Classification of road surface status using a 94 GHz dual-channel polarimetric radiometer

In this article, we classify road surface statuses using a Bayesian classification method. This article uses principal component analysis (PCA) that combines a 94 GHz dual-channel polarimetric radiometer. The radiometer is used to investigate the behaviour of the brightness temperature (BT) of different road surface statuses in an open-air laboratory. The aim of this investigation is to characterize four different road surface classes (dry, wet, snowy and icy). Here, the BT (radiothermal emission) characteristics are measured at horizontal and vertical polarizations. For a given database of weather information (including BT, road surface temperature, wind speed, etc.), a PCA subspace is constructed, and the score vectors are classified by solving the Bayesian classification method. As a result, the road surface statuses were found to be well classified by the proposed method in real time.     

Impact on the chlorophyll concentration in the Bay of Bengal and Arabian Sea during Indian Ocean dipole mode

The chlorophyll (Chl) concentration in the seawater of the Bay of Bengal (BoB) and the Arabian Sea (AS) changes most during the Indian Ocean dipole (IOD) mode event. The empirical orthogonal function (EOF) of several oceanographic and atmospheric data was studied, using 9 years (1998–2006) of reanalysed satellite data. The variation of Chl during the period of September to November (SON) over the 9 years has been studied in this article. It has been found that significant enhancement of Chl in the BoB takes place during IOD years owing to the surface wind action, that is, wind-stress curl (WC), which favours the upwelling process, whereas the AS shows a decline in concentration of Chl owing to a reduced open ocean upwelling process.     

Interactive Lighting Design with Hierarchical Light Representation

Lighting design plays a crucial role in indoor lighting design, computer cinematograph and many other applications. Computer‐assisted lighting design aims to find a lighting configuration that best approximates the illumination effect specified by designers. In this paper, we present an automatic approach for lighting design, in which discrete and continuous optimization of the lighting configuration, including the number, intensity, and position of lights, are achieved. Our lighting design algorithm consists of two major steps. The first step estimates an initial lighting configuration by light sampling and clustering. The initial light clusters are then recursively merged to form a light hierarchy. The second step optimizes the lighting configuration by alternatively selecting a light cut on the light hierarchy to determine the number of representative lights and optimizing the lighting parameters using the simplex method. To speed up the optimization computation, only illumination at scene vertices that are important to rendering are sampled and taken into account in the optimization. Using the proposed approach, we develop a lighting design system that can compute appropriate lighting configurations to generate the illumination effects iteratively painted and modified by a designer interactively.     

Efficient Hausdorff Distance computation for freeform geometric models in close proximity

We present an interactive-speed algorithm for computing the Hausdorff Distance (HD) between two freeform geometric models represented with NURBS surfaces. The algorithm is based on an effective technique for matching a surface patch from one model to the corresponding nearby surface patch on the other model. To facilitate the matching procedure, we employ a bounding volume hierarchy (BVH) for freeform NURBS surfaces, which provides a hierarchy of Coons patches and bilinear surfaces approximating the NURBS surfaces (Kim et al., 2011 [1]). Comparing the local HD upper bound against a global HD lower bound, we can eliminate the majority of redundant surface patches from further consideration. The resulting algorithm and the associated data structures are considerably simpler than the previous BVH-based HD algorithms. As a result, we can compute the HD of two freeform geometric models efficiently and robustly even when the two models are in close proximity. We demonstrate the effectiveness of our approach using several experimental results.     

Evaluation of radiation exposure upon visual organs during a head CT scan

In order to analyze and compare the absorbed radiation dose and dose rate of visual organs (eyes, corneas, and lenses) of the head with the surrounding areas of the head during CT scans, a mathematical head phantom was created. In addition, the amount of radiation exposure reduced when using an eye shield was also analyzed. According to the results, it was found that the absorbed dose was highest when using 120 kV (as compared to 80 kV and 100 kV) and the absorbed dose rate of the visual organs compared to the head was about 1.35% for the eyes, 0.9% for the corneas, and 0.095% for the lenses. Finally, it was shown that the dose reduction rate of each organ when using an eye shield was about 24% for the eyes, about 22% for the corneas, and more than 40% for the lenses.     

Scratch-resistant hydrophobic and oleophobic coatings prepared by simple PECVD method

A simple and conventional PECVD method was adopted to synthesize scratch-resistant hydrophobic and oleophobic films, by varying the process condition. The film was designed to be 3 layered. The first SiOx layer was coated on the substrate using OMCTS and O₂, followed by O₂ plasma treatment; hydrocarbon-based hydrophobic film was synthesized using HMDS as a second layer; and finally, CFx-based film was coated using C₂F₆. The first and second layers were synthesized using RF power of 13.56 MHz, while MF power of 40 kHz was used for the CFx layer for ion-assisted deposition. The water contact angle was measured to be 110°–115°, and the oil contact angle was 84° for the best obtained sample. The pencil hardness was measured to be 7H for anti-scratch property. XPS was adopted to analyze the chemical structure and showed that highly cross-linked dense structured film was synthesized.     

A Simulation Study on the Collection of Submicron Particles in a Unipolar Charged Fiber

In this study, we developed a simulation method to predict the initial collection efficiency of a unipolar charged fiber and the particle deposition morphology in the electret filter composed of unipolar charged fibers. The particle sizes considered in this study were in the submicron range, and in the simulation method, Brownian motion of particles was also taken into consideration along with electrostatic forces acting on the particles. The simulation results were compared with other investigator's initial collection efficiency data, and it was found that simulation results are in good agreement with the experimental data. Based on this, we analyzed the effect of operating variables on the particle deposition morphology, which in turn affects the collection efficiency and pressure drop of the filter. In view of the simulation results on particle deposition morphology, it is clear that in the case of electret filters, particle deposition tends to take place onto the entire perimeter of fibers relatively uniformly, which may reduce the increase of pressure drop with time or extent of particle deposition compared to the conventional fibrous filter.     

Study on the Accuracy of Injection Molded Plastic Gear with the Assistance of Supercritical Fluid and a Pressurized Mold

Plastic gears are lighter and less noisy compared to steel gears, and they can be easily shaped into diverse forms by the injection molding process. For this reason, plastic gears are widely used in industry. An extensive amount of research has been conducted on gear materials and methods of shaping plastic gears for durability and for broader applications. In this article, the focus is on producing a plastic gear shaping method incorporating the injection molding process.

The most important factor influencing the durability of a plastic gear is its accuracy. Unlike steel gears, the dimensions of plastic gears are subject to considerable change during formation, and this is due to certain conditions during the injection molding process and to the mold structure. The main causes of size variability here are the high viscosity of plastic and the shrinkage ratio of the resin. In our study, a supercritical fluid was used to reduce the viscosity of the plastic, and a pressurized mold was used to control the shrinkage ratio of the resin. Thus, production of an improved, more highly accurate plastic gear was achieved.     

Photonic quantum ring laser of 3D whispering cave mode

A new whispering cave mode (WCM), a three-dimensional (3D) case of Lord Rayleigh's 2D whispering gallery modes, based upon 3D total internal reflection is presented, where GaAs quantum well (QW) near-vertical microdisk resonators exhibit a strong carrier-photon coupling for the QW carriers located in the Rayleigh band, generating 2D-to-1D carrier phase transitions of photonic quantum ring (PQR). It is a ‘photonic’ quantum corral effect (PQCE), whose simulation work produces a tangled web pattern of imminent recombinant carriers in picoseconds timescale. The PQCE is responsible for the ultralow threshold currents below 300 nA for a single mode GaAs PQR laser, and a prototype GaN PQR laser with a threshold near and below 1 μA.