Towards high accuracy calibration of electron backscatter diffraction systems

For precise orientation and strain measurements, advanced Electron Backscatter Diffraction (EBSD) techniques require both accurate calibration and reproducible measurement of the system geometry. In many cases the pattern centre (PC) needs to be determined to sub-pixel accuracy. The mechanical insertion/retraction, through the Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM) chamber wall, of the electron sensitive part of modern EBSD detectors also causes alignment and positioning problems and requires frequent monitoring of the PC. Optical alignment and lens distortion issues within the scintillator, lens and charge-coupled device (CCD) camera combination of an EBSD detector need accurate measurement for each individual EBSD system.This paper highlights and quantifies these issues and demonstrates the determination of the pattern centre using a novel shadow-casting technique with a precision of ∼10 μm or ∼1/3 CCD pixel.     

Catastrophic chaos theory: predicting recovery of health or death

Recently, we revealed a standard pattern of a macroscopic molecular network for controlling morphogenetic processes such as the development of organs, including blast, mesoderm, heart, and hands during about sevenfold cell divisions and a standard bio-chemical clock like the circadian one (Naitoh in Artif Life Robot 13, 2008; Japan J Ind Appl Math 28(1), 2011; J Phys Conf Ser 344, 2012; Artif Life Robot 17, 2012) A network model derived logically based on experimental observations is described by a nonlinear differential equation for predicting time evolutions of six macroscopic molecular groups: three gene groups and three enzyme groups, which include promoting and suppressing factors. Here, the macroscopic model extended for also describing aging processes shows various types of cycles and reveals the physical condition for determining whether or not living beings such as humans can survive after getting ill. It is stressed that, after becoming ill, living systems with overly fast generation of information molecules such as various genes end in death, whereas relatively fast production of enzymes leads to recovery. This may also explain an essential feature underlying carcinogenic processes.     

Microscopic image restoration based on tensor factorization of rotated patches

In microscopic image processing for analyzing biological objects, structural characters of objects such as symmetry and orientation can be used as a prior knowledge to improve the results. In this study, we incorporated filamentous local structures of neurons into a statistical model of image patches and then devised an image processing method based on tensor factorization with image patch rotation. Tensor factorization enabled us to incorporate correlation structure between neighboring pixels, and patch rotation helped us obtain image bases that well reproduce filamentous structures of neurons. We applied the proposed model to a microscopic image and found significant improvement in image restoration performance over existing methods, even with smaller number of bases.     

Transflective IPS‐LCD with improved reflective contrast ratio

Abstract— In order to improve the reflective contrast ratio of transflective IPS‐LCDs, a novel pixel design for a normally white reflective IPS has been proposed. In this design, the large‐inter‐electrode‐spacing layout using a novel driving method and a double‐layered electrode have effectively reduced the light leakage. By applying these two technologies, a transflective IPS‐LCD has been successfully demonstrated with a high contrast ratio (15:1) in the reflective mode and a wide‐viewing‐angle characteristic in the transmissive mode.     

Motion analysis of a tripod parallel mechanism

A tripod parallel mechanism consists of three links of fixed length and a rigid platform, and these are connected by revolute joints. The platform can achieve sixdegrees-of-freedom (6-DOF) motion by the coordinated movement of the bottom ends of the three links on a horizontal plane. This mechanism has advantages over the more common six extendible parallel manipulators. It has a much larger work space and a simple structure. In this article, we show that the vector analysis for this tripod parallel mechanism and the derivation of the positions of the three bottom ends of the links in an arbitrary attitude of platform can be found by inverse kinematics and the conditions of geometrical constraint. Then, by a numerical simulation, the trajectories of the bottom ends of the three links are shown.     

PLC在医疗机器人控制系统中的应用

将PLC应用于医疗机器人的控制系统.介绍了PLC的选型,并根据工作要求给出了相应的硬件和软件设计,软件设计中着重介绍了直线步进电机升降控制和点动控制程序.现场实验表明,该机器人运行良好,安全可靠,满足系统的要求.     

Freestanding hierarchical porous carbon film derived from hybrid nanocellulose for high-power supercapacitors

Nanocellulose is a sustainable and eco-friendly nanomaterial derived from renewable biomass.In this study,we utilized the structural advantages of two types of nanocellulose and fabricated freestanding carbonized hybrid nanocellulose films as electrode materials for supercapacitors.The long cellulose nanofibrils (CNFs) formed a macroporous framework,and the short cellulose nanocrystals were assembled around the CNF framework and generated micro/mesopores.This two-level hierarchical porous structure was successfully preserved during carbonization because of a thin atomic layer deposited (ALD) Al2O3 conformal coating,which effectively prevented the aggregation of nanocellulose.These carbonized,partially graphitized nanocellulose fibers were interconnected,forming an integrated and highly conductive network with a large specific surface area of 1,244 m2·g-1.The two-level hierarchical porous structure facilitated fast ion transport in the film.When tested as an electrode material with a high mass loading of 4 mg·cm-2 for supercapacitors,the hierarchical porous carbon film derived from hybrid nanocellulose exhibited a specific capacitance of 170 F.g-1and extraordinary performance at high current densities.Even at a very high current of 50 A·g-1,it retained 65％ of its original specific capacitance,which makes it a promising electrode material for high-power applications.     

Mechanical property enhancement of aligned multi-walled carbon nanotube sheets and composites through press-drawing process

A solid-state drawing and winding process was done to create thin aligned carbon nanotube (CNT) sheets from CNT arrays. However, waviness and poor packing of CNTs in the sheets are two main weaknesses restricting their reinforcing efficiency in composites. This report proposes a simple press-drawing technique to reduce wavy CNTs and to enhance dense packing of CNTs in the sheets. Non-pressed and pressed CNT/epoxy composites were developed using prepreg processing with a vacuum-assisted system. Effects of pressing on the mechanical properties of the aligned CNT sheets and CNT/epoxy composites were examined. Pressing with distributed loads of 147, 221, and 294 N/m showed a substantial increase in the tensile strength and the elastic modulus of the aligned CNT sheets and their composites. The CNT sheets under a press load of 221 N/m exhibited the best mechanical properties found in this study. With a press load of 221 N/m, the pressed CNT sheet and its composite, respectively, enhanced the tensile strength by 139.1 and 141.9%, and the elastic modulus by 489 and 77.6% when compared with non-pressed ones. The pressed CNT/epoxy composites achieved high tensile strength (526.2 MPa) and elastic modulus (100.2 GPa). Results show that press-drawing is an important step to produce superior CNT sheets for development of high-performance CNT composites.     

Resolving force indeterminacy in contact dynamics using compatibility conditions

Contact dynamics (CD) is a powerful method to solve the dynamics of large systems of colliding rigid bodies. CD can be computationally more efficient than classical penalty-based discrete element methods (DEM) for simulating contact between stiff materials such as rock, glass, or engineering metals. However, by idealizing bodies as perfectly rigid, contact forces computed by CD can be non-unique due to indeterminacy in the contact network, which is a common occurence in dense granular flows. We propose a frictionless CD method that is designed to identify only the unique set of contact forces that would be predicted by a soft particle method, such as DEM, in the limit of large stiffness. The method involves applying an elastic compatibility condition to the contact forces, which maintains no-penetration constraints but filters out force distributions that could not have arisen from stiff elastic contacts. The method can be used as a post-processing step that could be integrated into existing CD codes with minimal effort. We demonstrate its efficacy in a variety of indeterminate problems, including some involving multiple materials, non-spherical shapes, and nonlinear contact constitutive laws.