Dielectric properties of liquid crystals for display and sensor applications

Temperature dependence of dielectric properties of nematic liquid crystals are investigated for two types of devices: wide temperature range liquid crystal (LC) displays and capacitor temperature sensor. Both real and imaginary components of the dielectric constant have been measured in wide frequency and temperature range including t < 0 °C as well as versus the angle θ between the directions of both magnetic and electric field in the measuring scheme. Some physical parameters of the nematic LC (NLC) dielectric relaxation have been determined. Effective values of the LC dielectric permittivity with different values of the LC pretilt angles in different parts of a complex LC cell have been simulated.     

Introduction of static quality analysis in small- and medium-sized software enterprises: experiences from technology transfer

Today, small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) in the software industry face major challenges. Their resource constraints require high efficiency in development. Furthermore, quality assurance (QA) measures need to be taken to mitigate the risk of additional, expensive effort for bug fixes or compensations. Automated static analysis (ASA) can reduce this risk because it promises low application effort. SMEs seem to take little advantage of this opportunity. Instead, they still mainly rely on the dynamic analysis approach of software testing. In this article, we report on our experiences from a technology transfer project. Our aim was to evaluate the results static analysis can provide for SMEs as well as the problems that occur when introducing and using static analysis in SMEs. We analysed five software projects from five collaborating SMEs using three different ASA techniques: code clone detection, bug pattern detection and architecture conformance analysis. Following the analysis, we applied a quality model to aggregate and evaluate the results. Our study shows that the effort required to introduce ASA techniques in SMEs is small (mostly below one person-hour each). Furthermore, we encountered only few technical problems. By means of the analyses, we could detect multiple defects in production code. The participating companies perceived the analysis results to be a helpful addition to their current QA and will include the analyses in their QA process. With the help of the Quamoco quality model, we could efficiently aggregate and rate static analysis results. However, we also encountered a partial mismatch with the opinions of the SMEs. We conclude that ASA and quality models can be a valuable and affordable addition to the QA process of SMEs.     

Effect of annealing on percolating porosity in ultrafine-grained copper produced by equal channel angular pressing

Percolating porosity as a specific type of deformation-induced was discovered in ultrafine-grained (UFG) Cu produced by equal channel angular pressing (Ribbe et al., Phys Rev Lett 2009;102:165501). The stability of this defect type against annealing under various conditions is investigated for UFG Cu of different purity levels. The porosity is found to withstand the annealing treatments up to 1073 K for several hours in purified Ar atmosphere, despite significant microstructure transformation. Annealing at 1313 K in Ar removes the percolating porosity, as do relatively short heat treatments at 427 K in a hydrogen-containing atmosphere. Quasi-hydrostatic pressure applied at moderate temperatures, e.g. 1 GPa at 423 K, eliminates the percolating porosity, too. A model of porosity evolution, which accounts for the experimental findings, is suggested.     

Experimental and numerical investigation of premixed flame propagation with distorted tulip shape in a closed duct

High-speed schlieren photography, pressure records and large eddy simulation (LES) model are used to study the shape changes, dynamics of premixed flame propagation and pressure build up in a closed duct. The study provides further understanding of the interaction between flame front, pressure wave and combustion-generated flow, especially when the flame acquires a “distorted tulip” shape. The Ulster multi-phenomena LES premixed combustion model is applied to gain an insight into the phenomenon of “distorted tulip” flame and explain the experimental observations. The model accounts for the effects of flow turbulence, turbulence generated by flame front itself, selective diffusion, and transient pressure and temperature on the turbulent burning velocity. The schlieren images show that the flame exhibits a salient “distorted tulip” shape with two secondary cusps superimposed onto the two original tulip lips. This curious flame shape appears after a well-pronounced classical tulip flame is formed. The dynamics of “distorted tulip” flame observed in the experiment is well reproduced by LES. The numerical simulations show that large-scale vortices are generated in the burnt gas after the formation of a classical tulip flame. The vortices remain in the proximity of the flame front and modify the flow field around the flame front. As a result, the flame front in the original cusp and near the sidewalls propagates faster than that close to the centre of the original tulip lips. The discrepancy in the flame propagation rate finally leads to the formation of the “distorted tulip” flame. The LES model validated previously against large-scale hydrogen/air deflagrations is successfully applied in this study to reproduce the dynamics of flame propagation and pressure build up in the small-scale duct. It is confirmed that grid resolution has an influence to a certain extent on the simulated combustion dynamics after the flame inversion.     

Diffusion simulation-based fiber tracking using time-of-arrival maps: a comparison with standard methods

Object

We propose a new tracking method based on time-of-arrival (TOA) maps derived from simulated diffusion processes.

Materials and methods

The proposed diffusion simulation-based tracking consists of three steps that are successively evaluated on small overlapping sub-regions in a diffusion tensor field. First, the diffusion process is simulated for several time steps. Second, a TOA map is created to store simulation results for the individual time steps that are required for the tract reconstruction. Third, the fiber pathway is reconstructed on the TOA map and concatenated between neighboring sub-regions. This new approach is compared with probabilistic and streamline tracking. All methods are applied to synthetic phantom data for an easier evaluation of their fiber reconstruction quality.

Results

The comparison of the tracking results did show severe problems for the streamline approach in the reconstruction of crossing fibers, for example. The probabilistic method was able to resolve the crossing, but could not handle strong curvature. The new diffusion simulation-based tracking could reconstruct all problematic fiber constellations.

Conclusion

The proposed diffusion simulation-based tracking method used the whole tensor information of a neighborhood of voxels and is, therefore, able to handle problematic tracking situations better than established methods.     

Patient-Specific iPSCs-Based Models of Neurodegenerative Diseases: Focus on Aberrant Calcium Signaling

The development of cell reprogramming technologies became a breakthrough in the creation of new models of human diseases, including neurodegenerative pathologies. The iPSCs-based models allow for the studying of both hereditary and sporadic cases of pathologies and produce deep insight into the molecular mechanisms underlying neurodegeneration. The use of the cells most vulnerable to a particular pathology makes it possible to identify specific pathological mechanisms and greatly facilitates the task of selecting the most effective drugs. To date, a large number of studies on patient-specific models of neurodegenerative diseases has been accumulated. In this review, we focused on the alterations of such a ubiquitous and important intracellular regulatory pathway as calcium signaling. Here, we reviewed and analyzed the data obtained from iPSCs-based models of different neurodegenerative disorders that demonstrated aberrant calcium signaling.     

纳米流体驱提高原油采收率的三维孔隙尺度模拟

基于不同渗透率岩心的三维微观模型,采用流体体积法对纳米流体驱油进行数值模拟;利用实验测得的含SiO2纳米颗粒的悬浮液界面张力、接触角和黏度,针对质量分数为0～1％、具有不同粒径的SiO2纳米颗粒的水基悬浮液,研究了纳米颗粒质量分数和粒径、驱替液流速、原油黏度和岩心渗透率对纳米流体驱油效率的影响.研究表明:采收率随着颗粒...     

Analytical light-scattering solution for Chebyshev particles

We develop a modification of the T-matrix method that allows for fast calculations of scattering properties of particles with irregular shapes. This modification uses the so-called Sh matrices, the elements of which depend on the shape of particles and do not depend on the particle size or optical constants; i.e., the introduction of Sh matrices makes possible the separation of these parameters within the T-matrix algorithm. For a given shape of a scattering object we calculate the Sh matrices only once and then can quickly calculate the T-matrix elements for a number of sizes and refractive indices. This, in particular, can provide rapid particle-size and refractive index averaging in a particle ensemble. This separation is useful for the derivation of an analytical light-scattering solution for Chebyshev particles.