Effect of wet-jet milling on the c-axis orientation of hydroxyapatite ceramics fabricated using a strong magnetic field

Controlling the crystal orientation of hydroxyapatite, an inorganic material that is a major component of human hard tissues is important to fabricate better artificial bones and artificial tooth roots. To obtain highly oriented hydroxyapatite ceramics under a strong magnetic field, a good dispersion of the raw materials in the slurry must be obtained. This study investigates the effect of wet-jet milling of a slurry on the orientation of hydroxyapatite ceramics fabricated using a strong magnetic field. Although the prolonged ball milling with ZrO₂ balls of the raw powder fractures the primary particles of hydroxyapatite, wet-jet milling is used to successfully pulverize agglomerated hydroxyapatite raw powder without changing the morphology of the primary particles. Evidently, ceramics with a highly oriented c-axis of hydroxyapatite are obtained by molding the wet-jet milled slurry in a strong rotating magnetic field. They exhibit anisotropy in fracture toughness, and the fracture toughness calculated from the crack length perpendicular to the rotating axis is higher than that calculated from the crack length parallel to it. Furthermore, these values are higher than those of randomly oriented hydroxyapatite ceramics, which may be owing to the crystal orientation dependence of the fracture toughness of the hydroxyapatite grains and grain boundaries.     

Colorless polyimides derived from 1S,2S,4R,5R-cyclohexanetetracarboxylic dianhydride,self-orientation behavior during solution casting,and their optoelectronic applications

A novel cycloaliphatic monomer for polyimides (PI), 1S,2S,4R,5R-cyclohexanetetracarboxylic dianhydride (H′-PMDA) is proposed in this work. H′-PMDA shows high polymerizability with various diamines in contrast to its isomer, i.e., conventional hydrogenated pyromellitic dianhydride (H-PMDA) and leads to highly flexible and colorless PI films with very high T_g's. In particular, the combinations with rigid structures of diamines give rise to PIs with significantly decreased coefficients of thermal expansion (CTE) owing to high extents of in-plane chain orientation induced by thermal imidization, whereas the H-PMDA-based counterparts do not. The decreased CTE reflects structural rigidity/linearity of the H′-PMDA-based diimide units as supported by liquid crystallinity observed in the corresponding model compound. Solution casting of a chemically imidized PI derived from H′-PMDA and 2,2′-bis(trifluoromethyl)benzidine (TFMB) results in a lower CTE than that of the thermally imidized counterpart, suggesting the presence of a self-orientation phenomenon during solvent evaporation. The mechanism is proposed in this work. H′-PMDA/TFMB and its copolymer systems can be useful as plastic substrates in image display devices and/or novel coating-type optical compensation films.     

Pressureless all-solid-state sodium-ion battery consisting of sodium iron pyrophosphate glass-ceramic cathode and β″-alumina solid electrolyte composite

In recent years, the expansion of demand for lithium ion batteries has resulted in soaring prices of the constituent resources. From the viewpoint of safety, studies on all-solid-state batteries are actively being carried out. In this study, we succeeded in driving all-solid-state batteries derived from nontoxic oxide glasses at room temperature without requiring scarce resources such as lithium and cobalt. The main structure of the ceramic batteries with a simple structure in which Na₂FeP₂O₇ crystallized glass and β″-alumina solid solution are joined by pressureless cofiring at 550°C. During the crystallization of Na₂O-Fe₂O₃-P₂O₅ glass, fusion with the β″-alumina solid solution is achieved. Reversible charge and discharge of 80 mAh/g were achieved at room temperature. It is not necessary to apply pressure during cell preparation or the use of the batteries. Furthermore, the strong junction at the cathode and electrolyte interface does not peel off during charge and discharge over a long period of 623 cycles. Ex situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy revealed partial Fe⁴⁺ induction and a reversible charge and discharge reaction even after overcharging to 9 V. It was demonstrated that Na₂FeP₂O₇ is very stable against overcharging to 9 V.     

Preparation of Ca-α SiAlON hollow spheres by carbothermal reduction-nitridation of CaO-Al2O3-SiO2 glass

Ca-α SiAlON powders were prepared by carbothermal reduction-nitridation of CaO-Al₂O₃-SiO₂ glasses at 1450 °C for 2 h in nitrogen. The content of Ca-α SiAlON phase was 65-81% in the products, and the other phases were AlN and β-SiAlON. The products contained hollow spheres with the size of around 5 μm in diameter. The particle morphology was almost identical to that of Ca-α SiAlON prepared from CaCO₃-Al₂O₃-SiO₂ powder mixtures.     

Physical meaning of ΔKRP and fatigue crack propagation in the residual stress distribution field

Previous papers have shown ΔK_RP to be a useful parameter describing fatigue crack propagation behavior, where ΔK_RP is an effective stress intensity factor range corresponding to the excess RPG load (re-tensile plastic zone's generated load) in which the retensile plastic zone appears under the loading process. In this paper, the relationship between ΔK_RP and the zone size ( ) (which is smaller between the tensile plastic zone at maximum load and the compressive plastic zone at minimum load) was investigated using a crack opening/closing simulation model so as to consider a physical meaning of ΔK_RP. As a result, it becomes clear that ΔK_RP dominates the zone size where fatigue damage mostly occurs. This result supports the following crack propagation equation

where C and m are material constants.Simulation and fatigue crack propagation tests were then carried out for compact tension (CT), center cracked tension (CCT) and four points bend (4PB) specimens under constant amplitude loading to obtain C and m values for HT-50 steel. Fatigue crack propagation tests were also carried out under constant amplitude loading using CCT specimens with residual stress distribution due to flame gas heating at the center line or edge lines. The T specimen introduced tensile residual stress at the tip of a notch, and the C specimen introduced compressive residual stress. It therefore becomes clear that tensile residual stress leads to a decrease in RPG load, while compressive residual stress leads to increase in RPG load, and that the simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental RPG load. It also becomes clear that simulated crack growth curve using the simulated and the above equation is in good agreement with the experimental curve. It is understood that tensile residual stress creates only a slight increase in crack propagation rate and compressive residual stress create a big decrease a crack propagation rate.     

Use of multivariate analysis for the improvement in prediction accuracy of bacterial aerobic plate count by flow cytometry

Flow cytometry (FCM) and aerobic plate count (APC) by the culture method were performed on green tea samples spiked with Escherichia coli type strain NCTC9001 (ATCC11775) solutions of different concentrations. In FCM, fluorescence signals from multiple stained bacteria and other fluorophores are detected using detector channels, and recorded as events with a voltage at each channel. FCM data were analyzed in two ways: conventional and multivariate analysis. In the former, the number of events with voltages larger than the defined threshold values was regarded as the predicted APC. In the latter, voltage histograms of all channels were obtained and merged horizontally to serve as explanatory variables. Then a partial least squares regression (PLSR) model was built to predict APC from the histogram data. The coefficient of determination (R²) and the root mean square error (RMSE) between APC by the culture method and that predicted by conventional FCM were 0.916 and 1.08 cfu/ml². The APC values predicted by the PLSR model and those measured were in good agreement with R² of 0.982 and RMSE of 0.417 cfu/ml, which verified the potential of the proposed method for improving APC prediction accuracy by FCM.     

Unique Features of Mobile Commerce

While the market potentials and impacts of web-based e-commerce are still in the ascendant, the advances in wireless technologies and mobile networks have brought about a new business opportunity and research attention, what is termed mobile commerce. Commonly, mobile commerce is considered to be another new application of existing web-based e-commerce onto wireless networks, but as an independent business area, mobile commerce has its own advantages and challenges as opposed to traditional e-commerce applications. This paper focuses on exploring the unique features of mobile commerce as compared with traditional e-commerce. Also, there are still some limitations arisen in m-commerce in contrast to web-based e-commerce. Finally, current state of mobile commerce in Japan is presented in brief, with an introduction of several cases involving mobile commerce applications in today's marketplace.     

Evaluation of robust control by universal learning networks

The characteristics of control system design using a universal learning network (ULN) are such that both the controlled systems and their controller are represented in a unified framework, and that the learning stage of the ULN can be executed by using not only first-order derivatives (gradient) but also the higher order derivatives of the criterion function with respect to parameters. ULNs have the same generalization ability as neural networks. So the ULN controller is able to control the system in a favorable way under an environment which is little different from the environment of the control system at the learning stage. However, stability cannot be sufficiently realized. In this paper, we propose a robust control method using a ULN and second-order derivatives of that ULN. Robust control, as considered here, is defined as follows. Even though the initial values of the node outputs are very different from those at the learning stage, the control system is able to reduce its influence to other node outputs and can control the system as in the case of no variation. In order to realize such robust control, a new term concerning the variation is added to the usual criterion function, and the parameters are adjusted so as to minimize the above-mentioned criterion function using second-order derivatives of the criterion function with respect to the parameters. Finally, it is shown that the ULN controller constructed by the proposed method works effectively in a simulation study of a non-linear crane system. This work was presented, in part, at the International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, February 18–20, 1996     

高温流化床的流化特性及结焦非流化行为

在 8 0 mm× 30 mm和 80 mm× 10 mm石英流化床中 ,以低温粘结的高密度聚乙烯和聚丙烯 ,高温粘结的玻璃珠为实验物料 ,研究了高温流化床的流化特性及高温下物料结焦产生的非流化行为。结果表明 ,在本文实验条件下 ,Geldart A、B类高温表面粘结物料 ,床层温度小于其最小粘结温度时 ,床层温度增大 ,颗粒的最小流化速度减小 ;Geldart D类高温表面粘结物料的最小流化速度随温度增加而增大。得出了不同温度下颗粒最小流化速度预测式。床层温度大于最小粘结温度时 ,流化床需在较高的表观气速下才能保持流化 ,床层温度愈高床层流化所需的表观气速越大。研究同时发现 ,颗粒物料的粒径减小 ,流化颗粒的最小粘结温度减小。