Improving the actuating response of carbon nanotube/ionic liquid composites by the addition of conductive nanoparticles

Polyaniline (PANI) or carbon black (CB) was used as a conductive additive in porous electrodes of a dry-type carbon nanotube (CNT)-polymer actuator to improve the actuation properties. We estimated the strain from the bending motion of the actuator in the frequency range of 200–0.005 Hz. The generated stress was calculated from the Young’s modulus of the electrode film and the maximum strain. Eight different types of electrode films were prepared by changing the mixed amount of PANI or CB into the CNT electrode film. When a same amount of PANI (50 mg) against CNT (50 mg) was added to the CNT electrode (in the case of CNT/PANI(50/50)), the strain of CNT/PANI(50/50) was increased to be almost three times larger than that of CNT(50) (without any additives). As a result, CNT/PANI(50/50) showed more than five times the generated stress compared to CNT(50). Using 40 mg of CB as an additive, CNT/CB(50/40) showed a more than four times larger stress compared to CNT(50). The electrochemical properties such as conductivity and capacitance were also investigated and discussed. An asymmetrical three-layered actuator element was fabricated to investigate the actuation mechanism. The results imply that the anode contracts and the cathode expands.     

Flexible supercapacitor-like actuator with carbide-derived carbon electrodes

Soft and flexible electric driven transducers based on carbide-derived carbon (CDC), 1-ethyl-3-methylimidazolium tetrafluoroborate (EMIBF₄), polyvinylidenefluoride-co-hexafluoropropylene (PVdF(HFP)) are proposed, and electroactive performances of these materials are reported. By its nature, the synthesized device has two features when voltage is applied. Firstly, it is a bending-type electrochemical actuator. Besides the external change of shape, this device is also an electrochemical capacitor, providing opportunity to store a considerable amount of charge. Laminated actuators can work in open air at low voltages (1–3 V). Their operating frequency is between 5 × 10⁻³ – 1 × 10¹ Hz (it is from 5 millihertz to 200 hertz) and 10 Hz and the maximum strain calculated from transducer displacement is 0.6%. The gravimetric capacitance of CDC in actuator electrodes was found to be 119 F g⁻¹ at 1 mV s⁻¹ sweep rate of the applied triangle voltage. The effects of synthesis temperature of CDC and associated changes in the porosity and surface area on the actuator displacement are discussed. The results of this study demonstrated a great potential of CDC as an active material for actuator electrodes, especially in these applications where the performance of the actuator has to be standardized and highly predictable.     

Autonomous community construction and coordination technology to achieve real-time transmission in multiple emergencies’ situation

Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) is used in Emergency Management System (EMS). If emergency situation happens, real-timely transmitting emergency information in dynamically changing environment should be assured. But this requirement could not be satisfied by conventional approaches which are based on static situation and centralized management. In this paper, to satisfy this requirement, autonomous community construction technology is proposed for single emergency. Emergency information could be transmitted in community and protected from interference of other information’s transmission. Moreover, autonomous coordination technology is proposed for multiple emergencies’ information’s transmission. Via this technology, each emergency could have its individual route to transmit emergency information. Each emergency information’s transmission will not influence with each other. Evaluation results are provided to demonstrate the improvement.     

Effect of viscoelastic properties of the base polymer on extrusion foaming with thermally expandable microcapsules

Thermally expandable microcapsules (MCs) are applicable to the foam processing of polypropylene (PP). The purpose of this study is to clarify the influence of processing conditions, such as temperature, shear rate and resin selection, on the behavior of thermally expandable MCs in PP. In this study, MC was added to several types of PP and extrusion foaming was performed. The average diameter of the MCs after processing was calculated to characterize the expansion of PP including MCs. Two types of molecular architecture, homo- and impact-PP, were examined in this study. The expansion behavior could be summarized by the shear viscosity at the extrusion die. Irrespective of the molecular architecture, data were summarized on one curve on a plane that expressed the relation between the shear viscosity and average MC diameter. Shear viscosity is thus an effective parameter to examine base resin selection for MC foaming. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 60:558–562, 2020. © 2020 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Site-directed mutagenesis of the putative active site residues of 3C proteinase of coxsackievirus B3: evidence of a functional relationship with trypsin-like serine proteinases

Picornavirus 3C proteinases (3C^pro) are cysteine proteinasesbut recent sequence analyses have shown that they are relatedto trypsin-like serine proteinases. Two models of 3C^pro structurehave been presented. Both models indicate that residues His40and Cysl47 are members of the catalytic triad but the modelsdiffer in the designation of the third member of the catalytictriad, which is assigned as either Glu71 or Asp85. To test theimportance of these four residues in the catalytic activityof 3C^pro of coxsackievirus B3, a member of the enterovirus subgroupof the picornavirus family, single amino acid substitutionswere introduced at each of the four sites. All of these mutationsresulted in the reduction or inactivation of autocatalytic cleavageof the 3C precursor protein expressed in Escherichia coli, suggestingthat all of these residues are essential for the proteolyticreaction. The substitution of Cysl47 with Ala abolished 3C^proactivity while the mutant in which Cysl47 was replaced withSer retained reduced proteolytic activity both in cis and intrans. Our results strongly support the proposal that Cysl47of 3C^pro functions as a nucleophile analogous to Serl95 of trypsin-likeserine proteinases.     

Planar lightwave circuit dispersion equalizer

The authors report an integrated-optic dispersion equalizer fabricated on a planar lightwave circuit (PLC). This PLC dispersion equalizer is composed of several asymmetrical Mach-Zehnder interferometers cascaded in series. The dispersion equalizer has a high degree of design flexibility and can compensate for both normal and anomalous fiber dispersions at any center wavelength. Moreover, the equalizer can be applied to WDM transmission systems. This equalizer employing five asymmetrical interferometers is fabricated and its measured dispersion values are +834 and -1006 ps/nm. The effectiveness of the equalizer is demonstrated in a 2.5 Gb/s transmission experiment with a 1.3 μm zero-dispersion fiber at 1.55 μm. Also, its performance is evaluated theoretically     

Planar lightwave circuit dispersion equaliser module withpolarisation insensitive properties

The authors report the fabrication of an integrated-optic dispersion equaliser module based on a planar lightwave circuit (PLC). The equaliser consists of five asymmetrical Mach-Zehnder interferometers cascaded in series. Polyimide half waveplates inserted in the interferometers eliminate the polarisation dependent path length differences of the equaliser     

Recognition of handprinted Hebrew characters using features selected in the Hough transform space

Automatic identification of handprinted Hebrew characters is described in this paper. The recognition model devised constitutes a multi-stage system. In the first stage a coarse classifier allocates the input patterns into one of 17 categories, based on the number and the location of end points within predetermined regions in the characters matrix. The second stage uses features extracted in the Hough transform space to classify characters assigned to each of 16 categories. The remaining one category, composed of similar, square-like (rotated L shape) classes, is recognized by structural analysis and a statistical classifier. An additional step of postprocessing is added to compensate for the sensitivity of the Hough transform to the existence of similar classes within some of the categories. Experiments were conducted with a multi-author (40 writers) data base. An average recognition rate of 86.9% was observed for the system. This compared favorably with the results of two other recognition methods.