Supermedia-enhanced Internet-based telerobotics

This paper introduces new planning and control methods for supermedia-enhanced real-time telerobotic operations via the Internet. Supermedia is the collection of video, audio, haptic information, temperature, and other sensory feedback. However, when the communication medium used, such as the Internet, introduces random communication time delay, several challenges and difficulties arise. Most importantly, random communication delay causes instability, loss of transparency, and desynchronization in real-time closed-loop telerobotic systems. Due to the complexity and diversity of such systems, the first challenge is to develop a general and efficient modeling and analysis tool. This paper proposes the use of Petri net modeling to capture the concurrency and complexity of Internet-based teleoperation. Combined with the event-based planning and control method, it also provides an efficient analysis and design tool to study the stability, transparency, and synchronization of such systems. In addition, the concepts of event transparency and event synchronization are introduced and analyzed. This modeling and control method has been applied to the design of several supermedia-enhanced Internet-based telerobotic systems, including the bilateral control of mobile robots and mobile manipulators. These systems have been experimentally implemented in three sites test bed consisting of robotic laboratories in the USA, Hong Kong, and Japan. The experimental results have verified the theoretical development and further demonstrated the stability, event transparency, and event synchronization of the systems.     

TEM Studies of High Temperature Corrosion Behaviour of TiAl Intermetallics with Surface Modifications

The oxidation/sulphidation behaviour of a Ti‐46.7Al‐1.9W‐0.5Si alloy with a TiAl₃ diffusion coating was studied in an environment of H₂/H₂S/H₂O at 850^oC. The kinetic results demonstrate that the TiAl₃ coating significantly increased the high temperature corrosion resistance of Ti‐46.7Al‐1.9W‐0.5Si. The SEM, EDX, XRD and TEM analysis reveals that the formation of an Al₂O₃ scale on the surface of the TiAl₃‐coated sample was responsible for the enhancement of the corroison resistance. The Ti‐46.7Al‐1.9W‐0.5Si alloy was also modified by Nb ion implantation. The Nb ion implanted and as received sampels were subjected to cyclic oxidation in an open air at 800^oC. The Nb ion implantation not only increased the oxidation resistance but also substantially improved the adhesion of scale to the substrate.     

Kinetic Characteristics of Amino Acid Salt Crystallization in Methanol‐Water System

Nucleation and growth mechanisms and kinetics of crystals of an amino acid salt were investigated in a methanol‐water system by measuring and evaluating the induction time as a function of the supersaturation ratio and temperature in batch salting out crystallization experiments. Discrimination between the possible crystallization mechanisms, and estimation of the kinetic parameters were carried out using nonlinear parameter identification. The results concerning the growth mechanism obtained were checked additionally by measuring the induction time as a function of number density of seed crystals.     

Estimating crystallinity in high density polyethylene fibers using online Raman spectroscopy

Online Raman spectra, obtained at different points along the spin line during pilot‐scale nonisothermal melt spinning of high density polyethylene (HDPE) fibers, are presented for the first time. The fraction of the crystalline phase corresponding to each spectrum was determined from the normalized integrated intensity of the 1418 cm^?1 Raman band. It is well established that this band represents the orthorhombic crystalline phase in polyethylene. The estimates of percent crystallinity obtained from decomposition of the Raman spectrum were compared with the percent crystallinity from differential scanning calorimetry (DSC) measurements. It is concluded that online Raman spectroscopy can be successfully used to monitor the development of crystallinity in HDPE fibers as a function of distance from the spinneret. © 2003 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 88: 545–549, 2003     

Synthesis and characterization of conducting copolymers from aniline and o‐anisidine in HCl solutions

Conducting poly(aniline‐co‐o‐anisidine) (PAS) films with different ratios of aniline units in the polymer chain were prepared by oxidative polymerization of different molar ratios of aniline and o‐anisidine in 1 M HCl using cyclic voltammetry. Due to the much higher reactivity of o‐anisidine, the structure and properties of PASs were found to be dominated by the o‐anisidine units. The polymerization of poly‐o‐anisidine and PASs followed zero‐order kinetics with respect to formation of the polymer (film thickness) and the autocatalytic polymerization of aniline was completely inhibited. In contrast to polyaniline, a decrease in the polymerization temperature was found to increase the amount of copolymer formed and its redox charge. The presence of aniline units in PASs led to a pronounced increase in the molecular weight and conductivity, and a decrease in the solubility in organic solvents. Repetitive charging/discharging cycles showed that PASs resist degradation more than polyaniline. Copyright © 2003 Society of Chemical Industry     

Perceptually-weighted evaluation criteria for segmentation masks in video sequences

In order to complement subjective evaluation of the quality of segmentation masks, this paper introduces a procedure for automatically assessing this quality. Algorithmically computed figures of merit are proposed. Assuming the existence of a perfect reference mask (ground truth), generated manually or with a reliable procedure over a test set, these figures of merit take into account visually desirable properties of a segmentation mask in order to provide the user with metrics that best quantify the spatial and temporal accuracy of the segmentation masks. For the sake of easy interpretation, results are presented on a peaked signal-to-noise ratio-like logarithmic scale.     

Mining predecessor–successor rules from DAG data

Data mining extracts implicit, previously unknown, and potentially useful information from databases. Many approaches have been proposed to extract information, and one of the most important ones is finding association rules. Although a large amount of research has been devoted to this subject, none of it finds association rules from directed acyclic graph (DAG) data. Without such a mining method, the hidden knowledge, if any, cannot be discovered from the databases storing DAG data such as family genealogy profiles, product structures, XML documents, task precedence relations, and course structures. In this article, we define a new kind of association rule in DAG databases called the predecessor–successor rule, where a node x is a predecessor of another node y if we can find a path in DAG where x appears before y. The predecessor–successor rules enable us to observe how the characteristics of the predecessors influence the successors. An approach containing four stages is proposed to discover the predecessor–successor rules. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Int J Int Syst 21: 621–637, 2006.     

Comparison of total and faecal coliforms as faecal indicator in eutrophicated surface water.

The aim of this study was to evaluate the use of total coliforms (TC) and faecal coliforms (FC) using a membrane filtration method for precise monitoring of faecal pollution in Korean surface water. The samples were collected in Korea from both main rivers and their tributaries. Presumptive TC * FC were enumerated. The ratios of presumptive FC to TC were not constant, but varied widely, and TC were difficult to enumerate because of overgrowth by background colonies. For FC this was not the case. Seven hundred and three purified strains of presumptive TC * FC and their background colonies were biotyped using API 20E. Among 272 presumptive TC, non-faecal related species, Aeromonas hydrophila dominated (34.6%) and E. coli accounted for only 5.1%. In contrast, E. coli made up 89% of the 209 presumptive FC. Furthermore, of 164 background colonies on Endo Agar LES, 54.9% was A. hydrophila, while background colonies on m-FC Agar were few (58 strains), and despite their atypical colony appearance, most of them were biotyped as enteric bacteria. These results reveal that the detection of FC rather than TC using m-FC Agar is more appropriate for faecal pollution monitoring in eutrophicated surface water located in a temperate region.     

Corrected Sum Rule, Generalized Virial Identity and Elementary Excitation Spectrum of Bose–Einstein Condensates at Any Trapped Atom Number

Using a corrected sum rule and a generalized virial identity, we study the analytical expression for entire modes of the collective elementary excitation spectrum in a trapped Bose–Einstein condensate at any atom number. Explicit analytical formulas for the spectrum are obtained for the harmonic traps with both spherical symmetry and axial symmetry using the gaussian approximation for the N-body ground-state wave function of the condensate. These formulas give the simple dependence of all energy levels on the atom numbers, their interaction strength and trap geometry parameters.     

Kommunikationsoberfläche Membran‐ Vorbild für moderne Nanoanalytik

A central event in the life of a cellular system is the interaction between the exterior and the interior compartments. Biochemical signals arrive at the cellular surface, bind to their membrane bound receptor followed by a conformational change triggering the release of an internal chemical or electrical signal.This basic principle is followed by all our perceptive abilities like sense of smell or taste, but also by different signal transduction pathways involved in nerve conductivity, vision, sense of touch or hearing. To follow and mimic this principle of parallel registration is one of the aims of modern nanobiotechnology. If we are able to specifically biofunctionalize small arrays of a solid surface, which could be an electrode or a semiconductor, this approach will enable us to build up devices called “biochips” or “biosensors” that allow the determination of bioactive molecules with high specificity at lowest concentrations. Potential pharmacological active substrates might be screened as well as new receptors may be determined. Applications in genomics as well as proteomics are realistic. The major prerequisite for such a broad spectrum of applications is the fabrication of receptive surfaces. Biomolecules have to be surface‐adsorbed in a highly reproducible, oriented and well organised fashion, a task which in biology is taken by the cellular membranes as external or internal receptive surfaces. The physical principles like hydrogen bonds, electrostatic or hydrophobic interactions that lead to such an organized surface are well known. To synthesize molecular building blocks and to position them onto an otherwise unspecific surface is one of the challenges of nanobiotechnology combining biological knowledge and chemical skills with biophysical techniques that allow to handle or analyze even single molecules.