Plan for first phase of safety demonstration tests of the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR)

Safety demonstration tests using the High Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) will be conducted for the purpose of demonstrating inherent safety features of High Temperature Gas-cooled Reactors (HTGRs) as well as providing the core and plant transient data for validation of HTGR safety analysis codes. The first phase safety demonstration test items include the reactivity insertion test and the coolant flow reduction test. In the reactivity insertion test, which is the control rod withdrawal test, one pair out of 16 pairs of control rods is withdrawn, simulating a reactivity insertion event. The coolant flow reduction test consists of the partial loss of coolant flow test and the gas circulators trip test. In the partial loss of coolant flow test, primary coolant flow rate is slightly reduced by control system. In the gas circulators trip test one and two out of three gas circulators are run down, simulating coolant flow reduction events. The gas circulators trip tests, in which position of control rods are kept unchanged, are simulation tests of anticipated transients without scram (ATWS).     

A fast and compact elimination method of empty elements from a double‐array structure

A double‐array is a well‐known data structure to implement the trie. However, the space efficiency of the double‐array degrades with the number of key deletions because the double‐array keeps empty elements produced by the key deletion. This paper presents a fast and compact elimination method of empty elements using properties of the trie nodes that have no siblings. The present elimination method is implemented by C language. From simulation results for large sets of keys, the present elimination method is about 30–330 times faster than the conventional elimination method and maintains high space efficiency. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Appearance-based virtual view generation from multicamera videos captured in the 3-D room

We present an appearance-based virtual view generation method that allows viewers to fly through a real dynamic scene. The scene is captured by multiple synchronized cameras. Arbitrary views are generated by interpolating two original camera-views near the given viewpoint. The quality of the generated synthetic view is determined by the precision, consistency and density of correspondences between the two images. All or most of previous work that uses interpolation extracts the correspondences from these two images. However, not only is it difficult to do so reliably (the task requires a good stereo algorithm), but also the two images alone sometimes do not have enough information, due to problems such as occlusion. Instead, we take advantage of the fact that we have many views, from which we can extract much more reliable and comprehensive 3D geometry of the scene as a 3D model. Dense and precise correspondences between the two images, to be used for interpolation, are obtained using this constructed 3D model.     

Investigations on welding residual stresses in penetration nozzles by means of 3D thermal elastic plastic FEM and experiment

Recent discoveries of stress corrosion cracking (SCC) in weldments including penetration nozzles at pressurized water reactors (PWRs) and boiling water reactors (BWRs) have raised concerns about safety and integrity of plant components. It is well known that welding residual stress is an important factor resulting in SCC in weldments. In the present work, both experimental method and numerical simulation technology are used to investigate the characteristics of welding residual stress distribution in penetration nozzles welded by multi-pass J-groove joint. An experimental mock-up is fabricated to measure welding residual stress at first. In the experiment, each weld pass is performed using a semi-circle balanced welding procedure. Then, a corresponding finite element models with considering moving heat source, deposition sequence, inter-pass temperature, temperature-dependent thermal and mechanical properties, strain hardening and annealing effect is developed to simulate welding temperature and residual stress fields. The simulation results predicted by the 3D model are generally in good agreement with the measurements. Meanwhile, to clarify the influence of deposition sequence on the welding residual stress, the welding residual stress field in the same geometrical model induced by a continuous welding procedure is also calculated. Finally, the influence of a joint oblique angle on welding residual stress is investigated numerically. The numerical results suggest that both deposition sequence and oblique angles have effect on welding residual stress distribution.     

Damage evolution behavior of CFRP laminates under post-impact fatigue with water absorption environment

In this study, the damage evolution behavior was evaluated considering the effect of the textile structure and water absorption. Damage observation was conducted by the integration of non-destructive and direct observation methods. Candidate textile reinforcements were T300-3k plain woven fabric (PW) and T700S-12k multi-axial knitted fabric (MA). The effect of water absorption on the performances of compression after impact (CAI) and PIF were small in PW CFRP laminates. Conversely, PIF properties of water-absorbed MA CFRP laminates drastically decreased than that of dry ones. CAI strength was not affected by water absorption. PIF performance of dry MA CFRP was fairly higher than that of the others. From the precise observation, some evidences of interfacial deterioration caused by water absorption were confirmed in both PW and MA CFRP laminates.     

Fabrication of heterostructures of halogen-bridged quasi-one-dimensional mixed-valence transition metal complexes

Single-heterostructure crystals of a series of halogen-bridged quasi-one- dimensional mixed-valence transition metal complexes (HMMCs) were fabricated by selective coordination epitaxial growth (SCE growth). The overgrowth crystals of the HMMC were grown on the columnar crystals of the substrate HMMC in solution. The single-heterostructure crystals were epitaxially grown only when the two HMMCs had similar crystal structures. If their crystal structures were different, no heterostructure crystal was grown. This result suggests that the degree of mismatch between the crystal structures of the substrate and the overgrowth is the predominant factor which determines the SCE growth of the HMMCs.     

Production of Lacto-N-biose I Using Crude Extracts of Bifidobacterial Cells

Lacto-N-biose I (LNB) is supposed to represent the bifidus factor in human milk oligosaccharides, and can be practically produced from sucrose and GlcNAc using four bifidobacterial enzymes, 1,3-β-galactosyl-N-acetylhexosamine phosphorylase, sucrose phosphorylase, UDP-glucose-hexose 1-phosphate uridylyltransferase, and UDP-glucose 4-epimerase, recombinantly produced by Escherichia coli. Here the production of LNB by the same enzymatic method without using genetically modified enzymes to consider the use of LNB for a food ingredient was reported. All four enzymes were produced as the intracellular enzymes of Bifidobacterium strains. The mixture of the crude extracts contained all four enzymes, with other enzymes interfering with the LNB production, namely, phosphoglucomutase, fructose 6-phosphate phosphoketolase, and glycogen phosphorylase. The first two interfering enzymes were selectively inactivated by heat treatment at 47 °C for 1 h in the presence of pancreatin, and glycogen phosphorylase was disabled by hydrolyzing its possible acceptor molecules using glucoamylase. Finally, 91 % of GlcNAc was converted into LNB in the 100-mL reaction mixture containing 300 mM GlcNAc.     

An Antisense Oligonucleotide against a Splicing Enhancer Sequence within Exon 1 of the MSTN Gene Inhibits Pre-mRNA Maturation to Act as a Novel Myostatin Inhibitor

Antisense oligonucleotides (ASOs) are agents that modulate gene function. ASO-mediated out-of-frame exon skipping has been employed to suppress gene function. Myostatin, encoded by the MSTN gene, is a potent negative regulator of skeletal muscle growth. ASOs that induce skipping of out-of-frame exon 2 of the MSTN gene have been studied for their use in increasing muscle mass. However, no ASOs are currently available for clinical use. We hypothesized that ASOs against the splicing enhancer sequence within exon 1 of the MSTN gene would inhibit maturation of pre-mRNA, thereby suppressing gene function. To explore this hypothesis, ASOs against sequences of exon 1 of the MSTN gene were screened for their ability to reduce mature MSTN mRNA levels. One screened ASO, named KMM001, decreased MSTN mRNA levels in a dose-dependent manner and reciprocally increased MSTN pre-mRNA levels. Accordingly, KMM001 decreased myostatin protein levels. KMM001 inhibited SMAD-mediated myostatin signaling in rhabdomyosarcoma cells. Remarkably, it did not decrease GDF11 mRNA levels, indicating myostatin-specific inhibition. As expected, KMM001 enhanced the proliferation of human myoblasts. We conclude that KMM001 is a novel myostatin inhibitor that inhibits pre-mRNA maturation. KMM001 has great promise for clinical applications and should be examined for its ability to treat various muscle-wasting conditions.     

Return Link Systems for Wireless Mobile Camera Using 42 GHz-Band with Frequency and Space Diversity Techniques

In this paper, return link systems for wireless mobile camera using 42 GHz-band in multipath fading environments are proposed. The return link systems for wireless mobile camera require wireless transmission with high reliability as same as the conventional wired camera systems. The proposed return link systems achieve transmission with high reliability by taking into consideration frequency and space diversity techniques. The proposed systems can be classified as 3 three types of return link systems according to diversity techniques： FD （frequency diversity） systems, SD （space diversity） systems and FD＋SD system （frequency and space diversity）. Computer simulations are carried out in order to confirm the effectiveness of the proposed return link systems. It is confirmed that the proposed three types of return link systems have an advantage about BER performances and effectively exploit frequency and space resources.     

Locomotion Control of MEMS Microrobot Using Pulse‐Type Hardware Neural Networks

This paper presents the locomotion control of a microelectromechanical system (MEMS) microrobot. The MEMS microrobot demonstrates locomotion control by pulse‐type hardware neural networks (P‐HNN). P‐HNN generate oscillatory patterns of electrical activity like those of living organisms. The basic component of P‐HNN is a pulse‐type hardware neuron model (P‐HNM). The P‐HNM has the same basic features as biological neurons, such as the threshold, the refractory period, and spatiotemporal summation characteristics, and allows the generation of continuous action potentials. P‐HNN has been constructed with MOSFETs and can be integrated by CMOS technology. Like living organisms, P‐HNN has realized robot control without using software programs or A/D converters. The size of the microrobot fabricated by MEMS technology was 4 × 4 × 3.5 mm. The frame of the robot was made of a silicon wafer, equipped with rotary actuators, link mechanisms, and six legs. The MEMS microrobot emulated the locomotion method and the neural networks of an insect by rotary actuators, link mechanisms, and the P‐HNN. We show that the P‐HNN can control the forward and backward locomotion of the fabricated MEMS microrobot, and that it is possible to switch its direction by inputting an external trigger pulse. The locomotion speed was 19.5 mm/min and the step size was 1.3 mm. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 186(3): 43–50, 2014; Published online in Wiley Online Library ( wileyonlinelibrary.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.22473