Voice communication with computers: A primer

Due to the rapid development of speech communication interfaces, speech will be a major mode of man-machine communication. Essential to the development of speech input/output applications is the understanding of the techniques and jargon of speech by the application designer who, in most cases, has no formal speech training and, perhaps, little understanding of computers. This paper includes introductory tutorials on speech synthesis and recognition in an attempt to overcome the jargon barrier. A limited number of application examples are presented to stimulate generation of new applications.     

Automated enzymatic determination of starch in meat products

Summary An automated method is described for the enzymatic determination of starch in some meat products. After solubilization with dimethylsulfoxide/hydrochloric acid, the starch was automatically determined with amyloglucosidase (EC 3.2.1.3) and hexokinase (EC 2.7.1.1)/glucose-6-phosphate dehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.49) using a Technicon AutoAnalyzer II System. The analyses could be performed at a rate of forty samples per hour. The results agree very well with those obtained by the polarimetric method.

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Eine automatisierte enzymatische Bestimmung der Stärke in Fleischerzeugnissen

Zusammenfassung Eine automatische Methode zur enzymatischen Bestimmung der Stärke in Fleischerzeugnissen wird beschrieben. Nach Lösung in einer Dimethylsulfoxide/Salzsäure-Mischung, wurde Stärke mittels Amyloglucosidase (EC 3.2.1.3) and Hexokinase (EC 2.7.1.1)/Glukose-6-phosphatdehydrogenase (EC 1.1.1.49) mit Hilfe des Technicon AutoAnalyzers II automatisch bestimmt. Diese Methode ermöglicht 40 Proben pro Std. zu untersuchen. Die Ergebnisse stimmen gut mit den Analysenwerten der polarimetrischen Bestimmung überein.

     

Surface tree languages and parallel derivation trees

The surface tree languages obtained by top-down finite state transformation of monadic trees are exactly the frontier-preserving homomorphic images of sets of derivation trees of ETOL systems. The corresponding class of tree transformation languages is therefore equal to the class of ETOL languages.     

Three hierarchies of transducers

Composition of top-down tree transducers yields a proper hierarchy of transductions and of output languages. The same is true for ETOL systems (viewed as transducers) and for two-way generalized sequential machines.     

Apex graph grammars and attribute grammars

Summary Apex graph grammars are a particular type of directed node-label controlled (DNLC) graph grammars: the embedding edges are established between terminal nodes only. Apex graph grammars, slightly generalized, can generate the sets of dependency graphs of attribute grammars. The other way around, every apex graph language can be obtained from such a dependency graph language by a graph replacement (which is an operation analogous to a string homomorphism).     

Iterated deterministic substitution

Summary Deterministic substitution of languages means substituting the same word (from a given language) for all occurrences of a symbol. For an arbitrary family K of languages the notion of deterministic K-iteration grammar is introduced, which is essentially the iteration of a finite number of deterministic substitutions of languages from K. The families of languages generated by these grammars are investigated.The work of the first author has been supported by the Netherlands Organization for the Advancement of Pure Research (Z.W.O.)     

Nephrotoxicity of cephaloridine in newborn rabbits: role of the renal anionic transport system

The nephrotoxicity of cephaloridine, cefazolin and mercuric chloride was studied in rabbits of various ages. Cephaloridine produced dose-related elevations in serum urea nitrogen, creatinine and renal tubular necrosis in adult and 30-day-old rabbits, only slight changes at 15 days of age and no effect in 5-day-old rabbits. Cefazolin also produced dose-related nephrotoxicity in adult rabbits but no effect in 15-day-old rabbits. Mercuric chloride administration resulted in similar nephrotoxicity in 5-, 15- and 30-day-old rabbits and adults. The development of susceptibility to cephaloridine nephrotoxicity paralleled the maturation of the renal anionic transport system as determined by the accumulation of p-aminohippurate by renal cortical slices in vitro. Substrate stimulation of the anionic transport system by p-aminohippurate or penicillin increased the nephrotoxicity of cephaloridine in between rabbits. The authors concluded that the lack of cephaloridine nephrotoxicity in newborn rabbits is due to the incomplete development of the renal anionic transport system.     

Evolutionary Algorithms in Drug Design

Designing a drug is the process of finding or creating a molecule which has a specific activity on a biological organism. Drug design is difficult since there are only few molecules that are both effective against a certain disease and exhibit other necessary physiological properties, such as absorption by the body and safety of use. The main problem of drug design is therefore how to explore the chemical space of many possible molecules to find the few suitable ones. Computational methods are increasingly being used for this purpose, among them evolutionary algorithms. This review will focus on the applications of evolutionary algorithms in drug design, in which evolutionary algorithms are used both to create new molecules and to construct methods for predicting the properties of real or yet unexisting molecules. We will also discuss the progress and problems of application of evolutionary algorithms in this field, as well as possible developments and future perspectives.     

Inter-comparison of laser photoacoustic spectroscopy and gas chromatography techniques for measurements of ethene in the atmosphere

Laser photoacoustic spectroscopy (LPAS) is highly suitable for the detection of ethene in air due to the overlap between its strongest absorption lines and the wavelengths accessible by high-powered CO2 lasers. Here, we test the ability of LPAS to measure ethene in ambient air by comparing the measurements in urban air with those from a gas chromatography flame-ionization detection (GC-FID) instrument. Over the course of several days, we obtained quantitative agreement between the two measurements. Over this period, the LPAS instrument had a positive offset of 330 +/- 140 pptv (parts-per-trillion by volume) relative to the GC-FID instrument, possibly caused by interference from other species. The detection limit of the LPAS instrument is currently estimated around 1 ppbv and is limited by this offset and the statistical noise in the data. We conclude that LPAS has the potential to provide fast-response measurements of ethene in the atmosphere, with significant advantages over existing techniques when measuring from moving platforms and in the vicinity of emission sources.