Development of gas electron multiplier foils with a laser etching technique

Fine-pitch gas electron multiplier (GEM) foils have been produced for cosmic X-ray polarimeters using a carbon dioxide laser etching technique. The finest hole pitch of the foil which can be produced repeatedly is and the smallest hole diameter is . The electron amplification factor was measured as a function of applied voltage. The behavior of the factor is almost the same as the -pitch standard foil fabricated by CERN. Our GEMs had no rate-dependent gain instability, which is expected of the GEMs having holes of good cylindrical geometry. The amplification factor of the foil in a mixture of 70% argon and 30% carbon dioxide reaches about 5000 without any micro-discharge at a voltage of 570 V between foil electrodes.     

Reproducibility of Aluminum Foam by Combining Sintering and Dissolution Process with Precursor Foaming Process

A preliminary study of the reproducibility of aluminum foam was performed. Aluminum foam was fabricated by a sintering and dissolution process. It was found that aluminum foam containing a blowing agent can be fabricated without the decomposition of the blowing agent, namely, the densified aluminum foam can be used as a foamable precursor for refoaming. By heat treatment of the densified aluminum foam containing the blowing agent, pores were reproduced in the aluminum.     

Dimension Reduction and Construction of Feature Space for Image Pattern Recognition

We mathematically and experimentally evaluate the validity of dimension-reduction methods for the computation of similarity in image pattern recognition. Image pattern recognition identifies instances of particular objects and distinguishes differences among images. This recognition uses pattern recognition techniques for the classification and categorisation of images. In numerical image pattern recognition techniques, images are sampled using an array of pixels. This sampling procedure derives vectors in a higher-dimensional metric space from image patterns. To ensure the accuracy of pattern recognition techniques, the dimension reduction of the vectors is an essential methodology since the time and space complexities of processing depend on the dimension of the data. Dimension reduction causes information loss of topological and geometrical features of image patterns. Through both theoretical and experimental comparisons, we clarify that dimension-reduction methodologies that preserve the topology and geometry in the image pattern space are essential for linear pattern recognition. For the practical application of methods of dimension reduction, the random projection works well compared with downsampling, the pyramid transform, the two-dimensional random projection, the two-dimensional discrete cosine transform and nonlinear multidimensional scaling if we have no a priori information on the input data.     

Realistic imitation of mosquito's proboscis: Electrochemically etched sharp and jagged needles and their cooperative inserting motion

Aiming at the use in low-invasive medical treatments, this paper proposes a realistic imitation of mosquito's proboscis. A silicon needle is electrochemically etched, making the three-dimensionally sharp tip with finely smooth surface. The jagged shank shape is machined by a deep reactive ion etching (DRIE). The combined needles comprising a central straight needle and two outer jagged needles are fabricated, imitating a labrum and two maxillas of the mosquito, respectively. The cooperative motion of the three needles imitating the mosquito's motion is realized by applying PZT actuators independently to all the needles. The effectiveness of inserting these needles cooperatively was experimentally confirmed. Considering practical medical application, a biodegradable polymer needle with three-dimensionally sharp tip is also developed. The fabrication process based on micromolding is as follows: a nickel negative cavity is made by electroplating on a silicon sharp needle, to which melted polymer is injected, and it is finally released using a lost molding technique. The effectiveness of sharp tip for easy insertion was experimentally proven.     

Pattern recognition in multilinear space and its applications: mathematics,computational algorithms and numerical validations

We clarify the mathematical equivalence between low-dimensional singular value decomposition and low-order tensor principal component analysis for two- and three-dimensional images. Furthermore, we show that the two- and three-dimensional discrete cosine transforms are, respectively, acceptable approximations to two- and three-dimensional singular value decomposition and classical principal component analysis. Moreover, for the practical computation in two-dimensional singular value decomposition, we introduce the marginal eigenvector method, which was proposed for image compression. For three-dimensional singular value decomposition, we also show an iterative algorithm. To evaluate the performances of the marginal eigenvector method and two-dimensional discrete cosine transform for dimension reduction, we compute recognition rates for six datasets of two-dimensional image patterns. To evaluate the performances of the iterative algorithm and three-dimensional discrete cosine transform for dimension reduction, we compute recognition rates for datasets of gait patterns and human organs. For two- and three-dimensional images, the two- and three-dimensional discrete cosine transforms give almost the same recognition rates as the marginal eigenvector method and iterative algorithm, respectively.     

Surface chemical/binding reaction of coated Li layer by lithium vapor injectors in LIGHT-1

The Lithium Injection Gettering of Hydrogen and its Transport (LIGHT-1) experiment has begun at the NIFS. To study the material probes installed in the cylindrical vacuum chamber, the chemical characteristics for lithium are analyzed using X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS). The characteristics of chemical binding between lithium and other impurities are shown to be oxide bindings. In addition, the influence of the vacuum vent effect due to exposure to air was determined in both solid lithium and lithium-coated probes in LIGHT-1. Using the peak positions of Li₂O and pure lithium, the thickness of the coated lithium is estimated. For the SS316 target, the coated lithium shows two different peaks, Li1s and Fe3p, located at a similar binding energy region. Thus, the real lithium intensities can be measured by the separation of the peaks. After this analysis, the coated thickness of lithium is estimated to be from 8 to 20 nm, and it is not uniform in the Z-axis direction, probably due to erosion by glow discharge.     

Synthesis of hollow silica microparticles from bacterial templates

Hollow inorganic particles have attracted great interest because of their unique physicochemical properties. In this study, hollow silica microparticles were prepared using a rod-shaped gram-negative bacterium, Escherichia coli (KP7600), as a biological template. Silica nanoparticles were generated in addition to coated biological templates when the reaction rate was increased, so control of reaction rate is important for coating silica smoothly onto the bacterial surface. Silica coating was also carried out using the fixed cells (with and without internal water) using glutaraldehyde as templates. When the fixed cells without internal water were used as templates, no rod-shaped particles were observed after calcination of the synthesized particles. By contrast, silica hollow particles were formed using the fixed cells with internal water as templates. This means that the internal water inside biological cells acts as an initiator for hydrolysis of tetraethyl orthosilicate (TEOS) and results in the formation of smooth silica shell surface and indicates that the use of dry cultured bacteria templates is not required. Thus, there is a significant benefit in using gram-negative bacteria as templates for producing hollow silica microparticles, compared with the method using dried gram-positive bacteria templates.