April in Paris: signs of artificial life along the Seine

What if every public space and surface were transformed into an interactive experience - capturing our movements, gestures, sounds and actions and using these to produce new sounds, images, text and actions? Bus stops could come alive and talk back, advertisements could look back at you and talk to you and public park robotic devices could play games with you. Will public places eventually become our social barometer as well as director? Will billboards display the populace's discourse? The author look at some special streets in France where the city is literally alive with art and explores what it might mean for us to live in a world of artistic interactivity.     

Force criteria of the state of limiting equilibrium of a cracked plate under biaxial loading

We deduce the theoretical formula taking into account the influence of biaxial loading of a plate weakened by a crack on the stress intensity factor K _I. This enables us to compute the characteristic of crack resistance K _c according to the known boundary forces. __________ Translated from Fizyko-Khimichna Mekhanika Materialiv, Vol. 43, No. 6, pp. 14–16, November–December, 2007.     

Midplane-symmetry breaking in the flow between two counter-rotating disks

This paper considers the axisymmetric steady flow driven by exact counter rotation of two co-axial disks of finite radius. At the edges of the rotating disks one of three conditions is (typically) imposed: (i) zero velocity, corresponding to a stationary, impermeable, cylindrical shroud (ii) zero normal velocity and zero tangential fluid traction, corresponding to a (confined) free surface and (iii) an edge constraint that is consistent with a similarity solution of von Kármán form. The similarity solution is valid in an infinite geometry and possesses a pitchfork bifurcation that breaks the midplane symmetry at a critical Reynolds number. In this paper, similar bifurcations of the global (finite-domain) flow are sought and comparisons are made between the resulting bifurcation structure and that found for the similarity solution. The aim is to assess the validity of the nonlinear similarity solutions in finite domains and to explore the sensitivity of the solution structure to edge conditions that are implicitly neglected when assuming a self-similar flow. It is found that, whilst the symmetric similarity solution can be quantitatively useful for a range of boundary conditions, the bifurcated structure of the finite-domain flow is rather different for each boundary condition and bears little resemblance to the self-similar flow.     

PECVD of diamond-like carbon (a-C:H) from the decomposition of methane in a high-density inductively coupled discharge

The paper describes an experimental investigation of the diamond-like carbon deposition process from methane precursor with an innovative high-density inductively coupled plasma source. It appears that a high plasma density allows a fast growth of diamond-like carbon coatings exhibiting a high hardness. In contrast to what is usually found in the literature, it seems that the ion species participate significantly to the growth of the carbon film when exposed to a high ion flux.     

Low-temperature pyroelectric properties of Li<Subscript>2</Subscript>SO<Subscript>4</Subscript>

The pyroelectric properties of lithium sulfate have been studied theoretically on the hypothesis of a pseudosymmetry of the structure of its polar phase. Analytical expressions are proposed for the temperature dependences of its pyroelectric polarization and pyroelectric coefficient at low temperatures and near the polymorphic transformation. The pyroelectric and piezoelectric coefficients of a polar crystal are shown to be in direct proportion.     

Termites live in a material world: exploration of their ability to differentiate between food sources.

Drywood termites are able to assess wood size using vibratory signals, although the exact mechanism behind this assessment ability is not known. Important vibratory characteristics such as the modal frequencies of a wooden block depend on its geometry and boundary conditions; however, they are also dependent on the material characteristics of the block, such as mass, density and internal damping. We report here on choice experiments that tested the ability of the drywood termite Cryptotermes secundus to assess wooden block size using a solid wooden block paired with a composite block, the latter made of either wood and aluminium or wood and rubber. Each composite block was constructed to match mass or low-frequency vibratory modes (i.e. fundamental frequency) of the solid wooden block. The termites always chose the blocks with more wood; they moved to the solid wooden blocks usually within a day and then tunnelled further into the solid wooden block by the end of the experiment. Termites offered composite blocks of wood and rubber matched for mass were the slowest to show a preference for the solid wooden block and this preference was the least definitive of any treatment, which indicated that mass and/or damping may play a role in food assessment. This result clearly shows that the termites were not fooled by composite blocks matched for mass or frequency, which implies that they probably employ more than a single simple measure in their food assessment strategy. This implies a degree of sophistication in their ability to assess their environment hitherto unknown. The potential importance of alternative features in the vibrational signals is discussed.     

Optimum power-saving method for power MOSFET width of DC/DC converters

An optimum power metal-oxide-semiconductor field effect transistor (MOSFET) width technique is proposed for enhancing the efficiency characteristics of switching DC-DC converters. By implementing a one-cycle buck DC-DC converter, it is demonstrated that the dynamic power MOSFET width controlling technique has a much improved power reduction whether the load current is light or heavy. The maximum efficiency of the buck converter is ~92% with a 3% efficiency improvement for the heavy load condition. The efficiency is further improved by ~16% for the light load condition as a result of the power reduction from the large power MOSFET transistors. Also proposed is a new error-correction loop circuit to enable a better load regulation than that of previous designs. Compared with the adaptive gate driver voltage technique, the optimum power MOSFET width can achieve a significant improvement in power saving. It is also superior to the low-voltage-swing MOSFET gate drive technique for switching DC-DC converters     

Low loss guided wave propagation in a left-handed microstrip structure using dispersive split ring?rod combination metamaterial

Split ring-rod combination metamaterial is used as a substrate material in a microstrip guided wave structure to determine what the effect is of a material with potentially excessive dispersion or loss or both. A Green's function method readily incorporates the metamaterial permittivity and permeability tensor characteristics. Ab initio calculations are performed to obtain the dispersion diagrams of several complex propagation constant modes of the structure. Analytical analysis is done for the design and interpretation of the results, which demonstrate remarkable potential for realistic use in high frequency electronics, while showing modes with extremely low loss bands.     

Netted radar sensitivity and ambiguity

The performance of netted radar is evaluated in terms of a netted version of the radar equation and the ambiguity function. A software simulation has been developed to allow assessment of netted radar sensitivity and ambiguity properties in both two-and three-dimensional space. Simulation results demonstrate that coherent netted radar sensitivity depends not only on the radar parameters, but also on the numbers, locations and specification of transmit and receive nodes. The netted radar ambiguity function is affected by a combination of many factors. In addition to those that determine the form of the monostatic ambiguity function, the locations of transmit and receive nodes as well as the position and velocity of the target all are shown to play an important role in evaluating system performance. As a result of these dependencies, it is shown that there is severe degradation of range and Doppler resolution when a target crosses sufficiently close to a transmit-receive baseline.