A novel bistable reflective display using quick‐response liquid powder

Abstract— We have developed new powder materials that exhibit liquid behavior, which can lead to the realization of novel bistable and reflective displays having paper‐white appearance, high contrast, and quick response. Two types of display were demonstrated, one had 160 × 160 array of pixels and the other had 320 × 320 in a 3.1‐in.‐diagonal viewable image size corresponding to 66 and 132 dpi, respectively. These displays were driven by passive‐matrix addressing. The displays showed a reflectivity of more than 41%, a contrast more than 1:10, and a pixel response time of less than 0.2 msec. The seven‐segment display for use in clocks was also demonstrated.     

An agent architecture for strategy-centric adaptive QoS control in flexible videoconference system

In this paper, we propose an agent architecture to improve flexibility of a videoconference system with strategy-centric adaptive QoS (Quality of Service) control mechanism. The proposed architecture realizes more flexibility by changing their QoS control strategies dynamically. To switch the strategies, system considers the properties of problems occurred on QoS and status of problem solving process. This architecture is introduced as a part of knowledge base of agent that deals with cooperation between software module of videoconference systems. We have implemented the mechanism, and our prototype system shows its capability of flexible problem solving against the QoS degradation, along with other possible problems within the given time limitation. Thus we confirmed that the proposed architecture can improve its flexibility of a videoconference system compared to traditional systems. Takuo Suganuma, Dr.Eng.: He is a research associate of Research Institute of Electrical Communication of Tohoku University. He received a Dr.Eng. degree from Chiba Institute of Technology in 1997. His research interests include agent-based computing and design methodology for distributed systems. He is a member of IPSJ, IEICE and IEEE. SungDoke Lee: He is a Ph.D. Student in the Graduate School of Information Sciences in Tohoku University. He received his MEng degree at Chonbuk National University, Korea in 1991. His research interests include Flexible Network and Knowledge of Agent. Tetsuo Kinoshita, Dr.Eng.: He is an associate professor of Research Institute of Electrical Communication of Tohoku University. He received a Dr.Eng. degree in information engineering from Tohoku University, Japan. His research interests include knowledge engineering, cooperative distributed processing and agent-based computing. He received the the IPSJ Best Paper Award in 1997, etc. He is a member of IPSJ, IEICE, JSAI, AAAI, ACM and IEEE. Norio Shiratori, Dr.Eng.: After receiving his Dr.Eng degree at Tohoku University, he joined the Research Institute of Electrical Communication of Tohoku University in 1977, and is now a professor at the same University. He has been engaged in research on distributed processing system, and flexible intelligent network. He received the 25th Anniversary of IPSJ Memorial Prize-Winning Paper Award in 1985, the 6th Telecommunications Advancement Foundation Incorporation Award in 1991, the Best Paper Award of ICOIN-9 in 1994, the IPSJ Best Paper Award in 1997, etc. He has been named a Fellow of the IEEE for his contributions to the field of computer communication networks.     

Interactions between nano-spacing flying head sliders and ultra-thin liquid lubricant films with non-uniform distribution in hard disk drives

This paper describes the effect of ultra-thin liquid lubricant films on air bearing dynamics and flyability of less than 10 nm spacing flying head sliders in hard disk drives. In particular, the effect of non-uniform lubricant film distributions on head/disk interface dynamics are studied. The disks with lubricant on one half of disk surface thicker than the other half were used in this study. The dynamics of sliders is monitored using acoustic emission (AE) and the interactions between the slider and disk are investigated experimentally. The disks were also examined with a scanning micro-ellipsometer before and after each test. Complicated slider responses were observed and clarified. In addition, it was found that the periodic lubricant film thickness modulations or non-uniformity caused by the slider-disk contact interactions could be observed. It is suggested that this lubricant film thickness non-uniformity will be one of the technical issues in order to achieve ultra-low head/disk contact interface of less than 10 nm.     

Development of a homogeneous competitive immunoassay for phosphorylated protein antigen based on the enhanced fluorescence resonance energy transfer technology

We describe a homogeneous competitive immunoassay for a phosphorylated protein antigen. The assay takes advantage of the enhanced fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET) technology, which has a unique characteristic that the FRET signal is increased by the specific interaction of two fluorolabeled leucine zippers. We chose extracellular signal-regulated kinase (ERK) as a model antigen and constructed two molecular probes in which either anti-phosphorylation site antibody or the antigen peptide was chemically conjugated to the enhanced FRET probes. While these molecular probes indicated sufficient FRET signal without antigen, they displayed a significant change in the fluorescent spectrum by mixing with phosphorylated antigens. With this competitive enhanced FRET immunoassay, a phosphorylated ERK concentration within the range from 15 nM to 250 nM could be determined. Because the assay is very simple, it would be applied to not only in vitro assay but also in vivo detection of protein phosphorylation.     

Investigation of UV-A light irradiation on tomato fruit injury during storage

We investigated the effect of UV-A light (wavelength 315 to 400 nm) irradiation during storage on tomato fruit injury. Mature green tomato fruit (cv. House Momotaro) were exposed to UV-A at doses of 0.02, 0.5, and 2 mW x cm(-2) throughout storage at 25 degrees C. The physiological disorders, fruit ripening, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, and increases in fruit temperature were evaluated. All UV-A-irradiated and nonirradiated tomatoes developed a full red color at the same time (2 weeks). Irradiated fruit ripened normally, and exposure of tomato fruits to UV-A did not lead to the discoloration of ripe tomato fruit at any dosage. The fruit temperature did not increase in response to various UV-A light doses and exposure times, and none of the UV-irradiated fruits showed physiological disorders (dull skin blemish, pitting). The SOD activity of UV-A-irradiated fruit exposed to the various UV-A doses did not significantly (P = 0.05) differ from that of fruit stored in dark conditions. The SOD results imply that UV-A light might not induce reactive oxygen species in UV-A-irradiated fruit.     

On-Line Shape recognition with incremental training using binary synaptic weights algorithm

Recognition of hand drawn shapes is beneficial in drawing packages and automated sketch entry in handheld computers. In this paper, we propose a new approach to on-line geometric shape recognition with incremental training function, which utilizes a heuristic function to reduce noise and a neural network for classification and on-line training. Instead of recognizing segments of a drawing and then performing syntactical analysis to match with a predefined shape, which is weak in terms of generalization and dealing with noise, we examine the shape as a whole. The main concept of the recognition method is derived from the fact that internal angles are very important in the perceived shape of outlines. Our application's aim is to recognize elliptic, rectangular, and triangular shapes in a way similar to human cognition of these shapes. Human beings recognize such basic shapes regardless of the variations in size, noise on the shape border, rotation and in the case of triangles, regardless of the type of the triangle. The key concept is that the neural network learns the relationships between the internal angles of a shape and its classification, therefore only a few training samples which represent the class of the shape are sufficient. Fast meremental training, which is performed on-line, is accomplished by the use of the Binary Synaptic Weights algorithm, a one pass, feedforward neural network training algorithm. Incremental training offers the advantage of adjusting the recognition capability of the system to the user's drawings. the results are very successful, such that the neural network correctly classified shapes that did not have any resemblance to the shapes in the initial training set.     

Least cost testing sequence problem with unknown rejecting probabilities

This paper discusses the least cost testing sequence problem. This problem has been considered under the assumption that costs and rejecting probabilities are completely known a priori.In this paper, a procedure for selecting the optimal testing sequence in the case that rejecting probabilities are unknown is proposed. Experimental results indicate that the optimal testing sequence can be selected by this procedure.     

Selective oxidation of Fe-30Ni alloy in a low-temperature range (433–473 K)

Fe-30Ni alloy specimens were oxidized for 10–240 min at 433–473 K in pure oxygen at a pressure of 1.33×10⁴ Pa. The thickness of oxide films was measured by a multiple-angle-of-incidence ellipsometer. The kinetics of film growth were found to obey a parabolic rate law. The depth-profiling of oxidized surfaces, performed with simultaneous use of Auger electron spectroscopy (AES) and argon-ion sputter-etching technique, reveals that iron component is selectively oxidized and an iron-depeletion zone is formed in the underlying alloy. The thickness of the iron depletion zone increases with increasing oxidation time or oxidation temperature. During surface oxidation of the alloy, the transport rate of iron component in the film is almost equal to the interdiffusion rate in the underlying alloy, indicating the establishment of a steady state. The values of the interdiffusion coefficient, , of the underlying alloy estimated from the depth-composition profiles are more than 10 orders of magnitude as large as the values extrapolated from the lattice diffusion data of the corresponding alloy obtained at high temperature. The enormously large values of may be explained in terms of the vacancy (monovacancy or divacancy)-enhanced lattice diffusion mechanism.     

Characterization of neurons differentiated from mouse embryonic stem cells using conditioned medium of dorsal root ganglia

Mouse embryonic stem (ES) cells have the pluripotent ability to differentiate in vitro into various cell lineages, including neurons. Adding chick dorsal root ganglion (DRG) conditioned medium (CM) to the culture medium promotes the differentiation of ES cells into neurons. We determined the types of neurons that differentiate from ES cells. The addition of DRG-CM caused nearly half of all ES cells on the periphery of the colony sphere to differentiate into neurons. Immunofluorescence analysis showed that the neurons that differentiated from ES cells were mainly motor, GABAergic, serotonergic, and cholinergic neurons. Of particular note, flow cytometry showed that approximately 50% of betaIII-tubulin-positive neurons were motor neurons. This indicates that DRG-CM induces ES cells to differentiate into motor neurons as target of DRG neurons (sensory neurons).     

Study on flow-induced vibration of head–disk assembly mechanisms in actual hard disk drive

Achieving ultra-high magnetic-recording density in hard disk drives (HDDs) requires clarification of flow-induced vibration issues. In particular, it is necessary to reduce the flow-induced disk vibration called disk flutter. Thus far, however, there has been no experimental research related to disk flutter in actual HDDs. For this study, therefore, the disk-flutter issues have been studied experimentally, using an actual 2.5-in. HDD with one disk and two magnetic heads. The aim was to study the effect of operating magnetic-head mechanisms on flow-induced disk flutter. This study evaluated disk flutter as well as static pressure distribution in the actual HDD, by taking measurements while changing the operating modes of the magnetic-head mechanism as well as the number of operating air-bearing sliders. The study demonstrated that the disk-flutter amplitude increases and its frequency decreases when the magnetic-head mechanisms are operating. It was also found that the amount of decrease in the disk-flutter frequency depends on the number of operating air-bearing sliders whose amplitude increase varies with the specific operating mode of the head mechanisms, such as whether it is in track-following or seek modes. In addition, operation of the magnetic-head mechanisms generated non-uniform static pressure distribution within the HDD. These factors suggest that a decrease in disk-flutter frequency results from the slider-coupled vibration and an increase in disk-flutter amplitude results from the static pressure changes as well as air-following changes, as these vary with the actual operation of the disk head mechanism. From these experimental results, it appears that the disk-flutter issues in actual HDDs should be considered as a system that includes the operation of the magnetic-head mechanisms and disk-coupled vibration.