Interest For Many Applications Research Articles

A Fast Online Estimator of the Two Main Vibration Modes of Flexible Structures From Biased and Noisy Measurements

Vibrations are present in many mechanical structures and machines, and are often associated with their elastic parts. Characterizing these vibrations, i.e., obtaining their frequencies, amplitudes and phases, is of most interest in many applications ranging from the maintenance of civil structures to motion control. This paper presents a method for the online and reliable identification of the defining parameters of two unknown sinusoidal signals through the use of their measured sum in the presence of noise and an offset. It is based on the algebraic derivative approach, defined in the frequency domain, which yields exact calculation formulae for the unknown parameters of the signal, i.e., the amplitudes, phases, and frequencies of the two sinusoids and the value of the constant term. The online estimation is performed in a time interval which is only a fraction of the first full cycle of the slower component of the measured signal. This feature allows the algorithm to be used to monitor time-varying parameters in these vibration signals. This algorithm has been used in experiments with a flexible beam, which is a representative platform of a vibrating mechatronic system. It estimated all the vibration signal parameters quickly and accurately, proved to be insensitive to high-frequency noises, and accurately tracked the time variations of the signal parameters.

Self-organized sheaf-like Fe3O4/C hierarchical microrods with superior lithium storage properties.

Functional nanomaterials with three-dimensional hierarchical structures are of high interest for many practical applications including lithium-ion batteries (LIBs). In this work, self-organized sheaf-like Fe3O4/C microrods constructed by porous nanowires have been synthesized by a facile solvothermal method combined with a subsequent annealing treatment. The morphology of the building blocks could be easily tuned by varying the synthesis parameters. When applied as an anode material for LIBs, these sheaf-like Fe3O4/C porous microrods manifest superior electrochemical lithium storage properties in terms of high reversible capacity, stable cycling capacity retention and good rate capability.

Fine structuration of low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) microreactors.

The development of microreactors that operate under harsh conditions is always of great interest for many applications. Here we present a microfabrication process based on low-temperature co-fired ceramic (LTCC) technology for producing microreactors which are able to perform chemical processes at elevated temperature (>400 °C) and against concentrated harsh chemicals such as sodium hydroxide, sulfuric acid and hydrochloric acid. Various micro-scale cavities and/or fluidic channels were successfully fabricated in these microreactors using a set of combined and optimized LTCC manufacturing processes. Among them, it has been found that laser micromachining and multi-step low-pressure lamination are particularly critical to the fabrication and quality of these microreactors. Demonstration of LTCC microreactors with various embedded fluidic structures is illustrated with a number of examples, including micro-mixers for studies of exothermic reactions, multiple-injection microreactors for ionone production, and high-temperature microreactors for portable hydrogen generation.

Supramolecular anticancer drug delivery systems based on linear–dendritic copolymers

The combination of two generations of polymers as linear–dendritic copolymers leads to hybrid systems with unique properties, which are of great interest for many applications. Herein, recent advances in anticancer drug delivery systems based on linear–dendritic copolymers have been reviewed.

Synthesis, self-assembly, and degradation of amphiphilic triblock copolymers with fully photodegradable hydrophobic blocks

The development of stimuli-responsive materials is of significant interest for many applications including drug delivery, medical imaging, sensors, and microfluidic devices. Among the available stimuli, light is particularly attractive as it can be applied with high spatial and temporal resolution. We describe here the synthesis of amphiphilic triblock copolymers composed of poly(ethylene glycol) and a hydrophobic block containing o-nitrobenzyl esters throughout the backbone using copper-catalyzed azide–alkyne cycloaddition chemistry. These materials were designed to have a high weight fraction of the hydrophobic block to favour nonmicellar aggregates. The self-assembly in water was studied using nanoprecipitation and the resulting assemblies were characterized by dynamic light scattering and transmission electron microscopy. Under optimized conditions, it was possible to prepare polymer vesicles, commonly referred to as polymersomes, with diameters of approximately 100 nm. The degradation of these materials in response to UV light was studied by spectroscopy, light scattering, and electron microscopy, demonstrating that the vesicles were broken down. These results suggest the potential of these materials for applications such as encapsulation and release.

Preconditioning for Vector-Valued Cahn--Hilliard Equations

The solution of vector-valued Cahn--Hilliard systems is of interest in many applications. We discuss strategies for the handling of smooth and nonsmooth potentials as well as for different types of constant mobilities. Concerning the nonsmooth systems, the necessary bound constraints are incorporated via the Moreau--Yosida regularization technique. We develop effective preconditioners for the efficient solution of the linear systems in saddle point form. Numerical results illustrate the efficiency of our approach. In particular, we numerically show mesh and phase independence of the developed preconditioner in the smooth case. The results in the nonsmooth case are also satisfying, and the preconditioned version always outperforms the unpreconditioned one.

Charge Difference Calculation in Fe/Fe3O4 Interfaces from DFT Results

In industrial applications, the mechanical stability of surface oxides formed from metal alloys is a key concern in the determination of component susceptibility to different deterioration mechanisms. In particular, the Fe/Fe3O4 system that is treated in this work is of great interest for many applications. A complete description of the chemical bonds between the metal substrate and the surface oxide may provide vital information. Charge density of the metal/oxide interface is obtained from DFT calculations, as well as for the free surfaces involved. A homemade computer program was implemented to calculate charge redistribution between the constituting surfaces and iron / magnetite interfaces. This analysis makes it possible to identify the interaction between surface iron as the key to understand interfacial adhesion. These results correlate to previous adhesion studies.

Luminescence studies on SnO2 and SnO2:Eu nanocrystals grown by laser assisted flow deposition.

Transparent conductive tin oxide materials have been a research topic extensively studied in recent years due to the great interest for many applications. However, in most of them, the pure form is rarely used, being usually modified by the incorporation of dopants. Selecting the most appropriate technique to develop nanocrystals of doped tin oxide and understanding the influence of dopant on the optical properties are the challenges that need to be addressed when envisaging devices. To fulfill this objective, the recently developed laser assisted flow deposition (LAFD) method is explored to grow SnO2 and SnO2:Eu nanocrystals. The morphology of these nanocrystals was investigated by scanning electron microscopy and well defined prismatic nanocrystals with sizes of ∼60 nm were identified. The crystalline quality assessed by X-ray diffraction measurements and Raman spectroscopy indicates that the produced nanocrystals are monophasic and crystallize in the tetragonal rutile structure. Steady state luminescence studies provide the information on the optical active centres in the SnO2 and SnO2:Eu nanocrystals. For the undoped samples only broad emission bands were observed by pumping the samples in the ultraviolet region. The broad emission was found to be an overlap of green and red optical centres as identified by temperature and excitation intensity dependent luminescence. The latter was found to exhibit an excitonic-related behaviour and the green emission was found to be of utmost importance to discuss the intraionic luminescence in the doped samples. For the SnO2:Eu nanocrystals the luminescence is dominated by the magnetic allowed (5)D0 → (7)F1 transition with the ions in almost undistorted centrosymmetric sites. The ion luminescence integrated intensity is found to increase with increasing temperatures being well accounted for a thermal population provided by the thermal quenching of the green band.

Subdivision surface fitting to a dense mesh using ridges and umbilics

Fitting a sparse surface to approximate vast dense data is of interest for many applications: reverse engineering, recognition and compression, etc. The present work provides an approach to fit a Loop subdivision surface to a dense triangular mesh of arbitrary topology, whilst preserving and aligning the original features. The natural ridge-joined connectivity of umbilics and ridge-crossings is used as the connectivity of the control mesh for subdivision, so that the edges follow salient features on the surface. Furthermore, the chosen features and connectivity characterise the overall shape of the original mesh, since ridges capture extreme principal curvatures and ridges start and end at umbilics. A metric of Hausdorff distance including curvature vectors is proposed and implemented in a distance transform algorithm to construct the connectivity. Ridge-colour matching is introduced as a criterion for edge flipping to improve feature alignment. Several examples are provided to demonstrate the feature-preserving capability of the proposed approach.

Occurrence of lignin degradation genotypes and phenotypes among prokaryotes.

A number of prokaryotes actively contribute to lignin degradation in nature and their activity could be of interest for many applications including the production of biogas/biofuel from lignocellulosic biomass and biopulping. This review compares the reliability and efficiency of the culture-dependent screening methods currently used for the isolation of ligninolytic prokaryotes. Isolated prokaryotes exhibiting lignin-degrading potential are presented according to their phylogenetic groups. With the development of bioinformatics, culture-independent techniques are emerging that allow larger-scale data mining for ligninolytic prokaryotic functions but today, these techniques still have some limits. In this work, two phylogenetic affiliations of isolated prokaryotes exhibiting ligninolytic potential and laccase-encoding prokaryotes were determined on the basis of 16S rDNA sequences, providing a comparative view of results obtained by the two types of screening techniques. The combination of laboratory culture and bioinformatics approaches is a promising way to explore lignin-degrading prokaryotes.

Bootstrap for dependent Hilbert space-valued random variables with application to von Mises statistics

Statistical methods for functional data are of interest for many applications. In this paper, we prove a central limit theorem for random variables taking their values in a Hilbert space. The random variables are assumed to be weakly dependent in the sense of near epoch dependence, where the underlying process fulfills some mixing conditions. As parametric inference in an infinite dimensional space is difficult, we show that the nonoverlapping block bootstrap is consistent. Furthermore, we show how these results can be used for degenerate von Mises-statistics.

A Multichannel Oscillator for a Resonant Chemical Sensor System

Vapor detection using highly sensitive miniaturized resonant sensors is of great interest for many applications, including consumer, industrial, and environmental applications. An operational-amplifier-based multichannel oscillator that interfaces with a 50-MHz capacitive micromachined ultrasonic transducer array is presented for chemical sensing applications. The circuit was implemented in a 0.18-μm CMOS technology to reduce power consumption, number of wires, and active area per channel. The presented integrated circuit also addresses the potential-frequency-locking problem between channels by allowing the open-loop gain to be adjustable off-chip. The feasibility of the developed oscillator for the chemical sensing application is demonstrated. Two channels that were operated simultaneously achieved excellent volume sensitivities of 8.5 × 10-4%/Hz and 3.9 × 10-4%/Hz, respectively, to relative humidity in N2.

Fermi-level pinning, charge transfer, and relaxation of spin-momentum locking at metal contacts to topological insulators

Topological insulators are of interest for many applications in electronics and optoelectronics, but harnessing their unique properties requires detailed understanding and control of charge injection at electrical contacts. Here we present large-scale ab initio calculations of the electronic properties of Au, Ni, Pt, Pd, and graphene contacts to Bi2Se3. We show that regardless of the metal, the Fermi level is located in the conduction band, leading to n-type Ohmic contact to the first quintuplet. Furthermore, we find strong charge transfer and band-bending in the first few quintuplets, with no Schottky barrier for charge injection even when the topoplogical insulator is undoped. Our calculations indicate that Au and graphene leave the spin-momentum locking mostly unaltered, but on the other hand, Ni, Pd, and Pt strongly hybridize with Bi2Se3 and relax spin-momentum locking. Our results indicate that judicious choice of the contact metal is essential to reveal the unique surface features of topological insulators.

Synthesis of Amphiphilic Naturally-Derived Oligosaccharide-block-Wax Oligomers and Their Self-Assembly.

Self-assembly characteristics of amphiphilic macromolecules into micelles, nanoparticles and vesicles has been of fundamental interest for many applications including designed nanoscale therapeutic delivery systems and enzymatic reactors. In this work, a class of amphiphilic block oligomers was synthesized from naturally occurring oligosaccharides and aliphatic alcohol precursors, which are all currently prominent in the pharmaceutical, food, and supplement industries. These block oligomer materials were synthesized by functionalization of the precursor materials followed by subsequent coupling by azide-alkyne cycloaddition and their bulk self-assembly was investigated after solvent vapor annealing. Self-assembly of the amphiphilic materials into liposomes in aqueous solution was also investigated after preparing solutions using a nanoprecipitation method. Encapsulation of hydrophobic components was demonstrated and verified using dynamic light scattering, transmission electron microscopy, and fluorescence spectroscopy experiments.

Influences of Structural Differences of Layered Double Hydroxides on Their Hydroxide Ion Conductivities

Anion-exchange membrane fuel cells (AEMFCs) have attracted much attention since they can potentially overcome the stumbling blocks of proton-exchange membrane fuel cells. There are many research approaches to improve the performance of AEMFCs, and one of them is to seek new ion conductors that effectively transport hydroxide ions at the ambient temperature. Ion conductors with not only high ion conductivities but also high robustness are strongly required to realize the high-efficiency and long-life performance of AEMFCs. Among such ion conductors, we have focused on layered double hydroxides (LDHs). The basic layer structure of LDHs is based on that of brucite [Mg(OH)2]. In the brucite lattice, magnesium ions are surrounded octahedrally with hydroxide ions, and these octahedral units form infinite plane of the 2D layers. LDHs are derived by the substitution of a fraction of divalent cations in brucite by trivalent cations, which lead to positive charges in hydroxide layers. These charges are balanced by intercalation of anions and water between the positively charged layers. The possibility of varying the kinds and relative proportions of the di- and trivalent cations as well as the interlayer anions gives rise to the large variety of LDHs with a general formula [M2+ 1−xM3+ x(OH)2]x+[An−]x/n·yH2O, where M2+ and M3+ are di- and trivalent metal cations respectively, and An− is an anion. This flexibility in composition of LDHs has induced an increase in interest for many applications, such as catalyst supports, ion-exchange and adsorption, drug-delivery system, etc. In addition, some research groups including our group recently reported that LDHs operated as an OH−conductor, which could be applied for alkaline fuel cells, metal-air secondary batteries, and alkaline secondary batteries. In this study, we focus on the nature of ion conductivities in LDHs. To understand the mechanism of ion conductivities in LDHs in detailed, we synthesized Mg-Al and Mg-Ga LDHs with different relative proportions of di- and trivalent metal cations, and evaluated the influence of the proportion of trivalent cation on their ion conductivities by electrochemical measurements. We chose Mg-Al and Mg-Ga LDHs since they are widely used in LDH studies. We shed light on the structural relationship, which could guide the design of improved or novel hydroxide-conductive materials. Using the co-precipitated method, we successfully synthesized Mg-Al-CO3 and Mg-Ga-CO3 LDHs with various proportions of trivalent cations. In the results of X-ray diffraction, as the Mg/Al ratio decreased from 4 to 2, the 003 diffraction peak positively shifted, which indicates that layer height between metal hydroxide layers were diminished. This decrease in the layer height was due to an increase in electrostatic attraction between positive and negative layers. In contrast, resulted LDHs were characterized in similar BET surface areas and mean diameter in spite of changing the proportion of trivalent cations. Both series of LDHs did not displayed a linear increase in ion conductivities as a function of the proportion of trivalent cations, but a sharp raise appeared only for Mg2+/Al3+ = 2 and Mg2+/Ga3+ = 3. Based on the results of electron-diffraction analysis, Mg-Al and Mg-Ga LDHs, showing the highest ion conductivities had the ordered honeycomb cation arrangement within some parts of (0001) hydroxide layers. Other LDHs had complete random cation distribution. The ordered honeycomb structure was a cation distribution that can elude direct contact of M3+−M3+ and diminish the distance of the nearest trivalent cations; “neither near nor far” for individual interlayer anions. These things for the ordered cation arrangements not only demonstrate a helpful strategy for improving ion conductivities of LDHs, but also present new insights into structural relationship between immobile cationic charge centers and mobile interlayer anions.

Maximizing phononic band gaps in piezocomposite materials by means of topology optimization.

Phononic crystals (PCs) can exhibit phononic band gaps within which sound and vibrations at certain frequencies do not propagate. In fact, PCs with large band gaps are of great interest for many applications, such as transducers, elastic/acoustic filters, noise control, and vibration shields. Previous work in the field concentrated on PCs made of elastic isotropic materials; however, band gaps can be enlarged by using non-isotropic materials, such as piezoelectric materials. Because the main property of PCs is the presence of band gaps, one possible way to design microstructures that have a desired band gap is through topology optimization. Thus in this work, the main objective is to maximize the width of absolute elastic wave band gaps in piezocomposite materials designed by means of topology optimization. For band gap calculation, the finite element analysis is implemented with Bloch-Floquet theory to solve the dynamic behavior of two-dimensional piezocomposite unit cells. Higher order frequency branches are investigated. The results demonstrate that tunable phononic band gaps in piezocomposite materials can be designed by means of the present methodology.

The excited state dynamics of protein-encapsulated Au nanoclusters

A combination of static and time-resolved spectroscopic techniques has been applied to study the low-lying excited electronic states of protein-encapsulated Au nanoclusters in terms of their energy levels and relaxation mechanisms. The energy levels were determined using photoluminescence (PL) spectroscopy. The excited state dynamics were probed using time-resolved PL techniques as well as femtosecond transient absorption (TA) spectroscopy. A simple model was proposed to account for the key spectral and dynamic features observed. This study has added new insight to the optical and dynamic properties of metal nanoclusters of interest in many applications including solar energy conversion and biomedical imaging.

A marginalized two-part model for semicontinuous data.

In health services research, it is common to encounter semicontinuous data characterized by a point mass at zero followed by a right-skewed continuous distribution with positive support. Examples include health expenditures, in which the zeros represent a subpopulation of patients who do not use health services, while the continuous distribution describes the level of expenditures among health services users. Semicontinuous data are typically analyzed using two-part mixture models that separately model the probability of health services use and the distribution of positive expenditures among users. However, because the second part conditions on a non-zero response, conventional two-part models do not provide a marginal interpretation of covariate effects on the overall population of health service users and non-users, even though this is often of greatest interest to investigators. Here, we propose a marginalized two-part model that yields more interpretable effect estimates in two-part models by parameterizing the model in terms of the marginal mean. This model maintains many of the important features of conventional two-part models, such as capturing zero-inflation and skewness, but allows investigators to examine covariate effects on the overall marginal mean, a target of primary interest in many applications. Using a simulation study, we examine properties of the maximum likelihood estimates from this model. We illustrate the approach by evaluating the effect of a behavioral weight loss intervention on health-care expenditures in the Veterans Affairs health-care system.

Analysis of the average performance of the multi-channel Wiener filter for distributed microphone arrays using statistical room acoustics

For most multi-microphone noise reduction algorithms, e.g. the multi-channel Wiener filter (MWF), it is well known that the performance depends on the acoustic scenario at hand, i.e. the used microphone array, the position of the desired source and the noise field. Since the position of the desired source is not always known a priori, it is of great interest in many applications to be able to compute the average performance for a specific microphone array, which can be obtained by averaging the performance over all feasible source positions. A possible but either time-consuming or computationally complex approach to achieve this is to use measurements or simulations for a large number of source positions.In this paper, we propose to use the statistical properties of the acoustical transfer functions (ATFs) between the desired source and the microphones to derive analytical expressions for the spatially averaged performance measures (output SNR, noise reduction, speech distortion) of the MWF, assuming a homogeneous and known noise field. In addition, we show that although the spatially averaged performance measures do not express the performance of the MWF for a given position of the source and/or the microphones, they can be used to derive approximate analytical expressions for the average performance of the MWF for a given position of the microphones. Experimental results show that the proposed analytical expressions can be used to easily compare the performance of different microphone arrays, e.g. in an acoustic sensor network, without having to measure or numerically simulate a large number of ATFs.

Frontispiece: Self-Organization of Polar Porphyrinoids

This Minireview focuses on the very recent developments in the field of porphyrin-based self-assembled nanomaterials with a particular focus on the use of tetrapyrrolic macrocycles bearing amphiphilic and ionic functionalities. As one of the most studied molecular materials, the importance of porphyrin-derived nanomaterials has attracted wide interest in many applications like catalysis, photodynamic therapy, and organic solar cells to name a few. By using key examples that have recently appeared in the literature, the discussion unfolds through two sections: amphiphilic and ionic assemblies. Although it focuses on the nanostructuring methodologies used to obtain organized materials, the discussion will also target the physical characterization of the functional materials for their implementation in prototypes.