An economical synthesis of the major sex attractant of the oak leaf roller—cis-10-tetradecenyl acetate

The major sex attractant of the oak leaf roller (Archips semiferanus Walker),cis-10-tetradecenyl acetate (I), was synthesized in 55–62% overall yield by a highly economical route from inexpensive azelaic acid (II).Authorized as Paper No. 4779 in the Journal Series of the Pennsylvania Agricultural Experiment Station.     

A randomized algorithm for natural object colorization

Natural objects often contain vivid color distribution with wide variety of colors. Conventional colorization techniques, on the other hand, produce colors that are relatively flat with little color variation. In this paper, we introduce a randomized algorithm which considers not only the value of target color but also the distribution of target color. In essence, our algorithm paints a color distribution to a region which synthesizes color distribution of a natural object. Our approach models the correlation between intensity and color in HSV color space in terms of H – S, H – V and S – V joint histogram. During the colorization process, we randomly swap and reassign color of a pixel to minimize a cost function that measures color consistency to its neighborhood and intensity‐to‐color correlation captured in the joint histogram. We tested our algorithm extensively on many natural objects and our user study confirms that our results are more vivid and natural compared to results from previous techniques.     

KINETICS OF SUPERCRITICAL FLUID EXTRACTION OF ETHANOL FROM AQUEOUS SOLUTION

A 1.3 dm³ high-pressure vessel was used to extract ethanol from aqueous solution of 10 wt% using supercritical carbon dioxide as a solvent. Experiments were carried out in a semibatch mode. A mathematical model based on the two-film theory was derived for estimating the over all mass transfer coefficient. The effects of operating variables, including pressure, CO₂ superficial velocity, and agitation rate, on the mass transfer coefficient were investigated. In general, the mass transfer coefficient increased with increasing pressure, CO₂ superficial velocity, and agitation rate. The concentration of ethanol recovered in the collector after 180 minutes reached 50 wt%, starting with a feed of 10 wt% ethanol.     

Group‐in‐a‐Box Meta‐Layouts for Topological Clusters and Attribute‐Based Groups: Space‐Efficient Visualizations of Network Communities and Their Ties

An important part of network analysis is understanding community structures like topological clusters and attribute‐based groups. Standard approaches for showing communities using colour, shape, rectangular bounding boxes, convex hulls or force‐directed layout algorithms remain valuable, however our Group‐in‐a‐Box meta‐layouts add a fresh strategy for presenting community membership, internal structure and inter‐cluster relationships. This paper extends the basic Group‐in‐a‐Box meta‐layout, which uses a Treemap substrate of rectangular regions whose size is proportional to community size. When there are numerous inter‐community relationships, the proposed extensions help users view them more clearly: (1) the Croissant–Doughnut meta‐layout applies empirically determined rules for box arrangement to improve space utilization while still showing inter‐community relationships, and (2) the Force‐Directed layout arranges community boxes based on their aggregate ties at the cost of additional space. Our free and open source reference implementation in NodeXL includes heuristics to choose what we have found to be the preferable Group‐in‐a‐Box meta‐layout to show networks with varying numbers or sizes of communities. Case study examples, a pilot comparative user preference study (nine participants), and a readability measure‐based evaluation of 309 Twitter networks demonstrate the utility of the proposed meta‐layouts.     

Learning Natural Colors for Image Recoloring

We present a data‐driven method for automatically recoloring a photo to enhance its appearance or change a viewer's emotional response to it. A compact representation called a RegionNet summarizes color and geometric features of image regions, and geometric relationships between them. Correlations between color property distributions and geometric features of regions are learned from a database of well‐colored photos. A probabilistic factor graph model is used to summarize distributions of color properties and generate an overall probability distribution for color suggestions. Given a new input image, we can generate multiple recolored results which unlike previous automatic results, are both natural and artistic, and compatible with their spatial arrangements.     

High utilization platinum deposition on single-walled carbon nanotubes as catalysts for direct methanol fuel cell

This research aims to enhance the activity of Pt catalysts, thus to lower the loading of Pt metal in fuel cell. Highly dispersed platinum supported on single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) as catalyst was prepared by ion exchange method. The homemade Pt/SWNTs underwent a repetition of ion exchange and reduction process in order to achieve an increase of the metal loading. For comparison, the similar loading of Pt catalyst supported on carbon nanotubes was prepared by borohydride reduction method. The catalysts were characterized by using energy dispersive analysis of X-ray (EDAX), transmission electron micrograph (TEM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), and X-ray photoelectron spectrum (XPS). Compared with the Pt/SWNTs catalyst prepared by borohydride method, higher Pt utilization was achieved on the SWNTs by ion exchange method. Furthermore, in comparison to the E-TEK 20 wt.% Pt/C catalyst with the support of carbon black, the results from electrochemical measurement indicated that the Pt/SWNTs prepared by ion exchange method displayed a higher catalytic activity for methanol oxidation and higher Pt utilization, while no significant increasing in the catalytic activity of the Pt/SWNTs catalyst obtained by borohydride method.     

Enhanced room-temperature positive magnetoresistance of a-C:Fe film

Fe-doped amorphous carbon (a-C:Fe) film and pure amorphous carbon (a-C) film were synthesized on n-Si substrate using pulsed laser deposition. The a-C:Fe film has a positive magnetoresistance (15% at magnetic field B = 1 T) at room temperature, while it has a negative magnetoresistance below 260 K. The electrical conduction in a-C:Fe film is one order of magnitude higher than that in pure a-C film. It is found that a-C:Fe film has very different conduction mechanism from that of pure a-C film. The activation energy of electron conduction in a-C:Fe film could be tuned significantly by magnetic field. The magnetoresistance effect of the a-C:Fe film seems difficult to explain by known magnetoresistance mechanisms.