Surface brightness measurements for APM galaxies

This paper considers some simple surface brightness (SB) estimates for galaxies in the Automated Plate Measuring Machine (APM) catalogue in order to derive homogeneous SB data for a very large sample of faint galaxies. The isophotal magnitude and area are used to estimate the central surface brightness and total magnitude based on the assumption of an exponential SB profile. The surface brightness measurements are corrected for field effects on each UK Schmidt plate and the zero-point of each plate is adjusted to give a uniform sample of SB and total magnitude estimates over the whole survey. Results are obtained for 2.4 million galaxies with blue photographic magnitudes brighter than b_J = 20.5 covering 4300 deg^2 in the region of the south galactic cap. Almost all galaxies in our sample have central surface brightness in the range 20 to 24 b_J mag per arcsec^2. The SB measurements we obtain are compared to previous SB measurements and we find an acceptable level of error of +/- 0.2 b_J mag per arcsec^2. The distribution of SB profiles is considered for different galaxy morphologies for the bright APM galaxies. We find that early-type galaxies have more centrally concentrated profiles.Comment: 14 pages, 17 figures, accepted for publication in MNRA

Predictors of photo naming: Dutch norms for 327 photos

The present study reports naming latencies and norms for 327 photos of objects in Dutch. We provide norms for eight psycholinguistic variables: age of acquisition, familiarity, imageability, image agreement, objective and subjective visual complexity, word frequency, word length in syllables and in letters, and name agreement. Furthermore, multiple regression analyses reveal that significant predictors of photo naming latencies are name agreement, word frequency, imageability, and image agreement. Naming latencies, norms and stimuli are provided as Supplemental Materials

An Experimental Research on the pCI Rule and Causal Judgment (in Chinese)

This research examined the precision of the pCI rule through three experiments. The results show that first , the tendency of the subjects’ casual judgments was basically similar to the pCI rule. But (a + d) / n predicted human’s casual judgments were even better; second, the increase of subjects’ casual judgments was milder than the pCI rule, and the subjects needed time to construct their own way of judging relationship; finally, different people had different ways of causal judgments, and could be grouped into some categories

Numerical Study on Indoor Wideband Channel Characteristics with Different Internal Wall

Effects of material and configuration of the internal wall on the performance of wideband channel are investigated by using the Finite Difference Time-Domain (FDTD) method. The indoor wideband channel characteristics, such as the path-loss, Root-Mean-Square (RMS) delay spread and number of the multipath components (MPCs), are presented. The simulated results demonstrate that the path-loss and MPCs are affected by the permittivity, dielectric loss tangent and thickness of the internal wall, while the RMS delay spread is almost not relevant with the dielectric permittivity. Furthermore, the comparison of simulated result with the measured one in a simple scenario has validated the simulation study

An Experimental Research on Causal Illusion (in Chinese)

The research examined humans’ causal attribution of response-outcome under controllable and uncontrollable conditions respectively and attempted to find out whether providing appropriate external cues could be beneficial to them in making accurate judgments. The results indicate: 1) under controllable conditions, the delay of feedback might lead to causal illusion; 2) under uncontrollable conditions, the subjects developed superstition and illusion of control rather than helplessness; 3) providing appropriate external cues helped the subjects eliminate their former established causal illusion

An Experimental Research on Search Order Based on Contour (in Chinese)

Contour is an important cue for pattern recognition. Further feature search may have something to do with contour, which is produced by parallel processing. In this research, 3 experiments were undertaken to explore the effects of contour on searching sequence. Experiment 1 aims at confirming the key role of contour in visual search. It’s results show that there exists mental representation of potential targets in visual search. Experiment 2 aims to verify the hypothesis that the new features produced by two figures’ overlapping will accelerate visual search. The results show that although the figures’ overlapping may produce new features, these byproducts may not make search faster. An alternative hypothesis was introduced that contour has effects on searching sequence. On the basis of contour, the search of distinct features follows this order: in the outer band of contour----along contour----in the inner band of contour. Experiment 3 tests this hypothesis further

A type of cruciform specimen applied to evaluate forming limits for boron steel under hot stamping conditions

The ultra-high strength boron steel has been intensively used in the hot stamping process to produce complex-shaped structural components in transportation industries. Forming limit diagram (FLD) is a fundamental and useful tool to evaluate the formability of metallic materials under various forming conditions. Since the standardized Nakajima test and Marciniak test are not applicable to perform formability tests for hot stamping applications due to the complex heating and cooling processes required, an in-plane testing method, in which cruciform specimens are deformed under hot tamping conditions in a Gleeble materials simulator combined with a multi-axial tensile rig to convert an input force to an output biaxial force, has been successfully applied to assess the formability of aluminium alloys at elevated temperatures. However, it is challenging to apply this in-plane testing method for boron steel due to higher nonuniformity of temperature distribution in gauge region of the cruciform specimen at a higher temperature. In this paper, a new type of cruciform specimen, together with a new specimen heating strategy, has been proposed to improve the temperature distribution in the gauge region. The dimensions of the newly-designed cruciform specimen have been optimised by a thermo-electrical finite element model embedded with a UAMP subroutine in ABAQUS to improve the niformity of temperature distribution in the gauge region. In order to validate the new design of cruciform specimen, biaxial tensile tests were conducted under hot stamping conditions by using the in-plane testing method

The comparison of two continuum damage mechanics-based material models for formability prediction of AA6082 under hot stamping conditions

The hot stamping and cold die quenching process has experienced tremendous development in order to obtain shapes of structural components with great complexity in automotive applications. Prediction of the formability of a metal sheet is significant for practical applications of forming components in the automotive industry. Since microstructural evolution in an alloy at elevated temperature has a large effect on formability, continuum damage mechanics (CDM)-based material models can be used to characterise the behaviour of metals when a forming process is conducted at elevated temperatures. In this paper, two sets of unified multi-axial constitutive equations based on material's stress states and strain states, respectively, were calibrated and used to effectively predict the thermo-mechanical response and forming limits of alloys under complex hot stamping conditions. In order to determine and calibrate the two material models, formability tests of AA6082 using a developed novel biaxial testing system were conducted at various temperatures and strain rates under hot stamping conditions. The determined unified constitutive equations from experimental data are presented in this paper. It is found that both of the stress-state based and strain-state based material models can predict the formability of AA6082 under hot stamping conditions

Atomistic Investigation of Titanium Carbide Ti8C5 under Impact Loading

Titanium carbides attract attention from both academic and industry fields because of their intriguing mechanical properties and proven potential as appealing candidates in the variety of fields such as nanomechanics, nanoelectronics, energy storage and oil/water separation devices. A recent study revealed that the presence of Ti8C5 not only improves the impact strength of composites as coatings, but also possesses significant strengthening performance as an interlayer material in composites by forming strong bonding between different matrices, which sheds light on the design of impact protection composite materials. To further investigate the impact resistance and strengthening mechanism of Ti8C5, a pilot Molecular Dynamics (MD) study utilizing comb3 potential is carried out on a Ti8C5 nanosheet by subjecting it to hypervelocity impacts. The deformation behaviour of Ti8C5 and the related impact resist mechanisms are assessed in this research. At a low impact velocity ~0.5 km/s, the main resonance frequency of Ti8C5 is 11.9 GHz and its low Q factor (111.9) indicates a decent energy damping capability, which would eliminate the received energy in an interfacial reflection process and weaken the shock waves for Ti8C5 strengthened composites. As the impact velocity increases above the threshold of 1.8 km/s, Ti8C5 demonstrates brittle behaviour, which is signified by its insignificant out-of-plane deformation prior to crack initiation. When tracking atomic Von Mises stress distribution, the elastic wave propagation velocity of Ti8C5 is calculated to be 5.34 and 5.90 km/s for X and Y directions, respectively. These figures are inferior compared with graphene and copper, which indicate slower energy delocalization rates and thus less energy dissipation via deformation is expected prior to bond break. However, because of its relatively small mass density comparing with copper, Ti8C5 presents superior specific penetration. This study provides a fundamental understanding of the deformation and penetration mechanisms of titanium carbide nanosheets under impact, which is crucial in order to facilitate emerging impact protection applications for titanium carbide-related composites