Effects of vanadium carbides on hydrogen embrittlement of tempered martensitic steel

Precipitation of V carbides is known to suppress the hydrogen-embrittlement (HE) phenomenon as well as to increase material strength. Despite increasing attention to V carbides, there have been few systematic and quantitative investigations on their effects on HE resistance. This study reveals the role of V carbides on the HE behavior of tempered martensitic steel while eliminating other factors, such as chemical composition of other elements, mechanical strength, and dislocation density. The amount of trapped hydrogen increased with increasing V content, whereas the best HE resistance was attained at 0.2 wt% V and it decreased with further V addition. V carbide was considered as a non-diffusible hydrogen-trapping site in this study. However, excessive V content led to the formation of large undissolved carbides that gave rise to brittle fracture and decreased HE resistance. This study suggests that improved HE resistance can be achieved by minimizing the size and amount of undissolved V carbides.     

High temperature oxidation resistance of Ni-(5∼13)Co-(10∼16)Cr-(5∼9)W-5Al-(1∼1.5)Ti-(3∼6)Ta alloys

The oxidation behavior of Ni-based superalloys was examined by cyclic oxidation tests at 850 and 1000 °C. The present study focused on the investigation of two newly developed and three commercial alloys (GTD-111, IN738LC, and CM247LC). The oxidation resistance of the superalloys were evaluated by the oxidation rate constants and the mass gains. The oxidation scales mainly consisted of outer Cr₂O₃ and inner Al₂O₃ layers at both temperatures, as well as oxides of minor elements such as TiO₂, NiCr₂O₄, CrTaO₄, HfO₂, and TaO. The oxidation resistance of the alloys containing larger amounts of Al, W, and Ta and lower Mo and Ti concentrations was higher than those of the other alloys. The ranking of oxidation resistance for the alloys corresponded to the statistical prediction drawn from a response surface analysis. Furthermore, these alloys contained more Ta oxides, such as CrTaO₄ and TaO, suggesting that Ta oxides had an active role in improving the oxidation resistance.     

Inhibitory effect of oral administration of Sangwhang mushroom (Phellinus linteus) grown on germinated brown rice on experimental lung metastasis and tumor growth in mice

Here, the effect of oral administration of the extract of sangwhang mushroom (Phellinus linteus, PL) grown on germinated brown rice on lung metastasis of tumor cells was examined in mice, and a possible immunological action was suggested. Oral administration of the extract of sangwhang mushroom grown on germinated brown rice (PB, 90 mg/kg) prior to tumor inoculation significantly inhibited experimental lung metastasis produced by colon 26-M3.1 carcinoma cells. Also oral administration of PB after tumor inoculation significantly inhibited experimental lung metastasis of tumor cells. In addition, oral administration of PB significantly suppressed tumor growth as well as tumor-induced angiogenesis. However, neither PL nor germinated brown rice (BR) was active. Oral administration of PB, but not PL and BR, resulted in a significant enhancement of natural killer (NK)-mediated killing activity against tumor cells. These results suggest that oral administration of PB can induce antitumor activity to inhibit tumor metastasis, and its antitumor effect is associated with NK cell activation.     

Flexible auto balancer design for the reduction of optical disk drive vibration

This study investigates the design of a flexible auto balancer (FAB) for the compensation of disk eccentricity. The FAB has various advantages over a conventional auto ball balancer, such as low cost, ease of implementation, lack of noise and applicability to standing-type drives. For the FAB design, a finite element model is developed considering the prestress effect and spin-softening effect caused by rotation. The structure is optimized and fabricated based on finite element model verification via modal testing. In addition, the dynamic behavior of the FAB is recorded by high-speed photography, and the vibration transmission to the base deck is measured.     

Measurement of total phenolic content in wine using an automatic Folin–Ciocalteu assay method

Measuring the total phenolic content in wine is important in estimating the taste and health benefits of wine. We developed an automatic Folin–Ciocalteu (F‐C) method to reduce processing times (3 min), human errors and waste volume as compared it to the manual method. The gallic acid standard responded linearly up to 5000 μg mL^?1, and the wine dilution series responded linearly between four‐ and sixteenfold dilutions. Anthocyanins showed slower reaction rate compared with wine, gallic acid and quercetin, while ascorbic acid showed the fastest rate. Fructose and glucose at the 10% level showed approximately 8% interference in port wines, and the interference was thought to be negligible in most dry wines containing <1% sugar. Total phenolic contents ranged between 1600 and 3300 μg mL^?1 by the automatic method and were approximately 20% less than those by the manual method, except in pink wines which was nearly identical. The regression analysis of the phenolic contents showed a very linear relationship between the methods (r² = 0.97***). This automatic method was thought to be efficiently adopted in wine testing laboratories as a fast and reproducible assay.     

Effect of temperature on the relationship between moisture content and dynamic rheological properties of Korean honey

Dynamic rheological properties of 27 Korean honeys with various moisture contents (16.2–20.1%) were evaluated at different temperatures (−5, 0, 5, 10, and 20°C) and were then correlated with moisture content. Dynamic moduli increased with a decrease in temperature while their predominant increases were noticed at −5°C. The relationships between moisture content and dynamic moduli seem to be influenced by temperature, and their correlations increased in the following order: −5>0>5 >10>20°C, showing greater determination coefficients (R²=0.942−0.966) at −5°C as compared to the other temperatures. In particular, the G″ at sub-zero temperatures had a better correlation (R²=0.965−0.966) than G′ (R²=0.899−0.942), indicating that the viscous property more closely correlated with moisture content as compared to the elastic property. This suggests that G″ determined at subzero temperatures can be useful for estimating the quality of honey.     

Modeling and Analysis of Queuing Effect of Two‐Level Approach to Network Localization

In this letter, a novel method for localizing a user in a smart home environment is presented. We propose a two‐level structure, in which the first level determines an occupant's location in the block level using RSSI in a ZigBee network, while the second level accurately estimates the occupant's location using a particle filter to handle the variations in the signal strength measurement. We devise an experimental setup with people performing significant tasks in the smart home. The results obtained from the testbed indicate that the proposed model leads to an improvement in the mean distance error.     

LISP controller: a centralized LISP management system for ISP networks

As the current Internet architecture is suffering from scalability issues, the network research community has proposed alternative designs for the Internet architecture. Among those solutions that adopt the idea of locator/identifier split paradigm, the locator/identifier separation protocol (LISP) has been considered as the most promising solution because of its incrementally deployable feature. Despite various advantages provided by LISP, many ISPs are still conservative to adopt LISP into their production network because the standard LISP does not fully satisfy ISP's requirements on LISP‐enabled services. In this paper, we define ISP's requirements on LISP‐enabled commercial services and describe limitations of the standard LISP from an ISP's perspective. Also, we propose LISP controller, a centralized LISP management system. By using LISP controller, we evaluate three ISP's representative LISP use cases: traffic engineering, virtual machine live migration, and vertical handover. The results show that the proposed LISP controller provides centralized management, controllability, and fast map entry update, without any modifications on the standard LISP. LISP controller allows an ISP to control and manage its LISP‐enabled services while satisfying ISP's requirements. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.