For many military and civilian large-scale, real-world systems of interest, data are first acquired asynchronously, i. e. at irregular intervals of time, at geographically-dispersed sites, processed utilizing decision-making algorithms, and the processed data then disseminated to other appropriate sites. The term real-world refers to systems under computer control that relate to everyday life and are beneficial to the society in the large. The traditional approach to such problems consists of designing a central entity which collects all data, executes a decision making algorithm sequentially to yield the decisions, and propagates the decisions to the respective sites. Centralized decision making algorithms are slow and highly vulnerable to natural and artificial catastrophes. Recent literature includes successful asynchronous, distributed, decision making algorithm designs wherein the local decision making at every site replaces the centralized decision making to achieve faster response, higher reliability, and greater accuracy of the decisions. Two key issues include the lack of an approach to synthesize asynchronous, distributed, decision making algorithms, for any given problem, and the absence of a comparative analysis of the quality of their decisions. This paper proposes MFAD, a Mathematical Framework for Asynchronous, Distributed Systems, that permits the description of centralized decision-making algorithms and facilities the synthesis of distributed decision-making algorithms. MFAD is based on the Kohn-Nerode distributed hybrid control paradigm. It has been a belief that since the centralized control gathers every necessary data from all entities in the system and utilizes them to compute the decisions, the decisions may be "globally" optimal. In truth, however, as the frequency of the sensor data increases and the environment gets larger, dynamic, and more complex, the decisions are called into question. In the distributed decision-making system, the centralized decision-making is replaced by those of the constituent entities that aim at minimizing a Lagrangian, i. e. a local, non-negative cost criterion, subject to the constraints imposed by the global goal. Thus, computations are carried out locally, utilizing locally obtained dataand appropriate information that is propagated from other sites. It is hypothesized that with each entity engaged in optimizing its individual behavior, asynchronously, concurrently, and independent of other entities, the distributed system will approach "global" optimal behavior. While it does not claim that such algorithms may be synthesized for all centralized real-world systems, this paper implements both the centralized and distributed paradigms for a representative military battlefield command, control, and communication (C3) problem. It also simulates them on a testbed of a network of workstations for a comparative performance evaluation of the centralized and decentralized paradigms in the MFAD framework. While the performance results indicate that the decentralized approach consistently outperforms the centralized scheme, this paper aims at developing a quantitative evaluation of the quality of decisions under the decentralized paradigm. To achieve this goal, it introduces a fundamental concept, embodied through a hypothetical entity termed "Perfect Global Optimization Device (PGOD)," that generates perfect or ideal decisions. PGOD possesses perfect knowledge, i. e. the exact state information of every entity of the entire system, at all times, unaffected by delay. PGOD utilizes the same decision-making algorithm as the centralized paradigm and generates perfect globally-optimal decisions which, though unattainable, provide a fundamental and absolute basis for comparing the quality of decisions. Simulation results reveal that the quality of decisions in the decentralized paradigm are superior to those of the centralized approach and that they approach PGOD's decisions.

We describe a theoretically optimal algorithm for computing the homography between two images. First, we derive a theoretical accuracy bound based on a mathematical model of image noise and do simulation to confirm that our renormalization technique effectively attains that bound. Then, we apply our technique to mosaicing of images with small overlaps. By using real images, we show how our algorithm reduces the instability of the image mapping.

Short-circuit photocurrents (ISC) utilizing surface plasmon polariton (SPP) excitation were investigated for the merocyanine (MC) LB film photoelectric device. The device has a prism/MgF2/Al/MC LB film/Ag structure. In the attenuated total reflection (ATR) configuration, SPPs were resonantly excited at the interfaces between MgF2 and Al (MgF2/Al) and between Ag and air (Ag/air). The thickness and the dielectric constants of the layers were evaluated from the ATR measurements. Short-circuit photocurrents, ISCs, as a function of the incident angle of the laser beam were observed simultaneously during the ATR measurements. In the ISC curves, large and small peaks were observed, and the peak angles of the ISC almost corresponded to the dip angles of the ATR curves due to the SPP excitations. Electric fields and optical absorptions in the cell were calculated using the dielectric constants and the film thickness obtained from the ATR measurements. The calculated absorption in the MC layer as a function of the incident angle corresponded to the ISC curve. It was thought that the optical absorption in the MC layer affected directly to the profile of the ISC. Furthermore, the calculated absorption in the cell with the prism and the MgF2 layer exhibited much larger than that of the cell without them. It was estimated that the photocurrents were enhanced by the excitation of SPPs in the ATR configuration.

Since odor sensing system is required in many fields, we have developed the system using QCM (Quartz Crystal Microbalance) sensor array and neural-network pattern recognition. In the present study, the mixed sensing films of two kinds of liquid-phase materials were characterized. As a result, it was found that the variety of sensing films were obtained by mixing two kinds of liquid-phase materials. The relative remnant of sensing film after repeated exposures was examined, and mixed films of two kinds of liquid-phase materials were found stable for the sensing materials.

In this paper, we propose a peak-weighted cepstral lifter (PWL) for enhancing the spectral peaks of an all-pole model spectrum in the cepstral domain. The design parameter of the PWL is the degree of pole enhancement or pole shifting toward the unit circle. The optimal pole shifting factor is chosen by considering the sensitivity to spectral resonance peaks, the variability of cepstral variances, and the recognition accuracy. Next, we generalize the PWL so that the optimal shifting factor is adaptively determined in frame-by-frame basis. Compared with other cepstral lifters, a speech recognizer employing the frame-adaptive PWL provides better recognition performance.

Topographical changes induced by optical near-field around photo-irradiated nanoparticles were attained using a pulsed laser with a large peak power as a light source. The arrayed structure of nanoparticles was transcribed on urethane-urea azo copolymer film as dent structure. The experiments by the pulsed laser of different wavelength showed that the topographical change was caused by the light absorption. The dent diameter and the dent depth changed depending on the diameter of nanoparticles.

We have fabricated a static induction transistor structure by using copper phthalocyanine (CuPc) films. Its layer-structure is Au(drain)/CuPc/Al(gate)/CuPc/Au(source)/glass. The source-drain current is controlled by the Al gate bias-voltage when the drain voltage is positive but is almost independent of it when the drain voltage is negative. The current-voltage characteristics are governed by the space-charge-limited conduction which depends on shallow traps.

Vanadyl-phthalocyanine (VOPc) single crystals were prepared on KBr substrate by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE). Their maximum size is 1380.16 µm3. The morphology of the VOPc single crystal was investigated from the results of UV/VIS spectra and RHEED. They suggest that the VOPc single crystal may be grown with pseudomorphic layers. The growing process was expained by Volmer-Weber model. The third order nonlinear optical property of VOPc single crystal was measured with Maker fringe method. The value of the third order optical susceptibility (χ(3)) of VOPc single crystal was estimated to be about 10-9 esu from the result of Maker fringe.

The differential 4-quadrature (D4Q) coherent optical system which does not need absolute phase information is proposed. The input information is encoded in the relative position of the present symbol with respect to the reference frame constructed by the previous 3 symbols. The general theory of the system operation including encoding and decoding is presented. This system does not need to track the fluctuation of the states of polarizations which is essential for most other polarization modulation systems. As an example, the 4-symbol D4Q system is described. And the saddle point approximation is applied to estimate the bit error rate performance. The analytic approximation agrees with the simulation results very well.

Photoacoustic spectroscopy (PAS) has recently received much attention especially for plant photosynthesis research, because this technique is capable of performing non-destructive measurement without any pre-treatment of specimens. So far we have developed a PAS system equipped with an open photoacoustic cell (OPC), which allows in situ and in vivo measurements of plant photosynthesis of intact undetached leaves. In this study, we have measured photosynthesis reaction using OPC and developed a Confocal Scanning Photoacoustic Microscopy (CSPAM) system, in which PAS is combined with confocal scanning laser microscopy. The system allows simultaneous measurement of acoustic signal and another signal such as fluorescence, and also gives two- and three- dimensional intensity distributions of these signals, thereby giving two- and three- dimensional information about photosynthetic activity of plants.

A high speed 3D shape reconstruction method with multiple video cameras and multiple computers on LAN is presented. The video cameras are set to surround the real 3D space where people exist. Reconstructed 3D space is displayed in voxel format and users can see the space from any viewpoint with a VR viewer. We implemented a prototype system that can work out the 3D reconstruction with the speed of 10.55 fps in 313 ms delay.

Layer-by-layer sequential adsorption process of polyelectrolytes had conventionally been used for the fabrication of the ultra-thin organic film formed by various polymers with different polarity of charge. In this study, hydrophobic Ruthenium complex monomer (tris (bilyridyl) ruthenium (II) hexafluorophosphate) was micelle-wrapped with an anionic surfactant, sodium dodecylbenzenesulfonate, and was assembled with PAH (poly (allylamine hydrochloride)) which has the opposite charge on ITO substrates. With this method, we succeed in fabricating ultra-thin organic films even when the adsorption material is not polymer but monomer. Moreover it was found that the bilayer thickness of the self-assembled (Ru micelle/PAH) was systematically changed by adjusting the solution pH of each bath. By using this process, EL device was fabricated by depositing the thin film of micelle-wrapping ruthenium complex monomer on ITO and formed Bi electrode on top of the film. Light emission was observed by applying voltage to this device.

We have developed a new type electrical probing system based on an atomic force microscope. This method enables us to measure simultaneously the surface topography and surface potential of thin films containing the crystal grains. The obtained local potential changes give an insight into conduction through the grains and their boundaries.

Micropatterning of organosilane self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) was demonstrated on the basis of photolithography using an excimer lamp radiating vacuum ultra-violet (VUV) light of 172 nm in wavelength. This lithography is generally applicable to micropatterning of organic thin films including alkyl and fluoroalkyl SAMs, since its patterning mechanism involves cleavage of C-C bonds in organic molecules and subsequent decomposition of the molecules. In this study, SAMs were prepared on Si substrates covered with native oxide by chemical vapor deposition in which an alkylsilane, that is, octadecyltrimethoxysilane [CH3(CH2)17Si(OCH3)3, ODS] or a fluoroalkylsilane, that is, 1H, 1H, 2H, 2H-perfluorodecyltrimethoxy-silane [CF3(CF2)7CH2CH2Si(OCH3)3, FAS] were used as precursors. Each of these SAMs was photoirradiated through a photomask placed on its surface. As confirmed by atomic force microscopy and x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, the SAMs were decomposed and removed in the photoirradiated area while the masked areas remained undecomposed. A micropattern of 2 µm in width was successfully fabricated. Furthermore, microstructures composed of two different SAMs, that is, ODS and FAS, were fabricated as follows. For example, an ODS-SAM was first micropatterned by the VUV-lithography. Since, the VUV-exposed region on the ODS-SAM showed an affinity to the chemisorption of organosilane molecules, the second SAM, i. e. , FAS, confined to the photolithographically defined pattern was successfully fabricated. Due to the electron negativity of F atoms, the FAS covered region showed a more negative surface potential than that of the ODS surface: its potential difference was ca. 120 mV as observed by Kelvin probe force microscopy.

A closed-loop queueing model of flow-based label switches, supporting label reservation protocols of different label-setup and release policies, is presented. This model can emulate the behavior of TCP under the label switch when the maximum window size has been achieved and the packet loss rate is negligible. The label-setup policy is that the IP controller does not start to set up a label until the accumulated packets of the same flow in the switch buffer have exceeded a triggering threshold. Meanwhile, the reserved bandwidth is released when the flow is detected idle and the label-release timer has expired. This policy can achieve higher channel utilization with minimal label processing overhead in spite of suffering from certain delay penalty. To avoid unnecessary TCP timeout or large packet delay under such policy, we also introduce a label-setup timer. Norton's theorem is applied to obtain approximate solutions of this queueing model. Although the analytical method is an approximate one, the simulation results show that the accuracy is high and this model can clearly illustrate how the label-setup and the lable-release timer affect the system performance. Besides, one can observe the trade-off between the throughput and the channel utilization.

The authors report ultra-high-speed digital IC modules that use 0.1-µm InAlAs/InGaAs/InP HEMTs for broadband optical fiber communication systems. The multiplexer IC module operated at up to 70 Gbit/s, and error-free operation of the decision IC module was confirmed at 50 Gbit/s. The speed of each module is the fastest yet reported for its kind.

A novel chemical sensor for sulfate detection was proposed in this study, utilizing sulfate binding protein (SBP) derived from Escherichia coli as sulfate recognition element. Purified SBP was immobilized on a gold electrode modified with cysteamine and glutaraldehyde. In this study the surface potential change of the SBP modified electrode to sulfate and various ions were investigated. In order to evaluate nonspecific interaction with ionic species, proteins with various isoelectric point were immobilized on the surface of gold electrode and response to ions were measured and compared to sulfate binding protein modified electrode. We made clear that the protein modified electrode shows the potential change to ions and these potential change was effected by the isoelectric point of the protein molecule, and BSA, whose isoelectric point is closest to that of SBP, showed the similar response to ions except sulfate. With use BSA modified electrode as a reference electrode, this sensing system showed selective response to sulfate, probably because of the selective binding sulfate by SBP. This potential change difference between the SBP modified electrode and the BSA modified electrode depended on the concentration of sulfate with in the range of 5 - 150 mM.

To enhance safety and traffic efficiency, a driver assistance system and an autonomous vehicle system are being developed. A preceding vehicle recognition method is important to develop such systems. In this paper, a vision-based preceding vehicle recognition method, based on supervised learning from sample images is proposed. The improvement for Modified Quadratic Discriminant Function (MQDF) classifier that is used in the proposed method is also shown. And in the case of road environment recognition including the preceding vehicle recognition, many researches have been reported. However in those researches, a quantitative evaluation with large number of images has rarely been done. Whereas, in this paper, over 1,000 sample images for passenger vehicles, which are recorded on a highway during daytime, are used for an evaluation. The evaluation result shows that the performance in a low order case is improved from the ordinary MQDF. Accordingly, the calculation time is reduced more than 20% by using the proposed method. And the feasibility of the proposed method is also proved, due to the result that the proposed method indicates over 98% as classification rate.

We have developed a map-based approach that enables us to efficiently extract information about man-made objects, such as buildings, from aerial images. An image is matched with a corresponding map in order to estimate the object information in the image (i. e. , presence, location, shape, size, kind, and surroundings). This approach is characterized by using a figure contained in a map as an object model for a top-down (model-driven) analysis of an object in the aerial image. We determined the principal steps of the map-based approach needed to extract object information and update a map. These steps were then applied to obtain the locations of missing buildings and the heights of existing buildings. The extraction results of experiments using aerial images of Kobe City (taken after the 1995 earthquake) show that the approach is effective for automatically extracting building information from aerial images and for rapidly updating map data.

There are methods used to test the optical purity of enantiomers; however, most of the simple methods are not precise and more complicated methods are better. As a result, these methods cannot be widely used for industrial purposes. The aim of this research is to design a sensor which can discriminate D-amino acids from L-amino acids. The designed sensor has chiral membranes and uses the technique of impedance change of these chiral membranes to discriminate the amino acids. We used a noise-FFT (Fast Fourier Transform) technique to determine the membrane impedance. When an enantiomer membrane resides in a chiral environment, (E*), diastereomeric interactions (E*-D) and (E*-L) are created, which may differ sufficiently in the arrangement of molecules of the membranes so as to permit the discrimination of optical substances due to the change in membrane characteristics. With increasing concentrations of the amino acids, the membrane resistance changes depended on the optical activity of the amino acids. The results suggest that the impedance changes of the chiral membrane with diastereomeric reaction can be used for the high-performance chemical sensor to measure the optical purity of different substances.