Synthesis of heterocyclic metal complexes and their evaluation as marine antifoulants

4-Amino-3-thio-1,24-triazolidine (L₁) and 4-amino-5-thio-1,3,4-thiadiazole (L_II) as well as their metal complexes of the general formulae ML_I·2H₂O and ML_IICl (M; Pb(II), Cd(II) and Zn(II)) were prepared. With Sn(II), we obtained Sn(L_I)₂·2H₂O and SnL_IICl, respectively. The structures of the compounds were identified through elemental analysis, and IR and UV spectra measurements, in addition to thermal analysis in case of the metal complexes. The antifouling properties of the compounds were tested by their incorporation into paint formulations which were applied to PVC substrates and tested in water from Alexandria western harbour. When the compounds were added at 17·5% by volume, the coated panels were fouled after 3 months of immersion. The addition of 6·7% by volume of tributyltin oxide to 15·8% of the prepared compounds in one formulation elevated the paint efficiency and prevented fouling for 11 months. Paint containing solely tributyltin oxide at the same concentration was inactive against algae.     

Construction of the plasmid PMEX8-HAK1 and random site-directed mutagenesis of human cytosolic adenylate kinase

The pMEX8-hAK1 vector was devised from the pAK plasmid (Kim J. H. et al., 1989, Protein Engineering 5, 379-386), which could directly express human adenylate kinase proteins without recombination and its single strand DNA could be withdrawn with helper phage for random site-directed mutagenesis. The conserved key residues at Lys21, Lys27, and Thr39 were engineered to obtain mutants for kinetic analysis. Three mutants were obtained as K21P, K27R, and T39S, their specific activities were strikingly reduced compared to those of wild type adenylate kinase. This pMEX8-hAK1 will be a powerful tool for site-directed mutagenesis to detect the substrate-enzyme interaction for human adenylate kinase including various other enzymes.     

Adaptive inverse filters for stereophonic sound reproduction

A general theoretical basis for the design of adaptive digital filters used for the equalization of the response of multichannel sound reproduction systems is described. The approach is applied to the two-channel case and then extended to deal with arbitrary numbers of channels. The intention is to equalize not only the response of the loudspeakers and the listening room but also the crosstalk transmission from right loudspeaker to left ear and vice versa. The formulation is a generalization of the Atal-Schroeder crosstalk canceler. However, the use of a least-squares approach to the digital filter design and of appropriate modeling delays potentially allows the effective equalization of nonminimum phase components in the transmission path. A stochastic gradient algorithm which facilitates the adaptation of the digital filters to the optimal solution, thereby providing the possibility of designing the filters in situ, is presented. Some experimental results for the two-channel case are given     

Damage tolerance of glass mat/epoxy laminates hybridized with flexible resin under static and impact loading

This study deals with the impact property and damage tolerance of matrix hybrid composite laminates with different laminate constitution. The matrix hybrid composite laminates consisted of the laminae with a conventional epoxy resin and the laminae with a flexible epoxy resin modified from the conventional resin to avoid the interlaminar delamination. The impact energy absorption ratio greatly depended on the matrix resin placed at the impact face. The energy absorption was almost constant if the conventional resin was placed at the impact surface layer, while it increased exponentially with the increasing fraction of the flexible resin if the flexible resin was placed at the impact face. The impact energy was absorbed by the damage development and propagation in the laminate with conventional resin laminae as the impacted face, while it was absorbed by both the recoverable deformation of the flexible resin and the damage propagation in the laminate with flexible resin laminae as the impacted face.     

Traffic grooming on WDM rings using optical burst transport

A sublambda traffic-grooming scheme on wavelength-division-multiplexed (WDM) rings, which is called optical burst transport (OBT), is proposed. The network protocol and architecture allow increased flexibility to tailor the transport network behavior for efficient delivery of bursty data traffic. Using different network parameters, its performance is analyzed via simulation, and the implementation issues including the media-access-control (MAC) protocol, tunable-filter controller, and burst-mode receiver are addressed. Finally, the feasibility of the OBT with an experimental testbed built by the authors is demonstrated and a streaming-video application is used to present its overall functionality.     

Vibration and damping analysis of beams with composite coats

Numerical and experimental investigations of the dynamic behavior for coated laminate composite beams has been presented and discussed in the present work. A numerical technique is utilized to compute the eigen parameters of coated laminated composite beams. An attempt to study the variations in the natural frequencies and damping properties of laminated composite coated beams taking into account different lamina orientation of coat and various kinds of core isotropic material (steel and aluminium) is introduced. The variations of the eigen parameters vs. the code number of the coated layer with the use of various types of isotropic material are measured by utilizing (the frequency response displayed on) an (FFT) analyzer. The experimental and numerical work is carried out on four different fiber orientations, aligned longitudinally, transversely, making 45 ° with the fibers direction and randomly oriented. Comparison between experimental and numerical results shows a tight connection between them.     

Solving regularized least squares with qualitatively controlled adaptive cross‐approximated matrices

The adaptive cross‐approximation (ACA) technique is applied to accelerating an inverse‐problem solver that estimates charge distribution on a dielectric spacer. The ACA generates an approximated system‐matrix that enables us to carry out high‐speed inverse calculation. We designed an approximation procedure based on ACA with some additional concepts, that is, (a) partitioning of matrix based on algebraic information, (b) approximation quality control based on matrix norms, and so on. The tested solver (LSQR for regularized least squares) with ACA demonstrates about 10 times faster performance than that without ACA. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Electr Eng Jpn, 159(3): 10–18, 2007; Published online in Wiley InterScience ( www.interscience.wiley.com ). DOI 10.1002/eej.20326     

Conditional Data Mapping Flip-Flops for Low-Power and High-Performance Systems

This paper introduces a new family of low-power and high-performance flip-flops, namely conditional data mapping flip-flops (CDMFFs), which reduce their dynamic power by mapping their inputs to a configuration that eliminates redundant internal transitions. We present two CDMFFs, having differential and single-ended structures, respectively, and compare them to the state-of-the-art flip-flops. The results indicate that both CDMFFs have the best power-delay product in their groups, respectively. In the aspect of power dissipation, the single-ended and differential CDMFFs consume the least power at data activity less than 50%, and are 31% and 26% less power than the conditional capture flip-flops at 25% data activity, respectively. In the aspect of performance, CDMFFs achieve small data-to-output delays, comparable to those of the transmission-gate pulsed latch and the modified-sense-amplifier flip-flop. In the aspect of timing reliability, CDMFFs have the best internal race immunity among pulse-triggered flip-flops. A post-layout case study is demonstrated with comparison to a transmission-gate flip-flop. The results indicate the single-ended CDMFF has 34% less in data-to-output delay and 28% less in power at 25% data activity, in spite of the 34% increase in size