Matrix influence on the piezoelectric properties of piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite exhibiting particle alignment

This study was addressed to the influence of an electric field strength applied at fabrication process and matrix properties, such as the dielectric constant and the Young's modulus, on “pseudo‐1‐3 piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite” in order to further enhance the piezoelectricity of that. The pseudo‐1‐3 piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite consists of linearly ordered piezoelectric ceramic particles in polymer material. Silicone gel, silicone rubber, urethane rubber, and poly‐methyl‐methacrylate, which exhibit different dielectric constants and Young's modulus, were used as matrices to evaluate the matrix influence. The piezoelectricity of the pseudo‐1‐3 piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite was evaluated using the piezoelectric strain constant d₃₃. The d₃₃ is one of the indices of the piezoelectric properties for piezoelectric materials. As a result, it was confirmed that d₃₃ of the pseudo‐1‐3 piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite increased with the increase of the electric filed strength applied at fabrication process, though, it reached a constant value at a certain strength value. Further it was confirmed that dielectric constant of the matrix had a small influence on d₃₃ of the pseudo‐1‐3 piezoelectric ceramic/polymer composite, however, in case of matrix of lower Young's modulus, d₃₃ was increase. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 41817.     

Visual evaluation at scale of threshold to suprathreshold color difference

Visual evaluation experiments of color discrimination threshold and suprathreshold color‐difference comparison were carried out using CRT colors based on the psychophysical methods of interleaved staircase and constant stimuli, respectively. A large set of experimental data was generated ranged from threshold to large suprathreshold color difference at the five CIE color centers. The visual data were analyzed in detail for every observer at each visual scale to show the effect of color‐difference magnitude on the observer precision. The chromaticity ellipses from this study were compared with four previous published data, of CRT colors by Cui and Luo, and of surface colors by RIT‐DuPont, Cheung and Rigg, and Guan and Luo, to report the reproducibility of this kind of experiment using CRT colors and the variations between CRT and surface data, respectively. The present threshold data were also compared against the different suprathreshold data to show the effect of color‐difference scales. The visual results were further used to test the three advance color‐difference formulae, CMC, CIE94, and CIEDE2000, together with the basic CIELAB equation. In their original forms or with optimized K_L values, the CIEDE2000 outperformed others, followed by CMC, and with the CIELAB and CIE94 the poorest for predicting the combined dataset of all color centers in the present study. © 2005 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 30, 198–208, 2005; Published online in Wiley InterScience (www.interscience.wiley.com). DOI 10.1002/col.20106     

Damage mechanism in weldment of 2.25Cr-1Mo steel under creep-fatigue loading

The purpose of this study is to clarify damage process of “Type IV cracking” in weldment of a 2.25Cr-1Mo steel and to propose a micro damage prediction method. From continuous observation under a creep-fatigue test, it was found that spherical shape voids initiated and grew on grain boundaries in fine grain region and these voids grow continuously by changing their shape to crack-like. Both spherical and crack-like void growth rate equations were derived from the proposed void growth model. It was indicated that measured void growth rate under the creep-fatigue loading was well predicted by the growth rate equations.     

Wide gamut LCD using locally dimmable four‐primary‐color LED backlight

This paper proposes a wide gamut LCD using locally dimmable four‐primary‐color (4PC) LED backlight. Although the color gamut of LCDs has been improved in recent years, it is insufficient to reproduce all the colors in the real world. The objective of this paper is to propose a wide gamut LCD that reproduces all the colors in the real world while keeping the cost increases to a minimum. We evaluated the color gamut reproduced by LEDs of multiple primary colors and selected cyan as the optimal color to be added to the three primary colors to reproduce all the colors in the real world. Therefore, we designed an LED backlight consisting of an additional only‐cyan LED with three‐primary‐color LEDs and developed a prototype LCD with 4PC LED backlight. Furthermore, we developed a local dimming algorithm for the 4PC LED backlight. As a result, we confirmed that the prototype LCD with the 4PC LED backlight is able to cover almost all the colors in the real world and also able to display natural images with highly saturated colors by local dimming.     

Combination of bottleneck feature extraction and dereverberation for distant-talking speech recognition

The performance of speech recognition in distant-talking environments is severely degraded by the reverberation that can occur in enclosed spaces (e.g., meeting rooms). To mitigate this degradation, dereverberation techniques such as network structure-based denoising autoencoders and multi-step linear prediction are used to improve the recognition accuracy of reverberant speech. Regardless of the reverberant conditions, a novel discriminative bottleneck feature extraction approach has been demonstrated to be effective for speech recognition under a range of conditions. As bottleneck feature extraction is not primarily designed for dereverberation, we are interested in whether it can compensate for other carefully designed dereverberation approaches. In this paper, we propose three schemes covering both front-end processing (cascaded combination and parallel combination) and back-end processing (system combination). Each of these schemes integrates bottleneck feature extraction with dereverberation. The effectiveness of these schemes is evaluated via a series of experiments using the REVERB challenge dataset.     

Observation of three-dimensional elemental distributions of a Si device using a 360 degrees -tilt FIB and the cold field-emission STEM system

A technique for preparation of a pillar-shaped specimen and its multidirectional observation using a combination of a scanning transmission electron microscope (STEM) and a focused ion beam (FIB) instrument has been developed. The system employs an FIB/STEM compatible holder with a specially designed tilt mechanism, which allows the specimen to be tilted through 360 degrees [T. Yaguchi, M. Konno, T. Kamino, T. Hashimoto, T. Ohnishi, K. Umemura, K. Asayama, Microsc. Microanal. 9 (Suppl. 2) (2003) 118; T. Yaguchi, M. Konno, T. Kamino, T. Hashimoto, T. Ohnishi, M. Watanabe, Microsc. Microanal. 10 (Suppl. 2) (2004) 1030]. This technique was applied to obtain the three-dimensional (3D) elemental distributions around a contact plug of a Si device used in a 90-nm technology. A specimen containing only one contact plug was prepared in the shape of a pillar with a diameter of 200nm and a length of 5mum. Elemental maps were obtained from the pillar specimen using a 200-kV cold-field emission gun (FEG) STEM model HD-2300C equipped with the EDAX genesis X-ray energy-dispersive spectrometry (XEDS) system through a spectrum imaging technique. In this study, elemental distributions of minor elements with weak signals were enhanced by applying principal component analysis (PCA), which is a superior technique to extract weak signals from a large dataset. The distributions of elements, especially the metallization component Ti and minor dopant As in this particular device, were successfully extracted by PCA. Finally, the 3D elemental distributions around the contact plug could be visualized by reconstruction from the tilt series of maps.     

Self-generation of reward by logarithmic transformation of multiple sensor evaluations

Artificial Life and Robotics - Although the design of the reward function in reinforcement learning is important, it is difficult to design a system that can adapt to a variety of environments and...     

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.     

Development of an image evaluation method for skin color distribution in facial images and its application: Aging effects and seasonal changes of facial color distribution

In this article, we present an evaluation method for the skin color distribution in the face area. Unlike previous methods that extract a specific area, our method subdivides the entire face into small regions and analyzes detailed, per-frame textures. Our evaluation method for skin color distribution is based on facial feature points and includes segmentation that takes into account the facial skeleton and muscle orientation. The use of facial feature points enables a comparison at relatively equal positions on the face without depending on the shape or size of the individual's face. Our evaluation method is versatile, and as an application, we clarified age-specific features and seasonal variations of facial color distribution. As a result of applying this evaluation method to the facial images of women aged 20 to 78 years, we confirmed that the lightness of the face decreased as age increased. In particular, the decrease in lightness was remarkable in the region along the cheekbone, from the temple to the center of the cheek. Furthermore, we analyzed the seasonal changes of melanin distribution in the face area. This showed that the melanin index increased particularly in the cheekbone area in the summer when the influence of ultraviolet rays became large. Our novel methodology and the data presented in this article will be useful in various fields, such as dermatology, cosmetics, and computer vision.     

Microstructures of InN film on 4H-SiC (0001) substrate grown by RF-MBE

InN film was grown on 4H-SiC (0001) substrate by RF plasma-assisted molecular beam epitaxy (RF-MBE). Prior to the growth of InN film, an InN buffer layer with a thickness of ~ 5.5 nm was grown on the substrate. Surface morphology, microstructure and structural quality of InN film were investigated. Micro-structural defects, such as stacking faults and anti-phase domain in InN film were carefully investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The results show that a high density of line contrasts, parallel to the growth direction (c-axis), was clearly observed in the grown InN film. Dark field TEM images recorded with diffraction vectors g = 1120 and g = 0002 revealed that such line contrasts evolved from a coalescence of the adjacent misoriented islands during the initial stage of the InN nucleation on the substrate surface. This InN nucleation also led to a generation of anti-phase domains.