Further investigation on the thermal decomposition of aluminium dialkylamides

Both dimethylamino- (I) and diethylamino-alane dimers (II), [(R₂N)₂AlH]₂ (I, R=Me; II, R=Et) decompose above 800° C under a few hundred Pa of hydrogen to dark greyish, hard (Vickers hardness larger than 2000), oxidation-resistive and oxidation-protective deposits which are tentatively identified as Al₅C₃N. The deposits are stable to moisture and diluted hydrochloric acid in contrast to those obtained below 800° C, but they easily dissolve in sodium hydroxide solution at room temperature evolving a gas. The deposits on a stainless steel substrate adhere strongly to the substrate and remain so on rapid heating and cooling. The electrical resistivity of the deposits is in the range 10² to 10⁴ cm.     

High rate nitrogen removal by the CANON process at ambient temperature

Completely autotrophic nitrogen removal over nitrite (CANON) is a cost-effective nitrogen removal process. Implementation of the CANON process relies on the cooperation of ammonium-oxidizing and Anammox bacteria, as well as the inhibition of nitrite-oxidizing bacteria. Strict limitations on dissolved oxygen (DO) concentration in the reactor, and the addition of sufficient inorganic carbon in the influent, were adopted as the main operational strategies. The reactor was fed with synthetic inorganic wastewater composed mainly of NH(4)(+)-N, and operated for 106 days. Stable nitrogen removal rates (NRR) of around 1.4 kg N m(-3) d(-1) were obtained at ambient temperature. Morphological characteristics and analysis of bacterial community confirmed the formation of functional outer aerobic and inner anaerobic granular sludge, providing evidence of stable nitrogen removal.     

MOSAIC for multiple-reward environments

Reinforcement learning (RL) can provide a basic framework for autonomous robots to learn to control and maximize future cumulative rewards in complex environments. To achieve high performance, RL controllers must consider the complex external dynamics for movements and task (reward function) and optimize control commands. For example, a robot playing tennis and squash needs to cope with the different dynamics of a tennis or squash racket and such dynamic environmental factors as the wind. In addition, this robot has to tailor its tactics simultaneously under the rules of either game. This double complexity of the external dynamics and reward function sometimes becomes more complex when both the multiple dynamics and multiple reward functions switch implicitly, as in the situation of a real (multi-agent) game of tennis where one player cannot observe the intention of her opponents or her partner. The robot must consider its opponent's and its partner's unobservable behavioral goals (reward function). In this article, we address how an RL agent should be designed to handle such double complexity of dynamics and reward. We have previously proposed modular selection and identification for control (MOSAIC) to cope with nonstationary dynamics where appropriate controllers are selected and learned among many candidates based on the error of its paired dynamics predictor: the forward model. Here we extend this framework for RL and propose MOSAIC-MR architecture. It resembles MOSAIC in spirit and selects and learns an appropriate RL controller based on the RL controller's TD error using the errors of the dynamics (the forward model) and the reward predictors. Furthermore, unlike other MOSAIC variants for RL, RL controllers are not a priori paired with the fixed predictors of dynamics and rewards. The simulation results demonstrate that MOSAIC-MR outperforms other counterparts because of this flexible association ability among RL controllers, forward models, and reward predictors.     

Resolving permutation ambiguity in correlation-based blind image separation

We address the problem of permutation ambiguity in blind separation of multiple mixtures of multiple images (resulting, for instance, from multiple reflections through a thick grass plate or through two overlapping glass plates) with unknown mixing coefficients. In this paper, first we devise a generalized multiple correlation measure between one gray image and a set of multiple gray images and derive a decorrelation-based blind image separation algorithm. However, many blind image separation methods, including this algorithm, suffer from a permutation ambiguity problem that the success of the separation depends upon the selection of permutations corresponding to the orders of the update operations. To solve the problem, we improve the first algorithm above by decorrelating the mixtures while searching for the appropriate update permutation using a pruning technique. We show its effectiveness through experiments with artificially mixed images and real images.     

Growth and structure of heteroepitaxial thin films of homologous compounds RAO3(MO)m by reactive solid-phase epitaxy: Applicability to a variety of materials and epitaxial template layers

A reactive solid-phase epitaxy (R-SPE) method combines deposition of a thick amorphous or polycrystalline layer with a desired chemical composition and post-deposition solid-phase epitaxial growth. The solid-phase epitaxial growth is invoked by thermal annealing with an assistance of a sacrificial layer working as an epitaxial template. Thereby it enables us to grow high-quality epitaxial films of complex oxides whose epitaxial films are not grown by conventional high-temperature growth techniques. It was reported that 2-nm-thick ZnO layers worked as template for growing InGaO₃(ZnO)_m (m = integer) epitaxial films. The present study extended the R-SPE technique to growth of various complex oxides with chemical compositions of RAO₃(MO)_m and to use of various epitaxial template layers. We found that mono oxide epitaxial layers such as In₂O₃ and Ga₂O₃ work as template layers as well. Alternatively, a ZnO epitaxial layer is also applicable to ZnO-free compounds. The films obtained were grown heteroepitaxially on YSZ(111) and single-crystalline when the fabrication conditions are optimized.     

Safety aspects of the combined HTTR/steam reforming complex for nuclear hyrogen production

The High-Temperature Engineering Test Reactor (HTTR) in Oarai, Japan, has the potential to demonstrate the production of hydrogen by steam reforming and using nuclear process heat as primary energy input. Particular safety aspects for such a combined nuclear/chemical complex have been investigated such as fire and explosion hazard at presence of flammable gases (LNG, H₂, CO) near the reactor building. A methane vapor cloud in the open atmosphere or partially obstructed areas is highly unlikely to detonate and damage the reactor building. Theoretical assessments and experimental studies significant to the HTTR-steam reforming system, include the spreading and combustion behavior of cryogens and flammable gases providing the basis for a comprehensive safety analysis of the nuclear/chemical facility.     

Domain characteristics and chemical bonds of lithium niobate

Domain characteristics such as domain shape, domain switching, and etching rate at Z-surfaces of lithium niobate (LN) single crystals are comprehensively studied from the chemical bonding viewpoint. The present work shows that the domain characteristics are closely correlated to anisotropic bonding behaviors of constituent ions, which may be regarded as a microscopic reflection of detailed conditions of the chemical bonding geometry and strength of Li⁺ and Nb⁵⁺ cations in the LN crystallographic frame.     

LaBGeO5 single crystals in glass and second-harmonic generation

Flower-shaped crystals with diameters of 100–200 μm consisting of LaBGeO₅ (LBGO) single crystals similar to petals were observed in the interior of transparent LBGO surface-crystallized glasses. Each flower-shaped crystal was radially grown from the surface of the included bubbles. A more intense second-harmonic generation was observed from the LBGO crystallized glasses with the flower-shaped LBGO single crystals compared to the samples without such crystals based on the Maker fringe technique and second-harmonic (SH) generation microscopy. The SH intensity for the flower-shaped LBGO single crystals monotonically decreased with increasing temperature up to 350 °C, less than the Curie temperature reported so far (530 °C). It is considered that the internal compressive stress induced by the difference in the thermal expansion between the LBGO single crystal and the corresponding glass affect the ferroelectric property of the flower-shaped LBGO single crystals in glass.     

Full Band Monte Carlo Study for Two-Dimensional Hole Transport in Strained Si p-MOSFETs

Transport properties of the two-dimensional hole gas in inversion layer of strained Si/SiGe p-MOSFETs are investigated using the full-band Monte Carlo simulator based on the nonlocal pseudopotential calculation. The hole mobility is significantly enhanced by the strain in the case of Ge content of ≥20%. Moreover, we also present the high-field transport characteristics of 2D holes. In contrast to the low-field mobility, the hole saturation velocity does not significantly enhanced by the strain.     

Software system of the Earth Simulator

The Earth Simulator (ES) is a large scale, distributed memory, parallel computer system consisting of 640 processor nodes (PN) with shared memory vector multi-processors (64GFLOPS/PN, 5120 APs in total, AP: arithmetic processor). All the nodes are connected via a high speed (16GB/s) single-stage crossbar network called the Interconnection Network (IN).

The operating system for the Earth Simulator is based on SUPER-UX, the UNIX operating system for the SX series scientific supercomputers. In order to realize high-performance parallel processing on the highly parallel machine, the operating system is enhanced for scalability.

The Earth Simulator system is managed as a two-level cluster system called the Super Cluster System. In the Super Cluster System, the Earth Simulator system is divided into 40 clusters (16 PNs/cluster). A single controller called Super Cluster Control Station (SCCS) manages all these clusters. This management system provides Single System Image (SSI) operation, management and job control for the large scale multi-node system.

The Job Scheduler (JS) and NQS running on the SCCS control all jobs of the system. They schedule the resources such as processing nodes and files which have not usually been treated as scheduling resources. This allows efficient scheduling of large scale jobs.

The MPI library (MPI/ES) and the HPF compiler (HPF/ES) are available for distributed parallel programming on the Earth Simulator. MPI/ES conforms to the MPI 2.0 standard and is optimized to exploit the hardware features. HPF/ES conforms to the core part of HPF 2.0 and supports some features of the HPF 2.0 approved extensions and HPF/JA 1.0 extensions. HPF/ES suitably handles the 3-level parallelism of the Earth Simulator system, that is, vectorization, shared-memory parallelization, and distributed-memory parallelization. Moreover, HPF/ES extends the language to easily handle irregular problems.