High-performance polymer alloys of polybenzoxazine and bismaleimide

Two series of high-performance polymer alloys were prepared by mixing typical benzoxine monomers, 3-phenyl-3,4-dihydro-2H-1,3-benzoxazine (P-a) or 6,6-(1-methylethyliden)-bis-(3,4-dihydro-3-phenyl-2H-1,3-benzoxazine) (B-a), with a typical bismaleimide, 4,4-bismaleimidodiphenyl methane by various ratios followed by thermal treatment up to 240 °C. DSC and IR of the alloys were examined to follow the curing reaction. These analyses showed that the obtained polymer alloys are AB co-cross-linked polymer networks through the formation of ether linkage between the hydroxyl group of polybenoxazine and the double bond of bismaleimide. Viscoelastic analysis and softening temperature measurement revealed that the polymer alloys have much higher glass transition temperatures than those of each homopolymer. The thermal stability also increased with the increase of bismaleimide content as evidenced by TGA.     

Heavy arsenic doping of silicon grown by atmospheric pressure selective epitaxial chemical vapor deposition

Selective epitaxial Si with a high arsenic concentration of 2.2×10¹⁹ atoms/cm³ was deposited at a high growth rate of 3.3 nm/min under atmospheric pressure. It was confirmed that this method had excellent selectivity and produced films having good crystalline quality, abrupt dopant profiles at the interfaces, and smooth surfaces. The growth mechanism is discussed in terms of the relationship between the effects of arsenic surface segregation and etching by hydrogen chloride.     

The effect of inorganic additives on the formation,composition, and combustion of cellulosic char

At temperature above 300°C the glycosyl units of cellulose are simultaneously depolymerized to a tar and decomposed to a char by evolution of H₂O, CO, and CO₂. When the glycosyl units are depleted, a stable char is formed containing about 30% aliphatic and 70% aromatic components. The aliphatic component is formed first, but on further heating is converted to polycyclic aromatic structures. The chars formed at lower temperatures are more combustible because the aliphatic component of the char is highly pyrophoric and is oxidized almost at the same temperature at which it is formed (～360°C). The aromatic component, however, is less reactive and is oxidized at ～520°C. Consequently, the chars formed at higher temperatures are less combustible. It has been shown that (NH₄)₂HPO₄, which is a well-known flame retardant and smoldering inhibitor, lowers the pyrolysis temperature and increases the char yield by accelerating the decomposition reactions. This affects the composition of the intermediate chars but the final products have about the same composition irrespective of additives. (NH₄)₂HPO₄ also lowers the rate of oxidation of the aromatic component and the corresponding heat release. NaCl, which is an enhancer of smoldering combustion, has a slight stabilizing effect on pyrolysis of cellulose. It lowers the oxidation temperature of the aromatic component and dramatically increases its rate. The corresponding heat release is also increased due to complete oxidation to CO₂. The rate of oxidation calculated from the dynamic thermal analysis data is more than tripled by NaCl and significantly reduced by (NH₄)₂HPO₄.     

Reliability and mechanical durability tests of flexible OLED with ALD coating

To improve the reliability and mechanical durability of a flexible organic light‐emitting diode display, the entire flexible display is coated with an aluminum oxide film by atomic layer deposition (ALD). Because the step coverage of ALD is excellent, the AlO_x film was deposited not only on the front and back surfaces but also on the side surfaces of the display. A high‐temperature and high‐humidity preservation test, repetitive bending tests, and a pencil hardness test were conducted on the flexible display with ALD‐AlO_x coating. The display survived 500 h of a 65°C, 95% preservation test, endured a 100,000‐time repetitive bending test with a curvature radius of 4 mm, and was found to have a pencil hardness of 4H.     

Computational design of iris folding patterns

Computational Visual Media - Iris folding is an art-form consisting of layered strips of paper, forming a spiral pattern behind an aperture, which can be used to make cards and gift tags. This...     

Revolving Vernier Mechanism Controls Size of Linear Homomultimer

A new kind of the Vernier mechanism that is able to control the size of linear assembly of DNA origami nanostructures is proposed. The mechanism is realized by mechanical design of DNA origami, which consists of a hollow cylinder and a rotatable shaft in it connected through the same scaffold. This nanostructure stacks with each other by the shape complementarity at its top and bottom surfaces of the cylinder, while the number of stacking is limited by twisting angle of the shaft. Experiments have shown that the size distribution of multimeric assembly of the origami depends on the twisting angle of the shaft; the average lengths of the multimer are decamer, hexamer, and tetramer for 0°, 10°, and 20° twist, respectively. In summary, it is possible to affect the number of polymerization by adjusting the precise shape and movability of a molecular structure.     

A dynamically reconfigurable processor for H.264/AVC image prediction

H.264/AVC provides high video quality at substantially low bit rates. It is useful for saving and transferring video images by robot cameras. However, the computational complexity of H.264/AVC is very high. A high-speed general-purpose processor is necessary to process H.264/AVC. However, it is difficult to use such a processor for a portable device. Therefore, an application-specific processor is necessary. A dynamic reconfiguration can virtually expand the circuit area in a limited chip area. Therefore, this article proposes a dynamically reconfigurable processor for H.264/AVC image prediction. H.264/AVC contains intra- and inter-prediction processes. The intra- and inter-prediction processes are not used at the same time. The proposed processor was designed and synthesized, and dynamically reconfigures those circuits. As a result, look-up tables (LUTs) were reduced to 93%, flip-flops were reduced to 94%, and the maximum delay was about the same.     

Interactive Cover Design Considering Physical Constraints

We developed an interactive system to design a customized cover for a given three‐dimensional (3D) object such as a camera, teapot, or car. The system first computes the convex hull of the input geometry. The user segments it into several cloth patches by drawing on the 3D surface. This paper provides two technical contributions. First, it introduces a specialized flattening algorithm for cover patches. It makes each two‐dimensional edge in the flattened pattern equal to or longer than the original 3D edge; a smaller patch would fail to cover the object, and a larger patch would result in extra wrinkles. Second, it introduces a mechanism to verify that the user‐specified opening would be large enough for the object to be removed. Starting with the initial configuration, the system virtually “pulls” the object out of the cover while avoiding excessive stretching of cloth patches. We used the system to design real covers and confirmed that it functions as intended.     

An Interactive Design System of Free‐Formed Bamboo‐Copters

We present an interactive design system for designing free‐formed bamboo‐copters, where novices can easily design free‐formed, even asymmetric bamboo‐copters that successfully fly. The designed bamboo‐copters can be fabricated using digital fabrication equipment, such as a laser cutter. Our system provides two useful functions for facilitating this design activity. First, it visualizes a simulated flight trajectory of the current bamboo‐copter design, which is updated in real time during the user's editing. Second, it provides an optimization function that automatically tweaks the current bamboo‐copter design such that the spin quality—how stably it spins—and the flight quality—how high and long it flies—are enhanced. To enable these functions, we present non‐trivial extensions over existing techniques for designing free‐formed model airplanes [ UKSI14 ], including a wing discretization method tailored to free‐formed bamboo‐copters and an optimization scheme for achieving stable bamboo‐copters considering both spin and flight qualities.     

Content-Dependent Question Generation Using LOD for History Learning in Open Learning Space

The objective of this research is to use current linked open data (LOD) to generate questions automatically to support history learning. This paper tries to clarify the potential of LOD as a learning resource. By linking LOD to natural language documents, we created an open learning space where learners have access to machine understandable natural language information about many topics. The learning environment supports learners with content-dependent questions. In this paper, we describe the question generation method that creates natural language questions using LOD. The integrated data is combined to a history domain ontology and a history dependent question ontology to generate content-dependent questions. To prove whether the generated questions have a potential to support learning, a human expert conducted an evaluation comparing our automatically generated questions with questions generated manually. The results of the evaluation showed that the generated questions could cover more than 80% of the questions supporting knowledge acquisition generated by humans. In addition, we confirmed the automatically generated questions have a potential to reinforce learners’ deep historical understanding.