The distribution of antimony in the oxide layer formed by potentiostatic oxidation of Pb-Sb alloy

The distribution of antimony within the oxide films on Pb-Sb alloy prepared by potentiostatic oxidation in H₂SO₄ solutions was examined by SIMS. The study of oxide films prepared by applying different potentials for three hours showed that two types of film were obtained depending on whether the potential was more negative or more positive than 1·5 V. Antimony profiles were obtained for films at several stages in the initial growth. It was found that antimony was retained in the oxide film at 1·5 V during both nucleation and two- or three-dimensional growth of PbO₂ and at 1·6 V during the lateral overlaps of three-dimensional centres of PbO₂. Relationships between the antimony distribution profiles and the oxide film growth are discussed.     

A New Preparation Method of Bimodal Catalyst Support and Its Application in Fischer–Tropsch Synthesis

The silica-based supports that contained distinct bimodal structure were prepared by incipient-wetness impregnation of silica or zirconia sols into the large pores of silica gel. The pore-size distributions of the obtained supports proved that two kinds of pores coexisted according to the bimodal structure. For these bimodal supports, the increased specific surface area and decreased pore volume indicated that the particles of silica or zirconia sols had entered the large pores of the silica gel. The obtained supports were applied in liquid-phase Fischer–Tropsch synthesis (FTS) after cobalt had been loaded. The catalytic properties of these catalysts exhibited increased activity and decreased selectivities of CH₄ and CO₂ due to the spatial promotional effect of the bimodal pore structure and chemical effects of the porous zirconia inside the large pores of the original silica gel.     

Development of a new low-temperature methanol synthesis process

A new reaction route of methanol synthesis at low temperature from CO₂-containing syngas with Cu/ZnO catalyst and the aid of alcohols has been developed in a batch and a flow-type semi-batch reactors. The use of alcohols as catalytic solvents realized methanol synthesis at 443 K with formate as an intermediate. The activity of methanol synthesis depends on types and structures of alcohols. Among all alcohols, 2-alcohol exhibited the highest activity. With the aid of 2-butanol, the one-pass 47.0% conversion and 98.9% selectivity were achieved at a mild condition, 443 K and 50 bar. The new reaction route of methanol synthesis is a practical method for near future technology.     

An effect of hydration entropy on adsorption of various alkylammonium ions at the mercury/water interface

The adsorption of various alkylammonium cations was investigated by measurement of the interfacial tension. Tetraethanolammonium ions (HOC₂H₄)₄N⁺ showed weaker adsorbability than that expected from its ionic radius. The adsorbabilities (relative surface excess of cation FΓ₊ and charge of specifically adsorbed cation q¹₊) of the ethyl series (C₂H₅)_nH_4?nN⁺(n = 0 ≈ 4), and of the methyl series (CH₃)_nH_4?nN⁺n = 0 ≈ 3) were directly proportional to the hydration enthalpies of these cations - ΔH⁰_h, but the proportionalities were different between the methyl and the ethyl series. A linear relation was, however, found between FΓ₊ and the hydration entropies - ΔS⁰_h without regard to the kinds of cations. A similar relation was also found between q¹₊? - ΔS⁰_h. In conclusion, the adsorbabilities of these cations were governed by the hydration entropy, not by the hydration enthalpy.     

Accumulable optimistic fair exchange from verifiably encrypted homomorphic signatures

Let us consider a situation where a client (Alice) frequently buys a certain kind of product from a shop (Bob) (e.g., an online music service sells individual songs at the same price, and a client buys songs multiple times in a month). In this situation, Alice and Bob would like to aggregate the total transactions and pay once per month because individual payments are troublesome. Though optimistic fair exchange (OFE) has been considered in order to swap electronic items simultaneously, known OFE protocols cannot provide such aggregate function efficiently because various costs are bounded by the number of transactions in the period. In order to run this aggregation procedure efficiently, we introduce a new kind of OFE called accumulable OFE (AOFE) that allows clients to efficiently accumulate payments in each period. In AOFE, any memory costs, computational costs, and communication complexity of the payment round must be constant in terms of the number of transactions. Since a client usually has just a low power and poor memory device, these efficiencies are desirable in practice. Currently, known approaches (e.g., based on verifiably encrypted signature scheme) are not very successful for constructing AOFE. Thus, we consider a new approach based on a new cryptographic primitive called verifiably encrypted homomorphic signature scheme (VEHS). In this paper, we propose a generic construction of AOFE from VEHS and also present a concrete VEHS scheme over a composite-order bilinear group by using the dual-form signature techniques. This VEHS scheme is also of independent interest. Since we can prove the security of VEHS without random oracles, our AOFE protocol is also secure without random oracles. Finally, we implemented our AOFE protocol, and it is efficient enough for practical use.     

3D Scan matching for mobile robot localization over rough terrain

In order to enable an autonomous mobile robot to travel over rough terrain, it necessitates the capability to detect self‐position accurately even when the odometry errors are increased in traveling. The conventional method can keep high speed and precise localization using iterative closest point algorithms or feature matching techniques. However, effects of steep changes of a mobile robot position are not considered when it travels over rough terrain. In this article, we propose the method for efficient real‐time 6D pose tracking using a rotating 2D laser scanner in traveling over rough terrain. For adaptation to steep changes of the position, weighted point clouds are generated based on the angular and the linear velocity measured by sensors mounted on the robot. And the position and posture of the robot are sequentially optimized by the scan matching in increments of 10 scans. In indoor experiments, we evaluated accuracy of our method when the robot passes on rugged floor. As a result, our method was performed with less than 0.078 m RMS positional error in real time.     

Direct synthesis of isoparaffin from synthesis gas under supercritical conditions

To produce isoparaffins from synthesis gas directly, modified Fischer–Tropsch (FT) synthesis was carried out under supercritical conditions using n-butane as a medium. One-step FT synthesis using a hybrid catalyst consisting of Co/SiO₂, HZSM-5 and Pd/SiO₂ was carried out. Introduction of supercritical-phase n-butane increased light isoparaffins significantly and suppressed the formation of the by-product, methane. Under supercritical-phase butane, hydrogenolysis and isomerization reactions were promoted. Due to the fact that the optimum temperatures for FT and HZSM-5 catalysts are different, 513 K and over 573 K, respectively, two-step FT synthesis was also carried out to optimize the reaction temperatures. The first-step reaction used Co/SiO₂ catalyst containing small amount of HZSM-5 for FT synthesis at 513 K, and the second-step reaction used a hybrid catalyst containing Pd/SiO₂ and zeolite for hydrogenolysis and isomerization of hydrocarbons at 573 K. Introduction of supercritical n-butane increased the isoparaffin selectivity, and decreased the methane selectivity significantly. The production of heavy hydrocarbons C₉+ was inhibited in both gas and supercritical phase. The isoparaffin selectivity in the gas phase decreased with time-on-stream, but very stable for the supercritical-phase reaction. Because water and heavy hydrocarbons were removed from active sites on zeolite and the zeolite acidity was promoted in the supercritical medium, the selectivity of isoparaffin was considered stable. Among zeolites added to the hybrid catalyst in the second-step reactor, HZSM-5 and H-beta zeolite were suitable for producing light isoparaffins. These results indicated that two-step FT synthesis under supercritical n-butane was superior for producing light isoparaffins from synthesis gas directly.     

Evaluation of low cost water purification systems for humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR)

Following a natural disaster, access to safe drinking water by the affected population is a high priority. Low cost water purification systems, which can be used for both short-term (immediate) and long-term (sustainable) response to serve the needs of the affected communities, are ideal for these scenarios. The University of Hawaii has developed three low cost water purification technologies for use during humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HA/DR) missions. A UH team participated in joint USA and partner nation training exercises, such as Crimson Viper 2010 and 2011, organized by the Marine Corps Forces Pacific Experimentation Center (MEC) in Sattahip, Thailand, to demonstrate the effectiveness of these technologies to purify water from local sources. Three technologies were selected for Crimson Viper 2010: (1) a backpack filter unit, (2) a bicycle pump powered reverse osmosis (RO) unit, and (3) a model slow sand filtration unit. For Crimson Viper 2011, improved versions of the backpack and RO units were deployed. This article discusses and evaluates the results obtained during the demonstration of the three technologies at these exercises.     

Three-dimensional visualization and physiologic evaluation of bile canaliculi in the rat liver slice by confocal laser scanning microscopy.

We evaluated the morphology and physiologic function of the bile canaliculi (BC) in the rat liver slice (RLS) by confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). Lucifer yellow (LY) dye was injected into the RLS, and the distribution of LY was serially evaluated. After the injection of LY, hepatocytes were initially visualized, followed by visualization of the BC. There was no significant difference in the distribution of LY between zones 1 and 3 in the hepatic lobule. In zone 1, the reticular distribution of the BC was observed, whereas the part of BC was linearly visualized in zone 3 along the course of sinusoids. When changes in the bile canalicular fluorescence (BCF) were serially evaluated, the BCF was decreased to the minimal level (88% of the value obtained immediately after the LY injection) 10 min after the LY injection, and it tended to increase thereafter. The intralobular hepatocyte fluorescence (ILHF) was decreased to 58.9% of the initial value during the first 40 min. However, the ILHF was transiently increased 30 min after the LY injection, suggesting the possibility of reabsorption of LY by hepatocytes. Three-dimensional (3-D) reconstruction images of the BC facilitated the evaluation of the stereoscopic structure of BC. Confocal laser scanning microscopy facilitated the evaluation of structures and physiologic function of the BC.     

Signal Representation by Adaptive Biased Wavelet Expansions

This paper reviews a technique of adaptive wavelet expansions and introduces the novel concept of “biased wavelets.” These are functions that are localized in time and in frequency but, unlike conventional wavelets, have an adjustable nonzero mean component. Under mild conditions, it is shown that a conventional mother wavelet can be used to construct a family of biased wavelets which spans the set of finite-energy functions L²( ). Numerical tests suggest that the introduction of the adjustable “bias” considerably improves the representation capabilities of wavelet expansions. A problem of electrocardiographic data compression is used for illustration purposes. Test signals were extracted from the MIT–BIH ECG Compression Test Database.