Nitric oxide decomposition in air by using nonthermal plasmaprocessing with additives and catalyst

Catalyst (copper-coated zeolite catalyst, i.e., Cu-ZSM-5) was used to enhance NO_x removal plasma chemical reactions. Two kinds of hydrocarbons (2-propane-1-ol, 2-propanol) were added to the synthesized flue gas before the nonthermal plasma process, and their effects on NO_x removal characteristics were investigated. Enhancement effects of NO_x removal by the nonthermal plasma process with hydrocarbons as the additives were confirmed. Usually, the catalyst's working temperature is much higher than the room temperature. A catalytic reactor was installed after the plasma reactor. Catalytic effects on NO_x removal characteristics disappeared when the synthesized flue gas temperature was increased (~250°C). When the synthesized flue gas temperature was at room temperature, about 90% NO _x removal efficiency was realized with a combination of hydrocarbons, the catalytic reactor, and the pulsed discharge plasma     

A new scalable multicast routing algorithm for interactive real-time applications

Quality of service (QoS) provisioning generally assumes more than one QoS measure that implies that QoS routing can be categorized as an instance of routing subject to multiple constraints: delay jitter, bandwidth, cost, etc. We study the problem of constructing multicast trees to meet the QoS requirements of real-time interactive applications where it is necessary to provide bounded delays and bounded delay variation among the source and all destinations while keeping overall cost of the multicast tree low. The main contribution of our work is a new strategy for constructing multiconstrained multicast trees. We first derive mathematically a new delay-variation estimation scheme and prove its efficiency. Thereafter, we propose a simple and competitive (in terms of running time) heuristic algorithm, for delay and delay variation constrained routing problem based on the proposed delay-variation estimation scheme and using the Extended Prim-Dijkstra tradeoffs’ algorithm. Our contribution also extends previous works in providing some properties and analyses of delay bounded paths satisfying delay variation constraints. Extensive simulation results show that our algorithm outperforms DVDMR in terms of multicast delay variation with the same time complexity as DVDMR.     

A Hilbert warping method for handwriting gesture recognition

We propose a novel sequence alignment algorithm for recognizing handwriting gestures by a camera. In the proposed method, an input image sequence is aligned to the reference sequences by phase-synchronization of analytic signals which are transformed from original feature values. A cumulative distance is calculated simultaneously with the alignment process, and then used for the classification. A major benefit of this method is that over-fitting to sequences of incorrect categories is restricted. The proposed method exhibited higher recognition accuracy in handwriting gesture recognition, compared with the conventional dynamic time warping method which explores optimal alignment results for all categories.     

Fabrication of X-rays mask with carbon membrane for diffraction gratings

We have produced diffraction gratings for obtaining high resolution X-ray phase imaging, such as X-ray Talbot interferometer. These diffraction gratings were required to have a fine, high accuracy, high aspect ratio structure. Therefore, we decided to use the X-rays lithography technique that used synchrotron radiation of the directivity for a manufacture process. The accuracy of the completed structure depends largely on the accuracy of the X-ray mask. In our group, a resin material is conventionally used for the membrane of large X-ray masks. However, X-ray masks comprising a resin membrane have the disadvantage that, after several cycles of X-ray exposure, they crease and sag due to X-ray-derived heat. As a substitute for the conventional resin membrane, we experimentally fabricated a new X-ray mask using a carbon wafer membrane. The newly fabricated X-ray mask was subjected to X-ray exposure experiment. We succeeded in making the structure body which was almost shape. And the experimental results verified that the new mask did not deteriorate even when used repeatedly, demonstrating that it was highly durable.     

Performance of SOR methods on modern vector and scalar processors

The building-cube method (BCM) is a new generation algorithm for CFD simulations. The basic idea of BCM is to simplify the algorithm in all stages of flow computation to achieve large-scale simulations. Calculation of a pressure field using the Successive Over Relaxation (SOR) method consumes most of the total execution time required for BCM. In this paper, effective implementations on modern vector and scalar processors are investigated. NEC SX-9 and Intel Nehalem-EX are the latest vector and scalar processors. Those processors have much higher peak performances than their previous-generation processors. However, their memory bandwidth improvement cannot catch up with the performance improvement of processors. This is the so-called memory wall problem. In our paper, we discuss optimization techniques for implementation of the SOR method based on architectural characteristics of these modern processors, and evaluate their effects on the sustained performances of these processors for BCM.     

A Graph‐based Approach to Continuous Line Illustrations with Variable Levels of Detail

This paper introduces a method for automatically generating continuous line illustrations, drawings consisting of a single line, from a given input image. Our approach begins by inferring a graph from a set of edges extracted from the image in question and obtaining a path that traverses through all edges of the said graph. The resulting path is then subjected to a series of post‐processing operations to transform it into a continuous line drawing. Moreover, our approach allows us to manipulate the amount of detail portrayed in our line illustrations, which is particularly useful for simplifying the overall illustration while still retaining its most significant features. We also present several experimental results to demonstrate that our approach can automatically synthesize continuous line illustrations comparable to those of some contemporary artists.     

Generation of templates for low-resolution text recognition using a hypothesis graph

We propose a recognition method of character-string images captured by portable digital cameras. A challenging task in character-string recognition is the segmentation of characters. In the proposed method, a hypothesis graph is used for recognition-based segmentation of the character-string images. The hypothesis graph is constructed by the subspace method, using eigenvectors as conditionally elastic templates. To obtain these templates, a generation-based approach is introduced in the training stage. Various templates are generated to cope with low-resolution. We have experimentally proved that the proposed scheme achieves high recognition performance even for low-resolution character-string images. The text was submitted by the authors in English. Hiroyuki Ishida. Received his B.S. and M.S. degrees from the Department of Information Engineering and from the Graduate School of Information Science, respectively, at Nagoya University. He is currently pursuing a Ph.D. in Information Science at Nagoya University. Ichiro Ide. Received his B.S. degree from the Department of Electronic Engineering, his M.S. degree from the Department of Information Engineering, and his Ph.D. from the Department of Electrical Engineering at the University of Tokyo. He is currently an Associate Professor in the Graduate School of Information Science at Nagoya University. Tomokazu Takahashi. Received his B.S. degree from the Department of Information Engineering at Ibaraki University, and his M.S. and Ph.D. from the Graduate School of Science and Engineering at Ibaraki University. His research interests include computer graphics and image recognition. Hiroshi Murase. Received his B.S., M.S., and Ph.D. degrees from the Graduate School of Electrical Engineering at Nagoya University. He is currently a Professor in the Graduate School of Information Science at Nagoya University. He received the Ministry Award from the Ministry of Education, Culture, Sports, Science and Technology in Japan in 2003. He is a Fellow of the IEEE.     

Technique for anisotropic extension of organic crystals: application to temperature dependence of electrical resistance

We have developed a technique for the anisotropic extension of fragile molecular crystals. The pressure medium and the instrument, which extends the pressure medium, are both made from epoxy resin. Since the thermal contraction of our instrument is identical to that of the pressure medium, the strain applied to the pressure medium has no temperature dependence down to 2 K. Therefore, the degree of extension applied to the single crystal at low temperatures is uniquely determined from the degree of extension in the pressure medium and thermal contractions of the epoxy resin and the single crystal at ambient pressure. Using this novel instrument, we have measured the temperature dependence of the electrical resistance of metallic, superconducting, and insulating materials. The experimental results are discussed from the viewpoint of the extension (compression) of the lattice constants along the parallel (perpendicular) direction.     

Magnetic probe array with high sensitivity for fluctuating field

A magnetic probe array is constructed to measure precisely the spatial structure of a small fluctuating field included in a strong confinement field that varies with time. To exclude the effect of the confinement field, the magnetic probes consisting of figure-eight-wound coils are prepared. The spatial structure of the fluctuating field is obtained from a Fourier analysis of the probe signal. It is found that the probe array is more sensitive to the fluctuating field with a high mode number than that with a low mode number. An experimental demonstration of the present method is attempted using a field-reversed configuration plasma, where the fluctuating field with 0.1% of the confinement field is successfully detected.