No abstract

To improve the charge-discharge cycle stability, we adopted a gas-deposition ͑GD͒ method to prepare lithium storage alloy electrodes. The resulting Mg 2 Ge GD film exhibited an increase in both charge and discharge capacities in comparison with the conventional bulk electrode, suggesting improvement of adhesion between the Mg 2 Ge layer and Cu foil. Furthermore, the cyclability of the GD film electrode was noticeably superior to that of the bulk electrode. The discharge capacity of the film electrode maintained 35% of the initial capacity, even at the 200th cycle. It is noteworthy that the GD-film electrode was able to operate at very large current densities.

No abstract

A quantitative procedure by a solution hybridization involving RNA-RNA hybridization kinetics was developed for measurement of specific mRNA accumulated in particular tissues and cells. For quantitating mouse beta-tubulin mRNA two types of riboprobes were prepared: one was a truncated RNA covering only the coding portion of beta-tubulin cDNA and the other was a non-truncated RNA covering the vector portion as well as the coding portion. These antisense RNAs were hybridized with mouse brain total cellular RNA, yielding heat-stable hybrids. Both the truncated and non-truncated antisense RNA probes showed similar hybridization kinetics. Hybridization of the sense RNA, consisting of the beta-tubulin coding portion, with the antisense RNA probe gave standards for determining the proportion of beta-tubulin mRNA in total brain RNA. By this method, the amounts of beta-tubulin mRNA included in the brains of 10- and 50-day-old mice were quantitated to be 0.0056 and 0.0011% of total RNA, respectively.