A far-infrared spectroscopic study of low temperature soft phonon mode in Tris-Sarcosine Calcium Chloride(TSCC)

Temperature dependences of the soft phonon frequency and the damping constant in Tris-Sarcosine Calcium Chloride (TSCC) single crystal have been investigated between 5K and 100K by using a Fourier-transform far-infrared spectrometer. It has been observed that the soft phonon frequency decreases gradually and the damping constant increases as the transition temperature is approached from below The damping constant varies from 7cm^-1 a 90K to less than 0.5cm^-1 at 5K. It has been found that the damping constant is approximately proportional to temperature below about 60K.     

Improvement in Thermoelectric Characteristics of n-type Iron Disilicide by Local Composition Modification

High thermoelectric figure of merit semiconducting ceramics of n -type iron disilicide with modified local compositions have been developed. Sintering and annealing of the composite powder composed of iron disilicide and precipitated cobalt (II) hydroxide resulted in the dissolution of excess Co and oxygen into the iron disilicide phase. Excess Co segregated to the grain boundary region, while interstitially incorporated oxygen was distributed homogeneously in the microstructure. The maximum figure of merit achieved was 5.2 × 10⁻⁴/K at 673 K.     

A study on the factors for improving the ethanol production from Jerusalem artichoke by Kluyveromyces fragilis

This study is to investigate the factors influencing the alcohol production byKluyveromyces fragilis using the juice of Jerusalem Artichoke tubers. The cell growth rate and ethanol production rate were stimulated by aeration and by the addition of unsaturated fatty acids and the cell mass production and the ethanol production were substantially improved. It was found that oxygen and unsaturated fatty acids added played a decisive role on the increase of alcohol tolerance of yeast.     

A low wall-loading DEMO reactor design with high priority for early and reliable realization of a tokamak fusion reactor over the cost performance

Based on scientific databases adopted for designing ITER plasmas and on the advancement of fusion nuclear technology from the recent R&D program, a low wall-loading DEMO fusion reactor has been designed, where high priority has been given to the early and reliable realization of a tokamak fusion plasma over the cost performance. Since the major radius of this DEMO reactor is chosen to be 10 m, plasma ignition is achievable with a low fusion power of 0.8 GW and an operation period of 4–5 hours is available only with inductive current drive. The low ignition power makes it possible to adopt a first wall with an austenitic stainless steel, for which significant databases and operating experience exists, due to its use in the presence of neutron irradiation in fission reactors. In step with development of advanced materials, a step-wise increase of the fusion power seems to be feasible and realistic, because this DEMO reactor has the potential to produce a fusion power of 5 GW.     

Performance comparison of tracking filters in terms of predicted hitting point

This article describes the performance comparison of several tracking filters from the viewpoint of gun fire control. It is common that filter performance can be represented by the RMSE of the current state. However, for the design of a gun fire control system, the performance of the tracking filter in terms of prediction is more important since the current state proceeds with a designed dynamic model to a certain future which is used for the final gun order. It is shown that the predicted results amplify the current state RMSE and can be a good measure.     

On the possible patterns of inputs for block sorting in the Burrows-Wheeler transformation

Block sorting in the Burrows-Wheeler transformation is to sort all of the n circular shifts of a string of length n lexicographically. We introduce a notion called the width of a sequence of n strings of length n and show that the values of widths are very different between the two types of sequences of strings; (1) a sequence of n randomly generated strings of length n, and (2) the sequence of n circular shifts of a randomly generated string of length n.     

Basic constructs of the SIM operating system

The basic constructs of SIMPOS (Sequential Inference Machine Programming and Operating System) are explained. SIMPOS is an operating system for a super-personal computer (SIM), based on logic programming language (a modified Prolog, called KL0). Our design principle is simplicity both in concept and structure. The entire system will be constructed using these basic constructs.     

Helium gas permeability of montmorillonite/epoxy nanocomposites

Helium gas permeability of silicate clay (montmorillonite) particles/epoxy nanocomposites was examined. The incorporation of increasing amounts of montmorillonite particles reduced the helium gas permeability. Based on Fick’s law, gas permeation behavior of the nanocomposite was evaluated. With the increase of montmorillonite loading, gas diffusivity decreased, while gas solubility increased. Helium diffusion behavior is in agreement to the numerical results based on the Hatta–Taya–Eshelby theory. It has been revealed that dispersion of nanoscale platelets in polymer is effective in improving gas barrier property.     

On the computational power of insertion-deletion systems

Gene insertion and deletion are basic phenomena found in DNA processing or RNA editing in molecular biology. The genetic mechanism and development based on these evolutionary transformations have been formulated as a formal system with two operations of insertion and deletion, called insertion-deletion systems (Kari and Thierrin, 1996; Kari et al., 1997).We investigate the generative power of insertion-deletion systems (InsDel systems), and show that the family INS ¹ ₁ DEL ¹ ₁ is equal to the family of recursively enumerable languages. This gives a positive answer to an open problem posed in Kari et al. (1997) where it was conjectured contrary. This revised version was published online in June 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.