Energy Harvesting of Deionized Water Droplet Flow over an Epitaxial Graphene Film on a SiC Substrate

Abstract: This study investigates energy harvesting by a deionized (DI) water droplet flow on an epitaxial graphene film on a SiC substrate. We obtain an epitaxial single-crystal graphene film by annealing a 4H-SiC substrate. Energy harvesting of the solution droplet flow on the graphene surface has been investigated by using NaCl or HCl solutions. This study validates the voltage generated from the DI water flow on the epitaxial graphene film. The maximum generated voltage was as high as 100 mV, which was a quite large value compared with the previous reports. Furthermore, we measure the dependence of flow direction on electrode configuration. The generated voltages are independent of the electrode configuration, indicating that the DI water flow direction is not influenced by the voltage generation for the single-crystal epitaxial graphene film. Based on these results, the origin of the voltage generation on the epitaxial graphene film is not only an outcome of the fluctuation of the electrical-double layer, resulting in the breaking of the uniform balance of the surface charges, but also other factors such as the charges in the DI water or frictional electrification. In addition, the buffer layer has no effect on the epitaxial graphene film on the SiC substrate

Daily News on Japanese Legislation toward Global Sharing of Japanese Legal Information

Our purpose in this paper is to develop a system for the international sharing of Japanese legal information. We plan to promptly provide the Outlines of all the newly promulgated Japanese statutes in English, using machine translation. Structured documents in XML format made it possible to achieve various functions concerning machine translation, text search, and display style. We developed the Document Type Definition for the Outlines based on our investigation of their structure. We also developed a rule-based annotator for the Outlines, which adequately marked up 87.2% on the Outlines of Japanese acts

Improvement of Translation Accuracy for the Outlines of Japanese Statutes by Splitting Parenthesized Expressions

To globally share Japanese legal information, we translate the Outlines of Japanese statutes. These outlines are the official summaries of Japanese statutes and are useful to quickly understand their contents. In a previous statistical machine translation system for the outlines, we found that the training corpus consisted of both statutes and their outlines, including many long sentences that reduced the translation quality. To solve this problem, we shortened the length of sentences and focused on parenthesized expressions. In this paper, we propose a translation method that splits off parenthesized expressions from the sentences. Experimental result shows the effectiveness of our method

Primary arm array during directional solidification of a single-crystal binary alloy: Large-scale phase-field study

AbstractPrimary arm arrays formed during the directional solidification of a single-crystal binary alloy were investigated by performing large-scale phase-field simulations using the GPU supercomputer TSUBAME2.5 at Tokyo Institute of Technology. The primary arm array and spacing were investigated by Voronoi decomposition and Delaunay triangulation, respectively. It was concluded that a hexagonal array was dominant for both the dendrite and cell structures and that penta–hepta defects, which are typical defects in hexagonal patterns, were formed. The primary arms continuously moved such that the number of hexagons increased, and the distribution of primary arm spacing became uniform over time even after the number of primary arms was constant. The order of array was highest in the growth condition of the dendrite close to the cell-to-dendrite transition region. In addition, we proposed a realistic and accurate evaluation method of primary arm array by removing small sides from the Voronoi polygons

Thermal desorption of structured water layer on epitaxial graphene

Thermal desorption of the structured water layer on graphene was observed in this study via electrical conductivity measurements. Specifically, a structured water layer was formed on the graphene surface via deionized water treatment, following which we examined the thermal desorption process of the layer using sheet resistance measurements. The water molecules acting as a p-type dopant were strongly adsorbed on graphene, forming a solid layer. Consequently, the layer was completely removed from the graphene surface at 300⁡°C. The thermal desorption spectrum of the structured water layer on graphene was quantitatively obtained by converting the measured sheet resistance to carrier density change

Video-Assisted Thoracoscopic Surgery Using Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation for Intractable Pneumothorax

Intractable pneumothorax with poor lung function that has received multiple conservative treatments may occur. Case 1 was a 70-year-old woman with aspergilloma who was admitted for pneumothorax. Case 2 was a 68-year-old man with acute exacerbation of interstitial pneumonia who developed pneumothorax. In both cases, multiple conservative therapies were administered, but the leak continued; thus, operations using veno-venous extracorporeal membrane oxygenation (ECMO) were planned. By video-assisted thoracoscopic surgery (VATS), we obtained the optimal surgical field by lung collapse. We removed many blood clots that were used for pleurodesis, ligated the bulla in case 1, and covered the leak point with strengthening agents in case 2. For cases of intractable pneumothorax, lung collapse by ECMO is advantageous because we can check details and leak points even in blood clots or in poor condition of the lung, and we can maneuver the lung in poor condition with a clear surgical field

Estimation of articulated angle in six-wheeled dump trucks using multiple GNSS receivers for autonomous driving

Due to the declining birthrate and aging population, the shortage of labor in the construction industry has become a serious problem, and increasing attention has been paid to automation of construction equipment. We focus on the automatic operation of articulated six-wheel dump trucks at construction sites. For the automatic operation of the dump trucks, it is important to estimate the position and the articulated angle of the dump trucks with high accuracy. In this study, we propose a method for estimating the state of a dump truck by using four global navigation satellite systems (GNSSs) installed on an articulated dump truck and a graph optimization method that utilizes the redundancy of multiple GNSSs. By adding real-time kinematic (RTK)-GNSS constraints and geometric constraints between the four antennas, the proposed method can robustly estimate the position and articulation angle even in environments where GNSS satellites are partially blocked. As a result of evaluating the accuracy of the proposed method through field tests, it was confirmed that the articulated angle could be estimated with an accuracy of 0.1$^\circ$ in an open-sky environment and 0.7$^\circ$ in a mountainous area simulating an elevation angle of 45$^\circ$ where GNSS satellites are blocked.Comment: This is an electronic version of an article published in ADVANCED ROBOTICS, 35:23, 1376-1387, 2021. ADVANCED ROBOTICS is available online at: www.tandfonline.com/Article DOI; 10.1080/01691864.2019.161962