Microvials with tungsten nanowire arrays

Nanostructured eutectic NiAl–W, fabricated using a Bridgman-type directional solidification facility, combines the advantages of single individual nanowires with the benefit of a conductive macroscopic matrix. Through an electrochemical dissolution step, using conditions derived from the combined Pourbaix diagrams of all three elements involved, the NiAl matrix is selectively dissolved allowing the release of embedded W nanowires. An application of micro-scale electrochemical techniques, such as scanning droplet cell microscopy, facilitates not only selective but moreover local matrix dissolution. Such a local dissolution leads to the formation of cavities on the micro-scale containing arrays of single crystalline W nanowires. In this connection, the depth and volume of fabricated microvials can directly be determined from the charge consumed during potentiostatic dissolution. A subsequent surface functionalisation enhances the hydrophobic behaviour, which is already observed for non-functionalised nanowire arrays, resulting in measured contact angles close to the border to superhydrophobicity.     

Shannon capacity of M-ary redundant multitrack runlength limitedcodes

We consider multiamplitude, multitrack runlength-limited (d, k) constrained channels with and without clock redundancy. We calculate the Shannon capacities of these channels and present some simple 100% efficient codes. To compute capacity a constraint graph equivalent to the usual runlength-limited constraint graph is used. The introduced graph model has the vertex labeling independent of number of tracks to be written on (in parallel), which provides computational savings when the number of tracks is large. We show that increasing the number of tracks written on in parallel provides significant increase of per-track capacity for the more restrictive clocking constraint case, i.e., when k相似文献   

MHD Couette two-fluid flow and heat transfer in presence of uniform inclined magnetic field

The MHD Couette flow of two immiscible fluids in a parallel plate channel in the presence of an applied electric and inclined magnetic field is investigated in the paper. One of the fluids is assumed to be electrically conducting, while the other fluid and the channel plates are assumed to be electrically insulating. Separate solutions with appropriate boundary conditions for each fluid are obtained and these solutions are matched at the interface using suitable matching conditions. The partial differential equations governing the flow and heat transfer are transformed to ordinary differential equations and closed-form solutions are obtained in both fluid regions of the channel. The results for various values of the Hartmann number, the angle of magnetic field inclination, the loading parameter and the ratio of the heights of the fluids are presented graphically to show their effect on the flow and heat transfer characteristics.     

Structured sublinear compressive sensing via belief propagation

Compressive sensing (CS) is a sampling technique designed for reducing the complexity of sparse data acquisition. One of the major obstacles for practical deployment of CS techniques is the signal reconstruction time and the high storage cost of random sensing matrices. We propose a new structured compressive sensing scheme, based on codes of graphs, that allows for a joint design of structured sensing matrices and logarithmic-complexity reconstruction algorithms. The compressive sensing matrices can be shown to offer asymptotically optimal performance when used in combination with orthogonal matching pursuit (OMP) methods. For reduced-complexity greedy reconstruction schemes, we propose a new family of list-decoding belief propagation algorithms, as well as reinforced and multiple-basis belief propagation (BP) algorithms. Our simulation results indicate that reinforced BP CS schemes offer very good complexity–performance tradeoffs for very sparse signal vectors.     

Capacity of correlative nakagami-m fading channels under adaptive transmission and maximal-ratio combining diversity technique

The study of channel capacity evaluation in conjunction with maximal ratio diversity-combining (MRC) is presented in this paper. Analysis of the capacity in correlative Nakagami-m fading channels is observed. Using the proposed fading model, the power and rate adaptation, constant transmit power, channel inversion with fixed rate and truncated channel inversion adaptation policies are analyzed. Our results show that the power and rate adaptation policy, being only slightly higher than capacity of constant transmit power policy, provides the highest capacity over the other adaptation policies. The results also show that truncated channel inversion adaptation policy is better alternative compared to complete channel inversion policy for all values of fading severity, diversity order and correlation coefficient.     

Single tungsten nanowires as pH sensitive electrodes

The electrochemical potentials of tungsten nanowire samples, covered with their own oxide, were measured in dependence of the pH value. The samples were prepared by selective etching of a directionally solidified eutectic NiAl–W alloy. Directional solidification in a Bridgman-type crystal growth furnace yields nanostructured two-phase materials. Electrochemical processing allows selective etching of the phases exposing the nanoscale structures. In this work, pointed samples with a single wire 200 nm in diameter protruding from the tip were produced. Subsequently the tungsten oxide layer on these single nanowires was electrochemically modified to optimize their pH sensing capabilities. The method has a potential for further downsizing since the wire diameter and exposed length can be controlled by the process parameters during solidification and during electrochemical processing. The advantages of these nanowire pH probes along with possible applications such as the pH measurement in ultra small cavities and other small systems of interest such as corrosion pits and biological cells are discussed.     

Densest translational lattice packing of non-convex polygons

A translational lattice packing of k polygons P₁,P₂,P₃,…,P_k is a (non-overlapping) packing of the k polygons which is replicated without overlap at each point of a lattice i₀v₀+i₁v₁, where v₀ and v₁ are vectors generating the lattice and i₀ and i₁ range over all integers. A densest translational lattice packing is one which minimizes the area |v₀×v₁| of the fundamental parallelogram. An algorithm and implementation is given for densest translational lattice packing. This algorithm has useful applications in industry, particularly clothing manufacture.     

Multiple-bases belief-propagation decoding of high-density cyclic codes

We introduce a new method for decoding short and moderate-length linear block codes with dense paritycheck matrix representations of cyclic form. This approach is termed multiple-bases belief-propagation. The proposed iterative scheme makes use of the fact that a code has many structurally diverse parity-check matrices, capable of detecting different error patterns. We show that this inherent code property leads to decoding algorithms with significantly better performance when compared to standard belief-propagation decoding. Furthermore, we describe how to choose sets of parity-check matrices of cyclic form amenable for multiple-bases decoding, based on analytical studies performed for the binary erasure channel. For several cyclic and extended cyclic codes, the multiple-bases belief propagation decoding performance can be shown to closely follow that of the maximum-likelihood decoder.     

Preparation of cellulosic fibers with biological activity by immobilization of trypsin on periodate oxidized viscose fibers

In this study, a biologically active fibrous material was designed by immobilizing trypsin on viscose fibers. The viscose yarn was first oxidized with sodium periodate to produce aldehyde groups and then employed as a support for subsequent immobilization of trypsin through bovine serum albumin. The oxidation by sodium periodate caused changes in the chemical and physical properties of the modified yarn samples, which were evaluated by determining the aldehyde group content, fineness and tensile strength of yarn. The viscose fibers oxidized under the most severe conditions (0.4 % NaIO₄, 360 min) exhibited the maximum amount of introduced aldehyde groups (1.284 mmol/g), but also the highest decrease in tensile strength. The trypsin activity was assayed with N-α-benzoyl-DL-arginine p-nitroanilide hydrochloride, whereas the amount of bound trypsin was determined by Bradford method. Trypsin immobilized on oxidized viscose yarn retained 97.3 and 83.8 % of the initial activity over 60 days of storage at 4 and 25 °C, respectively, and remained firmly attached to the carrier. The potential application of obtained bioactive fibers is in the treatment of wounds.