Single‐pack,self‐curable,aqueous‐based polyurethane dispersion containing a disperse dye

An organic‐solvent‐soluble disperse dye was introduced into an aqueous phase by a reaction with a self‐emulsified, aqueous‐based polyurethane (PU), and this resulted in the formation of a homogeneous, aqueous polymeric dye dispersion. This aqueous polymeric dye was stable in a water phase with excellent color extension upon application. It was formulated with a latent curing agent, polyaziridine (e.g., TMPTA‐AZ), as a single‐component, self‐curable, aqueous polymeric dye. The curing reaction took place between PU carboxylic acid and the latent curing agent upon drying. A self‐cured polymeric dye was obtained with excellent color extension and fastness and resistance to organic solvents and water after drying. This single‐component, self‐curable, aqueous‐based PU system containing a dye has potential for printing, writing, and dyeing applications. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2006 © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 100: 3741–3747, 2006     

Novel CO2 Absorbents Using Lithium-Containing Oxide

We have discovered a series of lithium-containing oxides that immediately react with ambient carbon dioxide (CO₂) up to 700°C. The products react and return reversibly to the oxides at a temperatures higher than about 700°C. The absorption capacity surpasses that of other CO₂ absorbents by a factor of 10. Utilizing these absorbents, the possibility of a CO₂ separation system that operates at around 500°C is proposed. It is generally believed that a CO₂ separation process operable at temperatures higher than 500°C has the special benefit of a small energy penalty. Moreover, the absorption also proceeds at ambient temperature in the atmospheric environment. This property offers the possibility of many other applications, such as air cleaners or cartridges. Therefore, we think these materials have the potential to make a valuable contribution to the realization of CO₂ emission control.     

Seniors and Information Technology in China

Technology, particularly information technology (IT), is changing rapidly and offers many advantages for users. IT has the potential to improve one’s quality of life, but only if used. Research has shown that, in most developed and developing nations, senior use of IT lags behind that of other segments of society. This “gray divide” is a concern for government, business, and others. Concern about senior adoption and use of IT has been the motivation for numerous studies and is the motivation for this study of Chinese seniors. This exploratory study examines urban Chinese seniors’ IT use, computers and mobile phones in particular, but also their attitudes and behaviors as they relate to the use of those devices. More specifically it examines several potential factors that motivate or hinder senior’s use of information technology, including self-efficacy, satisfaction, comfort with technology, and both positive and negative attitudes. This study provides some insight into the quantity and diversity of Chinese senior technology use in urban China. Particularly noteworthy, the study found that technology ownership was quite high, and in general the Chinese seniors studied had positive attitudes and beliefs concerning information technology. This is generally good news for the Chinese government, which must efficiently provide services for the growing population of Chinese seniors, as well as for businesses that wish to capitalize on one of the largest senior populations in the world.     

On the criteria for designing complex orthogonal space-time block codes

A complex orthogonal design (COD) used in space-time block codes is a kind of combinatorial design. It has been well studied because it has a fast maximum-likelihood decoding algorithm and achieves full diversity. When designing CODs, there are seven characteristics that should be considered, which include code rate, decoding delay, transceiver signal linearization, peak-to-average power ratio, etc. In this paper, we study the relationships among these design criteria. We prove that the maximum rate of generalized CODs (GCODs) that meet the last five criteria is 1/2. Moreover, we present a new method to construct GCODs based on CODs. Using this method on balanced complex orthogonal designs (BCODs), we obtain a novel class of GCODs that performs almost perfectly with respect to all the seven properties.     

Creating a live, public short message service corpus: the NUS SMS corpus

Short Message Service (SMS) messages are short messages sent from one person to another from their mobile phones. They represent a means of personal communication that is an important communicative artifact in our current digital era. As most existing studies have used private access to SMS corpora, comparative studies using the same raw SMS data have not been possible up to now. We describe our efforts to collect a public SMS corpus to address this problem. We use a battery of methodologies to collect the corpus, paying particular attention to privacy issues to address contributors’ concerns. Our live project collects new SMS message submissions, checks their quality, and adds valid messages. We release the resultant corpus as XML and as SQL dumps, along with monthly corpus statistics. We opportunistically collect as much metadata about the messages and their senders as possible, so as to enable different types of analyses. To date, we have collected more than 71,000 messages, focusing on English and Mandarin Chinese.     

Impacts of employee participation and trust on e-business readiness, benefits, and satisfaction

An increasing number of firms have invested large sums in implementing electronic business (e-business). Nowadays, while the e-businesses are fostering rapid industrial growth, employees are the one who factually engage with information exchange, communication and support e-business processes. However, prior literature has paid scant attention in determining e-business value and its drivers from employee perspective. Thus, the present study attempts to investigate how user participation and trust drives e-business value in terms of e-business readiness, e-business benefits, and e-business satisfaction. For this sake, data collected from 143 employees at Taiwanese IT related firms and analyzed with partial least square (PLS) structural equation approach reveal that trust and user participation were significant precursors of employee e-business satisfaction. The results strongly support the contention that trust directly affects e-business satisfaction, and indirectly affects it through e-business readiness and e-business benefits. The research model and findings will help managers implement e-business successfully and offer valuable references for researchers interested in developing related theories.     

块效应图像质量模糊评估标准

研究和讨论了图像质量评估方法,提出一种基于模糊推理的块效应评估标准。假设图像由平滑区域、边缘区域以及纹理区域等组成,而且不同的区域应采用不同的方法进行质量评估。在此基础上,给出了三个分别适用于不同区域的图像质量评估因子,并提出了一个灵活的模糊图像质量评估方法。此方法把块效应和图像本身具有的边缘分开,防止了边缘会被误认为是块效应。仿真结果表明,提出的标准对于不同的图像具有鲁棒性,有一般图像质量评价标准的性能。     

结合PVT模拟和排队模型的系统级主存性能分析

由于主存系统的性能受到多种因素的影响,现有方法不能快速地得到可靠的分析结果,从而影响芯片质量和上市时机.为解决此问题,提出将带时序的程序员视图(PVT)模拟和排队论相结合的方法--ComPQ.首先从PVT模拟中提取与访存相关的系统级实时参数,然后将主存系统抽象为非抢占优先的M/G/1排队模型,再结合实时参数进行性能分析,得到平均访存延迟结果.由于PVT的建模和模拟代价小,从中得到的实时参数弥补了静态理论分析的不足;同时,排队论也提高了纯PVT模拟的精度.实验结果表明,ComPQ与周期精确级模拟相比平均误差为6. 38%,最后用主存系统设计空间探索的实例验证了ComPQ的有效性.     

基于DSL的装备保障领域建模

基于领域专用语言构建了装备保障领域的元模型,描述了实体、关系、行为、约束、流程等基本要素,在该模型中,二次开发人员能够方便地对该领域的各类软件系统进行建模,并通过模型精化来自动生成最终的可执行系统。实验证明,该模型是有效的。