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Anion exchange membranes (AEMs) are a promising class of materials for applications that require selective ion transport, such as fuel cells, water purification, and electrolysis devices. Studies of structure–morphology–property relationships of ion-exchange membranes revealed that block copolymers exhibit improved ion conductivity and mechanical properties due to their microphase-separated morphologies with well-defined ionic domains. While most studies focused on symmetric diblock or triblock copolymers, here, the first example of a midblock quaternized pentablock AEM is presented. A symmetric ABCBA pentablock copolymer was functionalized to obtain a midblock brominated polymer. Solution cast films were then quaternized to obtain AEMs with resulting ion exchange capacities (IEC) ranging from 0.4 to 0.9 mmol/g. Despite the relatively low IEC, the polymers were highly conductive (up to 60 mS/cm Br− at 90 °C and 95%RH) with low water absorption (

Rice straw presents challenges as livestock feed due to its low digestibility and the presence of chemical residues. One potential solution is to focus on breeding brittle varieties that possess disease-resistance traits. In this study, AZ1803, a brittle mutant line isolated from the IR64 mutant pool, was chosen for gene identification and breeding. The AZ1803 mutant was crossed to the TNG67 variety to generate a mapping population and to the CS11 variety for fine mapping and breeding. The gene was mapped on chr. 10 between RM467 and RM171 SSR markers and was narrowed down to RM271 and RM5392 with 600 kb proximately interval. The AZ1803 and IR64 sequencing results revealed a substitution mutant in the Exon 9th of the OsCesA7 gene, resulting in an amino acid mutation at the end of the transmembrane domain 5th of the CESA7, responsible for cellulose synthesis for the secondary cell wall. The cellulose content of AZ1803 was reduced by 25% compared with the IR64. A new brittle and disease-resistant variety was bred by using developed markers in marker-assisted selection. In addition, bending tests and bacterial blight inoculation were applied. The bacterial lesion length of the bred variety is 64% lower than that of AZ1803. The rice straw of the new variety can be used for livestock feeding, which increases farmer income and reduces pesticide residues and air pollution from straw burning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study focuses on the computational characterization of electrochemical C-C bond formation through the CO and CHO coupling process utilizing a dioxo-coordinated Cu single atom site ([CuO2]*) supported on a Pd(111) surface. The stable intermediate, [CuO2]*(CO)2, was identified as a tetradentate-and-tetrahedral species formed upon exposure to CO gaseous molecules. Electrochemically, the hydrogenation of the carbonyl group to CHO was found to be 0.87 eV, conceivably lower than the corresponding step for conventional Cu surfaces. This study observed a considerable charge transfer effect from the top layer of Pd atoms to the adsorbate moiety, especially at the TS structure. This phenomenon resulted in an accessible C-C bond formation barrier at 0.67 eV. Furthermore, the reaction energy of C-C bond formation was found to be exothermic at −0.21 eV, indicating a favorable chemical equilibrium condition. Considering the temperature effect and pressure of the gaseous molecules (CO, CO2, O2), the [CuO2]*(CO)2 intermediate was substantially populated at room temperature and was found to be chemically resilient under dry ambient conditions, as suggested by the kinetic modeling results. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on photoluminescence spectroscopy on Cr-doped gem materials has demonstrated great success regarding the identification of gemstones in terms of building rapid test systems. In this study, 405 nm photoluminescence spectroscopy was used to measure the luminescence decay profiles of dozens of natural and lab-grown spinel (including heated spinel) and alexandrite. Spinel and alexandrite are both capable of producing photoluminescence with a long lifetime: spinel between 9 and 23 microseconds and alexandrite from 25 to 53 microseconds. The photoluminescence lifetime and exponential parameters of the half-life demonstrated notable differences in the ranges of decay times between natural, heated, and lab-grown versions of these materials. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents an implementation of a low-power and pure-hardware advanced-audio-coding (AAC) audio decoder system. Based on the characteristics of each decoding block, the AAC system is partitioned into four separate modules. For low-power and low-complexity considerations, architectural- and algorithmic-level approaches are adopted in both individual modules and whole system. In parallel PLA-based codeword decoder, we achieve a constant output rate of Huffman decoding in 2.5 cycles for the worst case, and memory usage is decreased compared to that in the binary-tree memory-based method. In reduced lookup table inverse quantizer, a table lookup with interpolation scheme is adopted which reduces the size of the lookup table from 8192 to 256. In hardware-shared signal processor, we use a hardware-sharing technique which integrates several similar blocks into a common hardware to reduce cost and enhance hardware utilization. In fully pipelined filterbank, a fast algorithm decreases the numbers of multiplication and addition largely to factors of 24 and 144 for the short and long blocks, respectively. A corresponding hardware for filterbank processing is proposed with fully pipelined architecture. Referring to stereo processing, a single hardware is shared for the channel pairs with low-cost consideration. The hardware operations of each module are well scheduled with high utilization of pipeline, and furthermore, the parallel processing among blocks is joined to increase efficiency. A 48% power savings can be reached by using the pipeline and parallel techniques of the channel pair. The proposed AAC decoder is realized in UMC 0.18-[micro]m 1P6M technology and is operated at only 3 MHz in the worst case. The power dissipation is only 2.45 mW at the sampling frequency of 44.1 kHz. Index Terms--Advanced audio coding (AAC), audio, decoder, low power, system.

In the upcoming video coding standard MPEG-4 AVC/JVT/H.264, motion estimation is allowed to use multiple references and multiple block sizes to improve the rate-distortion performance. However, full exhaustive search of all block sizes is computational intensive with complexity increasing linearly to the number of allowed reference frames and block sizes. In block motion estimation, a search pattern with a different shape or size has a very important impact on search speed and distortion performance. Based on an in-depth examination for the influence of search pattern on speed performance, a novel search algorithm, three-dimensional predict hexagon search (3DPHS), is proposed in this paper. The 3DPHS depends on the characteristics of motion vector distribution; it can predict the object movement in horizontal and vertical direction with a novel search pattern. The proposed algorithm also considers the characteristics of multiple reference frames and multiple block sizes in H.264. The analysis results show that the speed improvement of 3DPHS over some popular fast search algorithms is about 25%-75%. The compression quality is almost the same compared with Full Search. Index Terms--Fast block matching algorithm, H.264, motion estimation.