Blends and alloys of vinyl—technology and applications

The use of multiphase polymers is of growing importance because of their inherent economical and technological benefits. The basic characteristics of multiphase polymer blends and alloys are covered. The advantages of vinyl as a component are discussed in light of its ease of processing, inherent compatibility, fire resistance, weatherability, and a wide range of properties achievable. Blend morphology is reviewed and related to the mechanical properties. Typical examples of commercial materials and their application are reviewed.     

Myopic Social Prediction and the Solo Comparison Effect.

Four experiments explored the psychological processes by which people make comparative social judgments. Each participant chose how much money to wager on beating an opponent on either a difficult or a simple trivia quiz. Quiz difficulty did not influence the average person's probability of winning, yet participants bet more on a simple quiz than on a difficult quiz in the first 3 experiments. The results suggest that this effect results from a tendency to attend more closely to a focal actor than to others. Experiment 4 directly manipulated focusing; when participants were led to focus on the opponent instead of themselves, the effect was reversed. The discussion relates the results to other literatures including overly optimistic self-evaluation, false consensus, overconfidence, and social comparison. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Visual complexity: A review.

The idea of visual complexity, the history of its measurement, and its implications for behavior are reviewed, starting with structuralism and Gestalt psychology at the beginning of the 20th century and ending with visual complexity theory, perceptual learning theory, and neural circuit theory at the beginning of the 21st. Evidence is drawn from research on single forms, form and texture arrays and visual displays. Form complexity and form probability are shown to be linked through their reciprocal relationship in complexity theory, which is in turn shown to be consistent with recent developments in perceptual learning and neural circuit theory. Directions for further research are suggested. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Identification of steroid hormones in pomegranate (Punica granatum) using HPLC and GC–mass spectrometry

Although it has been known that pomegranate (Punica granatum L.) contains several steroid hormones, concrete experimental proofs about that have not been published until now. In order to identify and evaluate the contents of steroid hormones including estrone in pomegranate, we analyzed pomegranate seed, fruit juice and commercial preparations. We developed a reproducible and sensitive method for separation and identification of steroid hormones in pomegranate samples using both high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC)–PDA and gas chromatography (GC)–MS. In case of HPLC, an isocratic elution method using 35% aqueous acetonitrile solution at 1.0 ml/min with photodiode-array (PDA) detection at 225 nm and 254 nm was found to optimally separate and identify the steroid hormones from the pomegranate samples with a run time of less than 30 min. The pomegranate samples were comparatively analyzed to the HPLC results by GC/FID or GC/MS detection on a HP-1 (30 m length, 0.32 mm I.D.) with helium as carrier gas under the oven temperature control as follows: start 220 °C for 5 min, raising 5 °C per min, final 280 °C for 10 min. The HPLC and GC methods were successfully applied to the identification of steroid hormones in pomegranate samples. Our results suggested that there were no steroid estrogens including estrone, estradiol and testosterone in pomegranate seed, fruit juice and preparations. Consequently, we assumed that the previously reported analysts of pomegranate were misunderstood their analytical results according to either the estrogen-like effects or similarity of peak retention time and Rf values in experiments.     

The root cause of black pad failure of solder joints with electroless Ni/Immersion gold plating

This paper reports on a study of the reaction of solder with the electrolessnickel with immersion gold (ENIG) plating system, and the resulting interfacial structures. Aforcused-ion beam (FIB) was used to polish the cross sections to reveal details of the microstructure of the ENIG-plated pad with and without soldering. High-speed pull testing of solder joints was performed to expose the pad surface. Results of scanning-electron microscopy/energy-dispersive x-ray analysis of the cross sections and fractured pad surfaces support the suggestion that black pad is the result of galvanic hyper-corosion of the plated electroless nickel by the gold plating bath. Criteria are proposed for diagnosing black pad of ENIG plating.     

A Software-Optimized Encryption Algorithm

We describe the software-efficient encryption algorithm SEAL 3.0. Computational cost on a modern 32-bit processor is about 4 clock cycles per byte of text. The cipher is a pseudorandom function family: under control of a key (first preprocessed into an internal table) it stretches a 32-bit position index into a long, pseudorandom string. This string can be used as the keystream of a Vernam cipher. Received 3 May 1996 and revised 17 September 1997     

Spatio-temporal EEG source localization using simulated annealing

The estimation of multiple dipole parameters in spatio-temporal source modeling (STSM) of electroencephalographic (EEG) data is a difficult nonlinear optimization problem due to multiple local minima in the cost function. A straightforward iterative optimization approach to such a problem is very susceptible to being trapped in a local minimum, thereby resulting in incorrect estimates of the dipole parameters. Here, the authors present and evaluate a more robust optimization approach based on the simulated annealing algorithm. The complexity of this approach for the STSM problem was reduced by separating the dipole parameters into linear (moment) and nonlinear (location) components. The effectiveness of the proposed method and its superiority over the traditional nonlinear simplex technique in escaping local minima were tested and demonstrated through computer simulations. The annealing algorithm and its implementation for multidipole estimation are also discussed. The authors found the simulated annealing approach to be 7-31% more effective than the simplex method at converging to the true global minimum for a number of different kinds of three-dipole problems simulated in this work. In addition, the computational cost of the proposed approach was only marginally higher than its simplex counterpart. The annealing method also yielded similar solutions irrespective of the initial guesses used. The proposed simulated annealing method is an attractive alternative to the simplex method that is currently more common in dipole estimation applications     

Real-time pitch extraction of voiced speech

This paper describes a novel speech analysis application which was implemented using a Motorola M68HC11 microcontroller system. This microcontroller-based platform was designed to function as a pitch extractor for voiced speech in real time. In this context, pitch extraction is the identification of individual pitch periods, or glottal cycles, from a raw speech waveform. The system implements a new pitch determination algorithm (PDA) that is based on a progressing wave model of speech generation. The PDA was developed specifically to operate in real-time and to maintain phase characteristics with the raw speech signal. As one possible application, the pitch extractor was incorporated into a dual processor system designed to function as a Musical Instrument Digital Interface (MIDI)-compatible controller.     

Position-linked interference in forming simple visual groups.

Experiments with 2-element visual groups reveal a form of interference that has several interesting properties. Observers judged the orientation of an imaginary line formed by 2 pixels (the target) while attempting to ignore a 3rd pixel (the noise). Noise interfered with performance, even when it was made distinct from the target in various ways. This interference was strongly position linked; a single equation described the interference pattern for many different target-noise configurations. Maximum interference was observed not when the noise was closest to the target but when it was at a distance of half the separation between target pixels. Some initial findings were consistent with the idea that visual grouping reflects the operation of visual channels with Gabor-like receptive-field profiles, but subsequent results implicated processes that automatically construct visual boundaries. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)