High-power CW-DFB laser diode modules for CATV applications operating at 1550 nm

Investigation of the correlation between longitudinal photon density distribution and spectral linewidth re-broadening, in conjunction with carefully designed coupling optics, enable laser modules that simultaneously achieve very high fibre-coupled power of 175 mW and very narrow linewidth<1 MHz even at /spl sim/120 mW of output power to be successfully fabricated.     

Facile optical resolution of amino acid esters via hydrolysis by an industrial enzyme in organic solvents

Racemic amino acid esters were optically resolved via hydrolysis in organic solvents by the catalysis of an industrial alkaline protease, “Alcalase”. The products which were composed mainly of L-amino acids were insoluble and easily separated by filtration. The activity of the enzyme and enantiomeric excess of the products were significantly dependent on the nature of solvent and the water content in the reaction media. Generally, high values of enantiomeric excess were obtained at low water contents. Many natural and unnatural amino acids were resolved by this method.     

Correction to: “SPOCU”: scaled polynomial constant unit activation function

Neural Computing and Applications - Addendum on SPOCU fitting and Erratum.     

Reports of the DAS02 working groups

This document is a collection of four working group reports in the areas of digital libraries, document image retrieval, layout analysis, and Web document analysis. These reports were the outcome of discussions by participants at the Fifth IAPR International Workshop on Document Analysis Systems held in Princeton, NJ on 19-21 August 2002.Published online: 16 March 2004     

Chemical dehydrofluorination and electrical conductivity of poly(vinylidene fluoride) films

The dehydrofluorination of poly(vinylidene fluoride) (PVDF) powder and films was studied using several kinds of base solution. Especially the reactivity of 1,8-diazabicyclo[5.4.0]-7-undecene (DBU) in ethanol, KOH in 2-propanol and aqueous NaOH solution with tetrabutylammonium bromide was investigated by the change in infrared (IR) and ultraviolet-visible (UV-VI) absorptions of PVDF films. The elimination reactions by DBU or KOH were considered to be accompanied by substitution reaction. The electrical conductivity of dehydrofluorinated PVDF films increased markedly by doping with iodine, and the activation energies of conduction were found to be between 0.4 and 0.5 eV. When a drawn PVDF film was dehydrofluorinated and doped with iodine, anisotropy in conductivity was observed.     

Monotonicity in Optimal Policy of a Flexible Manufacturing Cell Feeding Several Production Lines

This paper deals with an optimal part selection problem tominimize the expected cost, in an automated manufacturing system in which a flexible manufacturing cell produces different parts for several production lines. The optimal control problem is formulated as an undiscounted semi-Markov decision process. Properties of the optimal policy are analyzed. Moreover, sufficiency conditions are derived for the optimal policy to be of control iimit type.     

Analysis of annotations on documents for recycling of information

In order to make collaborative business activities fruitful, it is essential to know characteristics of organizations and persons in more details and to gather information relevant to the activities. In this paper, we describe a notion of “information recycling” that actualizes these requirements by analyzing documents. The key of recycling information is to utilize annotations on documents as clues for generating user profiles and for weighting contents in the context of the activities. We also propose a method of extracting annotations on paper documents just by pressing one button with the help of techniques of camera‐based document image analysis. Experimental results demonstrate that it is fundamentally capable of acquiring annotations on paper documents on the condition that their electronic versions without annotations are available for the processing. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 165(2): 60–68, 2008; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20516     

Textural analysis of hyperspectral images for improving contaminant detection accuracy

Previous studies demonstrated a hyperspectral imaging system has a potential for poultry fecal contaminant detection by measuring reflectance intensity. The simple image ratio at 565 and 517 nm images with optimal thresholding was able to detect fecal contaminants on broiler carcasses with high accuracy. However, differentiating false positives from real contaminants, especially cecal feces were challenging. Further image processing such as textural analysis in the spatial domain was able to reduce false positive errors. In this study, textural analysis of hyperspectral images was conducted to improve detection accuracy by reducing false positives. Specifically, textural analysis with co-occurrence matrix of hyperspectral images performed well to identify “true” contamination. In addition, co-occurrence matrix textural features including average, variance, entropy, contrast, correlation, moment of poultry hyperspectral images were investigated for selecting optimal features to represent contamination. Image pre-processing with co-occurrence textural analysis, specifically mean of co-occurrence textural feature from the matrix (0° angle and distance equals to one) followed by image ratio was able to improve fecal detection accuracy without additional optical filters that increase cost for system hardware of multispectral imaging system for on-line application. Mention of trade names or commercial products in this article is solely for the purpose of providing specific information and does not imply recommendation or endorsement by the U.S. Department of Agriculture.     

Protective coatings for improving contamination performance ofoutdoor high voltage ceramic insulators

This paper presents an overview of the practices employed by utilities and industries to combat the contamination problem with ceramic insulators. It emphasizes two popular methods, namely, coating insulators with greases and RTV (room temperature vulcanizing) silicone rubber coatings. The experience to date, application methods, user concerns, current theories on how and why the coatings perform, life expectancy, and future direction of the technology, are outlined. The paper also describes research activity in the committee on RTV coatings, which is the state of the art in protective coatings     

Electrical conductivity of chemically dehydrochlorinated poly(vinyl chloride) films doped with electron acceptors

Poly(vinyl chloride) (PVC) films were effectively dehydrochlorinated by the reaction with aqueous sodium hydroxide solutions in the presence of tetrabutylammonium bromide (TBAB) or tetrabutylphosphonium bromide (TBPB). The obtained black films were doped with iodine, ferric chloride, or boron trifluoride. By doping, the electric conductivity markedly increased up to the order of 10^?3 S cm^?1. The activation energy of the conduction was 0.36 eV. The effects of casting solvent, film thickness, and film drawing are described. The change in IR spectrum by doping was discussed in terms of the formation of positively charged polyenes due to electron transfer from the dehydrochlorinated PVC to the dopants.