A 0.9 V 92 dB Double-Sampled Switched-RC Delta-Sigma Audio ADC

A 0.9 V third-order double-sampled delta-sigma audio ADC is presented. A new method using a combination of a switched-RC technique and a floating switched-capacitor double-sampling configuration enabled low-voltage operation without clock boosting or bootstrapping. A three-level quantizer with simple dynamic element matching was used to improve linearity. The prototype IC implemented in a 0.13 CMOS process achieves 92 dB DR, 91 dB SNR and 89 dB SNDR in a 24 kHz audio signal bandwidth, while consuming 1.5 mW from a 0.9 V supply. The prototype operates from 0.65 V to 1.5 V supply with minimal performance degradation.     

Adaptive user modelling in intelligent telephone and email assistants

With the burgeoning complexity and capabilities of modern information appliances and services, user modelling is becoming an increasingly important research area. Simple user profiles already personalise many software products and consumer goods such as digital TV recorders and mobile phones. A user model should be easy to initialise, and it must adapt in the light of interaction with the user. In many cases, a large amount of training data is needed to generate a user model, and adaptation is equivalent to retraining the system. This paper briefly outlines the user modelling problem and work done at BTexact on an intelligent personal assistant (IPA) which incorporates a user profile. We go on to describe FILUM, a more flexible method of user modelling, and show its application to the telephone assistant and email assistant components of the IPA, with tests to illustrate its usefulness.     

Cooling and Solidification of Melted Drops in an Immiscible Cooling Medium

The cooling and solidification of melted drops during their movement in an immiscible cooling medium is widely employed for granulation in the chemical industry, and a study of these processes to provides a basis for the design of the granulation tower height and the temperature of the cooling medium is reported. A physical model of the cooling and solidification of the drop is established and the numerical calculation is performed. The influences of the key factors in the solidification, i.e., Bi number, drop diameter, temperature of the cooling medium, etc. are presented. The cooling and solidification during wax granulation in a water‐cooling tower and during urea granulation in an air‐cooling tower (spraying tower) are described in detail. Characteristics of the solidification and temperature distribution within the particle at different times are shown. The model and calculations can be used for structure design of the granulation tower and optimization of the operation parameters.     

Facile modifications of polyimide via chloromethylation: II. Synthesis and characterization of thermocurable transparent polyimide having methylene acrylate side groups

From chloromethylated polyimide, a useful starting material for modification of aromatic polyimides, a thermocurable transparent polyimide having acrylate side groups was prepared. In the presence of 1,8‐diazabicyclo[5,4,0]undec‐7‐ene, chloromethylated polyimide was esterified with acrylic acid to synthesize poly(imide methylene acrylate). The polymer was soluble in organic solvent, which makes it possible to prepare a planar film by spin coating. The polymer film became insoluble after thermal treatment at 230 °C for 30 min. Optical transparency of the film at 400 nm (for 1 µm thickness) was higher than 98 % and not affected by further heating at 230 °C for 250 min. Adhesion properties measured by the ASTM D3359‐B method ranged from 4B to 5B. Preliminary results of planarization testing showed a high degree of planarization (DOP) value (>0.53). These properties demonstrate that poly(imide methylene acrylate) could be utilized as a thermocurable transparent material in fabricating display devices such as TFT‐LCD. Copyright © 2004 Society of Chemical Industry     

Properties of nanoporous organosilicate hybrid thin films with a bimodal pore size distribution

Low dielectric poly[methylsilsesquioxane‐ran‐trifluoropropylsilsesquioxane‐ran‐(2,4,6,8‐tetramethyl‐2,4,6,8‐tetraethylenecyclotetrasiloxane)silsesquioxane]s {P[M‐ran‐TFP‐ran‐(TCS)]SSQs} having various compositions were synthesized using trifluoropropyl trimethoxysilane, methyl trimethoxysilane and 2,4,6,8‐tetramethyl‐2,4,6,8‐tetra(trimethoxysilylethyl)cyclotetrasiloxane. The chemical composition of the polymers and the content of SiOH end‐groups were controlled by adjusting the reaction conditions, and they were characterized by ¹H‐NMR. The thermally decomposable trifluoropropyl groups on the P[M‐ran‐TFP‐ran‐(TCS)]SSQ backbone and heptakis(2,3,6‐tri‐O‐methyl)‐β‐cyclodextrin (CD) were employed as pore generators. The dielectric constants of the porous CD/P[M‐ran‐TFP‐ran‐(TCS)]SSQ films were in the range 2.0–2.7 (at 100 kHz) depending on the concentration of the porogens, and showed no change over 4 days under aqueous conditions. The pore size of the films showed a bimodal distribution, with diameters of ca 0.5–1.0 nm for those originating from the trifluoropropyl groups and 1.7 nm from the CD. The elastic modulus and hardness of the 30 vol% CD‐blended film with a dielectric constant of 2.26 were 2.40 and 0.38 GPa, respectively, as determined by a nanoindenter. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Slow eroding biodegradable multiblock poloxamer copolymers

Biodegradable multiblock poloxamers (BMPs) with gel duration of 8 h to several weeks were prepared by varying their molecular weights from 4000 to 40 000 g mol^?1. The molecular weight of the BMP was controlled by changing the poloxamer to coupling agent ratio. Assuming a micelle packing model of the BMP gel, as in the case of a poloxamer gel, the micelle properties and critical gel concentration of BMPs were investigated on the basis of the scaling concept. The findings suggest that the control of molecular weight by hydrolyzable groups can be a facile approach to optimize the gel properties for biomedical applications. Copyright © 2005 Society of Chemical Industry     

Evaluation of ProKappa

ProKappa is an expert system tool kit developed by IntelliCorp in C using X-Windows for graphical interface. The SUN 3 or 4 version costs $9995/£7000 and $2595/£1800 for the interactive C environment.
This review covers ProKappa version 1.1, installed on a colour SUN SPARC Station 1 with the minimum recommended values of 12 Mb of memory and 30 Mb of swap space.
IntelliCorp can be contacted in the USA at 1975 El Camino Real West, Mountain View, CA 94040-2216 (+1 (415) 965-5500) and in the UK at 10 Jewry Street, Winchester, Hampshire SO23 8RZ (+44 (0)962 735348).     

Integration framework for intelligent manufacturing processes

In this article, we describe a new approach to applying distributed artificial intelligence techniques to manufacturing processes. The construction of intelligent systems is one of the most important techniques among artificial intelligence research. Our goal is to develop an integrated intelligent system for real time manufacturing processes. An integrated intelligent system is a large knowledge integration environment that consists of several symbolic reasoning systems (expert systems) and numerical computation packages. These software programs are controlled by a meta-system which manages the selection, operation and communication of these programs. A meta-system can be implemented in different language environments and applied to many disciplines. This new architecture can serve as a universal configuration to develop high performance intelligent systems for many complicated industrial applications in real world domains.To whom all correspondence should be addressed.     

Study of a BGO calorimeter using electron and hadron beams from 1 to 50 GeV

A calorimeter of 25 bismuth germanate (BGO) crystals equipped with silicon photodiode readout has been tested at the CERN SPS in the energy range 1–50 GeV. The response for electrons has been shown to be linear in this energy range and the rms resolution obtained ( ) is approximately 1%, for E > 4 GeV. The electron/pion separation was found to be better than 1:500 in the energy range 1–20 GeV. Data on lateral and longitudinal shower development were compared with the results of a Monte Carlo simulation using the SLAC-EGS program and found to be in good agreement.