Contributions of generators for power flow and loads in a power system

Because of the introduction of deregulation and competition in the electricity supply industry, large numbers of IPPs (Independent Power Producers) will get into the market. It has become much more important to be able to determine which generators are supplying a particular load, which generator is responsible for transmission line congestion, and what is each generator's contribution to the system losses. In this paper, we propose a way to calculate these contributions automatically. The applicability of the proposed technique is demonstrated using the EAST 10 47‐bus power system. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 144(3): 28–35, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10181     

Plasma centrifuge for separation of metal elements and isotopes

Centrifugal separation of elements has been explored in rapidly rotating metal plasmas. The plasma is produced and driven into rotation by cross-field, vacuum discharge in a coaxial plasma gun. A large separation factor is measured in Cu/Zn plasmas. In particular, a hollow density profile which improves the separative power is found to be established in the plasma column.     

Conference assistant system for supporting knowledge sharing in academic communities

This paper describes our ongoing attempts to build a communityware system by presenting a project of providing digital assistants to support participants in an academic conference. We provided participants at the conference with a personal assistant system with mobile and ubiquitous computing technologies and facilitated communication among the participants. We also made online services available via the Web to encourage the participants to continue their relationships even after the conference. In this paper, we show the system we provided for the project and report the results.     

CO gas sensor devices plasma-polymerized from tetramethyltin

Thin films plasma-polymerized from tetramethyltin was applied for CO gas sensor device. The films formed from tetramethyltin contains alkyl chains with organic tin moieties, and pyrolysis of them at 350–500°C yields carbonized films with SnO₂ moieties. The electrical resistance for the films pyrolized at 350–500°C decreases in exposing to CO gas. The sensitivity, the ratio of the electrical resistance between in air and in CO atmosphere, is enhanced by catalytic actions of palladium chloride, specially in operation at low temperatures below 50°C. The gas sensitivity between CO and other gases such as ethanol, methane, and propane gases is good. The possible determination of CO gas concentration by the sensor device is in ranges from 10 to 1000 ppm.     

Vacancy site occupation by Co and Ir in half-Heusler ZrNiSn and conversion of the thermoelectric properties from n-type to p-type

The n-type thermoelectric properties of the half-Heusler compound ZrNiSn can be converted to p-type by the addition of Co and Ir. We found that Co and Ir atoms preferably occupy the vacancy sites instead of substituting at Ni sites. This implies that the phase stability of the compound gradually changes towards that of the Heusler compound Zr(Ni,M)₂Sn, where M is Co and/or Ir. The occupation of vacancy sites by Co and Ir atoms leads to a drastic reduction in lattice thermal conductivity owing to the enhancement of phonon scattering by the solid solution effect.     

VIDEO BASED ESTIMATION OF PEDESTRIAN WALKING DIRECTION FOR PEDESTRIAN PROTECTION SYSTEM

Pedestrian protection has played an important role for driver assistance systems.Our aim is to develop a video based driver assistance system for the detection of the potentially dangerous situation be...     

MusiKalscope: a graphical musical instrument

A new multimedia system for musical and graphical expression called MusiKalscope contains subsystems that support computer-assisted jazz improvisation (RhyMe) and kaleidoscopic imagery (the lamascope). The Graphical Musical Instrument Interface (GMII) connects these subsystems and lets performers create images and music as they play virtual drums. A functional map matches the images' mood to the music played     

Video based estimation of pedestrian walking direction for pedestrian protection system

Pedestrian protection has played an important role for driver assistance systems. Our aim is to develop a video based driver assistance system for the detection of the potentially dangerous situation between the vehicle and pedestrian, in order to warn the driver. In this paper, we address the problem of detecting pedestrian in real-world scenes and estimation of the walking direction with a single camera from a moving vehicle. Considering all the available cues for predicting the possibility of collision is very important. The direction in which the pedestrian is facing is one of the most important cues predicting where the pedestrian may move in the future. So we first address the problem of single-frame pedestrian orientation estimation in real-world scenes. Then again, we estimate the pedestrian walking direction using multi-frame based on the result of single-frame orientation estimation. We propose a three-step method: pedestrian detection for single-frame step, orientation estimation for single-frame step and walking direction estimation for multi-frame step. To evaluate the proposed method in its robustness and accuracy, the experiments have been performed between numbers of images which is highly challenging uncontrolled conditions in real world. It shows a significant performance improvement in octant orientation estimation of about 64% accuracy in the orientation estimation step and achieved surprisingly good accuracy in estimating the walking direction against 212 targeted objects.