Effect of water-Insoluble Powder Addition on Physical Properties of Gelatin Gel

Water-insoluble powder is often dispersed in shells of commercial soft capsules for various reasons, but little reports have been published about the effect of powder addition on the physical properties of the gelatin gel. Glass powder, titanium oxide, calcium carbonate and γ-orizanol were used as model of powder. Changes of Young modulus obtained from the tensile test showed that any powder addition to the gelatin sheet made the gelatin sheet hard not by the surface effect of powder but by the volumetric effect of it. In this test, any powders had no effect on the tensile strength of the gelatin sheet because there was little interaction between each powder and the gelatin gel in the break point. The limiting strain was decreased a little up to the specific amount of each powder and then beyond the specific amount that decreased steeply in the case of glass powder and γ-orizanol. There might be a suitable range of the amount of powder for the gelatin sheet to keep the plastic flow similar to the gelatin sheet containing no powder. In this work, it was shown that the physical properties of the gelatin shell would be regulated by powder addition to the gelatin sheet.     

Effect of polymer matrices on magnetic properties of plastic magnets

Plastic magnets were prepared using commercial polyamide (Nylon 12), polystyrene and ethylene-vinylacetate copolymer, and three kinds of ferrite magnetic powders with different concentration levels (20, 35 and 50 vol%). Their magnetic properties and thermal stability are discussed comparing viscoelasticity and thermal properties of the polymers and plastic magnets. Magnetic properties of the anisotropic plastic magnets were largely dependent on the concentration of the magnetic powder and its degree of orientation in the matrix. The degree of the orientation was mainly affected by the interaction between polymer matrix and magnetic powder, and viscoelastic property of the matrix polymer. It was also affected to some extent by the shape of the magnetic particles. The order of the interaction of the polymers to the magnetic powders was as follows: PA > EVA copolymer > PS, and PA-bonded magnets gave the highest magnetic properties among the matrices examined. The decrease in magnetic properties due to the change in the orientation of magnetic powder rarely occurred during thermal treatment.     

New annealing method and CaGe garnet film coercivity origin

A new annealing method which drastically reduces the coercivity of GaGe-garnet films grown by LPE has been developed. The as-grown films of (YSmLuCa)₃(FeGe)₅O₁₂ and (YEuTmCa)₃(FeGe)₅ O₁₂ are sealed with Y₂O₃ and metal Ca in an evacuated tube having three chambers. When heated, the tube is filled with Ca and O₂ gases which are supplied from the metal Ca and Y₂O₃, respectively. Ca and oxygen are believed to be incorporated into the film occupying the dodecahedral cation vacancies and oxygen vacancies, respectively. By this annealing, coercivities higher than 5.0 Oe are drastically reduced to less than 0.5 Oe. At the same time, the 4πMs and lattice constant af are decreased, while the Curie temperature T_c is increased. A point defect structure model containing c-site vacancies, oxygen vacancies and a-site Ge²⁺ ions is proposed. The origin of the coercivity is believed to be the oxygen vacancies.     

Application of rigid polyurethane integral-skin foams to thermal insulating unit cases for car air conditioners

Integral-skin foams of rigid polyurethane are sandwich structures consisting of a core layer of closed cells enclosed in rigid surface layers on both sides. We examined the layer composition of integral-skin foam with the objective of maximum flexural strength, and then studied possibilities of reconciling the strength and thermal insulating properties in housings for evaporators in car air conditioners; i.e., unit cases. This examination showed that the most practical density range (250 ≦ ρ_pall ≦ 500 kg/m³) provides vibratile resistance and thermal insulating properties. In actual car-running tests, a maximum 0.1 MPa stress was generated on unit cases with overall densities of 350 kg/m³, We found this to be 0.4% of the flexural strength of an integral-skin foam and 2% of the fatigue strength. In the forcible vibratile test, a stress of 0.5 to 1.0 MPa was generated at the resonance point of a unit case with 250 to 500 kg/m³ overall density. We found that these values are 2 to 5% of integral-skin foam's flexural strength and 10 to 25% of its fatigue strength. These values are of the same level as the conventional unit case made of polypropylene blended with talc. An integral-skin foam with an overall density of 250 kg/m³, nearly equal to half the weight of polypropylene, has the same level of resistance to vibration.     

Additivity failure of chromatic valence in the opponent-color theory

The additivity of flicker responses produced by two different wavelengths λ₁ and λ₂ was investigated for five adapting levels of 560 nm by the summation-index method. A summation-index value of σ of 0.30 was obtained for all conditions employed, confirming the linear property of the achromatic channel. The additivity of unique chromatic responses, red, yellow, green, and blue, was also investigated with the same method. In this case the wavelengths λ₁ and λ₂ were chosen in a spectral region to produce one of the four unique colors and the summation index was measured for the color with the cancellation method. A summation index of 0.30 was found for the green and blue sensations and also for the red sensation if both stimuli were from the same spectral region. A slight additivity failure of the enhancement type was found for pairs λ₁ and λ₂ λ₁ was in the short-wavelength region while λ₂ was in the long-wavelength region. An additivity failure of the same type was found for the yellow chromatic sensation when λ₂ was 607 nm and λ₁ was 570, 550, or 533 nm, the last combination giving a summation index of as much as 0.64. The results imply the existence of two different cones whose responses do not add linearly to yield the yellow sensation.     

Significance of residual stress on fatigue properties of welded pipes

The mean stress effect on the fatigue properties of two kinds of welded pipes was investigated in cantilever bending. The fatigue strength changed with the mean stress on fillet welded pipes, but did not change on butt welded pipes. The fatigue crack initiated from the toe of weld on the outer surface of fillet welded pipes and from the undercut on the inner surface of butt welded pipes. The measurement of the fatigue crack propagation rate and the residual stress distribution through the thickness of pipe revealed that the difference in the fatigue properties between fillet and butt welded pipes arose from the weld-induced residual stress, tension on the inner surface and compression on the outer surface. It is suggested that the production of compressive residual stress along the inner surface would be an effective means for improving the fatigue strength of butt welded pipes.     

Sub-Pixel Estimation Error Cancellation on Area-Based Matching

Area-based image matching and sub-pixel displacement estimation using similarity measures are common methods that are used in various fields. Sub-pixel estimation using parabola fitting over three points with their similarity measures is also a common method to increase the matching resolution. However, few investigations or studies have explored the characteristics of this estimation.This study analyzed sub-pixel estimation error using two different types of matching model. Our analysis demonstrates that the estimation contains a systematic error depending on image characteristics, the similarity function, and the fitting function. This error causes some inherently problematic phenomena such as the so-called pixel-locking effect, by which the estimated positions tend to be biased toward integer values. We also show that there are good combinations of the similarity functions and fitting functions.In addition, we propose a new algorithm to greatly reduce sub-pixel estimation error. This method is independent of the similarity measure and the fitting function. Moreover, it is quite simple to implement. The advantage of our novel method is confirmed through experiments using different types of images.