Phase engineering of Ni-Mn binary layered oxide cathodes for sodiumion batteries

Nickel-manganese binary layered oxides with high working potential and low cost are potential candidates for sodium-ion batteries,but their electrochemical properties are highly related to compositional diversity.Diverse composite materials with various phase structures of P3,P2/P3,P2,P2/O3,and P2/P3/O3 were synthesized by manipulating the sodium content and calcination conditions,leading to the construction of a synthetic phase diagram for Na_(x)Ni_(0.25)Mn_(0.75)O_(2)(0.45≤x≤1.1).Then,we compared the electrochemical characteristics and structural evolution during the desodiation/sodiation process of P2,P2/P3,P2/03,and P2/P3/O3-Na_(x)Ni_(0.25)Mn_(0.75)O_(2).Among them,P2/P3-Na0.75Ni0.25Mn0.75O2exhibits the best rate capability of 90.9 mA h g^(-1)at 5 C,with an initial discharge capacity of 142.62 mA h g^(-1)at 0.1 C and a capacity retention rate of 78.25%after 100 cycles at 1 C in the voltage range of 2-4.3 V.The observed superior sodium storage performance of P2/P3 hybrids compared to other composite phases can be attributed to the enhanced Na^(+)transfer dynamic,reduction of the Jahn-teller effect,and improved reaction reversibility induced by the synergistic effect of P2 and P3 phases.The systematic research and exploration of phases in Na_(x)Ni_(0.25)Mn_(0.75)O_(2)provide new sights into high-performance nickel-manganese binary layered oxide for sodium-ion batteries.

Parameterization and Explicit Modeling of Cloud Microphysics:Approaches, Challenges, and Future Directions

Cloud microphysical processes occur at the smallest end of scales among cloud-related processes and thus must be parameterized not only in large-scale global circulation models(GCMs)but also in various higher-resolution limited-area models such as cloud-resolving models(CRMs)and large-eddy simulation(LES)models.Instead of giving a comprehensive review of existing microphysical parameterizations that have been developed over the years,this study concentrates purposely on several topics that we believe are understudied but hold great potential for further advancing bulk microphysics parameterizations:multi-moment bulk microphysics parameterizations and the role of the spectral shape of hydrometeor size distributions;discrete vs“continuous”representation of hydrometeor types;turbulence-microphysics interactions including turbulent entrainment-mixing processes and stochastic condensation;theoretical foundations for the mathematical expressions used to describe hydrometeor size distributions and hydrometeor morphology;and approaches for developing bulk microphysics parameterizations.Also presented are the spectral bin scheme and particle-based scheme(especially,super-droplet method)for representing explicit microphysics.Their advantages and disadvantages are elucidated for constructing cloud models with detailed microphysics that are essential to developing processes understanding and bulk microphysics parameterizations.Particle-resolved direct numerical simulation(DNS)models are described as an emerging technique to investigate turbulence-microphysics interactions at the most fundamental level by tracking individual particles and resolving the smallest turbulent eddies in turbulent clouds.Outstanding challenges and future research directions are explored as well.

Interactive Restoration of Three-Dimensional Implicit Surface with Irregular Parts

Implicit surface generation based on the interpolation of surface points is one of the well-known modeling methods in the area of computer graphics.Several methods for the implicit surface reconstruction from surface points have been proposed on the basis of radial basis functions,a weighted sum of local functions,splines,wavelets,and combinations of them.However,if the surface points contain errors or are sparsely distributed,irregular components,such as curvature-shaped redundant bulges and unexpectedly generated high-frequency components,are commonly seen.This paper presents a framework for restoring irregular components generated on and around surfaces.Users are assumed to specify local masks that cover irregular components and parameters that determine the degree of restoration.The algorithm in this paper removes the defects based on the user-specific masks and parameters.Experiments have shown that the proposed methods can effectively remove redundant protrusions and jaggy noise.

Robust zero-watermarking algorithm based on discrete wavelet transform and daisy descriptors for encrypted medical image

In the intricate network environment,the secure transmission of medical images faces challenges such as information leakage and malicious tampering,significantly impacting the accuracy of disease diagnoses by medical professionals.To address this problem,the authors propose a robust feature watermarking algorithm for encrypted medical images based on multi-stage discrete wavelet transform(DWT),Daisy descriptor,and discrete cosine transform(DCT).The algorithm initially encrypts the original medical image through DWT-DCT and Logistic mapping.Subsequently,a 3-stage DWT transformation is applied to the encrypted medical image,with the centre point of the LL3 sub-band within its low-frequency component serving as the sampling point.The Daisy descriptor matrix for this point is then computed.Finally,a DCT transformation is performed on the Daisy descriptor matrix,and the low-frequency portion is processed using the perceptual hashing algorithm to generate a 32-bit binary feature vector for the medical image.This scheme utilises cryptographic knowledge and zero-watermarking technique to embed watermarks without modifying medical images and can extract the watermark from test images without the original image,which meets the basic re-quirements of medical image watermarking.The embedding and extraction of water-marks are accomplished in a mere 0.160 and 0.411s,respectively,with minimal computational overhead.Simulation results demonstrate the robustness of the algorithm against both conventional attacks and geometric attacks,with a notable performance in resisting rotation attacks.

Investigation of the Behavior of a Jet Issued into Two-Layer Density-Stratified Fluid

This study experimentally investigates a jet flow issued into a two-layer density-stratified fluid in a tank and the resultant mixing phenomena. The upper and lower fluids are water and a NaCl- water solution, respectively, with the lower fluid issued vertically upward from a circular nozzle mounted on the tank bottom. Experimental highlights of the jet behavior and mixing phenomena are classified into three patterns according to the jet Reynolds number and mass concentration of the NaCl-water solution. The internal density current clearly occurs along the density interface, and the maximum jet height is predicted by the Froude number defined by the density difference between the upper and lower fluids. The effect of fluid thickness on the maximum jet height is also clarified.

Preliminary study of automatic gastric cancer risk classification from photofluorography

AIM To perform automatic gastric cancer risk classificationusing photofluorography for realizing effective mass screening as a preliminary study. METHODS We used data for 2100 subjects including X-ray images, pepsinogen Ⅰ and Ⅱ levels, PGⅠ/PGⅡ ratio, Helicobacter pylori (H. pylori) antibody, H. pylori eradication history and interview sheets. We performed two-stage classification with our system. In the first stage, H. pylori infection status classification was performed, and H. pylori-infected subjects were automatically detected. In the second stage, we performed atrophic level classification to validate the effectiveness of our system.RESULTS Sensitivity, specificity and Youden index(YI) of H. pylori infection status classification were 0.884, 0.895 and 0.779, respectively, in the first stage. In the second stage, sensitivity, specificity and YI of atrophic level classification for H. pylori-infected subjects were 0.777, 0.824 and 0.601, respectively. CONCLUSION Although further improvements of the system are needed, experimental results indicated the effectiveness of machine learning techniques for estimation of gastric cancer risk.

Organogermanium (Ge-132) Suppresses Activities of Stress Enzymes Responsible for Active Oxygen Species in Monkey Liver Preparation

Assays of stress enzymes related to active oxygen species were performed by using an in vitro preparation from the liver of a monkey (Japanese Macaque). Ge-132, an organic germanium compound, viz. poly-trans-[(2-carboxyethyl) germasesquioxane] [(GeCH2CH2COOH)2O3]n, suppressed the activities of NADH-dependent oxidase and NADPH-dependent oxidase [NAD(P)H-OD] and xanthine oxidase (XOD) as superoxide-forming enzymes, while promoting the activities of superoxide dismutase (SOD) as a superoxide-scavenging enzyme and catalase (CAT) as an enzyme responsible for degradation of hydrogen peroxide (H2O2). The evidence suggests that the levels of active oxygen species such as and H2O2 would be reduced by Ge-132. The possible connection between Ge-132 and activities of stress enzymes is discussed on the basis of these results.

Reducing Power and Energy Consumption of Nonvolatile Microcontrollers with Transparent On-Chip Instruction Cache

Demands for low-energy microcontrollers have been increasing in recent years. Since most microcontrollers achieve user programmability by integrating nonvolatile (NV) memories such as flash memories for storing their programs, the large power consumption required in accessing an NV memory has become a major problem. This problem becomes critical when the power supply voltage of NV microcontrollers is decreased. We can solve this problem by introducing an instruction cache, thus reducing the access frequency of the NV memory. Unlike general-purpose microprocessors, microcontrollers used for real-time applications in embedded systems must accurately calculate program execution time prior to its execution. Therefore, we introduce a “transparent” instruction cache, which does not change the existing NV microcontroller’s cycle-level execution time, for reducing power and energy consumption, but not for improving the processing speed. We have conducted detailed microar chitecture design based on the architecture of a major industrial microcontroller, and we evaluated power and energy consumption for several benchmark programs. Our evaluation shows that the proposed instruction cache can successfully reduce energy consumption in a fairly wide range of practical NV microcontroller configurations.

Experimental Study of Flow around a Circular Cylinder inside a Bubble Plume

This study experimentally explores the flow around a cylinder with circular cross-section placed inside a bubble plume. Small gas bubbles with diameter smaller than 0.06 mm are released from electrodes on the bottom of a water tank by electrolysis of water. The bubbles induce water flow around them as they rise because of buoyancy. Inside the generated bubble plume, a cylinder with diameter D of 30 mm is placed at 6.5D above the electrodes. The bubbles and water flow around the cylinder are visualized, and the bubble velocity distribution is measured. The experiments elucidate the bubble behavior around the cylinder, the separated shear layers originating at the cylinder surface, their roll-up, the bubble entrainment in the resultant large-scale eddies behind the cylinder, and the vortex shedding from the cylinder.

Configuration of propagator method for calculation of electron velocity distribution function in gas under crossed electric and magnetic fields

This paper presents a self-contained description on the configuration of propagator method(PM)to calculate the electron velocity distribution function(EVDF) of electron swarms in gases under DC electric and magnetic fields crossed at a right angle. Velocity space is divided into cells with respect to three polar coordinates v,θ and f. The number of electrons in each cell is stored in three-dimensional arrays. The changes of electron velocity due to acceleration by the electric and magnetic fields and scattering by gas molecules are treated as intercellular electron transfers on the basis of the Boltzmann equation and are represented using operators called the propagators or Green’s functions. The collision propagator, assuming isotropic scattering, is basically unchanged from conventional PMs performed under electric fields without magnetic fields. On the other hand, the acceleration propagator is customized for rotational acceleration under the action of the Lorentz force. The acceleration propagator specific to the present cell configuration is analytically derived. The mean electron energy and average electron velocity vector in a model gas and SF6 were derived from the EVDF as a demonstration of the PM under the Hall deflection and they were in a fine agreement with those obtained by Monte Carlo simulations. A strategy for fast relaxation is discussed, and extension of the PM for the EVDF under AC electric and DC/AC magnetic fields is outlined as well.

Numerical simulation of effect of convection-diffusion on oxygen transport in microcirculation

The entire process of oxygen transport in microcirculation by developing a3 D porous media model is calculated numerically with coupled solid deformation-fluid seepage-convection and diffusion. The principal novelty of the model is that it takes into account volumetric deformation of both capillary and tissues resulting from capillary fluctuation. How solid deformation, fluid seepage, and convection-diffusion combine to affect oxygen transport is examined quantitatively:(1) Solid deformation is more significant in the middle of capillary, where the maximum value of volumetric deformation reaches about 0.5%.(2) Solid deformation has positive influence on the tissue fluid so that it flows more uniformly and causes oxygen to be transported more uniformly, and eventually impacts oxygen concentration by 0.1%–0.5%.(3) Convection-diffusion coupled deformation and seepage has a maximum(16%) and average(3%) increase in oxygen concentration,compared with pure molecular diffusion. Its more significant role is to allow oxygen to be transported more evenly.

Frequency Switches at Transition Temperature in Voltage-Gated Ion Channel Dynamics of Neural Oscillators

Understanding of the mechanisms of neural phase transitions is crucial for clarifying cognitive processes in the brain. We investigate a neural oscillator that undergoes different bifurcation transitions from the big saddle homoclinic orbit type to the saddle node on an invariant circle type, and the saddle node on an invariant circle type to the small saddle homoclinic orbit type. The bifurcation transitions are accompanied by an increase in thermodynamic temperature that affects the voltage-gated ion channel in the neural oscillator. We show that nonlinear and thermodynamical mechanisms are responsible for different switches of the frequency in the neural oscillator. We report a dynamical role of the phase response curve in switches of the frequency, in terms of slopes of frequency-temperature curve at each bifurcation transition. Adopting the transition state theory of voltagegated ion channel dynamics, we confirm that switches of the frequency occur in the first-order phase transition temperature states and exhibit different features of their potential energy derivatives in the ion channel. Each bifurcation transition also creates a discontinuity in the Arrhenius plot used to compute the time constant of the ion channel.

Two-step Design of Critical Control Systems Using Disturbance Cancellation Integral Controllers

An efficient critical control system design is proposed in this paper. The key idea is to decompose the design problem into two simpler design steps by the technique used in the classical loop transfer recovery method (LTR). The disturbance cancellation integral controller is used as a basic controller. Since the standard loop transfer recovery method cannot be applied to the disturbance cancellation controller, the nonstandard version recently found is used for the decomposition. Exogenous inputs with constraints both on the amplitude and rate of change are considered. The majorant approach is taken to obtain the analytical sufficient matching conditions. A numerical design example is presented to illustrate the effiectiveness of the proposed design.

A DFT Method for Single-Control Testability of RTL Data Paths for BIST

This paper presents a new BIST method for RTL data paths based on single-control testability, a new concept of testability. The BIST method adopts hierarchical test. Test pattern generators are placed only on primary inputs and test patterns are propagated to and fed into each module. Test responses are similarly propagated to response analyzers placed only on primary outputs. For the propagation of test patterns and test responses paths existing in the data path are utilized. The DFT method for the single-control testability is also proposed. The advantages of the proposed method are high fault coverage (for single Stuck-at faults), low hardware overhead and capability of at-speed test. Moreover, test patterns generated by test pattern generators can be fed into each module at consecutive system clocks, and thus, the BIST can also detect some faults of other fault models (e.g., transition faults and delay faults) that require consecutive application of test patterns at speed of system clock.

Study of Sweet-Sensitive Taste Sensor with Lipid/Polymer Membranes

A sweet-sensitive taste sensor was investigated with potetiometric measurement.The transducer was a lipid/polymer membrane composed of tetradodecylammonium bromide,di-n-octylphenylphosphonate and polyvinyl chloride,which surface was modified with polyphenol and the solvent 30% EtOH,100 mmol/L KC1 and 10 mmol/L KOH.Balancing hydrophobic/ hydrophilic property and charge density on the membrane surface was susceptible to sensitivity for sweetener.Interaction between the membrane and sweet taste substances such as sucrose was detected as membrane potential change.

A Simplified Approach of Open Boundary Conditions for the Smoothed Particle Hydrodynamics Method

In this paper,we propose a simplified approach of open boundary conditions for particle-based fluid simulations using the weakly compressible smoothed-particle hydrodynamics(SPH)method.In this scheme,the values of the inflow/outflow particles are calculated as fluid particles or imposed desired values to ensure the appropriate evolution of the flow field instead of using a renormalization process involving the fluid particles.We concentrate on handling the generation of new inflow particles using several simple approaches that contribute to the flow field stability.The advantages of theδ^(+).-SPH scheme,specifically the particle shifting technique,were successfully applied to correct the position,velocity,and pressure terms of the particles.Therefore,unexpected errors were removed and tensile instabilities of the particles were prevented.The proposed technique is validated for several benchmark test cases,and the tests show that the results match the reference solutions well.A viscous open-channel flow is used to demonstrate the stability of the flow field during the computational time.Based on this stability,we compress the computational domain to a lower resolution in a second test case while preserving the accuracy of the simulation.Flow over a backward-facing step is used to highlight the challenges of inflow boundary conditions with prescribed or non-prescribed values.The developed technique is well suited to the wall boundaries and the evolution of the flow field.The results demonstrate the robustness and versatility of the proposed technique for a variety of simulations.

VIDEO BASED ESTIMATION OF PEDESTRIAN WALKING DIRECTION FOR PEDESTRIAN PROTECTION SYSTEM

Pedestrian protection has played an important role for driver assistance systems.Our aim is to develop a video based driver assistance system for the detection of the potentially dangerous situation between the vehicle and pedestrian,in order to warn the driver.In this paper,we address the problem of detecting pedestrian in real-world scenes and estimation of the walking direction with a single camera from a moving vehicle.Considering all the available cues for predicting the possibility of collision is very important.The direction in which the pedestrian is facing is one of the most important cues predicting where the pedestrian may move in the future.So we first address the problem of sin-gle-frame pedestrian orientation estimation in real-world scenes.Then again,we estimate the pedes-trian walking direction using multi-frame based on the result of single-frame orientation estimation.We propose a three-step method:pedestrian detection for single-frame step,orientation estimation for single-frame step and walking direction estimation for multi-frame step.To evaluate the proposed method in its robustness and accuracy,the experiments have been performed between numbers of images which is highly challenging uncontrolled conditions in real world.It shows a significant per-formance improvement in octant orientation estimation of about 64% accuracy in the orientation es-timation step and achieved surprisingly good accuracy in estimating the walking direction against 212 targeted objects.

Implementation and Evaluation of Dual-Purpose Normal and Disaster Situations System Based on Delay and Disruption Tolerant Bluetooth MANETs

Dual-purpose systems for both normal and disaster situations are necessary for providing continuous services from normal situations to disaster situations. We have been developing the dual-purposed systems based on the assurance network design principle. The assurance network design principle makes the dual-purpose systems work stably in both normal and disaster situations. This paper proposes a connectivity-dependent data propagation scheme, in which each terminal transfers data adaptively by wireless multi-hop data transfer or store-and-forward data transfer depending on whether the terminal has connections to its neighboring terminals. To verify the resilience against disconnection among neighboring terminals, we show field experimental results on data propagation time. Also we propose the dual-purpose system, in which there are two types of graphical user interface (GUI) for both situations. Whenever each terminal receives a special packet in disaster situations, the GUI automatically switches from one type for normal situations to another type for disaster situations. We have unified these two types of GUI so that users can understand how to use them even when GUI is automatically switched. To validate feasibility of the dual-purpose normal and disaster situations system, we show experimental results on dissemination of assessment information and automatical switching of GUIs.

Cyclic Bis(3'-5')diadenylic Acid (c-di-AMP) Analogs Promote the Activities of Photosynthesis and Respiration of <i>Chlamydomonas reinhardtii</i>

Physiological changes in the photosynthesis, respiration and cell division of Chlamydomonas reinhardtii, a freshwater green alga, in response to adenine nucleotides were investigated. In advance of this investigation, two adenine nucleotides, di(2'-O-methyl)-cyclic bis(3'-5')diadenylic acid (1) and its N-benzoyl-protected analog 2 were synthesized from the commercially available adenosine phosphoramidite. The respective analogs significantly promoted the cell division (cell number) of C. reinhardtii strains 137c mt+ and BR mt+. Moreover, they significantly enhanced the O2 evolution (photosynthesis) and O2 uptake (respiration) of both strains. c-di-AMP analogs seem to play an effective role as a physiological activator in planta.