Growth and fatigue properties of pulsed laser deposited Pb1 − x La x (Zr y Ti z )O3 thin films with [0 0 /] preferred orientation

Growth of [0 0 /] preferentially oriented Pb_{1 - x} La _x (Zr _y Ti _z ) O₃ (PLZT) thin films was carried out by using targets of either tetragonal or rhombohedral structure. The tetragonal films grew in a similar manner to the rhombohedral films. Both the substrate temperature (500 or 550 C) and oxygen pressure (0.1 mbar, 10 Pa) required stringent control in order to deposit [0 0 /]-textured PLZT thin films. The ferroelectric and fatigue properties were examined.The films deposited on YBa₂Cu₃O_{7 - x} and CeO₂ coated silicon (YBCO/CeO₂/Si) substrates possessed substantially lower remanent polarization than those grown on YBCO coated SrTiO₃ (YBCO/STO) substrates; this is ascribed to inferior crystallinity of the PLZT/YBCO/CeO₂/Si films. The remanent polarization of tetragonal PLZT films was degraded insignificantly up to 10⁸ polarization switching cycles, whereas that of rhombohedral PLZT films was already reduced to 80% of the initial value after 10⁸ cycles. Low endurance of rhombohedral films was ascribed to the periodic stress induced when the inclined spontaneous polarization vector (P = [111]) switched. On the other hand, high endurance of tetragonal films was explained by the fact that the spontaneous polarization vector (P = [001]) lies along the film's normal such that switch cycles cause no lateral stress.     

Transmembrane passage of cytokine-inducing bacterial products across new and reprocessed polysulfone dialyzers

The widespread use of bicarbonate dialysate and reprocessed high-efficiency and "high-flux" dialyzers has raised concerns about the increased risk of reverse-transfer of dialysate contaminants into the blood compartment. To evaluate this concern, the reverse-transfer of bacterial products from contaminated bicarbonate dialysate into the blood compartment was compared during in vitro dialysis with new or reprocessed high-flux polysulfone dialyzers. In vitro dialysis was carried out at 37 degrees C by use of a counter-current recirculating loop dialysis circuit with either new high-flux polysulfone dialyzers or dialyzers reprocessed once or 20 times with formaldehyde (0.75%) and bleach (< 1%) with an automated system. Heparinized whole blood from healthy volunteers was circulated through the blood compartment, and bicarbonate dialysate was circulated in the dialysate compartment. The dialysate was challenged sequentially by 1:1000 and 1:100 dilutions of a sterile Pseudomonas aeruginosa culture supernatant (bacterial challenge). Samples were drawn from the blood and dialysate compartments 1 h after each challenge. Peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMC) were harvested by Ficoll-Hypaque separation from whole blood in the blood compartment and a 5 x 10(6) PBMC/mL cell suspension was prepared. Likewise, dialysate samples (0.5 mL) were added to 0.5 mL suspension of 5 x 10(6) PBMC/mL drawn at baseline. All PBMC suspensions were incubated upright in a humidified atmosphere at 37 degrees C with 5% CO2 for 24 h, and total interleukin-1 alpha (IL-1 alpha) and tumor necrosis factor-alpha (TNF alpha) cytokine production (cell-associated and secreted) was measured by radioimmunoassay. Eight experiments were performed for each arm of the study with the same donor for each arm. One hour after contaminating the dialysate with a 1:1000 dilution of the bacterial challenge, IL-1 alpha production by PBMC harvested from the blood compartment was 160 +/- 0, 171 +/- 11, and 270 +/- 35 pg, respectively, for new dialyzers, dialyzers reprocessed once, and dialyzers reprocessed 20 times (P = 0.004). One hour after challenging the dialysate with 1:100 dilution, IL-1 alpha production by PBMC harvested from the blood compartment was 188 +/- 20, 228 +/- 35, and 427 +/- 67 pg, respectively, for new dialyzers, dialyzers reprocessed once, and dialyzers reprocessed 20 times (P = 0.006). IL-1 alpha production by PBMC from dialyzers reprocessed 20 times was significantly greater than both new and dialyzers reprocessed once. However, there were no significant differences between new dialyzers and dialyzers reprocessed once. Similarly, after the 1:1000 challenge, TNF alpha production by PBMC harvested from the blood compartment was 160 +/- 0, 160 +/- 0, and 213 +/- 22 pg, respectively, for new dialyzers, dialyzers reprocessed once, and dialyzers reprocessed 20 times (P = 0.008). After the 1:100 challenge, TNF alpha production was 168 +/- 8, 188 +/- 20, and 225 +/- 32 pg, respectively, for new dialyzers, dialyzers reprocessed once, and dialyzers reprocessed 20 times (P = 0.20). These results demonstrate that reprocessing of high-flux polysulfone dialyzers with bleach increases the risk of reverse-transfer of bacterial products from contaminated dialysate, and this risk appears to increase with the number of reuses. Consequently, units that reprocess membranes with bleach and have suboptimal water quality might subject their patients to a higher risk of cytokine-related morbidity.     

Electric contacts inspection using machine vision

Machine vision is an excellent tool for inspecting a variety of industrial items such as textiles, printed circuit boards, electric components, labels, integrated circuits (IC), machine tools and fruits. In this paper, we propose machine vision-based inspection system for electric contact (EC), which are popularly used in switches, breakers and relays, and are important components in the electrical industry. The proposed system consists of three sub-systems, which inspect the top, side, and bottom surfaces of electric contact for different types of defects respectively. The system acquires the digital image of three views and classifies the surface defects including cracks, breaks, and scratches. For each view, this study develops different image pre-processing and feature extraction methods to enhance and detect the surface defects. The proposed system was implemented and verified using 229 samples collected from the EC production lines. Experimental results show the proposed system is effective and efficient in identifying EC defects.     

Effects of stray magnetic forces on position error signals during a long seeking-and-settling process

This paper is to study how stray magnetic forces encountered in a long seeking process affect position errors of a hard disk drive after it finishes the seek and settles. The study consists of three parts: analysis of stray magnetic forces, numerical modeling, and analysis of numerical results. In the analysis of stray magnetic forces, we lump the stray magnetic forces into three components D1, D2 and D4. Specifically, D1 is a pair of stray magnetic forces in the plane of the voice coil. The two forces act on the two equal legs of the voice coil. In addition, the two forces point to and away from the pivot center, respectively. D2 is a pair of stray magnetic forces out of the plane of the voice coil. The two forces are equal in magnitudes but opposite in directions. The two force components also act on the two equal legs of the voice coil. D4 is identical to D2, except that the two force components in D4 act in the same direction. In the numerical study, we adopt a numerical model that includes a spinning spindle motor, a spinning disk pack with multiple disks, a stationary base plate with a top cover, and a slewing head-stack assembly. Moreover, multiple bearings are present in the model to connect the multiple components. In particular, fluid-dynamic bearings connect the rotating spindle and disk pack with the base plate, pivot bearings connect the base plate with the head-stack assembly, and air bearings connect the spinning disk pack with head sliders located at the tip of the slewing head-stack assembly. Also, the numerical model assumes that the head-stack assembly seeks according to a user-specified seeking profile. Numerical simulations show two major conclusions. First, stray magnetic force component D1 does not lead to significant position errors when the head-stack assembly settles. Stray magnetic force components D2 and D4, however, can affect the position errors by significantly exciting torsion and bending modes of the head-stack assembly. Second, a flex cable can significantly increase position errors below 1 kHz during settling.     

Chattering reduction of sliding mode control by low‐pass filtering the control signal

The conventional approach to reducing control signal chattering in sliding mode control is to use the boundary layer design. However, when there is high‐level measurement noise, the boundary layer design becomes ineffective in chattering reduction. This paper, therefore, proposes a new design for chattering reduction by low‐pass filtering the control signal. The new design is non‐trivial since it requires estimation of the sliding variable via a disturbance estimator. The new sliding mode control has the same performance as the boundary layer design in noise‐free environments, and outperforms the boundary layer design in noisy environments. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley and Sons Asia Pte Ltd and Chinese Automatic Control Society     

随机采样的2DPCA人脸识别方法

在2DPCA的基础上提出一种随机采样的2DPCA人脸识别方法--RRS-2DPCA.同传统通过对特征或投影向量进行采样的方法不同的是,RRS-2DPCA(Row Random Sampling 2DPCA)将随机采样建立于图像的行向量集中,然后在行向量子集中执行2DPCA.在ORL、Yale和AR人脸数据集上进行实验,结果表明RRS-2DPCA不仅具很好的识别性能和运算效率,而且对参数具有很大的稳定性.另外针对2DPCA和RRS-2DPCA对光线、遮挡等不鲁棒问题,进一步提出了局部区域随机采样的2DPCA方法LRRS-2DPCA(Local Row Random Sampling 2DPCA),将RRS-2DPCA执行在人脸图像的局部区域中.实验结果表明LRRS-2DPCA不仅具有较好的鲁棒性更大大的提高了RRS-2DPCA的识别性能.     

Consideration factors and adoption of type,tabulation and framework for creating e-portfolios

The purpose of this research is to analyze the content of e-portfolios created by students in order to understand their tabulation and ways of displaying content. The analytic result shows that the number of outcome portfolios created by students is more than that of process portfolios. The five types of e-portfolio tabulation, in order of those most commonly created by students, are combination-based, content item-based, work-based, course unit-based, and time-based. The combination-based type incorporates the advantages of other tabulation types, while the content item-based and work-based types are better for clearly classifying data and step-by-step organization of it. Future research may further explore factors related to students’ decision of tabulation type, the difficulties they face in the process, and their mentality as they adopt a portfolio type.     

Boosted multi-task learning

In this paper we propose a novel algorithm for multi-task learning with boosted decision trees. We learn several different learning tasks with a joint model, explicitly addressing their commonalities through shared parameters and their differences with task-specific ones. This enables implicit data sharing and regularization. Our algorithm is derived using the relationship between ? ₁-regularization and boosting. We evaluate our learning method on web-search ranking data sets from several countries. Here, multi-task learning is particularly helpful as data sets from different countries vary largely in size because of the cost of editorial judgments. Further, the proposed method obtains state-of-the-art results on a publicly available multi-task dataset. Our experiments validate that learning various tasks jointly can lead to significant improvements in performance with surprising reliability.     

A personalized learning content adaptation mechanism to meet diverse user needs in mobile learning environments

With the heterogeneous proliferation of mobile devices, the delivery of learning materials on such devices becomes subject to more and more requirements. Personalized learning content adaptation, therefore, becomes increasingly important to meet the diverse needs imposed by devices, users, usage contexts, and infrastructure. Historical server logs offer a wealth of information on hardware capabilities, learners?? preferences, and network conditions, which can be utilized to respond to a new user request with the personalized learning content created from a previous similar request. In this paper, we propose a Personalized Learning Content Adaptation Mechanism (PLCAM), which applies data mining techniques, including clustering and decision tree approaches, to efficiently manage a large number of historical learners?? requests. The proposed method will intelligently and directly deliver proper personalized learning content with higher fidelity from the Sharable Content Object Reference Model (SCORM)-compliant Learning Object Repository (LOR) by means of the proposed adaptation decision and content synthesis processes. Furthermore, the experimental results indicate that it is efficient and is expected to prove beneficial to learners.     

New Compliance-Mechanism Design for Small Companion Robots

The compliance mechanisms used on robotic arms can be classified into two major categories: mechanical and electronic. The ideal characteristics of a compliance mechanism include small volume, simple mechanical structure, low cost, large complaint range, and high precision and accuracy under displacement control. Most mechanical compliance mechanisms are able to meet the first three conditions but have a small compliant range and low precision and accuracy under displacement control. The electronic compliance mechanism is hardly limited in the degree of deformation and comes with a higher precision and accuracy under the displacement control, but its sensors are expensive and the system is difficult to control. To combine the advantages of both types, this research aims to develop a new design of compliance mechanism in which a small-scale torque-limiting mechanism with a self-locking feature is installed between the actuator and the arm structure to minimize the volume while providing an ample torque limit. When the robotic arm is overloaded under an external force, a slide will occur inside the compliance mechanism so that the robotic arm will move along the direction of the external force to avoid damage. The robotic arm will automatically return to its original position after the external force is removed. The new compliance mechanism not only exceeds most of the current mechanical designs in the range of compliance but also does not affect the precision and accuracy of the displacement control. Furthermore, the new compliance mechanism does not require any sensors, which will benefit small robotic arms.