A randomized algorithm for natural object colorization

Natural objects often contain vivid color distribution with wide variety of colors. Conventional colorization techniques, on the other hand, produce colors that are relatively flat with little color variation. In this paper, we introduce a randomized algorithm which considers not only the value of target color but also the distribution of target color. In essence, our algorithm paints a color distribution to a region which synthesizes color distribution of a natural object. Our approach models the correlation between intensity and color in HSV color space in terms of H – S, H – V and S – V joint histogram. During the colorization process, we randomly swap and reassign color of a pixel to minimize a cost function that measures color consistency to its neighborhood and intensity‐to‐color correlation captured in the joint histogram. We tested our algorithm extensively on many natural objects and our user study confirms that our results are more vivid and natural compared to results from previous techniques.     

Living cationic polymerization of isobutyl vinyl ether (II): Photoinduced living cationic polymerization in a mixed solvent of toluene and diethyl ether

A new method of preparation of living cationic polymer of isobutyl vinyl ether via photoinduced polymerization in the presence of diphenyliodonium iodide (DPII, initiator) and zinc iodide in a mixed solvent of toluene/diethyl ether, which was irradiated at ?78°C for short period, was completed within 15 min. The reaction was allowed for further reaction in the dark until monomer was fully consumed. It was found that increase in the conversion of monomer to polymer during the irradiation is very limited. Confirmation of the linear dependence of number‐average molar mass of resulting polymer on % conversion together with the fact that polymerization proceeds until monomer consumption, and controllability of number‐average molar mass of resulting polymer, depending on the molar ratio of monomer and initiator, strongly suggests the living nature of this polymerization, unless reaction temperature becomes higher than 0°C, i.e., the absence of chain breaking process. The narrow molar mass distribution, whose polydispersity index values are less than 1.2, reveals that the rate of initiation where irradiation is usually completed within 15 min is much faster than that of propagation in cationic nature in this system. Effect of some major factors, such as solvent polarity and temperature, on the living nature of the polymerization was also investigated. © 2006 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J Appl Polym Sci 101: 3581–3586, 2006     

Editing and Synthesizing Two‐Character Motions using a Coupled Inverted Pendulum Model

This study aims to develop a controller for use in the online simulation of two interacting characters. This controller is capable of generalizing two sets of interaction motions of the two characters based on the relationships between the characters. The controller can exhibit similar motions to a captured human motion while reacting in a natural way to the opponent character in real time. To achieve this, we propose a new type of physical model called a coupled inverted pendulum on carts that comprises two inverted pendulum on a cart models, one for each individual, which are coupled by a relationship model. The proposed framework is divided into two steps: motion analysis and motion synthesis. Motion analysis is an offline preprocessing step, which optimizes the control parameters to move the proposed model along a motion capture trajectory of two interacting humans. The optimization procedure generates a coupled pendulum trajectory which represents the relationship between two characters for each frame, and is used as a reference in the synthesis step. In the motion synthesis step, a new coupled pendulum trajectory is planned reflecting the effects of the physical interaction, and the captured reference motions are edited based on the planned trajectory produced by the coupled pendulum trajectory generator. To validate the proposed framework, we used a motion capture data set showing two people performing kickboxing. The proposed controller is able to generalize the behaviors of two humans to different situations such as different speeds and turning speeds in a realistic way in real time.     

Microstructural Evidence for Diffusion-Driven Tetragonal-to-Orthorhombic Phase Transformation in Y-Ba-Cu-O Superconductor

Microstructures of Y-Ba-Cu-O superconductor were observed using a polarized microscope. Orthorhombic and tetragonal phases were easily distinguished by the optical etching with cross-polarized light. In the specimen cooled rapidly in oxygen, it was possible to see the path of oxygen diffusion by observing the variation of the twin concentration. At the boundary between transformed and untransformed materials, evidence for diffusion-driven transformation could be clearly seen.     

Permeability characteristics of carbonated concrete considering capillary pore structure

During carbonation process, the calcium phases present in cement are attacked by CO₂ and converted into CaCO₃ and the permeability of concrete is changing due to the change in porosity. The rate of carbonation depends upon porosity and moisture content of the concrete. Especially in underground reinforced concrete structures, the interior portion of concrete surface may be exposed to carbonation and the exterior portion of concrete surface exposed to wet soil or underground water. As carbonation proceeds from outer surface into internal portion of concrete, microstructure is also changed continuously from outer surface into internal portion of concrete. Even the deteriorations in the structures due to the carbonation have been reported more, research on permeability characteristics of concrete considering carbonation and micro-structural information is very scarce.In this study, the permeability coefficient in carbonated concrete is derived by applying a capillary pore structure formation model in carbonated cement mortar and assuming that aggregates do not affect carbonation process in early-aged concrete as a function of porosity. The permeability obtained from the micro-level modeling for carbonated concrete is verified with the results of accelerated carbonation test and water penetration test in cement mortar.     

Measurement and modeling solubility of bioactive coumarin and its derivatives in supercritical carbon dioxide

To design a supercritical fluid extraction process for the separation of bioactive substances from natural products, a quantitative knowledge of phase equilibria between target biosolutes and solvent is necessary. How-ever, mostly no such information is available in literature to date. Thus in the present study, illustratively the solubility of bioactive coumarin and its various derivatives (i.e., hydroxy-, methyl-, and methoxy-derivatives) in supercritical CO₂ were measured at 308.15–328.15 K and 10–30 MPa. Also, the pure physical properties such as normal boiling point, critical constants, acentric factor, molar volume and standard vapor pressure for coumarin and its derivatives were estimated. By these estimated information, the measured solubilities were quantitatively correlated by an approximate lattice equation of state proposed recently by the present authors.     

Chaos-based self-embedding fragile watermarking with flexible watermark payload

This paper proposes a self-embedding watermarking scheme that reduces the watermark payload significantly while maintaining good recovery quality and security. The embedded watermark contributes to the tamper detection and content recovery and is composed of only the compression codes of the image content. The compression codes with variable length are generated according to the roughness of the image. To improve the security, a chaos-based pseudorandom sequence generator is adopted to generate block-mapping sequence and encrypt compression codes. The proposed method takes into account the invisibility, recovery quality, and security using the flexible watermark payload, which preserves sufficient information of the image block with as few bits as possible. Experimental results demonstrate that the proposed scheme not only outperforms conventional self-embedding fragile watermarking algorithms in tamper detection and recovery, but also improve the security against the various counterfeiting attacks.     

Changes in pore properties of phenol formaldehyde-based carbon with carbonization and oxidation conditions

Porous carbon beads were prepared by carbonizing at 700 and 1000 °C under N₂ (NN-series) or CO₂ atmospheres (CO-series) and a subsequent oxidization with boiling nitric acid solution (13%, v/v) for 3 h (ANN- and ACO-series). BET surface area of both CO- and NN-series samples tends to increase with increasing carbonization temperature, but CO-series samples show higher BET surface areas (700 °C: 610 m²/g, 1000 °C: 780 m²/g) compared with those of NN-series samples (700 °C: 380 m²/g, 1000 °C: 580 m²/g). After acid oxidation, BET surface areas of NN-series samples increased from 580 to 650 m²/g, whereas those of CO-series samples decreased from 780 to 600 m²/g. On subsequent acid oxidation, acidic surface functional groups increased in both CO- and NN-series samples, but the CO-series samples tend to have much more acidic surface functional groups. Adsorption of halogenated methanes, such as tetra-, tri- and dichloromethanes, onto the samples of CO-, NN-, ACO- and ANN-series was thought to be driven initially by the basicity, but the acidic functional groups that could attract adsorbates via dipole-dipole interaction might hinder the adsorption of subsequently incoming adsorbates.     

Atmospheric Dependence on Dielectric Loss of 1/6Ba5Nb4O15· 5/6BaNb2O6 Ceramics

Samples of 1/6Ba₅Nb₄O₁₅·5/6BaNb₂O₆ along with the pure end members, Ba₅Nb₄O₁₅ and BaNb₂O₆, were sintered under low oxygen partial pressure. The degradation mechanisms of dielectric loss in this reducing atmosphere have been studied. We found that the degradation occurred primarily due to the formation of oxygen vacancies caused by the reduction of Nb⁵⁺. This was determined by measuring the electrical conductivity, and through X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. More importantly, the dielectric loss of 1/6Ba₅Nb₄O₁₅·5/6BaNb₂O₆ samples with higher temperature stability was further decreased on sintering in a reducing atmosphere. This observation has been explained by considering the increased porosity and formation of a reduced second phase, Ba_0.65NbO₃.     

The effects of Ni and Li doping on the performance of lithium manganese oxide material for lithium secondary batteries

Layered Li_0.7[M_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ (M=Li, Ni) was synthesized using a sol-gel method. P2-Na_0.7[M_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ precursor was first synthesized by a sol-gel method, and then O2-Li_0.7[M_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ was prepared by an ion exchange of Li for Na in P2-Na_0.7[M_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ precursor. From charge/discharge curves, it was seen that Li_0.7[Li_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ has two plateaus similar to those observed from a spinel structure, but Li_0.7[Ni_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ holds a single plateau as observed from a typical layered structure. It was considered that Li_0.7[Li_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ undergoes a phase transformation from layered to spinel structure during the charge/discharge cycle, but Li_0.7[Ni_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ maintains O2-layered structure after the cycles. Li_0.7[Ni_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂ was higher in discharge capacity and retention rate than Li_0.7[Li_1/6Mn_5/6]O₂.