Magnesium technology 2002, part I: Primary production,environmental issues,high-temperature alloys

Conclusion It is expected that the research in high-temperature alloy development will reach a critical mass in about five years. This will not only raise the materials science of magnesium to a higher level but will also increase the confidence of the industry in magnesium as a structural performance material. Currently, applications are being actively pursued in United States Council for Automotive Research power train programs and European Council for Automotive R&D engine block programs to develop the technology for elevated-temperature magnesium. More research is still needed in this interesting materials field.     

Atomic force microscopy study of biaxially oriented polypropylene films

Atomic force microscopy (AFM) uses a very sharp pointed mechanical probe to collect real-space morphological information of solid surfaces. AFM was used in this study to image the surface morphology of a biaxially oriented polypropylene film. The polymer film is characterized by a nanometer-scale, fiberlike network structure, which reflects the drawing process used during the fabrication of the film. AFM was used to study polymer-surface treatment to improve wettability by exposing the polymer to ozone with or without ultraviolet (UV) irradiation. Surface-morphology changes observed by AFM are the result of the surface oxidation induced by the treatment. Due to the topographic features of the polymer film, the fiberlike structure has been used to check the performance of the AFM tip. An AFM image is a mixture of the surface morphology and the shape of the AFM tip. Therefore, it is important to check the performance of a tip to ensure that the AFM image collected reflects the true surface features of the sample, rather than contamination on the AFM tip.     

Comparison of two scaling approaches for the development of biomechanical multi-body human models

Dimensional scaling approaches are widely used to develop multi-body human models in injury biomechanics research. Given the limited experimental data for any particular anthropometry, a validated model can be scaled to different sizes to reflect the biological variance of population and used to characterize the human response. This paper compares two scaling approaches at the whole-body level: one is the conventional mass-based scaling approach which assumes geometric similarity; the other is the structure-based approach which assumes additional structural similarity by using idealized mechanical models to account for the specific anatomy and expected loading conditions. Given the use of exterior body dimensions and a uniform Young’s modulus, the two approaches showed close values of the scaling factors for most body regions, with 1.5 % difference on force scaling factors and 13.5 % difference on moment scaling factors, on average. One exception was on the thoracic modeling, with 19.3 % difference on the scaling factor of the deflection. Two 6-year-old child models were generated from a baseline adult model as application example and were evaluated using recent biomechanical data from cadaveric pediatric experiments. The scaled models predicted similar impact responses of the thorax and lower extremity, which were within the experimental corridors; and suggested further consideration of age-specific structural change of the pelvis. Towards improved scaling methods to develop biofidelic human models, this comparative analysis suggests further investigation on interior anatomical geometry and detailed biological material properties associated with the demographic range of the population.     

k-Multi-preference query over road networks

Nowadays, the road network has gained more and more attention in the research area of databases. Existing works mainly focus on standalone queries, such as k-nearest neighbor queries over a single type of objects (e.g., facility like restaurant or hotel). In this paper, we propose a k-multi-preference (kMP) query over road networks, involving complex query predicates and multiple facilities. In particular, given a query graph, a kMP query retrieves of the top-k groups of vertices (of k facility types) satisfying the label constraints and their aggregate distances are the smallest. A naïve solution to this problem is to enumerate all combinations of vertices with k possible facility types and then select the one with the minimum sum distance. This method, however, incurs rather high computation cost due to exponential possible combinations. In addition, the existing solutions to other standalone queries are for a single type of facilities and cannot be directly used to answer kMP queries. Therefore, in this paper, we propose an efficient approach to process a kMP query, which utilizes an index with bounded space and reduces the computation cost of the shortest path queries. We also design effective pruning techniques to filter out false alarms. Through our extensive experiments, we demonstrate the efficiency and effectiveness of our proposed solutions.     

基于改进粒子群优化算法的火电厂机组负荷分配

以坑口电厂厂级监控信息系统的机组负荷在线优化分配功能模块为应用背景,针对模块所运用的基本粒子群优化算法在优化过程中容易陷入局部收敛、收敛速度慢的缺点,提出一种基于惯性权重非线性减小策略的改进粒子群优化算法,使惯性权重呈对数减小;测试函数仿真结果表明,改进粒子群优化算法在收敛速度和寻优精度方面,优化性能均优于基本粒子群优化算法;通过MATLAB与Visual C++混合编程,开发了机组负荷在线优化分配功能模块,提高了算法的计算效率和工程应用价值。     

Robust video hashing based on representative-dispersive frames

This study proposes a robust video hashing for video copy detection.The proposed method,which is based on representative-dispersive frames(R-D frames),can reveal the global and local information of a video.In this method,a video is represented as a graph with frames as vertices.A similarity measure is proposed to calculate the weights between edges.To select R-D frames,the adjacency matrix of the generated graph is constructed,and the adjacency number of each vertex is calculated,and then some vertices that represent the R-D frames of the video are selected.To reveal the temporal and spatial information of the video,all R-D frames are scanned to constitute an image called video tomography image,the fourth-order cumulant of which is calculated to generate a hash sequence that can inherently describe the corresponding video.Experimental results show that the proposed video hashing is resistant to geometric attacks on frames and channel impairments on transmission.     

Bidirectional controlled quantum teleportation and secure direct communication using five-qubit entangled state

A scheme is presented to implement bidirectional controlled quantum teleportation (QT) by using a five-qubit entangled state as a quantum channel, where Alice may transmit an arbitrary single qubit state called qubit A to Bob and at the same time, Bob may also transmit an arbitrary single qubit state called qubit B to Alice via the control of the supervisor Charlie. Based on our channel, we explicitly show how the bidirectional controlled QT protocol works. By using this bidirectional controlled teleportation, espcially, a bidirectional controlled quantum secure direct communication (QSDC) protocol, i.e., the so-called controlled quantum dialogue, is further investigated. Under the situation of insuring the security of the quantum channel, Alice (Bob) encodes a secret message directly on a sequence of qubit states and transmits them to Bob (Alice) supervised by Charlie. Especially, the qubits carrying the secret message do not need to be transmitted in quantum channel. At last, we show this QSDC scheme may be determinate and secure.     

高职计算机应用基础课程实训教学改革的探索与实践

根据高等职业教育的培养目的和教学特点以及非计算机专业《计算机应用基础》课程实践教学标准的要求,文章从加强《计算机应用基础》课程的实训教学出发,根据学生的不同专业和实际情况,探讨了加强实训教学的方法和科学合理检查和评价学生的方法,总结了《计算机应用基础》课程在高职教育教学改革中一些行之有效的经验,全面提高学生的计算机实际应用能力。