Research and development of liquid hydrogen (LH2) temperature monitoring system for marine applications

Monitoring the temperature in liquid hydrogen (LH₂) storage tanks on ships is important for the safety of maritime navigation. In addition, accurate temperature measurement is also required for commercial transactions. Temperature and pressure define the density of liquid hydrogen, which is directly linked to trading interests. In this study, we developed and tested a liquid hydrogen temperature monitoring system that uses platinum resistance sensors with a nominal electrical resistance of approximately 1000 Ω at room temperature, PT-1000, for marine applications. The temperature measurements were carried out using a newly developed temperature monitoring system under different pressure conditions. The measured values are compared with a calibrated reference PT-1000 resistance thermometer. We confirm a measurement accuracy of ±50 mK in a pressure range of 0.1 MPa–0.5 MPa.     

Supramolecular Zn(II)-Dipicolylamine-Azobenzene-Aminocyclodextrin-ATP Complex: Design and ATP Recognition in Water

Cyclodextrins (CyDs) are water-soluble host molecules possessing a nanosized hydrophobic cavity. In the realm of molecular recognition, this cavity is used not only as a recognition site but also as a reaction medium, where a hydrophobic sensor recognizes a guest molecule. Based on the latter concept, we have designed a novel supramolecular sensing system composed of Zn(II)-dipicolylamine metal complex-based azobenzene (1-Zn) and 3A-amino-3A-deoxy-(2AS,3AS)-γ-cyclodextrin (3-NH₂-γ-CyD) for sensing adenosine-5′-triphosphate (ATP). 1-Zn showed redshifts in the UV-Vis spectra and induced circular dichroism (ICD) only when both ATP and 3-NH₂-γ-CyD were present. Calculations of equilibrium constants indicated that the amino group of 3-NH₂-γ-CyD was involved in the formation of supramolecular 1-Zn/3-NH₂-γ-CyD/ATP. The Job plot of the ICD spectral response revealed that the stoichiometry of 1-Zn/3-NH₂-γ-CyD/ATP was 2:1:1. The pH effect was examined and 1-Zn/3-NH₂-γ-CyD/ATP was most stable in the neutral condition. The NOESY spectrum suggested the localization of 1-Zn in the 3-NH₂-γ-CyD cavity. Based on the obtained results, the metal coordination interaction of 1-Zn and the electrostatic interaction of 3-NH₂-γ-CyD were found to take place for ATP recognition. The “reaction medium approach” enabled us to develop a supramolecular sensing system that undergoes multi-point interactions in water. This study is the first step in the design of a selective sensing system based on a good understanding of supramolecular structures.     

A pre-heating vaporization technology of coal-water-slurry for the gasification process

A pre-heating vaporization technology of coal water slurry, CWS, was developed to increase the efficiency of coal gasification with the reduction of oxygen consumption. A CWS pre-heating experimental unit having a capacity of 2.0 tons-coal/day was manufactured. After the CWS was heated to 573 K at about 10 MPa, water in CWS was continuously vaporized in a tube of which the diameter increased gradually (2–10 mm I.D.), and dry coal particles with steam were atomized and fed to a vessel. No aggregation of coal particles was observed in the atomized samples. The temperature and the pressure distributions of the fluid were calculated with empirical heat transfer and pressure drop correlations. The calculated results well corresponded to the experimental data measured in some test points. Using the calculation model, a large scale apparatus of 100 tons-coal/day was designed using KNO₃ + NaNO₂ + NaNO₃ molten salt as a heating medium.     

Effect of molecular weight on molecular orientation and morphology of polypropylene sheets containing a β-nucleating agent

In this study, polypropylene (PP) films containing the β nucleating agent, N,N′-dicyclohexyl-2,6-naphthalenedicarboxamide, were prepared using PP with three different molecular weights (low, medium, and high) by extrusion process with T-shaped die. The structure and morphology of the films were studied after stretching. It was found that a unique molecular orientation, in which both the c-axis and crystalline lamellae were oriented perpendicular to the flow direction, was formed in all undrawn film samples, irrespective of the molecular weights of the PP. In the PP sheets stretched in the machine direction, the low-molecular-weight sample containing the nucleating agent exhibited brittle properties owing to a lack of tie chains in the stretching direction. In contrast, cavitation was prominent in the medium (M-PP)- and high (H-PP)-molecular-weight samples. Notably, M-PP containing the nucleating agent, with a high degree of molecular orientation, promoted the formation of a large number of voids. In H-PP containing the nucleating agent, the presence of numerous tie chains inhibited cavitation, resulting in fewer voids. The experimental results demonstrated the influence of the molecular weight on the void structure, which will be useful in the field of microporous membranes.     

A novel radial orientation treatment of nematic liquid crystals using magnetic field lines with permanent magnet and applying the assisted electric field

Recently, there has been considerable research on optical devices, such as liquid crystal (LC) lenses and special optical plates, using LCs. In such devices, relatively small LC cells are frequently used, or unique LC orientations are required. As an LC orientation process, we focused on the LC director's orientation induced by the magnetic force line distribution of a small neodymium magnet. We propose a simple method for obtaining radial orientation, which is rather difficult to obtain using the ordinary rubbing method. The initial orientation in the LC cell is a vertical orientation cell with almost zero azimuth anchoring. With the proposed method, the reorientation process is performed with an assisting electric field and a small permanent magnet, unlike the conventional magnetic field orientation process that requires a large electromagnet. Furthermore, a polymer stabilization treatment is used to fix the obtained radial orientation pattern in the LC cell. After the treatment, the applying voltage can control the tilt angle of the director in weak polymer treatment, and a completely fixed orientation pattern can be obtained that in strong.     

Recurrent infomax generates cell assemblies, neuronal avalanches, and simple cell-like selectivity

Recently multineuronal recording has allowed us to observe patterned firings, synchronization, oscillation, and global state transitions in the recurrent networks of central nervous systems. We propose a learning algorithm based on the process of information maximization in a recurrent network, which we call recurrent infomax (RI). RI maximizes information retention and thereby minimizes information loss through time in a network. We find that feeding in external inputs consisting of information obtained from photographs of natural scenes into an RI-based model of a recurrent network results in the appearance of Gabor-like selectivity quite similar to that existing in simple cells of the primary visual cortex. We find that without external input, this network exhibits cell assembly-like and synfire chain-like spontaneous activity as well as a critical neuronal avalanche. In addition, we find that RI embeds externally input temporal firing patterns to the network so that it spontaneously reproduces these patterns after learning. RI provides a simple framework to explain a wide range of phenomena observed in in vivo and in vitro neuronal networks, and it will provide a novel understanding of experimental results for multineuronal activity and plasticity from an information-theoretic point of view.     

Self-organizing maps with asymmetric neighborhood function

The self-organizing map (SOM) is an unsupervised learning method as well as a type of nonlinear principal component analysis that forms a topologically ordered mapping from the high-dimensional data space to a low-dimensional representation space. It has recently found wide applications in such areas as visualization, classification, and mining of various data. However, when the data sets to be processed are very large, a copious amount of time is often required to train the map, which seems to restrict the range of putative applications. One of the major culprits for this slow ordering time is that a kind of topological defect (e.g., a kink in one dimension or a twist in two dimensions) gets created in the map during training. Once such a defect appears in the map during training, the ordered map cannot be obtained until the defect is eliminated, for which the number of iterations required is typically several times larger than in the absence of the defect. In order to overcome this weakness, we propose that an asymmetric neighborhood function be used for the SOM algorithm. Compared with the commonly used symmetric neighborhood function, we found that an asymmetric neighborhood function accelerates the ordering process of the SOM algorithm, though this asymmetry tends to distort the generated ordered map. We demonstrate that the distortion of the map can be suppressed by improving the asymmetric neighborhood function SOM algorithm. The number of learning steps required for perfect ordering in the case of the one-dimensional SOM is numerically shown to be reduced from O(N(3)) to O(N(2)) with an asymmetric neighborhood function, even when the improved algorithm is used to get the final map without distortion.     

Experience with radio isotope myelography from neurosurgical aspects (author's transl)

Experience with Radio Isotope Myelography is reported here. 169Yb-DTPA as a tracer was intrathecally injected at lumbar region in twenty three patients with various spinal cord lesions. The first scanning is perfomed after comfirming by gamma-camera that the tracer reaches to the lesion, the second and the third scannings are done according to the ascending rate of the tracer. (I) Normal scintimyelogram (A) In normal case, the shape of the Radio Isotope Myelogram well corresponds the shape of anatomical subarachnoid space. (B) In normal adult cases, the tracer comes up to the cisterna magna in 20-25 minutes after the lumbar injection. Therefore, the scintimyelographic diagnosis should be made not only by the shape but also by the ascending rapidity of the tracer. (II) Abnormal scintimyelogram Abnormal scintimyelograms could be summarized as following three categories. (A) "Delay": It means delay of the ascending of the tracer. Besides, "Transient delay" found in a case of Arnord-Chiari's malformation was proposed. (B) "Partial block": It meas a defect at the level of the lesion. This "Partial block" were observed in cases of spinal cord angioma, cervical spondylosis and spinal cord tumor etc. (C) "Complete block": It means the stagnation of the tracer below the lesion. To sum up, Rario Isotope Myelography, especially in partial block, can more easily and more sensitively represent the maximum extent of the spinal cord lesion than other myelographic study or angiographic one. On the other hand, we can not qualitatively diagnose about the lesions by its indistinct border.