Thermal Stability of the Pigments Hydroxysafflor Yellow A, Safflor Yellow B, and Precarthamin from Safflower (Carthamus tinctorius)

ABSTRACT Three major yellow pigments were isolated from safflower petals ( Carthamus tinctorius ) and characterized as hydroxysafflor yellow A (1), safflor yellow B (2), and precarthamin (3) by ¹H-NMR, ¹H-¹H COSY, ¹³C-NMR, HMQC, and HMBC spectral analysis. Thermal degradation reactions of 3 yellow pigments 1 to 3 at temperatures of 70 to 90 °C were carried out at different pH levels within the range of 3.0 to 10.0 by UV-vis spectral measurements. First-order reaction kinetics was observed for the degradation of safflower yellow pigments (1 to 3) at pH 3.0 and 5.0. Activation energies of thermal degradation of 1-3 at pH 5.0 were calculated as 17.0, 15.4, and 20.1 kcal/mol, respectively. At neutral and alkaline conditions, yellow pigments 1-3 did not follow simple first-order kinetics.     

A structured procedure for analysis and design of order pick systems

We present a structured procedure for order pick system (OPS) analysis and design that has been established on literature review and interviews with and presentations to OPS experts. In particular, we attempt to include the thinking processes that occur between OPS designers and owners. The design procedure and related issues are discussed in the order of input, selection, and evaluation stages.     

Time series modeling and spectrum analysis for chatter mode in endmilling dynamics

To analyze the chatter mechanics, the power spectrum of a time series method was analyzed by considering cutting and structural dynamics. In this study, several time series models such as AR (burg, least square, yule walker, geometric lattice, instrument variable), ARX (arx, iv4), ARMAX, ARMA, Box Jenkins, Output Error were modeled and compared with one another. Finally, it was proved that arx, armax and iv4 are more desirable and reliable algorithms than the others for the calculation of the chatter mode in the endmilling operation. The cutting forces Fx and Fz have more powerful effects on the chatter than Fy in the sense that there is no shifting or pseudo mode in the power spectrum.     

Surface and normal ensembles for surface reconstruction

The majority of the existing techniques for surface reconstruction and the closely related problem of normal reconstruction are deterministic. Their main advantages are the speed and, given a reasonably good initial input, the high quality of the reconstructed surfaces. Nevertheless, their deterministic nature may hinder them from effectively handling incomplete data with noise and outliers. An ensemble is a statistical technique which can improve the performance of deterministic algorithms by putting them into a statistics based probabilistic setting. In this paper, we study the suitability of ensembles in normal and surface reconstruction. We experimented with a widely used normal reconstruction technique [Hoppe H, DeRose T, Duchamp T, McDonald J, Stuetzle W. Surface reconstruction from unorganized points. Computer Graphics 1992;71-8] and Multi-level Partitions of Unity implicits for surface reconstruction [Ohtake Y, Belyaev A, Alexa M, Turk G, Seidel H-P. Multi-level partition of unity implicits. ACM Transactions on Graphics 2003;22(3):463-70], showing that normal and surface ensembles can successfully be combined to handle noisy point sets.     

Parasitic Bipolar Junction Transistors in a Floating-Gate MOSFET for Fluorescence Detection

In this letter, we examined whether the parasitic bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) in the MOSFET fabricated by the standard CMOS process can play a role as a fluorescence detector. To suppress the action of two vertical parasitic BJTs, the gate and n-well were tied in the parasitic BJTs, and the body node was connected to the drain. The proposed device was compared with the inherent and the parasitic diodes in the MOSFET. It had 100 times higher photocurrents than the diodes in the MOSFET. In addition, it was applied for the detection of the fluorescent signal, and could detect near 10 nM of Alexa 546. Therefore, CMOS-process-compatible parasitic BJTs can be used as a photodetector in an integrated fluorescence detector.     

Piezoelectric Multilayer Ceramic/Polymer Composite Transducer with 2–2 Connectivity

A multilayer piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite with 2–2 connectivity was fabricated by thermoplastic green machining after co-extrusion. The multilayer ceramic body was composed of piezoelectrically active lead zirconate titanate (PZN)–lead zinc niobate (PZN)-lead zirconate titanate (PZT) layers and electrically conducting PZN–PZT/Ag layers. After co-extruding the thermoplastic body, which consisted of five piezoelectric layers interspersed with four conducting layers, it was computer numeric-controlled machined to create periodic channels within it. Following binder burnout and sintering, an 18 vol% array of 190 μm thin PZT slabs with a channel size of 880 μm was fabricated. The channels were filled with epoxy in order to fabricate a PZN–PZT/epoxy composite with 2–2 connectivity. The piezoelectric coefficient (effective d ₃₃) and hydrostatic figure of merit ( d _h× g _h) of the PZN–PZT/epoxy composite were 1200 pC/N and 20 130 × 10⁻¹⁵ m²/N, respectively. These excellent piezoelectric characteristics as well as the relatively simple fabrication procedure will contribute in widening the application range of the piezoelectric transducers.     

Maximizing SNR in improper complex noise and applications to CDMA

The optimum linear time-invariant (LTI) filter that maximizes the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is, in general, the solution to an integral equation. This is the well-known matched filter. With regards to the detection of bandpass signals, we present the full form of the integral equation using the complex baseband representation of signals. The correct form of the complex integral equation includes, in addition to the autocorrelation function, a pseudoautocorrelation function which vanishes for most applications. However, in the presence of improper complex noise, overlooking the pseudoautocorrelation leads to a “nonoptimal” filter. To illustrate the concept, we apply the theory to a direct-sequence code-division multi-access (DS-CDMA) system in which improper complex noise arises. In the application, we derive the SNR maximizing filter and the nonoptimal filter and compare their near-far resistances