Mankind is quickly approaching an age where fossil fuels, particularly coal, and petroleum and natural gas to some extent, have reached a point where they are under economic and policy pressures for meeting societal needs. Alternative energetic technologies are continually being developed and deployed, yet fossil fuels still supply more than 80% of the global energy demand. This need for finding alternative energetic sources lies amongst three key drivers: resource economics, geo-political conditions, and climate change. Development of promising alternative energy sources must be accelerated and the most promising options fully commercialized. Agricultural systems are uniquely positioned to supplement the present hydrocarbon economy by providing food, fuel and fiber to satisfy a growing global population.

All plastics have relatively low elastic moduli and strength, which can be about 100 and 5 times lower, respectively, than those for metals. In general, these properties are lower for thermoplastics than for thermoset resins. While the desired stiffness and strength of a part can be achieved by using mechanical design stiffening principles, such as by using ribs, materials with inherently higher stiffness and strength can expand the design envelope. One successful strategy is to use high-stiffness and high-strength fibers to reinforce plastics. Different types of reinforcing materials and the theoretical background for fiber reinforcement have been discussed in Chapter 8. Fiber fillers are also used to improve thermal stability, reduce shrinkage, and to enhance electromagnetic characteristics.

While plastics have many desirable properties, such as the ease with which they can be used to make complex parts, their relatively low stiffness and strength can limit their structural applications. However, this limitation can be overcome by forming composites in which the plastic matrix acts as a glue that holds stiffer and stronger fibers together. This chapter discusses several stiffening mechanisms, including the use of aligned fibers in advanced composites, and small chopped fibers, flakes, and particulates in injection moldable compounds. Characteristics of the commonly used fibers, flakes, and particulates are also described.

This chapter describes the chemical structure and properties of many industrially important thermoplastics used in a wide variety of applications. The word plastic comes from roots that refer to “of molding,” “to mold,” and “form.” It can refer to materials that can be molded, such as clay, which can be deformed continuously and permanently without rupture. In engineering, theword plastic connotes a host of organic synthetic or processed materials – mostly thermoplastic or thermosetting polymers that can be molded, cast, extruded, or drawn; or laminated into parts; or formed into films or fibers.

A fiber-type laser induced bubble makes an important role on laser lithotripsy. This treatment can be affected by the circumference condition such as ureter tissue and a stone. In this study, we observed behavior of the bubble in a narrow space between two walls with different deformability. According to the present experimental results, a bubble symmetrically divides into two parts and collapses in the case of two walls with same hardness. The soft wall is deformed with bubble growth and collapse. In the case of walls with different hardness materials, the bubble which shows characteristic behavior asymmetrically divides, moves and collapses even if the bubble is formed at the center of two walls. The bubble moves toward wall direction during multiple collapses. The larger bubble collapse on the hard wall, that is, the impact is predicted to be larger on the rigid wall. It is found that bubble collapse pattern is greatly affected even by slight wall deformation.

The radiofrequency (RF) power in the 0.3∼30 MHz band is often used for coagulation, ablation, and modification of tissues in medicine while in the lower frequency band both shock waves and cavitation may occur, which has found applications in lithotripsy for stone fragmentation and water purification. In this study, we demonstrate that single oscillating bubble is produced at the electrode tip in cell culture medium, which avoids the random inception of cavitation in liquid. With high-speed image recordings and Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) spectrum analysis, the frequency of the bubble oscillations is found to be dependent on the driven radio frequency, electrode diameter and the supplied voltage. With microelectrodes that are incorporated into flexible fibers (2-6 Fr), sustained oscillation is generated in the frequency range of 5.7-17 kHz. The oscillation frequency decreases with the radio frequency and electrode diameter, while an optimum voltage exists to reach maximum frequency of bubble oscillation. The RF power supply also offers flexibility to control the bubble dynamics with different voltage waveforms, duty cycles and pulse repetition rate.

In this monograph, production of biopolymers, properties of biopolymers, preparation of macro-, micro- and nano-materials using biopolymers, characterization of biomaterials and application of biomaterials are described. Various form of biomaterials such as powder, solution, scaffolds, gel, films, beads, fibers, microcapsules, nano-particles, etc have been used in many sectors such as food production, biotechnology, waste water treatment, electronic applications, biomedical and nano-medical technologies, etc. The cumulative information given in this monograph is hoped to serve researchers, who are interested in biomedicine, nanomedicine, biopolymers and various fields of biotechnology. Moreover it is hoped that these information will serve a great scope of further research in these fields for better applications and will be useful to companies interested in production and applications of biopolymers.

Bacteriophages T2, T4 and T6 were the first members of what has come to be described as the T-even family of viruses, more properly the Myoviridae (Kutter et al., 1995; Repoila et al., 1994). Structurally these viruses have a prolate icosahedral capsid (the head) attached at one vertex to a long protein infection promoting structure (the tail) (Figure 2-1). At the far end of the tail are one or more receptor binding proteins (the tail fibers), also described as adhesins. Bacteriophage T4 has two sets of tail fibers, long tail fibers that are the initial receptor binding proteins and short tail fibers that bind subsequently and trigger the infection process including: an opening of the base of the tail, contraction of the outer sheath of the tail and penetration of the inner tube of the tail through the outer membrane and cell wall providing a path for genome entry into the cell (Kostyuchenko et al., 2005).

While much of our work was focused on altering tail fiber proteins to enhance existing properties or add novel ones, we also addressed the issue of large scale production of assembled tail fibers. Several methods for the purification of the long tail fiber and its component half fibers in phage infected lysates have been reported previously (Cerritelli et al., 1996; Earnshaw et al., 1979; Imada and Tsugita, 1970; Imada and Tsugita, 1972; Selivanov et al., 1987; Ward and Wood, 1968; Ward et al., 1970). However, each of these methods for LTF purification relied on serial column based chromatographic steps that can be complex, expensive and relatively inefficient. As our area of interest revolved around the manipulation of LTF, and since production of large quantities of LTF was essential to the further study of LTF structure and its use as a nanomaterial, we developed a non-chromatographic purification scheme that can be used for the rapid, efficient and economical purification of natively folded LTFs.

We and others working in the Goldberg lab have succeeded in identifying or introducing a number of changes into tail fiber proteins. These changes include deletions and insertions, and epitopes or other peptides as attachment sites for other molecules. For the following sections all bacteria and phage strains are listed in Appendix F, growth media and other buffers are described in Appendix G and general stock preparation and mutant generation methods are described in Appendix H.

As shown in the results presented here, some of our hypotheses concerning the ability to modify particle segments of the P37 segment of the tail fiber were correct. We found or constructed tail fibers of altered length and inserted several peptide segments that added novel functionality. Clearly particular functional domains of gp 37 can be modified without affecting neighboring domains. Work by other researchers in the Goldberg lab demonstrated other binding element insertions. However, moving beyond simple attachment sites has proven more problematic. Functional attachment of nanoparticles, as described above, proved more difficult. In work not shown here, we did attempt to create hybrid and chimeric hybrid assembly proteins as described in Section 2.2. While we had some limited results on hybrid construction, no evidence for chimeric hybrid formation was obtained.

IR Sensor Based Fiber Communication System For Sensors/Control Using Advanced TDM & New Source Coding Technique To Efficiently Utilize Time & Amplitude Scale To Send Coded Messages For Sensor Networks. The Application Circuit Used Is Based On Optical Transmission & Can Be Operated With High Speed Fiber Connection or Properly Aligned IR Wireless Link.

A novel compensation scheme is proposed to reduce the fiber nonlinearity effect for coherent optical orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (CO-OFDM) system. We show that self-phase modulation (SPM) is mitigated with a simple intensity-dependent phase-modulation. A phase modulator is used to modulate the phase of the local oscillator at the coherent receiver. Thus, the nonlinear phase noise induced by amplitude fluctuation and SPM is partially cancelled by coherent detection algorithm. The suggested compensation method is evaluated using numerical simulations and validated in a 10 Gbit/s 4-QAM CO-OFDM system.

Composite soils have been widely used in civil engineering applications, especially in slopes, embankment dam and landfills. This paper aims to investigate effect of fiber inclusion on compaction characteristic of composite soil (i.e. clay composite). A series of laboratory tests carried out to evaluate fiber effect on optimum water content and maximum dry unit weight of composite soils. Clay was selected as soil part of the composite and glass fiber was used as reinforcement. The fiber parameters differed from one test to another, as fiber length varied from 15 mm to 25mm and fiber content were selected as 0.25% and 0.75%. For each test, compaction curved derived and the results were compared. The results proved that inclusion of fiber affected compaction behaviour of samples so that increasing in fiber content and length caused increasing in Optimum Moisture Content (OMC) and slightly decreased maximum dry unit weight.

In this paper generation of 40GHz and 60GHz millimeter wave carriers using 20 GHz and 30Ghz local oscillators via optical phase modulator is presented. By exploiting the 1 out of phase nature of first order harmonics of phase modulator without suppressing the carrier we have successfully double the beating frequency and also up convert 2.5Gb/s and 622Mb/s data in mm wave band over these carriers through LINbO 3 MZM modulator. Error free transmission up to 50km is successfully obtained. Millimeter wave generation and data up conversion is analyzed bout in electrical and optical domain.BER for different length of fibers and immunity of system against dispersion is also simulated.

We propose a slow light structure Mach-Zehnder (M-Z) fiber interferometer. The sensitivity of the interferometer is enhanced greatly by structure dispersion of the slow light structure. The results show that the sensitivity enhancement factor varies with the coupling coefficient, and reaches its maximum at critical coupling conditions.

Layer Steel Fiber Reinforced Rubber Concrete is a new type of pavement material. Base on optimized concrete mix design, the flexural tensile performance of Layer Steel Fiber Reinforced rubber concrete was studied. Detailed discussion was performed in the Flexural tensile properties compared with ordinary concrete, rubber concrete, layer steel fiber reinforced concrete. The enhanced toughness of pavement structure was analyzed using the experimental constitutive curve of this new pavement material. The results can be helpful for further study and practical application.

The operating systems method to semaphores is defined not only by the improvement of fiber-optic cables, but also by the confirmed need for fiber-optic cables. Given the current status of optimal theory, statisticians urgently desire the improvement of cache coherence. We motivate a novel application for the simulation of cache coherence, which we call Mime.

Electret filter materials have a good supplying foreground with the advantages of high efficiency, low resistance, long working time, high dust holding capacity, saving energy and sterilization. The performances of Polypropylene (nonwoven, by needling) fabrics with different densities which are charged, including clean and washed, are tested under the different wind speed and comparison with other materials is made. It has high efficiency to all particles, especially to fine particles. Because of the low resistance it can cut down the consumption of energy. After being washed filtration efficiency to small particles drops greatly. It also analyses its dust holding capacity. Based on these analyses, the references for applications are provided.

Acoustic emission is an important physical phenomenon when materials are deformed and fractured due to inner distortion or outer loading. It is also a direct parameter to show the mechanical property of rocks. Detecting or monitoring acoustic emission is significant in rock material failure theory and engineering. Because electromagnetism ultrasonic detection implements have some disadvantages of poor interference immunity, low sensitivity and inferior reliability, acoustic emission detection based on fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensor is put forward to monitoring rocks. The strain and ultrasonic detection principles of FBG sensors are analyzed, at the same time, experimental system based on FBG ultrasonic sensor detection is also set up to simulate ultrasonic detection. The testing results of 500kHz acoustic shock signal and response are shown. A numerical simulation code RFPA is used to study rock acoustic emission. Mud and sand materials from river are used to process rock specimen. Rock specimen failure experiments are fulfilled via numerical control press device, which generate acoustic emission during the process of rock deformation and failure. Rock acoustic emission experimental signals' energy and counts are detected by FBG ultrasonic sensor detection system, which elementally proves FBG sensor can detect acoustic emission. Simulation and experiments of rock specimen give some useful results. All these show that FBG ultrasonic sensor can monitor rock distortion and failure effectively and is a novel technology and method in rock engineering.