Optimum design parameters of a squash head projectile

This note first establishes a correlation between post impact fuze delay and the spread of explosives of a squash head gun-fired projectile when hitting a rigid non-yielding plate. Estimations of optimum strike velocity and fuze delay to maximize spread are derived.     

Gas holdup and overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient in a modified reversed flow jet loop reactor

Experiments were conducted in a modified reversed flow jet loop reactor having the liquid outlet at the top of the reactor to determine the gas holdup and overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient in the air-water system. The influence of gas and liquid flow rates, and the draft tube to reactor diameter ratio were studied. It was observed that both gas holdup and volumetric mass transfer coefficient increased with increased gas and liquid flow rates and were found to be significantly higher in the modified reactor compared to the conventional one. The optimum draft tube to reactor diameter ratio was found to be in the range of 0.4 to 0.5. Empirical correlations are presented to predict gas holdup and overall volumetric mass transfer coefficient in terms of operational and geometrical variables.     

Photoinduced anisotropy measurements in liquid-crystalline azobenzene side-chain polyesters

Reversible photoinduced anisotropy in a series of liquid-crystalline azobenzene side-chain polyesters is investigated as a function of intensity of the write beam and the sample temperature. Measurements reveal that the erasing takes place at a temperature much higher than the glass transition temperature. Induced anisotropy can be erased by heating the polyesters to approximately 80 °C.     

A unified framework for optimizing locality, parallelism, andcommunication in out-of-core computations

This paper presents a unified framework that optimizes out-of-core programs by exploiting locality and parallelism, and reducing communication overhead. For out-of-core problems where the data set sizes far exceed the size of the available in-core memory, it is particularly important to exploit the memory hierarchy by optimizing the I/O accesses. We present algorithms that consider both iteration space (loop) and data space (file layout) transformations in a unified framework. We show that the performance of an out-of-core loop nest containing references to out-of-core arrays can be improved by using a suitable combination of file layout choices and loop restructuring transformations. Our approach considers array references one-by-one and attempts to optimize each reference for parallelism and locality. When there are references for which parallelism optimizations do not work, communication is vectorized so that data transfer can be performed before the innermost loop. Results from hand-compiles on IBM SP-2 and Inter Paragon distributed-memory message-passing architectures show that this approach reduces the execution times and improves the overall speedups. In addition, we extend the base algorithm to work with file layout constraints and show how it is useful for optimizing programs that consist of multiple loop nests     

Polarimetric investigation of materials with both linear and circular anisotropy

Abstract

We investigate light propagation through materials with both linear and circular anisotropy and find the relation of the amplitude and polarization transfer functions to the four anisotropic characteristics: linear circular birefringence, and linear and circular dichroism. We determine these four characteristics of anisotropic samples by measuring the output intensity and polarization corresponding to different input polarization azimuths and fitting the theoretical and experimental results. In our experiments we have used films of side-chain azobenzene polyesters in which optical anisotropy had been previously induced on illumination with elliptically polarized light.     

Zinc Tin Oxide (ZTO) electron transporting buffer layer in inverted organic solar cell

Solution processed, high electron mobility and highly transparent Zinc Tin Oxide (ZTO) was successfully exploited as electron transporting buffer layer in an inverted organic solar cell. The device configuration of FTO/ZTO/P3HT:PCBM/WO₃/Ag was employed. For comparison, an identical device using a sol–gel derived TiO_x electron extracting layer was also fabricated. Increased short-circuit density (J_sc) and open-circuit voltage (V_oc) were generated in the devices with ZTO layer in comparison to the ones with TiO_x layer. It is attributed to a better electron transporting, hole blocking capacities and reduced recombination probabilities at electron collecting electrode with ZTO layer. A power conversion efficiency of 3.05% was achieved with ZTO devices.     

Understanding discharges initiated by water droplet on epoxy nanocomposites under DC voltages adopting UHF technique

Corona inception voltage due to a water droplet on epoxy resin in an electrode gap is high under DC voltage compared to AC voltage. It is observed that, as the contact angle of the epoxy nanocomposite material becomes higher, the corona discharge inception voltage increases. The droplet movement is observed, using a high‐speed camera, on application of the voltage. It is seen that a droplet moves toward the ground electrode under an AC or a negative DC voltage, whereas it moves toward the high‐voltage electrode under a positive DC voltage. It is also observed that carbonization occurs near the ground electrode under AC and negative DC voltages, and near the high‐voltage electrode under a positive DC voltage. During the evaporation of the water droplet (during arcing) on the surface of the insulating material under AC and DC voltages, carbonization of material occurs and is high both in pure epoxy resin and in nanocomposites with 5 wt% epoxy clay. The magnitude of the arcing current is nearly the same irrespective of the percentage of clay in the epoxy nanocomposites. The magnitude of discharge current flow is high under negative DC voltage compared to positive DC/AC voltages. The rise time of injected current pulses, at the time of corona inception and during arcing, under AC/DC voltages, is a few nanoseconds. Ultrahigh‐frequency signals were emitted as a result of the corona discharge from the water droplet on epoxy nanocomposites and at the time of arcing between the droplets and the electrodes, both under AC and DC voltages, with its dominant frequency in the range 1–2 GHz. © 2013 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

Ensembles of radial basis function networks for spectroscopicdetection of cervical precancer

The mortality related to cervical cancer can be substantially reduced through early detection and treatment. However, current detection techniques, such as Pap smear and colposcopy, fail to achieve a concurrently high sensitivity and specificity. In vivo fluorescence spectroscopy is a technique which quickly, noninvasively and quantitatively probes the biochemical and morphological changes that occur in precancerous tissue. A multivariate statistical algorithm was used to extract clinically useful information from tissue spectra acquired from 361 cervical sites from 95 patients at 337-, 380-, and 460-nm excitation wavelengths. The multivariate statistical analysis was also employed to reduce the number of fluorescence excitation-emission wavelength pairs required to discriminate healthy tissue samples from precancerous tissue samples. The use of connectionist methods such as multilayered perceptrons, radial basis function (RBF) networks, and ensembles of such networks was investigated. RBF ensemble algorithms based on fluorescence spectra potentially provide automated and near real-time implementation of precancer detection in the hands of nonexperts. The results are more reliable, direct, and accurate than those achieved by either human experts or multivariate statistical algorithms