IEEE-PES Transmission and Distribution Conference and Exposition Call for Papers

Static network-related system voltage stability margin (VSM) depends on the availability of reactive power to support the transport of real power from sources to sinks. Based on this premise, the total VAr loss is minimized in the unified OPF framework considering real and reactive power controllers, and its effect on VSM is studied. Studies are conducted on a three-bus system, the IEEE 30-bus system, and a 191-bus Indian electric power system, and their results are reported.     

Photovaractor for remote optical control of microwave circuits

A photovaractor for the remote optical control of microwave circuits was studied. The photovaractor was fabricated as a p-i-n photodiode placed in a pigtailed fiber optical module. The study of the impedance in the frequency range up to 3 GHz in darkness and under illumination has shown that the photovaractor capacitance strongly depends on the incident optical power. The capacitance variation of the photovaractor diode under illumination is discussed     

Development of enhanced depth-resolution technique for shallow dopant profiles

A rapid shrinkage in the minimum feature size of integrated circuits requires analysis of dopants in their shallow source–drain and their extensions with an enhanced depth resolution. Rutherford backscattering spectroscopy (RBS) combining a medium-energy He ion beam with a detector of improved energy resolution should meet the requirement of a depth resolution better than 5 nm at a depth of 10–20 nm in the next 10 years. A toroidal electrostatic analyzer of 4×10⁻³ energy resolution has been used to detect the scattered ions of a medium-energy He ion beam. Five keV As⁺ implanted Si or SiO₂ samples were measured. Depth profiling results using the above technique are compared with those of glancing-angle RBS by MeV energy He ions. Limitations in the energy resolution due to various energy-spread contributions have been clarified.     

A look at court appointed psychiatric evaluations in Israel with special reference to criminal liability

This article presents the data collected from 128 court appointed psychiatric evaluations (CAPEs) and their analysis. Issues addressed are: the link between type of criminal offence and mental disorder; rate of recidivism; efficacy of the early detection and follow-up systems; inherent psychiatric dilemmas; unacceptable lacuna in information recorded in the CAPEs; and the babel of legal and psychiatric terms. We advocate that a combined effort be made by the legal and psychiatric fraternities to create a uniform and standardized CAPE.     

Actions speak no louder than words: Symmetrical cross-modal interference effects in the processing of verbal and gestural information.

Five experiments are reported that investigate the distribution of selective attention to verbal and nonverbal components of an utterance when conflicting information exists in these channels. A Stroop-type interference paradigm is adopted in which attributes from the verbal and nonverbal dimensions are placed into conflict. Static directional (deictic) gestures and corresponding spoken and written words show symmetrical interference (Experiments 1, 2, and 3), as do directional arrows and spoken words (Experiment 4). This symmetry is maintained when the task is switched from a manual keypress to a verbal naming response (Experiment 5), suggesting the mutual influence of the 2 dimensions is independent of spatial stimulus-response compatibility. It is concluded that the results are consistent with a model of interference in which information from pointing gestures and speech is integrated prior to the response selection stage of processing. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Contributions of Transformation and Microcracking to the Plastic Deformation of Magnesia-Partially-Stabilized Zirconia

The measured plastic deformation of Mg-PSZ under stress contains contributions from both transformation and microcracking. A method is described to separate the contributions from transformation and microcracking for samples deformed in uniaxial tension. Such a separation enables the ratio of the longitudinal to transverse strains arising from the transformation to be estimated. The results are compared to the predictions of the shear–dilatation model of Chen and Reyes-Morel. Serious discrepancies are found between the experimental results and the predictions of the model and the possible reason for this is discussed.     

The application of semantic classification trees to naturallanguage understanding

This article describes a new method for building a natural language understanding (NLU) system, in which the system's rules are learnt automatically from training data. The method has been applied to design of a speech understanding (SU) system. Designers of such systems rely increasingly on robust matchers to perform the task of extracting meaning from one or several word sequence hypotheses generated by a speech recognizer. We describe a new data structure, the semantic classification tree (SCT), that learns semantic rules from training data and can be a building block for robust matchers for NLU tasks. By reducing the need for handcoding and debugging a large number of rules, this approach facilitates rapid construction of an NLU system. In the case of an SU system, the rules learned by an SCT are highly resistant to errors by the speaker or by the speech recognizer because they depend on a small number of words in each utterance. Our work shows that semantic rules can be learned automatically from training data, yielding successful NLU for a realistic application     

A statistical analysis of the received signal from blood duringlaminar flow

In order to determine the limiting velocity resolution that can be achieved using ultrasound, and to provide a model which can be generalized for the analysis of disturbed flow, a theoretical and experimental evaluation of the statistics of the received signal from laminar flow following the transmission of a train of short pulses is presented. The authors derive the autocorrelation function and determine the length of the correlated signal for various flow rates, comparing experimental measurements to theoretical predictions. High resolution experimental RF M-mode images are used to verify the theoretical model. Using a fluid with a density, viscosity, volume concentration, particle size, and speed of sound which is similar to that of blood, the authors show that the signal remains correlated for a long interval under many conditions of clinical interest. Including a comparison with experimental data, the effect of the lateral transit time through the sample volume and the axial velocity spread within the sample volume on the correlation of the received signal is evaluated. When a significant range of velocity components is present within the sample volume, this range is the limiting factor in the length of the correlated signal interval. Therefore, the use of a wideband signal, which reduces the sample volume size, produces a returned signal that may be correlated for a larger number of pulses, or for a longer time