Studies on syntheses and permeabilities of special polymer membranes. XIV. Permeation characteristics of modified nylon 12 membranes

The permeation characteristics and the burst strength of nylon 12 membranes treated with heat in various solutions such as aqueous solutions of formic acid, formic acid/formalin, and sodium hydroxide/ formalin were investigated under various conditions. They were significantly influenced by the treatment solution, temperature and time, and the concentration of acid and alkali in the treatment solution. In particular, nylon 12 membranes treated with formic acid/formalin remarkably improved the permeation characteristics and the burst strength. These phenomena were discussed from the standpoint of the effective pore size and pore number in the membrane, and the form and aggregation of polymer molecules forming the membrane.     

Anomalous galvanomagnetic properties of graphite in the quantum limit

Recent experiments on the galvanomagnetic effects of graphite in the quantum limit revealed that (1), σ_xyH is not a constant but depends on the field strength; (2), the resistivity ? ? σ_xx^?1 at low temperatures has a field dependence of? = ∣(A + BHⁿ), n ? 1; and (3), the ? vs T curve has a maximum at about T = 25K. These results cannot be explained by a simple theory. However, in consideration of the appearance of the bound states D⁰ and A⁰ in the quantum limit we can provide a qualitative explanation of the above observed results, where D correspond to donor and A represents acceptor. In the quantum limit the possibility of the transitions D⁺ + (?e) → D⁰ and A^? + (+e) → A⁰ is pointed out. Co-existence of the ionized impurity scattering and the neutral impurity scattering explains the qualitative features of the (H,T)-dependence of the resistivity at low temperatures. At high temperatures it is necessary to consider the phonon scattering and the carrier-carrier scattering. Without the carrier-carrier scattering the (H,T)-dependence of ? at T > 25K cannot be explained.     

Efficient Pump Depolarizer Analysis for Distributed Raman Amplifier With Low Polarization Dependence of Gain

This paper discusses a method of reducing the polarization dependence of gain (PDG) of a distributed Raman amplifier. Reducing its PDG is important for a Raman amplifier because it is higher than that of an erbium-doped fiber amplifier and can degrade transmission performance. Raman PDG is determined primarily by two factors, namely 1) polarization-mode dispersion (PMD) of the transmission fiber and 2) degree of polarization (DOP) of the pump source. The authors propose a simple analytical model to show the required pump light DOP for a given transmission fiber's PMD and the allowable PDG. For instance, a low pump DOP of 5% produces a low PDG of 0.2 dB under typical fiber PMD conditions, in which the analytical model agrees well with experiment. Subsequently, to achieve the required DOP, the pump source configuration is investigated in detail. The authors used one length of polarization-maintaining fiber (PMF) as an efficient pump depolarizer and evaluated its performance for various pump light spectra. It has been shown that the DOP following the depolarizer is determined simply by Fourier transformation of the pump light spectrum. The analysis in this paper has led to the important result that a Fabry-Perot laser diode pump with a short piece of PMF is effective in achieving a low pump DOP due to its multimode spectrum when the length of the PMF is properly adjusted for the longitudinal-mode spacing frequency. It has been verified that a Raman amplifier's PDG can be reduced by the proposed efficient depolarizer sufficiently for a PDG-reduced Raman amplifier repeater to be applicable to long-haul transmission systems     

Construction of the Voronoi diagram for `one million' generators insingle-precision arithmetic

A numerically stable algorithm for constructing Voronoi diagrams in the plane is presented. In this algorithm higher priority is placed on the topological structure than on numerical values, so that, however large the numerical errors, the algorithm will never come across topological inconsistency and thus can always complete its task. The behavior of the algorithm is shown with examples, including one for as many as 10⁶ generators     

New oral dosage form for elderly patients. III. Stability of trichlormethiazide in silk fibroin gel and various sugar solutions

The hydrolysis of trichlormethiazide (TCM) in silk fibroin gel (SFG) prepared in various sugar solutions (such as ribose, fructose, mannose, and glucose solutions) was determined. The hydrolysis rate of TCM differed with the variety of sugars utilized in this study; that is, it decreased in the following order: ribose > fructose > mannose > glucose. To investigate the relationship between the hydrolysis rate of TCM and the physicochemical properties of the sugar molecule, the amount of unfrozen water of sugar molecules was calculated from differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The amount of unfrozen water increased with an increase in the number of the equatorial OH groups n(e-OH) per sugar molecule that are able to hydrate favorably to the surrounding water molecules. The hydrolysis rate constant decreased with increase in n(e-OH); glucose, having a large n(e-OH) in this study could effectively stabilize TCM.     

A brush device with visual and haptic feedback for virtual painting of 3D virtual objects

We have previously developed a mixed reality (MR) painting system with which a user could take a physical object in the real world and apply virtual paint to it. However, this system could not provide the sensation of painting on virtual objects in MR space. Therefore, we subsequently proposed and developed mechanisms that simulated the effect of touch and movement when a brush device was used to paint on a virtual canvas. In this paper, we use visual and haptic feedback to provide the sensation of painting on virtual three-dimensional objects using a new brush device called the MAI Painting Brush++. We evaluate and confirm its effectiveness through several user studies.     

High-performance bismuth-telluride compounds with highly stable thermoelectric figure of merit

The p-type (Bi_0.25Sb_0.75)₂Te₃ ingot doped with 8 wt% excess Te alone and the n-type Bi₂ (Te_0.94Se_0.06)₃ ingot codoped with 0.068 wt% I and 0.017 wt% Te were grown by the Bridgman method and annealed at 673 K for 5 h in a hydrogen stream. The electrical resistivity ρ, Seebeck coefficient α and thermal conductivity κ before and after annealing were measured at 298 K, so that the annealing degraded significantly ZT of the p-type specimen but enhanced remarkably that of the n-type one. The temperature dependences of ρ, α and κ of the as-grown p-type and annealed n-type specimens with higher ZT were investigated in the temperature range from 200 to 360 K. As a result, ZT values of the as-grown p-type and annealed n-type specimens have a broad peak and reached great values of 1.19 and 1.13 at approximately 320 K, respectively. The present materials were thus found to be far superior to any other bismuth-telluride compound in the thermal stability of energy conversion efficiency in addition to the high performance.