Direct Observation of Pure Cu and Cu-Ag Anode Passivation in H2SO4-CuSO4 Aqueous Solution by Channel Flow Double Electrode and Optical Microscopy

Metallurgical and Materials Transactions B - The dissolution and passivation of pure Cu and Cu-5 wt pct Ag anodes in H2SO4-CuSO4 electrolyte were investigated by a direct...     

γ‐Butyrolactone‐processable high‐modulus poly(ester imide)s

γ‐Butyrolactone (GBL)‐processable high modulus heat‐resistant materials were developed in this work. The polyaddition of an ester‐containing tetracarboxylic dianhydride, i.e. hydroquinone bis(trimellitate anhydride) (TAHQ), and 2,2′‐bis(trifluoromethyl)benzidine (TFMB) in GBL resulted in gelation in the initial reaction stage. The incorporation of a methyl group to TAHQ (M‐TAHQ) allowed polymerization with TFMB in GBL and led to a homogeneous poly(ester imide) (PEsI) precursor solution with a short pot life of 3 days, whereas a simple copolymerization approach using bulky/flexible comonomers to TAHQ/TFMB was less effective. PEsI precursors (PEsAAs) were prepared from TFMB, M‐TAHQ and a minor fraction of 4,4′‐(hexafluoroisopropylidene)diphthalic anhydride (6FDA) or a fluorene‐containing tetracarboxylic dianhydride. These PEsAA systems showed drastically improved GBL solution stability. In particular, the M‐TAHQ(80);6FDA(20)/TFMB copolymer system provided a PEsAA film with a very high light transmittance at 365 nm (>70%). A photosensitive film composed of this matrix resin and diazonaphthoquinone provided a clear positive‐tone pattern by development in a 2.38 wt% tetramethylammonium hydroxide aqueous solution at room temperature with a high dissolution contrast. The thermally cured PEsI film achieved a very high tensile modulus (>5 GPa) as the present target with other desirable properties, i.e. sufficient film flexibility, a relatively low coefficient of thermal expansion, a high T_g and low water absorption. The present materials can be promising candidates as novel buffer coat films in semiconductor applications. Copyright © 2011 Society of Chemical Industry     

ArchaeoSTOR: A data curation system for research on the archeological frontier

The broad adoption of diagnostic and analytical techniques in the field of archeology, presents a unique opportunity for e-Science in the form of scientific explanation, drawing from methodologies aimed at recording, archiving, analyzing, and disseminating, rich data collections to create the needed infrastructure for both research and web-based curation and data management system. This paper presents a needed stepping stone towards synergy between information technology and archeology, by introducing a data acquisition, tagging and characterization pipeline along with a novel method for spatially querying archeological data.     

Structural hierarchy developed in injection molding of nylon 6/clay/carbon black nanocomposites

The influence of platelet-type clay nanoparticle (nanoplatelet) on the structural evolution in injection-molded nylon 6)/carbon composites was investigated. In the absence of nanoplatelets, the nylon 6/CB systems were found to exhibit unoriented structure with nylon 6 crystalline regions exhibiting exclusively α crystal form throughout the thickness of the samples. However, inclusion of nanoplatelets induces substantial local orientation of the nylon 6 chains in the molded parts in all processing conditions and compositions. In these clay/nylon 6/CB ternary nano systems, nylon 6 matrix was found to be exclusively in γ crystal form at the skin regions and α crystal form fraction increases towards the core of the molded parts as a result of decrease in cooling rate with depth during the solidification stage. Two nanoplatelet orientation behaviors were identified: (i) in the absence of irregular shaped CB, the nanoplatelets align parallel with one another following the local flow patterns. The latter behavior also causes enhanced orientation of the nylon 6 chains undergoing substantial shear amplification trapped in between the nanoplatelets (ii) in the CB-enriched regions, nanoplatelets though still remaining parallel to one another, are randomized by following the local contours of irregular shaped CB aggregates. These CB aggregates themselves were found to organize to form trains in larger scale as a result of flow alignment.     

Packing density of glycolipid biosurfactant monolayers give a significant effect on their binding affinity toward immunoglobulin G

Mannosylerythritol lipid-A (MEL-A) is one of the most promising glycolipid biosurfactants, and abundantly produced by Pseudozyma yeasts. MEL-A gives not only excellent self-assembling properties but also a high binding affinity toward human immunoglobulin G (HIgG). In this study, three kinds of MEL-A were prepared from methyl myristate [MEL-A (m)], olive oil [MEL-A (o)], and soybean oil [MEL-A (s)], and the effect of interfacial properties of each MEL-A monolayer on the binding affinity toward HIgG was investigated using surface plasmon resonance (SPR) and the measurement of surface pressure (pi)-area (A) isotherms. Based on GC-MS analysis, the main fatty acids were C(8) and C(10) acids in all MEL-A, and the content of unsaturated fatty acids was 0% for MEL-A (m), 9.1% for MEL-A (o), 46.3% for MEL-A (s), respectively. Interestingly, the acid content significantly influenced on their binding affinity, and the monolayer of MEL-A (o) gave a higher binding affinity than that of MEL-A (m) and MEL-A (s). Moreover, the mixed MEL-A (o)/ MEL-A (s) monolayer prepared from 1/1 molar ratio, which comprised of 27.8% of unsaturated fatty acids, indicated the highest binding affinity. At the air/water interface, MEL-A (o) monolayer exhibited a phase transition at 13 degrees C from a liquid condensed monolayer to a liquid expanded monolayer, and the area per molecule significantly expanded above 13 degrees C, while the amount of HIgG bound to the liquid expanded monolayer was much higher than that bound to liquid condensed monolayer. The binding affinity of MEL-A toward HIgG is thus likely to closely relate to the monolayer packing density, and may be partly controlled by temperature.     

Revolving Vernier Mechanism Controls Size of Linear Homomultimer

A new kind of the Vernier mechanism that is able to control the size of linear assembly of DNA origami nanostructures is proposed. The mechanism is realized by mechanical design of DNA origami, which consists of a hollow cylinder and a rotatable shaft in it connected through the same scaffold. This nanostructure stacks with each other by the shape complementarity at its top and bottom surfaces of the cylinder, while the number of stacking is limited by twisting angle of the shaft. Experiments have shown that the size distribution of multimeric assembly of the origami depends on the twisting angle of the shaft; the average lengths of the multimer are decamer, hexamer, and tetramer for 0°, 10°, and 20° twist, respectively. In summary, it is possible to affect the number of polymerization by adjusting the precise shape and movability of a molecular structure.     

Wide gamut LCD using locally dimmable four‐primary‐color LED backlight

This paper proposes a wide gamut LCD using locally dimmable four‐primary‐color (4PC) LED backlight. Although the color gamut of LCDs has been improved in recent years, it is insufficient to reproduce all the colors in the real world. The objective of this paper is to propose a wide gamut LCD that reproduces all the colors in the real world while keeping the cost increases to a minimum. We evaluated the color gamut reproduced by LEDs of multiple primary colors and selected cyan as the optimal color to be added to the three primary colors to reproduce all the colors in the real world. Therefore, we designed an LED backlight consisting of an additional only‐cyan LED with three‐primary‐color LEDs and developed a prototype LCD with 4PC LED backlight. Furthermore, we developed a local dimming algorithm for the 4PC LED backlight. As a result, we confirmed that the prototype LCD with the 4PC LED backlight is able to cover almost all the colors in the real world and also able to display natural images with highly saturated colors by local dimming.     

Self-generation of reward by logarithmic transformation of multiple sensor evaluations

Artificial Life and Robotics - Although the design of the reward function in reinforcement learning is important, it is difficult to design a system that can adapt to a variety of environments and...     

Ground object recognition and segmentation from aerial image‐based 3D point cloud

Several attempts have been made to grasp three‐dimensional (3D) ground shape from a 3D point cloud generated by aerial vehicles, which help fast situation recognition. However, identifying such objects on the ground from a 3D point cloud, which consists of 3D coordinates and color information, is not straightforward due to the gap between the low‐level point information (coordinates and colors) and high‐level context information (objects). In this paper, we propose a ground object recognition and segmentation method from a geo‐referenced point cloud. Basically, we rely on some existing tools to generate such a point cloud from aerial images, and our method tries to give semantics to each set of clustered points. In our method, firstly, such points that correspond to the ground surface are removed using the elevation data from the Geographical Survey Institute. Next, we apply an interpoint distance‐based clustering and color‐based clustering. Then, such clusters that share some regions are merged to correctly identify a cluster that corresponds to a single object. We have evaluated our method in several experiments in real fields. We have confirmed that our method can remove the ground surface within 20 cm error and can recognize most of the objects.