MEG experiment at PSI searches for the decay μ→eγ at a level of ≈10^−13 on the branching ratio BR(μ→eγ/μ→tot), well beyond the present experimental limit (BR≤1.2×10^−11) and is sensitive to the predictions of SUSY-GUT theories. To reach this goal the experiment uses one of the most intense continuous surface muon beams available (≈10^8μ/s) and relies on advanced technology (LXe calorimetry, a gradient-field superconducting spectrometer as well as flexible and powerful trigger and acquisition systems). In order to maintain the highest possible energy, time and spatial resolutions for such detector, frequent calibration and monitoring, using a Cockcroft–Walton proton accelerator, are required. The proton beam is brought to the centre of MEG by a special bellows insertion system and travels in a direction opposite to the one of the normal μ-beam. Protons interact with a lithium tetraborate (Li2B4O7) nuclear target and produce one γ (17.6 MeV) from the reaction 3-7 Li(p, γ)8-4 or two coincident γs (11.67 and 4.4 MeV) from the reaction 11-5 B(p, γ)12-6 C*. The 17.6 MeV γ is used for calibrating and monitoring the LXe calorimeter (σEγ/Eγ=3.85±0.15% at 17.6 MeV) while the coincident 11.67 and 4.4 MeV γs are used to measure the relative timing of the calorimeter and the spectrometer timing counters (σ_delta_t=0.450±0.015ns).

We present a new result based on an analysis of the data collected by the MEG detector at the Paul Scherrer Institut in 2009 and 2010, in search of the lepton-flavor-violating decay μ→eγ. The likelihood analysis of the combined data sample, which corresponds to a total of 1.8×10^14 muon decays, gives a 90% C.L. upper limit of 2.4×10^-12 on the branching ratio of the μ→eγ decay, constituting the most stringent limit on the existence of this decay to date.

A search for the decay μ+→e+γ, performed at PSI and based on data from the initial three months of operation of the MEG experiment, yields an upper limit on the branching ratio of BR(μ+→e+γ)2.8×10^−11 (90% C.L.). This corresponds to the measurement of positrons and photons from ~10^14 stopped μ+ decays by means of a superconducting positron spectrometer and a 900 litre liquid xenon photon detector.

The excited states of benzophenone adsorbed on well-characterized Ti−Al binary oxides were investigated by means of conventional molecular spectroscopic techniques such as UV and IR absorption as well as photoluminescence spectra measurements. It was found that the photochemical and photophysical properties of benzophenone adsorbed on the oxide surfaces strongly depend on their surface properties, which are systematically changed by changing the composition of the oxides. Specifically, the phosphorescence spectra of benzophenone adsorbed on the oxides have been found to be composed of the hydrogen-bonded benzophenone species and the protonated benzophenone species.

Ti−Al binary oxides prepared by a coprecipitation method exhibit different chemical behaviors from those of physically mixed TiO2−Al2O3 oxides, and the dispersion of the TiO2 species in the Ti−Al binary oxides increases when the composition of Al of the starting materials is increased. When benzophenone is adsorbed on the Ti−Al binary oxides, the photochemical and photophysical properties of benzophenone are found to be greatly different from those of benzophenone adsorbed on porous silica glass such as Vycor glass. Namely, the phosphorescence properties of benzophenone adsorbed on Ti−Al binary oxides show the presence of the protonated form of benzophenone in addition to the benzophenone hydrogen-bonded to the surface OH groups. The characteristics of the surface properties, structures, and activities of these binary oxides are examined by monitoring the characteristics of the isomerization of cis-2-butene as a probe reaction. The phosphorescence properties of the protonated and hydrogen-bonded form of b...

The phosphorescence properties of benzophenone included within alkali metal cationexchanged ZSM-5 zeolites were investigated to clarify the effects of the micro-environment of hostadsorbents on the electronic excited states of guest-molecules included within the restricted void spaces. Benzophenone included within such cation-exchanged ZSM-5 zeolites was found to exist in both a protonated and hydrogen-bonded form. It was found that exchanging the cations dramatically affects the ratio of their contents. Photolysis of these systems revealed that both benzhydrol and benzpinacol were the main products, their yields strongly depending on the kind of the cations exchanged. Especially, the protonated species was found to play a significant role in the photoreactions observed with benzophenone included within zeolite cavities.

The μ-particle rare decay physics experiment, the MU-E-GAMMA (MEG) experiment, will soon be operational at the Paul Scherrer Institute in Zurich. To achieve the extremely high sensitivity required to detect gamma rays, 800 L of liquid xenon is used as the medium in the calorimeter, viewed by 830 photomultiplier tubes (PMT) immersed in it. The required liquid xenon purity is of the order of ppb of water, and is obtained by using a cryogenic centrifugal pump and cold molecular sieves. The heat load of the calorimeter at 165 K is to be approximately 120 W, which is removed by a pulse-tube cryocooler developed at KEK and built by Iwatani Industrial Gas Corp., with a cooling power of about 200 W at 165 K. The cryogenic system is also equipped with a 1000-L dewar. This paper describes the results of an initial performance test of each cryogenic component.

This paper aims to introduce a diffusion filtering based on the Laplacian map. Classical non-linear diffusion filtering using the gradient-map-controlled local diffusivity. The Laplacian maps has similar geometric properties with the gradient map for the extraction of the region boundaries. Laplacian-based diffusion function has the same property with the Perona-Malik type and the Weickert type diffusion functions for the small scale. However, for the large scale, the diffusion operation has similar geometrical properties with the linear diffusion filtering. Therefore, the filtering operation in this paper provides a method for the combination of hierarchical expression based on linear and non-linear diffusion filtering operations.

A high‐power coaxial pulse tube cryocooler, originally developed in KEK and technology‐transferred to Iwatani Industrial Gases Corp (IIGC), has been installed in a large liquid xenon calorimeter to evaluate liquid nitrogen‐free (LN2‐free) operation of the rare μ‐particle decay experiment (MEG). Features of this pulse tube cryocooler include the cold‐end heat exchanger, designed with sufficient surface area to ensure high‐power cooling, and a cylindrical regenerator placed inside the pulse tube giving compact design and ease of fabrication. This production‐level cryocooler provides a cooling power of ∼200 W at 165 K, using a 6 kW Gifford‐McMahon (GM)‐type compressor. The paper describes the detailed configuration of the cryocooler, and the results of the continuous LN2‐free operation of the large prototype liquid xenon calorimeter, which ran for more than 40 days without problems.

We are developing a liquid xenon calorimeter for the MEG experiment. This experiment, to be performed at the Paul Scherrer Institut (PSI) in Villigen (CH), was designed by an Italian-Japanese-Russian-Swiss collaboration to search for the /spl mu//sup +//spl rarr/e/sup +//spl gamma/ decay, forbidden in the standard model of electroweak and strong interactions. The photon four momentum is to be measured by an innovative C-shaped 800 litres liquid xenon calorimeter read by more than 800 photo-multiplier tubes. An absorption length for Xe scintillation light larger than 100 cm has been measured. The performance of such a detector has been measured using a large volume prototype (100 litres) in a test beam at PSI, using high energy photons from decays of neutral pions from a charge exchange reaction of negative pions on protons. A resolution of 5% FWHM was obtained.

An array of refractive microlenses was successfully fabricated by electrodeposition of a polymer emulsion on transparent ITO covered with a polysilane film patterned by UV-light irradiation.

We developed a new sheath for selective trans-brachial and trans-femoral arteriography. This sheath has a J-shaped tip and can be inserted by the conventional Seldinger method using a linear dilator. This sheath was particularly useful for abdominal angiography via the brachial artery and pelvic arteriography via the femoral artery.