Holographic zone plates for f x theta and collimating lenses

A holographic zone plate generated by subtracting the spherical wave phase is proposed, that is, a hologram generated by using two divergent or convergent spherical waves. This holographic zone plate can correct the increase in focal power in a radial direction in contrast with the interferometric zone plate. Use of this holographic zone plate for f x O and collimating lenses is analyzed. For an f x O lens, it is shown that an optimum combination of recording spherical waves exists that satisfies both scan linearity and image field flatness. For a collimating lens for a laser diode, it is shown that aberration can be corrected for different playback wavelengths from that used during recording.     

Example‐Driven Procedural Urban Roads

Synthesizing and exploring large‐scale realistic urban road networks is beneficial to 3D content creation, traffic animation and urban planning. In this paper, we present an interactive tool that allows untrained users to design roads with complex realistic details and styles. Roads are generated by growing a geometric graph. During a sketching phase, the user specifies the target area and the examples. During a growing phase, two types of growth are effectively applied to generate roads in the target area; example‐based growth uses patches extracted from the source example to generate roads that preserve some interesting structures in the example road networks; procedural‐based growth uses the statistical information of the source example while effectively adapting the roads to the underlying terrain and the already generated roads. User‐specified warping, blending and interpolation operations are used at will to produce new road network designs that are inspired by the examples. Finally, our method computes city blocks, individual parcels and plausible building and tree geometries. We have used our approach to create road networks covering up to 200 and containing over 3500 km of roads.     

Pretreatment with fine bubbles for effective zinc ion precipitation and removal from zinc electroplating wastewater

Heavy metals such as zinc are widely used in plating plants for the processing of material surfaces; therefore, an adequate wastewater treatment is required afterwards to comply with wastewater regulations. However, the presence of chemicals such as degreasing agents in the wastewater generated from the plating process inhibits the formation of hydroxides, thereby making treatment of wastewater and compliance with the stipulated regulations difficult. Herein, the effects of fine bubbles on oil cleaning and wastewater treatment were investigated for developing an alternative cleaning technology to degreasing agents. The concentration of fine bubbles significantly affected the oil cleaning. The fine bubbles demonstrated remarkable cleaning of highly viscous oil, which was difficult to remove using pure water. The high cleaning effect of fine bubbles on oil was achieved because of the hydrophobic interaction of the bubbles. Furthermore, a decrease in cleaning effect was observed for samples with uneven shapes, which was attributed to the difficulty in penetration of fine bubbles in materials with irregularities. Furthermore, fine bubble cleaning exhibited better efficiency for wastewater treatment than degreaser cleaning. Therefore, fine bubble cleaning is speculated to be an excellent cleaning technology with high oil cleaning effectiveness and improved wastewater treatability.     

Flow induced acoustic resonance in in-line tube banks

In the present paper the attention is focused on the relation between vortex shedding phenomena andacoustic resonance which occurred in the two-dimensional model of boiler.There were tube bankswith in-line arrangement for small tube pitch ratio.We measured the sound pressure level,the phasedelay of acoustic pressures,the spectrum of velocity fluctuation and the gap velocity.As a result, wefound two peak frequencies of sound pressure level with different Strouhal numbers S_t,mainly about0.26 and 0.52.The noise of S_t=0.26 was the resonance of transverse mode and S_t=0.52 waslongitudinal mode.The vortex shedding of S_t=0.15 was generated inside the tube banks withoutacoustic resonance. As gap velocity increased, we observed that the peak level of spectrum was weakand broad-banded. The onset velocity of the acoustic resonance of longitudinal mode was lower thanthat of transverse mode.     

Lysosomal pH-inducible supramolecular dissociation of polyrotaxanes possessing acid-labile N-triphenylmethyl end groups and their therapeutic potential for Niemann-Pick type C disease

Niemann-Pick type C (NPC) disease is characterized by the accumulation of cholesterol in lysosomes. We have previously reported that biocleavable polyrotaxanes (PRXs) composed of β-cyclodextrins (β-CDs) threaded onto a linear polymer capped with bulky stopper molecules via intracellularly cleavable linkers show remarkable cholesterol reducing effects in NPC disease patient-derived fibroblasts owing to the stimuli-responsive intracellular dissociation of PRXs and subsequent β-CD release from the PRXs. Herein, we describe a series of novel acid-labile 2-(2-hydroxyethoxy)ethyl group-modified PRXs (HEE-PRXs) bearing terminal N-triphenylmethyl (N-Trt) groups as a cleavable component for the treatment of NPC disease. The N-Trt end groups of the HEE-PRXs underwent acidic pH-induced cleavage and led to the dissociation of their supramolecular structure. A kinetic study revealed that the number of HEE groups on the PRX did not affect the cleavage kinetics of the N-Trt end groups of the HEE-PRXs. The effect of the number of HEE groups of the HEE-PRXs, which was modified to impart water solubility to the PRXs, on cellular internalization efficiency, lysosomal localization efficiency, and cholesterol reduction ability in NPC disease-derived fibroblasts (NPC1 fibroblasts) was also investigated. The cellular uptake and lysosomal localization efficiency were almost equivalent for HEE-PRXs with different numbers of HEE groups. However, the cholesterol reducing ability of the HEE-PRXs in NPC1 fibroblasts was affected by the number of HEE groups, and HEE-PRXs with a high number of HEE groups were unable to reduce lysosomal cholesterol accumulation. This deficiency is most likely due to the cholesterol-solubilizing ability of HEE-modified β-CDs released from the HEE-PRXs. We conclude that the N-Trt group acts as a cleavable component to induce the lysosomal dissociation of HEE-PRXs, and acid-labile HEE-PRXs with an optimal number of HEE groups (4.1 to 5.4 HEE groups per single β-CD threaded onto the PRX) have great therapeutic potential for treating NPC disease.     

Toward mutual dependency between empathy and technology

Technology explosion induced by information explosion will eventually change artifacts into intelligent autonomous agents consisting of surrogates and mediators from which humans can receive services without special training. Four potential problems might arise as a result of the paradigm shift: technology abuse, responsibility flaw, moral in crisis, and overdependence on artifacts. Although the first and second might be resolved in principle by introduction of public mediators, the rest seems beyond technical solution. Under the circumstances, a reasonable goal might be to create a mutual dependency between empathy and technology: Using technology to help people cultivate empathy among people, so empathy in the society may allow people to help each other to recover from disasters beyond the scope of the assumption underlying the society of mediators. I highlight an immersive collaborative interaction environment for helping people share first-person view and its application to building empathic agents.     

Derivation of the optical autocorrelation function from Raman scattering of diffusing particles

Raman scattering is an inelastic scattering process with chemical specificity to molecular bonds. Because it is a coherent process, the autocorrelation function of its intensity fluctuations can be treated similarly as in the case of the quasi-elastic scattering that is the basis of photon correlation spectroscopy (PCS). This article discuses the possibility of such a new optical characterization method, Raman correlation spectroscopy (RCS). If the phase behavior of Raman scattering is constant or slow enough compared to the diffusion of particles in a dispersion, RCS can work as a variation of PCS with similar instrumentation as PCS and could become a useful addition for nanoparticle characterization research. This article also discusses the effect of incoherent fluorescence in the data analysis of RCS.     

Molding of PBO fabric reinforced thermoplastic composite to achieve high fiber volume fraction

In fiber‐reinforced plastic materials, the fiber volume fraction is one of the most important parameters, and it strongly influences the composite properties. However, it is hard to improve impregnation and the fiber volume fraction in fiber‐reinforced thermoplastics because thermoplastic resins have high melt viscosities. This study explored a reformative solution impregnation method for molding fabric‐reinforced thermoplastic composites with a high fiber volume fraction. The fiber volume fraction was significantly increased, to 60%, which is equal to that of fiber‐reinforced thermosetting plastic materials. A comparison indicated that a fiber‐reinforced thermoplastic and a fiber‐reinforced thermosetting plastic with the same reinforcing fiber had similar tensile properties and that the proposed molding method is effective in thermoplastic composite manufacture. POLYM. COMPOS., 34:953–958, 2013. © 2013 Society of Plastics Engineers