Axial dispersion and enterainment of particles in wakes of bubbles

The entrainment and dispersion of solid particles in bubble columns was investigated experimentally and heoretically. A mechanistic model for the dispersion caused by entrainment in wakes of large solitary bubbles was developed. The dispersion coefficient was found to be dependent on the bubble size, bubble frequency, particle settling velocity and column surface area. Experimental tests were conducted in a rectangular bubble column. The system consisted of air, water and copper powder. Spherical cap bubbles were produced by a single nozzle. Significant entrainment of particles in wakes of rising bubbles observed in the lower region of the column, whereas, turbulence seemed to dominate the dispersion in the upper region of the tank. Calculated particle distributions were found to be in good agreement with experimental data.     

Heat transfer efficiency in a fliuidized bed

The equilibrium stage concept used in staged contacting operations was adopted as a measure of heat transfer efficiency for a fluidized bed. A simple model was developed which postulates that solids flow through the bed can be by perfect mixing, plug flow and short-circuiting. Efficiencies were determined experimentally in a 150 mm diameter fluidized bed with air as the fluidizing medium and sand as the solid. Heat transfer efficiencies greater than 100% were obtained indicating that small diameter, low aspect ratio fluidized beds do not behave as perfect mixers. The results indicate that heat transfer measurements can be used to develop information on solids flow behavior.     

New product development team intelligence: Antecedents and consequences

Our study investigated the effect of team knowledge on new product development (NPD). By investigating 207 NPD projects, we found that the declarative and procedural knowledge of the team and their use of IT had a positive influence on the team's knowledge base; and that the higher the functional diversity of the project team, the greater their overall knowledge. We also found that team knowledge positively impacted new product creativity and success in the market place.     

Piecewise straight-line correlation algorithm for navigation of autonomous systems with robotics applications

Autonomous moving systems, such as free moving robots and ‘nursing’ robots, accumulate errors during path tracking. While moving, correlation between measurement of the pattern characterizing the path and a previously recorded pattern stored in the computer of the tracking system can be found. Based on this correlation, it is possible to evaluate the system deviations from the desired path and calculate the required action to correct the movement of the vehicle. For certain applications the path characterizing pattern can be based on piecewice sections of nonparallel straight lines. The pattern can be obtained by filtering the straight lines from a picture of the path vicinity. To perform the required correlation between the actual measurement and this pattern a novel correlation algorithm, based on MSD (Mean Square Difference), is derived. MSD has an advantage over other methods for path pattern correlation, when there are no scaling errors between the measurement and the pattern in memory. Moreover, MSD converges to ML (Maximum Likelihood) for errors which are small with respect to the pattern measurement. Two main issues in implementing the new correlation process are discussed:

1. The near optimum performance of the new correlation algorithm, along with its simplicity, and the way in which it ‘handles’ real-time calculations with minimum computational effort.
2. The evaluation of the performance bound for the correlation process.

It is shown that, with the proposed method, deterministic errors in measuring the distances to these lines do not affect the correlation in the longitudinal (x) direction. Thus, only random measurement errors among the lines will cause correlation errors in x. In the lateral (y) direction, however, the obtained error is identical in size to the bias error.     

非晶硅薄膜晶化方法

多晶硅薄膜由于具有较高的载流子迁移率和良好的光电性能,广泛应用于集成电路及光电器件中,尤其在太阳电池领域引起了广泛关注。多晶材料晶界处会发生载流子的复合,降低载流子寿命。结晶度与晶粒尺寸是多晶硅薄膜取得良好性能的关键因素,直接制备的多晶硅薄膜一般晶粒尺寸较小、晶界较多,所以常采用非晶硅晶化法制备出晶粒尺寸较大的多晶硅薄膜。介绍了几种常见的非晶硅薄膜晶化方法,总结了各种晶化方法的机理和制备的薄膜的物理性质。     

Images, frames, and connectionist hierarchies

The representation of hierarchically structured knowledge in systems using distributed patterns of activity is an abiding concern for the connectionist solution of cognitively rich problems. Here, we use statistical unsupervised learning to consider semantic aspects of structured knowledge representation. We meld unsupervised learning notions formulated for multilinear models with tensor product ideas for representing rich information. We apply the model to images of faces.     

Phasic norepinephrine: a neural interrupt signal for unexpected events

Extensive animal studies indicate that the neuromodulator norepinephrine plays an important role in specific aspects of vigilance, attention and learning, putatively serving as a neural interrupt or reset function. The activity of norepinephrine-releasing neurons in the locus coeruleus during attentional tasks is modulated not only by the animal's level of engagement and the sensory inputs, but also by temporally rich aspects of internal decision-making processes. Here, we propose that it is unexpected changes in the world within the context of a task that activate the noradrenergic interrupt signal. We quantify this idea in a Bayesian model of a well-studied visual discrimination task, demonstrating that the model captures a rich repertoire of noradrenergic responses at the sub-second temporal resolution.     

The OODB path-method generator (PMG) using access weights and precomputed access relevance

A path-method is used as a mechanism in object-oriented databases (OODBs) to retrieve or to update information relevant to one class that is not stored with that class but with some other class. A path-method is a method which traverses from one class through a chain of connections between classes and accesses information at another class. However, it is a difficult task for a casual user or even an application programmer to write path-methods to facilitate queries. This is because it might require comprehensive knowledge of many classes of the conceptual schema that are not directly involved in the query, and therefore may not even be included in a user's (incomplete) view about the contents of the database. We have developed a system, called path-method generator (PMG), which generates path-methods automatically according to a user's database-manipulating requests. The PMG offers the user one of the possible path-methods and the user verifies from his knowledge of the intended purpose of the request whether that path-method is the desired one. If the path method is rejected, then the user can utilize his now increased knowledge about the database to request (with additional parameters given) another offer from the PMG. The PMG is based on access weights attached to the connections between classes and precomputed access relevance between every pair of classes of the OODB. Specific rules for access weight assignment and algorithms for computing access relevance appeared in our previous papers [MGPF92, MGPF93, MGPF96]. In this paper, we present a variety of traversal algorithms based on access weights and precomputed access relevance. Experiments identify some of these algorithms as very successful in generating most desired path-methods. The PMG system utilizes these successful algorithms and is thus an efficient tool for aiding the user with the difficult task of querying and updating a large OODB. Received July 19, 1993 / Accepted May 16, 1997