Experimental observations on the effect of added dispersing agent on phenol biodegradation in a microporous membrane bioreactor

The effect of added dispersing agent tetrasodium pyrophosphate (TSP) on the degradation of phenol by Pseudomonas putida BCRC 14365 in a microporous membrane bioreactor was experimentally studied at 30 degrees C and pH 7. The hollow fibers were pre-wetted with ethanol to make them more hydrophilic. Phenol solution was passed through the lumen of the module and the cell medium was flowed across the shell. All Experiments were carried out at a fixed initial cell density of 0.023 g/L (0.06 optical density). Phenol could be completely degraded with the help of the biofilm formed on the outer surfaces of the fibers even though its level was high up to 3 g/L. It was also shown that the presence of TSP in cell medium could improve biodegradation. The amount of added TSP was optimized to be 1 g/L under the conditions studied. In this situation, 3 g/L of phenol could be completely removed within 76 h, much shorter than the absence of TSP (within 92 h).     

Reliability-Based Method for Assessing Liquefaction Potential of Soils

This paper describes a probabilistic method for assessing the liquefaction potential of sandy soils. The proposed probabilistic method is formulated based on the results of reliability analyses of 225 field records, observations of soil performance against liquefaction. The results of the present study show that a meaningful mapping between notional probability and an actual relative frequency measure of the occurrence of liquefaction can be obtained with the proposed method. Twenty case records from the 1989 Loma Prieta earthquake are further analyzed to demonstrate the proposed reliability-based method. The developed method has the potential of becoming a practical tool for engineers involved in the assessment of liquefaction potential.     

Various effects of silicidation on shallow p+ junctionsformed by BF2+ implantation into thin poly-Sifilms on Si substrates

Various effects of silicidation on shallow p⁺ n junctions formed by the scheme that implants BF₂⁺ ions into thin poly-Si films on Si substrates are described. A post-Ni silicidation just slightly improves the preformed junctions of the annealed sample. However, as the sample is first deposited with thin Ni films after the implantation and then annealed, the resulting junctions are much better than the preformed ones. Moreover, as the sample is deposited with Ti films, the resultant junctions are just slightly better the preformed ones     

CORDIC algorithm for vectoring mode without constant scalingfactors

A new CORDIC algorithm is presented that can be used for the vectoring mode without requiring constant scaling factors. The algorithm can also be used to carry out complete transformation from rectangular co-ordinates (x,y) to polar co-ordinates (ρ&thetas;) in each iteration. The exponent difference of x and y is computed so as to speed up convergence. This new CORDIC algorithm has an average of 0.75 n iterations for n-bit input data and can achieve>94.78% 23 bit accuracy. It is also suitable for VLSI chip implementation due to the regular architecture required     

Gender Recognition Based on Computer Vision System

Detecting human gender from complex background, illumination variations and objects under computer vision system is very difficult but important for an adaptive information service. In this paper, a preliminary design and some experimental results of gender recognition will be presented from the walking movement that utilizes the gait-energy image (GEI) with denoised energy image (DEI) pre-processing as a machine learning support vector machine (SVM) classifier to train and extract its characteristics. The results show that the proposed method can adopt some characteristic values and the accuracy can reach up to 100% gender recognition rate under combining the horizontal added vertical feature and using a normal image size and test data when people are walking at a fixed angle. Meanwhile, it will be able to achieve over 80% rate within some allowed fault-tolerant angle range.     

Portrait Vision Fusion for Augmented Reality

Kinect(+openCV); Dynamic portrait segmentation; Skeletal tracking; Edge transparent processing; Video interactive     

Physical properties of amorphous Mo-doped In–Ga–Zn–O films grown by magnetron co-sputtering technique

Amorphous thin films of In–Ga–Zn–O (a-IGZO) doped with Mo have been fabricated by using magnetron co-sputtering technique. The Mo concentration in a-IGZO films was modulated by varying the sputtering power applied on the Mo target. The electrical, optical and magnetic properties of Mo-doped a-IGZO films grown on glasses were investigated. The carrier density and mobility of a-IGZO films can be remarkably enhanced by low concentration Mo doping. On the other hand, the optical bandgap of a-IGZO films is not significantly affected by Mo doping. However, the transmission is decreased with increasing the Mo doping. Moreover, all Mo-doped films exhibit room-temperature ferromagnetism.     

Fabrication and characterization of amorphous In–Zn–O/SiOx/n-Si heterojunction solar cells

Amorphous In–Zn–O (a-IZO) films were deposited on SiO_x covered n-type Si substrates by using pulsed laser deposition (PLD) technique to form a-IZO/SiO_x/n-Si heterojunction solar cells. The a-IZO films grown at 150 °C with various laser power (250–500 mJ/pulse) exhibit low resistivity (2–3 × 10⁻³ Ω cm) and high transparency (∼80%) in the visible wavelength range. The highest conversion efficiency of the fabricated a-IZO/SiO_x/n-Si solar cells is 2.2% under 100 mW/cm² illumination (AM1.5 condition). The open-circuit voltage, short-circuit current density and fill factor of the best device are 0.24 V, 28.4 mA/cm² and 33.6%, respectively.