Quasicrystalline Structures as Catalyst Precursors for Hydrogenation Reactions

The quasicrystalline structures of alloys with nominal compositions of Al₇₂Ni_13.4Co_14.6 and Al_72.3Ni_7.8Co_19.8 were characterized by X-ray diffraction, transmission electron microscopy and scanning electron microscopy. For catalytic application, the solids were leached with an alkaline NaOH solution and tested at 373 K with two model reactions under atmospheric pressure: hydrogenation of crotonaldehyde and acetonitrile. The catalytic activities of these leached alloys were compared to that of a Raney nickel reference catalyst. Catalysts prepared from quasicrystals showed high catalytic activities and high selectivities towards butanal (in crotonaldehyde hydrogenation) and ethylamine (in acetonitrile hydrogenation).     

MMPP models for multimedia traffic

The paper presents a study on the use of Markov‐Modulated Poisson Processes (MMPP's) for characterizing multimedia traffic with short‐term and long‐term correlation. The applicability of the 2‐state MMPP and a refined moment‐based parameter‐matching technique to model an arbitrary ATM traffic stream in evaluating its queueing performance are examined by simulation. Following a discussion on the limitation of the 2‐state MMPP model, a model using a superposition of N homogeneous 2‐state MMPP to characterize bursty multimedia traffic is presented. The proposed model requires only five parameters which can be estimated from the samples of the traffic counting process by using a pdf‐based matching technique. The introduced pdf‐based parameter‐matching procedure uses the probability density function of the arrival rate and the IDC curve of the traffic samples. An approximation for the probability of loss in MMPP/D/1 queues is also obtained. The versatility and accuracy of the proposed model to characterize bursty multimedia traffic are shown by several case studies and test results. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

The effects of air pollution and climatic factors on atmospheric corrosion of marble under field exposure

The atmospheric corrosion of marble was evaluated in terms of SO₂ concentration as air pollution and climatic factors such as rainfall, relative humidity, temperature and so on under the field exposure. Marble of calcite type (CaCO₃) was exposed to outdoor atmospheric environment with and without a rain shelter at four test sites in the southern part of Vietnam for 3-month, 1- and 2-year periods from July 2001 to September 2003. The thickness loss of marble was investigated gravimetrically. X-ray diffraction and X-ray fluorescent methods were applied to study corrosion products on marble. The corrosion product of marble was only gypsum (CaSO₄ · 2H₂O) and was washed out by rain under the unsheltered exposure condition. It was found that the most substantial factors influencing the corrosion of marble were rainfall, SO₂ concentration in the air and relative humidity. Based on the results obtained, we estimated the dose-response functions for the atmospheric corrosion of marble in the southern part of Vietnam.     

Regioselective Synthesis of Naphtho‐fused Heterocycles via Palladium(0)‐Catalyzed Tandem Reaction of N‐Tosylhydrazones

We have developed a palladium(0)‐catalyzed tandem process which involves the cross‐coupling reaction of N‐tosylhydrazones with dibromide compounds followed by a sequence of intramolecular 5‐exo‐trig, 3‐exo‐trig cyclization, ring opening, and β‐hydride elimination to produce 6‐endo‐trig cyclized products. The strategy was successfully applied for the regioselective synthesis of substituted benzo[b]naphtho[2,1‐d]thiophenes, naphtho[1,2‐b]benzofurans, and benzo[a]carbazoles in moderate to excellent yields.

     

Bayesian Multi-Object Filtering With Amplitude Feature Likelihood for Unknown Object SNR

In many tracking scenarios, the amplitude of target returns are stronger than those coming from false alarms. This information can be used to improve the multiple-target state estimation by obtaining more accurate target and false-alarm likelihoods. Target amplitude feature is well known to improve data association in conventional tracking filters, such as probabilistic data association and multiple hypothesis tracking, and results in better tracking performance of low signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) targets. The advantage of using the target amplitude approach is that targets can be identified earlier through the enhanced discrimination between target and false alarms. One of the limitations of this approach is that it is usually assumed that the SNR of the target is known. We show that the reliable estimation of the SNR requires a significant number of measurements, and so we propose an alternative approach for situations where the SNR is unknown. We illustrate this approach in the context of multiple targets for different SNRs in the framework of finite set statistics (FISST). Furthermore, we illustrate how this can be incorporated into approximate multiple-object filters derived from FISST, including probability hypothesis density (PHD) and cardinalized PHD (CPHD) filters. We present simulation results for Gaussian mixture implementations of the filters that demonstrate a significant improvement in performance over just using location measurements.     

Vapor Annealing as a Post-Processing Technique to Control Carrier Concentrations of Bi<Subscript>2</Subscript>Te<Subscript>3</Subscript> Thin Films

This article demonstrates that carrier concentrations in bismuth telluride films can be controlled through annealing in controlled vapor pressures of tellurium. For the bismuth telluride source with a small excess of tellurium, all the films reached a steady state carrier concentration of 4 × 10¹⁹ carriers/cm³ with Seebeck coefficients of −170 μV K⁻¹. For temperatures below 300°C and for film thicknesses of 0.4 μm or less, the rate-limiting step in reaching a steady state for the carrier concentration appeared to be the mass transport of tellurium through the gas phase. At higher temperatures, with the resulting higher pressures of tellurium or for thicker films, it was expected that mass transport through the solid would become rate limiting. The mobility also changed with annealing, but at a rate different from that of the carrier concentration, perhaps as a consequence of the non-equilibrium concentration of defects trapped in the films studied by the low temperature synthesis approach.     

A study of relative phase in complex wavelet domain: Property,statistics and applications in texture image retrieval and segmentation

In this paper, we develop a new approach which exploits the probabilistic properties from the phase information of 2-D complex wavelet coefficients for image modeling. Instead of directly using phases of complex wavelet coefficients, we demonstrate why relative phases should be used. The definition, properties and statistics of relative phases of complex coefficients are studied in detail. We proposed von Mises and wrapped Cauchy for the probability density function (pdf) of relative phases in the complex wavelet domain. The maximum-likelihood method is used to estimate two parameters of von Mises and wrapped Cauchy. We demonstrate that the von Mises and wrapped Cauchy fit well with real data obtained from various real images including texture images as well as standard images. The von Mises and wrapped Cauchy models are compared, and the simulation results show that the wrapped Cauchy fits well with the peaky and heavy-tailed pdf of relative phases and the von Mises fits well with the pdf which is in Gaussian shape. For most of the test images, the wrapped Cauchy model is more accurate than the von Mises model, when images are decomposed by different complex wavelet transforms including dual-tree complex wavelet (DTCWT), pyramidal dual-tree directional filter bank (PDTDFB) and uniform discrete curvelet transform (UDCT). Moreover, the relative phase is applied to obtain new features for texture image retrieval and segmentation applications. Instead of using only real or magnitude coefficients, the new approach uses a feature in which phase information is incorporated, yielding a higher accuracy in texture image retrieval as well as in segmentation. The relative phase information which is complementary to the magnitude is a promising approach in image processing.     

Hydrogen Generation from CO2 Reforming of Biomass-Derived Methanol on Ni/SiO2 Catalyst

Topics in Catalysis - CO2 reforming of methanol for producing hydrogen was experimentally carried out in a fixed-bed reactor on 10%Ni/SiO2. The 10%Ni/SiO2 was completely reduced during H2...