Novel screen technology for high‐contrast front‐projection display by controlling ambient‐light reflection

Abstract— One problem with front‐projection displays is that the screen contrast ratio decreases in bright ambient light. In this paper, we propose a new front‐projection display system that incorporates the control of reflection of ambient light in the screen design, providing a high contrast ratio even in a brightly lit room.     

Human-like natural behavior generation based on involuntary motions for humanoid robots

Human behaviors consist of both voluntary and involuntary motions. Almost all behaviors of task-oriented robots, however, consist solely of voluntary motions. Involuntary motions are important for generating natural motions like those of humans. Thus, we propose a natural behavior generation method for humanoid robots that is a hybrid generation between voluntary and involuntary motions. The key idea of our method is to control robots with a hybrid controller that combines the functions of a communication behavior controller and body balancing controllers. We also develop a wheeled inverted pendulum type of humanoid robot, named “Robovie-III”, in order to generate involuntary motions like oscillation. By applying our method to this robot and conducting preliminary experiments, we verify its validity. Experimental results show that the robot generates both voluntary and involuntary motions.     

Progress in viewing‐angle properties of liquid‐crystal displays

Abstract— Viewing‐angle dependences of the contrast ratio and color shift of LCDs have been radically improved as evidenced by the increasing application of LCDs in high‐quality television. This paper describes the concept of optical compensation and the fundamental characteristics of the viewing‐angle property for various LC modes.     

Syndiotactic‐specific radical polymerization of N‐isopropylacrylamide in toluene at low temperatures in the presence of silyl alcohols

The radical polymerization of N‐isopropylacrylamide was carried out in toluene at low temperatures in the presence of silyl alcohols, such as triethylsilanol. Poly(N‐isopropylacrylamide) with a racemo dyad content of 75% was obtained at ? 80 °C with a 4:1 triethylsilanol to monomer ratio loading. NMR analysis suggests that the mechanism for syndiotactic induction, in the presence of silyl alcohols, may be similar to that observed with alkyl alcohols. In this case, a 1:2 complex formation, via hydrogen bonding interactions, leads to the induction of syndiotactic specificity. Copyright © 2012 Society of Chemical Industry     

Evaluating the protective effects of radon inhalation or ascorbic acid treatment after transient global cerebral ischemic injury in gerbils

In this study, we compared the protective effects of radon inhalation and ascorbic acid administration on transient global cerebral ischemic injury in gerbils. Gerbils were treated with radon inhalation (2000 Bq/m³, 24 hours) or ascorbic acid (100, 300, or 500 mg/kg body weight). Then, transient global cerebral ischemia was induced by bilateral occlusion of the common carotid artery. Results showed that the number of damaged neurons was significantly increased in gerbils that underwent ischemia compared with that in control gerbils. However, the number of damaged neurons in gerbils treated with radon or 500 mg/kg of ascorbic acid before ischemia was significantly lower than gerbils who were subjected to ischemia without any pretreatment, and the protective effects of radon inhalation were similar to the effects of administering 500 mg/kg ascorbic acid. The levels of superoxide dismutase (SOD) and total glutathione (t-GSH) in brain tissue were increased to a similar extent by pretreatment with radon inhalation or 500 mg/kg of ascorbic acid. These findings suggested that radon inhalation has a protective antioxidative effect against transient global cerebral ischemic injury similar to 500 mg/kg ascorbic acid treatment.     

WO3/BiVO4 composite photoelectrode prepared by improved auto-combustion method for highly efficient water splitting

We report on the improvement in the water splitting efficiency of a WO₃/BiVO₄ composite photoelectrode by the application of an improved auto-combustion method to the preparation of porous BiVO₄ thin films. The unique feature of this preparation method is the addition of both NH₄NO₃, as a strong oxidizing agent, and an organic additive into BiVO₄ precursor solution. The local decomposition heat of the organic additive and oxidizing agent created a porous film with small, highly crystalline BiVO₄ particles. The photoelectrode has many advantages over existing ones, such as the high light-harvesting efficiency (LHE), a single BiVO₄ phase, the facile access of the holes to the photoelectrode/electrolyte interface, and the ease of water and oxygen diffusion. The maximum incident photon-to-current efficiency (IPCE) was estimated to be 64% (at 440 nm, 1.23 V vs. RHE) and the applied bias photon-tocurrent efficiency (ABPE) reached as high as 1.28%. This ABPE value is highest among all oxide semiconductor photoelectrodes reported previously, except for the case of a stacking photoelectrode system.     

Simulation of a chemical reaction, 2LiH→Li2+H2, driven by doubly excitation

A direct computer simulation of reaction dynamics at the electronic excited states is not easy to perform, because nonadiabatic equations must be solved as a function of time. Here we present a simple simulation to integrate directly the time-dependent Schrödinger equation within the framework of the time-dependent density functional theory (for electrons) coupled with the Newtonian equation of motion (for nuclei). We find that a chemical reaction, 2LiH→Li₂+H₂, takes place by the doubly excitation. Along the reaction, a level crossing occurs automatically between the highest occupied and lowest unoccupied levels. The simulation demonstrates a mechanism for relaxation for the reactions driven by doubly excitation: electronic excited state changes smoothly into the electronic ground state leaving a kinetic energy of the atoms.     

Robust comprehension of natural language instructions by a domestic service robot

We present a method through which domestic service robots can comprehend natural language instructions. For each action type, a variety of natural language expressions can be used, for example, the instruction, ‘Go to the kitchen’ can also be expressed as ‘Move to the kitchen.’ We are of the view that natural language instructions are intuitive and, therefore, constitute one of the most user-friendly robot instruction methods. In this paper, we propose a method that enables robots to comprehend instructions spoken by a human user in his/her natural language. The proposed method combines action-type classification, which is based on a support vector machine, and slot extraction, which is based on conditional random fields, both of which are required in order for a robot to execute an action. Further, by considering the co-occurrence relationship between the action type and the slots along with the speech recognition score, the proposed method can avoid degradation of the robot’s comprehension accuracy in noisy environments, where inaccurate speech recognition can be problematic. We conducted experiments using a Japanese instruction data-set collected using a questionnaire-based survey. Experimental results show that the robot’s comprehension accuracy is higher in a noisy environment using our method than when using a baseline method with only a 1-best speech recognition result.     

Conductive and flexible multi-walled carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane composites made with naphthalene/toluene mixture

Conventional conductive materials face challenges when utilizing them for flexible and wearable electronics and soft robotics. Carbon nanotube/polydimethylsiloxane (CNT/PDMS) composites are a promising alternative to the conventional hard conductors because they are light and can realize large deformation. To date, well dispersion of CNTs into PDMS to increase conductivity while maintaining flexibility remains challenging. We aimed at developing highly electrically conductive and flexible multi-walled carbon nanotube/PDMS (MWCNT/PDMS) composites. To this end, we proposed a method to enhance the dispersion of MWCNTs into PDMS using naphthalene and toluene. Our results showed that the addition of naphthalene and toluene into the composites improved dispersion of the MWCNTs and increased the direct current (DC) electrical conductivity. We also found that the morphology of primary aggregates of the MWCNTs influenced the DC electrical conductivity of the composites. © 2019 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2019 , 136, 48167.