At the National Synchrotron Radiation Research Center (NSRRC), which operates a 1.5 GeV storage ring, a dedicated small-angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) beamline has been installed with an in-achromat superconducting wiggler insertion device of peak magnetic field 3.1 T. The vertical beam divergence from the X-ray source is reduced significantly by a collimating mirror. Subsequently the beam is selectively monochromated by a double Si(111) crystal monochromator with high energy resolution (DeltaE/E approximately 2 x 10(-4)) in the energy range 5-23 keV, or by a double Mo/B4C multilayer monochromator for 10-30 times higher flux ( approximately 10(11) photons s(-1)) in the 6-15 keV range. These two monochromators are incorporated into one rotating cradle for fast exchange. The monochromated beam is focused by a toroidal mirror with 1:1 focusing for a small beam divergence and a beam size of approximately 0.9 mm x 0.3 mm (horizontal x vertical) at the focus point located 26.5 m from the radiation source. A plane mirror installed after the toroidal mirror is selectively used to deflect the beam downwards for grazing-incidence SAXS (GISAXS) from liquid surfaces. Two online beam-position monitors separated by 8 m provide an efficient feedback control for an overall beam-position stability in the 10 microm range. The beam features measured, including the flux density, energy resolution, size and divergence, are consistent with those calculated using the ray-tracing program SHADOW. With the deflectable beam of relatively high energy resolution and high flux, the new beamline meets the requirements for a wide range of SAXS applications, including anomalous SAXS for multiphase nanoparticles (e.g. semiconductor core-shell quantum dots) and GISAXS from liquid surfaces.

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In this article, we proposed a novel teleconferencing system that combines a facial muscle model and the techniques of face detection and facial feature extraction to synthesize a sequence of life-like face animation. The proposed system can animate realistic 3D face images in a low-bandwidth environment to support virtual videoconferencing. Based on the technique of feature extraction, a face detection algorithm for the virtual conferencing system is proposed in this article. In the proposed face detection algorithm, the YCbCr skin color model is used to detect the possible face area of the image; the feature points of the face is determined by using the symmetry property of the face and the gray level characteristics of the eyes and the mouth. According to the positions of the feature points on a facial image, we can compute the transformation values of the feature points. These values will then be sent via a network from the sender's side to the receiver's side frame by frame. We can synthesize the realistic facial animations on the receiver's side based on these. Experimental results show that the proposed system can achieve a practical animated face-to-face virtual conference with good facial expressions and a low-bandwidth requirement.

The Taiwan photon source (TPS) is a 3 GeV synchrotron light source now in routine operation at the NSRRC. At the beginning of beam commissioning, significant photon flux dips could be observed at injection due to a blow-up of the beam size. To eliminate this transient effect, all four kickers were rematched. The leakage field was shielded and the induced current loops at vacuum chambers in the injection area were also eliminated. These efforts reduced the horizontal betatron oscillations and orbit distortions to around one-tenth. In order to decrease the recovery time of photon dips during injection, the operational chromaticity was reduced to improve incoherent effects. After all those improvements, the photon flux dips during injection dropped to 30 % and the recovery time to less than 1 msec.

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