Strength and Fracture Toughness of Isostatically Hot-Pressed Composites of Al2O3 and Y2O3-Partially-Stabilized ZrO2

Composites of Al₂O₃ and Y₂O₃ partially-stabilized ZrO₂ were isostatically hot-pressed using submicrometer powders as the starting material. The addition of Al₂O₃ resulted in a large increase in bending strength. The average bending strength for a composite containing 20 wt% Al₂O₃ was 2400 MPa, and its fracture toughness was 17 MN·w^−3/2     

Contribution of high p34cdc2 kinase activity to premature chromosome condensation of injected somatic cell nuclei in rat oocytes

The present study was undertaken to clarify the relationship between the p34cdc2 kinase activity of in vitro-aged or enucleated rat oocytes and the premature chromosome condensation (PCC) of microinjected cumulus cell nuclei. Wistar rat oocytes were placed in vitro up to 120 min after the animal was killed. The p34cdc2 kinase activity of the oocytes decreased in a time-dependent manner. The incidence of PCC was higher when nuclear injection into intact oocytes was completed in 15-45 min rather than 46-120 min. When rat oocytes were enucleated for subsequent nuclear injection, the p34cdc2 kinase activity transiently increased soon after enucleation but drastically decreased after 30 min. Removal of the cytoplasm instead of the meta-phase-plate did not affect the p34cdc2 kinase activity even after 60 min. PCC occurred in intact and cytoplasm-removed oocytes but not in enucleated oocytes. In contrast, oocytes from BDF1 mice exhibited a p34cdc2 kinase level twice that of rat oocytes and supported PCC despite enucleation. The p34cdc2 kinase level of intact rat oocytes was reduced to the equivalent level of aged (120 min) or enucleated (+60 min) oocytes by a 45 min treatment with roscovitine, an inhibitor of p34cdc2 kinase. None of the roscovitine-treated oocytes supported PCC while half of the control oocytes did. When rat oocytes were treated with MG132, a proteasome inhibitor, delayed inactivation of the p34cdc2 kinase was observed in the MG132-treated oocytes. A significantly higher proportion of the MG132-treated oocytes supported PCC when compared with the control oocytes. Moreover, a higher proportion of MG132-treated and enucleated oocytes carried two pseudo-pronuclei after cumulus cell injection and developed to the two-cell stage when compared with the enucleated oocytes at the telophase-II stage. These results suggest that the decreased level of p34cdc2 kinase activity in aged or enucleated rat oocytes is responsible for their inability to support PCC of microinjected donor cell nuclei and that inhibition of p34cdc2 kinase inactivation by chemicals such as MG132 is in part effective for rat oocytes to promote PCC and further development.     

HEXHOOP: Modular Templates for Converting a Hex-Dominant Mesh to an ALL-Hex Mesh

This paper presents a new mesh conversion template called HEXHOOP, which fully automates a con-version from a hex-dominant mesh to an all-hex mesh. A HEXHOOP template subdivides a hex/prism/pyramid element into a set of smaller hex elements while main-taining the topological conformity with neighboring elements. A HEXHOOP template is constructed by assembling sub-templates, cores and caps. A dicing template for a hex and a prism is constructed by choosing the appropriate combination of a core and caps. A template that dices a pyramid without losing conformity to the adjacent element is derived from a HEXHOOP template. Some experimental results show that the HEXHOOP templates successfully convert a hex-dominant mesh into an all-hex mesh. ID="A1" Correspondence and offprint requests to: K. Shimada, Department of Mechanical Engineering, Carnegie Mellon University, 5000 Forbes Avenue, Pittsburgh, PA 15213–3890, USA. E-mail: shimada@cmu.edu     

Preparation and phase transition of Gd4(Al1 − xGax)2O9 solid solutions

The solid-solution compounds of Gd₄(Al_{1 – x} Ga _x )₂O₉ (x = 0.0–1.0) were prepared at 1600°C for 5 h in air. The unit cell volume of the compounds increased from 0.853 to 0.878 nm³ with x. Phase transitions having a temperature hysteresis were observed from 1100° to 1400°C by calorimetry and dilatometry. The transition temperature increased with x. The volume of the high-temperature phase was 0.5% smaller than that of the low-temperature phase at the transition temperature. The volume changes were independent of x. The hysteresis width observed by the dilatometry was about 300°C for the Gd₄Al₂O₉ ceramics (grain size: about 1 m) and decreased to 50°C for the Gd₄(Al_0.2Ga_0.8)₂O₉ ceramics (grain size: over 10 m). Gd₄Ga₂O₉ was unstable at low temperature and decomposed to Gd₃GaO₆ and Gd₃Ga₅O₁₂ during the thermal analyses.     

Radiation-induced polymerization of ethylene in pilot plant. III. Heavy-phase recycling process

Radiation-induced polymerization of ethylene using aqueous tert-butyl alcohol as medium was carried out in a large-scale pilot plant with a 50-liter central source-type reactor at a pressure of 105 to 395 kg/cm², temperature of 30° to 80°C, mean dose rate of 4.5 × 10⁴ to 1.9 × 10⁵ rads/hr, ethylene feed rate of 5.5 to 23.5 kg/hr, and medium feed rate of 21 to 102 l./hr. The space–time yield and molecular weight of the polymer were in the range of 4.7 to 16.8 g/l.-hr and 1.3 × 10⁴ to 8.9 × 10⁴, respectively. The space–time yield and molecular weight increased with mean residence time at 30°C, whereas at 80°C they became almost independent of the time. The space–time yield increased with pressure and dose rate, slightly decreased with temperature, and was maximum at ethylene molar fraction of 0.5. The polymer molecular weight increased with pressure and ethylene molar fraction, and decreased with dose rate and temperature. The total amount of deposited polymer on the reactor wall, source case wall, and scraping blades was usually less than 1 kg, which was negligibly small for the analysis of polymerization. Continuous discharge of the polymer slurry and production of fine-powder polyethylene were successfully carried out. In the central source-type reactor, a dose rate of 1.9 × 10⁵ rads/hr was obtained with a ⁶⁰Co source of ca. 12 kCi.     

Thermoelectric properties of Bi and Cu co-doped Ca3Co2O6single crystals

Single crystals of Bi and Cu-doped Ca₃Co₂O₆were synthesized in a molten K₂CO₃flux. Using an obtained single crystal of (Ca_0.985(5)Bi_0.015(5))₃(Co_0.990(3)Cu_0.010(3))₂O₆elongated to the c-axis direction of the crystal structure, the electric resistivity (ρ) and Seebeck coefficient (S) were measured from room temperature to over 1000 K in air. The single crystal showed p-type semiconducting behavior with ρ values of 1.8 Ω cm at 303 K and 0.017 Ω cm at 1000 K. The S values were +254 μ VK^{− 1} at 325 K, +360 μ VK^{− 1} at 420 K, and +214 μ VK^{− 1} at 1000 K. The power factor (S ² ρ ^{− 1}) increased with an increase of temperature and attained 2.70 × 10^{− 4} Wm^{− 1}K^{− 2} at 1000 K.     

Acquisition of optimal attribute subset through genetic algorithm using GNP‐based class association rule mining

Attribute selection is a technique to prune less relevant information and discover high‐quality knowledge. It is especially useful for the classification of a large database, because the preprocessing of data increases the possibility that predictor attributes given to the mining algorithm become more relevant to the class attribute. In this paper, a method to acquire the optimal attribute subset for the genetic network programming (GNP) based class association rule mining has been proposed, and this attribute selection process using genetic algorithm (GA) leads to a higher accuracy for classification. Class association rule mining through GNP is conducted with a small subset of data rather than the original large number of attributes; thus simple but important rules are obtained for classification while the local optimal problem is avoided. Simulation results with educational data show that the classification accuracy is largely improved from 52.73 to 74.54%, when classification is made using the optimal attribute subset. © 2014 Institute of Electrical Engineers of Japan. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Inc.     

InGaAs angled-grating distributed Bragg reflector lasers integrated with grating outcoupler for collimation

An angled-grating distributed Bragg reflector (DBR) laser integrated with a grating outcoupler (GO) is proposed and demonstrated. It consists of an angled broad-area gain stripe surrounded by angled DBR (/spl alpha/-DBR) gratings parallel to the gain stripe and two DBR gratings for feedback at the stripe ends, and a GO for emitting a collimated output beam. Due to distributed Bragg reflection in the /spl alpha/-DBR gratings, filamentation can be suppressed. Single-mode lasing up to 69 mW peak power was obtained under pulse condition. A collimated output beam with divergence angles, close to the diffraction limit, was obtained. These results confirm the effectiveness of the /spl alpha/-DBR gratings.     

Preparation of Titanium Nitride Films from Amide Precursors Synthesized by Electrolysis

A TiN precursor solution was synthesized by galvanostatic electrolysis of Ti metal and isopropylamine at a current density of 50 mA·cm⁻² at room temperature. TiN films were prepared by dip-coating of the precursor solution on a Si wafer, followed by two-stage heat treatment at 400°C and a fixed temperature of 800–1200°C in flowing N₂, N₂/NH₃, or NH₃ gas. The TiN films were characterized by XRD, chemical analysis, XPS, and electrical resistivity measurements. The TiN films were composed of uniform grains 20 to 200 nm in size with thicknesses ranging from 300 to 400 nm at temperatures of 800–1200°C. The effect of the heat treatment atmosphere (N₂ and NH₃) on the impurity content, crystallinity, particle size, and electrical resistivity is discussed.