A new boundary integral equation for notch problem of plane elasticity

A new boundary integral equation for the notch problem of plane elasticity is formulated in this paper. In the formulation, the distributed dislocation density is taken to be the unknown function and the resultant force function to be the right-hand term in the resulting integral equation. As a result the integral equation derived contains a logarithmic kernel. The equation is compact in form and convenient for computation. The accuracy of the method is demonstrated through a number of numerical examples.     

An electromigration failure model for interconnects under pulsedand bidirectional current stressing

An electromigration failure model which can be used to project the electromigration lifetime under pulsed DC and AC current stressing has been reported. The experimental results indicate that different metallization systems (Al-2%Si, Al4%Cu/TiW, and Cu) show similar failure behaviors, which can be explained and predicted by this model. The pulsed DC lifetime is found to be longer than DC lifetime, and the AC lifetime is found to be very much longer. This recognition can provide significant relief to circuit designs involving metals carrying pulsed DC and AC currents, and allow a more aggressive design to improve circuit density and speed     

Apply geometric duality to energy-efficient non-local phenomenon awareness using sensor networks

A powerful concept to cope with resource limitations and information redundancy in wireless sensor networks is the use of collaboration groups to distill information within the network and suppress unnecessary activities. When the phenomena to be monitored have large geographical extents, it is not obvious how to define these collaboration groups. This article presents the application of geometric duality to form such groups for sensor selection and non-local phenomena tracking. Using a dual-space transformation, which maps a non-local phenomenon (e.g., the edge of a half-plane shadow) to a single point in the dual space and maps locations of distributed sensor nodes to a set of lines that partitions the dual space, one can turn off the majority of the sensors to achieve resource preservation without losing detection and tracking accuracy. Since the group so defined may consist of nodes that are far away in physical space, we propose a hierarchical architecture that uses a small number of computationally powerful nodes and a massive number of power constrained motes. By taking advantage of the continuity of physical phenomena and the duality principle, we can greatly reduce the power consumption in non-local phenomena tracking and extend the lifetime of the network.     

FSK heterodyne transmission experiments at 560 Mbit/s and 1 Gbit/s

Optical frequency-shift-keying (FSK) signals are obtained from directly modulated distributed feedback (DFB) semiconductor lasers. Experimental studies of the direct frequency modulation (FM) characteristics of the DFB lasers show a nonuniform FM response due to the competing effects of thermal modulation of the laser active region and carrier density modulation. Equalization of the signal current to the laser is employed to produce a flat FM response from 30 kHz to 1 GHz. Optical FSK transmission and heterodyne detection experiments at 560-Mbit/s and 1-Gbit/s are conducted at a wavelength of 1497 nm. Receiver sensitivities of -39 dBm at 560 Mbit/s and -37 dBm at 1 Gbit/s are obtained. Transmission through 100 km of single-mode fiber at 1 Gbit/s is achieved with no degradation in receiver sensitivity.     

Spectral predictions for pulse interval and width modulation

An expression for the frequency spectrum of pulse interval and width modulation (PIWM) is presented. Experimental results obtained have shown close agreement with spectral predictions from the formula. Performance figures are also included from a practical PIWM optical-fibre transmission system intended for use with TV and video signals.<>     

Signal classification through multifractal analysis and complex domain neural networks

This paper describes a system capable of classifying stochastic self-affine nonstationary signals produced by nonlinear systems. The classification and the analysis of these signals are important because these are generated by many real-world processes. The first stage of the signal classification process entails the transformation of the signal into the multifractal dimension domain, through the computation of the variance fractal dimension trajectory (VFDT). Features can then be extracted from the VFDT using a Kohonen self-organizing feature map. The second stage involves the use of a complex domain neural network and a probabilistic neural network to determine the class of a signal based on these extracted features. The results of this paper show that these techniques can be successful in creating a classification system which can obtain correct classification rates of about 87% when performing classification of such signals without knowing the number of classes.     

Synthesis and characterization of a novel proton‐exchange membrane for fuel cells operating at high temperatures and low humidities

The synthesis of a p‐toluidine/formaldehyde (PTF) resin was performed, and the effects of the molar ratio of the individual monomers and the polymerization conditions on the structure of the PTF resin were studied. Fourier transform infrared and ¹³C‐NMR spectra were used to characterize the PTF. Wide‐angle X‐ray diffraction patterns revealed the crystalline structures of various PTFs. Polarized optical microscopy revealed that the molar ratio of the monomers had a strong effect on the crystalline morphologies. A longer polymerization time turned out a polymer with a higher intrinsic viscosity and molecular weight, which led to differences in the proton conductivity. All of the PTFs showed a higher proton conductivity than a commercial Nafion membrane at 90–100°C and 0% relative humidity. The proton conductivity of the PTF series could be improved by sulfonation with sulfuric acid and could be maintained after blending with polyurethane. Pure methanol could be used as a fuel source because of the insolubility and nonwetting properties of PTF in methanol to increase the output current density for a PTF membrane electrode assembly. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 2008     

Cross-Border Migration of Hong Kong Residents Under the 'One Country, Two Systems' Policy

Hong Kong is known as a migrant city because its population was sourced from mainland China, and because there has always been outflows of people to overseas countries, especially from the mid-1980s to mid-1990s. Emigration to mainland China has become a significant recent trend. This article discusses this phenomenon in the theoretical contexts of migration and trans-border residential development. It contends that the trend will intensify more quickly than other cross-border movements because the two systems are separated by a political border within one country, and because there are common cultural ties and rapid economic integration.     

Two-dimensional phase unwrapping using a minimum spanning treealgorithm

Phase unwrapping refers to the determination of phase from modulo 2pi data, some of which may not be reliable. In 2D, this is equivalent to confining the support of the phase function to one or more arbitrarily shaped regions. A phase unwrapping algorithm is presented which works for 2D data known only within a set of nonconnected regions with possibly nonconvex boundaries. The algorithm includes the following steps: segmentation to identify connectivity, phase unwrapping within each segment using a Taylor series expansion, phase unwrapping between disconnected segments along an optimum path, and filling of phase information voids. The optimum path for intersegment unwrapping is determined by a minimum spanning tree algorithm. Although the algorithm is applicable to any 2D data, the main application addressed is magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) where phase maps are useful.