2008 NOV 3 - (VerticalNews.com) -- According to a study from the United States, "We apply a four-term polynomial-interpolation extension of the van der Pauw Hall measurement technique to a 330 nm Mg-Pd bilayer during both absorption and desorption of hydrogen at room temperature."

  "We show that standard versions of the van der Pauw DC Hall measurement technique produce an error of over 100% due to a drifting offset signal and can lead to unphysical interpretations of the physical processes occurring in this film. The four-term technique effectively removes this source of error, even when the offset signal is drifting by an amount larger than the Hall signal in the time interval between successive measurements," wrote D.W. Koon and colleagues, St. Lawrence University ...read more

  2008 SEP 1 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "This paper presents a lateral resolution improvement for TIRF (total internal reflection fluorescence) microscopy that employs a combination of standing evanescent light and a fluorescence distribution retrieval algorithm with successive approximation. In this method, variations in fluorescence images are detected by shifting the standing evanescent light illumination," scientists writing in the journal Measurement Science & Technology report ...read more

  2008 JUN 23 - (VerticalNews.com) -- "The quantity and size of the metallic debris falling off machine components due to fatigue, corrosion and pitting provide valuable information about the machine structural integrity. For this reason, in-line oil debris sensors have been widely adopted for on-line fault detection," scientists writing in the journal Measurement Science & Technology report.

  "However, the effectiveness of such sensors relies on how the acquired data are processed. The existing method for identifying debris or particle signatures is threshold based. Specifying a proper threshold is application dependent and knowledge demanding. Even if a 'proper' threshold can be determined, it is useful only when the signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) is sufficiently high. However, the signal is often contaminated by noise, making the threshold irrelevant. As such, we propose a fractional calculus technique consisting of two detectors to enhance the detection process. The first detector is used to extract the 'particle-like' waveform. Nevertheless, if the signal is weak, the signature obtained by this detector cannot be definitely classified as a true particle signature. The second detector is hence used to confirm or dismiss the signature authenticity depending on whether it can locate the three inflection points - a key feature of a particle signature. This technique does not require any threshold and therefore can avoid the difficulties present in the existing method. Both simulated and experimental results have shown that the proposed technique is robust in a noisy environment and can effectively detect small particles," wrote H. Hong and colleagues, University of Ottawa ...read more