Preparation of aligned polyetherimide fiber by electrospinning

Fifteen to 20 wt % polyetherimide (PEI) solutions with 1-methyl-2-pyrrolidinone (NMP) were prepared. The electrical conductivity and surface tension of the solutions were determined. The fiber spinning technique of electrospinning was optimized in order to prepare unidirectionally aligned, structurally oriented nanofiber tows. The morphology of the PEI fibers was investigated using field emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM). The well-aligned fibers with diameters between 0.58 and 0.90 μm (FESEM) were collected by electrospinning 20 wt % PEI solutions with NMP in the range of 8–10 kV onto a target rotating with a surface velocity 9.8 m/s. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci, 2008     

Polyaniline-multiwalled carbon nanotube composites: Characterization by WAXS and TGA

Polyaniline/carboxylated multi-walled carbon nanotube (PAni/c-MWNT) nanocomposites have been synthesized by micellar aided emulsion polymerization with various c-MWNTs compositions, viz., 0.5, 1, 5, and 10 wt %. The microcrystalline parameters such as the nanocrystal size (〈N〉), lattice strain (g), interplanar distance (d_hkl), width of the crystallite size distribution, surface weighted crystal size (D_s), and volume of the ordered regions were calculated from the X-ray data by using two mathematical models, namely the Exponential distribution and Reinhold distribution methods. The effects of heat ageing on the microcrystalline parameters of the PAni/c-MWNT nanocomposites were also studied and the results are correlated. The thermal stability and electrical resistivity of the PAni/c-MWNT nanocomposites were examined with thermogravimetric analysis (TGA) and a conventional two-probe method. The TGA data indicate that the thermal stability of the nanocomposites improved after the incorporation of c-MWNTs. The influence of temperature on the resistivity of the nanocomposites was also measured. © 2008 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2008     

A WDM-PON Employing Fabry–PÉrot Laser Diodes Without a Seed Light Injection

We propose and demonstrate a wavelength-division-multiplexed passive optical network by employing double-contact Fabry-Perot laser diodes (F-P LDs) without a seed light injection. To avoid the high mode partition noise at low frequency, we use a binary phase-shift keying as a modulation format at a low relative intensity noise window. An error-free transmission is achieved by compensating a lasing envelope shift due to temperature variation with the double-contact F-P LD.     

袁泉：活力天然的一泓清泉

明眸晧齿，笑容爽朗，脸部轮廓分明。看到袁泉，马上会有清冽甘甜的感觉，一如她的名字，仿佛夏日里活力天然的一泓清泉。从《春天的狂想》到娃哈哈广告中的美丽少女，袁泉给人的印象一直是青春、健康而甜美的，举手投足，一颦一笑，洋溢着独有的耀眼活力。不久前，这位活力闰女更是担任了“中国女性健康白皮书系列活动”的形象大使。作为宣传女性健康的代言人，袁泉呼吁，要让更多的女性认识到：健康的身体才是美丽人生的根基。[编者按]     

An analytical study on the thermal characteristics of flat-plate and evacuated solar collectors

In this study, we highlighted differences in the standards used in performance tests of solar collectors. We analyzed testing results for different types of solar collectors to determine the effects of the collector area and mass flow rate, which were not necessarily consistent across all tests. Our analysis showed that the factor,F′ (τα), including collector efficiency factor (F′), could be correlated with the flow rate or area regardless of the collector type. Moreover, the collector loss coefficient (F′U _L ) per flow rate or area for an evacuated collector was less that of a flat-plate collector; this was also correlated with the flow rate or area, regardless of the type of evacuated collector. As a result of this analysis, we propose a modified heat loss coefficient that includes the effects of all parameters that can be considered in a performance test and show that this coefficient could better describe the thermal characteristics of various types of solar collectors.     

Service-oriented smart home applications: composition, code generation, deployment, and execution

A smart home usually has a variety of devices or home appliance, instead of designing software for a specific home, this paper proposes a service-oriented framework with a set of ontology systems to support service and device publishing, discovery of devices and their services, composition of control software using existing control services that wrap devices, deployment, and execution of the composed service in an computing environment, monitoring the execution, and recovery from device failure. The ontology systems specify semantic information about devices, services, and workflows used in various smart home, and users can compose and recompose services for their specific needs. New devices, workflows, and services can be added into ontology. Most of the steps in this process can be automated including code generation. For example, service composition will be carried out in three steps: abstract workflow design, function construction, and device discovery, and different codes can be generated for different computing platforms such as Java and Open Services Gateway initiative environments. In this way, a variety of smart home can be constructed rapidly using the framework by discovery and composition using existing services and workflows. This paper illustrates this framework using a media control example to illustrate the ontology, discovery, composition, deployment, execution, monitoring, and recovery.     

Simple systolic arrays for discrete cosine transform

in this paper, simple 1-D and 2-D systolic array for realizing the discrete cosine transform (DCT) based on the discrete Fourier transform (DFT) fo an input sequence are presented. The proposed arrays are obtained by a simple modified DFT (MDFT) and an inverse DFT (IDFT) version of the Goertzel algorithm combined with Kung's approach. The 1-D array requiresN cells, one multiplier and takesN clock cycles to produce a completeN-point DCT. The 2-D array takes N clock cycles, faster than the 1-D array, but the area complexity is larger. A continuous flow of input data is allowed and no idle time is required between the input sequences.     

Signal tracking method of GNSS receivers for spinning vehicles

A signal tracking method of GNSS receivers for spinning vehicles is proposed in order to eliminate the influence of spinning to the GNSS signal of a vehicle. In the proposed method, a rotation tracking loop is added into the carrier tracking loop of a conventional GNSS receiver. The proposed method was verified through computer simulations and an experiment for live GPS signals. The results show that the proposed method gives an accurate tracking performance.     

The α- to β-Si3N4 transformation in the presence of liquid silicon

The compacts consisted of , -Si₃N₄ and free silicon are heat treated in the range 1650° C to 1750° C in an argon atmosphere in order to observe the following behaviours; the to phase transformation and variations of the microstructure during heat treatment in silicon nitride. For the microstructural observation of the heat treated specimens, the same grains in the polished surface were investigated before and after eliminating the retained silicon by etching. The to phase transformation, in this case, occurs via silicon melts irrespective of added -Si₃N₄. Both and phases are soluted and precipitated into molten silicon and their morphology are changed from an equiaxed shape to prismatic one. Although elongated grains are precipitated at low temperature or in the early stage of heat treatment, fine precipitated grains are mainly observed with increasing heat treating temperature.