The Wearable Motherboard™: The first generation of adaptive and responsive textile structures (ARTS) for medical applications

Virtual reality (VR) has been making inroads into medicine in a broad spectrum of applications, including medical education, surgical training, telemedicine, surgery and the treatment of phobias and eating disorders. The extensive and innovative applications of VR in medicine, made possible by the rapid advancements in information technology, have been driven by the need to reduce the cost of healthcare while enhancing the quality of life for human beings.In this paper, we discuss the design, development and realisation of an innovative technology known as the Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard (GTWM), or the Smart Shirt. The principal advantage of GTWM is that it provides, for the first time, a very systematic way of monitoring the vital signs of humans in an unobtrusive manner. The flexible databus integrated into the structure transmits the information to monitoring devices such as an EKG machine, a temperature recorder, a voice recorder, etc. GTWM is lightweight and can be worn easily by anyone, from infants to senior citizens. We present the universal characteristics of the interface pioneered by the Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard and explore the potential applications of the technology in areas ranging from combat to geriatric care. The GTWM is the realisation of a personal information processing system that gives new meaning to the termubiquitous computing. Just as the spreadsheet pioneered the field of information processing that brought computing to the masses, it is anticipated that the Georgia Tech Wearable Motherboard will bring personalised and affordable healthcare monitoring to the population at large.     

Distributivity in Łℵ0 and Other Sentential Logics

Certain distributivity results for ukasiewicz's infinite-valued logic ₀ are proved axiomatically (for the first time) with the help of the automated reasoning program OTTER. In addition, nondistributivity results are established for a wide variety of positive substructural logics by the use of logical matrices discovered with the automated model-finding programs MACE and MAGIC.     

Deterministic polynomial-time quantum algorithms for Simon’s problem

D. R. Simon stated a problem, so-called Simons problem, whose computational complexity is in the class BQP but not in BPP, where is the function or oracle given in the problem. This result indicates that BPP may be strictly included in its quantum counterpart, BQP. Later, G. Brassard and P. Høyer showed that Simons problem and its extended version can be solved by a deterministic polynomial time quantum algorithm. That is, these problems are in the class EQP. In this paper, we show that Simons problem and its extended version can be deterministically solved in a simpler and more concrete way than that proposed by G. Brassard and P. Høyer.     

The essence of eta-expansion in partial evaluation

Selective eta-expansion is a powerful binding-time improvement,i.e., a source-program modification that makes a partial evaluator yield better results. But like most binding-time improvements, the exact problem it solves and the reason why have not been formalized and are only understood by few.In this paper, we describe the problem and the effect of eta-redexes in terms of monovariant binding-time propagation: eta-redexes preserve the static data flow of a source program by interfacingstatic higher-order values in dynamic contexts anddynamic higher-order values in static contexts. They contribute to twodistinct binding-time improvements.We present two extensions of Gomard's monovariant binding-time analysis for the pure -calculus. Our extensions annotateand eta-expand -terms. The first one eta-expands static higher-order values in dynamic contexts. The second also eta-expands dynamic higher-order values in static contexts.As a significant application, we show that our first binding-time analysis suffices to reformulate the traditional formulation of a CPS transformation into a modern one-pass CPS transformer. This binding-time improvement is known, but it is still left unexplained in contemporary literature,e.g., about cps-based partial evaluation.We also outline the counterpart of eta-expansion for partially static data structures.     

The way stylized language means: Pattern matching in the child ballads

This paper suggests ways in which the pattern-matching capability of the computer can be used to further our understanding of stylized ballad language. The study is based upon a computer-aided analysis of the entire 595,000- word corpus of Francis James Child'sThe English and Scottish Popular Ballads (1882–1892), a collection of 305 textual traditions, most of which are represented by a variety of texts. The paper focuses on the Mary Hamilton tradition as a means of discussing the function of phatic language in the ballad genre and the significance of textual variation.Cathy Lynn Preston is a Research Associate, Computer Research in the Humanities, at the University of Colorado, Boulder. She is interested in folklore, particularly oral narrative; popular literature of the 18th- and 19th-century, particularly broadside and chapbook; the works of John Gay, Jonathan Swift, Thomas Hardy; Middle English romance and lyric. Her major publications areA KWIC Concordance to Jonathan Swift's A Tale of a Tub, The Battle of the Books, and A Discourse Concerning the Mechanical Operation of the Spirit, A Fragment, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1984) (co-authored with Harold D. Kelling), andA KWIC Concordance to Thomas Hardy's Tess of the d'Urbervilles, (New York: Garland Publishing, 1989).     

A Mathematical Analysis of Pānini’s <Emphasis Type="Italic">Śivasūtras</Emphasis>

In Pninis grammar of Sanskrit one finds the ivastras, a table which defines the natural classes of phonological segments in Sanskrit by intervals. We present a formal argument which shows that, using his representation method, Pninis way of ordering the phonological segments to represent the natural classes is optimal. The argument is based on a strictly set-theoretical point of view depending only on the set of natural classes and does not explicitly take into account the phonological features of the segments, which are, however, implicitly given in the way a language clusters its phonological inventory. The key idea is to link the graph of the Hasse-diagram of the set of natural classes closed under intersection to ivastra-style representations of the classes. Moreover, the argument is so general that it allows one to decide for each set of sets whether it can be represented with Pninis method. Actually, Pnini had to modify the set of natural classes to define it by the ivastras (the segment h plays a special role). We show that this modification was necessary and, in fact, the best possible modification. We discuss how every set of classes can be modified in such a way that it can be defined in a ivastra-style representation.¹     

Multimedia teleorchestra with independent sources: Part 1 — temporal modeling of collaborative multimedia scenarios

Multimedia synchronization involving independent sources is a challenging issue imposed by the distributed multimedia applications. In our work, this issue is studied by investigating the teleorchestra application (remote multimedia presentation). In teleorchestration, among the data objects to be presented, relative and uncertain temporal requirements may be involved. Fuzzy presentation scenarios are thus generated. In this paper, we describe a temporal model that can handle these fuzzy scenarios that contain imprecise synchronization constraints, such as unknown object presentation durations and relative event occurring times. The model supports a distributed synchronization algorithm that can schedule the independent sources for the multimedia teleorchestration.     

A Typology of Translation Problems for Eurotra Translation Machines

This paper presents a detailed study of Eurotra Machine Translation engines, namely the mainstream Eurotra software known as the E-Framework, and two unofficial spin-offs – the C,A,T and Relaxed Compositionality translator notations – with regard to how these systems handle hard cases, and in particular their ability to handle combinations of such problems. In the C,A,T translator notation, some cases of complex transfer are wild, meaning roughly that they interact badly when presented with other complex cases in the same sentence. The effect of this is that each combination of a wild case and another complex case needs ad hoc treatment. The E-Framework is the same as the C,A,T notation in this respect. In general, the E-Framework is equivalent to the C,A,T notation for the task of transfer. The Relaxed Compositionality translator notation is able to handle each wild case (bar one exception) with a single rule even where it appears in the same sentence as other complex cases.     

End-to-end communications management using TMN “X” interfaces

The ongoing integration of LANs and WANs to support global communications and businesses and the emergence of integrated broadband communication services has created an increased demand for cooperation between customers, network and service providers to achieve end-to-end service management. Such a cooperation between autonomous authorities, each defining their own administrative management domains, requires the application of an open standardized framework to facilitate and regulate interworking. Such a framework is given by the ITU-T recommendations on TMN, where the so-called X interface is of particular importance for inter-domain management. In this paper, we explain the role of the TMN X interface within an inter-domain TMN architecture supporting end-to-end communications management. We identify the important issues that need to be addressed for the definition and realization of TMN X interfaces and report about our practical experiences with the implementation of TMN X interfaces in the PREPARE project.     

Complex-Weighted One-Unit ‘Rigid-Bodies’ Learning Rule for Independent Component Analysis

Over the recent years, noticeable theoretical efforts have been devoted to the understanding of the role of networks' parameter spaces in neural learning. One of the contributions in this field concerns the study of weight-flows on Stiefel manifold, which is the natural parameter-space's algebraic-structure in some unsupervised (information-theoretic) learning task. An algorithm belonging to the class of learning equations generating Stiefel-flows is based on the rigid-body theory, introduced by the present Author in 1996. The aim of this Letter is to present an investigation on the capability of a complex-weighted neuron, trained by a rigid-bodies learning theory, with application to blind source separation of complex-valued independent signals for telecommunication systems.     

Searching minimax game trees under memory space constraint

Games such as CHESS, GO and OTHELLO can be represented by minimax game trees. Among various search procedures to solve such game trees,- and SSS^* are perhaps most well known. Although it is proved that SSS^* explores only a subset of the nodes explored by-, - is commonly believed to be faster in real applications, since it requires very little memory space and hence its storage management cost is low. Contrary to this folklore, however, this paper reports, using the OTHELLO game as an example, that SSS^* is much faster than-. It is also demonstrated that SSS^* can be modified to make the required memory space controllable to some extent, while retaining the high efficiency of the original SSS^*.This research was partially supported by the Ministry of Education, Science and Culture of Japan, under a Scientific Grant-in-Aid.     

More Church–Rosser Proofs

The proofs of the Church–Rosser theorems for , , and reduction in untyped -calculus are formalized in Isabelle/HOL, an implementation of Higher Order Logic in the generic theorem prover Isabelle. For -reduction, both the standard proof and Takahashi's are given and compared. All proofs are based on a general theory of commutating relations that supports an almost geometric style of reasoning about confluence diagrams.     

Understanding Computer-based “Informated” Environments

The paper introduces the concept of Computer-based Informated Environments (CBIEs) to indicate an emergent form of work organisation facilitated by information technology. It first addresses the problem of inconsistent meanings of the informate concept in the literature, and it then focuses on those cases which, it is believed, show conditions of plausible informated environments. Finally, the paper looks at those factors that when found together contribute to building a CBIE. It makes reference to CBIEs as workplaces that comprise a non-technocentric perspective and questions whether CBIEs truly represent an anthropocentric route of information technology.     

Valiant’s model and the cost of computing integers

Let (n) be the minimum number of arithmetic operations required to build the integer from the constants 1 and 2. A sequence x_n is said to be easy to compute if there exists a polynomial p such that for all It is natural to conjecture that sequences such as or n! are not easy to compute. In this paper we show that a proof of this conjecture for the first sequence would imply a superpolynomial lower bound for the arithmetic circuit size of the permanent polynomial. For the second sequence, a proof would imply a superpolynomial lower bound for the permanent or P PSPACE.     

On the Axioms of Scale Space Theory

We consider alternative scale space representations beyond the well-established Gaussian case that satisfy all reasonable axioms. One of these turns out to be subject to a first order pseudo partial differential equation equivalent to the Laplace equation on the upper half plane {(x, s) ^d × | s > 0}. We investigate this so-called Poisson scale space and show that it is indeed a viable alternative to Gaussian scale space. Poisson and Gaussian scale space are related via a one-parameter class of operationally well-defined intermediate representations generated by a fractional power of (minus) the spatial Laplace operator.     

From Pre-Historic to Post-Modern Symbolic Model Checking

Symbolic model checking, which enables the automatic verification of large systems, proceeds by calculating expressions that represent state sets. Traditionally, symbolic model-checking tools are based on backward state traversal; their basic operation is the function pre, which, given a set of states, returns the set of all predecessor states. This is because specifiers usually employ formalisms with future-time modalities, which are naturally evaluated by iterating applications of pre. It has been shown experimentally that symbolic model checking can perform significantly better if it is based, instead, on forward state traversal; in this case, the basic operation is the function post, which, given a set of states, returns the set of all successor states. This is because forward state traversal can ensure that only parts of the state space that are reachable from an initial state and relevant for the satisfaction or violation of the specification are explored; that is, errors can be detected as soon as possible.In this paper, we investigate which specifications can be checked by symbolic forward state traversal. We formulate the problems of symbolic backward and forward model checking by means of two -calculi. The pre- calculus is based on the pre operation, and the post- calculus is based on the post operation. These two -calculi induce query logics, which augment fixpoint expressions with a boolean emptiness query. Using query logics, we are able to relate and compare the symbolic backward and forward approaches. In particular, we prove that all -regular (linear-time) specifications can be expressed as post- queries, and therefore checked using symbolic forward state traversal. On the other hand, we show that there are simple branching-time specifications that cannot be checked in this way.     

A predicate transformer for the progress property ‘to-always’

The temporal property to-always has been proposed for specifying progress properties of concurrent programs. Although the to-always properties are a subset of the leads-to properties for a given program, to-always has more convenient proof rules and in some cases more accurately describes the desired system behavior. In this paper, we give a predicate transformerwta, derive some of its properties, and use it to define to-always. Proof rules for to-always are derived from the properties ofwta. We conclude by briefly describing two application areas, nondeterministic data flow networks and self-stabilizing systems where to-always properties are useful.     

Global culture, local cultures and the internet: The Thai example

This paper addresses the questions of whether and, if so, how and to what extent the Internet brings about homogenisation of local cultures in the world. It examines a particular case, that of Thai culture, through an investigation and interpretation of a Usenet newsgroup, soc.culture.thai. Two threads of discussion in the newsgroup are selected. One deals with criticisms of the Thai government and political leaders, and the other focuses on whether the Thai language should be a medium, or perhaps the only medium, of communication in the newsgroup. It is found that, instead of erasing local cultural boundaries, creating a worldwide monolithic culture, the Internet reduplicates the existing cultural boundaries. What the Internet does, on the contrary, is to create an umbrella cosmopolitan culture which is necessary for communication among people from disparate cultures. That culture, however, is devoid of thick backgrounds, in Michael Walzer's sense.