A microprocessor-based toggle-control lighting system

Analysis, design, practical consideration, and implementation of a microprocessor-based toggle-control lighting system are presented. The system is primarily configured with a power factor corrector (PFC), a square-wave voltage generator, a manually controlled toggle switch, and two relays. Toggling the toggle switch can select a different number of lamps in operation, resulting in a mutual dimming feature. A fluorescent lamp lighting system with this specific ballast gains the merits of lower system cost and more flexibilities in lighting fixture design, as compared to conventional systems     

Microfabricated liquid chromatography columns based on collocated monolith support structures

There is great interest today in massively parallel analytical strategies as a way to accelerate the rate of discovery in biological research; among them being 'biochips' and 'laboratories-on-a-chip'. The concept in the 'chip' approach is that minaturization will allow large numbers of operations to be performed in parallel in a small space, as in electronics. Proceeding with the semiconductor analogy, this paper demonstrates that in situ micromachining can be used to simultaneously fabricate millions of micrometer size, particle like structures in multiple liquid chromatography columns on a single wafer. Reduction of this widely used bioanalytical tool to the nanoliter volume, parallel processing, chip format is a significant step toward laboratories-on-a-chip.     

Kinetic model of block photopolymerization of glycidyl methacrylate to high conversion

The kinetics of glycidyl methacrylate block polymerization to high conversion was experimentally investigated with variations of the photoinitiator concentration, temperature, and power of UV illumination. The kinetic curves of this polymerization process contain three characterized sections of coordinates of “conversion–time,” namely: The first one is practically linear to a conversion of ≈0.5, the second represents, by itself, the autoacceleration process, and the third presents the autodecelation process. An additional peculiarity of such a polymerization process is poor reproduction of the kinetic measurements. This reproduction does not correspond to instrumental error. Derivation of a kinetic model for block linear polymerization was done. This model is, quantitatively, in good agreement with all the data of the experimental material. © 2002 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 86: 3556–3569, 2002     

Enhancement of heat and mass transfer in a plane channel with turbulizers on one of the walls

The effect of turbulizing asperities positioned on one of the walls of a plane channel on the intensity of exchange processes near a smooth wall with injection of different working media is studied experimentally. Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 70, No. 3, pp. 404–408, 1997.     

Cost Effective VLSI Architectures for Full-Search Block-Matching Motion Estimation Algorithm

In this paper, we present efficient VLSI architectures for full-search block-matching motion estimation (BMME) algorithm. Given a search range, we partition it into sub-search arrays called tiles. By fully exploiting data dependency within a tile, efficient VLSI architectures can be obtained. Using the proposed VLSI architectures, all the block-matchings in a tile can be processed in parallel. All the tiles within a search range can be processed serially or concurrently depending on various requirements. With the consideration of processing speed, hardware cost, and I/O bandwidth, the optimal tile size for a specific video application is analyzed. By partitioning a search range into tiles with appropriate size, flexible VLSI designs with different throughput can be obtained. In this way, cost effective VLSI designs for a wide range of video applications, from H.261 to HDTV, can be achieved.