An eye-tracking experiment investigated whether incremental interpretation applies to interclausal relationships. According to Millis and Just's (1994) delayed-integration hypothesis, interclausal relationships are not computed until the end of the second clause, because the processor needs to have two full propositions before integration can occur. We investigated the processing of causal and diagnostic sentences (Sweetser, 1990; Tversky & Kahneman, 1982) that contained the connective because. Previous research (Traxler, Sanford, Aked, & Moxey, 1997) has demonstrated that readers have greater difficulty processing diagnostic sentences than causal sentences. Our results indicated that difficulty processing diagnostic sentences occurred well before the end of the second clause. Thus comprehenders appear to compute interclausal relationships incrementally.

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In this work, we have studied cycle-to-cycle variation in a spark-ignited engine using large-eddy simulation in conjunction with the G-equation combustion model. A single cylinder of a four-cylinder port-fueled spark-ignited engine was simulated. A total of 49 consecutive full cycles were computed. The operating condition studied in this work is stoichiometric and stable and represents a load of 16 bar brake mean effective pressure and an engine speed of 2500 r/min. The computational fluid dynamics simulation shows good agreement in terms of in-cylinder pressure prediction with respect to the experiments and is also able to capture the range of cycle-to-cycle variation observed in experiments. Furthermore, neither the simulation nor the experiments show any distinguishable pattern in the sequence of high and low cycles. We numerically decoupled the effects of variations in equivalence ratio fields and velocity fields to isolate the effects of differences in the velocity field and differences in the equivalence ratio field on flame development and propagation. Based on this study, we inferred that for this engine, under the operating conditions studied, the differences in burn rates can be attributed to the differences in the velocity flow-field in the region around the spark gap during ignition. We then performed an analysis to identify the correlation between peak cylinder pressure and flame topologies over all the simulated cycles. We found that high cycles (higher peak cylinder pressure values) are strongly correlated to flatter flame volume shapes (flattened in the piston-to-head direction) and volumes that are more symmetric about the ignition axis. In addition, these kinds of flame volumes were found to correlate well with lower values of prior-to-ignition velocity going from the intake to the exhaust side (mean flow caused by tumble) at the spark and also higher values of prior-to-ignition velocity in the piston-to-head direction.

Polyaniline (PANI)-ZnO nanocomposite thin film has been successfully fabricated on glass substrates by using vacuum deposition technique. The as-grown PANI-ZnO nanocomposite thin films have been characterized using X-ray diffraction, Scanning Electron Microscopy, Atomic Force Microscopy, UV-visible spectrophotometer and Fourier Transform Infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy, respectively. X-ray diffraction of as-grown film shows the reflection of ZnO nanoparticles along with a broad peak of PANI. The surface morphology of nanocomposite films has been investigated using scanning electron microscopy and atomic force microscopy. The hypsochromic shift of the UV absorption band corresponding to pi-pi* transition in polymeric chain of PANI and a band at 504 cm(-1) due to ZnO nanoparticles has been observed in the FTIR spectra. The hydrogen bonding between the imine group of PANI and ZnO nanoparticle has been confirmed from the presence of the absorbance band at 1151 cm(-1) in the FTIR spectra of the nanocomposite thin films.

We present a new method for particle interactions in polymer models of DNA. The DNA is represented by a bead-rod polymer model and is fully-coupled to the fluid. The main objective in this work is to implement short-range forces to properly model polymer-polymer and polymer-surface interactions, specifically, rod-rod and rod-surface uncrossing. Our new method is based on a rigid constraint algorithm whereby rods elastically bounce off one another to prevent crossing, similar to our previous algorithm used to model polymer-surface interactions. We compare this model to a classical (smooth) potential which acts as a repulsive force between rods, and rods and surfaces.