Preparation of CeO2-ZrO2 mixed oxide with high surface area and high thermal stability

Ceria-zirconia solid particles have been recognized as a key material of the automotive exhaust catalysts since they can release and uptake oxygen owing to the rapid reversible oxidation states of cerium between Ce³⁺ and Ce⁴⁺. Several methods have recently been described to prepare the CeO₂-ZrO₂ solid particles used in the catalysts. In this paper, a new coprecipitation method is used to prepare the CeO₂-ZrO₂ solid particles. The Ce-Zr alcogel is dried and calcined in flowing N₂ not in flowing air under atmospheric pressure. The results show that the ceria-zirconia sample calcined at 650 °C has high surface area over 90 m²g⁻¹, which drops to 40 m²g⁻¹ following treatment at 900°C.     

Recrystallization of phenylbutazone using supercritical fluid antisolvent process

Phenylbutazone was recrystallized from its solutions by using a supercritical fluid antisolvent process. It was dissolved in acetone and supercritical carbon dioxide was injected into the solution, thereby inducing supersaturation and particle formation. Variation in the physical properties of the recrystallized phenylbutazone was investigated as a function of the crystallizing temperature and the carbon dioxide injection rate. The recrystallized particles showed cleaner surfaces and more ordered morphology compared to the particles obtained by other methods such as solvent evaporation. X-ray diffraction patterns indicated that the crystallinity of the particles had been modified upon the recrystallization. Differential scanning calorimetry measurement revealed that the crystallizing temperature influenced the thermal stability of the resulting crystals. Larger crystals were produced when the carbon dioxide injection rate was reduced.     

Collision-Free Interleaver Composed of a Latin Square for Parallel-Architecture Turbo Codes

In parallel-architecture turbo codes, the constituent interleavers must avoid memory collision. This paper proposes a collision-free interleaver structure composed of a Latin square (LS) and pre-designed interleavers. Our proposed interleavers can be easily optimized for various information block sizes and for various degrees of parallelism. Their performances were evaluated by computer simulation.     

Study on the c-axis preferred orientation of ZnO film on various metal electrodes

ZnO thin film was deposited on various metal electrodes by reactive sputtering, and c-axis preferred orientation of the film has been studied. ZnO, which has high piezoelectricity, is promising for oscillators or filter devices such as surface acoustic wave (SAW) device, gas sensor, and film bulk acoustic resonator (FBAR). But, for the application of ZnO film for these devices, the film should be grown with c-axis normal to the electrode. In this study, Pt, Al, and Au were deposited on Si wafer, and the surface roughness and crystal structure of the ZnO film on the electrode were investigated using AFM, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), and X-ray diffraction (XRD). Columnar structures of ZnO films were grown with c-axis normal to all electrodes, and among them Pt electrode showed the highest preferred orientation of ZnO film.     

Preparation of multi-compositional gas sensing films by combinatorial solution deposition

Various compositions of gas sensing films were prepared by the combinatorial deposition of SnO₂, ZnO, and WO₃ sol solutions and their gas sensing behaviors were investigated. The film composition could be manipulated conveniently via the alternate dropping of different oxide sol solutions. From the correlation between film compositions and gas sensitivities, the selective detection of C₂H₅OH and CH₃COCH₃ in the presence of CO, C₃H₈, H₂, and NO₂ could be attained. In addition, the discrimination between C₂H₅OH and CH₃COCH₃, which is a challenging issue due to their similar chemical nature, becomes possible. This research demonstrates the precise design of the sensor-material composition for the selective gas detection via the combinatorial approach.     

Photochemical reduction of molecular weight and number of double bonds in natural rubber film

Natural rubber (NR) can be degraded depending on various factors such as heat, mechanical force, chemical reaction, and light. Light is a very interesting factor because it can cause the NR to degrade under low temperature and pressure. The photo-degradation of NR films was carried out to investigate the effects of the light and the temperature on the reduction of the weight-average molecular weight (Mw) and the double bonds in the NR films. The NR films, with and without catalysts, titanium dioxide (TiO₂), and potassium persulfate (K₂S₂O₈), were exposed to light from a mercury light bulb at 7,000 and 36,000 lux, and at the temperature of 25 °C and 80 °C for 192 hrs. After exposure, the Mw of the NR films was analyzed by gel permeation chromatography (GPC). Changes in the Mw were used to construct a kinetic model for the process, (1/Mw)=(1/Mw₀)+(kt/2M₀) where k is the rate constant, and M₀ is the Mw of the monomer unit. The linear relationship between 1/Mw and time suggested pseudo first-order processes with random scission. The Mw distribution information from the GPC was used to calculate the number of double bonds in the NR films. The trend of the double bonds reduction curves was quite similar to the result obtained from the calculation from the FTIR spectra. This indicated that this calculation method might possibly be another alternative way to obtain the number of double bonds in the NR.     

Self-adjusting the intensity of assortative mating in genetic algorithms

Mate selection plays a crucial role in both natural and artificial systems. While traditional Evolutionary Algorithms (EA) usually engage in random mating strategies, that is, mating chance is independent of genotypic or phenotypic distance between individuals, in natural systems non-random mating is common, which means that somehow this mechanism has been favored during the evolutionary process. In non-random mating, the individuals mate according to their parenthood or likeness. Previous studies indicate that negative assortative mating (AM)—also known as dissortative mating—, which is a specific type of non-random mating, may improve EAs performance by maintaining the genetic diversity of the population at a higher level during the search process. In this paper we present the Variable Dissortative Mating Genetic Algorithm (VDMGA). The algorithm holds a mechanism that varies the GA’s mating restrictions during the run by means of simple rule based on the number of chromosomes created in each generation and indirectly influenced by the genetic diversity of the population. We compare VDMGA not only with traditional Genetic Algorithms (GA) but also with two preceding non-random mating EAs: the CHC algorithm and the negative Assortative Mating Genetic Algorithm (nAMGA). We intend to study the effects of the different methods in the performance of GAs and verify the reliability of the proposed algorithm when facing an heterogeneous set of landscapes. In addition, we include the positive Assortative Mating Genetic Algorithm (pAMGA) in the experiments in order test both negative and positive AM mechanisms, and try to understand if and when negative AM (or DM) speeds up the search process or enables the GAs to escape local optima traps. For these purposes, an extensive set of optimization test problems was chosen to cover a variety of search landscapes with different characteristics. Our results confirm that negative AM is effective in leading EAs out of local optima traps, and show that the proposed VDMGA is at least as efficient as nAMGA when applied to the range of our problems, being more efficient in very hard functions were traditional GAs usually fail to escape local optima. Also, scalability tests have been made that show VDMGA ability to decrease optimal population size, thus reducing the amount of evaluations needed to attain global optima. We like to stress that only two parameters need to be hand-tuned in VDMGA, thus reducing the tuning effort present in traditional GAs and nAMGA.     

Analysis of the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol’s connection management procedures using the sweep-line method

State space explosion is a key problem in the analysis of finite state systems. The sweep-line method is a state exploration method which uses a notion of progress to allow states to be deleted from memory when they are no longer required. This reduces the peak number of states that need to be stored, while still exploring the full state space. The technique shows promise but has never achieved reductions greater than about a factor of 10 in the number of states stored in memory for industrially relevant examples. This paper discusses sweep-line analysis of the connection management procedures of a new Internet standard, the Datagram Congestion Control Protocol (DCCP). As the intuitive approaches to sweep-line analysis are not effective, we introduce new variables to track progress. This creates further state explosion. However, when used with the sweep-line, the peak number of states is reduced by over two orders of magnitude compared with the original. Importantly, this allows DCCP to be analysed for larger parameter values. Somsak Vanit-Anunchai was partially supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0559927) and Suranaree University of Technology. Guy Edward Gallasch was supported by an Australian Research Council Discovery Grant (DP0559927).     

Real-time measurement of pointing action by using DSP

This paper presents an approach of measuring in real-time the vector of finger that is pointing to an object. DSP is used in the operation processing unit in order to do the real-time processing. The steps include the extraction of flesh-colored regions from an image, the labeling of the flesh-colored regions, and the detection of two characteristic positions on the finger so that the direction that the finger is pointing at will be calculated. The entire process takes about 29 msec, which makes it possible to have the frame rate of 34 fps. With this frame rate, this measurement approach is considered real-time and promising to be merged into other application systems. This work was presented in part at the 13th International Symposium on Artificial Life and Robotics, Oita, Japan, January 31–February 2, 2008