Catalyst Design of Pt-Modified Ni/Al2O3 Catalyst with Flat Temperature Profile in Methane Reforming with CO2 and O2

Pt(0.3)/Ni(10)/Al₂O₃, prepared by a sequential impregnation method, exhibited a more excellent performance in methane reforming with CO₂ and O₂ in terms of the catalytic activity and the temperature profile of the catalyst bed than Pt(0.3) + Ni(10)/Al₂O₃ prepared by a coimpregnation method, Ni(10)/Al₂O₃, Pt(0.3)/Al₂O₃, and Pt(10)/Al₂O₃. It is thought that this is because the surface Pt atoms on Ni catalyst can contribute to the enhancement of the catalyst reducibility.     

Development of an epileptic seizure prediction algorithm using R–R intervals with self-attentive autoencoder

Epilepsy is a neurological disorder that may affect the autonomic nervous system (ANS) from 15 to 20 min before seizure onset, and disturbances of ANS affect R–R intervals (RRI) on an electrocardiogram (ECG). This study aims to develop a machine learning algorithm for predicting focal epileptic seizures by monitoring R–R interval (RRI) data in real time. The developed algorithm adopts a self-attentive autoencoder (SA-AE), which is a neural network for time-series data. The results of applying the developed seizure prediction algorithm to clinical data demonstrated that it functioned well in most patients; however, false positives (FPs) occurred in specific participants. In a future work, we will investigate the causes of FPs and optimize the developing seizure prediction algorithm to further improve performance using newly added clinical data.

     

Mechanical properties and microstructures of rapidly solidified Al89.5Ni8Zr2.5 and Al88.5Ni8Ti3.5 alloys

Al89.5Ni8Zr2.5 and Al88.5Ni8Ti3.5 alloys extruded from their rapidly solidified powders have tensile strength more than 800 MPa and Young's modulus about 100 GPa. The extruded Al89.5Ni8Zr2.5 alloy is composed of -Al, Al3Ni and a metastable tetragonal Al3Zr, and the extruded Al88.5Ni8Ti3.5 alloy consists of -Al, Al3Ni and equilibrium Al3Ti. Through investigation on microstructure change of rapidly solidified Al89.5Ni8Zr2.5 and Al88.5Ni8Ti3.5 alloys with temperature, it is found that a new tetragonal Al3Zr phase, together with -Al and Al3Ni precipitates from the supersaturated -Al phase in the rapidly solidified Al89.5Ni8Zr2.5 alloy at around 603 K and an equilibrium Al3Ti, together with -Al and Al3Ni forms from the supersaturated -Al phase in the rapidly solidified Al88.5Ni8Ti3.5 alloy at about 523 K. The lattice parameters of the new metastable tetragonal Al3Zr phase were calculated to be a=0.3896 nm and c=0.9006 nm. Both the metastable tetragonal Al3Zr and equilibrium Al3Ti phases keep a nano grain size, less than 50 nm even at 773 K. The existence of the nano scale Al3Zr, Al3Ti phases and fine grains of -Al, Al3Ni phases is the reason that Al89.5Ni8Zr2.5 and Al88.5Ni8Ti3.5 alloys have the high strength. © 1998 Chapman & Hall     

Efficient semi-supervised learning on locally informative multiple graphs

We address an issue of semi-supervised learning on multiple graphs, over which informative subgraphs are distributed. One application under this setting can be found in molecular biology, where different types of gene networks are generated depending upon experiments. Here an important problem is to annotate unknown genes by using functionally known genes, which connect to unknown genes in gene networks, in which informative parts vary over networks. We present a powerful, time-efficient approach for this problem by combining soft spectral clustering with label propagation for multiple graphs. We demonstrate the effectiveness and efficiency of our approach using both synthetic and real biological datasets.     

Static Coarse Grain Task Scheduling with Cache Optimization Using OpenMP

Effective use of cache memory is getting more important with increasing gap between the processor speed and memory access speed. Also, use of multigrain parallelism is getting more important to improve effective performance beyond the limitation of loop iteration level parallelism. Considering these factors, this paper proposes a coarse grain task static scheduling scheme considering cache optimization. The proposed scheme schedules coarse grain tasks to threads so that shared data among coarse grain tasks can be passed via cache after task and data decomposition considering cache size at compile time. It is implemented on OSCAR Fortran multigrain parallelizing compiler and evaluated on Sun Ultra80 four-processor SMP workstation using Swim and Tomcatv from the SPEC fp 95. As the results, the proposed scheme gives us 4.56 times speedup for Swim and 2.37 times on 4 processors for Tomcatv respectively against the Sun Forte HPC Ver. 6 update 1 loop parallelizing compiler.     

Quantum Monte Carlo Device Simulation of Nano-Scaled SOI-MOSFETs

Quantum transport properties of nano-scaled SOI-MOSFETs are investigated based on a quantum Monte Carlo (MC) device simulation. The quantum mechanical effects are incorporated in terms of a quantum correction of potential in the well-developed particle MC computational techniques. The ellipsoidal multi-valleys of silicon conduction band are also considered in the simulation. First, the validity of the quantum MC technique is verified by comparing the simulated results with a self-consistent Schrödinger-Poisson solution at thermal equilibrium. Then, we apply the technique to non-equilibrium and quasi-ballistic quantum transport in nano-scaled SOI-MOSFETs.     

Minimum void ratio characteristic of soils containing non-plastic fines

The minimum void ratio is an index widely used to indicate the contraction characteristics and the densest state of soils. The minimum void ratio obtained by the traditional test method has been utilized to represent the density of soils irrespective of their fines content despite the restriction (FC ≤ 5%). By considering the effect of the blow count, pore water, and their primary properties, the applicability of the minimum void ratio to soils containing fines was examined with an automatic tapping machine. It was confirmed that the blow count of the traditional method is not sufficient for soils with a high fines content. Furthermore, the presence of pore water had a significant effect on the minimum void ratio of soils containing fines. The characteristics of the cyclic minimum void ratio, which indicates the minimum void ratio obtained throughout the repetition of liquefaction and drainage, were also examined.     

A comparison of historical land-use change patterns and recommendations for flood plain developments in three delta regions in Southeast Asia

Historical land-cover changes in three delta regions in Southeast Asia are assessed by using selected Landsat images from 1990 to 2005. Potential inundation areas of the delta regions for different return periods are estimated by using digital elevation model data and extreme-value distribution of annual maximum river discharges. The results indicate significant changes of natural land cover within the potential inundation areas due to agricultural exploitation and industrialization. Implications for flood-mitigation policies are discussed. There is a clear need for sustainable land-use management strategies in all three areas.