Substring-based machine translation

Machine translation is traditionally formulated as the transduction of strings of words from the source to the target language. As a result, additional lexical processing steps such as morphological analysis, transliteration, and tokenization are required to process the internal structure of words to help cope with data-sparsity issues that occur when simply dividing words according to white spaces. In this paper, we take a different approach: not dividing lexical processing and translation into two steps, but simply viewing translation as a single transduction between character strings in the source and target languages. In particular, we demonstrate that the key to achieving accuracies on a par with word-based translation in the character-based framework is the use of a many-to-many alignment strategy that can accurately capture correspondences between arbitrary substrings. We build on the alignment method proposed in Neubig et al. (Proceedings of the 49th Annual Meeting of the Association for Computational Linguistics. Portland, Oregon, pp. 632–641, 2011), improving its efficiency and accuracy with a focus on character-based translation. Using a many-to-many aligner imbued with these improvements, we demonstrate that the traditional framework of phrase-based machine translation sees large gains in accuracy over character-based translation with more naive alignment methods, and achieves comparable results to word-based translation for two distant language pairs.     

Compatibility between alumina fibres and aluminium

An investigation is carried out on the interfacial wetting behaviour and reactions between aluminium and alumina fibres (85mass% Al₂O₃ and 15mass% SiO₂). Aluminium is coated onto alumina fibres by a vacuum evaporation technique and the surface of the fully coated fibres and the edge of the partially coated fibres are examined by scanning electron microscope after heat treatments at various temperatures. Within a temperature regime between 943 and 1273 K, occurrence of such interfacial reactions as 4Al(I) + Al₂O₃(s) 3Al₂O₃(g) and 4Al(I) + 3SiO₂(s) 2Al₂O₃(s) + 3Si(s) are detected. It is found that molten aluminium can cover the alumina fibre surface but it peels off near the edge of the coating film on a partially coated fibre, showing the very weak interface cohesion. This is ascribed to the lack of a stable compound formation at the interface. Results of tensile test show that the strength of the coated fibres is degraded after heat-treating at above the melting point of aluminium. The culprits for the tensile failure of alumina fibres are evaluated by the Weibull distribution theory.     

日本东京农业大学关于造园学的研究机构

日本东京农业大学的公园绿地研究工作，在世界上是领先的，它隶属于地域环境科学系造园科学科，设有造园学专业博士前期、后期课程，有完备的教学和科研体制和设施，致力于培养人才，勇于向公园绿地领域所必需的技术、调查分析和规划设计3方面进行挑战，满足国内外造园专业的需要。     

Hydrolysis of β-glucosyl ester linkage of p-hydroxybenzoyl β- -glucose, a chemically synthesized glucoside, by β-glucosidases

To investigate the hydrolysis of glucosyl esters by β-glucosidase, p-hydroxybenzoyl β- -glucose (pHBG) was chemically synthesized. The hydrolytic activity of some β-glucosidases for pHBG was compared to that for p-nitrophenyl β-glucoside (pNPG). The Clavibacter michiganense and Flavobacterium johnsonae enzymes could hydrolyze pHBG and steviol glycosides which are natural glucosyl esters. The commercial β-glucosidase originating from Caldocellum saccharolyticum also hydrolyzes pHBG despite having no activity for steviol glycosides. The β-glucosidase from Aspergillus niger cleaved the glucosyl ester linkage much more weakly than the glucosidic linkage. The pH-activity profile for the hydrolysis of pHBG was similar to that of pNPG by the C. saccharolyticum β-glucosidase. The similar profiles for these substrates suggested that the active site for the glucosyl ester chemically resembles that for glucoside with respect to catalysis. Kinetic analysis of the C. saccharolyticum β-glucosidase for mixed substrates of pHBG and pNPG showed that the hydrolysis of pHBG competed with that of pNPG. This result indicated that there is only one active site for both the glucosyl ester and glucoside. Mass spectroscopic analysis of the hydrolysates of pHBG in H₂¹⁸O suggested that β-glucosidase hydrolyzes glucosyl esters between the anomeric carbon of glucose and the carbonyl oxygen, not between the carbonyl carbon and the carbonyl oxygen.     

Friction welding of Cr-Zr copper alloy

Copper and copper alloys have a higher thermal conductivity than even aluminium, itself regarded as having good heat conduction. When materials with high thermal conductivity are joined, the heat rapidly diffuses in the base metal in a way that generally results in poor weldability due to the difficulty of concentrating heat in welds. To obtain sound welds with satisfactory penetration during fusion welding of copper alloys, it is necessary to ensure high-temperature preheating and high interpass temperatures. Copper alloys are also reported to face problems such as solidification cracking and blowhole formation.¹ To solve these problems, it is necessary to perform welding at low heat input for a short time, which are conflicting requirements because of the high heat conduction.     

Composition controlled synthesis of fcc-FePt nanoparticles using a modified polyol process

A low temperature synthesis method using a modified polyol process is employed to synthesize FePt nanoparticles even at 393 K. The composition could be controlled using the above process by varying the reaction conditions to obtain Fe₅₀Pt₅₀ nanoparticles at 473 K. The magnetic properties of the fcc-FePt nanoparticles indicate that they are not completely superparamagnetic in spite of the smaller particle size.     

Electrochemical oxidation of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite during potential cycling in sulfuric acid solution

Oxidation of highly oriented pyrolytic graphite (HOPG) under potential cycling conditions is investigated to understand the stability of graphite used in polymer electrolyte fuel cells (PEFCs) under their dynamic operation conditions. Electrochemical methods, AFM and XPS are applied to examine the surface oxidation of HOPG. The current peaks corresponding to quinone–hydroquinone redox reaction begin to appear on cyclic voltammograms after potential cycling between 0.6 V and 0.8 V vs. SHE (standard hydrogen electrode), indicating that the surface of HOPG is partially oxidized to form surface functional groups containing oxygen, whereas HOPG is relatively stable during potential cycling between 0.4 V and 0.6 V. An increase in potential range to 0.8–1.0 V extends the oxidation and forms pits on the surface of HOPG that is caused by the loss of surface carbon through the oxidation to gaseous products. The high rate of potential cycling accelerates the surface oxidation of HOPG.