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The plasma-assisted surface-activated bonding technique enables one to directly bond heterogeneous materials. The surface roughness of wafers is an important factor for achieving bonding. The effects of precleaning and plasma surface activation processes on the surface roughness are investigated for silicon-on-insulator (SOI), Ce-substituted yttrium iron garnet (Ce:YIG), InP and LiNbO3. We found that an appropriate precleaning process reduces the surface roughness. Also, the oxygen plasma irradiation to the wafer surface for 10 or 30 s smoothens the surfaces. We achieved the bonding of SOI–Ce:YIG with a strength greater than 1.8 MPa, which is sufficient for application to silicon waveguide optical isolators and circulators.

After screening about three thousands of Streptomyces strains from soils, a strain of Streptomyces hygroscopicus SF‐1084, which gave the highest amylase production was isolated and some properties of the amylase were studied. Amylase production media were examined and a medium which consisted of glucose 2%, corn starch 5.5%, corn meal 1%, wheat germ 0.5%, soy bean meal 1.4%, KH2PO4 0.2% adjusted to pH 7.0 was used to produce the amylase. Amylase production by 30 l jar fermenter was reached at 1500 u/ml in 110 h culture. The amylase was purified from broth filtrate by the method of ammonium sulfate precipitation, DEAE‐sephadex A‐50 column chromatography and Sephadex G‐150 gelfiltration to get single band on a polyacrylamide disc gel electrophoresis. It is shown that the SF‐1084 amylase produced 88% maltose from amylose and 80% maltose from amylopectin in 48 h saccharification. From the pattern of blue value and reducing value, the amylase is supposed to have endogenous action on starch and the activity is not inhibited by PCNB (pentachloronitrobenzene); the SF‐1084 amylase does not belong to β‐amylase. The optimum pH of the amylase was 5 to 6 and the optimum temperature was 50 to 55 °C. The amylase was fairly thermostable and the residual activity after incubation at 90 °C for 15 min and 100 °C for 15 min were revealed more than 50% and 30% respectively.

Estrogen receptor (ER) content in myoma and myometrium was determined by radio-receptor assay (RRA), and ER staining was performed by immunocytochemical staining, i.e. the peroxidase-antiperoxidase (PAP) method, in uterine samples from eight patients with uterine leiomyoma. ER content in myoma tended to be hither than that in myometrium, but the difference was not significant. The distribution pattern of ER staining was thought to be an important criterion. When the data were compared on the basis of the number of cells in the site where the largest number of positive cells aggregated, the number for myoma was significantly higher than that for myometrium (P less than 0.05). These results suggest that myoma contains more ER positive cells to obtain estrogen effects than myometrium.

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