P-MOSFET's with ultra-shallow solid-phase-diffused drain structureproduced by diffusion from BSG gate-sidewall

A p-MOSFET structure with solid-phase diffused drain (SPDD) is proposed for future 0.1-μm and sub-0.1-μm devices. Highly doped ultrashallow p⁺ source and drain junctions have been obtained by solid-phase diffusion from a highly doped borosilicate glass (BSG) sidewall. The resulting shallow, high-concentration drain profile significantly improves short channel effects without increasing parasitic resistance. At the same time, an in situ highly-boron-doped LPCVD polysilicon gate is introduced to prevent the transconductance degradation which arises in ultrasmall p-MOSFETs with lower process temperature as a result of depletion formation in the p⁺-polysilicon gate. Excellent electrical characteristics and good hot-carrier reliability are achieved     

Finite element analysis of the transient motion of stratified viscous fluids under gravity

The present paper deals with the finite element analysis of two-dimensional two-layer density flows in a gravitational field. A fluid in each layer is replaced with a large number of discrete particles, and the motion and deformation of each layer is represented by moving those particles in a Lagrangian manner. The velocity distribution in the whole fluid region is given as the finite element solution of the Navier-Stokes equations and the equation of continuity. In the finite element calculation, free-slip conditions are used on solid wall boundaries because no-slip conditions may cause sticking of some particles to walls. Then, a new technique for the implementation of free-slip conditions on arbitrary curved boundaries is presented. As numerical examples, density flows in a rectangular closed container and Rayleigh-Taylor instability in the container with a circular cross-section have been computed.     

Predicting Long‐Term Changes in Riparian Bird Communities in Floodplain Landscapes

As anthropogenic impacts on riverine ecosystems expand, both aquatic and terrestrial ecosystems are influenced over large spatiotemporal scales. We predicted how riparian bird communities changed in response to long‐term changes in floodplain landscapes such as woodland expansion (i.e. rapid increases in vegetation cover on gravel bars and the progress of vegetation succession due to a decrease in the frequency and magnitude of flood disturbance). To test the hypothesis that woodland expansion after dam construction reduces the abundance of gravel bar‐nesting birds and increases the abundance of forest‐nesting birds, we estimated historical changes between past and present bird abundances using species distribution models across multiple rivers that were either unregulated or regulated by dams. We created past and present vegetation maps from remote sensing images and used habitat quantities as explanatory variables in the species distribution models. As we hypothesized, the estimated abundance of gravel bar‐nesting birds decreased and that of forest‐nesting birds increased because of woodland expansion in some regulated rivers. This suggests that anthropogenic alterations of riverine conditions (e.g. dam construction) can affect terrestrial ecosystems (e.g. riparian bird communities) through changes in floodplains (e.g. woodland expansion). In addition, our findings highlight the efficacy of combining spatial and temporal analyses when examining long‐term ecological dynamics. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A Recommendation System Keeping Both Precision and Recall by Extraction of Uninteresting Information

A recommendation system which recommends interesting information to the target user must guarantee high precision and recall. However, there is trade-off between precision and recall. In this paper, we propose a web page recommendation method balancing both of them by take advantage of uninteresting information. The proposed method extracts the interest and uninterest indicators from not only historical interesting web pages but also uninteresting ones in a target genre. The historical interesting and uninteresting information is derived based on the browsing time and bookmarking. The proposed method can keep precision and recall by excluding the uninteresting information from the recommended ones based on the interest and uninterest indicators. The experimental result proved that the proposed method can improve the precision and recall than an existing method.     

Encapsulation of radioactive metals inside multilayered polyhedral shells of carbon as a barrier to radionuclide release

A carbon nanoencapsulate has a polyhedral outer shell of nested, concentric layers of carbon. The shell defines an internal cavity where a metal is encapsulated. Although the rare-earth carbides readily hydrolyze in moist air, the carbides in these carbon shells did not degrade after exposure to air for considerable lengths of time. This means that the carbide particle is physically enclosed within the carbon cavity completely, and the cavity protects it perfectly against attack of water molecules. Considering intrinsic chemical stability of carbon under oxygen free condition, this structure may be a perfect barrier to extremely long-term release of radionuclides. Because encapsulation of LaC₂ within carbon nanoparticles increased drastically from by-product to major product, it would be possible to find the optimized condition that complete encapsulation is achieved. Intrinsic stability of carbon and carbon coated waste nanoparticles may provide an improved barrier to radionuclide release by groundwater.     

Mutants of the nematode Caenorhabditis elegans that are defective specifically in their attraction to cycloheximide

The nematode Caenorhabditis elegans exhibits chemotaxis toward a wide variety of chemicals including water-soluble molecules and volatile organic compounds. We have previously discovered that C. elegans wild-type strain N2 is strongly attracted by cycloheximide which has long been known as a bitter tastant for humans and other mammals. We describe here the isolation and initial characterization of the first mutants which were defective specifically in their attraction to cycloheximide. In our screenings, we selected two mutants that were defective in chemotaxis to cycloheximide but normal in their attraction to NH4Cl and histidine. These mutants also avoided quinine hydrochloride, CuSO4 and high concentrations of NaCl similar to the wild-type strain N2. Furthermore, no observable defect was detected in their attraction to volatile odorants such as isoamyl alcohol and diacetyl. Dye-filling experiments suggested that they have no morphological defect in the sensory endings of the amphid neurons.     

Vivid image projection system using e‐Paper active screen

Projected image on a screen is not always vivid enough when it is projected in a bright room. We generally have to choose either vivid image in a dark room or dull image in a bright room. We have suggested a new projection system which can realize high contrast image projection in a bright room. It is consisted of electronic paper screen, projector, and light‐emitting diode room light. The electronic paper (e‐Paper) screen alternates its whole surface white/black with 120 Hz. Room lights are controlled with the same frequency of 120 Hz with the opposite phase as that of the e‐Paper screen. We have confirmed that our new system has achieved higher contrast than the conventional projection system and also enough readability of paper documents in the room simultaneously. We have thus confirmed that our new system can bring an ideal condition, for audience, which can realize a vivid image projection in a bright room.     

Extraction of Road Information from Guidance Map Images

A function of image recognition is indispensable to an intelligent robot which can coexist with a human being. Furthermore, the intelligent robot needs to understand the environment of their action range by getting information of characters and maps on advertisements and signboards in order to move autonomously. In this research, a method to search the route from the starting point to the destination on a guidance map, by extracting the road area on the map and revising degradation portions because of overlapping with characters or other figures is proposed. And the validity of this method is shown by the experiment using maps which were collected from advertisements or pamphlets.     

Augmented reality-based block piling game with superimposed collapse prediction

Understanding what cannot be seen is difficult. Physical behavior can be explained on the basis of physical theories even if the behavior cannot be observed. Explanation of what is physically happening in the real world would become easy, however, if annotations were superimposed on the real objects. Herein, the authors demonstrate how an understanding of a physical event can be facilitated by overlapping a real-world situation with a simulation that predicts a future state. This idea is demonstrated in a game application in which a player stacks blocks into a pile until it collapses. In general, it is easy to estimate whether a block on the edge of a table will fall or not. However, it is more difficult to predict whether a stack of many blocks will collapse, and in what manner the stack will collapse. Even though previous research has demonstrated that the problem of how two-dimensionally stacked blocks collapse can be reduced to solving a sequence of convex quadratic programs, algorithms for convex quadratic programs require massive computational resources. Hence, the authors developed a fast and new algorithm based on a linear program. The proposed algorithm realizes real-time simulation based on physics that superimposes predicted collapse. The block that is predicted to fall is superimposed on the real block with a lit background projection. The system was evaluated in an experiment, and superimposed augmented reality annotation was observed to be efficient. The system was also demonstrated in game contests and received positive feedback and comments.     

Comparison of Centralized and Decentralized Systems in Power System Restoration

This paper proposes a multiagent approach to decentralized power system restoration for distribution system networks and presents a comparison of centralized and decentralized systems for power system restoration. Numerous studies have been conducted on power system restoration problems. From the viewpoint of system structures, this research can be divided into two categories: centralized systems and decentralized systems. In this study, we solve a power system restoration problem for a power distribution network by two different methods: mathematical programming (MIP) and the proposed multiagent‐based method (MAS). The proposed multiagent system consists of several distributing substation agents (DSAGs) and load agents (LAGs). An LAG corresponds to the customer load, and a DSAG supplies electricity to the LAG. From the simulation results, it can be seen that the proposed system can reach the right solution by making use of only local information and that the solution quality is better than that of the centralized system (MIP). This means that the proposed multiagent restoration system is a promising approach to larger scale distribution networks.