Morphological responses in thermally conditioned linear low density polyethylene

An octene-modified linear low density polyethylene has been used to examine the mechanisms involved during thermal annealing. Annealing temperatures ranged from 60 to 100°C. Annealing results in crystallinity increments and these respond to two concurrent effects. One involves the segregation from crystalline regions of low molecular weight moieties in the polymer's molecular weight distribution; the other is lamellar thickening, leading to the formation of more highly perfected crystalline domains. In the present polymer, the two effects were found to be in balance at annealing temperatures near 80°C leading to the optimum distribution of crystalline regions in the amorphous portions of the polymer. The effect of thermal conditioning on mechanical properties of the polymer was illustrated in terms of the initial modulus and the polymer's yield strength. The twin mechanisms of molecular fractionation and lamellar thickening were found to influence both of the mechanical property parameters.     

Effect of epitaxial realignment on the leakage behavior of arsenic-implanted,as-deposited polycrystalline Si-on-single crystal Si diodes

When dopants are indiffused from a heavily implanted polycrystalline silicon film deposited on a silicon substrate, high thermal budget annealing can cause the interfacial “native” oxide at the polycrystalline silicon-single crystal silicon interface to break up into oxide clusters, causing epitaxial realignment of the polycrystalline silicon layer with respect to the silicon substrate. Anomalous transient enhanced diffusion occurs during epitaxial realignment and this has adverse effects on the leakage characteristics of the shallow junctions formed in the silicon substrate using this technique. The degradation in the leakage current is mainly due to increased generation-recombination in the depletion region because of defect injection from the interface.     

Optical and thermal properties of poly(ethylene oxide) doped with MnCl2 salt

The optical and thermal properties of prepared poly(ethylene oxide)/MnCl₂ films were studied as a function of MnCl₂ concentration at room temperature. The observed optical energy gap (E_opt) and energy gap tail (ΔE) were determined from the measured absorption spectra. It was found that the optical energy gap decreases with MnCl₂ concentration, and the absorption coefficient reduces sharply at concentration of 5 wt% MnCl₂ compared with the neat PEO. Differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurement shows that the heat of fusion increases with the MnCl₂ concentration, while the melting point decreases. Correlation between the observed optical energy gap and heat of fusion is presented.     

A novel silicon Schottky diode for NLTL applications

The design and simulation of a novel silicon Schottky diode for nonlinear transmission line (NLTL) applications is discussed in this paper. The Schottky diode was fabricated on a novel silicon-on-silicide-on-insulator (SSOI) substrate for minimized series resistance. Ion implantation technology was used as a low-cost alternative to molecular beam epitaxy to approximate the delta (/spl delta/) doping profile, which results in strong nonlinear CV characteristics. The equivalent circuit model of the Schottky diode under reverse bias conditions was extracted from the S-parameter measurement performed on the diode. The measured CV characteristics show strong nonlinearity, the junction capacitance varies from 182 to 47.5 fF as the reverse bias voltage is varied from 0 to -5 V. A parasitic inductance of 40 pH was measured for the silicon Schottky diode, which is much smaller than a comparable sized GaAs Schottky diode. This small inductance is an advantage for the silicon Schottky diode offering improvement in the silicon NLTL performance.     

Pyramid collaborative filtering technique for an intelligent autonomous guide agent

This article presents an autonomous guide agent that can observe a community of learners on the web, interpret the learners' inputs, and then assess their sharing. The goal of this agent is to find a reliable helper (tutor or other learner) to assist a learner in solving his task. Despite the growing number of Internet users, the ability to find helpers is still a challenging and important problem. Although helpers could have much useful information about courses to be taught, many learners fail to understand their presentations. For that, the agent must be able to deal autonomously with the following challenges: Do helpers have information that the learners need? Will helpers present information that learners can understand? And can we guarantee that these helpers will collaborate effectively with learners? We have developed a new filtering framework, called a pyramid collaborative filtering model, to whittle the number of helpers down to just one. We have proposed four levels for the pyramid. Moving from one level to another depends on three filtering techniques: domain model filtering, user model filtering, and credibility model filtering. A new technique is filtering according to helpers' credibilities. Our experiments show that this method greatly improves filtering effectiveness. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 22: 1065–1082, 2007.     

CONTEXTUALIZING LEARNING OBJECTS USING ONTOLOGIES

Educational research over the past three years has intensified such that the context of learning resources needs to be properly modeled. Many researchers have described and even mandated the use of ontologies in the research being conducted, yet the process of actually connecting one or more ontologies to a learning object has not been extensively discussed. This paper describes a practical model for associating multiple ontologies with learning objects while making full use of the IEEE LOM specification. The model categorizes these ontologies according to five major categories of context based on the most popular fields of study actively being pursued by the educational research community: Thematic context, Pedagogical context, Learner context, Organizational context, and Historical/Statistical context.     

A hybrid technique of modeling of cracks using displacement discontinuity and direct boundary element method

A hybrid technique to model two dimensional fracture problems which makes use of displacement discontinuity and direct boundary element method is presented. Direct boundary element method is used to model the finite domain of the body, while displacement discontinuity elements are utilized to represent the cracks. Thus the advantages of the component methods are effectively combined. This method has been implemented in a computer program and numerical results which show the accuracy of the present method are presented. The cases of bodies containing edge cracks as well as multiple cracks are considered. A direct method and an iterative technique are described. The present hybrid method is most suitable for modeling problems involving crack propagation.     

Effect of cooking on the chemical composition of lentils,rice and their blend (Koshary)

Lentils, rice and their blend (Koshary) were cooked by traditional Egyptian methods. Cooking resulted in slight changes in the total nitrogen, as well as in the non-protein nitrogen (NPN), ether extract and crude fibre of the three products, compared with raw grains. In contrast, significant decreases were found in the mineral elements, indicating losses through leaching, on washing and cooking. The mineral composition of lentils' cooking liquor confirmed this.     

Window materials for high power gyrotron

The room temperature application of sapphire as window material at higher frequencies is not feasible since its absorption coefficient increases almost linearly with increasing frequency in the millimeter wavelength region. At cryogenic temperature the absorption coefficient value decreases only by a few factors (factor of 2 to 3) in the 90 – 200 GHz region. The earlier reported temperature squared dependence (decrease) in the absorption coefficient or the loss tangent value is totally absent in our broad band continuous wave data we are reporting here (at 6.5 K, 35K, 77K and 300K) and one we reported at conferences earlier. Our results are verified by another technique. We utilize our precision millimeter wave dispersive Fourier transform spectroscopic techniques at room temperature and at cryogenic temperatures The extra high resistivity single crystal compensated silicon is no doubt the lowest loss material available at room temperature in the entire millimeter wavelength region At higher millimeter wave frequencies an extra high resistivity silicon window or an window made with extra high resistivity silicon coated with diamond film would certainly make a better candidate in the future. A single free standing synthetic diamond window seems to have higher absorption coefficient values at millimeter wavelength region at this time although it is claimed that it possesses good mechanical strength and higher thermal conductivity characteristics. It certainly does not rule out the use of diamond film on a single crystal high resistivity silicon to improve its mechanical strength and thermal conductivity