Concentration of tocopherols from soybean sludge by supercritical carbon dioxide

A supercritical fluid extraction method has been applied to test the feasibility of tocopherol concentration from soybean sludge with carbon dioxide at temperatures and pressures ranging from 35 to 70°C and 200 to 400 bar, respectively. The supercritical solubility of the esterified soybean sludge was over 4–6 times greater than that of the original soybean sludge. By a simple batch-type one-stage method the tocopherols in the esterified soybean sludge could be concentrated up to 40 wt%. The overall results of the present study show that soybean sludge initially containing about 13–14 wt% tocopherols may require a countercurrent multistage column to be highly and effectively concentrated.     

Effect of surface coating on the screw loosening of dental abutment screws

Regardless of the type of performed restoration, in most cases, a screw connection is employed between the abutment and implant. For this reason, implant screw loosening has remained a problem in restorative practices. The purpose of this study was to compare the surface of coated/plated screws with titanium and gold alloy screws and to evaluate the physical properties of coated/plated material after scratch tests via FE-SEM (field emission scanning electron microscopy) investigation. GoldTite, titanium screws provided by 3i (Implant Innovation, USA) and TorqTite, titanium screws by Steri-Oss (Nobel Biocare, USA) and gold screws and titanium screws by AVANA (Osstem Implant, Korea) were selected for this study. The surface, crest, and root of the abutment screws were observed by FE-SEM. A micro-diamond needle was also prepared for the scratch test. Each abutment screw was fixed, and a scratch on the surface of the head region was made at constant load and thereafter the fine trace was observed with FE-SEM. The surface of GoldTite was smoother than that of other screws and it also had abundant ductility and malleability compared with titanium and gold screws. The scratch tests also revealed that teflon particles were exfoliated easily in the screw coated with teflon. The titanium screw had rough surface and low ductility. The clinical use of gold-plated screws is recommended as a means of preventing screw loosening.     

Note: Interpolation for evaluation of a two-dimensional spatial profile of plasma densities at low gas pressures

An interpolation algorithm for the evaluation of the spatial profile of plasma densities in a cylindrical reactor was developed for low gas pressures. The algorithm is based on a collisionless two-dimensional fluid model. Contrary to the collisional case, i.e., diffusion fluid model, the fitting algorithm depends on the aspect ratio of the cylindrical reactor. The spatial density profile of the collisionless fitting algorithm is presented in two-dimensional images and compared with the results of the diffusion fluid model.     

Image mosaicking for polyhedral scene and in particular singly visible surfaces

Image mosaic construction is about stitching together a number of images about the same scene to construct a single image with a larger field of view. The majority of the previous work was rooted at the use of a single image-to-image mapping termed planar homography for representing the imaged scene. However, the mapping is applicable only to cases where the imaged scene is either a single planar surface, or very distant from the cameras, or imaged under a pure rotation of the camera, and that greatly limits the range of applications of the mosaicking methods. This paper presents a novel mosaicking solution for scenes that are polyhedral (thus consisting of multiple surfaces) and that are pictured possibly in closed range of the camera. The solution has two major advantages. First, it requires only a few correspondences over the entire scene, not correspondences over every surface patch in it to work. Second, it conquers a seemingly impossible task—warping image data of surfaces that are visible in only one of the input images, which we refer to as the singly visible surfaces, to another viewpoint to constitute the mosaic there. We also provide a detail analysis of what determines whether a singly visible surface could be mosaicked or not. Experimental results on real image data are presented to illustrate the performance of the method.     

Supervisory control using variable lookahead policies

This paper deals with the efficient on-line calculation of supervisory controls for discrete event systems (DES's) in the framework of limited lookahead control policies (or LLPs) that we introduced in previous papers. In the LLP scheme, the control action after a given trace of events has been executed is calculated on-line on the basis of anN-step ahead projection of the behavior of the DES. To compute these controls, one must calculate after the execution of each event the supremal controllable sublanguage of a finite language with respect to another finite larger language. In our previous work, we showed how the required supremal controllable sublanguage calculation can be performed by using a backward dynamic programming algorithm over the nodes of the tree representation of these two languages. In this paper, we pursue the same approach for the calculation of LLP controls, but instead we adopt a forward calculation procedure over theN-level tree of interest. This forward procedure improves upon previous work by avoiding the explicit consideration of all the nodes of theN-level tree, while still permitting tree-to-tree recursiveness as enabled events are executed by the system. The forward search ends whenever a control decision can be made unambiguously or whenever the boundary of theN-level tree is reached, whichever comes first. This motivates the name Variable Lookahead Policy (or VLP) for this implementation of the LLP supervisory control scheme. This paper presents a general VLP algorithm and studies the properties of several special cases of it. The paper also discusses the implementation of the VLP algorithms and presents computational results regarding the application of these algorithms to a time-varying DES.     

Metal Ions versus Protons: Tracking of Charge-Carrier Insertion into a Cathode Oxide in Aqueous Rechargeable Batteries

Protons in aqueous electrolytes can perform as an additional type of charge carrier for insertion/extraction in addition to the primary carrier cations in aqueous rechargeable batteries. Despite many diverse claims regarding the effect of protons, mutually conflicting experimental results and their interpretations without direct evidence have been reported over the last decade. Systematic examinations and analyses are thus imperative to clarify the conditions of proton insertion in aqueous rechargeable batteries. Utilizing V₂O₅ as a model cathode and beaker-type cells with a sufficient amount of ZnSO₄ aqueous electrolytes in this work, it is demonstrated that protons are inserted into the cathode prior to Zn-ions in low-pH conditions (pH ≤ 3.0). In stark contrast, the influence of protons on the discharge voltage and capacity is insignificant, when either the pH becomes higher (pH ≥ 4.0) or the electrolyte volume is considerably low in coin-type cells. Similar behavior of pH-dependent proton insertion is also verified in Na–, Mg–, and Al-ion electrolytes. Providing a resolution to the controversy regarding proton insertion, the present study emphasizes that the influence of protons substantially varies depending on the pH and relative volume of electrolytes in aqueous batteries.