A mechanism for transgranular stress-corrosion cracking

A model is proposed to explain transgranular-stress corrosion cracking (T-SCC) in face-centered cubic (fcc) materials. Crack propagation is shown to be anisotropic, in that growth near {110} < 001> is discontinuous due to crack arrest by dislocation blunting whereas growth away from this growth orientation is continuous. For the former case, renucleation of arrested cracks involves active dissolution of shear bands at the crack tip, which changes the stress state at Lomer-Cottrell locks, causing them to fail by cleavage. Once the crack is nucleated, its instantaneous macroscopic crack-growth velocity is considered to be comprised of multiple nucleation of microcracks with intervening arrests. This microcracking results from the interaction of the stress fields from neighboring cracks which are forming simultaneously, the crack-opening constraint due to ligaments which act as “bridges” behind the crack front, and the localized dissolution at the microcrack tip which affectsK _IC and leads to the “cobblestone” appearance. Experimental evidence and theoretical considerations are presented to support the model. The system studied was Cu-25 at. pct Au in 0.6 M NaCl solution at potentials between 300 and 400 mV (sce), which precludes hydrogen embrittlement. This article is based on a presentation made in the symposium “Quasi-Brittle Fracture” presented during the TMS fall meeting, Cincinnati, OH, October 21–24, 1991, under the auspices of the TMS Mechanical Metallurgy Committee and the ASM/MSD Flow and Fracture Committee.     

纳米α-FeOOH颗粒的形态和结构

以硫酸法钛白的副产物绿矾为原料，采用滴加法制备纳米铁黄（α－FeOOH）颗粒。研究了反应体系的pH值、反应温度、通氧速率、搅拌速率和添加剂等对铁黄颗粒形态结构的影响，采用XRD、TEM等分析手段对颗粒进行表征。结果表明，调节体系pH值能控制铁黄晶型结构和色相；改变通氧速率、搅拌速率、添加剂种类以及反应温度等可以调节纳米α－FeOOH的大小和分散性。     

吐丝圈径对大规格高碳盘条组织性能的影响

计算与分析了斯太尔摩冷线上盘条的吐丝圈径、搭接密度及"佳灵"装置横向布风曲线之间的关系,研究了吐丝圈径的大小对大规格82B盘条组织和性能的影响,确定了大规格82B盘条最小吐丝圈径应为980mm.     

Replacement of beef fat in Frankfurters by interesterified palm,cottonseed and olive oils

Three interesterified vegetable oils (IVOs) prepared from palm, cottonseed, and olive oil, respectively, have been studied for application to Frankfurters. Beef fat (10%) was replaced by one of the IVOs at 20, 60 or 100%. Fatty acid composition of the lipid fraction in the Frankfurters and saturated/unsaturated ratios were established for all batches. We found that total or partial replacement of beef fat by IVOs did not lead to significant changes in appearance, colour, texture, flavour or sensory score. We conclude that IVOs may be successfully applied as beef fat substitutes in Frankfurters.     

The organisational learning effects of management accounting information under advanced manufacturing technology

This study empirically examined the organisational learning effects of the nonfinancial performance information provided by management accounting information systems (MAISs) under advanced manufacturing technology (AMT). In this study, a target costing system and the frequent and quick reporting of information were considered the facilitators of learning. First, we examined the relationships between AMT level and the amount of nonfinancial performance information produced by MAISs. The empirical results showed that there are significant positive relationships between the level of AMT and nonfinancial performance information. With a systems approach, we also proved the impact of the relationships among AMT levels, nonfinancial performance information and learning facilitators on the organisational performance of a firm. The results of our research suggest that under a high level of AMT, for the provision of information to result in an increase of performance through organisational learning, a target costing system must be introduced and a large amount of information should be provided frequently and quickly. The results of this study also showed that although AMT level may be low, fairly well-arranged facilitators and a moderately large amount of information may be necessary for the improvement of performance. In conclusion, effective organisational learning depends on the provision of relevant information as well as efficient learning support mechanisms.     

Automatic conversion from lexical words to prosodic words for mandarin text-to-speech system

In real speech, not like lexical words (LWs), prosodic words (PWs) are basic rhythmic units. The naturalness of a Text-to-Speech (TTS) system is directly influenced by the segmentation of the PWs. Most of the PWs are the combination of several LWs. In this paper, three Lexical Combination Models are proposed to combine LWs into PWs, including a Directed Acyclic Graph Model, a Segmentation Model and a Markov Model (MM). To cope with the situation where some long LWs should be segmented into two or more PWs, a Lexical Split Model (LSM) is applied to the long LWs. Experimental results prove that relatively constant results with various training data can be obtained from a MM. The Transformation-Based Error Driven Learning (TBED) algorithm, for its high performance of individual property, is applied in combination with the MM to improve the precision of PW segmentation. Experiments show that among the three proposed models, the MM combined with TBED and LSM, leads to the best performance, in which a precision of 93.00% and a recall of 93.23% are achieved. The perception test indicates that by using PWs as the lowest prosodic units a speech sounds more natural and acceptable than by using LWs. This paper is supported by NSFC Project (60503071); 973 Natural Basic Research Program of China (2004CB318102); Postdoctor Science Foundation of P. R. China (20070420275).     

Critical Configurations for 1-View in Projections from ℙ<Superscript>k</Superscript> → ℙ<Superscript>2</Superscript>

In this paper we describe, from a theoretical point of view, critical configurations for the projective reconstruction of a set of points, for a single view, i.e. for calibration of a camera, in the case of projections from ℙ^k to ℙ² for k ≥ 4. We give first a general result describing these critical loci in ℙ^k, which, if irreducible, are algebraic varieties of dimension k−2 and degree 3. If k=4 they can be either a smooth ruled surface or a cone and if k = 5 they can be a smooth three dimensional variety, ruled in planes, or a cone. If k≥ 6, the variety is always a cone, the vertex of which has dimension at least k − 6. The reducible cases are studied in Appendix A. These results are then applied to determine explicitly the critical loci for the projections from ℙ^k which arise from the dynamic scenes in ℙ³ considered in [13]. Marina Bertolini is currently Associate Professor of Geometry at the Department of Mathematics at the Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Her main field of research is Complex Projective Algebraic Geometry, with particular interest for the classification of projective varieties and for the geometry of Grassmann varieties. On these topics M. Bertolini has published more than twenty reviewed papers on national and international journals. She has been for some years now interested also in applications of Algebraic Geometry to Computer Vision problems. Cristina Turrini is Associate Professor of Geometry at the Department of Mathematics of Università degli Studi di Milano, Italy. Her main research interest is Complex Projective Algebraic Geometry: subvarieties of Grassmannians, special varieties, automorphisms, classification. In the last two years she has started to work on applications of Algebraic Geometry to problems of Computer Vision. She is author or co-author of about thirty reviewed papers. She is also involved in popularization of Mathematics, and on this subject she is co-editor of some books.