Distribution of Nitrogen in the Cationized Potato Starch Granule

The distribution of a cationic reagent in the potato starch granule derivatized by reaction with 1,2-epoxypropyl trimethylammonium chloride was studied by ESCA spectroscopy. It was possible to detect and quantify the contents of nitrogen derived from proteinous material and nitrogen derived from the cationizing reagent on the surfaces of starch preparations. The results show that the differences in nitrogen distribution between cationic starches prepared by different (dry or wet) methods are negligible. According to the result it seems that the cationization takes place more easily in the amorphous material of the inner parts of the granule than in the crystalline amylopectin layer of the surface.     

A micropower analog-digital heart rate detector chip

A micropower detector chip integrated with CMOS technology has been developed for a hand-held heart rate monitoring instrument mainly used by professional athletes and others who exercise seriously to increase their endurance and overall performance. The chip uses linear bandpass filtering and threshold detection and is implemented with analog switched-capacitor (SC) and digital techniques. The bandpass filter transfer function is derived from the spectral contents of noisy ECG signals. The layout was designed in full custom style in order to minimize the silicon area. The chip achieves a detection rate of 90% with a simulated ECG signal corrupted with Gaussian noise (signal-to-noise ratio = 5) in the heart rate range 60-200 1/min with a total current consumption of less than 30µA from a 3-V supply. The detection rate is 96.9% for a noisy signal obtained from the MIT-BIH arrhythmia database.     

Development of testing procedure for ceramic disc filters

Small-scale laboratory tests for sizing and designing disc filters are typically performed by using leaf test equipment. Although the basic tests are fairly simple and quick, the accuracy and repeatability of the results may be poor due to various reasons. In addition to errors caused by variations in the structure of the equipment, also the skills and experience of the person performing the tests is of great importance. This paper introduces an experimental study carried out for defining the most important sources of errors in these kinds of laboratory tests and for estimating their influence on the final test results. The results obtained in this study were utilized for designing an improved version of the test equipment and also for creating a standard procedure for performing the tests. The results acquired with the small-scale laboratory tests were in good agreement with the performance results obtained from full-scale ceramic disc filters operating in industrial processes.     

Strength retention of drawn self-reinforced polyglycolide rods and fixation properties of the distal femoral osteotomies with these rods. An experimental study on rats

Drawn self-reinforced polyglycolide (SR-PGA) rods, Ø 2 mm and 26 mm long, were implanted in the dorsal subcutaneus tissue of 16 rats. Osteotomies of the distal femur were fixed with SR-PGA rods (2 mm by 15 mm) in another 38 rats. The follow-up times varied from one week to one year. After sacrifice, three-point bending and shear tests were performed for subcutaneously placed rods. Radiological, histological, histomorphometrical, microradiographic, and oxytetracycline-fluorescence studies of osteotomized and intact control femora were also performed. At three weeks the flexural strength of the rods was 50% of the initial value, and the flexural modulus was 46% of the initial value. Five osteotomy specimens had to be excluded due to dislocation or non-union. One of the 33 evaluated osteotomy specimens showed signs of postoperative infection. Thirty-two osteotomies healed uneventfully. No gross signs of inflammatory or foreign-body reaction were observed. The amount of osteoid surface and active osteoid formation surface reached their highest value in the histomorphometrical analysis at 24 weeks. The present investigation demonstrated that the mechanical strength and fixation properties of the drawn SR-PGA rods are suitable for fixation of cancellous bone osteotomies in rats. The present article is the first report on the successful application of drawn SR-PGA rods for fixation of cancellous bone osteotomies.     

Neural network modelling of word production in Finnish: coding semantic and non-semantic features

The objective of our research is to computationally model word production and its disorders by means of artificial neural networks. In the current study we develop and analyze an algorithm that generates a distributed semantic coding from a given semantic tree-structure classification of words. With the algorithm it is possible to generate semantic representations that are compact and easy to modify. This renders the coding method suitable for our multilayer perceptron-based neural network model of word production. The model is shown to be able to account for a variety of performance patterns observed in four Finnish aphasia patients suffering from word-finding difficulties.     

Improving R&D processes by an ISO 9001-based Quality Management System

This paper presents practical experience in planning, implementing, and adopting a Quality Management System (QMS) for embedded systems development at VTT Electronics. The main objective for the development of the QMS was to make it practical for real-life embedded systems research and development (R&D) projects. We have applied the ISO 9001 standard and ISO 9000–3 guidelines in building the quality system. From our personnel's point of view, the most important parts of the system have been document skeletons and plan templates that were made accessible to everyone. One of the major quality improvement resulting from the use of the QMS has been the enhanced predictability of R&D projects. This makes it possible for the organization to concentrate on essential matters. From our clients' point of view, we have clearly improved the quality of our R&D services in terms of the customer satisfaction index. Based on QMS auditing activities, we have been able to evaluate and tune our R&D procedures in a systematic manner. We have decided to use Total Quality Management and Quality Award frameworks in the further development of the QMS. Customer service and human resources management are examples of important areas for further quality improvement.     

Atomic layer deposition of transition metals

Atomic layer deposition (ALD) is a process for depositing highly uniform and conformal thin films by alternating exposures of a surface to vapours of two chemical reactants. ALD processes have been successfully demonstrated for many metal compounds, but for only very few pure metals. Here we demonstrate processes for the ALD of transition metals including copper, cobalt, iron and nickel. Homoleptic N,N'-dialkylacetamidinato metal compounds and molecular hydrogen gas were used as the reactants. Their surface reactions were found to be complementary and self-limiting, thus providing highly uniform thicknesses and conformal coating of long, narrow holes. We propose that these ALD layers grow by a hydrogenation mechanism that should also operate during the ALD of many other metals. The use of water vapour in place of hydrogen gas gives highly uniform, conformal films of metal oxides, including lanthanum oxide. These processes should permit the improved production of many devices for which the ALD process has previously not been applicable.     

Overlapping correlation clustering

We introduce a new approach for finding overlapping clusters given pairwise similarities of objects. In particular, we relax the problem of correlation clustering by allowing an object to be assigned to more than one cluster. At the core of our approach is an optimization problem in which each data point is mapped to a small set of labels, representing membership in different clusters. The objective is to find a mapping so that the given similarities between objects agree as much as possible with similarities taken over their label sets. The number of labels can vary across objects. To define a similarity between label sets, we consider two measures: (i) a 0–1 function indicating whether the two label sets have non-zero intersection and (ii) the Jaccard coefficient between the two label sets. The algorithm we propose is an iterative local-search method. The definitions of label set similarity give rise to two non-trivial optimization problems, which, for the measures of set-intersection and Jaccard, we solve using a greedy strategy and non-negative least squares, respectively. We also develop a distributed version of our algorithm based on the BSP model and implement it using a Pregel framework. Our algorithm uses as input pairwise similarities of objects and can thus be applied when clustering structured objects for which feature vectors are not available. As a proof of concept, we apply our algorithms on three different and complex application domains: trajectories, amino-acid sequences, and textual documents.     

AUTOMATED OBJECT LOCATOR IN A FOREST FORWARDER

A double approach method for versatile detection of similar objects from the real environment is introduced. By searching both the shape and textural data from the video image, it is possible to solve a generalized location problem without a loss in overall reliability in near–real time. A forest forwarder is used as a proof-of-concept application for the technique.