Quantitative structural analysis of twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 using HAADF STEM method

The structure and composition of the 1/4{110} twin boundary in alpha-Zn7Sb2O12 have been determined by using quantitative high-angle annular dark field scanning transmission electron microscopy (HAADF STEM) analysis. The noise in the experimental HAADF STEM images is reduced by using the maximum entropy method and average processing, and the parameters used in dynamical simulations are experimentally determined. From the analysis, it has been found that octahedral sites in the twin boundary slightly shift parallel to the [110] direction, and a reduction of the Sb concentration at the octahedral sites on the plane adjacent to the twin boundary was detected. The reduction was measured from three regions in the same twin boundary, and the Sb concentrations were 4 +/- 3, 8 +/- 3 and 19 +/-2 at% from 33 at%.     

The effect of cold cardioplegic cardiac arrest and electrically induced ventricular fibrillation on human cardiac beta-adrenoceptors during open-heart surgery

This study was designed to test the hypothesis that distinct alterations in cardiac beta-adrenoceptors (betaARs) may occur during cardiopulmonary bypass (CPB) alone, during CPB with cold cardioplegic cardiac arrest (CCCA), and during CPB with electrically induced ventricular fibrillation (EIVF). We assessed the density and affinity of right atrial betaARs in 27 patients undergoing open-heart surgery by (-)-[125I]iodocyanopindolol binding before CPB, defined as the "control," immediately after initiation, defined as "before," and immediately before the cessation of CCCA or EIVF, defined as "after." The density of betaARs was equivalent between the "control" and "before" groups; however, during CPB with EIVF, the density of betaARs decreased significantly (P < 0.001), whereas during CPB with CCCA, it increased significantly (P < 0.01). The rate of changes of the betaAR density was not correlated with the "before"-"after" interval, and the affinity of the betaARs did not change throughout these CPBs. These findings demonstrate that: CPB alone does not affect cardiac betaARs, at least until the onset of EIVF or CCCA; CPB with EIVF induces rapid desensitization of cardiac betaARs; and CPB with CCCA induces rapid sensitization of cardiac betaARs.     

Severe facial clefting, limbic dermoid, hypoplasia of the corpus callosum, and multiple skin appendages: severe frontofacionasal "dysplasia" or newly recognised syndrome?

We report on a child with severe midline facial cleft, bilateral cleft lip and palate, telecanthus, S-shaped palpebral fissures, limbic dermoid, midface hypoplasia, hypoplastic corpus callosum, and multiple skin appendages. This case may be an example of severe frontofacionasal "dysplasia" or a newly recognised syndrome.     

Development of a pulse control-type MEMS microrobot with a hardware neural network

This article presents the micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) microrobot which demonstrates locomotion controlled by hardware neural networks (HNN). The size of the microrobot fabricated by the MEMS technology is 4 × 4 × 3.5 mm. The frame of the robot is made of silicon wafer, and it is equipped with a rotary-type actuator, a link mechanism, and six legs. The rotary-type actuator generates rotational movement by applying an electrical current to artificial muscle wires. The locomotion of the microrobot is obtained by the rotation of the rotary-type actuator. As in a living organism, the HNN realized robot control without using any software programs, A/D converters, or additional driving circuits. A central pattern generator (CPG) model was implemented as an HNN system to emulate the locomotion pattern. The MEMS microrobot emulated the locomotion method and the neural networks of an insect with the rotary-type actuator, the link mechanism, and the HNN. The microrobot performed forward and backward locomotion, and also changed direction by inputting an external trigger pulse. The locomotion speed was 0.325 mm/s and the step width was 1.3 mm.     

Instance-based domain ontological view creation towards semantic integration

In many domains today there are very limited explicit ontologies established for implementing information systems. Traditional ontology-driven semantic integration approaches cannot be directly applied in integrating these information systems. Usually, the information systems have schemas, a type of formal information model, for their information repositories which to some extent imply the semantics of the information. Each schema actually reflects a specific view of the domain conceptualization. This paper investigates the theoretical foundation of ontologies and extends the traditional ontology concept to the ontological view concept. It proposes to use ontological views to address the challenge of semantic integration. The proposed approach adopts the schemas to create local ontological views, uses data instances of the information systems to discover semantic relationships between the concepts within the ontological views, and builds a domain ontological view based on the discovered equivalence mappings. It applies the hierarchical clustering technique on the data instances and, in the further analysis, uses the clusters to reduce the cost of processing a large amount of data. The matching of concept properties is based on the probability distribution of the data instances. The experimental results have demonstrated the effectiveness of this approach.     

Extremely localized interaction in a market model

The model of self-organized criticality (SOC) is a useful tool to understand the complexity of natural systems in the form of the artificial life and the artificial market. However, SOC remains the question what guarantees the criticality even though the natural systems seem to keep itself in the critical state. In this paper, we focus on the locality of interaction in zero-intelligence plus (ZIP) model. The extremely localized interaction changes the behavior of the ZIP model from equilibrium to intermittency. Although the original ZIP model falls into unstable with some noise, extremely localized interaction model archives robust intermittency against the noise parameter. Further, the statistical property of intermittent behavior shows the power-law nature.     

Estimating life-form cover fractions in California sage scrub communities using multispectral remote sensing

The California sage scrub (CSS) community type in California's Mediterranean-type ecosystems is known for its high biodiversity and is home to a large number of rare, threatened, and endangered species. Because of extensive urban development in the past fifty years, this ecologically significant community type is highly degraded and fragmented. To conserve endangered CSS communities, monitoring internal conditions of communities is as crucial as monitoring distributions of the community type in the region. Vegetation type mapping and field sampling of individual plants provide ecologically meaningful information about CSS communities such as spatial distribution and species compositions, respectively. However, both approaches only provide spatially comprehensive information but no information about internal conditions or vice versa. Therefore, there is a need for monitoring variables which fill the information gap between vegetation type maps and field-based data. A number of field-based studies indicate that life-form fractional cover is an effective indicator of CSS community health and habitat quality for CSS-obligated species. This study investigates the effectiveness of remote sensing approaches for estimating fractional cover of true shrub, subshrub, herb, and bare ground in CSS communities of southern California. Combinations of four types of multispectral imagery ranging from 0.15 m resolution scanned color infrared aerial photography to 10 m resolution SPOT 5 multispectral imagery and three image processing models - per-pixel, object-based, and spectral mixture models - were tested.An object-based image analysis (OBIA) routine consistently yielded higher accuracy than other image processing methods for estimating all cover types. Life-form cover was reliably predicted, with error magnitudes as low as 2%. Subshrub and herb cover types required finer spatial resolution imagery for more accurate predictions than true shrub and bare ground types. Positioning of sampling grids had a substantial impact on the reliability of accuracy assessment, particularly for cover estimates predicted using multiple endmember spectral mixture analysis (MESMA) applied to SPOT imagery. Of the approaches tested in this study, OBIA using pansharpened QuickBird imagery is one of the most promising approaches because of its high accuracy and processing efficiency and should be tested for more heterogeneous CSS landscapes. MESMA applied to SPOT imagery should also be examined for effectiveness in estimating factional cover over more extensive habitat areas because of its low data cost and potential for conducting retrospective studies of vegetation community conditions.     

Development of a liquid tin microjet target for an efficient laser-produced plasma extreme ultraviolet source

A regenerative tin liquid microjet target was developed for a high average power extreme ultraviolet (EUV) source. The diameter of the target was smaller than 160 microm and good vacuum lower than 0.5 Pa was maintained during the operation. A maximum EUV conversion efficiency of 1.8% at the Nd:yttrium-aluminum-garnet laser intensity of around 2 x 10(11) Wcm(2) with a spot diameter of 175 microm (full width at half maximum) was observed. The angular distribution of the EUV emission remained almost isotropic, whereas suprathermal ions mainly emerged toward the target normal.     

Mechanical properties of textile-inserted PP/PP knitted composites using injection–compression molding

This paper concentrates on the experimental investigation of the self-reinforced all-polypropylene composites. There exists an optimum processing condition to produce high quality specimens by injection–compression molding. Tensile and 3-point bending properties of the virgin PP materials were nearly unaffected by the introduction of reinforcing knit layer(s) due to very low fibre content of the knitted fabrics used. 3-point bending properties were also unaffected by the surface of indentation-flexure. The applied impact energy was maintained at 5 J for the homo-PP and 27 J for the block-PP materials, respectively, to cause penetration during drop-weight impact tests. It is interestingly noteworthy that the self-reinforced homo-PP composites exhibited superior energy absorption capability when compared with the virgin matrix materials. The corresponding plate bending performances of the self-reinforced homo-PP composites also revealed consistent improvement as compared to their virgin counterparts. On the other hand, although virgin block-PP material exhibited better impact performances than its composite reinforced by the homo-PP knitted fabric, a notably small increase in the reinforcement fibre content revealed considerable improvement in the impact properties comparable to those of the virgin block-PP matrix materials. These self-reinforced homo-PP/block-PP materials have clearly indicated that they have the potential to out-perform the block-PP materials via modification and/or manipulation of the reinforcement knit structural/geometrical parameters and the content of reinforcement fibres. Both static and dynamic impact properties are likely to be affected by the local area properties of the tested face under indentation, and thereby contributing to the improved performances of the composite specimens with the knit face under the impact.     

A 63-mW H.264/MPEG-4 audio/visual codec LSI with module-wise dynamic Voltage/frequency scaling

A single-chip H.264 and MPEG-4 audio-visual LSI for mobile applications including terrestrial digital broadcasting system (ISDB-T / DVB-H) with a module-wise, dynamic voltage/frequency scaling architecture is presented for the first time. This LSI can keep operating even during the voltage/frequency transition, so there is no performance overhead. It is realized through a dynamic deskewing system and an on-chip voltage regulator with slew rate control. By the combination with traditional low power techniques such as embedded DRAM and clock gating, it consumes only 63 mW in decoding QVGA H.264 video at 15 frames/sec and MPEG-4 AAC LC audio simultaneously.