The development and illustrative applications of an ambient ionization technique termed Venturi easy ambient sonic-spray ionization (V-EASI) is described. Its dual mode of operation with Venturi self-pumping makes V-EASI applicable to the direct mass spectrometric analysis of both liquid (V(L)-EASI) and solid (V(S)-EASI) samples. V-EASI is simple and easy to assemble, operating solely via the a...

Pipelines constitute the dominant inland transportation mode for crude oil and oil products. Lots of refined products such as gasoline, jet fuel and diesel are shipped from refineries and seaports to truck-loading terminals by multiproduct pipelines. Planning the operation of multiproduct pipelines is a very difficult task demanding efficient tools to get safe, on-time, low-cost and high-qualit...

Optical microcavities can be designed to take advantage of total internal reflection, which results in resonators supporting whispering-gallery modes (WGMs) with a high-quality factor (Q factor). One of the crucial problems of these devices for practical applications such as designing microcavity lasers, however, is that their emission is nondirectional due to their radial symmetry, in addition...

We have developed and demonstrated both Ytterbium-doped and Erbium-doped, diode-pumped and seeded, fiber amplifiers at 1064 and 1570 nm, respectively. By pulse pumping a one-stage Erbium amplifier, we have shown greater than 20 W peak output power and high wall-plug efficiency. Our pulse-pumping approach improves energy efficiency up to 80% (at 1 kHz PRF) over the identical CW pumping scheme wh...

This document defines an additional mode of the link-layer assisted RObust Header Compression (ROHC) profile, also known as the zero-byte profile, beyond the two defined in RFC 3242. Zero-byte header compression exists in order to prevent the single-octet ROHC header from pushing a packet voice stream into the next higher fixed packet size for the radio. It is usable in certain widely deployed ...

A unidirectional link exists in an ad-hoc network when a node B is within the transmission range of another node A while node A cannot directly hear node B. However, a reverse route from B to A might exist, by going through multiple nodes. Unidirectional links may exist in an ad hoc network due to variation in transmission power of different nodes, noise or other signal propagation phenomena, a...

We report the coexistence of low threshold lasing and strong coupling in a high-quality semiconductor microcavity under near-resonant optical pumping. A sharp laser mode splits from the lower-polariton branch and approaches the bare cavity mode frequency as the pump power increases. The lasing is produced by low density localized exciton states, which are weakly coupled to the cavity mode. The ...

Transport of suspended sediment between the two reservoirs of a pumped-storage plant in Switzerland was monitored over an 8-month period. A turbidity probe was installed on the upstream end of the pressure shaft, in which real-time monitoring was ensured by automatic data acquisition and remote control. The suspended sediment concentration in the reservoirs varies considerably over the course o...

Surface acoustic wave (SAW) devices based on Rayleigh wave, shear wave, love wave, acoustic plate mode (APM) wave and flexural plate wave have been explored for sensors, actuators and telecommunication applications. An interdigital transducer (IDT) is a metallic comb-like structure fabricated over piezoelectric substrate. SAWs are generated over the substrate by applying electrical signal to th...

Objective. To assess fracture resistance and failure mode of repaired fiber-reinforced composite (FRC) cusp-replacing restorations. Methods. Sixteen extracted human premolars with fractured cusp-replacing woven (Group (A)) or unidirectional (Group (B)) FRC restorations from a previous loading experiment were repaired with resin composite and loaded to fracture. Results. Differences in fracture ...