Differentiating educational needs of North American and Non-North American tradeshow exhibitors

The purpose of this study is to determine what educational demands exhibitors have to ensure a successful trade show and how these demands are different among North American and Non-North American trade show exhibitors. In addition, the educational topics, the educational format, and the timing of education provided by show management for exhibitors, will be identified. The data collection method for this study was a structured, self-administered survey questionnaire; This study was also designed to measure the overall perceived importance score of educational information for North American and Non-North American exhibitors and compare different perceptions toward the information among the exhibitors. A total of 197 International CES exhibitors\u27 responses to specially designed questions were analyzed. The sample includes subjects from 13 different countries; The findings show that there are significant differences needed in educational topics between North American and non-North American exhibitors and by demographic variables as well. Moreover, the findings demonstrate that show satisfaction and perceived importance of exhibitor education are positively related. Based on the research findings practical implications for the tradeshow industry are discussed and suggestions for future research are offered

ADVANCED NANOIMPRINT TECHNIQUE FOR MULTILAYER STRUCTURES AND FUNCTIONAL POLYMER APPLICATIONS

Three-dimensional (3D) polymer structures are very attractive because the extra structural dimension can provide denser integration and superior performance to accomplish complex tasks. Successful fabrication of 3D multilayer microstructures in thermoplastic polymers using optimized nanoimprint lithography techniques such as layer-transfer and transfer-bonding methods are developed in this dissertation work. The capability and flexibility of the techniques developed here are expected to have deep impact on the applications of soft materials such as polymers including functional polymers in micro- and nanofabricated devices and systems. Although NIL technique is developing rapidly in recent years, there are still issues that need to be addressed for broader adoption of the nanoimprint technique. One of the problems is the residual layer that remains in the polymer pattern after nanoimprint. The conventional approach, oxygen reactive-ion-etching (RIE) process, to remove the residual layers, increases the cost and lowers the overall throughput of the nanoimprint process. More severely, it can degrade or even damage the functional polymers. In order to overcome these problems, new residual layer removal techniques need to be developed. In this dissertation, two methods are newly developed, which do not negatively affect the chemistry of the polymer materials. The techniques are suitable for all thermoplastic polymers, particularly functional polymers. Another advantage of nanoimprint is its ability to directly create functional polymers structures. This is because thermal nanoimprint only needs temperature and pressure for pattern replication, which both are benign to functional polymers. This feature combined with newly developed techniques such as transfer-bonding and residue removal techniques opens up the possibilities in nondestructive functional polymers patterning at the micro- and nanoscale for novel applications in electronics, optoelectronics, photonics and bioengineering. Finally, several applications of 3D multilayer structures fabricated by the techniques developed in this dissertation are demonstrated. The first application is a multilayer metal-dielectric-metal structure with embedded microfluidic channels. This structure can be used as an on-chip tunable filter for integrated microfluidic applications. The second application is a multilayer microfluidic channels in which each layer has a different channel size. This device can be used for particle separation and filtration based on lateral fluid flow

Recent Advances in General Game Playing

The goal of General Game Playing (GGP) has been to develop computer programs that can perform well across various game types. It is natural for human game players to transfer knowledge from games they already know how to play to other similar games. GGP research attempts to design systems that work well across different game types, including unknown new games. In this review, we present a survey of recent advances (2011 to 2014) in GGP for both traditional games and video games. It is notable that research on GGP has been expanding into modern video games. Monte-Carlo Tree Search and its enhancements have been the most influential techniques in GGP for both research domains. Additionally, international competitions have become important events that promote and increase GGP research. Recently, a video GGP competition was launched. In this survey, we review recent progress in the most challenging research areas of Artificial Intelligence (AI) related to universal game playing

Impact of F-D Kondo Cloud on Superconductivity of Nickelates

The Discovery of Superconducting Nickelates Reignited Hope for Elucidating the High-Tc Superconductivity Mechanism in Isostructural Cuprates. While the Superconducting Gap Opens Up on a Single Band of the Quasi-2D Fermi Surface in the Cuprates, the Nickelates Are Known to Have a 3D Nature of an Electronic Structure with a Multi-Band. This Raises a Serious Question About the Role of the 2D Nature for the High-Tc Superconductivity. Here, Employing GW + Dynamical Mean Field Theory (DMFT), We Report the Kondo Effect Driven by the Strong Correlation of Nd-4f and Ni-3d Electrons Emerging at Low Temperature. the Kondo Effect Modifies the Topology of the Fermi Surface, Leading to a 3D Multi-Band Nature. Remarkably, the Kondo Effect is Easily Destroyed by Lattice Modulation, Leading to the Quasi-2D Nature. Our Findings Could Provide a New Perspective for Explaining the Inconsistent Occurrence of Superconductivity and Distinct Electrical Resistivity Behavior between NdNiO2 Bulk and Films, Calling for an Experimental Measure of the Fermi Surface of Bulk NdNiO2

Sr 2 B 5 O 9 OH•H 2 O, A SYNTHETIC BORATE RELATED TO HILGARDITE

ABSTRACT The crystal structure of a new strontium borate, Sr 2 B 5 O 9 OH•H 2 O, space group C2, a 10.2571(6), b 8.0487(2), c 6.4043(4) Å, ␤ 127.860(2)°, Z = 2, has been determined by X-ray diffraction using a single crystal grown under hydrothermal conditions. The structure is closely related to that of the zeolite-like hilgardite minerals, Mots-clés: pentaborate de strontium hydraté, pentaborate de calcium hydraté, hilgardite, cristallochimie, structure cristalline, diffraction X

The art of stacking: structural folding and self-assembly of branched p-conjugation assisted by O–H...O and C–H...F hydrogen bonds

An intimate interplay of O–H O/C–H F hydrogen bonds and p–p stacking interactions allows a phenyleneethynylene based dendritic molecule to fold and self-assemble into two distinctively different molecular crystals as pseudopolymorphs

HandNeRF: Learning to Reconstruct Hand-Object Interaction Scene from a Single RGB Image

This paper presents a method to learn hand-object interaction prior for reconstructing a 3D hand-object scene from a single RGB image. The inference as well as training-data generation for 3D hand-object scene reconstruction is challenging due to the depth ambiguity of a single image and occlusions by the hand and object. We turn this challenge into an opportunity by utilizing the hand shape to constrain the possible relative configuration of the hand and object geometry. We design a generalizable implicit function, HandNeRF, that explicitly encodes the correlation of the 3D hand shape features and 2D object features to predict the hand and object scene geometry. With experiments on real-world datasets, we show that HandNeRF is able to reconstruct hand-object scenes of novel grasp configurations more accurately than comparable methods. Moreover, we demonstrate that object reconstruction from HandNeRF ensures more accurate execution of a downstream task, such as grasping for robotic hand-over.Comment: 9 pages, 4 tables, 7 figure