Structural Antecedents to Knowledge and Participation: Extending the Knowledge Gap Concept to Participation

This paper investigates relationships between community characteristics and levels of knowledge and participation examined at both the individual and the community levels. This research extends the knowledge gap concept to a parallel phenomenon, the participation gap. Results from the Social Capital Benchmark Survey 2000 showed that community density, education, and cohesion were significant positive predictors of knowledge but less consistent predictors of participation at the individual level. At the community level, relationships were even stronger, though cohesion was associated with higher mean levels of participation and reduced participation gaps, whereas population density was associated with lower levels of participation and increased gaps.     

Effective Polysulfide Rejection by Dipole‐Aligned BaTiO3 Coated Separator in Lithium–Sulfur Batteries

Although the exceptional theoretical specific capacity (1672 mAh g^?1) of elemental sulfur makes lithium–sulfur (Li–S) batteries attractive for upcoming rechargeable battery applications (e.g., electrical vehicles, drones, unmanned aerial vehicles, etc.), insufficient cycle lives of Li–S cells leave a substantial gap before their wide penetration into commercial markets. Among the key features that affect the cyclability, the shuttling process involving polysulfides (PS) dissolution is most fatal. In an effort to suppress this chronic PS shuttling, herein, a separator coated with poled BaTiO₃ or BTO particles is introduced. Permanent dipoles that are formed in the BTO particles upon the application of an electric field can effectively reject PS from passing through the separator via electrostatic repulsion, resulting in significantly improved cyclability, even when a simple mixture of elemental sulfur and conductive carbon is used as a sulfur cathode. The coating of BTO particles also considerably suppresses thermal shrinkage of the poly(ethylene) separator at high temperatures and thus enhances the safety of the cell adopting the given separator. The incorporation of poled particles can be universally applied to a wide range of rechargeable batteries (i.e., metal‐air batteries) that suffer from cross‐contamination of charged species between both electrodes.     

Digital Laser Micropainting for Reprogrammable Optoelectronic Applications

Structural coloration is closely related to the progress of innovative optoelectronic applications, but the absence of direct, on-demand, and rewritable coloration schemes has impeded advances in the relevant area, particularly including the development of customized, reprogrammable optoelectronic devices. To overcome these limitations, a digital laser micropainting technique, based on controlled thin-film interference, is proposed through direct growth of the absorbing metal oxide layer on a metallic reflector in the solution environment via a laser. A continuous-wave laser simultaneously performs two functions—a photothermal reaction for site-selective metal oxide layer growth and in situ real-time monitoring of its thickness—while the reflection spectrum is tuned in a broad visible spectrum according to the laser fluence. The scalability and controllability of the proposed scheme is verified by laser-printed painting, while altering the thickness via supplementary irradiation of the identical laser in the homogeneous and heterogeneous solutions facilitates the modification of the original coloration. Finally, the proof-of-concept bolometer device verifies that specific wavelength-dependent photoresponsivity can be assigned, erased, and reassigned by the successive application of the proposed digital laser micropainting technique, which substantiates its potential to offer a new route for reprogrammable optoelectronic applications.     

A High Quality Depth Map Upsampling Method Robust to Misalignment of Depth and Color Boundaries

In recent years, fusion camera systems that consist of color cameras and Time-of-Flight (TOF) depth sensors have been popularly used due to its depth sensing capability at real-time frame rates. However, captured depth maps are limited in low resolution compared to the corresponding color images due to physical limitation of the TOF depth sensor. Most approaches to enhancing the resolution of captured depth maps depend on the implicit assumption that when neighboring pixels in the color image have similar values, they are also similar in depth. Although many algorithms have been proposed, they still yield erroneous results, especially when region boundaries in the depth map and the color image are not aligned. We therefore propose a novel kernel regression framework to generate the high quality depth map. Our proposed filter is based on the vector pointing similar pixels that represents the unit vector toward similar neighbors in the local region. The vectors are used to detect misaligned regions between color edges and depth edges. Unlike conventional kernel regression methods, our method properly handles misaligned regions by introducing the numerical analysis of the local structure into the kernel regression framework. Experimental comparisons with other data fusion techniques prove the superiority of the proposed algorithm.     

Thermally Controlled,Active Imperceptible Artificial Skin in Visible‐to‐Infrared Range

Cephalopods’ extraordinary ability to hide into any background has inspired researchers to reproduce the intriguing ability to readily camouflage in the infrared (IR) and visible spectrum but this still remains as a conundrum. In this study, a multispectral imperceptible skin that enables human skin to actively blend into the background both in the IR‐visible integrated spectrum only by simple temperature control with a flexible bi‐functional device (active cooling and heating) is developed. The thermochromic layer on the outer surface of the device, which produces various colors based on device surface temperature, expands the cloaking range to the visible spectrum (thus visible‐to‐IR) and ultimately completes day‐and‐night stealth platform simply by controlling device temperature. In addition, the scalable pixelization of the device allows localized control of each autonomous pixel, enabling the artificial skin surface to adapt to the background of the sophisticated pattern with higher resolution and eventually heightening the level of imperceptibility. As this proof‐of‐concept can be directly worn and conceals the human skin in multispectral ranges, the work is expected to contribute to the development of next‐generation soft covert military wearables and perhaps a multispectral cloak that belongs to cephalopods or futuristic camouflage gadgets in the movies.     

All-Impurities Scavenging,Safe Separators with Functional Metal-Organic-Frameworks for High-Energy-Density Li-Ion Battery

Li-ion batteries (LIBs) have wide applications owing to their high-energy density and stable cycle characteristics. Nevertheless, with the rapid expansion of electric vehicle market, issues such as explosion of LIBs and the need to secure a longer driving distance have emerged. In this work, functional metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) are introduced as a separator in LIBs, in which a highly heat-resistant polymer separator is fabricated through electrospinning. The MOFs can scavenge impurities (including gas, water, and hydrofluoric acid) that positively affect battery performance and safety. The multi-functional separator suppresses salt decomposition when a nickel-rich cathode is operated at high voltage and high temperature through it. This delays the deterioration of the cathode interface and results in a superb cycle stability with 75% retention even in the presence of 500 ppm of water in the electrolytes. In addition, the pouch cell is manufactured by enlarging the separator, and the degree of electrode swelling due to gas generation and interface degradation in the pouch state is alleviated to 50% or less. These findings highlight the necessity of scavenging impurities to maintain excellent performance and provides the development direction of functional separators in LIBs.     

Three‐dimensional numerical analysis on discharge properties of microwave excited ring dielectric line surface wave processing plasma device

A three‐dimensional simulation code with the finite difference time domain (FDTD) method combined with the electron fluid model has been developed for the microwave excited surface wave plasma in the RDL‐SWP device. This code permits the three‐dimensional numerical analysis of the spatial distributions of electric field, power absorption, electron density, and electron temperature. At a low gas pressure (about 10 mTorr), the numerical results were compared with the experimental measurements that show the validity of this 3D simulation code. A simplified analysis assuming that the electron density is spatially uniform has also been studied and its applicability is evaluated by the comparison of the 3D simulation and the analytical solutions. The surface wave eigenmodes are determined by the electron density, and it is found that the structure of the device strongly influences the spatial distribution of the electric fields of surface waves in a low‐density area (n_e < 3.0 × 10¹¹ cm^?3). A method to irradiate by microwave the whole surface area of the plasma is proposed. The method is found to be effective in obtaining a high uniformity distribution of electron density. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 150(4): 1–12, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.10333     

Energy Efficient and Reliable ARQ Scheme (E^2R-ACK) for Mission Critical M2M/IoT Services

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) are the main infrastructure for machine to machine (M2M) and Internet of thing (IoT). Since various sophisticated M2M/IoT services have their own quality-of-service (QoS) requirements, reliable data transmission in WSNs is becoming more important. However, WSNs have strict constraints on resources due to the crowded wireless frequency, which results in high collision probability. Therefore a more efficient data delivering scheme that minimizes both the transmission delay and energy consumption is required. This paper proposes energy efficient and reliable data transmission ARQ scheme, called energy efficient and reliable ACK (E \(^2\) R-ACK), to minimize transmission delay and energy consumption at the same time. The proposed scheme has three aspects of advantages compared to the legacy ARQ schemes such as ACK, NACK and implicit-ACK (I-ACK). It consumes smaller energy than ACK, has smaller transmission delay than NACK, and prevents the duplicated retransmission problem of I-ACK. In addition, resource considered reliability (RCR) is suggested to quantify the improvement of the proposed scheme, and mathematical analysis of the transmission delay and energy consumption are also presented. The simulation results show that the E \(^2\) R-ACK scheme achieves high RCR by significantly reducing transmission delay and energy consumption.     

Evidence for anthropogenic 210Po in the urban atmosphere of Seoul, Korea

We have measured the concentrations of 210Po, 210Pb, SO4(2-), Na+, and 34S in precipitation samples from two metropolitan cities, Seoul and Busan, Korea. The delta34S values ranged from 0 to 10% in most Seoul and Busan precipitation samples, indicating major contributions from industrial sources to S levels. A high level of excess 210Po, which is not produced by 210Pb decay in the troposphere, was observed in both regions. The excess 210Po activities in some samples from Busan, a harbor city, were influenced strongly by sea salt (i.e., sea-surface microlayer) which could be traced using [Na+] and delta34S values. In Seoul precipitations, we observed a good correlation between non-sea-salt SO4(2-) and excess 210Po, suggesting that both species are controlled mainly by the same factor. This correlation and the delta34S values indicate that the major source for both species in this region is likely to be anthropogenic, rather than from traditionally suggested sources such as soil resuspension, stratospheric air intrusion, sea sprays, volcanic emissions, and biogenic emissions.     

Strain improvement of Aspergillus sojae for increased l-leucine aminopeptidase and protease production

Food Science and Biotechnology - Conventional random mutagenesis was implemented to improve l-leucine aminopeptidase (LAP) and protease production in Aspergillus sojae. Through successive...