Fabrication of Planar Heating Chuck Using Nichrome Thin Film as Heating Element for PECVD Equipment

Improving semiconductor equipment and components is an important goal of semiconductor manufacture. Especially during the deposition process, the temperature of the wafer must be precisely controlled to form a uniform thin film. In the conventional plasma-enhanced chemical vapor deposition (PECVD) chuck, heating rate, and temperature uniformity are limited by the spiral pattern and volume of the heating element. To overcome the structural limitation of the heating element of conventional chuck, we tried to develop the planar heating chuck (PHC), a 6-inch PECVD chuck with a planar heating element based on NiCr thin film that would be a good candidate for rapidly and uniformly heating. The time for the temperature elevation from room temperature to 330 °C was 398 s. In a performance evaluation, the fabricated PHC successfully completed a SiO2 PECVD process.

Individuals With Pre-arthritic Hip Pain Walk With Hip Motion Alterations Common in Individuals With Hip OA

Background: Individuals with hip osteoarthritis (OA) commonly walk with less hip extension compared to individuals without hip OA. This alteration is often attributed to walking speed, structural limitation, and/or hip pain. It is unclear if individuals who are at increased risk for future OA (i.e., individuals with pre-arthritic hip disease [PAHD]) also walk with decreased hip extension.Objectives: (1) Determine if individuals with PAHD exhibit less hip extension compared to individuals without hip pain during walking, and (2) investigate potential reasons for these motion alterations.Methods: Adolescent and adult individuals with PAHD and healthy controls without hip pain were recruited for the study. Kinematic data were collected while walking on a treadmill at three walking speeds: preferred, fast (25% faster than preferred), and prescribed (1.25 m/s). Peak hip extension, peak hip flexion, and hip excursion were calculated for each speed. Linear regression analyses were used to examine the effects of group, sex, side, and their interactions.Results: Individuals with PAHD had 2.9° less peak hip extension compared to individuals in the Control group (p = 0.014) when walking at their preferred speed. At the prescribed speed, the PAHD group walked with 2.7° less hip extension than the Control group (p = 0.022). Given the persistence of the finding despite walking at the same speed, differences in preferred speed are unlikely the reason for the reduced hip extension. At the fast speed, both groups increased their hip extension, hip flexion, and hip excursion by similar amounts. Hip extension was less in the PAHD group compared to the Control group (p = 0.008) with no significant group-by-task interaction (p = 0.206). Within the PAHD group, hip angles and excursions were similar between individuals reporting pain and individuals reporting no pain.Conclusions: The results of this study indicate that kinematic alterations common in individuals with hip OA exist early in the continuum of hip disease and are present in individuals with PAHD. The reduced hip extension during walking is not explained by speed, structural limitation, or current pain.

What processes are disrupted during the attentional blink? An integrative review of event-related potentials research

Reporting the second of two targets is impaired when these appear in close succession, a phenomenon known as the attentional blink (AB). Despite decades of research, what mechanisms are affected by the AB remains unclear. Specifically, two central issues remain open: Does the AB disrupt attentional processes or reflect a structural limitation in working memory encoding? Does it disrupt perceptual processing or only post-perceptual processes? We address these questions by reviewing event-related potentials (ERP) studies of the AB. The findings reveal that the core influence of the AB is by disrupting attentional engagement (indexed by N2pc). As a consequence, while early processing (indexed by P1\N1) is spared, semantic processing (indexed by N400) and working memory (WM) encoding (indexed by P3b) are compromised: minor disruptions to attentional engagement weaken but do not eliminate semantic processing, whereas they prevent encoding in WM. Thus, semantic processing can survive the blink, whereas encoding in WM does not. To accommodate these conclusions, we suggest a Disrupted Engagement and Perception (DEaP) account of the attentional blink.

Modal and Harmonic Analysis of Bio-Mimic Corrugated Dragonfly Aerofoil

In this present work, free vibration analysis is carried out on the 2-dimensional bio-mimetic corrugated ‘Pantala flavescens’ dragonfly forewing. The numerical modeling based on Finite Element Method (FEM) is developed to predict structural limitation of the dragonfly wings Dragonfly wings bend and twist over the course of flight stroke, causing deformation by a combination of elastic and inertial forces. We found that the wing deformation is smaller during the downstroke and it is revealed that the structural maximum beat frequency of a corrugated dragonfly wing is 38.34 Hz during hovering flight. The modal and harmonic analysis is performed using ANSYS 15 Mechanical APDL to extract the wing’s natural frequency and mode shape of corrugated wing which is significant in design, analysis and manufacturing of analogous MAVs structure

Populism, Democracy and South Korea

In this commentary, I raise some questions. The first is about the structural limitation of liberal democracy. The second is about the inherent weaknesses of populist democracy, the third about the future prospects of democracy in South Korea, and the last one about possible reforms that can improve the efficiency of governance in liberal democracy and populist democracy.

Creep prediction with temperature effect and experimental verification of rubber suspension components used in rail vehicles

Rubber anti-vibration components are widely used in rail vehicles as either a primary or a secondary suspension system with long-term service. An essential requirement is to limit the deflections of suspension components not to exceed their structural limitation due to creep in order to avoid early failure over its service life. Temperature is the main environmental factor to account for creep. Traditional hyperelastic approach can only be used for mechanical loading analysis without reference to time. In this article, the primary creep of rubber structures is obtained by introducing time as an additional variable into hyperelastic models. A deviation function from the primary creep due to temperature change is established and also integrated into the proposed model so that the real creep values can be obtained at specified time. The proposed approach has been validated experimentally using a Vee mount, a Metacone component and a Circular mount. It has been shown that real creep value due to temperature change can be obtained from this approach. It is also revealed that the creep due to temperature change is mainly attributed to alternation of the rubber elastic parameters. It is suggested that this approach can be used in a design stage for similar polymer applications.

Shifting the Matrix from Legal Passivity to a New Domestic Legal Order: Towards the Justiciability of Economic, Social and Cultural Rights in Cameroon

Despite the fact that economic, social and cultural rights (ESCR) have been categorised as ‘second-generation rights’, the evolving jurisprudence of international bodies indicate that these are legally recognised rights worthy of protection, promotion and enforcement. Subjecting the realisation of these rights to the availability of resources has become a structural limitation that is being invoked by many African states to justify why ESCR have not earned the recognition, protection, promotion and enforceability they deserve in their domestic legal systems. As Cameroon's attitude towards ESCR puts her in material breach of her obligations arising from the ICESCR and the African Charter on Human and Peoples’ Rights, it is argued that achieving recognition, promotion and protection of ESCR in Cameroon requires justiciability of ESCR as a new paradigm: by the very nature of justiciability, legislative and institutional reforms will have to be implemented.

Evolutionary Adaptation of Korean Divination to Religious Markets

Although divination is admittedly the oldest religious tradition constructed in human societies, there are few sociological researches on divination. This article explains different features of three divination communities in the Seoul Metropolitan Area (SMA) in contemporary Korea and then analyses their theoretical significance and implication in terms of religious market theory. Different patterns of competition that each divination community faces in a religiously pluralistic market are influenced by a religio-economic rationality and a socio-structural limitation specific to each niche market. However, a new relationship between local diviners and the municipal government is made with the construction of a “divination valley”: a divination community to encourage religious competition and innovation as well as to attract more city tourists as a local cultural property. Based on the evolution of divination communities, the paper applies the notion of “elective affinity” to the relationship between religious diversity and a polytheistic rationality in the context of contemporary Korean religious market.

Selective inhibition of a multicomponent response can be achieved without cost

Behavioral flexibility frequently requires the ability to modify an on-going action. In some situations, optimal performance requires modifying some components of an on-going action without interrupting other components of that action. This form of control has been studied with the selective stop-signal task, in which participants are instructed to abort only one movement of a multicomponent response. Previous studies have shown a transient disruption of the nonaborted component, suggesting limitations in our ability to use selective inhibition. This cost has been attributed to a structural limitation associated with the recruitment of a cortico-basal ganglia pathway that allows for the rapid inhibition of action but operates in a relatively generic manner. Using a model-based approach, we demonstrate that, with a modest amount of training and highly compatible stimulus-response mappings, people can perform a selective-stop task without any cost on the nonaborted component. Prior reports of behavioral costs in selective-stop tasks reflect, at least in part, a sampling bias in the method commonly used to estimate such costs. These results suggest that inhibition can be selectively controlled and present a challenge for models of inhibitory control that posit the operation of generic processes.