Laser ablation of diamond particles suspended in ethanol: Effective formation of long polyynes

Polyynes were synthesized by laser ablation of diamond particles with various sizes suspended in ethanol. Chain length distributions and total yields of polyynes produced were compared with those produced from graphitized diamond particles and graphite particles. The relative amounts of long polyynes such as C₁₄H₂ and C₁₆H₂ produced from diamond particles were found to be larger than those from graphitized diamond particles and graphite particles. From the change of the chain length distribution with the laser irradiation time, it is concluded that the long polyynes are produced directly from diamond particles at the initial stage of ablation. Furthermore, the total yield of polyynes was found to increase with the size of diamond particles and decrease as their graphitization proceeds. Possible mechanisms of these results are discussed.     

Experimental verification of frequency decoupling effect on acceleration sensitivity in tuning fork gyroscopes using in-plane coupled resonators

The effect of in- and anti-phase mode decoupling on the frequency response of coupled in-plane resonators was examined, experimentally, to suppress the acceleration sensitivity (acceleration output) in tuning fork gyroscopes (TFGs). Finite element simulations, conducted in our recent works, show that the origin of acceleration sensitivity for the sensing resonators in TFGs lies in the transduction of linear (in-phase) acceleration to anti-phase resonant vibration of the sensing resonators in TFGs. We further revealed that the frequency decoupling of the in- and anti-phase vibration modes is effective in suppressing the transduction. To experimentally validate this, two types of coupled resonators (one coupled with a frame and the other with a spring) to represent the sensing resonators of TFGs were fabricated on silicon-on-insulator wafer. Different resonant frequencies were used to evaluate the frequency decoupling effect on the coupled resonators, i.e., the coupling from in-phase mode oscillation to the anti-phase mode vibration. The vibration amplitude of the anti-phase mode increased in the coupled resonators with small frequency decoupling (decoupling ratio, DR) value. Additionally, the two types of coupled resonators exhibit similar output after considering the effect of decoupling ratio, anti-phase frequency and different stiffness unbalances. Our results reveal that TFG can be designed with lower acceleration sensitivity by utilizing sense resonators with large decoupling ratio, higher anti-phase frequency, and possessing structures which are insensitive to fabrication imperfections.     

Polymerizations of ethylene and propylene initiated by milled metallic oxides. II. Characterizations of the mechanochemically produced polymers

Polyethylene was mechanochemically produced by milling of alumina powder at room temperature in the presence of ethylene monomer. Nearly 50% of the produced polyethylene was chemically bonded with the matrix of the alumina. The other 50% of the polymer was extracted by the organic solvents. The polyethylene extracted by the hot n-heptane was characterized as having a structure similar to that of the branched polyethylene of low density, and the toluene extracted polyethylene had a structure similar to that of the high density polyethylene. The molecular weights of the mechanochemically produced polyethylene were found to distribute from 10² to 10⁶ by gel permeation chromatography. The weight average molecular weight was estimated as 260,000 after the 3 days milling. Mechanochemical polymerization of ethylene was also demonstrated by milling of silica in the presence of ethylene monomer. Polymerization of propylene by milling of alumina under propylene atmosphere was performed. The obtained polymer was found to be an atactic by IR measurement and the molecular weight of the extracted product was determined as ? 400 by the vapor pressure osmometer.     

Role of supported metals in the selective reduction of nitrogen monoxide with hydrocarbons over metal/alumina catalysts

The promoting effect of supported metals on alumina catalyst was investigated for the reduction of nitrogen monoxide in oxygen-rich atmospheres. For NO reduction with propene over impregnated CoO/A1₂O₃, the first reaction step was found to be the oxidation of NO to NO₂ probably catalyzed by dispersed cobalt species. The next reaction step, which is the reaction of NO₂ with propene to form N₂, was considered to take place on the alumina surface. Although the activity of impregnated FeO/A1₂O₃ was low because of the presence of large iron oxide particles catalyzing propene oxidation with dioxygen, FeO/A1₂O₃ prepared with sol-gel method showed excellent deNO_x activity.     

Anti-Biofouling Ozone System for Cooling Water Circuits. II – An Application To Seawater

A new anti-biofouling ozone system which intermittently supplies high-concentration ozone was demonstrated to be effective for preventing marine biofouling in test cooling tubes (titanium, aluminum brass and epoxy-coated PVC) simulating condenser and intake conduit systems of power plants. Injection of ozone of about 5 mg/L for five minutes once each day was enough to keep them clean. Corrosion of titanium and aluminum brass tubes after the three-month test was found tobe negligible.     

Interfacial reaction and its influence on phase morphology and impact properties of modified‐polyacetal/thermoplastic polyurethane blends

The cationic polymerization of 1,3,5‐trioxane, 1,3‐dioxolane and a small amount of 2‐hydroxyacetic acid (HAA) was carried out, and the resulting modified‐polyacetal (POM) was blended with thermoplastic polyurethane (TPU) in melt. The results of ¹H NMR analysis indicated that HAA was almost incorporated in the modified‐POM, and that the resulting carboxyl end‐group and hydroxyl end‐group in the modified‐POM reacted with TPU during the melt blending. There were many boundary layers between the cavities and matrix in the modified‐POM/TPU (82/18 by weight) blend that was etched with tetrahydrofuran (THF), and the diameter of the cavities became ～0.3–1 μm long when the blending time reached 10 min. The results of scanning electron microscopic (SEM) observation and dynamic mechanical analysis (DMA) indicated that the modified‐POM/TPU blend had a good compatibility because of the interfacial reaction between the modified‐POM and TPU phase in the blend. The modified‐POM/TPU blend exhibited higher Charpy impact strength when compared with a normal‐POM/TPU blend; the toughness of the modified‐POM/TPU blend attributed to the good compatibility between the two phases. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 100: 4375–4382, 2006     

Modification of transport properties of ion exchange membranes,XIII. Surface-modified cation exchange membranes prepared from polyamines and a copolymer membrane containing p-stryenesulfonyl chloride

A membrane precursor was prepared by the copolymerization of p-styrenesulfonyl chloride and divinylbenzene in the presence of a poly(vinyl chloride) supported cloth. The surface of the membrane was treated with various amines, and then the sulfonyl chloride groups in the internal part of the membrane were hydrolyzed with an aqueous sodium hydroxide solution in organic methanol or acetone solvent. Hydrolysis conditions were examined for the introduction of the sulfonic acid groups. The membrane modified by ethylenediamine exhibited slightly bipolar properties during the electrodialysis of seawater. Surface-modified membranes using tetraethylenepentamine exhibited excellent monovalent cation permselectivity, low membrane electric resistance, and long performance durability during the electrodialysis of seawater.     

Block coordinate descent algorithms for large-scale sparse multiclass classification

Over the past decade, ? ₁ regularization has emerged as a powerful way to learn classifiers with implicit feature selection. More recently, mixed-norm (e.g., ? ₁/? ₂) regularization has been utilized as a way to select entire groups of features. In this paper, we propose a novel direct multiclass formulation specifically designed for large-scale and high-dimensional problems such as document classification. Based on a multiclass extension of the squared hinge loss, our formulation employs ? ₁/? ₂ regularization so as to force weights corresponding to the same features to be zero across all classes, resulting in compact and fast-to-evaluate multiclass models. For optimization, we employ two globally-convergent variants of block coordinate descent, one with line search (Tseng and Yun in Math. Program. 117:387–423, 2009) and the other without (Richtárik and Taká? in Math. Program. 1–38, 2012a; Tech. Rep. arXiv:1212.0873, 2012b). We present the two variants in a unified manner and develop the core components needed to efficiently solve our formulation. The end result is a couple of block coordinate descent algorithms specifically tailored to our multiclass formulation. Experimentally, we show that block coordinate descent performs favorably compared to other solvers such as FOBOS, FISTA and SpaRSA. Furthermore, we show that our formulation obtains very compact multiclass models and outperforms ? ₁/? ₂-regularized multiclass logistic regression in terms of training speed, while achieving comparable test accuracy.     

Construction and development of a time-resolved x-ray magnetic circular dichroism-photoelectron emission microscopy system using femtosecond laser pulses at BL25SU SPring-8

A femtosecond pulsed laser system has been installed at the BL25SU soft x-ray beamline at SPring-8 for time-resolved pump-probe experiments with synchronization of the laser pulses to the circularly polarized x-ray pulses. There are four different apparatuses situated at the beamline; for photoemission spectroscopy, two-dimensional display photoelectron diffraction, x-ray magnetic circular dichroism (XMCD) with electromagnetic coils, and photoelectron emission microscopy (PEEM). All four can be used for time-resolved experiments, and preliminary investigations have been carried out using the PEEM apparatus to observe magnetization dynamics in combination with XMCD. In this article, we describe the details of the stroboscopic pump-probe XMCD-PEEM experiment, and present preliminary data. The repetition rate of the laser pulses is set using a pulse selector to match the single bunches of SPring-8's hybrid filling pattern, which consists of several single bunches and a continuous bunch train. Electrons ejected during the bunch train, which do not provide time-resolved signal, are eliminated by periodically reducing the channel plate voltage using a custom-built power supply. The pulsed laser is used to create 300 ps long magnetic field pulses, which cause magnetic excitations in micron-sized magnetic elements which contain magnetic vortex structures. The observed frequency of the motion is consistent with previously reported observations and simulations.     

Effects of entraining velocity of lubricant and sliding velocity on friction behavior in stainless steel sheet rolling

A series of experiments was carried out using a rolling-type tribometer to investigate the effects on friction behavior of the entraining velocity of the lubricant at the inlet to the contact zone (V) and sliding velocity during deformation (ΔV). Experiments with stainless steel sheets of two different surface roughnesses showed that the variations in the friction coefficient with entraining velocity V and sliding velocity ΔV are largely dependent on the initial surface texture of the workpiece. For a smooth workpiece, the friction coefficient decreases with increasing sliding velocity ΔV but keeps almost constant with increasing entraining velocity V. However, for a rough workpiece, the friction coefficient initially decreases slowly and increases largely with increasing sliding velocity ΔV or decreasing entraining velocity V. Observation of the rolled surface for a smooth workpiece shows that, with increasing entraining velocity V, the slip band becomes more marked, and with increasing sliding velocity ΔV, the rubbed portions become more conspicuous. For a rough workpiece, galling occurs at high sliding velocity ΔV. The critical condition for galling outbreak is shown on the V-ΔV graph. The galling outbreak process is observed by interrupting the rolling process.