Linear bipolar OTAs employing exponential‐law circuits

This paper presents design of linear bipolar OTAs, which are composed of two function blocks; one is an exponential‐law circuit and the other is a core cell. Multi‐tanh cells are employed as the core cell. This kind of OTA has lower power dissipation relatively to the conventional multi‐tanh cell. According as the order of the multi‐tanh core cell becomes higher, the number of circuit realization for the core cell increases. For example, we have two OTAs for the core circuit of an emitter‐coupled pair and four OTAs for the doublet core cell. Thus, we consider the generalized OTAs for an arbitrary order n of the core cell and obtain a formula to give the realization number of the linear OTAs for n. According to the formula, there must be eight OTAs in the case of n=3. All of the eight OTAs are examined. Analysis and simulation results show that the OTAs have advantage in their characteristics, such as linear input range, power dissipation, noise, and frequency response. Copyright 2004 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Phase Diagram of Hydrogen in Palladium

Hydrogen in palladium, Pd-H(D), is an interesting system because of the highly mobile hydrogen and the presence of a phase boundary below 100 K. Experimentally, however, the nature of this transition has not been established. Historically this transition around 55 to 100 K has been thought to be an order-disorder transition. Such a transition would produce a phase boundary with anomalies at specific hydrogen concentrations corresponding to the specific ordered structures. In order to check this phase boundary we have performed a detailed study of the hydrogen concentration dependence of the specific heat of PdH _x over the temperature range from below 0.5 K to above 100 K using PdH _x specimens with x up to 0.8753. The measured heat capacity has been analyzed as the sum of contributions due to the lattice specific heat of Pd, the electronic specific heat of PdH _x , and the excess contribution caused by hydrogenation of the specimen. The excess specific heat result shows a sharp peak which indicates a phase boundary with transition temperature T ₁=55 K to 85 K depending linearly on the hydrogen concentration from x=0.6572 to 0.8753. We do not observe anomalies at specific x values as would be expected for the specific ordered structures.     

Design and performance of compensator for decremental persistent current in HTS magnets using linear type magnetic flux pump

This paper has described the characteristics of a stationary linear type magnetic flux pump newly developed this time. The linear type flux pump aims to compensate a little decremental persistent current of the HTS magnet in NMR and MRI systems. The flux pump mainly consists of DC bias coil, 3-phase AC coil and Nb foil. Analytical results by the FEM are proved to nearly agree with experimental ones. In the experiment, it has been investigated that the flux pump can effectively charge the current in the load coil of 1.3 mH for various frequencies in 150 s under two following conditions: (1) DC bias of 10 A and AC of 4 A_rms, (2) DC bias of 10 A and AC of 5 A_rms. The maximum magnitudes of initial increasing rate of pumping current and load magnet voltage are: (1) 0.2 A/s and 25 mV and (2) 0.22 A/s and 34 mV, respectively.     

Stochastic Asset Pricing with Seismic Hazard Risk

Since cash flow of asset in the long run is generally subject to economic fluctuation, and also to potential damage due to seismic hazard risk, asset pricing is more relevantly evaluated, provided that uncertainties of both cash flow and seismic risk are properly taken into account. This study will propose a discounted cash flow method to evaluate asset pricing, in which incomes gained from asset are modeled as a Markov process and seismic loss is modeled due to only one earthquake event during the service time. A numerical example is demonstrated for an 11 story steel reinforced commercial building considering the service time of 50 years. Various risk–asset price curves are numerically obtained in the form of probability of excess versus asset price with discount rate as a parameter for cases with and without earthquake loss taken into account, and for a case in which earthquake strengthening measure is implemented. These curves contribute information to decision makers in charge of risk and investment management.     

Magnetic Behavior of Some Rare-Earth Transition-Metal Perovskite Oxide Systems

Magnetic properties were investigated for the rare-earth 3d-transition metal oxides with the perovskite structure. Intriguing magnetic phenomena were reviewed for a few systems:magnetization peak effect in the titanates, magnetization reversal in the chromites and metallic ferromagnetism in the cobahites. The results suggest an important role of the rare-earth ions for the magnetic properties of such complex oxides.     

Evaluation of Desulphurization Flux in CaO‐Al2O3‐BaO‐CeO2‐MgO System

The flux of the CaO‐Al₂0₃‐BaO‐CeO₂‐MgO system as a desulphurization flux containing no fluorine for the secondary metallurgy process was evaluated in this study. The flux composition was designed using the eutectic compositions of the binary systems. The melting and desulphurization abilities of the fluxes were evaluated by measuring their liquidus temperatures and the distribution ratios of sulphur between the fluxes and the carbon‐saturated iron or stainless steel. The lowest liquidus temperature of 1325°C was obtained by adding 5.7 mass% MgO to the 80mass%A‐20mass%B flux. (A: 12CaO‐7Al₂O₃, B: BaCeO₃+12mass%Al₂O₃). The distribution ratios of sulphur and sulphide capacities of the fluxes in this study were higher than those of the commercial product of calcium aluminate flux. This means that the CaO‐Al₂O₃‐BaO‐CeO₂‐MgO fluxes developed in this study have higher desulphurization and melting abilities compared with the commercial product of calcium aluminate flux.     

Bending Behavior of Steel Pipe Girders Filled with Ultralight Mortar

Bending behavior of steel pipes filled with ultralight mortar was studied by bending tests using a steel pipe, steel pipes filled with ultralight mortar, and steel pipes filled with light aggregate concrete and normal concrete. The steel pipe model filled with normal concrete had 1.8 times higher bending strength than the steel pipe model. The bending behavior of the steel pipe filled model with ultralight mortar was not improved when the compressive strength of the ultralight mortar was less than 1 MPa. However, ductility was much improved when the compressive strength was over 5 MPa, and the ultimate steel strain was more than double of the steel pipe model. The strains of steel and concrete in all the models were proportional to the distance from the neutral axis until the steel plate yielded. A simple analytical method was proposed to calculate the bending moments of the ultralight mortar filled steel pipes. The calculated values agreed very well with the test results.     

Optical CO2 sensor with the combination of colorimetric change of α-naphtholphthalein and internal reference fluorescent porphyrin dye

A new optical CO₂ sensor based on the overlay of the CO₂ induced absorbance change of pH indicator dye α-naphtholphthalein with the fluorescence of tetraphenylporphyrin (TPP) was developed. The observed luminescence intensity from TPP at 655 nm increased with increasing the CO₂ concentration. The ratio I₁₀₀/I₀ values of the sensing films consisting of α-naphtholphthalein in ethyl cellulose layer and TPP in polystyrene layer, where I₀ and I₁₀₀ represent the detected luminescence intensities from a layer exposed to 100% nitrogen and 100% CO₂, respectively, that the sensitivity of the sensor, are more than 53.9. The response and recovery times of the sensing films consisting of α-naphtholphthalein in ethyl cellulose layer and TPP in polystyrene layer were less than 5 s for switching from nitrogen to CO₂, and for switching from CO₂ to nitrogen. The signal changes were fully reversible and no hysterisis was observed during the measurements. The highly sensitive optical CO₂ sensor based on fluorescence intensity changes of TPP due to the absorption change of α-naphtholphthalein with CO₂ was achieved.     

Glasslike Transitions in Thin Polymer-Melt Films Due to Thickness Constraint

The shear properties of thin films of star and linear polyisoprene (PIP) melts under high pressure were investigated as a function of sliding velocity (shear rate) using the surface forces apparatus. The results were contrasted with their bulk rheological properties; effects of thickness constraint on the shear behavior were discussed. The melts of PIP in bulk exhibit Newtonian-like constant viscosity at least at low shear rates (frequencies), which suggests that individual molecules flow with lateral sliding motion. However, thin films of PIP melts show tribological features involving apparent shear-thinning behavior, indicative of the correlated motions in confined geometries. The shear-property change from bulk rheological behavior to thin-film tribological behavior along with the thickness decrease reflects the physical states and their transitions in the systems; the thickness constraint induces glasslike transitions. Effects of molecular weights and molecular architecture (star-branched or linear) on the shear properties are also discussed.     

High temperature superconductor micro-superconducting-quantum-interference-device magnetometer for magnetization measurement of a microscale magnet

We have developed a high temperature superconductor (HTS) micrometer-sized dc superconducting quantum interference device (SQUID) magnetometer for high field and high temperature operation. It was fabricated from YBa2Cu3O7-delta of 92 nm in thickness with photolithography techniques to have a hole of 4x9 microm2 and 2 microm wide grain boundary Josephson junctions. Combined with a three dimensional magnetic field coil system, the modulation patterns of critical current Ic were observed for three different field directions. They were successfully used to measure the magnetic properties of a molecular ferrimagnetic microcrystal (23x17x13 microm3), [Mn2(H2O)2(CH3COO)][W(CN)8]2H2O. The magnetization curve was obtained in magnetic field up to 0.12 T between 30 and 70 K. This is the first to measure the anisotropy of hysteresis curve in the field above 0.1 T with an accuracy of 10(-12) J T(-1) (10(-9) emu) with a HTS micro-SQUID magnetometer.