Nagoya Institute of Technology

About: Nagoya Institute of Technology is a education organization based out in Nagoya, Japan. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Thin film & Catalysis. The organization has 10766 authors who have published 19140 publications receiving 255696 citations. The organization is also known as: Nagoya Kōgyō Daigaku & Nitech.

Trajectory modeling based on HMMs with the explicit relationship between static and dynamic features.

Abstract: This paper shows that the HMM whose state output vector includes static and dynamic feature parameters can be reformulated as a trajectory model by imposing the explicit relationship between the static and dynamic features. The derived model, named trajectory HMM, can alleviate the limitations of HMMs: i) constant statistics within an HMM state and ii) independence assumption of state output probabilities. We also derive a Viterbi-type training algorithm for the trajectory HMM. A preliminary speech recognition experiment based on N -best rescoring demonstrates that the training algorithm can improve the recognition performance significantly even though the trajectory HMM has the same parameterization as the standard HMM.

First-principles study of lithium ion migration in lithium transition metal oxides with spinel structure

Abstract: The migration of lithium (Li) ions in electrode materials is an important factor affecting the rate performance of rechargeable Li ion batteries. We have examined Li migration in spinels LiMn2O4, LiCo2O4, and LiCo1/16Mn15/16O4 by means of first-principles calculations based on density functional theory (DFT). The results showed that the trajectory of the Li jump was straight between the two adjacent Li ions for all of the three spinel compounds. However, there were significant differences in the energy profiles and the Li jump path for LiMn2O4 and LiCo2O4. For LiMn2O4 the highest energy barrier was in the middle of the two tetrahedral sites, or in the octahedral vacancy (16c). For LiCo2O4 the lowest energy was around the octahedral 16c site and the energy barrier was located at the bottleneck sites. The difference in the energy profile for LiCo2O4 stemmed from the charge disproportion of Co3.5+ to Co3+/Co4+ caused by a Li vacancy forming and jumping, which was not observed for LiMn2O4. Charge disproportion successfully accounted for the faster Li migration mechanism observed in LiCo1/16Mn15/16O4. Our computational results demonstrate the importance of the effect of charge distribution on the ion jump.

Electrospun silica/PLLA hybrid materials for skeletal regeneration

Abstract: This paper presents the electrospinning of new silica/poly(L-lactic acid) (PLLA) based organic/inorganic sol–gel hybrid materials for skeletal defect regeneration. Here, hybrids are defined as inorganic and organic species interacting at the molecular level such that there are no distinguishable phases above the nanoscale. In previous hybrids, calcium has not been successfully incorporated into the silica network, limiting bioactivity. Here, an alkoxide source of calcium (calcium methoxyethoxide (CME)) was successfully used with a modified dual syringe reactive electrospinning (DSRS) setup to produce a calcium and silica containing PLLA sol–gel hybrid fibermat. Fibermats with continuous and homogeneous fibers were successfully produced that showed controlled and tailorable release of soluble silica in aqueous media. The CME-derived PLLA hybrid was observed to be hydrophilic and showed indication of bone-like apatite formation within 12 h of soaking in simulated body fluid (SBF). After soaking in SBF, the entire fiber surface was coated by a homogeneous thickness of apatite that had a plate-like crystal structure. The reversal of PLLA's hydrophobicity has tremendous implications on the biological properties of the material. All the electrospun materials were easy to handle and could be easily shaped into complex shapes. The tensile strength of the hybrid fibermats was found to be enhanced by the addition of silica, where a twofold increase in the tensile strength of 20 wt% silica containing PLLA fibermats compared to that of PLLA fibermats was observed.

Balancing utility and deal probability for auction-based negotiations in highly nonlinear utility spaces

Abstract: Negotiation scenarios involving nonlinear utility functions are specially challenging, because traditional negotiation mechanisms cannot be applied. Even mechanisms designed and proven useful for nonlinear utility spaces may fail if the utility space is highly nonlinear. For example, although both contract sampling and constraint sampling have been successfully used in auction based negotiations with constraint-based utility spaces, they tend to fail in highly nonlinear utility scenarios. In this paper, we will show that the performance of these approaches decrease drastically in highly nonlinear utility scenarios, and propose a mechanism which balances utility and deal probability for the bidding and deal identification processes. The experiments show that the proposed mechanisms yield better results than the previous approaches in highly nonlinear negotiation scenarios.