Interlaboratory Study of Digital Volume Correlation Error Due to X-Ray Computed Tomography Equipment and Scan Parameters: an Update from the DVC Challenge

Experimental Mechanics - The quality of Digital Volume Correlation (DVC) full-field displacement measurements depends directly on the characteristics of the X-ray Computed Tomography (XCT)...     

Degradation study in flexible substrate organic light-emitting diodes

Indium tin oxide (ITO) coated polycarbonate (PC) multilayer flexible substrates have been subjected to different cycles of bending. Atomic force microscopy (AFM) results on bent ITO surfaces show that bending results in much rougher ITO surfaces. The Ca degradation test shows that the ITO cracks are perpendicular to the flexing direction and that barrier performance deteriorated after bending. When an organic light emitting device is fabricated on the bent substrate, electrical and optical performance decrease. This can be attributed to moisture and oxygen permeated through deteriorated substrate and barrier degraded polymer and oxidized cathode materials. However, optical microscopy observation found that the dark spots have less relationship with the size and position of the cracks on oxide film. Instead to a great extent, they are directly related to the ITO surface spikes. The results further prove that the dark spot is due to electrical stress generated by intense local current at sharp anode and cathode points, which degrade the polymer causing the formation of the dark center. PACS 78.66.Qn; 82.35.Cd; 62.60.Mk     

The distribution of the eigenvalues of the discrete Laplacian

We estimate the distribution of the eigenvalues of the discrete Laplacian on a bounded set inR ⁿ . The proof is based on a variational technique similar to that used by Weyl for the Laplacian. As an application of our estimates we prove stability in the maximum norm for the Crank-Nicolson method for the heat equation on a bounded set.The research of the second author was supported in part by National Science Foundation grant GP-30735X.     

Nuclear quadrupole coupling in the microwave spectrum of imidazole

The quadrupole hyperfine structure in the rotational spectrum of two isotopic forms of imidazole has been analyzed to obtain principal nuclear quadrupole coupling constants for the two nonequivalent nitrogen atoms. The results have been compared with field gradient tensors calculated using INDO molecular orbital wavefunctions and some implications for the electronic structure of imidazole are mentioned. Comparisons with pyrazole and the NQR results for imidazole are also made.     

Diastereoselective synthesis of (+/-)-(3-aminocyclopentane)alkylphosphinic acids, conformationally restricted analogues of GABA

A divergent synthesis of both diastereoisomers of (+/-)-(3-aminocyclopentane)alkylphosphinic acid is described. Both diastereoisomers are obtained in 5 steps from the key (+/-)-(3-hydroxycyclopent-1-ene)alkylphosphinate esters which are prepared via a palladium catalysed C-P bond forming reaction.     

Asymptotic behaviour and optimal word size for exact and approximate word matches between random sequences

The present work is concerned with a fast and accurate sequence comparison method: the count of the number of words of length k letters shared by two sequences, also known as the D2 statistic. We link recent theoretical advances in the characterization of D2 asymptotic distributions with applications to biological sequences. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)