Untersuchung der Verteilung und Intensität filamentierter Barrierenplasmen für die Behandlung von Oberflächen

The application of barrier discharges at atmospheric pressure in air expands on the market of plasma technology, because it is an ecological and cost‐effective alternative to other processes of surface treatment. These plasmas usually consist of a multitude of spatially and temporally localized filaments, whose distribution should be as even as possible for homogeneous treatment. This holds especially for the plasma treatment of sensitive goods such as wool or other textiles. In equipment for continuous pass of material the barrier arrangements often consist of a system cylinder – cylinder or cylinder – plane, whereby the gap width changes locally. Space distribution and intensity of filaments has been investigated by means of short‐time photography and spatially resolved measurement of current distribution and energy distribution derived from it. The local dependency found can be explained by means of a capacitive equivalent circuit.     

Results from the ORPHEUS dark matter detector

The ORPHEUS dark matter detector consists of 450 g superconducting tin granules with diameters of 28 and 36 μm. The detector has been operating in the shallow site of the underground laboratory in Bern (70 m.w.e). First preliminary results on WIMP detection sensitivity will be presented.     

Effect of Strain Rate on Discontinuous Flow and Mechanical Characteristics of High-Nitrogenous Steel

Experimental study on the effect of strain rate on discontinuous flow and mechanical characteristics of the high-nitrogenous steel Kh23AG19F has been performed. Within the range of strain rates from 4.62 · 10^-5 to 1.85 · 10 ^-4 s^-1, discontinuous flow, reflected by serration on the tensile diagram, is chiefly determined by intergranular deformation mechanisms. Under strain rates over 1.85 · 10^-2 s^-1, combined deformation modes prevail, which cause a change in the character of discontinuous flow and transform a serrated tensile diagram into a wavy graph, with the yield stress of steel increased significantly.     

Effect of film thickness on hydrogen content in a-Si : H

The hydrogen content, its depth distribution, and its bonding configuration have been studied in hydrogenated amorphous silicon prepared by plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition with hydrogen-diluted silane. Nuclear reaction analysis and infrared spectroscopy were used to determine the total amount of hydrogen and its bonded component, respectively. It has been established that the total concentration of hydrogen does not depend on the film thickness, and has a uniform depth profile. The concentration of bonded hydrogen changes with the film thickness within the measurement accuracy. The data obtained suggest the presence of molecular (non-bonded) hydrogen, uniformly distributed in concentration across the film thickness.     

RLS-based initialization for per-tone equalizers in DMT receivers

Per-tone equalization has recently been proposed as an alternative receiver structure for discrete multitone-based systems improving upon the well-known structure based on time-domain equalization. Fast initialization of all the equalizer coefficients has been identified as an open problem. In this letter, a recursive initialization scheme based on recursive least squares with inverse updating is presented for the per-tone equalizers. Simulation results show convergence with an acceptably small number of training symbols. Complexity calculations are made for per-tone equalization and for the case where tones are grouped. It is demonstrated with an example that in the latter case, initialization complexity becomes sufficiently low and comparable to complexity during data transmission.     

Unified Systolic-Like Architecture for DCT and DST Using Distributed Arithmetic

A common computing-core representation of the discrete cosine transform and discrete sine transform is derived and a reduced-complexity algorithm is developed for computation of the proposed computing-core. A parallel architecture based on the principle of distributed arithmetic is designed further for the computation of these transforms using the common-core algorithm. The proposed scheme not only leads to a systolic-like regular and modular hardware for computing these transforms, but also offers significant improvement in area-time efficiency over the existing structures. The structure proposed here is devoid of complicated input/output mapping and does not involve any complex control. Unlike the convolution-based structures, it does not restrict the transform length to be a prime or multiple of prime and can be utilized as a reusable core for cost-effective, memory-efficient, high-throughput implementation of either of these transforms     

An optically clocked transistor array with dual serial-to-parallel and parallel-to-serial conversion capability for optical label swapping

We propose an optically clocked transistor array optoelectronic integrated circuit (OEIC) for both serial-to-parallel and parallel-to-serial conversion (demux/mux), enabling an interface between high-speed asynchronous burst optical labels and CMOS circuitry for optical label swapping. Dual functionality of the OEIC reduces size, power, and cost of the optical label swapper. The capability for greater than 20-Gb/s conversion operation is demonstrated.     

A possibilistic clustering approach to novel fault detection and isolation

In this paper, a new approach for fault detection and isolation that is based on the possibilistic clustering algorithm is proposed. Fault detection and isolation (FDI) is shown here to be a pattern classification problem, which can be solved using clustering and classification techniques. A possibilistic clustering based approach is proposed here to address some of the shortcomings of the fuzzy c-means (FCM) algorithm. The probabilistic constraint imposed on the membership value in the FCM algorithm is relaxed in the possibilistic clustering algorithm. Because of this relaxation, the possibilistic approach is shown in this paper to give more consistent results in the context of the FDI tasks. The possibilistic clustering approach has also been used to detect novel fault scenarios, for which the data was not available while training. Fault signatures that change as a function of the fault intensities are represented as fault lines, which have been shown to be useful to classify faults that can manifest with different intensities. The proposed approach has been validated here through simulations involving a benchmark quadruple tank process and also through experimental case studies on the same setup. For large scale systems, it is proposed to use the possibilistic clustering based approach in the lower dimensional approximations generated by algorithms such as PCA. Towards this end, finally, we also demonstrate the key merits of the algorithm for plant wide monitoring study using a simulation of the benchmark Tennessee Eastman problem.     

Occurrence and characterisation of the hydrogen-evolving enzyme in Frankia sp.

An increase in hydrogen evolution from the hydrogen-evolving enzyme in the actinomycete Frankia was recorded in the presence of nickel. Immunogold localisation analysis of the intracellular distribution of hydrogenase proteins indicated that they were evenly distributed in the membranes and cytosol of both hyphae and vesicles. In addition, molecular characterisation of the hydrogen-evolving enzyme at the proteomic level, using two-dimensional gel electrophoresis combined with mass spectrometry, confirmed that the Frankia hydrogen-evolving enzyme is similar to the cyanobacterial bidirectional hydrogenase of Anabena siamensis.     

COMBINED EFFECTS OF ENZYME DOSAGE AND REACTION TIME ON PAPAYA JUICE EXTRACTION WITH THE AID OF PECTIC ENZYMES – A PRELIMINARY REPORT

Pectic enzymes are widely used in the food industry for fruit juice extraction as well as in the clarification of cloudy juices. Our laboratory has been using pectic enzymes produced from a strain of Saccharomyces cerevisiae (ATCC 52712) in different applications including fruit juice extraction. The enzyme was produced in the laboratory by culturing the yeast in papaya juice supplemented with 1% pectin for 6 days. Known amounts of enzyme preparation (0–40 mg protein) were added to a measured weight of papaya mash for varying reaction periods (30–90 min) and the amount of free‐run juice obtained in each treatment compared with a control sample. Treatment of 200 g of papaya mash with different dosages of the pectic enzyme extract resulted in rapid increases in flow rate of free‐run juice. Mash treated with 32 mg of total protein extract with a 30‐min reaction time was the optimum for a maximum rate of juice flow (25 mL/min) when initial rates were measured. There was no significant difference (P > 0.05) between the red‐ and yellow‐fleshed varieties of the papaya used. When juice flow was monitored over 6 min, the treated samples gave a flow rate that was more than twice those of the untreated samples. This biotechnological approach could be adopted to enhance papaya‐juice production by local fruit juice processors when parameters for scale‐up processes are established.