In Situ Study of Nanostructure and Electrical Resistance of Nanocluster Films Irradiated with Ion Beams

An in situ study is reported on the structural evolution in nanocluster films under He⁺ ion irradiation using an advanced helium ion microscope. The films consist of loosely interconnected nanoclusters of magnetite or iron‐magnetite (Fe‐Fe₃O₄) core‐shells. The nanostructure is observed to undergo dramatic changes under ion‐beam irradiation, featuring grain growth, phase transition, particle aggregation, and formation of nanowire‐like network and nanopores. Studies based on ion irradiation, thermal annealing and electron irradiation have indicated that the major structural evolution is activated by elastic nuclear collisions, while both electronic and thermal processes can play a significant role once the evolution starts. The electrical resistance of the Fe‐Fe₃O₄ films measured in situ exhibits a super‐exponential decay with dose. The behavior suggests that the nanocluster films possess an intrinsic merit for development of an advanced online monitor for fast neutron radiation with both high detection sensitivity and long‐term applicability, which can enhance safety measures in many nuclear operations.     

Nightly@nbc.com: Audience Scope and the Perception of Interactivity in Viewer Mail on the Internet

A content analysis looked at 650 Internet mail messages sent to NBC Nightly News in response to an invitation during a series dealing with the impact of new technologies. Message indexes were created to reflect the scope of the audience they addressed. Macro-scopic messages were formal, dealt with political issues, and either did not mention technology or mentioned mass media. These messages resembled a letter to a newspaper editor. Mezzoscopic messages were positive and avoided political issues. They congratulated NBC as a team for their work on the technology series and tended to mention computers. Micro-scopic messages stood out for their authors' high perception of interactivity. These messages mentioned computer technology more than any other group and appear similar to face-to-face communication in many ways. Results are discussed in terms of how the relationship between media users' perceived sense of interactivity and the scope of the audience they address are related to message style and content.     

Photonic Hydrogels from Chiral Nematic Mesoporous Chitosan Nanofibril Assemblies

Iridescence in animals and plants often arises from structural coloration, which involves hierarchical organization of minerals and biopolymers over length scales of the visible spectrum, leading to diffraction of light. In this work, discarded crustacean shells that are not known for their structural colors are used to produce photonic nanostructures of large, freestanding chiral nematic mesoporous chitosan membranes with tunable iridescent color. Bioinspired by colorful nanostructures in nature, photonic hydrogels with Bouligand‐type organization are fabricated from the twisted mesoporous membranes, where the chitosan nanofibrils are a novel precursor for surface acetylation and are also a biotemplate for polymerizing methyl methacrylate. The colors of the hydrogels can be tailored by swelling as they show large volume changes in response to changes in solvent environment.     

Bio‐Derived Polymers for Sustainable Lithium‐Ion Batteries

Biologically derived organic molecules are a cost‐effective and environmentally benign alternative to the widely used metal‐based electrodes employed in current energy storage technologies. Here, the first bio‐derived pendant polymer cathode for lithium‐ion batteries is reported. The redox moiety is flavin and is derived from riboflavin (vitamin B₂). A semi‐synthetic methodology is used to prepare the pendant polymer, which is composed of a poly(norbornene) backbone and pendant flavin units. This semi‐synthetic approach reduces the number of chemical transformations required to form this new functional material. Lithium‐ion batteries incorporating this polymer have a 125 mAh g^?1 capacity and an ≈2.5 V operating potential. It is found that charge transport is greatly improved by forming hierarchical structures of the polymer with carbon black, and new insight into electrode degradation mechanisms is provided which should be applicable to polymer electrodes in general. This work provides a foundation for the use of bio‐derived pendant polymers in sustainable, high‐performance lithium‐ion batteries.     

一种新的电源定序方法

目前,大部分为通信和数据处理应用而设计的电路板需要多种集成电路供电电压.长期以来,在上电和断电过程中正确的给这类电源定序一直是个设计问题,这个问题由于最新集成电路的苛刻要求而日益严重.本文考察了各类定序方法,重点阐述了具有内置定序特性的新一代模块式负载点(POL)转换器,它提供了一种特别有成本效益的解决方案.     

提高便携式超声波系统的图像质量

便携式超声波系统是紧急护理点使用的强大诊断工具之一。这种无创成像工具让许多自然灾害如地震、飓风和路侧事故等中的受害者能够快速地得到的诊断和治疗。这种便携式设备大小不一,从膝上型到手持式,重量为10磅甚至更轻,并且可以使用电池供电。由于得到新兴超声波市场的广泛认可,在最近几年发展势头迅猛。     

Simulation of Terahertz Generation from Lateral Diffusion Currents in Semiconductor Devices

In this paper we model the carrier dynamics and resulting THz emission from lateral diffusion currents within a semiconductor device which has been partially masked by a metallic mask. We present a numerical 1D model and a 1D Monte Carlo simulation which both demonstrate that regardless of the excitation laser spot shape we do not expect to see measurable THz emission in the direction of the optical pump propagation from lateral diffusion currents. Experimentally such devices do produce strong THz emission. We analytically investigate the role of the metal mask and we found that it suppresses the emission of dipoles that are in a region that is less than a wavelength away from the interface. The results from the numerical model are also included in a finite element analysis model of the geometry which predicts THz emission if and only if the metal mask is present.     

Analogue electronic circuit diagnosis based on ANNs

Feed-forward artificial neural networks (ANNs) have been applied to the diagnosis of nonlinear dynamic analogue electronic circuits. Using the simulation-before-test (SBT) approach, a fault dictionary was first created containing responses observed at all inputs and outputs of the circuit. The ANN was considered as an approximation algorithm to capture mapping enclosed within the fault dictionary and, in addition, as an algorithm for searching the fault dictionary in the diagnostic phase. In the example given DC and small signal frequency domain measurements were taken as these data are usually given in device’s data-sheets. A reduced set of data per fault (DC output values, the nominal gain and the 3 dB cut-off frequency, measured at one output terminal) was recorded. Soft (parametric) and catastrophic (shorts and opens) defects were introduced and diagnosed simultaneously and successfully. Large representative set of faults was considered, i.e., all possible catastrophic transistor faults and qualified representatives of soft transistor faults were diagnosed in an integrated circuit. The generalization property of the ANNs was exploited to handle noisy measurement signals.     

QoS guarantee and power distribution for soft handoff connections in cellular CDMA downlinks

A two-phase power distribution scheme for supporting quality-of-service (QoS) and best effort traffic is proposed. We first formulate the power distribution for QoS traffic as an optimization problem so that the number of simultaneously transmitting connections is maximized. Optimum power distribution is difficult to implement in practice due to both the computational complexity and the requirement for global information about the mobile station (MS) locations, connection channel conditions, and traffic load in the system. We then propose a heuristic scheme of power distribution for soft handoff (SHO) connections. The full scheme includes an initial power distribution (IPD) and a power distribution adjustment (PDA). IPD allocates BS power resource based on the channel condition of each individual connection, while PDA further coordinates the power distribution between neighboring base stations (BSs) in order to accommodate more connections. The proposed power distribution scheme can achieve a capacity close to that of the optimum power distribution, while providing much higher transmission throughput for best effort data traffic. The proposed power distribution scheme can be applied to existing SHO schemes for efficient BS power resource usage. The scheme does not require global information, and its implementation can be further simplified by performing IPD only with slight performance degradation.     

Transferring human grasping synergies to a robot

In this paper, a system for transferring human grasping skills to a robot is presented. In order to reduce the dimensionality of the grasp postures, we extracted three synergies from data on human grasping experiments and trained a neural network with the features of the objects and the coefficients of the synergies. Then, the trained neural network was employed to control robot grasping via an individually optimized mapping between the human hand and the robot hand. As force control was unavailable on our robot hand, we designed a simple strategy for the robot to grasp and hold the objects by exploiting tactile feedback at the fingers. Experimental results demonstrated that the system can generalize the transferred skills to grasp new objects.