Pd Uptake and H2S Sensing by an Amphoteric Metal–Organic Framework with a Soft Core and Rigid Side Arms

Molecular components of opposite character are often incorporated within a single system, with a rigid core and flexible side arms being a common design choice. Herein, molecule L has been designed and prepared featuring the reverse design, with rigid side arms (arylalkynyl) serving to calibrate the mobility of the flexible polyether links in the core. Crystallization of this molecule with Pb^II ions led to a dynamic metal–organic framework (MOF) system that not only exhibits dramatic, reversible single‐crystal‐to‐single‐crystal transformations, but combines distinct donor and acceptor characteristics, allowing for substantial uptake of PdCl₂ and colorimetric sensing of H₂S in water.     

Fundamental Groups of Graphs of Cyclic Subgroup Separable and Weakly Potent Groups

We give a characterization of the cyclic subgroup separability and weak potency of the fundamental group of a graph of polycyclic-by-finite groups and free-by-finite groups amalgamating edge subgroups of the form × D,where h has infinite order and D is finite.     

Adaptive vehicle posture and height synchronization control of active air suspension systems with multiple uncertainties

This paper addresses the tasks of height and posture motion control for an electronically controlled active air suspension (AAS) system. A mathematical model of a vehicle body with AAS system is established to describe the dynamic characteristics and then formulated into a multi-input multi-output nonlinear system by considering parametric uncertainties and unmodelled dynamics. Based on this mathematical model, a synchronization control strategy is proposed to adjust the heights of adjacent AASs simultaneously, driving the pitch and roll angles closely to an arbitrarily neighborhood of zero, achieving global uniform ultimate boundedness. The proposed controller is robust to parametric uncertainties and external disturbances. A projection operator is utilized to limit the estimated parameters to their corresponding prescribed bounds in finite time. A co-simulation is conducted by combining a virtual vehicle plant with ASS system in AMEsim with the proposed synchronization controller in MATLAB/Simulink. Simulation results demonstrate that the proposed synchronization controller is effective and robust.     

Identification of pre-sliding friction dynamics

The hysteretic nonlinear dependence of pre-sliding friction force on displacement is modeled using different physics-based and black-box approaches including various Maxwell-slip models, NARX models, neural networks, nonparametric (local) models and dynamical networks. The efficiency and accuracy of these identification methods is compared for an experimental time series where the observed friction force is predicted from the measured displacement. All models, although varying in their degree of accuracy, show good prediction capability of pre-sliding friction. Finally, we show that even better results can be achieved by using an ensemble of the best models for prediction.     

Simultaneous demodulation technique for a multiplexed fiber Fizeau interferometer and fiber Bragg grating sensor system

We propose a demodulation technique for a multiplexed fiber Fizeau interferometer (FFI) and fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor system using the discrete wavelet transform with signal processing enhancements. This simple and flexible demodulation technique determines the cavity length of FFI and the Bragg wavelength of FBG simultaneously and is especially suited for quasi-static measurements. We demonstrate this demodulation technique by performing some strain measurements, and a strain resolution of 1.0 microepsilon and an accuracy of 2.6 microepsilon are obtained. The maximum cross-talk of the sensor system is 6% of the applied strains.     

Improved rejection of multiply scattered photons in confocal microscopy using dual-axes architecture

We perform Monte Carlo simulations to show that the dual-axes (DA) confocal architecture has superior rejection of multiply scattered photons in tissue to that of single axis. As a result, the DA configuration provides improved signal-to-noise ratio and dynamic range, and thus is sensitive to ballistic photons from deeper within tissue, features that are particularly useful for performing vertical cross-sectional reflectance images in tissue.     

Analysis of retroreflector-introduced spectrum distortion in birefringent crystal-based interleaver filters

Spectrum distortion in a birefringent crystal-based interleaver filter introduced by the right-angle total internal reflection retroreflector is studied. The phase shift between two perpendicularly polarized components of the polarized light incident onto the retroreflector is calculated. The sensitivity of the phase shift to the incident angle for different materials from which the retroreflector is made is also considered. This study indicates that the phase shift is less sensitive to the incident angle for retroreflectors having a higher index of refraction, suggesting a fixed-phase compensator that can be used to cancel out the phase shift introduced by the retroreflector to recover the interleaver filter's spectrum. The fold-back 50 GHz channel spacing birefringent crystal interleaver filter is fabricated to demonstrate that the spectrum distortion due to the phase shift introduced by retroreflector can be eliminated by a phase compensator.     

Highly sensitive miniature photonic crystal fiber refractive index sensor based on mode field excitation

A highly sensitive miniature photonic crystal fiber refractive index sensor based on field mode excitation is presented. The sensor is fabricated by melting one end of a photonic crystal fiber into a rounded tip and splicing and collapsing the other end with a single-mode fiber. The rounded tip is able to induce cladding mode excitation, which resulted in an additional phase delay. Linear response of 262.28 nm/refractive index unit in the refractive index range of 1.337 to 1.395 is obtained for the physical length of a 953 μm sensor. The sensor is also shown to be insensitive to environmental temperature.     

Learning a novel phonological contrast depends on interactions between individual differences and training paradigm design

Studies evaluating phonological contrast learning typically investigate either the predictiveness of specific pretraining aptitude measures or the efficacy of different instructional paradigms. However, little research considers how these factors interact--whether different students learn better from different types of instruction--and what the psychological basis for any interaction might be. The present study demonstrates that successfully learning a foreign-language phonological contrast for pitch depends on an interaction between individual differences in perceptual abilities and the design of the training paradigm. Training from stimuli with high acoustic-phonetic variability is generally thought to improve learning; however, we found high-variability training enhanced learning only for individuals with strong perceptual abilities. Learners with weaker perceptual abilities were actually impaired by high-variability training relative to a low-variability condition. A second experiment assessing variations on the high-variability training design determined that the property of this learning environment most detrimental to perceptually weak learners is the amount of trial-by-trial variability. Learners' perceptual limitations can thus override the benefits of high-variability training where trial-by-trial variability in other irrelevant acoustic-phonetic features obfuscates access to the target feature. These results demonstrate the importance of considering individual differences in pretraining aptitudes when evaluating the efficacy of any speech training paradigm.     

Low-temperature Mössbauer studies of FeNb2O6

Fe⁵⁷ Mössbauer spectra of FeNb₂O₆ were obtained from 15.0K down to 1.9 K. The isomer shift, 1.42±0.01 mm sec^?1 relative to Cr, was found to be temperature independent, whereas the magnitude of the quadrupole splitting was observed to decrease slightly with temperature. The quadrupole splitting and the hyperfine field at 1.9 K are -2.41±0.01 mm sec^?1 and 34.6±0.3 kOe respectively. The directions of the hyperfine fields experienced by the Fe nuclei are in the a-c plane symmetrically displaced with respect to the crystallographic axes.