Three-phase current-fed soft-switching PWM converter with auxiliarycommutation inductors and resonant snubber

A new three-phase current-fed soft-switching PWM converter is presented. This converter utilises two types of switching commutation scheme to improve the PWM current utilisation rate. It is shown by means of computer simulation that this converter has low THD and offers unity power factor correction     

Who said what? Source memory for narrator and character agents in literary short stories.

One dimension of reading literacy involves the tracking of agents associated with the text. In a literary short story, there is a society of character agents and pragmatic agents. This study investigated the relative salience of different classes of agents in memory. Two experiments measured source memory as an index of agent salience in long-term memory. Patterns of source memory scores supported an invisible third-person narrator hypothesis and an agent amalgamation hypothesis, but not a structural prominence hypothesis: First-person narrator > nonnarrator character > third-person narrator > 0. Statement detection parameters did not significantly differ among the 3 classes of agents, so differences in source memory could not be explained by differences in the content of the speech acts. Source memory scores also could not be explained by surface features of the text, differences among readers, and sophisticated guessing on the basis of a story abstract. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Personality development across the life span: Longitudinal analyses with a national sample from Germany.

Longitudinal data from a national sample of Germans (N = 20,434) were used to evaluate stability and change in the Big Five personality traits. Participants completed a brief measure of personality twice, 4 years apart. Structural equation modeling techniques were used to establish measurement invariance over time and across age groups. Substantive questions about differential (or rank-order) and mean-level stability and change were then evaluated. Results showed that differential stability was relatively strong among all age groups but that it increased among young adults, peaked in later life, and then declined among the oldest old. Patterns of mean-level change showed that Extraversion and Openness declined over the life span, whereas Agreeableness increased. Mean levels of Conscientiousness increased among young adults and then decreased among older adults. Trajectories for Neuroticism were relatively flat, with slight increases during middle age and a slight decline in late life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Operational characteristics of residential and light-commercial air-conditioning systems in a hot and humid climate zone

Forced-air space-conditioning systems are ubiquitous in U.S. residential and light-commercial buildings, yet gaps exist in our knowledge of how they operate in real environments. This investigation strengthens the knowledge base of smaller air-conditioning systems by characterizing a variety of operational characteristics measured in 17 existing residential and light-commercial air-conditioning systems operating in the cooling mode in Austin, Texas. Some key findings include: measured airflow rates were outside of the range recommended by most manufacturers for almost every system; actual measured cooling capacities were less than two-thirds of rated cooling capacities on average; hourly fractional operation times increased approximately 6% for every °C increase in indoor–outdoor temperature difference; and lower mean indoor surrogate thermostat settings and higher supply duct leakage fractions were most associated with longer operation times. The operational characteristics and parameters detailed herein provide insight into the magnitude of the effects of HVAC systems on both energy consumption and indoor air quality (IAQ) in residential and light-commercial buildings.     

Analytical model to relate DMFC material properties to optimum fuel efficiency and system size

In the design of the direct methanol fuel cell and the evaluation of new materials and their appropriateness for inclusion, it is helpful to consider the impact of material properties on the performance of a complete system: to some degree, methanol crossover losses can be mitigated by proper system design. As such, an analytical model is developed to evaluate the methanol concentration profile across the anode backing layer and membrane of the direct methanol fuel cell. The model is integrated down the anode flow channel to determine fuel utilization as a function of the feed concentration, backing layer properties, and membrane properties. A minimum stoichiometric ratio is determined based on maintaining zero-order methanol kinetics, which allows the fuel efficiency to be optimized by controlling these physical properties. This analysis is then used to estimate the required flow rates and the size of system components such as the methanol storage tank, based on the minimum methanol flow rate that those components must produce to deliver a specified current; in this way, the system-level benefits of reduced membrane crossover can be evaluated.     

Monitoring and Repair of the Milwaukee City Hall Masonry Tower

The Milwaukee City Hall was built between 1893 and 1898 and is located in downtown Milwaukee, one block east of the Milwaukee River. The 300?ft (91.4?m) long building, nine stories high over its main portion, is a trapezoid in plan. On the south side, there is a 393?ft (119.8?m) tall South Tower located above the main entrance to the building. On three sides, the South Tower rises from the street level to the 13th level and the roof above, and on the north side, it is connected to the rest of the building up to the ninth floor. The South Tower is a hybrid steel and masonry structure consisting of masonry perimeter walls and a central core, four-sided steel truss supporting the floors and roof. The building is a perimeter-load-bearing masonry structure supported on wood piles. The city of Milwaukee had been aware of distress, in the form of cracks and loose masonry, in the South Tower for a number of decades. In 2002, the city took action to investigate the causes and significance of distress, and to develop a repair program. The scope of our work included review of the available structural drawings and documents, inspection of the tower, measurement and monitoring of movements, monitoring of thermal response, structural analyses of the hybrid steel and masonry structure, and development of repair recommendations. The repair program presently is under construction. This paper describes the monitoring program, analyses of the causes for distress, and the implemented repair concepts for the observed distress in the South Tower of the Milwaukee City Hall.     

Facile synthesis of thiol-terminated poly(styrene-ran-vinyl phenol) (PSVPh) copolymers via reversible addition-fragmentation chain transfer (RAFT) polymerization and their use in the synthesis of gold nanoparticles with controllable hydrophilicity

A facile approach to prepare thiol-terminated poly(styrene-ran-vinyl phenol) (PSVPh) copolymers and PSVPh-coated gold nanoparticles is reported with the goal of creating stabilizing ligands for nanoparticles with controlled hydrophilicity. Dithioester-terminated poly(styrene-ran-acetoxystyrene) copolymers were synthesized via RAFT polymerization using cumyl dithiobenzoate as a chain transfer agent. These copolymers were converted to thiol-terminated PSVPh copolymers by a one step hydrazinolysis reaction using hydrazine hydrate to simultaneously convert dithioester-terminal and acetoxy-pendant groups to thiol-terminal and hydroxyl-pendant groups, respectively. Spectroscopic observations including NMR and IR confirm end- and pendant-group conversion. PSVPh-coated gold nanoparticles were synthesized in the presence of a mixture of thiol-terminated PSVPh and PSVPh copolymers containing disulfides as stabilizing ligands in a water/toluene, two-phase system. The size and size distribution of core gold nanoparticles were determined by TEM and image analysis. The hydrodynamic radius of PSVPh-coated gold nanoparticles was also determined by dynamic light scattering experiment, which confirms the particle analysis by TEM. This procedure provides a facile technique to control the polarity and hydrophilicity of metal nanoparticle surfaces and could prove critical in advancing the control of nanoparticle placement in biological and hierarchically ordered systems, such as diblock copolymers.     

Characterization of LENS-fabricated Ti6Al4V and Ti6Al4V/TiC dual-material transition joints

The design of engineering structures with function-specific material members is on the increase. This requires advanced fabrication technologies with capabilities for multi-material processing. A major challenge however is obtaining effective transition from one material to another. Dissimilar material systems made using laser metal deposition processes have been investigated. The fusion of materials having different physical properties and chemical compositions under high laser power often results in defects at the joints due to thermal expansion mismatch, the formation of intermetallics, or other mechanisms. Some solutions have been proffered in previous works based on evaluations using qualitative techniques. However, quantitative experimental studies are imperative to accurately assess the mechanical behavior of dual-material structures for real-life applications as predictive tools have not yet been validated. In this work, different designs of material transitions from Ti6Al4V alloy to Ti6Al4V/TiC composites were established. Experimental evaluations of their strengths at these joints were made using LENS-fabricated tensile and flexural test samples. The mode of transition from one material to another was found to have a significant effect on the tensile strengths of the structures. Also, material transition designs with optimum strengths were applied for the fabrication of simplified dual-material minimum-weight structures and tested. The structures failed at locations away from the material transition regions, thus proving the effectiveness of the joints.     

Characterization of the morphological and lattice orientational microstructure of As-Cast aluminum ingot

The morphological and lattice orientational microstructure of commercial-purity aluminum ingot (1100 series) is investigated by section analysis and individual measurements of crystallite orientation from electron backscattering diffraction (EBD). These measurements render possible the determination of the sectional grain-area distribution, the number-of-sides per grain section distribution, the mean grain-interception length, the orientation distribution function, and the nearest-neighbor orientation coherence function. It is found that the morphological measures of the aluminum ingot are consistent with predictions based upon the classical Johnson-Mehl model. A small anisotropy of grain shape is observed, with the grains exhibiting a 17 pct larger dimension in the axial direction of the ingot compared with radial and hoop directions. The orientational measures indicate that the ingot has a random texture with random spatial orientation coherence relationships. Formerly Visiting Scholar, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Brigham Young University, Provo, UT 84602, is retired.     

A 23-ns 4-Mb CMOS SRAM with 0.2-μA standby current

A 4-Mb CMOS SRAM having 0.2-μA standby current at a supply voltage of 3 V has been developed. Current-mirror/PMOS cross-coupled cascade sense-amplifier circuits have achieved the fast address access time of 23 ns. A new noise-immune data-latch circuit has attained power-reduction characteristics at a low operating cycle time without access delay. A 0.5-μm CMOS, four-level poly, two-level metal technology with a polysilicon PMOS load memory cell, yielded a small cell area of 17 μm² and the very small standby current. A quadruple-array, word-decoder architecture allowed a small chip area of 122 mm²