Cell Adhesion and in Vivo Osseointegration of Sandblasted/Acid Etched/Anodized Dental Implants

The authors describe a new type of titanium (Ti) implant as a Modi-anodized (ANO) Ti implant, the surface of which was treated by sandblasting, acid etching (SLA), and anodized techniques. The aim of the present study was to evaluate the adhesion of MG-63 cells to Modi-ANO surface treated Ti in vitro and to investigate its osseointegration characteristics in vivo. Four different types of Ti implants were examined, that is, machined Ti (control), SLA, anodized, and Modi-ANO Ti. In the cell adhesion study, Modi-ANO Ti showed higher initial MG-63 cell adhesion and induced greater filopodia growth than other groups. In vivo study in a beagle model revealed the bone-to-implant contact (BIC) of Modi-ANO Ti (74.20% ± 10.89%) was much greater than those of machined (33.58% ± 8.63%), SLA (58.47% ± 12.89), or ANO Ti (59.62% ± 18.30%). In conclusion, this study demonstrates that Modi-ANO Ti implants produced by sandblasting, acid etching, and anodizing improve cell adhesion and bone ongrowth as compared with machined, SLA, or ANO Ti implants. These findings suggest that the application of Modi-ANO surface treatment could improve the osseointegration of dental implant.     

Fabrication of a Flat Tubular Segmented‐in‐series Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Using Decalcomania Paper

A flat tubular segmented‐in‐series (SIS) solid oxide fuel cell (SOFC) was fabricated using decalcomania paper. The performance of a two‐cell stack with 4.5‐mm‐wide electrodes was investigated in a temperature range of 650–800 °C. The decalcomania paper allowed fabrication of the SIS‐SOFC on all sides of the flat tubular support and achieve an effective electrode area larger than that obtained using typical SOFC fabrication techniques such as screen printing or slurry coating. SEM observations revealed that each component layer was flat, uniformly thick, and well adherent to adjacent layers. Measured values of open circuit voltages were very close to the theoretical values; confirming that the processing technique utilizing decalcomania paper is suitable for SIS‐SOFC fabrication. The power densities of the two‐cell‐stack were 437.4, 375.6, 324.6, and 257.1 mW cm⁻² at 800, 750, 700 and 650 °C, respectively.     

Comparative Study of Visual and Instrumental Analyses of Shade Selection

The difference between visual and instrumental analyses of a shade selection on natural teeth was investigated. With visual analysis, five prosthodontist examined the middle third of the unrestored maxillary right central incisor of a patient using VITAPEN classical and Vita Toothguide 3D-MASTER tooth shade guide. In instrumental analysis, one prosthodontist examined the same teeth using a spectrophotometer (ShadepilotTM, Degudent, Hanau-Wolfgang, Germany, software 2.40). Overall, instrumental analysis is...     

Evaluation of grounding performance of energized substation by ground current measurement

Substation grounding systems typically build up a large network of various grounding electrodes, which consists of a substation grounding grid, multi-grounded transmission line skywires and distribution line neutral wires. Although the fall-of-potential (FOP) method has been widely used for ground resistance measurement, it is difficult to use the method in case of such a substation grounding system because of the difficulty of interpretation of the measured FOP profile. In this paper, we have presented a practical example of ground resistance measurement in a 154 kV substation under commercial operating condition. Conventional FOP tests and the measurement of ground current splits to each part of the grounding system were conducted simultaneously. A simple interpretation method of FOP profiles, with the measured ground current splits, has been suggested.     

Correlation of Microstructure and Cracking Phenomenon Occurring during Hot Rolling of Lightweight Steel Plates

An investigation was conducted into the correlation of microstructure and the cracking phenomenon that often occurred in hot-rolled lightweight steel plates. Two kinds of steels were fabricated with varying Mn and Al contents, and their microstructures, tensile properties, and high-temperature transformation behavior were investigated. In the two steels, banded structures containing ferrite grains and κ-carbides were well developed along the rolling direction. Detailed microstructural analyses showed that cracks initiated at film-type κ-carbides continuously formed interfaces between bands, while the band populated with κ-carbides did not play an important role in initiating cracks. Thus, the formation of band structures and film-type interfacial κ-carbides must be minimized to prevent the cracking. The decreased content of hardenability elements, including aluminum, higher finish-rolling temperature, reduced central segregation during the slabmaking process, and decreased material variation during hot rolling, were suggested as practical methods for preventing the cracking.     

Micro-capacitors based on electrochemically grown vertical arrays of gold nanowires as electrodes

This paper describes the development of micro-capacitors with electrodes based on electrochemically grown vertical gold nanowire arrays. A high aspect-ratio anodized aluminum oxide template integrated on silicon dioxide/silicon substrates was exploited for fabricating a vertical array of nanowires with a high surface to volume ratio. Bismuth ferric oxide thin films were deposited to create high dielectric material between the electrodes using room temperature electrodeposition. This nanofabrication process may be compatible with a complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) process, therefore, this capacitor can be used for protecting and regulating the surge voltage biased to the CMOS circuits. This capacitor achieved a high density capacitance of 3.1 μF/m² at 1 MHz, which was measured using a parallel plate set-up.     

Direct Physical Imaging and Chemical Probing of LiFePO4 for Lithium‐Ion Batteries

The control of unexpectedly rapid Li intercalation reactions without structural instability in olivine‐type LiFePO₄ nanocrystals is one of the notable scientific advances and new findings attained in materials physics and chemistry during the past decade. A variety of scientific studies and technological investigations have been carried out with LiFePO₄ to elucidate the origins of many peculiar physical aspects as well as to develop more effective synthetic processing techniques for better electrochemical performances. Among the several features of LiFePO₄ that have attracted much interest, in this article we address four important issues—regarding doping of aliovalent cations, distribution of Fe‐rich secondary metallic phases, nanoparticle formation during crystallization, and antisite Li/Fe partitioning—by means of straightforward atomic‐scale imaging and chemical probing. The direct observations in the present study provide significant insight into alternative efficient approaches to obtain conductive LiFePO₄ nanocrystals with controlled defect structures.     

In-vivo human brain molecular imaging with a brain-dedicated PET/MRI system

Advances in the new-generation of ultra-high-resolution, brain-dedicated positron emission tomography-magnetic resonance imaging (PET/MRI) systems have begun to provide many interesting insights into the molecular dynamics of the brain. First, the finely delineated structural information from ultra-high-field MRI can help us to identify accurate landmark structures, thereby making it easier to locate PET activation sites that are anatomically well-correlated with metabolic or ligand-specific organs in the neural structures in the brain. This synergistic potential of PET/MRI imaging is discussed in terms of neuroscience and neurological research from both translational and basic research perspectives. Experimental results from the hippocampus, thalamus, and brainstem obtained with ¹⁸F-fluorodeoxyglucose and ¹¹C-3-amino-4-(2-dimethylaminomethylphenylsulfanyl)benzonitrile are used to demonstrate the potential of this new brain PET/MRI system.     

Double antireflection coating layer with silicon nitride and silicon oxide for crystalline silicon solar cell

Anti-reflection coating (ARC) film effectively reduces the reflection of sunlight on the silicon wafer surface and then increases substantially the solar cell conversion efficiency. In this work, we carried out experiments to lessen the reflectance and thus improve the conversion efficiency with double AR coating layer with silicon nitride and silicon oxide by plasma enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) for the silicon solar cells. The optimized thicknesses and refractive indices of each ARC layer were calculated with Essential Macleod program and the theoretical method. The single antireflection layer of silicon nitride was applied with 800 Å thickness and its cell showed the conversion efficiency as 17.45 %. For the double layer AR coating (DLARC), silicon nitride layer was deposited first using SiH₄ and NH₃, and then, silicon oxide was deposited with SiH₄ and N₂O. The thicknesses of SiN_x and SiO₂ were 800 Å and 1400 Å for DLARC-1 and 500 Å and 1000 Å for DLARC-2, respectively. As a result, the reflectance of DLARCs was lower than single SiN_x and then yielded increase of short-circuit current and conversion efficiency. The completed solar cell with DLARCs showed conversion efficiencies of 17.57 % for DLARC-1 and 17.76 % for DLARC-2. This indicates that the double AR coating layer is effective to obtain the high efficiency solar cell with PECVD.     

Enhanced soft subspace clustering integrating within-cluster and between-cluster information

While within-cluster information is commonly utilized in most soft subspace clustering approaches in order to develop the algorithms, other important information such as between-cluster information is seldom considered for soft subspace clustering. In this study, a novel clustering technique called enhanced soft subspace clustering (ESSC) is proposed by employing both within-cluster and between-class information. First, a new optimization objective function is developed by integrating the within-class compactness and the between-cluster separation in the subspace. Based on this objective function, the corresponding update rules for clustering are then derived, followed by the development of the novel ESSC algorithm. The properties of this algorithm are investigated and the performance is evaluated experimentally using real and synthetic datasets, including synthetic high dimensional datasets, UCI benchmarking datasets, high dimensional cancer gene expression datasets and texture image datasets. The experimental studies demonstrate that the accuracy of the proposed ESSC algorithm outperforms most existing state-of-the-art soft subspace clustering algorithms.