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Increasing the efficiency of spin–orbit torque (SOT) is of great interest in spintronics devices because of its application to the non-volatile magnetic random access memory and in-logic memory devices. Accordingly, there are several studies to alter the magnetic properties and reduce the SOT switching current with helium ion irradiation, but previous researches are focused on its phenomenological changes only. Here, the authors observe the reduction of switching current and analyze its origins. The analyzed major reasons are improved spin Hall angle represented as the changed resistivity of heavy metal layer and the reduction of surface anisotropy energy at interface between heavy metal and ferromagnet. It is confirmed that almost linear relation between changed SHA and Pt resistivity by helium ion irradiation, which is attributed because of the increase in the scattering sources induced by structural distortion during ion penetration. From the calculated power consumption ratio based on the derived parameter, the requiring power decreases according to the degree of ion irradiation. Our results show that helium ion penetration induced layer and interfacial disturbance affects SOT induced magnetization switching current reduction and may provide possibility about helium ion irradiation based superior SOT device engineering.

The continuous monitoring and recording of food intake amount without user intervention is very useful in the prevention of obesity and metabolic diseases. I adopted a technique that automatically recognizes food intake amount by combining the identification of food types through image recognition and a technique that uses acoustic modality to recognize chewing events. The accuracy of using audio signal to detect eating activity is seriously degraded in a noisy environment. To alleviate this problem, contact sensing methods have conventionally been adopted, wherein sensors are attached to the face or neck region to reduce external noise. Such sensing methods, however, cause dermatological discomfort and a feeling of cosmetic unnaturalness for most users. In this study, a noise-robust and non-contact sensing method was employed, wherein ultrasonic Doppler shifts were used to detect chewing events. The experimental results showed that the mean absolute percentage errors (MAPEs) of an ultrasonic-based method were comparable with those of the audio-based method (15.3 vs. 14.6) when 30 food items were used for experiments. The food intake amounts were estimated for eight subjects in several noisy environments (cafeterias, restaurants, and home dining rooms). For all subjects, the estimation accuracy of the ultrasonic method was not degraded (the average MAPE was 15.02) even under noisy conditions. These results show that the proposed method has the potential to replace the manual logging method.

In this paper, a limited-view CT image reconstruction method was studied to reduce the scan times and the X-ray dose for the patients. To reduce streak artifacts which is caused by insufficient number of views, we introduce a sinogram interpolation method based on image matching. Image matching is achieved using the characteristics of the neighboring views including intensity, gradient and distance between the pixels. Interpolation is performed using the image matching results.. A numerical phantom and Al-acryl phantom were used for evaluating the effectiveness of the proposed interpolation method. The results showed that streak artifacts were reduced in the reconstructed images while the details of the images were preserved. Moreover, maximum 5% improvements in terms of PSNR were observed.

A voice transformation (VT) method that can make the utterance of a source speaker mimic that of a target speaker is described. Speaker individuality transformation is achieved by altering three feature parameters, which include the LPC cepstrum, pitch period and gain. The main objective of this study involves construction of an optimal sequence of features selected from a target speaker’s database, to maximize both the correlation probabilities between the transformed and the source features and the likelihood of the transformed features with respect to the target model. A set of two-pass conversion rules is proposed, where the feature parameters are first selected from a database then the optimal sequence of the feature parameters is then constructed in the second pass. The conversion rules were developed using a statistical approach that employed a maximum likelihood criterion. In constructing an optimal sequence of the features, a hidden Markov model (HMM) was employed to find the most likely combination of the features with respect to the target speaker’s model. The effectiveness of the proposed transformation method was evaluated using objective tests and informal listening tests. We confirmed that the proposed method leads to perceptually more preferred results, compared with the conventional methods.

In the present study, a new stereophonic playback system was proposed, where the cross-talk signals would be reasonably cancelled at an arbitrary listener position. The system was composed of two major parts: the listener position tracking part and the sound rendering part. The position of the listener was estimated using acoustic signals from the listener (i.e. voice or hand-clapping signals). A direction of arrival (DOA) algorithm was adopted to estimate the directions of acoustic sources where the room reverberation effects were taken into consideration. A Crosstalk cancellation filter was designed using a free-field model. To determine the maximum tolerable shift of the listener position, a quantitative analysis of the channel separation ratio according to the displacement of the listener position was performed. Prototype hardware was implemented using a microprocessor board, a DSP board, a multi-channel ADC board and an analog frontend. The results showed that the average mean square error between the true direction of a listener and the estimated direction was about 5 degrees. More than 80% of the tested subjects indicated that better stereo images were obtained by the proposed system, compared with the non-processed signals.

Myoelectric signals (MESs) from the speaker's mouth region have been successfully shown to improve the noise robustness of automatic speech recognizers (ASRs), thus promising to extend their usability in implementing noise-robust ASR. In the recognition system presented herein, extracted audio and facial MES features were integrated by a decision fusion method, where the likelihood score of the audio-MES observation vector was given by a linear combination of class-conditional observation log-likelihoods of two classifiers, using appropriate weights. We developed a weighting process adaptive to SNRs. The main objective of the paper involves determining the optimal SNR classification boundaries and constructing a set of optimum stream weights for each SNR class. These two parameters were determined by a method based on a maximum mutual information criterion. Acoustic and facial MES data were collected from five subjects, using a 60-word vocabulary. Four types of acoustic noise including babble, car, aircraft, and white noise were acoustically added to clean speech signals with SNR ranging from -14 to 31 dB. The classification accuracy of the audio ASR was as low as 25.5%. Whereas, the classification accuracy of the MES ASR was 85.2%. The classification accuracy could be further improved by employing the proposed audio-MES weighting method, which was as high as 89.4% in the case of babble noise. A similar result was also found for the other types of noise.

The composite metal hydride MgH 2 –Me x O y powder was synthesized by high energy ball milling (Me x O y = V 2 O 5 , Cr 2 O 3 , Al 2 O 3 , Fe 2 O 3 ). The hydrogen absorption kinetics of composite metal hydride was determined by automated PCT measurements. The poor kinetics of MgH 2 were greatly improved with an addition of oxide. In absorption, the catalytic effects of Al 2 O 3 and Cr 2 O 3 were remarkable at 300 °C with hydrogen capacity up to 4.09 and 4.02 wt%. At 250 and 200 °C, V 2 O 5 showed that the fastest kinetics and hydrogen absorption capacities up to 3.2 and 2.25 wt%.

The 6061 (Al–1.01 wt% Mg–1.07 wt% Si) Al alloy was fabricated by powder metallurgy, and then subjected to equal channel angular pressing. The microstructure and mechanical properties such as microhardness and tensile properties of the equal channel angular pressed P/M 6061 Al alloy were investigated. The P/M 6061 Al alloy had an initial grain size of approximately 20 μm. After two pressings at 373 K using route A, the sample revealed microstructure of subgrain bands with a length of ∼0.8 μm and a width of ∼0.3 μm. The subgrain bands became larger above 1 μm in length and width after two pressings at 573 K. An equiaxed ultra-fine grained structure with the mean grain size of ∼0.5 μm was obtained after four repetitive equal channel angular pressings at 473 K using route A and C. The microhardness of P/M 6061 Al alloys was drastically increased from about 40 to 80 Hv by two repetitive pressings at 373 K. However, the microhardness decreased with increasing the pressing temperature. The tensile strength of 6061Al alloy before the equal channel angular pressing was 95 MPa, whereas it increased to both 248 MPa after two pressings at 373 K and 130 MPa after four pressings at 473 K, which was superior to that of a commercial 6061-O Al alloy.

The 6061 Al–10 vol% SiCw composites were prepared by powder metallurgy with the powders having the different sizes, i.e.

Current induced spin-orbit effective magnetic fields in metal/ferromagnet/oxide trilayers provide a new way to manipulate the magnetization, which is an alternative to the conventional current induced spin transfer torque arising from noncollinear magnetization. Ta/CoFeB/MgO structures are expected to be useful for non-volatile memories and logic devices due to its perpendicular anisotropy and large current induced spin-orbit effective fields. However many aspects such as the angular and temperature dependent phenomena of the effective fields are little understood. Here, we evaluate the angular and temperature dependence of the current-induced spin-orbit effective fields considering contributions from both the anomalous and planar Hall effects. The longitudinal and transverse components of effective fields are found to have strong angular dependence on the magnetization direction at 300 K. The transverse field decreases significantly with decreasing temperature, whereas the longitudinal field shows weaker temperature dependence. Our results reveal important features and provide an opportunity for a more comprehensive understanding of current induced spin-orbit effective fields.

It is well known that a strong relationship exists between human voices and the movement of articulatory facial muscles. In this paper, we utilize this knowledge to implement an automatic speech recognition scheme which uses solely surface electromyogram (EMG) signals. The sequence of EMG signals for each word is modelled by a hidden Markov model (HMM) framework. The main objective of the work involves building a model for state observation density when multichannel observation sequences are given. The proposed model reflects the dependencies between each of the EMG signals, which are described by introducing a global control variable. We also develop an efficient model training method, based on a maximum likelihood criterion. In a preliminary study, 60 isolated words were used as recognition variables. EMG signals were acquired from three articulatory facial muscles. The findings indicate that such a system may have the capacity to recognize speech signals with an accuracy of up to 87.07%, which is superior to the independent probabilistic model.

A newly developed image enhancement algorithm is described in this contribution. The proposed algorithm makes use of the signal subspace method to enhance images corrupted by uncorrelated additive noise. This enhancement is performed by eliminating the noise subspace and estimating clean image from the remaining signal subspace. We propose the block-adaptive Wiener filtering which engages properties of the human visual system to estimate clean image. This criterion enables one to not only preserve the detailed structure of the given image, but to reduce the level of background noise as well. Subjective evaluation tests show the superiority of the method proposed here. In particular, edge blurring effects are noticeably reduced compared to the conventional methods.

We describe a voice transformation method which changes the source speaker's acoustic features to those of a target speaker. In the method acoustic features are divided into two parts, linear and nonlinear parts. Linear parts are characterized by LPC cepstrum coefficients which are obtained from LP analysis. The nonlinear part, which represents the excitation signal, is modelled by the long-delay nonlinear predictor using a neural net. Conversion rules for the excitation signal are generated by the average pitch ratio and the mapping codebook, and those for LPC cepstrum coefficients are based on the orthogonal vector space conversion. In addition, the spectral envelope compensation is proposed to correct spectral distortion. In the transformed speech a listening test shows that the proposed method makes it possible to convert speaker's individuality while maintaining high quality.

Ginsenosides are deglycosylated by intestinal bacteria to active forms after oral administration. The present study demonstrated the pharmacodynamics of 20-O-beta-D-glucopyranosyl-20(S)-protopanaxadiol (M1), an intestinal bacterial metabolite of ginsenosides, and the in vitro and in vivo antitumor activities of M1-metabolites in comparison with M1 using C57BL/6 mice and Wistar rats. M1 was selectively accumulated into the liver soon after its intravenous administration to mice, and mostly excreted as bile; however, some M1 was transformed to fatty acid ester (EM1) in the liver. EM1 was isolated from rats in a recovery dose of approximately 24 mol%. Structural analysis indicated that EM1 comprised a family of fatty acid mono-esters of M1. Because EM1 was not excreted as bile as M1 was, it was accumulated in the liver longer than M1. Although the cytotoxicity of M1 against B16-F10 melanoma cells was attenuated by fatty acid esterification, EM1 inhibited tumor growth more than M1 in vivo. These results suggest that the fatty acid M1 esters may be the real active principles of ginsenosides in the body.

We theoretically investigate the threshold current for thermally activated switching of a perpendicular magnet by spin-orbit spin torque. Based on the Fokker-Planck equation, we obtain an analytic expression of the switching current, in agreement with numerical result. We find that thermal energy barrier exhibits a quasi-linear dependence on the current, resulting in an almost linear dependence of switching current on the log-scaled current pulse-width even below 10 ns. This is in stark contrast to standard spin torque switching, where thermal energy barrier has a quadratic dependence on the current and the switching current rapidly increases at short pulses. Our results will serve as a guideline to design and interpret switching experiments based on spin-orbit spin torque, 18 pages, 4 figures

We theoretically investigate the switching of a perpendicular magnetic layer by in-plane charge current due to the spin Hall effect. We find that, in the high damping regime, the threshold switching current is independent of the damping constant, and is almost linearly proportional to both effective perpendicular magnetic anisotropy field and external in-plane field applied along the current direction. We obtain an analytic expression of the threshold current, in excellent agreement with numerical results. This expression can be used to determine the physical quantities associated with spin Hall effect, and to design relevant magnetic devices based on the switching of perpendicular magnetic layers., Comment: 16 pages, 3 figures