Abstract: An optical waveguide interferometer that includes a first optical section, a second optical section, and a set of optical waveguides configured to connect the first and second optical sections, such that light propagating between the first optical section and the second optical section passes through each optical waveguide in the set, wherein the set of optical waveguides includes a first optical waveguide having a first length and a first width and a second optical waveguide having a second length and a second width, wherein the second length is greater than the first length, and the second width is greater than the first width.

Abstract: An optical data coding method includes at least steps of selecting a modulation scheme comprising an X-polarization constellation format having first and second amplitude rings with circular grids corresponding to predetermined phase angles and a Y-polarization constellation format having the first and second amplitude rings with the circular grids corresponding to the predetermined phase angles, arranging a first part of the symbol on a first circular grid of the first amplitude ring on the X-polarization constellation format, and arranging a second part of the symbol on a second circular grid of the second amplitude ring on the Y-polarization constellation format.

Abstract: Provide is a relief valve in which the flexibility of an attaching position is higher than a conventional relief valve. In the relief valve of the present invention, a discharge hole for discharging a fluid is arranged on a side surface of a cylindrical portion which protrudes from an end surface of a head portion in a bolt-type valve body. A direction change member which changes a direction in which the discharge hole is open to an arbitrary direction is provided. In this way, the relief valve is attached to a fluid device, and then with the direction change member, it is possible to direct the fluid discharge direction to a desired direction, and accordingly, the flexibility of the attaching position of the relief valve is enhanced as compared with the conventional relief valve.

Abstract: A multi-layer paint film satisfies paint film performance, such as water resistance, impact resistance and the like, required of an automobile paint film and which has excellent paint film appearance is obtained. The method comprises coating an aqueous first base paint (A) over an electrodeposited cured paint film to form a first base paint film, and then coating an aqueous second base paint (B) over the first base paint film without carrying out preliminary drying by heating after forming the first base paint film to form a second base paint film, preliminary drying by heating is carried out after forming the second base paint film, coating a single-liquid type clear paint (C) over the second base paint film to form a clear coat paint film. These three paint film layers are heated and cured at the same time.

Abstract: A method decodes an optical signal transmitted over an optical channel from a transmitter to a receiver. The receiver receives the transmitted optical signal to produce a digital signal which is filtered in the frequency domain for compensating static effects and/or dynamic effects. The filtering is performed in the frequency domain, while the frequency coefficients of the filter are updated in the time domain by updating at least some of time coefficients of the filter and transforming the time coefficients into the frequency domain.

Abstract: A new primer for electroless plating for use in the pretreatment process for electroless plating, which is environmentally friendly, can be easily treated in fewer process steps, and can provide sufficient adhesion to the substrate. A photocurable primer for forming a metal plating film on a base material through an electroless plating process, having (a) a hyperbranched polymer having an ammonium group at a molecular terminal and a weight average molecular weight of 1,000 to 5,000,000, (b) metal fine particles, (c) a polymerizable compound having a (meth)acryloyl group, and (d) a photopolymerization initiator.

Abstract: A method receives the symbol transmitted over a channel, selects, from a constellation of codewords, a first codeword neighboring the received symbol and a set of second codewords neighboring the first codeword, and determines a relative likelihood of each second codeword being the transmitted symbol with respect to a likelihood of the first codeword being the transmitted symbol. Next, the method determines an approximation of a log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of each data bit in the received symbol as a log of a ratio of a sum of the relative likelihoods of at least some of the second codewords having the same value of the data bit to a sum of the relative likelihoods of at least some of the second codewords having different value of the data bit and decodes the received symbol using the LLR of each data bit.

Abstract: A new primer for electroless plating for use in a pretreatment process of electroless plating, is environmentally friendly, can be treated in fewer process steps, and can facilitate formation of fine-pitch wiring with a width of a few ?m by photolithography. A photosensitive primer for forming a metal plating film on a base material through an electroless plating process has (a) a hyperbranched polymer having an ammonium group at a molecular terminal and a weight-average molecular weight of 1,000 to 5,000,000, (b) metal fine particles, (c) a polymerizable compound having three or more (meth)acryloyl groups in a molecule, and (d) a photopolymerization initiator.

Abstract: There is provided a novel, environmentally friendly primer for use in the pretreatment steps in electroless plating, which can be easily used in fewer steps with a lower cost. A primer for forming a metallic plating film on a substrate by electroless plating, the primer including: a hyperbranched polymer having an ammonium group at a molecular terminal and a weight-average molecular weight of 500 to 5,000,000; and a metal fine particle.

Abstract: A method receives the symbol transmitted over a channel, selects, from a constellation of codewords, a first codeword neighboring the received symbol and a set of second codewords neighboring the first codeword, and determines a relative likelihood of each second codeword being the transmitted symbol with respect to a likelihood of the first codeword being the transmitted symbol. Next, the method determines an approximation of a log-likelihood ratio (LLR) of each data bit in the received symbol as a log of a ratio of a sum of the relative likelihoods of at least some of the second codewords having the same value of the data bit to a sum of the relative likelihoods of at least some of the second codewords having different value of the data bit and decodes the received symbol using the LLR of each data bit.

Abstract: A method generates constant modulus multi-dimensional modulations for coherent optical communications by first projecting points in a constellation of the code onto a Poincare sphere or its higher-dimensional hyper-sphere. By using meta-heuristic procedures, nonlinear programming and gradient search methods, constellation points in the hyper-sphere are optimized in certain criteria, such as maximizing the minimum Euclidean distance, minimizing the union bound, minimizing the bit-error rate, minimizing the required signal-to-noise ratio, maximizing the nonlinear fiber reach, maximizing the phase noise tolerance, and maximizing the mutual information. Some methods use parametric unitary space-time block codes such as Grassmannian packing, and filter impulse response as well as unitary rotation over adjacent code blocks to generate near-constant modulus waveform, not only at the symbol timing, but also over the entire time.

Abstract: A method for transmitting data over an optical super-channel partitions the data unequally into a set of data streams for transmission over the set of sub-channels of the super-channel, such that a size of a first data stream for transmission over a first sub-channel is different than a size of a second data stream of the data for transmission over a second sub-channel. The method encodes each data stream of the data with an error correction code (ECC) having different ECC rates to produce a set of encoded data streams and transmits concurrently the set of encoded data streams over the set of sub-channels of the super-channel. Accordingly, the method uses an adaptive ECC for optical super-channels, such that a first ECC rate for encoding the first data stream is different than a second ECC rate for encoding the second data stream.

Abstract: An algae culture method capable of efficiently producing an osmotic pressure adjusting substance, a production method of the substance, and an algae culture method for recovering carbon dioxide from a mixed gas containing carbon dioxide and sulfurous acid gas. The methods involve preparing a plurality of enrichment cultures each containing betaine by culturing a culture of microalgae derived from an environmental specimen under a photoautotrophic condition and under a plurality of culture conditions; making a cultivation plan in which an optimum enrichment culture suitable for a main culture is selected from the plurality of enrichment cultures; producing a main culture that contains betaine under the photoautotrophic condition and a salt concentration of 10 wt. % or more; and separating betaine. In the main culture, the algae containing betaine are cultured while the mixed gas containing sulfurous acid gas and carbon dioxide is blown to a culture solution of the algae.

Abstract: An optical manipulator includes a first section for propagating an optical signal with multiple polarization modes including a transverse electric (TE) mode and a transverse magnetic (TM) mode and a second section for propagating separately the TE mode and the TM mode of the optical signal. The optical manipulator also includes a multi-mode interference (MMI) section having a groove with a first refractive index less than a second refractive index of the MMI section. The groove extends along an entire length of the MMI section to partition the MMI section into two connected channels including a first channel and a second channel. The first section is connected to the first channel and the second section is connected to both the first and the second channels.

Abstract: To provide a coating composition, which is capable of providing a coating film on a resin part and on a steel plate part at the same time at lower temperatures than conventional coating compositions, and which is capable of providing a coating film that has excellent bending resistance. A clear coating composition, which contains a base material that contains an acrylic polyol, a crosslinking agent that is composed of an active methylene type blocked isocyanate and a melamine resin, and a curing catalyst. The mass ratio of the base material to the melamine resin is 1.5-9.0, and the mass percentage of the active methylene type blocked isocyanate in the composition is set within a specific range when the total of the mass percentage of the base material and the mass percentage of the melamine resin in the composition is taken as 100% by mass.

Abstract: The embodiments of the invention provide methods to deal with problems of cycle slips, angular skew, and residual phase noise for high-speed optical communications employing any arbitrary high-order multi-dimensional modulation formats. The embodiments use a slip process analyzer, a skew angle estimator, and a phase noise variance estimator to provide feedforward soft-decision information of a carrier phase recovery (CPE) for more accurate likelihood calculation based on a high-order hidden Markov model (HMM). The log-likelihood calculation can be done jointly in dual polarization with joint Markov state transition. Some embodiments use a kernel filter or a particle filter for log-likelihood calculation.

Abstract: Provided are a clear coating composition which is used for top coats, the composition containing a crosslinking agent and a functional group-containing (meth)acrylate polymer formed by polymerization of a monomer component that includes an aromatic ring-containing (meth)acrylate and a functional group-containing monomer. Also provided is a clear coat composition which is used for top coats, the composition containing a crosslinking agent and a functional group-containing (meth)acrylate polymer formed by polymerization of a monomer component that includes a functional group-containing monomer and a fluorine atom-containing monomer. This clear coat composition has low colorability, has a high refractive index without the use of a filler, provides excellent glossy even when a filler is used, and can be applied to a thick film.

Abstract: An optical manipulator includes a first section for propagating an optical signal with multiple polarization modes including a transverse electric (TE) mode and a transverse magnetic (TM) mode and a second section for propagating separately the TE mode and the TM mode of the optical signal. The optical manipulator also includes a multi-mode interference (MMI) section having a groove with a first refractive index less than a second refractive index of the MMI section. The groove extends along an entire length of the MMI section to partition the MMI section into two connected channels including a first channel and a second channel. The first section is connected to the first channel and the second section is connected to both the first and the second channels.

Abstract: The transmission of data from a transmitter to a receiver over an optical super-channel including a set of sub-channels of different frequencies includes partitioning the data into a set of data streams including one data stream for each sub-channel and partitioning each data stream into a set of sub-streams. Each sub-stream of each data stream is encoded with different forward error correction (FEC) codes to produce a set of encoded sub-streams for each data stream, and the set of encoded sub-streams of each data stream are superimposed with different powers to produce a set of encoded data streams. The set of encoded data streams is multiplexed to produce an optical signal transmitted over the set of sub-channels of the optical super-channel.

Abstract: The present invention discloses a process for forming a multiple layered coating film in three wet coating method, which the multiple layered coating film has excellent chipping resistance while maintaining smoothness between the coating films. The present invention provides a process for forming a multiple layered coating film comprising the steps of forming an uncured first base coating film; an uncured second base coating film and an uncured clear coating film in order on an automobile body having an electrodeposition coating film on the surface thereof, and then simultaneously heating and curing the uncured coating films to form a multiple layered coating film, wherein the multiple layered coating film comprising the first base coating film having the dry coating film thickness of 25 ?m, the second base coating film having the dry coating film thickness of 10 ?m and the clear coating film having the dry coating film thickness of 30 ?m has an elongation at 20° C.