A formal model of the Semantic Web Service Ontology (WSMO)

Semantic Web Service, one of the most significant research areas within the Semantic Web vision, has attracted increasing attention from both the research community and industry. The Web Service Modelling Ontology (WSMO) has been proposed as an enabling framework for the total/partial automation of the tasks (e.g., discovery, selection, composition, mediation, execution, monitoring, etc.) involved in both intra- and inter-enterprise integration of Web services. To support the standardisation and tool support of WSMO, a formal model of the language is highly desirable. As several variants of WSMO have been proposed by the WSMO community, which are still under development, the syntax and semantics of WSMO should be formally defined to facilitate easy reuse and future development. In this paper, we present a formal Object-Z formal model of WSMO, where different aspects of the language have been precisely defined within one unified framework. This model not only provides a formal unambiguous model which can be used to develop tools and facilitate future development, but as demonstrated in this paper, can be used to identify and eliminate errors present in existing documentation.     

One-trial cocaine-induced behavioral sensitization in preweanling rats: Role of contextual stimuli.

Using a one-trial procedure, preweanling rats exhibit robust sensitization regardless of whether drug pretreatment and testing occur in the same or different environments. The purpose of the present study was to determine whether one-trial context-specific and context-independent sensitization of preweanling rats could be dissociated by varying the pretreatment dose of cocaine, by varying the pretreatment drug, or by minimizing interoceptive cues. In Experiments 1a and 1b, rats were pretreated with a broad dose range of cocaine (0–40 mg/kg) before placement in a novel activity chamber or the home cage. In Experiment 2, rats were pretreated with a locomotor-enhancing drug (e.g., methylphenidate, U50,488, or MK-801) before placement in a novel activity or anesthesia chamber. In Experiment 3, rats were anesthetized with isoflurane before cocaine administration to minimize the effects of interoceptive and injection cues. In all experiments, rats were challenged with cocaine on the test day (24 hr later), with locomotion being measured in activity chambers. Results showed that (a) the pretreatment dose of cocaine (10–40 mg/kg) did not differentially affect context-specific and context-independent sensitization; (b) cross-sensitization between methylphenidate and cocaine was observed in the context-specific condition, but not when using a context-independent procedure; and (c) sensitization was evident if injection and interoceptive cues were minimized. One possibility is that associative processes do not modulate the one-trial sensitization of preweanling rats. Alternatively, “unitization” may cause preweanling rats to treat the different environments as equivalent, thus permitting robust sensitization even when drug pretreatment and testing occur in different environments. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

De-embedding parasitic components from propagation constant calculations

We present a novel technique for extracting transition structure circuit elements from microwave transmission lines. Using a full-wave Maxwell Equation simulator and microwave circuit software tools, data were generated from a prototype 2.5-dimensional coaxial line-like structure and used as a test vehicle to ascertain the effectiveness of this method. Our results confirm the method's value as a new tool for the design of microwave components.     

The regular polygon detector

This paper describes a robust regular polygon detector. Given image edges, we derive the a posteriori probability for a mixture of regular polygons, and thus the probability density function for the appearance of a set of regular polygons. Likely regular polygons can be isolated quickly by discretising and collapsing the search space into three dimensions. We derive a complete formulation for efficiently recovering the remaining dimensions using maximum likelihood at the locations of the most likely polygons. Results show robustness to noise, the ability to find and differentiate different shape types, and to perform real-time sign detection for driver assistance.     

Surface evaluation of carbon fibre composites using wavelet texture analysis

Strong and lightweight fibre reinforced polymeric composites now dominate the aerospace, marine and low-volume automotive sectors. The surface finish on exterior composite panels is of critical importance for customer satisfaction. This paper describes the application of wavelet texture analysis (WTA) to the task of automatically classifying the surface finish of Carbon Fibre Reinforced Plastic (CFRP) samples into two quality grades. Automatic classification was successful for all but four samples out of 14,400 classification trial configurations, representing 403,200 sample classification attempts (28 attempts per configuration). This work establishes the principle of WTA as a basis for automatic surface finish classification of composite materials.     

Cobalt Ferrite in YSZ for Use as Reactive Material in Solar Thermochemical Water and Carbon Dioxide Splitting, Part II: Kinetic Modeling

The kinetics of 10 wt.% cobalt ferrite (CoFe₂O₄) in 8 mol.% yttria-stabilized zirconia, synthesized via the co-precipitation method and formed into a porous structure, are investigated in support of simulating the performance of a solar thermochemical reactor. Kinetic parameters for the thermal reduction (T-R) of CoFe₂O₄ at temperatures of 1325–1500°C were investigated by thermogravimetry. A nonlinear best fit of a uniform conversion model was used to determine kinetic parameters from experimental data. In the temperature range of 1375–1450°C, the activation energy and preexponential term were found to be 386 ± 13 kJ mol^?1 and 8.8 × 10⁹ ± 2.0 × 10⁸ min^?1, respectively, while increasing at higher temperatures. Simultaneous thermogravimetric analysis and differential scanning calorimetry studies showed an increase in the reaction rate of T-R upon the onset of melting (1440°C). Oxidation studies of the material using CO₂ yield an activation energy and preexponential term of 52.1 ± 6.8 kJ mol^?1 and 2.86 ± 0.2 min^?1, respectively, which is in good agreement with past work. The reaction order for CO₂ was determined to be 0.750 ± 0.08. The reaction kinetics for oxidation using CO₂ were best described by a 3-D diffusion Jander model.     

Predicting recidivism with the Psychopathy Checklist: Are factor score composites really necessary?

In two previous studies on general and violent recidivism (Walters & Heilbrun, 2010; Walters, Knight, Grann, & Dahle, 2008), the summed composite antisocial facet of the Psychopathy Checklist displayed incremental validity relative to the other 3 facets (interpersonal, affective, lifestyle), whereas the other 3 facets generally failed to demonstrate incremental validity relative to the antisocial facet. Because summed composite scores do not account for ordinal item distributions, the 6 Walters et al. (2008) samples were reanalyzed with factor score composites derived from a 4-factor confirmatory factor analysis. The results, however, showed little change from what had been obtained earlier with summed composite scores. Two additional samples not previously included in any incremental validity analyses of the Psychopathy Checklist evidenced a 3-factor structure, with the lifestyle and antisocial facets merged into a single factor. This single factor displayed incremental validity relative to the interpersonal and affective facets, but the reverse was not true regardless of whether summed composite scores or factor score composites were used. A comparison of zero-order correlations from all 8 samples revealed that the antisocial summed composite score predicted significantly better than the summed composite scores for the other 3 facets and that a superordinate factor failed to improve on the performance of either the antisocial summed composite score or the antisocial factor score composite. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)