Measured mass transfer coefficients in porous media using specific interfacial area

Bulk and intrinsic mass transfer processes across interfaces between nonaqueous phase liquids (NAPLs) and water were studied in water-saturated columns. Columns packed with different grain sizes of sand were used to create various NAPL-water interfacial areas along with different NAPL saturations. The intrinsic mass transfer coefficients were estimated from the bulk mass transfer coefficients, and the specific interfacial areas were measured using tracer studies. The bulk mass transfer coefficients increased with increasing NAPL-water specific interfacial area as well as NAPL saturation and pore velocity and with decreasing grain sizes. Moreover, the bulk mass transfer coefficients were correlated with NAPL-water specific interfacial area rather than NAPL saturation and were more sensitive at high NAPL-water interfacial areas than at low interfacial areas. In contrast, the intrinsic mass transfer coefficients were nearly independent of specific interfacial area and NAPL saturation but dependent on pore velocity. Reduction of NAPL saturation by dissolution caused a linear decrease in the bulk mass transfer coefficients.     

Fabrication of two-dimensional zinc oxide nanorod patterns and their application for optical diffraction grating effect

We present a novel method for fabricating two-dimensional arrays of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanorod patterns. Vertically aligned ZnO nanostructure patterns were synthesized by hydrothermal growth on a two-dimensional seed layer pattern formed by atomic layer deposition. Various characteristics of ZnO seed films were experimentally studied in order to optimize the fabrication of ZnO rod structures in terms of their uniformity and vertical alignment on the two-dimensional-patterned surfaces. Using these ZnO structures as hierarchical electrodes, we demonstrate that localized electric fields in the proximity of ZnO rod patterns can be used for periodic alignment of liquid crystal molecules, resulting in the optical diffraction grating effect. Process conditions for creating ZnO rod patterns that best enhance diffraction efficiency are further discussed. The current study is the first demonstration of hierarchical ZnO rod patterns as electrodes for optical modulation of a medium. We believe this will be beneficial for future optical applications.     

Extended Pilot‐Based Coding for Lossless Bit Rate Reduction of MPEG Surround

Pilot‐based coding (PBC), which is used for lossless bit rate reduction of audio coding, has been recently proposed for MPEG Surround. We propose extended PBC for further lossless bit rate reduction of MPEG Surround. Extended PBC selects the number of pilots depending on the parameter band number and the type of spatial parameter. It then encodes the pilots and the relevant difference data. Experiments show that extended PBC is more effective than the original PBC, especially for high bit rate modes, with a negligible complexity increase on the decoder side.     

Image enhancement using the modified ICM method

A generalized version of the iterative conditional modes (ICM) method for image enhancement is developed. The proposed algorithm utilizes the characteristic of Markov random fields (MRF) in modeling the contextual information embedded in image formation. To cope with real images, a new local MRF model with a second-order neighborhood is introduced. This model extracts contextual information not only from the intensity levels but also from the relative position of neighboring cliques. Also, an outlier rejection method is presented. In this method, the rejection depends on each candidate's contribution to the local variance. To cope with a mixed noise case, a hypothesis test is implemented as part of the restoration procedure. The proposed algorithm performs signal adaptive, nonlinear, and recursive filtering. In comparing the performance of the new procedure with several well-known order statistic filters, the superiority of the proposed algorithm is demonstrated both in the mean-square-error (MSE) and the mean-absolute-error (MAE) senses. In addition, the new algorithm preserves the details of the images well. It should be noted that the blurring effect is not considered.     

Design and implementation of low-profile contactless battery charger using planar printed circuit board windings as energy transfer device

This paper paper presents the practical details involved in the design and implementation of a contactless battery charger that employs a pair of neighboring printed circuit board (PCB) windings as a contactless energy transfer device. A prototype contactless battery charger developed for application with cellular phones is used as an example to address the design considerations for the PCB windings and energy transfer circuit, plus demonstrates the performance of the contactless charger adapted to a practical application system.     

Influence of nickel oxide nanolayer and doping in organic light-emitting devices

Here we report the effect of introducing nickel oxide (NiO) on the performance of organic light-emitting devices (OLEDs) based on small molecules. For the purpose of aligning the NiO deposition with the conventional OLED process, we employed a thermal evaporation method using the NiO powders. To understand the influence of the NiO introduction, we fabricated two types of devices: (1) OLED with the NiO nanolayer and (2) OLED with the NiO-doped hole transport layer. Results show that the NiO introduction improved the hole injection in both types of OLED. However, the device with the NiO nanolayer exhibited greatly improved efficiency, whereas the efficiency was significantly lowered for the device with the NiO-doped hole transport layer.     

Writing current reduction and total set resistance analysis in PRAM

We evaluated the limit of scaling bottom electrode contact (BEC) heater size and high resistivity heater to reduce writing current. It was found that the resistivity of heater should be increased for reducing writing current below the heater size of about 50 nm without any undesirable increase of resistance of the crystalline state (SET state, Rset). It was shown in the numerical simulations that the dissipated heat loss through BEC during melting GST was decreased in the increase of resistivity of heater. In addition, we analyzed the resistance components contributing to the total set resistance. It was observed that the undesired sharp increase of Rset as the BEC size decreases below 50 nm was attributed to the resistance component of GST–BEC interface. In the case of high resistivity heater, the contributions of both incomplete crystallization and heater itself were enhanced.     

Development of a statistical model to classify driving stress levels using galvanic skin responses

Many studies have demonstrated the strong relationships between physiological responses and driving stress, but they have done little to build a model that could be used to identify a driver's stress accurately in real time. The objective of this study is to develop a model that accurately classifies driving stress by monitoring physiological responses—specifically galvanic skin response (GSR). GSR data were collected from nine drivers with licenses obtained in the US in real road driving situations with two stress conditions—rest period (low stress) and highway or city driving (high stress). The validation drive was performed by one driver with licenses obtained in South Korea in real long‐term road driving situations with two stress conditions—rural area (low stress) and highway or highway under construction (high stress). Those two conditions were used to build a binary logistic regression model to classify low stress or high stress based on a driver's measured hand GSR. The overall classification accuracy of the developed model was found to be 85.3%, and the accuracy of cross validation, with a testing dataset, was found to be 83.2%. A simple logit model was developed to identify drivers' stress by incorporating their GSR data. The developed model can be embedded in a wearable device equipped with GSR sensors for drivers to detect their stress level in real time.     

A resilient buffer allocation scheme in active queue management: a stochastic cooperative game theoretic approach

During the last decade, a plentiful number of active queue management schemes have been proposed, but their main objectives are simply allocating the buffer resource to all flows evenly, or protecting responsive flows from being degraded by unresponsive flows. However, the sending rates of the responsive flows can be determined diversely, and not all unresponsive flows have aggressively high sending rates. Furthermore, it is rational to reserve a portion of the buffer resource for certain privileged traffic. Grounded by these evidences, in this paper, we present a resilient active queue management algorithm, named Prior‐Core‐based Buffer Allocation considering diverse congestion control algorithms, fair‐unresponsive flows, and some privileged traffic. Our approach is based on stochastic cooperative game theory, where the payoffs yielded by cooperation are described by random variables, and the core is defined only over the distribution of these random payoffs; the core in this situation is called the prior‐core. As a result, it is shown that our buffer allocation, yielded by the prior‐core, achieves completely fair allocation for those flows whose requirement does not exceed the fair‐share regardless of the responsiveness, whereas aggressive flows are restricted according to availability of the buffer; all these are verified through ns‐2 simulation experiments. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.