We investigated the most suitable device structure for large-scale SFQ circuits and propose a new Nb 10-layer device structure that is composed of active layers including junctions at the top, PTL ...layers in the middle and DC power layers at the bottom. This device structure enables us to reduce the influence of the magnetic field due to large bias currents and to form a Nb/AlO
x
/Nb junction layer in the last part of the fabrication sequence. To achieve this structure, we developed a higher quality planarization that could remove the residual slight roughness after standard caldera planarization. We fabricated a diagnostic chip that is composed of test elements such as junctions, contacts, resistors and many kinds of process test patterns. We obtained sufficient characteristics for the diagnostic chips. Moreover, to evaluate the fabrication process, we designed and fabricated several shift registers. We confirmed the correct operation of an up to 2560-bit shift register having 10,281 junctions.
We experimentally investigated the nitrogenation process of heavy rare earth (Gd, Tb, Dy, Ho and Er) hydrides dynamically by thermal analysis. The onset temperature of nitrogenation and the absolute ...value of nitrogenation enthalpy increased as the atomic number of the heavy rare earth elements increased and the onset temperature of nitrogenation with a sharp exothermic peak exhibited a large gap between Tb (406 °C) and Dy (806 °C). The reaction route R→RHx→RN has been done at a relatively low temperature and atmospheric pressure, indicating that the diffusion coefficient of nitrogen into the rare earth hydride is much higher than that of nitrogen into the rare earth metal and/or the activation energy of RHx→RN is lower than that of R→RN. For complete nitriding, ErN requires the highest nitrogenation temperature of at most 1000 °C in N2 flow from ErHx. We obtained the magnetic entropy change ΔS of -14 J/kg K (144 kJ/m3 K, calculated by using the theoretical density of 10.3 g/cm3) at ΔH = 2 T for HoN prepared at the nitrogenation temperature of 1000 °C. This value reached the reported value, indicates that this simple synthesis route without any toxic compounds as a precursor and with normal equipment of an atmospheric furnace without high temperature and pressure can adequately exploit the ability of the rare earth nitride as a magnetic refrigerant for magnetic refrigeration.
This study analyzed the demagnetizing effect for a permeability measurement of a thick NiZn ferrite sheet (100 μm thickness) applied using a microstrip line type probe. The ferromagnetic resonance ...of the NiZn ferrite sheet was observed by two probes with different width conductors. The FMR frequency decreased as the offset between the microstrip conductor and the specimen increased. The two demagnetizing factors were estimated using the ferromagnetic resonance and FEM analysis, and the two values were almost equal. We simulated permeability using FEM, considering the intrinsic permeability of NiZn ferrite (evaluated using the Nicolson-Ross-Weir method) and the demagnetizing effect. The simulated permeability roughly corresponded with the measured value of the microstrip line type probe with a narrow conductor (0.36 mm wide). These results show that the demagnetizing effect is dominant for the high frequency permeability measurement of the thick specimen.
Summary
Interleukin‐12 (IL‐12) plays an important role in antigen‐specific adaptive immunity against Plasmodium sporozoites, and this requirement allows for a new approach to developing an effective ...malaria vaccine. In this study, we examined whether IL‐12 could enhance protective efficacy of a baculovirus‐based malaria vaccine. For this aim, a baculoviral vector expressing murine IL‐12 (mIL‐12) under the control of CMV promoter (BES‐mIL‐12‐Spider) and a baculoviral vector expressing Plasmodium falciparum circumsporozoite protein (PfCSP) with post‐transcriptional regulatory element of woodchuck hepatitis virus (BDES‐sPfCSP2‐WPRE‐Spider) were generated. BES‐mIL‐12‐Spider produced bioactive IL‐12 which activates splenocytes, resulting in induction of IFN‐γ. When co‐immunized with BES‐mIL‐12‐Spider and BDES‐sPfCSP2‐WPRE‐Spider, the mouse number for high IgG2a/IgG1 ratios and the geometric mean in this group were both increased as compared with those of the other groups, indicating a shift towards a Th1‐type response following immunization with BES‐mIL‐12‐Spider. Finally, immunization with BDES‐sPfCSP2‐WPRE‐Spider plus BES‐mIL‐12‐Spider had a higher protective efficacy (73%) than immunization with BDES‐sPfCSP2‐WPRE‐Spider alone (30%) against challenge with transgenic Plasmodium berghei sporozoites expressing PfCSP. These results suggest that co‐administration of IL‐12 expressing baculoviral vector, instead of IL‐12 cDNA, with viral‐vectored vaccines provides a new feasible vaccine platform to enhance Th1‐type cellular immune responses against Plasmodium parasites.
Complete Video Quality-Preserving Data Hiding Kok Sheik Wong; Tanaka, K.; Takagi, K. ...
IEEE transactions on circuits and systems for video technology,
10/2009, Letnik:
19, Številka:
10
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Although many data hiding methods are proposed in the literature, all of them distort the quality of the host content during data embedding. In this paper, we propose a novel data hiding method in ...the compressed video domain that completely preserves the image quality of the host video while embedding information into it. Information is embedded into a compressed video by simultaneously manipulating Mquant and quantized discrete cosine transform coefficients, which are the significant parts of MPEG and H.26x-based compression standards. To the best of our knowledge, this data hiding method is the first attempt of its kind. When fed into an ordinary video decoder, the modified video completely reconstructs the original video even compared at the bit-to-bit level. Our method is also reversible, where the embedded information could be removed to obtain the original video. A new data representation scheme called reverse zerorun length (RZL) is proposed to exploit the statistics of macroblock for achieving high embedding efficiency while trading off with payload. It is theoretically and experimentally verified that RZL outperforms matrix encoding in terms of payload and embedding efficiency for this particular data hiding method. The problem of video bitstream size increment caused by data embedding is also addressed, and two independent solutions are proposed to suppress this increment. Basic performance of this data hiding method is verified through experiments on various existing MPEG-1 encoded videos. In the best case scenario, an average increase of four bits in the video bitstream size is observed for every message bit embedded.
This study utilized a 4-yr database consisting of catchment-wide volumetric soil moisture measurements at 78 locations from the surface down to 1.1 m depth within the 7.9-ha Shale Hills Critical Zone ...Observatory in central Pennsylvania. The objectives were to: (i) assess the uncertainty in estimating catchment-wide mean soil moisture content by characterizing the relationship between soil moisture spatial variability and spatially averaged moisture content and (ii) examine the relationship between temporal changes in soil moisture spatial variability and seasonal and event-based hydrologic fluxes. Our results showed that soil moisture spatial variability increased exponentially with increasing catchment-wide wetness across all measurement depths and various soil-landform units. This relationship led to the widening of confidence intervals and an increase in the number of sites needed to obtain 95% confidence in spatially averaged soil moisture as the catchment wets up. This was due to the well-drained and steep-sloped hillslope soils in the catchment that confined saturated areas to the swales and the valley floor. Temporal changes in soil moisture spatial variability indicated a seasonal increase in the catchment-wide soil moisture variability that coincided with the emergence of a shallow water table in the valley during the winter and spring months. Event-based increases in soil moisture spatial variability associated with large antecedent precipitation were also observed (but with limited resolution because of weekly to biweekly measurements), which indicated the importance of subsurface lateral flow in influencing the catchment-wide soil moisture spatial variability. Because ephemeral shallow water tables and subsurface lateral flow are common in many temperate forests, our results are useful for guiding soil moisture monitoring campaigns in these catchments and have implications for interpreting and scaling remote sensing footprints of soil moisture in these landscapes during different times of a year.
Approximately 18 months (September to December 2012) after the Fukushima Dai‐ichi Nuclear Power Plant accident, elevated radiocaesium concentrations were measured in samples of muscle and eggs from ...masu salmon Oncorhynchus masou, kokanee Oncorhynchus nerka, brown trout Salmo trutta and lake trout Salvelinus namaycush from the Lake Chuzenji system, central Honshu Island, Japan (160 km from the station). Mean muscle concentrations were 142·9–249·2 Bq kg−1 wet mass and mean concentrations in eggs were 38·7–79·0 Bq kg−1 wet mass. There was no relationship between fork length and muscle radiocaesium concentration in any of the species, but there were significant relationships between individual muscle and egg radiocaesium concentrations from O. masou, S. trutta and S. namaycush.
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