Supersonic Nozzle Flow Simulations for Particle Coating Applications: Effects of Shockwaves,Nozzle Geometry,Ambient Pressure,and Substrate Location upon Flow Characteristics

Characteristics of supersonic flow are examined with specific regard to nano-particle thin-film coating. Effects of shockwaves, nozzle geometry, chamber pressure, and substrate location were studied computationally. Shockwaves are minimized to reduce fluctuations in flow properties at the discontinuities across diamond shock structures. Nozzle geometry was adjusted to ensure optimal expansion (i.e., P _exit = P _ambient), where shock formation was significantly reduced and flow kinetic energy maximized. When the ambient pressure was reduced from 1 to 0.01316 bar, the nozzle’s diverging angle must be increased to yield the optimum condition of minimized adversed effects. Beyond some critical distance, substrate location did not seem to be a sensitive parameter on flow characteristics when P _amb = 0.01316 bar; however, overly close proximity to the nozzle exit caused flow disturbances inside the nozzle, thereby adversely affecting coating gas flow.     

Does mentioning “some people” and “other people” in a survey question increase the accuracy of adolescents' self-reports?

A great deal of developmental research has relied on self-reports solicited using the “some/other” question format (“Some students think that… but other students think that…”). This article reports tests of the assumptions underlying its use: that it conveys to adolescents that socially undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors are not uncommon and legitimizes reporting them, yielding more valid self-reports than would be obtained by “direct” questions, which do not mention what other people think or do. A meta-analysis of 11 experiments embedded in four surveys of diverse samples of adolescents did not support the assumption that the some/other form increases validity. Although the some/other form led adolescents to think that undesirable attitudes, beliefs, or behaviors were more common and resulted in more reports of those attitudes and behaviors, answers to some/other questions were lower in criterion validity than were answers to direct questions. Because some/other questions take longer to ask and answer and require greater cognitive effort from participants (because they involve more words), and because they decrease measurement accuracy, the some/other question format seems best avoided. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evidence for the Band‐Edge Exciton of CuInS2 Nanocrystals Enables Record Efficient Large‐Area Luminescent Solar Concentrators

Ternary I‐III‐VI₂ nanocrystals (NCs), such as CuInS₂, are receiving attention as heavy‐metals‐free materials for solar cells, luminescent solar concentrators (LSCs), LEDs, and bio‐imaging. The origin of the optical properties of CuInS₂ NCs are however not fully understood. A recent theoretical model suggests that their characteristic Stokes‐shifted and long‐lived luminescence arises from the structure of the valence band (VB) and predicts distinctive optical behaviours in defect‐free NCs: the quadratic dependence of the radiative decay rate and the Stokes shift on the NC radius. If confirmed, this would have crucial implications for LSCs as the solar spectral coverage ensured by low‐bandgap NCs would be accompanied by increased re‐absorption losses. Here, by studying stoichiometric CuInS₂ NCs, it is revealed for the first time the spectroscopic signatures predicted for the free band‐edge exciton, thus supporting the VB‐structure model. At very low temperatures, the NCs also show dark‐state emission likely originating from enhanced electron‐hole spin interaction. The impact of the observed optical behaviours on LSCs is evaluated by Monte Carlo ray‐tracing simulations. Based on the emerging device design guidelines, optical‐grade large‐area (30×30 cm²) LSCs with optical power efficiency (OPE) as high as 6.8% are fabricated, corresponding to the highest value reported to date for large‐area devices.     

Efficient estimation of a time-varying dimension parameter and its application to EEG analysis

This paper considers the problem of estimating the dimension of nonstationary electroencephalogram (EEG) signals and describes the implementation of an efficient algorithm to calculate a time-varying dimension estimate. The algorithm allows the practical calculation of a dimension estimate and its statistical significance over large data sets with a high temporal resolution. The method is applied to EEG recordings from patients with temporal lobe epilepsy and in one case the results of the analysis are compared with those obtained from an existing method of computing the correlation density.     

Adaptive viewpoints for co-browsing on heterogeneous devices

Co-browsing is an activity in which a group of users navigate their way through of a set of Web pages together for a shared purpose. Effective co-browsing among users with different device capabilities requires a shared understanding of those Web pages. This paper demonstrates the concept of shared viewpoints (SVPs), and personal viewpoints (PVPs), for co-browsing, before detailing a framework for implementing these concepts. Finally, the effectiveness of the framework is presented through a perceptual experiment.     

On-demand routing and channel assignment in multi-channel mobile ad hoc networks

The capacity of mobile ad hoc networks is constrained by the intra-flow interference introduced by adjacent nodes on the same path, and inter-flow interference generated by nodes from neighboring paths. By assigning orthogonal channels to neighboring nodes, one can minimize both types of interferences and allow concurrent transmissions within the neighborhood, thus improving the throughput and delay performance of the ad hoc network. In this paper, we present three novel distributed channel assignment protocols for multi-channel mobile ad hoc networks. The proposed protocols combine channel assignment with distributed on-demand routing, and only assign channels to active nodes. They are shown to require fewer channels and exhibit lower communication, computation, and storage complexity, compared with existing approaches. Through simulation studies, we show that the proposed protocols can effectively increase throughput and reduce delay, as compared to several existing schemes, thus providing an effective solution to the low capacity problem in multi-hop wireless networks.     

连续时间Sigma-Delta模/数转换器(下)

连续时间∑△调制器 第一枚获业界公认的∑△调制器诞生于1962年,而它事实上是采用了CT电路.此后,利用CT电路来实现∑△调制器便愈来愈普遍,但当开关电容器(SC)电路面世后,大部分的∑△调制器都改以DT环路滤波器来实现.SC电路之所以受欢迎,原因是它不会受信号波形特性的影响.此外,SC积分器的时间常数可随着采样频率而调整,从而提高系统的灵活性.     

用于大面积显示的低成本纳米管场发射显示器

我们验证了一个显示视频图像的阴极阵列,它基于6in对角线、QVGA分辨率的碳纳米管,采用了简单的低成本器件结构。该纳米管是利用选择性化学汽相沉积法生长在特定位置上的,对净化阴极具有良好的可控性。该器件结构只需要三个低分辩率的掩膜工序,开关电压为50V。此外,我们的器件设计为较长的显示寿命创造了条件。在一个较小的全熔接密封的试验显示器上,我们已经记录了超过3000小时的寿命,而电流仅下降了20%。     

Sparse LCMV beamformer design for suppression of ground clutter inairborne radar

Cancellation of the ground clutter received at an airborne phased array radar is an inherently two dimensional problem. Clutter returns are Doppler shifted due to platform motion forcing the use of processors that can resolve targets in both velocity (Doppler) and azimuth. Fully adaptive processors that operate in both dimensions require prohibitively large computation so that reduced adaptive dimension, or partially adaptive processors must be considered. In conventional partially adaptive linearly constrained minimum variance (LCMV) beamformer design the approach taken has been to represent the interference subspace with some reduced set of vectors, typically the eigenvectors associated with the largest eigenvalues of the interference covariance matrix. This technique does yield good performance but will not give the optimum performance for a given partially adaptive dimension. In this paper, an off-line method for selecting the “best” degrees of freedom to be retained in a partially adaptive design is presented. The sequential algorithm described selects those degrees of freedom that best minimize the beamformer output mean square error. This approach leads to a sparse structure for the transformation matrix, which when implemented in a generalized sidelobe canceller (GSC) structure results in a reduction in the computational load. This approach also allows a reduction in the required adaptive dimension as compared to the eigenvector based approach. Illustrative examples demonstrate the effectiveness of this method