Law,liability and expert systems

This paper examines some of the possible legal implications of the production, marketing and use of expert systems. The relevance of a legally useful definition of expert systems, comprising systems designed for use both by laymen and professionals, is related to the distinctions inherent in the legal doctrine underlying provision of goods and provision of services. The liability of the sellers and users of, and contributors to, expert systems are examined in terms of professional malpractice as well as product liability. A recurring theme indicates that legislators may be inclined to restrict possibilities of liability suits in order to avoid disincentives to the creation of expert systems.     

Characterization of the activated sludge and of the operating conditions of six SBR treating dairy effluent and operated at industrial scale.

The sludge from six SBRs treating dairy effluent and located at same geographical location, in North East of France, were collected to study their characteristic behavior. The six plants were designed and constructed by the same manufacturer and are working under quite similar operating conditions. The objective of the study was to observe if any similarity existed in the characteristics of the sludge collected from the SBRs. The sludge was characterized for morphological properties (filament index, floc size), settling, compressibility, suspended solids (SS) concentration. The sludge from each plant was different from the others in most of the characteristics. One sludge out of six (sludge G) was completely different from the others with a very degraded structure and low discrete settling and compression. This reactor was not working fully satisfactorily with a too high COD at outlet, probably because this SBR was undergoing repetitive overloading linked to a very bad recovery of the whey by the cheese maker. The five other SBRs were working fully satisfactorily but the characteristics of the five sludges were quite different from one sludge to another. The size of the flocs seemed to be the only parameter measured which could be correlated to the settling characteristics of the sludge. The sludge characteristics and the parameter correlations were also compared with that of municipal activated sludge and were found to be very different.     

Microwave plasma synthesis of TiN and ZrN nanopowders

This work demonstrates that TiN and ZrN nanopowders can be prepared by microwave plasma synthesis method. The effects of flow rate of plasma forming gas, flow rate of carrier gas and feeding rate of precursor raw material to the average particle size were studied. The TiN and ZrN nanopowders were characterized by means of transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and X-ray diffraction (XRD).     

A Stronger Complexity Result for the Single Machine Multi-Operation Jobs Scheduling Problem to Minimize the Number of Tardy Jobs

We consider the single machine multi-operation jobs scheduling problem to minimize the number of tardy jobs. Each job consists of several operations that belong to different families. In a schedule, each family of job operations may be processed in batches with each batch incurring a setup time. A job completes when all of its operations have been processed. The objective is to minimize the number of tardy jobs. In the literature, this problem has been proved to be strongly NP-hard for arbitrary due-dates. We show in this paper that the problem remains strongly NP-hard even when the due-dates are common and all jobs have the same processing time.     

未来工厂

Greg Morris没有花太多的时间在幻想未来工厂的样子上,因为他早已在经营一家未来工厂。     

Transient Response and Fixed Pattern Noise in Logarithmic CMOS Image Sensors

Logarithmic CMOS image sensors are appealing for their high-contrast and high-speed response but they require postprocessing to achieve high-quality images. Previously published work has explained the fixed pattern noise (FPN) in these image sensors using a steady-state analysis. This paper explains how the transient response of the readout circuit may also contribute to FPN. Thus, the performance of these CMOS cameras may be optimized with a proper understanding of the transient response, which is explained here through modeling and simulation with some experimental validation. In particular, the gain variation of a logarithmic camera is shown to be caused primarily by premature digitization. As logarithmic and linear active pixel sensors use similar circuits, some results in this paper, e.g., an analysis of readout capacitance, apply equally to the latter.     

Physicochemical Properties of Bread Baked from Flour Blended with Immature Wheat Meal Rich in Fructooligosaccharides

ABSTRACT: Grain of the soft white wheat cultivar Harus was harvested weekly from anthesis to maturity and fructooligosaccharides (FOS) contents were determined by reversed-phase high-performance liquid chromatography. Tests were carried out to determine the effect of adding immature wheat meal to a base flour of cultivar Russ (hard red spring) on the quality characteristics of bread. FOS content was also analyzed in baked bread, and the effect of transglutaminase in improving bread quality was examined. Marked decreases in FOS contents, such as 1-kestose and nystose, were observed with grain maturation. The overall quality of bread appeared to be acceptable, and the added FOS were retained after baking.     

Working memory in mild Alzheimer's disease and early Parkinson's disease.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) and Parkinson's disease (PD) impair working memory (WM). It is unclear, however, whether the deficits seen early in the course of these diseases are similar. To address this issue, the authors compared the performance of 22 patients with mild AD, 20 patients with early PD and without dementia, and 112 control participants on tests of inhibition, short-term memory, and 2 commonly administered tests of WM. The results suggest that although mild AD and early PD both impair WM, the deficits may be related to the interruption of different processes that contribute to WM performance. Early PD disrupted inhibitory processes, whereas mild AD did not. The WM deficits seen in patients with AD may be secondary to deficits in other cognitive capacities, including semantic memory. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Review of Arthur R. Jensen (2006)--Clocking the mind: Mental chronometry and individual differences.

Reviews the book Clocking the Mind: Mental chronometry and individual differences by Arthur Jensen (see record 2006-20276-000). Mental chronometry, as Arthur Jensen stresses, is the study of reaction time (RT) in its various guises, contexts, and applications. As with respect to much of experimental psychology (cognitive and other), there is a venerable past here lying in the background, providing a wide-ranging context in which to embed our current (that is, our 40-odd year) preoccupation with RT as a primary dependent measure in cognitive psychology. This recent book, Clocking the Mind: Mental Chronometry and Individual Differences (published by Elsevier), weds both differential psychology's concern with the measurement of individual differences in RT (e.g., Austin, Deary, Gibson, McGregor, & Dent, 1998) and experimental psychology's concern with "the effects of manipulating various external conditions on variation in the measurements of RT" (p. 1). The reader of this journal will most probably be more familiar with the latter use of RT in the literature, especially when embedded within such familiar experimental tasks as those tapping both Garner and Stroop effects (Pansky & Algom, 1999). The book should be perused with care in order to ensure the further profitable use of RT in both experimental and differential lines of research. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)