Thermal lens and beam properties in multiple longitudinally diodelaser pumped Nd:YAG slab lasers

The focal length of the thermal lens and the beam quality factor (beam propagation factor) M² for a multiple longitudinally diode pumped slab laser is deduced for pump and output powers up to 16 and 4.5 W, respectively. Due to the geometry of the arrangement, a stronger thermal lens is observed in the plane with the larger pump spot radius as predicted by an analytical model for slab geometries. In addition, the second stable zone of an asymmetric resonator is found to be advantageous for improved beam properties at high output powers     

Design and testing of a solar photovoltaic operated multi-seeds oil press

Oil expression tests were conducted to evaluate the performance of a novel oil expeller designed and fabricated to operate on a 200 W solar photovoltaic (PV) power system as a sole power source. The oil press was designed to press oilseeds meal with intermediate moisture content of 12±1% (w.b.) and 0.5–2 mm particle sizes. Freshly grated coconuts and ground peanuts were used to determine the oil expression efficiency of the press. The oilseed samples were pressed for 12 min with a maximum pressure of 3.0 MPa being reached at 6 min of pressing for peanuts and 8 min of pressing for coconuts. The pressure was then held for the rest of the pressing time. The press attained an average oil expression efficiency of 73% for coconuts and 70% for peanuts. The force-vs.-deformation studies indicated that peanut press meal was compacted at a higher rate as compared to coconuts. The observation on the energy consumption indicated that there was a significant increase (P<0.05) in the specific energy requirement for both coconuts and peanuts after 6 min of pressing, which resulted from the solidification of the press cake. An average specific energy of 36.55 and 20.35 Wh/kg was recorded for peanuts and coconuts, respectively, after 12 min of pressing.     

Modeling of static concentrator modules incorporating lambertian or v-groove rear reflectors

Ray tracing modeling has been used to calculate the performance of static concentrator modules with a geometric concentration ratio of 2 and incorporating very narrow (1–2 mm), long and bifacial cells. The modules utilize either a v-groove or a lambertian rear reflector. It is shown that the use of very narrow cells allows a performance improvement of 5% or more compared to structures incorporating wider cells, in the case of v-groove reflectors. The averaged yearly performance for both types of reflectors is found to be rather similar, with expected light collection in the range 82–86% of that of a module with 100% cell coverage. Experimental measurements on modules with lambertian reflectors are shown to be in good agreement with the results of modeling.     

Limited-trial Chase decoding

Chase decoders permit flexible use of reliability information in algebraic decoding algorithms for error-correcting block codes of Hamming distance d. The least complex version of the original Chase algorithms uses roughly d/2 trials of a conventional binary decoder, after which the best decoding result is selected as the final output. On certain channels, this approach achieves asymptotically the same performance as maximum-likelihood (ML) decoding. In this correspondence, the performance of Chase-like decoders with even less trials is studied. Most strikingly, it turns out that asymptotically optimal performance can be achieved by a version which uses only about d/4 trials.     

Facial expression recognition in image sequences using geometric deformation features and Support Vector Machines.

In this paper, two novel methods for facial expression recognition in facial image sequences are presented. The user has to manually place some of Candide grid nodes to face landmarks depicted at the first frame of the image sequence under examination. The grid-tracking and deformation system used, based on deformable models, tracks the grid in consecutive video frames over time, as the facial expression evolves, until the frame that corresponds to the greatest facial expression intensity. The geometrical displacement of certain selected Candide nodes, defined as the difference of the node coordinates between the first and the greatest facial expression intensity frame, is used as an input to a novel multiclass Support Vector Machine (SVM) system of classifiers that are used to recognize either the six basic facial expressions or a set of chosen Facial Action Units (FAUs). The results on the Cohn-Kanade database show a recognition accuracy of 99.7% for facial expression recognition using the proposed multiclass SVMs and 95.1% for facial expression recognition based on FAU detection.     

Gallium gradients in Cu(In,Ga)Se2 thin‐film solar cells

The gallium gradient in Cu(In,Ga)Se₂ (CIGS) layers, which forms during the two industrially relevant deposition routes, the sequential and co‐evaporation processes, plays a key role in the device performance of CIGS thin‐film modules. In this contribution, we present a comprehensive study on the formation, nature, and consequences of gallium gradients in CIGS solar cells. The formation of gallium gradients is analyzed in real time during a rapid selenization process by in situ X‐ray measurements. In addition, the gallium grading of a CIGS layer grown with an in‐line co‐evaporation process is analyzed by means of depth profiling with mass spectrometry. This gallium gradient of a real solar cell served as input data for device simulations. Depth‐dependent occurrence of lateral inhomogeneities on the µm scale in CIGS deposited by the co‐evaporation process was investigated by highly spatially resolved luminescence measurements on etched CIGS samples, which revealed a dependence of the optical bandgap, the quasi‐Fermi level splitting, transition levels, and the vertical gallium gradient. Transmission electron microscopy analyses of CIGS cross‐sections point to a difference in gallium content in the near surface region of neighboring grains. Migration barriers for a copper‐vacancy‐mediated indium and gallium diffusion in CuInSe₂ and CuGaSe₂ were calculated using density functional theory. The migration barrier for the In_Cu antisite in CuGaSe₂ is significantly lower compared with the Ga_Cu antisite in CuInSe₂, which is in accordance with the experimentally observed Ga gradients in CIGS layers grown by co‐evaporation and selenization processes. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Visualizing the electric grid

In the new world of competition, power traders, grid managers, public service boards, and the public itself all need to take in what's happening at a glance. Visualization software enables viewers to interpret the data more rapidly and more accurately than ever before. This kind of software will become still more useful, even indispensable, as electricity grids are integrated over ever-larger areas, as transmission and generation become competitive markets, and as transactions grow in number and complexity. Concepts like power flow, loop flow, and reactive power, which once mattered only to the engineers directly involved in grid operations, now must be made intuitive. This is because they must be communicated to public service commissions and the consumer-voters to whom such boards are answerable. In short, whether the client/user is a power marketer, a grid operator or manager, a public authority, or a member of the public, power system visualization tools can aid their comprehension by lifting the truly significant above background noise. Such tools can expedite decision-making for congestion management, power trading, market organization, and investment planning for the long term     

Defecting From the Gutenberg Legacy: Employing Images to Test Knowledge Gaps

Education‐based knowledge gaps are well‐documented across countries, media platforms, and content. Without exception, knowledge is measured through words not images. Given the centrality of sight in the natural history of Homo sapiens, the extraordinary visual acuity of humans, and the proliferation of screen‐based visual media environments in contemporary life, an experiment was conducted to test the knowledge gap visually. Participants watched 8 audiovisual news stories. Simple recognition of story details and comprehension of that information were tested in verbal and visual modalities. Results offered the first confirmation of the knowledge gap in visual terms. Yet, gaps were significantly smaller employing visual than verbal measures, pointing to the need for continued efforts to develop visual measures for future memory studies.     

On the application of the Neuron MOS transistor principle formodern VLSI design

In this paper, the speed performance, power consumption, and layout area of Neuron MOS transistor circuits are monitored considering the requirements of modern VLSI design. The Neuron MOS transistor is a recently discovered device principle which has a number of input gates that couple capacitively to a floating gate. The floating gate potential controls the current of a transistor channel. This device can be used in logic circuits. A threshold current through the Neuron MOS transistor can be defined that causes a switching of the output of the logic circuits as soon as the channel current surmounts or falls below the specified value. We designed two different multiplier cells, one based on a Neuron MOS inverter, and the other on a Neuron MOS n-MOSFET which is used as one input device of a comparator circuit. Functionality of both cells is proven for data rates up to 50 MHz which represents the first high-speed measurement of a circuit based on this new design principle. A perspective for the upper speed limit found at more than 500 MHz is given by simulation. The new design principle has a layout area reduced by more than a factor of two compared to usual multiplier cells. Moreover, it is shown, that depending on the design chosen, high speed operation leads to considerable power savings. In view of those advantages it is concluded that the principle of threshold logic qualifies for a major breakthrough for packing density improvement of CMOS-based applications     

A new method for the calculation of the emission spectrum of DFBand DBR lasers

A method based on transmission matrices that allows the emission spectra of arbitrarily complicated semiconductor laser structures to be computed below and above threshold has been developed. These can include active and passive periodic or uniform sections. As examples, the authors compute the emission spectra of a normal distributed feedback (DFB) laser, a DFB laser with a λ/4 phase shifter, and a surface-emitting distributed Bragg reflector (DFB) laser. To do that, Petermann's method for calculating the spontaneous emission coupling coefficient has been extended to the case of a periodic waveguide. It is shown how the spontaneous emission, when treated correctly, can be used to measure the coupling coefficient of the grating in a DFB laser with a λ/4 phase shifter