Quality-Assurance Technology in Japan

A survey of the state of SQA in Japan finds that the situation is much like, but slightly different than, that in the US.     

Morphology of thin anatase coatings prepared from alkoxide solutions containing organic polymer,affecting the photocatalytic decomposition of aqueous acetic acid

Porous anatase coatings were prepared from alkoxide solutions containing organic polymer by a dip-coating technique. The morphology of the coatings, such as pore size, pore distribution and thickness, was controlled. The effects of the morphology of the porous anatase coatings on the photocatalytic activity for the photocatalytic decomposition of aqueous acetic acid were examined.     

Preparation and photoconduction of rapidly quenched films in the Bi2O31bM2O5 system (M=V,Nb and Ta)

The Bi₂O₃1bM₂O₅ films (M=V, Nb and Ta) were prepared by a rapid quenching technique using a twin-roller type equipment. Quenched film of pure Bi₂O₃ partially precipitated a tetragonal phase which differs from well-known β-Bi₂O₃ in structure. In every (Bi₂O₃)_0.975 (M₂O₅)_0.025 composition (2.5% M₂O₅), the tetragonal phase was obtained as single phase, and the tetragonality became greater than that of the pure Bi₂O₃. Beyond this composition, the tetragonality decreased to form δ-phase with a fcc structure with increasing the M₂O₅ content. The lowest V₂O₅ content forming a δ-phase was 5%, while a slight tetragonality still remained in the samples containing 10% Nb₂O₅ and 10% Ta₂O₅, respectively. From the measurement of the photoconductivities of the quenched films, it was proved that a photoconduction appeared in the tetragonal phase while no photoconductivity was observed in the cubic phase. The characteristic of the photoconduction was that a remarkable decrease in the resistivity was observed when a light of ca. 500 nm in wave length was irradiated on the films.     

Shear bond strength of amalgam adhesives to dentin

Recent studies have suggested that failure of pentamidine prophylaxis against Pneumocystis carinii pneumonia (PCP) may be due to reduced deposition of pentamidine in the upper lobes. In this study, we performed bronchoalveolar lavage from the apical segment of the upper lobe and the middle lobe in 51 HIV-positive patients, all of whom were receiving prophylaxis with aerosolized pentamidine, who had presented with acute respiratory symptoms. Lavage fluid from each lobe was assayed for pentamidine using high-performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). The number of clusters of P carinii were counted after staining with a Wright-Giemsa stain. The patients were subclassified as PCP-positive (32 patients) and PCP-negative (19 patients) on the basis of the presence/absence of P carinii clusters in their BAL fluid. The concentration of pentamidine in the upper lobe compared with the middle lobe was no different (using paired Student's t tests) for either PCP-positive patients or PCP-negative patients. In comparing the positive with the negative subjects, using unpaired Student's t test, there was no difference in the concentration of pentamidine in the upper lobe or the middle lobe. For PCP-positive patients, the numbers of P carinii clusters were on average higher in the upper lobes (mean +/- SD: upper = 14.9 +/- 16.6, middle 7.5 +/- 10.8, p = 0.013, paired Student's t test), but there was no correlation between lobar P carinii cluster counts and pentamidine levels. We conclude that the absence of a relationship between cluster count and pentamidine level, the similarity in regional pentamidine levels between upper and middle lobes, as well as the similarity in pentamidine levels between the PCP-positive and PCP-negative groups indicate that the regional dose of pentamidine is not the determining factor as to whether aerosolized pentamidine prophylaxis will succeed or fail.     

Sintering of Ceria-Doped Tetragonal Zirconia Crystallized in Organic Solvents, Water, and Air

Amorphous CeO₂–ZrO₂ gels were prepared by coprecipitation in ammonia solutions. The onset of crystallization of the gels, from calcining in air, was 420°C, while 200° to 250°C in the presence of water and organic solvents such as methanol and ethanol. The sintering behaviors of CeO₂–ZrO₂ powders were sensitive to the crystallizing conditions, since hard agglomerates formed when the precipitated gels were crystallized by normal calcination in air, whereas soft agglomerates formed when they were crystallized in water or organic solvents. CeO₂–ZrO₂ powders crystallized in methanol and water at 250°C were sintered to full theoretical density at 1150° and 1400°C, respectively, whereas that crystallized by calcination in air at 450°C was sintered to only 95.2% of theoretical density, even at 1500°C.     

Design complexity control in truss optimization

Truss optimization based on the ground structure approach often leads to designs that are too complex for practical purposes. In this paper we present an approach for design complexity control in truss optimization. The approach is based on design complexity measures related to the number of bars (similar to Asadpoure et al. Struct Multidisc Optim 51(2):385–396 2015) and a novel complexity measure related to the number of nodes of the structure. Both complexity measures are continuously differentiable and thus can be used together with gradient based optimization algorithms. The numerical examples show that the proposed approach is able to reduce design complexity, leading to solutions that are more fit for engineering practice. Besides, the examples also indicate that in some cases it is possible to significantly reduce design complexity with little impact on structural performance. Since the complexity measures are non convex, a global gradient based optimization algorithm is employed. Finally, a detailed comparison to a classical approach is presented.     

Probabilistic nearest neighbor query processing on distributed uncertain data

A nearest neighbor (NN) query, which returns the most similar object to a user-specified query object, plays an important role in a wide range of applications and hence has received considerable attention. In many such applications, e.g., sensor data collection and location-based services, objects are inherently uncertain. Furthermore, due to the ever increasing generation of massive datasets, the importance of distributed databases, which deal with such data objects, has been growing. One emerging challenge is to efficiently process probabilistic NN queries over distributed uncertain databases. The straightforward approach, that each local site forwards its own database to the central server, is communication-expensive, so we have to minimize communication cost for the NN object retrieval. In this paper, we focus on two important queries, namely top-k probable NN queries and probabilistic star queries, and propose efficient algorithms to process them over distributed uncertain databases. Extensive experiments on both real and synthetic data have demonstrated that our algorithms significantly reduce communication cost.     

Platform design for large-scale artificial market simulation and preliminary evaluation on the K computer

Artificial market simulations have the potential to be a strong tool for studying rapid and large market fluctuations and designing financial regulations. High-frequency traders, that exchange multiple assets simultaneously within a millisecond, are said to be a cause of rapid and large market fluctuations. For such a large-scale problem, this paper proposes a software or computing platform for large-scale and high-frequency artificial market simulations (Plham: /pl\(\Lambda\)m). The computing platform, Plham, enables modeling financial markets composed of various brands of assets and a large number of agents trading on a short timescale. The design feature of Plham is the separation of artificial market models (simulation models) from their execution (execution models). This allows users to define their simulation models without parallel computing expertise and to choose one of the execution models they need. This computing platform provides a prototype execution model for parallel simulations, which exploits the variety in trading frequency among traders, that is, the fact that some traders do not require up-to-date information of markets changing in millisecond order. We evaluated a prototype implementation on the K computer using up to 256 computing nodes.