Changes with elapsed time are presented for five kinds of oils that were studied through the analyses of GLC method, where particularly we made an attempt to examine the relationship among specific gravity, viscosity, and the amount of water in oils. Furthermore, we tried to evaluate a few processes of various kinds of changes on the physical and chemical properties of oils such as evaporation, biodegradation, and photo-decomposition. The evaporation process was found to affect mainly paraffins with smaller boiling points, below the number of C12-C13, for 21 days, while due to the action of marine bacteria, normal paraffins were effectively degraded (ca. 50%) after 15 days except for branched ones. Moreover, it was also found that the aromatic hydrocarbons with anthracene ring and heteroaromatic ones, which were not easily decomposed by the processes mentioned above, were fairly decomposed by photo-irradiation for 10 hours.

Craniosynostosis is caused by abnormalities of multiple signaling pathways, including excessive RAS signaling. Recently, a truncating variant in ETS2 repressor factor (ERF), a negative transcriptional regulator of the RAS pathway, was shown to be associated with craniosynostosis. Here, we report a 10-year-old male patient with a heterozygous nonsense mutation, p.Arg183*, in ERF who exhibited craniosynostosis with Noonan syndrome-like phenotypes. In consideration that loss-of-function variants in ERF would result in excessive RAS signaling and RASopathy phenotypes, we propose that ERF may represent a causative gene for Noonan syndrome. Since preceding studies on ERF mutations dealt with patients who were ascertained because of craniosynostosis, further studies are needed to evaluate whether patients with variants in ERF can present with Noonan syndrome-like features without craniosynostosis.

Polypropylene fibers consist of a complicate higher-order structure and contain additives such as antioxidant, polar polymer and nucleating agent, hence, the origin of carrier traps is complicated. After carriers were trapped adequently into a nonwoven fabric by corona charging, the effect of additives was investigated by thermally stimulated current. As results, even a small amount of additives affected largely upon thermally stimulated current and enlarged the intensity of peak and the polarization charge. These phenomena may be the result of increase of physical and chemical traps formed by additives. The thermally stimulated current originated from trapped carriers and polarization of electret polypropylene fibers was found to closely concern with the molecular motion of polypropylene. Furthermore, the polarization charge increased by additives affected upon filter performance.

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