Alternating copolymers of carbon dioxide with glycidyl ethers for novel ion-conductive polymer electrolytes

To overcome the low ionic conduction of existing poly(ethylene oxide)-based polymer electrolytes, we consider polycarbonates obtained from the copolymerization of CO₂ and epoxy monomers. We synthesized four types of polycarbonates possessing phenyl, n-butyl, t-butyl and methoxyethyl side groups using zinc glutarate, and measured the ionic conductivity of their electrolytes, including 10 mol% of LiTFSI. The electrolyte possessing methoxyethyl side groups had the highest conductivity, of the order of 10⁻⁶ S cm⁻¹ at room temperature. The activation energy (E_a) for ionic conduction in the polycarbonate electrolytes was estimated from the VTF equation, and the E_a of the electrolyte possessing n-butyl side groups was almost the same with the polyether-based electrolytes. An interesting feature of our study is that the polycarbonate is a unique candidate for ion-conductive polymers because of its flexible and hydrophobic properties.     

Effect of surface roughness and surface modification of indium tin oxide electrode on its potential response to tryptophan

The effect of surface modification of indium tin oxide (ITO) electrode on its potential response to tryptophan was investigated for ITO substrates with different surface roughness. It was found that a small difference in surface roughness, between ∼1 and ∼2 nm of R_a evaluated by atomic force microscopy, affects the rest potential of ITO electrode in the electrolyte. A slight difference in In:Sn ratio at the near surface of the ITO substrates, measured by angle-resolved X-ray photoelectron spectrometry and Auger electron spectroscopy is remarkable, and considered to relate with surface roughness. Interestingly, successive modification of the ITO surface with aminopropylsilane and disuccinimidyl suberate, of which essentiality to the potential response to indole compounds we previously reported, improved the stability of the rest potential and enabled the electrodes to respond to tryptophan in case of specimens with R_a values ranging between ∼2 and ∼3 nm but not for those with R_a of ∼1 nm. It was suggested that there are optimum values of effective work function of ITO for specific potential response to tryptophan, which can be obtained by the successive modification of ITO surface.     

Performance evaluation of membrane on catalyst module for hydrogen production from natural gas

We have been developing a hydrogen production module with a Pd-based membrane on catalyst (MOC) from natural gas. The MOC module is expected to be more compact and cheaper than the conventional hydrogen production module. To evaluate the hydrogen production performance of the MOC module and to clear the factor that dominates the effective hydrogen production, we compared the reforming performance of the catalytic support without hydrogen permeable membrane and the MOC module at various reaction conditions. As a result, it was cleared that hydrogen permeation through the membrane improves the methane conversion drastically in the MOC module by comparing with the support only module and changing the experimental conditions.     

Characterization of polystyrene-binding peptides (PS-tags) for site-specific immobilization of proteins

In this study, we characterized polystyrene-binding peptides (PS-tags) that possess a specific binding affinity for hydrophilic polystyrene (phi-PS) plates. Both the FITC-labeled PS19-1 (RAFIASRRIKRP) and PS19-6 (RIIIRRIRR) peptides showed strong binding affinity for commercially available hydrophilic, but not hydrophobic, PS plates in the presence of the non-ionic surfactant Tween 20. The dissociation constants (K_d) of the PS19-1 and PS19-6 peptides for the hydrophilic PS-A plate were 169 and 86 nM, respectively, and the K_d of both peptides increased with the concentration of NaCl or urea. Based on adsorption yield and residual activity of glutathione S-transferase (GST) after fusion with the PS19-6 peptide or its variants, it was found that the basic amino acid in the PS-tags, i.e., Arg was essential for the strong binding affinity of PS-tags in both the peptide and peptide-fused protein forms The aliphatic amino acids in PS19-6 and PS19-6L, such as Ile or Leu, were also effective. Thus, a series of PS-tags that possess this unusual feature, especially the peptides PS19-6 (RIIIRRIRR) and PS19-6L (RLLLRRLRR), are potential candidate affinity peptide tags for site-specific immobilization of proteins onto hydrophilic PS plates, which show potential as solid supports for protein-based biochips.     

SUGAWARA(菅原)轴承测试系统

0引言SUGAWARA(菅原)轴承测试系统,是由日本SUGAWARA(菅原)研究所开发的一款高品质测试系统,系统具有集成度高、精准、安全、操作简单、维护轻松等特点,且具有测试范围广、外观高档、分析功能强大等优点。该系统广泛应用于研发、质量认证、检测、轴承测试领域,其代表客户有美蓓     

Effect of cleaving environment on the growth of ZnSe on the GaAs (1 1 0) surface by molecular beam epitaxy

Abstracts are not published in this journal This revised version was published online in November 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Understanding consumer heterogeneity: A business intelligence application of neural networks

This paper describes a business intelligence application of neural networks in analyzing consumer heterogeneity in the context of eating-out behavior in Taiwan. We apply a neural network rule extraction algorithm which automatically groups the consumers into identifiable segments according to their socio-demographic information. Within each of these segments, the consumers are distinguished between those who eat-out frequently from those who do not based on their psychological traits and eat-out considerations. The data set for this study has been collected through a survey of 800 Taiwanese consumers. Demographic information such as gender, age and income were recorded. In addition, information about their psychological traits and eating-out considerations that might influence the frequency of eating-out were obtained. The results of our data analysis show that the neural network rule extraction algorithm is able to find distinct consumer segments and predict the consumers within each segment with good accuracy.     

Autonomous robot navigation in outdoor cluttered pedestrian walkways

This paper describes an implementation of a mobile robot system for autonomous navigation in outdoor concurred walkways. The task was to navigate through nonmodified pedestrian paths with people and bicycles passing by. The robot has multiple redundant sensors, which include wheel encoders, an inertial measurement unit, a differential global positioning system, and four laser scanner sensors. All the computation was done on a single laptop computer. A previously constructed map containing waypoints and landmarks for position correction is given to the robot. The robot system's perception, road extraction, and motion planning are detailed. The system was used and tested in a 1‐km autonomous robot navigation challenge held in the City of Tsukuba, Japan, named “Tsukuba Challenge 2007.” The proposed approach proved to be robust for outdoor navigation in cluttered and crowded walkways, first on campus paths and then running the challenge course multiple times between trials and the challenge final. The paper reports experimental results and overall performance of the system. Finally the lessons learned are discussed. The main contribution of this work is the report of a system integration approach for autonomous outdoor navigation and its evaluation. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Transient and steady state crack growth kinetics for stress corrosion cracking of a cold worked 316L stainless steel in oxygenated pure water at different temperatures

The stress corrosion cracking (SCC) growth kinetics for a cold worked 316L stainless steel was continuously monitored in high purity water at different temperatures and dissolved oxygen (DO) levels under a K (or K_max) of 30 MPa m^0.5. The total SCC test time was more than 8000 h to make sure the steady state crack growth rate under each test condition could be reached. Crack growth rate (CGR) increases with increasing temperature in the range 110-288 °C. A typical intergranular-cracking mode is identified. Depending on the previous test condition, especially the temperature, three kinds of crack growth kinetics, i.e., increasing with testing time then becoming steady, being constant during the whole period, or decreasing with test time then becoming steady, are identified and discussed. Time-dependent and testing history-dependent crack growth modes were confirmed in two series of tests in 2 ppm DO and 7.5 ppm DO pure water. The apparent activation energies are calculated and compared with other data in different environments under different applied loading levels for understanding the cracking mechanism.     

Separation of a Nonstationary Component from the EEG by a Nonlinear Digital Filter

A new nonlinear digital filter which separates nonstationary waves such as spikes from stationary background waves of the EEG is proposed. This filter is composed of a prediction filter and a simple nonlinear function. Some examples showing the separation of spikes from EEG data of epileptic patients are given.