Interior structure of a quality control center at the low‐voltage side considering power conditioning by SMES

The authors have proposed FRIENDS—Flexible, Reliable and Intelligent Electrical eNergy Delivery System—as a future electric power distribution system. The most important idea of FRIENDS is to install new facilities called Quality Control Centers (QCCs) between the distribution substation and customers. By controlling QCCs appropriately, various purposes of FRIENDS can be achieved. It is indispensable to design the concrete interior structure of QCC in order to realize FRIENDS. This paper proposes the interior structure and control methods of QCC from the viewpoint of power conditioning functions by energy storage system in QCC. In this paper, it is assumed that SMES is used as the energy storage system in QCC. The proposed interior structure is based on the concept of UPS (Uninterruptable Power Supply). In this paper, SMES is installed in the DC side of UPS. Further, this paper proposes control methods of SMES and PWM converters. The proposed control methods are used to satisfy various purposes, such as load fluctuation compensation, load leveling, and cooperation with dispersed‐type generator. Finally, the validity of these control methods is confirmed through transient analysis PSCAD/EMTDC. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 143(3): 20–28, 2003; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10056     

Validation of temporal BRDFs of paddy fields estimated from MODIS reflectance data

The effect of the bidirectional reflectance distribution function (BRDF) is one of the most important factors in correcting and validating the reflectance obtained from remotely sensed data. While the importance of BRDF has become widely recognized, bidirectional reflectance factor (BRF) data measured for correction and validation are insufficient because of the technical difficulty of the measurement. The primary objective of the present research is to estimate BRDF effects from Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data. Temporal ground-based BRDFs of rice paddy fields were estimated from ground measurements conducted in June and August 2002. MODIS-derived BRDFs obtained from MODIS reflectance data and ground-based BRDFs were estimated using the reciprocal form of the RossThick and LiSparse (RossThick-LiSparse-R) kernels, a semiempirical BRDF model adopted for the operational MODIS BRDF product. The MODIS-derived band 1 (620-680 nm) and band 2 (841-876 nm) BRDFs were compared with the ground-based BRDFs corresponding to the same waveband, respectively. The comparison results demonstrate that BRDFs of paddy fields change in accordance with paddy growth and that MODIS-derived BRDFs are closely related to ground-based BRDFs in most of the cases. It was also revealed that MODIS-derived BRDFs can be estimated to a high degree of accuracy when MODIS data necessary for the estimation are available.     

Interstitial pneumonia treated with intermittent cyclophosphamide pulse therapy

A 52-year-old woman was admitted to the hospital because of polyarthralgia and dry coughing. A chest X-ray film showed bilateral diffuse reticulo-nodular shadows. A specimen obtained by transbronchial lung biopsy revealed alveolar septal thickening and infiltration by mononuclear cells. Interstitial pneumonia associated with rheumatoid arthritis was diagnosed. Interstitial pneumonia relapsed soon after the first pulse of corticosteroid therapy. Cyclophosphamide pulse therapy was given in addition to a second pulse of corticosteroid therapy; 700 mg of cyclophosphamide (500 mg/m2) was administered intravenously every month and the dose of steroids was gradually reduced. Cyclophosphamide pulse therapy was repeated three times and the dose of oral corticosteroids was reduced from 60 mg to 35 mg. There was no bone marrow suppression or hemorrhagic cystitis after the cyclophosphamide pulses. Eventually, corticosteroid therapy was stopped with no clinical deterioration. This case suggests that intermittent cyclophosphamide pulse therapy can be effective for treatment of interstitial pneumonia unresponsive to corticosteroids.     

Supermicroporous Niobium Oxide as an Acid Catalyst

Supermicroporous (1.5–2.5 nm pore diameter) niobium oxide is synthesized using a nonionic block copolymer as a structural directing reagent, which is removed by water washing after aging. The oxide contains water in the bulk material in the form of a water-rich niobium oxide. The supermicroporous niobium oxide is applicable for various acid-catalyzed reactions.     

Novel Conjugated Organic Dyes for Efficient Dye‐Sensitized Solar Cells

Novel conjugated organic dyes that have N,N‐dimethylaniline (DMA) moieties as the electron donor and a cyanoacetic acid (CAA) moiety as the electron acceptor were developed for use in dye‐sensitized nanocrystalline‐TiO₂ solar cells (DSSCs). We attained a maximum solar‐energy‐to‐electricity conversion efficiency (η) of 6.8 % under AM 1.5 irradiation (100 mW cm^–2) with a DSSC based on 2‐cyano‐7,7‐bis(4‐dimethylamino‐phenyl)hepta‐2,4,6‐trienoic acid (NKX‐2569): short‐circuit photocurrent density (J_sc) = 12.9 mA cm^–2, open‐circuit voltage (V_oc) = 0.71 V, and fill factor (ff) = 0.74. The high performance of the solar cells indicated that highly efficient electron injection from the excited dyes to the conduction band of TiO₂ occurred. The experimental and calculated Fourier‐transform infrared (FT‐IR) absorption spectra clearly showed that these dyes were adsorbed on the TiO₂ surface with the carboxylate coordination form. A molecular‐orbital calculation indicated that the electron distribution moved from the DMA moiety to the CAA moiety by photoexcitation of the dye.     

A novel FSK demodulation method using short-time DFT analysis forLEO satellite communication systems

This paper proposes a novel frequency-shift keying (FSK) demodulation method using short-time discrete Fourier transform (ST-DFT) analysis for low-Earth-orbit (LEO) satellite communication systems. The ST-DFT-based FSK demodulation method is simple and robust to a large and time-variant frequency offset because it expands the received signal in a time-frequency plane and demodulates it only by searching the instantaneous spectral peaks with no complicated carrier-recovery circuit. Two kinds of demodulation strategies are proposed: a bit-by-bit demodulation algorithm and an efficient demodulation-algorithm frequency-sequence estimation (FSE) based on the Viterbi algorithm. In addition, in order to carry out an accurate ST-DFT window synchronization, a simple DFT-based ST-DFT window-synchronization method is proposed     

Size dependence of crystallization within spherical microdomain structures

We have investigated the size dependence of crystallization within spherical microdomains formed in various poly(ε-caprolactone)-block-polybutadiene diblock copolymers (PCL-b-PB). The crystallinity (χ) and melting temperature (T_m) of the PCL block are considerably lower than those of PCL homopolymer, and χ decreases steadily and T_m decreases only slightly with decreasing radius of PCL spheres (R) for a series of PCL-b-PB with a same molecular weight (M_n). When PCL-b-PB is compared with the similar R but different M_n, χ is significantly different, suggesting that the sphere size is not the unique factor to control crystallization within spherical microdomains.     

High-power, tunable, high-repetition rate TEA-13C18O2 laser

The authors report the power enhancement of a high-repetition-rate TEA-¹³C¹⁸O₂ laser by substitution of rare ¹⁵N₂ isotope instead of ¹⁴N₂ and its tunable single-mode operation. Efficient, high-power operation with a maximum average power of 25 W (100 Hz) at a slope efficiency of 5.6%, which is improved by a factor of 2 by substitution of ¹⁵N₂ instead of ¹⁴N₂, has been successfully achieved from a discharge volume of 57.5 cm³ with an active length of 26 cm. In addition, high-power, tunable, single-mode operation has been achieved with a three-mirror cavity consisting of two mirrors and a Littrow grating