Exosomes (extracellular vesicles/EVs) participate in cell–cell communication and contain bioactive molecules, such as microRNAs. However, the detailed characteristics of secreted EVs produced by cells grown under low pH conditions are still unknown. Here, we report that low pH in the cell culture medium significantly affected the secretion of EVs with increased protein content and zeta potential. The intracellular expression level and location of stably expressed GFP‐fused CD63 (an EV tetraspanin) in HeLa cells were also significantly affected by environmental pH. In addition, increased cellular uptake of EVs was observed. Moreover, the uptake rate was influenced by the presence of serum in the cell culture medium. Our findings contribute to our understanding of the effect of environmental conditions on EV‐based cell–cell communication.

When a thin walled cylindrical liquid storage tank suffers a large seismic base excitation, buckling phenomena such as elephant foot bulge at the bottom portion and nonlinear ovaling vibration at the upper portion shows nonlinearity between the input and response level and suddenly occurs for the excessive input level, thus will be called as “nonlinear ovaling vibration” hereafter in this paper, may be caused. In the 1st report, the elephant foot bulge phenomena and the liquid pressure effects were investigated. In this 2nd report of the series of studies, the effect of nonlinear ovaling vibration phenomena were investigated based on the dynamic buckling tests using scaled models of thin walled cylindrical liquid storage tanks for nuclear power plants. The mechanism and the effect of vertical excitation and liquid sloshing were also studied and discussed.

When a thin walled cylindrical liquid storage tank suffers a large seismic base excitation, buckling phenomena may be caused such as bending buckling at the bottom portion and shear buckling at the middle portion of the tank. However, the dynamic behaviors of the tanks is not fully clarified, especially those from the occurrence of buckling to some failures. In this study, bending buckling phenomena were focused which will be categorized as diamond buckling and elephant foot bulge. As ones of a series of studies, dynamic buckling tests were performed using large scale liquid storage tank models simulating thin walled cylindrical liquid storage tanks in nuclear power plants. The input seismic acceleration was increased until the elephant foot bulge occurred, and the vibrational behavior before and after buckling was investigated. In addition to the large scaled model tests, fundamental tests using small scaled tank models were also performed in order to clarify the effects of dynamic liquid pressure on the buckling threshold and deformation patterns.

Our results indicate that gefitinib may work as a mitochondrial protector against combinational treatment with mitochondria-dependent anticancer agents in high-cell-density.

The degradation of several azo dyes by cell‐free extract from Aeromonas hydrophila var. 24B has been studied. The compounds 4‐dimethylaminoazobenzene, 4‐diethylaminoazobenzene, 2′‐carboxy‐4‐dimethylaminoazo‐benzene, 2′‐carboxy‐4‐diethylaminoazobenzene, 4′‐carboxy‐4‐dimethylaminoazobenzene, and 2′‐methoxy‐carbonyl‐4‐dimethylaminoazobenzene were appreciably degraded by the cell‐free extract. Azobenzene and 4‐carboxyazobenzene were not degraded. Aniline was detected by gas chromatography‐mass spectrometry as a degradation product from 4‐aminoazobenzene and 4‐dimethylaminoazobenzene. 4‐DimethyIaminoaniline was detected by gas chromatography‐mass spectrometry and spectrophotofluorimetry as a degradation product from 2′‐carboxy‐4‐dimethylaminoazobenzene. The cell‐free extract had high substrate specificity for 2′‐carboxy‐4‐dimethylaminoazobenzene.