Nonlinear Optic Nanocomposites Based on Oxide Glasses

The first nonlinear optic nanocomposite based on a low-melting vitreous matrix and a ferrielectric crystal has been obtained. The matrix consists of lead-borate glass and the filler is single-phase powder of ferrielectric KNbSi₂O₇. The quadratic optical nonlinearity of composites was studied depending on temperature and time of dissolution of crystals in the glass matrix. Conditions for producing transparent nanocomposites that generate the second optic harmonic are identified.     

Optical–microphysical properties of smoke haze from Siberian forest fires in summer 2012

A comprehensive experiment on the study of dynamics of optical and microphysical characteristics of submicron aerosols in the near-ground air layer was carried out in June–August of 2012 under conditions of extremely strong smoke haze originating from vast forest fires in Siberia. Variations of the spectral angular scattering coefficients and the degree of linear polarization in the visible wavelength range are studied, as well as the mass concentrations of dry fractions of aerosol and black carbon, relative content of black carbon (BC fraction), single scattering albedo, particle size distribution function, complex refractive index of the particulate matter, and parameter of condensation activity of aerosol. Peculiarities of differences between optical and microphysical characteristics of near-ground aerosol in smoke haze and under smokeless conditions are revealed. This study is important for validation of results of remote sensing of the composition of smoke haze and background atmosphere obtained from satellite data and sun photometric measurements at the Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET).     

A new set distance and its application to shape registration

We propose a new distance measure, called Complement weighted sum of minimal distances, between finite sets in ${\mathbb Z }^n$ and evaluate its usefulness for shape registration and matching. In this set distance the contribution of each point of each set is weighted according to its distance to the complement of the set. In this way, outliers and noise contribute less to the new similarity measure. We evaluate the performance of the new set distance for registration of shapes in binary images and compare it to a number of often used set distances found in the literature. The most extensive evaluation uses a set of synthetic 2D images. We also show three examples of real problems: registering a set of 2D images extracted from synchrotron radiation micro-computed tomography (SR $\upmu $ CT) volumes depicting bone implants; the difficult multi-modal registration task of finding the exact location of a 2D slice of a bone implant, as imaged by a light microscope, within a 3D SR $\upmu $ CT volume of the same implant; and finally recognition of handwritten characters. The evaluation shows that our new set distance performs well for all tasks and outperforms the other observed distance measures in most cases. It is therefore useful in many image registration and shape comparison tasks.     

Quantum correlations at negative absolute temperatures

We study behavior of quantum discord, a kind of quantum correlation, in systems of dipole–dipole interacting spins in an external magnetic field in the whole temperature range ( \(-\infty ). It was shown that negative temperatures, which are introduced to describe inversions in the population in a finite level system, provide more favorable conditions for emergence of quantum correlations including entanglement. We show that at negative temperature, the correlations become more intense and discord exists between remote spins being in separated states.     

Thermoplastic extrusion—the mechanism of the formation of extrudate structure and properties

Systems processed by thermoplastic extrusion can be regarded as heterophase polymer melts of incompatible water-plasticized biopolymers. In the process of thermoplastic extrusion, proteins and polysaccharides are melted at high pressure and temperature below the temperature region of their thermal decomposition. Dispersed particles of these systems can be deformed in flow. The mixed-melt anisotropic structure, formed in flow, is fixed by rapid conversion of the melt jet that lets the extruder die from a viscous state to a rubber-like state and then to a glassy state caused by cooling and drying. Incompatibility of proteins and polysaccharides in their water-plasticized melt mixtures impacts on structure formation and texturization during thermoplastic extrusion. Presented at the 20th ISF World Congress and 83rd AOCS Annual Meeting and Expo, May 10–14, 1992, Toronto, Ontario, Canada.     

Influence of Ionic Charge on Diffusion in the Surface Layer of Magnesia

The diffusion of ⁵⁷Co isotope on the MgO (100) surface was investigated by the edge-source method. The surface diffusion parameter, αD_sδ, where α is the segregation factor, D_s the surface diffusion coefficient, and δ the thickness of the high-diffusivity layer, was determined over the temperature region 750° to 1250°C. An Arrhenius plot shows a break at ∼1100°C. Below this temperature ionic or localized transport predominates and above it nonlocalized transport seems to predominate. The divalent Co ion diffuses faster than the trivalent Cr ion in the surface layer. The apparent activation energies for the localized surface diffusion of ⁵⁷Co and ⁵⁹Cr are 59±12 and 110±12 kj/mol, respectively.     

Memory leak detection in Plumbr

Platforms with automatic memory management, such as the JVM, are usually considered free of memory leaks. However, memory leaks can happen in such environments, as the garbage collector cannot free objects, which are not used by the application anymore, but are still referenced. Such unused objects can eventually fill up the heap and crash the application. Although this problem has been studied extensively, nevertheless, there are still many rooms for improvement in this area. This paper describes the statistical approach for memory leak detection, as an alternative, along with a commercial tool, Plumbr, which is based on the method. The tool is later analyzed with three case studies of real applications and in the process also analyzes strengths and weaknesses of the statistical approach for memory leak detection. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Image processing acceleration for intelligent unmanned aerial vehicle on mobile GPU

In this paper, we present an algorithm for providing visually-guided unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) control using visual information that is processed on a mobile graphic processing unit (GPU). Most real-time machine vision applications for UAVs exploit low-resolution images because the shortage of computational resources comes from size, weight and power issue. This leads to the limitation that the data are insufficient to provide the UAV with intelligent behavior. However, GPUs have emerged as inexpensive parallel processors that are capable of providing high computational power in mobile environments. We present an approach for detecting and tracking lines that use a mobile GPU. Hough transform and clustering techniques were used for robust and fast tracking. We achieved accurate line detection and faster tracking performance using the mobile GPU as compared with an x86 i5 CPU. Moreover, the average results showed that the GPU provided approximately five times speedup as compared to an ARM quad-core Cortex-A15. We conducted a detailed analysis of the performance of proposed tracking and detection algorithm and obtained meaningful results that could be utilized in real flight.     

On the composition of ISO 25964 hierarchical relations (BTG,BTP, BTI)

Knowledge organization systems (KOS) can use different types of hierarchical relations: broader generic (BTG), broader partitive (BTP), and broader instantial (BTI). The latest ISO standard on thesauri (ISO 25964) has formalized these relations in a corresponding OWL ontology (De Smedt et al., ISO 25964 part 1: thesauri for information retrieval: RDF/OWL vocabulary, extension of SKOS and SKOS-XL. http://purl.org/iso25964/skos-thes, 2013) and expressed them as properties: broaderGeneric, broaderPartitive, and broaderInstantial, respectively. These relations are used in actual thesaurus data. The compositionality of these types of hierarchical relations has not been investigated systematically yet. They all contribute to the general broader (BT) thesaurus relation and its transitive generalization broader transitive defined in the SKOS model for representing KOS. But specialized relationship types cannot be arbitrarily combined to produce new statements that have the same semantic precision, leading to cases where inference of broader transitive relationships may be misleading. We define Extended properties (BTGE, BTPE, BTIE) and analyze which compositions of the original “one-step” properties and the Extended properties are appropriate. This enables providing the new properties with valuable semantics usable, e.g., for fine-grained information retrieval purposes. In addition, we relax some of the constraints assigned to the ISO properties, namely the fact that hierarchical relationships apply to SKOS concepts only. This allows us to apply them to the Getty Art and Architecture Thesaurus (AAT), where they are also used for non-concepts (facets, hierarchy names, guide terms). In this paper, we present extensive examples derived from the recent publication of AAT as linked open data.     

Effect of photoaligning azo dye structure on liquid crystal anchoring energy

A method of controlling anchoring energy of surface interaction of liquid crystal photoaligning substances is considered to enhance the liquid crystal display performances. An important parameter of the dye's molecular structure that determines the ratio of polar and azimuthal anchoring energy is the ability to form dimers. The values of dimerization thermodynamic potentials have been found. The probability of the formation of dye molecules dimers is evaluated. The bonds conjugation transfer via intermolecular hydrogen bond is revealed, and anisotropy of polarizability of the hydrogen bond is evaluated. The effect of dimerization on polar and azimuthal anchoring energy of liquid crystal — azo dye system — is shown.