Surface modification of cellulosic fibres for multi-purpose TiO2 based nanocomposites

Vegetable cellulose fibres have been surface modified using the hydrolysis of tetraethoxysilane (TEOS), octyltrimethoxysilane (OTMS) or phenyltrimethoxysilane (PTMS), followed by the layer-by-layer deposition of previously synthesized TiO₂ nanoparticles. Raman, FTIR and ²⁹Si Solid State NMR spectroscopies, and SEM were used to characterize the resulting nanocomposites. Water contact angle measurements were performed and the results indicate a quite distinct behaviour depending on the employed surface modification procedure. We anticipate that some of the cellulose-based composite materials have potential to be used in self-cleaning surfaces and reinforcing agents in polymer matrices, namely due to their hydrophobic surface and photostability when exposed to solar radiation.     

Surface studies on activated and hydrided CaNi5 alloy

X-ray photoelectron spectroscopic studies on the activated pure CaNi₅ alloy as well as the hydride formed at 1 atm pressure and room temperature, CaNi₅H_4.8, showed that on activation calcium segregates to the surface and forms the oxide, whereas most of the nickel on the surface is present in the metallic form. This indicates that the coexistance of the oxide phase and the metal phase is essential for the facile hydriding behaviour of CaNi₅.     

Laterally supported sandwich panels subjected to large deflections: Part 2: FE analyses and model validation

Finite element (FE) models are used for predicting the global behavior of simply supported sandwich panels fixed by bolts on the two longitudinal edges or on all their four edges. The panels are subjected to transversal distributed loads and develop large deflections. Two finite element techniques are employed: (a) utilizing effective (equivalent) continuum solid elements for the core and plate elements for the face sheets and (b) utilizing plate elements of an equivalent three-layer laminate. In the first part of this project, discussed in a companion paper, the test set-up details were presented along with the experimental results. This second part of the work presents the procedure for estimating the panel–bolt bearing stiffness, the FE analysis procedure developed to simulate the behavior of the tested panels and the validation of the numerical models. A good correlation was observed between experimental and numerical results for the displacements of the panels and the shear loads at the attachment points. The results obtained demonstrated that the proposed two-dimensional FE approach yields a good trade off between the level of accuracy and computational efficiency.     

Compliant cryptologic protocols

Literally, the word compliance suggests conformity in fulfilling official requirements. This paper presents the results of the analysis and design of a class of protocols called compliant cryptologic protocols (CCPs). The paper presents a notion for compliance in cryptosystems that is conducive as a cryptologic goal. CCPs are employed in security systems used by at least two mutually mistrusting sets of entities. The individuals in the sets of entities only trust the design of the security system and any trusted third party the security system may include. Such a security system can be thought of as a broker between the mistrusting sets of entities. Published online: 15 November 2002     

Adaptive and predictive downlink resource management in next-generation CDMA networks

Guard channels have been proposed to minimize handoff call dropping when mobile hosts move from one cell to another. Code-division multiple-access (CDMA) systems are power- and interference-limited. Therefore, guard capacity in CDMA networks is soft, that is, a given capacity corresponds to variable number of connections. Thus, it is essential to adjust the guard capacity in response to changes in traffic conditions and user mobility. We propose two schemes for managing downlink CDMA radio resources: guard capacity adaptation based on dropping (GAD), and guard capacity adaptation based on prediction and dropping (GAPD). In both schemes, the guard capacity of a cell is dynamically adjusted so as to maintain the handoff dropping rate at a target level. In the second scheme, there is an additional, frequent adjustment component where guard capacity is adjusted based on soft handoff prediction. We show through extensive simulations that GAD and GAPD control the handoff dropping rate effectively under varying traffic conditions and system parameters. We also find that GAPD is more robust than GAD to temporal traffic variations and changes in control parameters.     

High-performance 0.07-μm CMOS with 9.5-ps gate delay and 150 GHzfT

We report room-temperature 0.07-μm CMOS inverter delays of 13.6 ps at 1.5 V and 9.5 ps at 2.5 V for an SOI substrate; 16 ps at 1.5 V and 12 ps at 2.5 V for a bulk substrate. This is the first room-temperature sub-10 ps inverter ring oscillator delay ever reported. PFETs with very high drive current and reduction in parasitic resistances and capacitances for both NFETs and PFETs, realized by careful thermal budget optimization, contribute to the fast device speed. Moreover, the fast inverter delay was achieved without compromising the device short-channel characteristics. At V_dd=1.5 V and I_off ~2.5 nA/μm, minimum L_eff is about 0.085 μm for NFETs and 0.068 μm for PFETs. PFET I_on is 360 μA/μm, which is the highest value ever reported at comparable V_dd and I_off. The SOI MOSFET has about one order of magnitude higher I_off than a bulk MOSFET due to the floating-body effect. At around 0.07 μm L_eff, the NFET cut-off frequencies are 150 GHz for SOI and 135 GHz for bulk. These performance figures suggest that subtenth-micron CMOS is ready for multi-gigahertz digital circuits, and has good potential for RF and microwave applications     

An Artificial-Neural-Network-Based Integrated Regional Model for Rain Retrieval Over Land and Ocean

An integrated regional model is proposed for rain-rate retrievals over land/ocean from the brightness temperature (Tb) values of the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) Microwave Imager (TMI). The polarization-corrected temperature calculated from the 85.5-GHz channels is also considered as one of the inputs along with the nine channel Tb values. This model is applicable over the region between and . For this purpose, an artificial neural network is utilized. The collocated precipitation radar (PR) near-surface rain rates as given by a 2A25 data product is considered as a target value. The methodology consists of the separation of land and ocean pixels, the separation of stratiform and convective pixels over land/ocean, and the selection of important features (inputs) for the multilayer perceptron network by the feature selection technique for each group. For the separation of land/ocean pixels, the Tb values of the 10.65-GHz vertical channel are utilized. The values are utilized to separate the stratiform and convective pixels both over land and ocean. The rain retrieval from the developed model is validated with TRMM PR. Overall result shows the better agreement of the model-retrieved rain rate with the PR observation compared to the TMI (2A12) rain rate particularly over land. The rain retrieved from the developed model is further validated with Doppler weather radar. A reasonably good agreement is observed between these two estimations.     

Multiple Antenna Enhancements for a High Rate CDMA Packet Data System

A High Data Rate (HDR) system has been proposed for providing downlink wireless packet service by using a channel-aware scheduling algorithm to transmit to users in a time-division multiplexed manner. In this paper, we propose using multiple antennas at the transmitter and/or at the receiver to improve performance of an HDR system. We consider the design tradeoffs between scheduling and multi-antenna transmission/detection strategies and investigate the average Shannon capacity throughput as a function of the number of antennas assuming ideal channel estimates and rate feedback. The highest capacities are achieved using multiple antennas at both the transmitter and receiver. For such systems, the best performance is achieved using a multi-input multi-output capacity-achieving transmission scheme such as BLAST (Bell Labs Layered Space-Time) in which the transmitted signal is coded in space and time, and the receive antennas are used to resolve the spatial interference. In the second part of the paper, we discuss practical transmitter and receiver architectures using BLAST for approaching the theoretical gains promised by the capacity analysis. Because the terminal receivers will be portable devices with limited computational and battery power, we perform a computational complexity analysis of the receiver and make high-level assessments on its feasibility. We conclude that the overall computational requirements are within the reach of current hardware technology.     

Strong quantum confinement effect in nanocrystalline cerium oxide

Highly uniform and well-dispersed cerium oxide quantum dots were successfully synthesized by simple precipitation method by using cerium ammonium nitrate and ammonium hydroxide as precursor materials with suitable conditions. The X-ray diffraction pattern indicates the formation of cubic phase CeO₂. The average particle size of cerium oxide from high resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM) was found to be 3 nm. The X-ray photoelectron (XPS) spectrum confirms the presence of Ce³⁺ in CeO₂. Optical studies by UV–vis spectroscopy for the synthesized CeO₂ nanoparticles exhibit a blue shift (E_g = 3.78 eV) with respect to the bulk material (E_g = 3.15 eV) due to quantum confined exciton absorption.