EFFECT OF DEVELOPER PROPERTIES ON PRINT QUALITY

We investigated the dependence of the toner charge-to-mass ratio (q/m) in a two-component electrophotographic developer on the shaking time, toner concentration (T/C), carrier sizes, and the carrier core and the coating materials, as well as the resulting print qualities in terms of print density, background density, tone reproduction, resolution, and dot gain. Four different sizes of spherical ferrite carriers, four different carrier coating materials, and an irregular iron carrier were used with two types of toner: 14 um red toner (NP-4080) and 8 um cyan toner (CLC-500). The q/m measurement by the blow-off method showed that the red toner charge was positive while the cyan toner charge was negative with these carriers. The toner q/m values, which depended on the shaking time and decreased with the increasing T/C were much more affected by the larger carrier and the smaller toner. The carriers which yielded charges in the proper range produced better print qualities than did the other carriers that yielded a toner q/m     

Fault section detection system for 66 kV underground branchtransmission lines using optical magnetic field sensors

A fault section detection system that uses optical magnetic field sensors and instantly detects the section in which a ground fault occurred was developed for 66 kV underground multiterminal systems having Y-branch joint boxes. The optical magnetic field sensor, which is based on the Faraday effect in Bi-doped YIG ((BiYbGd)₃Fe₅O₁₂) having a large Verdet constant, detects cable conductor currents of 0 to 2000 A with high precision with the use of a laminated magnetic ring core of silicon steel plates. Sensors and a fault section detector/indicator of a system are connected with optical fibers capable of nonrepeated transmission of over 6 km     

New balance ground relay for parallel four-circuit transmission lines

A 66-kV network generally is grounded through a neutral grounding resistor. In this network a single-phase ground-fault current is limited to as small as 100 to 400 A. There are parallel four-circuit transmission lines mounted on the same tower in the 66-kV network. In such transmission lines, the load and the fault currents could induce circulating current that flows through the lines. Since the circulating current has zero-phase-sequence and negative-phase-sequence components, it could cause unwanted operation of a balance ground relay using zero-phase-sequence current. However, it is difficult to compensate for the circulating current by the conventional vector compensation scheme. This paper presents a new balance ground relay to deal with the circulating current. In the relay from the ground-fault inception until first tripping, the difference current Δ3I_2d of negative-phase-sequence current 3I_2d of the differential current between two protected lines is used as an input current. The Δ3I_2d is the difference current of 3I_2d between, before and during faults. After the first tripping, the difference current of positive-phase-sequence load current and zero-phase-sequence current of the forementioned differential current are used as an input current. Consequently, a higher sensitivity of the ground-fault protection for these lines has been achieved. The correct operation of the new balance ground relay was confirmed when a single-phase-ground-fault occurred in the parallel four-circuit transmission lines, to which the relay is applied.     

Use of a YAP1 overexpression cassette conferring specific resistance to cerulenin and cycloheximide as an efficient selectable marker in the yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae.

Drug-resistance markers for yeast transformation are useful because they can be applied to strains without auxotrophic mutations. However, they are susceptible to technical difficulties, namely lower transformation efficiency and the appearance of drug-resistant mutants without the marker. To avoid these problems, we have constructed a phosphoglycerate kinase (PGK) promoter-driven YAP1 expression cassette, called PGKp-YAP1. Yeast cells containing PGKp-YAP1 were resistant to cycloheximide, a protein synthesis inhibitor, and also to cerulenin, a fatty acid synthesis inhibitor, but not to other drugs tested. The transformation efficiency of PGKp-YAP1 using cerulenin selection was comparable to that using a URA3 auxotrophic marker when low concentrations of cerulenin were used. Non-transformed drug-resistant colonies did appear on the low-concentration cerulenin plates. However, these non-transformed colonies could easily be identified, based on their cycloheximide sensitivity and/or their resistance to aureobasidin A to which the transformants were sensitive. Therefore, the dual drug resistance of PGKp-YAP1 could be used as an effective selection for PGKp-YAP1 recipient cells. The PGKp-YAP1 marker was used to disrupt the LYS2 gene and to transform an industrial yeast strain, indicating that this marker can be used for efficient and reliable gene manipulations in any Saccharomyces cerevisiae strain.     

Magnetic Fluids and Their Use in Transducers

Magnetic fluids are now widely used to implement transducer architectures. These fluids have valuable properties compared to traditional materials. In this column, a brief overview of magnetic fluids and their traditional uses in the field of transducers are given and some applications developed at the DIEES laboratory at the University of Catania, Italy are presented     

R & D Needs - Drying of Ceramics

New research and development needs for the drying of ceramics are prooosed. The researches on the ceramic drying are briefly reviewed and the role of the drying in the ceramic production process iS summarized. The drying must deal with molded materials and the problem is of significant difference from another drying with particulate materials. It means that the drying must be performed with keeping the molded feature and the insufficient completion of drying and the careless operation influence directly on the product quality The importnance of the R & D on the heat and moisture transfer. shrinking mechanism. the deformation behavior and the strain-stress formation in the molded clay issuggested. The subjects are also pointed out for the further improvement of the ceramic drying process and the precise design of molding with high quality.     

Design optimization of tall tubular lead/acid cells based on an analysis of the reaction distribution

In order to estimate the discharge performance of tall lead/acid cells (with tubular positives), changes in current and potential distributions with discharge progress were calculated with a computer on the basis of plate resistance and the current—potential—time relationship between small facing parts of positive and negative plates. The taller the cell, the larger the voltage drop along the plates. Thus, the discharge time became shorter despite a large amount of available active mass remaining in the bottom part of the plates.Various current-collector designs were evaluated, e.g., one with varying resistance at each height; a side conductor placed along the plates and connected to them at the top, centre and bottom, etc. Results revealed an optimum collector design with which the maximum discharge capacity could be obtained. Furthermore, it was shown that the side conductor markedly improved the discharge performance because the active mass near the connecting parts was appreciably used.     

Drying-Induced Strain and Stress: A Review

This paper is to review the works on strains and suesses in materials during drying.The strains and suesses are caused when temperature and moisture gradients are generated in mterials whose volume changes with heating and moisture removal. In such materials. failure and irregular deformion may be generated which affect considerably the qudity of the products after drying. In the first part. modeling procedure is introduced for the analysis of the strain-stress behavior in elaslic. viscous and visccelastic materials combined with heat and moisture transfer. An overview of the works on swains and stresses and drying characteristics are presented for malerials such as porous media. clay. sol-gels. agricultural products and foods in the second part. There are some materials that show both elasticity of the solid phase and viscosity of the fluid phase ( water or solvena∥ or viscoelasticiry. The suesses are often correlated with a suction pressure of fluids in pores and the flow rate is based on Dacy's equation for the elastic and viscous tnedia and a kind of viscoelastic media. The general canstitulive equalions. for suains and svesses are often analyzed with the stain behavior given by a function of moisturr for some media ai well. The emohasis is on the inuoduclion of comprehensive criteria for undersunding the problems of strain and stress development in materials subjected to drying.     

Discharge behaviour of electrodeposited PbO2 and Pb electrodes

The discharge behaviour of electrodeposited lead dioxide and lead electrodes was investigated under various conditions; the surfaces of the discharged electrodes were observed with a scanning electron microscope. Both the positive and negative electrodes were passivated by a covering of deposited lead sulphate crystals. The amount of lead sulphate required for passivation depended on the size of the crystals.     

Elimination of fictitious penetrating rays from PO and hybridization with AFIM

Physical optics (PO) is an approximation method for high‐frequency scattering and diffraction problems. But PO fields are inaccurate in the shadow region where the source is screened by the scatter. Two key factors of the error for PO are (i) edge diffraction coefficients and (ii) existence of fictitious penetrating rays. The correction with respect to the former has been extensively investigated by many authors using various ray techniques such as GTD, UTD, and UAT. On the other hand, the latter was identified recently by the authors. This paper proposes novel PO‐based calculation procedures termed PO‐AF and PTD‐AF, where PO and Aperture Field Integration Method (AFIM) are merged with the help of special elementary diffraction coefficients. These can uniformly cover the whole angular region and only the error factor (ii) is removed in PO‐AF while both (i) and (ii) are removed in PTD‐AF. The theoretical backgrounds of PO currents are discussed in terms of field equivalence theorem and visualization of EM waves. Next, new methods are proposed and their validity is numerically demonstrated for 2D scattering problems of a strip, a corner reflector, and a cylinder of circular arc. © 2004 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 150(2): 1–10, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20037