Elastic properties and Vickers hardness of optically transparent glass-ceramics with fresnoite Ba2TiSi2O8 nanocrystals

Optically transparent glass-ceramics (40BaO-20TiO₂-40SiO₂ (mol%)) consisting of nonlinear optical fresnoite Ba₂TiSi₂O₈ (BTS) nanocrystals (diameter: 100-200 nm) are fabricated, and their elastic properties and deformation behavior are examined as a function of the volume fraction (f) of BTS nanocrystals using cube resonance and Vickers indentation techniques. The elastic properties such as Young's modulus (E) increases linearly with increasing the volume fraction of nanocrystals, e.g., E = 84 GPa for f = 0% (glass) to E = 107 GPa for f = 54.5%. The Vickers hardness (H_v) and indentation fracture toughness (K_c) increase from 5.0 to 6.0 GPa for H_v and 0.48 to 1.05 MPa m^−1/2 for K_c with increasing the volume fraction (from f = 0% to f = 54.5%), but they do not change linearly against the volume fraction of nanocrystals. It is suggested that BTS nanocrystals themselves induce a high resistance against deformation during Vickers indenter loadings.     

New heat generation material in AC magnetic field for Y3Fe5O12-based powder material synthesized by reverse coprecipitation method

We found the most promising powder material for the application of the thermal coagulation therapy for the treatment of cancerous tissues. The maximum heat generation ability (ΔT = 40-77 °C, 370 kHz, 1.77 kA·m^− 1) was obtained for the powder materials by the calcination at 1100 °C for the Y_3 − XGd_XFe₅O₁₂ system. This ΔT value is higher than ca. ΔT = 30 °C in same magnetic field for fine FeFe₂O₄ particles as the candidate material for this type of therapy. The particle growth with the formation of the cubic single phase might influence to the high heat generation. As an unexpected result, the Gd₃Fe₅O₁₂ (X = 3) has no heat generation ability in an AC magnetic field.     

Tailoring temperature invariant viscoelasticity of carbon nanotube material

Using carbon nanotubes (CNTs) as building blocks, we fabricated a viscoelastic material. In contrast to existing conventional materials where the stiffness (storage modulus) increases when the viscosity (damping ratio) decreases, both of these two aspects could be simultaneously improved for the viscoelastic CNT material. This allows fabricating both strong and highly viscous materials. This unique phenomenon was explained by a zipping and unzipping of carbon nanotubes at contacts as the origin of viscoelasticity.     

Three predictions are better than one: Sentence multi‐emotion analysis from different perspectives

Emotion prediction has been a core task in affective computing, which aims at finding the thorough human mental states by analyzing people's activities. In this paper, we focus on predicting emotions in the public online blogs from different people, by extracting as many reasonable emotions for each blog sentence as possible. Concretely, we consider three different perspectives for analyzing the multiple emotions in a sentence: (i) predict sentence emotions by examining the emotion related topics in a global sense; (ii) predict the sentence emotions from the context‐sensitive word emotions; and (iii) predict sentence emotions by considering the emotional significance in the local bag of words. We build different probabilistic models from each perspective, to separately generate the sentence emotion probabilities. We then integrate these probabilistic models to jointly predict the emotion probabilities. Because the component models are based on different emotional assumptions with distinct features, the integrated predictions should predict emotions from more general perspectives and therefore yield better results. In the experiment, we employ different evaluation criteria to compare the multi‐emotion predictions from the single and integrated models. Compared to the results in the baseline model, our bi‐integrated models achieve 8.69% higher Micro F1 and 7.78% higher Macro F1 scores, on average. Moreover, our tri‐integrated model acquires 10.00% higher Micro F1 and 9.19% higher Macro F1 scores than the baseline results, which proves our assumption, and suggests interesting features in the different emotion perspectives. © 2014 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

A quantification and confirmation method of patulin in apple juice by GC/MS

A sensitive and selective method for quantification and confirmation of patulin in apple juice by GC/MS was developed. By this method, patulin was precisely determined and confirmed down to the level of 1 and 5 microg/kg in samples, respectively. Patulin was extracted with ethyl acetate from a sample and then hexane was added to the concentrated extract solution. Significant amounts of insoluble impurities were filtered off, followed by further clean-up by solid-phase extraction with combined silica gel and Florisil cartridges. The filtration step in a low-polarity condition was very effective to remove the impurities in the sample extract solution. The eluate from the cartridges was evaporated to dryness under reduced pressure and patulin was determined and confirmed by GC/MS after derivatization with 2.5% N,O-bis(trimethylsilyl)trifluoroacetamide ethyl acetate solution. Patulin was determined in the selected ion monitoring mode (m/z 226) and confirmed in the SCAN mode (m/z 40-340). The recovery from apple juice spiked with 10-500 microg/kg ranged from 93.4 to 100%. The limits of detection and quantification were 0.1 (S/N = 3) and 1 microg/kg (S/N = 30) of patulin in samples, respectively. Levels down to 5 microg/kg of patulin in sample were readily confirmed.     

Degradation and behavior of natural steroid hormones in cow manure waste during biological treatments and ozone oxidation

An efficient treatment process for screened cow manure waste, particularly for the degradation of natural steroid hormones, was developed. The first step in this process was a draw-and-fill process for thermophilic anaerobic digestion. After fourfold dilution with tap water, continuous feeding was performed for the aerobic treatment of the effluent from the anaerobic treatment. Batchwise ozone oxidation was then carried out for the degradation of the natural steroid hormones that remained in the effluent from the aerobic treatment. A yeast two-hybrid assay was performed to evaluate hormonal degradation. Significant reductions in the concentrations of total VFA, BOD(5), COD(Cr), TOC, TS, VSS, and natural steroid hormones were demonstrated in the effluent from the biological treatments. The removal ratios of such concentrations were 99.7%, 90%, 79%, 84%, 51%, 58%, and 99%, respectively. Although the concentrations of the remaining TOC and COD(Cr) remained constant, natural steroid hormones were completely removed by ozone oxidation.     

Single Source Hybrid Drive for Multi-Functional Ultrasonic Motor

We previously reported a multi-functional single-stator piezoelectric motor, which can produce translational or rotary motions in a simple structure. In this paper, we will present the theoretical analysis and experimental verification of the hybrid driving technique for this motor. In order to benefit from the resonance operating conditions of ultrasonic motors and the structural superiority of inertial type piezoelectric motors, we blend these two drive methods as the new hybrid technique. Translational and rotary motions of mobile element are produced by inertial drive while the stator is excited with rectangular signals at longitudinal and torsional resonance frequencies, respectively.     

Effect of dilution rate on structure of a mesophilic acetate-degrading methanogenic community during continuous cultivation

The community structures of two mesophilic acetate-degrading methanogenic consortia enriched at dilution rates of 0.025 and 0.6 d(-1) were analyzed by fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) and phylogenetic analyses based on 16S rDNA clonal sequences and quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (PCR). FISH experiments with archaeal and bacterial domain-specific probes showed that archaeal cells were predominant and only a small number of bacterial cells were detected at both dilution rates. In the domain Archaea, the number of cells closely related to Methanosarcina barkeri was shown to be greater at the high dilution rate using FISH with species-specific probes. Taxonomic analyses based on rDNA clonal sequences obtained at the low and high dilution rates showed that 43% of 100 clones and 72% of 92 clones, respectively, were affiliated with the domain Archaea and the remainders at each dilution rate were affiliated with the domain Bacteria. Within the domain Archaea, all rDNA clones at both dilution rates were affiliated with the genera Methanosaeta or Methanosarcina of the aceticlastic methanogens. Within the domain Bacteria, the rDNA clones obtained at the low dilution rate were affiliated with four phyla, Firmicutes (36%), Bacteroidetes (9%), Chloroflexi (6%) and candidate division OP12 (5%). The rDNA clones obtained at the high dilution rate were affiliated with four phyla, Firmicutes (16%), Bacteroidetes (8%), Proteobacteria (1%) and candidate division OP12 (3%). Real-time quantitative PCR experiments showed that the number of rDNA sequences affiliated with the genus Methanosarcina was greater at the high dilution rate. In addition, a significant number of rDNA sequences affiliated with the genus Methanoculleus were detected only at the low dilution rate. Detection of a hydrogenotrophic methanogen at the low dilution rate suggests that the syntrophic acetate oxidation by hydrogenotrophic methanogens and acetate-oxidizing bacteria could occur at the low dilution rate.     

Dynamic dissolved oxygen concentration control for enhancing the formation rate of torpedo-stage embryos in carrot somatic embryo culture

In utilizing somatic embryogenesis for transplant production, torpedo-stage embryos are harvested. In order to enhance the formation rate of torpedo-stage embryos to total embryos of all developmental stages in the culture at the time of harvest, a dynamic dissolved oxygen concentration (DO) control algorithm is proposed. The algorithm is based on the difference in developmental response of somatic embryogenesis to DO level depending on developmental stages, and the culture period was divided into three phases of different DO levels. The timing of the phase change was determined based on the formation rate of the embryos in each developmental stage in the suspension assessed by noninvasive monitoring of the culture. The induction of carrot (Daucus carroa L.) somatic embryogenesis resulted in doubled formation rate of torpedo-stage embryos by dynamic DO control compared to the 20% oxygen gas aeration, and 1.4 times higher formation rate compared to 6% oxygen gas aeration, while the total number of embryos did not differ among DO treatments. Plant conversion rate of torpedo-stage embryos cultured by the dynamic DO control was 70%, and was approximately the same as that in the control cultures. The relations between variations of medium pH and somatic embryogenesis were also analyzed.