Variable stage-independent double sampling plan with screening for acceptance quality loss limit inspection scheme

The quality loss suggested by Taguchi has been recognised as a new quality evaluation based on variable property instead of the quality evaluation based on traditional attribute property such as the proportion of nonconforming items. Some variable sampling inspection plans in order to assure the quality have been considered. As one of those sampling inspection plans, the single sampling plan with screening (SSPS) has been constructed for acceptance quality loss limit inspection scheme. Further, the repetitive group sampling plan with screening (RGSPS) has been developed for reducing the average total inspection (ATI). Although ATI by RGSPS has successfully been reduced in comparison with ATI by SSPS, RGSPS may sometimes increase the average sampling frequency (ASF) in return for reducing ATI. In this study, the stage-independent double sampling plan with screening (SIDSPS) based on the concept of the acceptance quality loss limit inspection scheme is proposed under the consideration of the trade-off between ATI and ASF. Through some numerical comparisons about ATI and ASF in SSPS, RGSPS, and SIDSPS, the usefulness of SIDSPS proposed in this study is confirmed.     

Fracture behavior of poly(vinyl chloride)/methyl methacrylate/butadiene/styrene polymer blends

The fracture mode of poly(vinyl chloride)/methyl methacrylate/butadiene/styrene (PVC/MBS) polymer blends can change from ductile to brittle in accordance with the changes in shape of the test specimen or test conditions. Therefore, the mechanisms of impact energy absorption and the main cause of stress whitening are complicated. The following results on PVC/MBS blends were obtained by carrying out fracture experiments at different test speeds and temperatures:

• (1) The ductile/brittle fracture mode of the PVC and PVC/MBS blends can be explained by σ (the craze initiation stress)/σ_y (the shear yield initiation stress), which depends on the strain rates and temperature.
• (2) The fracture behavior of the PVC/MBS blends can be classified into the following types from the standpoints of fracture mode and whitening degree: Fracture I: ductile fracture without whitening; Fracture II: ductile fracture with whitening; and Fracture III: brittle fracture without whitening.
• (3) The following concepts can be estimated from the measurements of yield stress, specific gravity and SEM, TEM and visual observations. In Fracture I, shear yield occurs mainly. In Fracture II, both shear yield and crazing occur. In Fracture III, deformation of the rubber and local crazing occur.
• (4) The main cause of stress whitening in PVC/MBS blends is light scattering by cavities in the rubber particles.
• (5) In Fracture II, at first, crazes with cavities in the rubber particles occur. Then, shear yield occurs. Finally, crazes are healed by the heat, and only the cavities in the rubber remain.

     

Studies on the toxicity of pulp and paper mill effluents—I. Mutagenicity of the sediment samples derived from Kraft paper mills

Sediment samples collected at three different coastal points (Shinguu, Ooigawa and Tagonoura) were extracted with diethylether and then methanol. Each extract was separated into five fractions by high-speed liquid chromatography and they were submitted to mutagenic assay using B. subtilis and S. typhimurium and to GC-MS analysis.The ether fraction of sediment sample from Shinguu showed DNA damaging potency on B. subtilis and exhibited mutagenic effect on S. typhimurium TA 98, TA 100 and TA 1537. 2,4,6-Trichlorophenol, 3,4,5,6-tetrachloroguaiacol, dehydroabietic acid, pyrene and fluoranthene were mutagenic substances among 28 substances identified and tested.     

Nanostructure of pure iron anodically oxidized in borate buffer solution and annealed by infrared radiation

The behavior of oxide film on pure iron passivated in a borate buffer solution and subsequently radiated by infrared light (IR) was investigated in comparing to that by just IR annealing without passivation, and was evaluated by film structure, etc. The effect of thermal annealing over 250 degrees C was observed with gamma-Fe2O3 grain growth and sharp increase in surface roughness, film thickness and oxygen content. An ellipsometric parameter of tan psi was sensitively reflected by annealing effect, and tan psi curve had a shoulder at 150 degrees C for 5 min and a peak of tan psi was shifted from 350 nm to 450 nm in wavelength. This shift was also caused by the formation of gamma-Fe2O3, because the peak was also observed in tan psi of the bulk Fe2O3 family. Passivation effects at 800 mV prior to IR annealing on thickness and oxygen content changed at 150 degrees C, and decreased tan psi at 350 nm and excessive film growth over 250 degrees C, and increased oxygen content under 100 degrees C and surface roughness at 50-250 degrees C. The terrace width with atomic scale flatness was slightly increase by passivation prior to IR annealing at 50-250 degrees C, and the maximum terrace width reached larger than 10 nm by passivation and IR annealing at 100 degrees C for 30 min.     

CP-PACS: A massively parallel processor at the University of Tsukuba

Computational Physics by Parallel Array Computer System (CP-PACS) is a massively parallel processor developed and in full operation at the Center for Computational Physics at the University of Tsukuba. It is an MIMD machine with a distributed memory, equipped with 2048 processing units and 128 GB of main memory. The theoretical peak performance of CP-PACS is 614.4 Gflops. CP-PACS achieved 368.2 Gflops with the Linpack benchmark in 1996, which at that time was the fastest Gflops rating in the world.CP-PACS has two remarkable features. Pseudo Vector Processing feature (PVP-SW) on each node processor, which can perform high speed vector processing on a single chip superscalar microprocessor; and a 3-dimensional Hyper-Crossbar (3-D HXB) Interconnection network, which provides high speed and flexible communication among node processors.In this article, we present the overview of CP-PACS, the architectural topics, some details of hardware and support software, and several performance results.     

Use of multivariate analysis for the improvement in prediction accuracy of bacterial aerobic plate count by flow cytometry

Flow cytometry (FCM) and aerobic plate count (APC) by the culture method were performed on green tea samples spiked with Escherichia coli type strain NCTC9001 (ATCC11775) solutions of different concentrations. In FCM, fluorescence signals from multiple stained bacteria and other fluorophores are detected using detector channels, and recorded as events with a voltage at each channel. FCM data were analyzed in two ways: conventional and multivariate analysis. In the former, the number of events with voltages larger than the defined threshold values was regarded as the predicted APC. In the latter, voltage histograms of all channels were obtained and merged horizontally to serve as explanatory variables. Then a partial least squares regression (PLSR) model was built to predict APC from the histogram data. The coefficient of determination (R²) and the root mean square error (RMSE) between APC by the culture method and that predicted by conventional FCM were 0.916 and 1.08 cfu/ml². The APC values predicted by the PLSR model and those measured were in good agreement with R² of 0.982 and RMSE of 0.417 cfu/ml, which verified the potential of the proposed method for improving APC prediction accuracy by FCM.     

Evolvable Reasoning Hardware: Its Prototyping and Performance Evaluation

In this paper, we propose evolvable reasoning hardware and its design methodology. In the proposed design methodology, case databases of each reasoning task are transformed into truth tables, which are evolved to extract rules behind the past cases through a genetic algorithm. Circuits for the evolvable reasoning hardware are synthesized from the evolved truth-tables. Parallelism in each task can be embedded directly in the circuits through the direct hardware implementation of the case databases. We developed the evolvable reasoning hardware prototype using Xilinx Virtex FPGA chips and applied it to the English-pronunciation-reasoning (EPR) task. The evolvable reasoning hardware for the EPR task was implemented with 270K gates, achieving an extremely high reasoning speed of less than 300 ns/phoneme. It also achieved a reasoning accuracy of 82.1% which is almost the same accuracy as NETTalk in neural networks and MBRTalk in parallel AI.     

Co-Al基三元系中B2相的溶解度间隙与稳定性

Information on phase equilibria in the Co-Al based systems which are related to some magnetic and heat resistance materials is important for their microstructural control. Recently, it was proposed with a theoretical calculation on electronic band structure that some Heusler-type alloys Co2 XAl (X: Cr and Mn) should be a new type of spinelectronic materials so-called half-metallic ferromagnet. In the case of the Co2CrAl, however, magnetic properties expected from the theoretical work can not been experimentally obtained and the reason has been still unknown. On the other hand, a tunne- ling magnetoresistance (TMR) effect due to the half-metallic properties was reported in Co2 (Cr0.6 Fe0.4 ) Al alloy, but not the Co2CrAl alloy. In the present paper, it is reported that this discrepancy with the theoretical work in the Co2CrAl alloy is bought about by phase separation between A2 and B2 phases, and that the substitution of Fe for Cr can suppress the precipitation of A2 phase in the B2 phase. Such a phase separation is originally due to the miscibility gap between CoAl and Cr formed in the Co-Al-Cr ternary system as well as that reported by Hao et al. in the Ni-Co-Al-Fe system.     

The effect of thickness on the steady-state creep properties of freestanding aluminum nano-films

To clarify the effects of film thickness on the creep properties of nano-films we conducted tensile creep experiments on freestanding aluminum films with thickness values in the range ～100–800 nm at room temperature. The nano-films showed typical creep behavior comprising transient, steady-state, and accelerated creep stages. The steady-state creep exponents of the 100–800 nm thick specimens were 0.84–2.7 in the stress range 30–120 MPa, which are close to the value for diffusion creep (1). Creep deformation clearly shows a thickness effect: the steady-state creep rate increases as the thickness decreases from 800 to 400 nm, shows a peak in the range 400–200 nm, and then decreases in the 200–100 nm thickness range. The creep experiments under a small stress of 1 MPa show a negative strain rate, indicating the presence of a driving force to reduce the surface area due to surface tension. The explanation for the thickness effect is as follows. Since the ratio of surface and grain boundary area to volume increases with decreasing thickness, diffusion creep along these paths is enhanced, resulting in an increase in the creep rate. As the thickness decreases to 200–100 nm, however, the surface tension effect to reduce the surface area becomes dominant, decreasing the creep rate. In addition, the creep rate of the nano-films is about two or three orders of magnitude smaller than that of the bulk material dominated by the dislocation creep mechanism.     

On the mechanism of intergranular stress corrosion cracking of sensitized stainless steel in tetrathionate solution

Intergranular stress corrosion cracking (SCC) mechanism in sensitized stainless steel (Type 304) was investigated experimentally. A tetra-thionic potassium (K₂S₄O₆) chemical solution was used to mimic polythionic acid SCC which the most aggressive SCC type. During the SCC test, the steel specimen was subjected to three-point bending with constant strain at room temperature, and simultaneous monitoring of acoustic emission and corrosion potential were employed to monitor SCC initiation and progression. At the early stage, transient phenomenon of local anodic dissolution was observed. Upon initiation of SCC, passivation film fracture and dissolution of metal at specimen surface take place. Through microscopic observation of SCC tip, it was found that the SCC tip advanced along the grain boundary with further mechanical loading. This suggested that the stress component plays a significant role of SCC propagation, in addition to the effect of the localized metal dissolution along Cr-depleted grain boundaries.