Slow eye movement as a possible predictor of reaction delays to auditory warning alarms in a drowsy state

In recently developed intelligent vehicles, warning alarms are often used to prompt avoidance behaviours from drivers facing imminent hazardous situations. However, when critical reaction delays to auditory stimulation are anticipated, the alarm should be activated earlier to compensate for such delays. It was found that reaction times to an auditory stimulus significantly increased in the presence of slow eye movement (SEM), which is known to occur frequently during the wake-sleep transition. The reaction delay could not be attributed to temporal effects such as fatigue and was invariant regardless of response effectors (finger or foot). Moreover, it was found that applied pedal force decreased immediately after an auditory stimulus interrupted SEM. Consequently, it was concluded that SEM can be a good predictor of reaction delays to auditory warning alarms when drivers are in a drowsy state. STATEMENT OF RELEVANCE: The present study demonstrated that simple auditory reaction time significantly increased when SEM emerged. In the design of vehicle safety systems using warning alarms to prompt avoidance behaviours from drivers, such reaction delays during SEM must be taken into account.     

Effects of hematocrit variations on cerebral blood flow and oxygen transport in ischemic cerebrovascular disease

The contribution of hematocrit (Ht) changes on cerebral blood flow (CBF) and brain oxygenation in ischemic cerebrovascular disease is still controversial. In the present study, effects of Ht variations of CBF and oxygen delivery were investigated in patients with ischemic cerebrovascular disease. CBF was measured by the Xe-133 intracarotid injection method in 27 patients, whose diagnoses included completed stroke, reversible ischemic neurological deficit, and transient ischemic attack. Ht values in the patients ranged from 31 to 53%. There was a significant inverse correlation between CBF and Ht in these Ht ranges. Oxygen delivery, i.e., the product of arterial oxygen content and CBF, increased with Ht elevation and reached the maximum level in the Ht range of 40-45% and then declined. The CBF-Ht and oxygen transport-Ht relations observed in our study were similar to those in the glass-tube model studies by other workers rather than to those in intact animal experiments. From these results, it is conceivable that in ischemic cerebrovascular disease, the vasomotor adjustment was impaired in such a manner that the relations among Ht, CBF, and oxygen delivery were different from those in healthy subjects. Further, an "optimal hematocrit" for brain oxygenation was also discussed.     

Outline of Ishikawajima-Harima Heavy Industry ? Suspension-Heater Flash-Furnace Clinker Burning Process

The suspension-preheater flash-furnace (SF) process for cement clinkering introduces a calcining flash furnace operating as an integral portion of a suspension preheater, rotary kiln, and clinker cooler system. Preheated raw meal from the suspension preheater is calcined in the flash furnace to 80 to 90 percent decarbonation. The capacity of the SF rotary kiln is increased thereby, since its function is limited to sintering rather than sintering and calcining. The flash furnace incorporates vortex flow to accomplish the mixing of fuel, raw meal, and gases. Effective distribution within the flash furnace limits temperature gradients and eliminates localized elevated temperatures that might otherwise lead to coating and material build-up. Hot combustion gases are recovered from the clinker cooler for use in the flash furnace. An orifice in the kiln gas exit duct serves to balance the parallel gas flows through the kiln and secondary air duct. Operating pressures and temperatures are described. The smaller size of the rotary kiln used in the SF process leads to extended refractory life as demonstrated by operating experience. The SF process is adaptable to the control of internal alkali, sulfur, and chlorine cycles through a gas bypass and through a unique material withdrawal arrangement from the flash furnace. Existing plants may be modified to incorporate the SF process. Nearly 20 commercial scale plants are operating or are being constructed.     

Electrical Inhomogeneity at the Mott Transition in the Band Width Controlled κ-(BEDT-TTF)2Cu[N(CN)2Br

The electronic phase separation on macroscopic scale is studied in the organic Mott system κ-(BEDT-TTF)₂Cu[N(CN)₂]Br by means of scanning microregion infrared spectroscopy using the synchrotron radiation. The phase separation appears in the vicinity of the Mott boundary in the single crystals of which the band width is controlled by partly substituting the BEDT-TTF molecule with the deuterated one. The transport properties under the phase separation are considered to be influenced by the percolation process of the domains.     

Surface modification of biodegradable plastics by ion beams

Biodegradable plastics can be used as conventional plastics, while on disposal they decompose to water and carbon dioxide by microorganisms existing in natural environment. Products using biodegradable plastics have recently been developed in many companies pursuing ecology. In this study, surface modification of biodegradable plastics was carried out by inert ion beams for improvement of photo deterioration under an ultraviolet ray. The hardness of biodegradable plastics tended generally to decrease with irradiation of an ultraviolet ray. In this method, the hardness of ion-bombarded biodegradable plastics was kept at an initial value under an ultraviolet ray, because the modified layer by ion bombardment intercepted an ultraviolet ray. The hardness of He⁺ ion-bombarded biodegradable plastics showed larger value than that of Ar⁺ ion bombardment. He⁺ ion bombardment at ion energy of 10 keV produced the suitable property with both of high transmittance of a visible ray and high interception of an ultraviolet ray in a surface layer of biodegradable plastics.     

Recursive estimation methods for discrete systems

In system identification, the error evolution is composed of two decoupled parts: one is the identifying information on the current estimation residual, while the other is past arithmetic errors. Previous recursive algorithms only considered how to update current prediction errors. Up to now, research has mostly been based on recursive least-squares (RLS) methods. In this note, a general recursive identification method is proposed for discrete systems. Using this new algorithm, a recursive empirical frequency-domain optimal parameter (REFOP) estimate is established. The REFOP method has the advantage of resisting disturbance noise. Some simulations are included to illustrate the new method's reliability.     

Static Coarse Grain Task Scheduling with Cache Optimization Using OpenMP

Effective use of cache memory is getting more important with increasing gap between the processor speed and memory access speed. Also, use of multigrain parallelism is getting more important to improve effective performance beyond the limitation of loop iteration level parallelism. Considering these factors, this paper proposes a coarse grain task static scheduling scheme considering cache optimization. The proposed scheme schedules coarse grain tasks to threads so that shared data among coarse grain tasks can be passed via cache after task and data decomposition considering cache size at compile time. It is implemented on OSCAR Fortran multigrain parallelizing compiler and evaluated on Sun Ultra80 four-processor SMP workstation using Swim and Tomcatv from the SPEC fp 95. As the results, the proposed scheme gives us 4.56 times speedup for Swim and 2.37 times on 4 processors for Tomcatv respectively against the Sun Forte HPC Ver. 6 update 1 loop parallelizing compiler.     

A Knowledge Discovery System with Support for Model Selection and Visualization

The process of knowledge discovery in databases consists of several steps that are iterative and interactive. In each application, to go through this process the user has to exploit different algorithms and their settings that usually yield multiple models. Model selection, that is, the selection of appropriate models or algorithms to achieve such models, requires meta-knowledge of algorithm/model and model performance metrics. Therefore, model selection is usually a difficult task for the user. We believe that simplifying the process of model selection for the user is crucial to the success of real-life knowledge discovery activities. As opposed to most related work that aims to automate model selection, in our view model selection is a semiautomatic process, requiring an effective collaboration between the user and the discovery system. For such a collaboration, our solution is to give the user the ability to try various alternatives and to compare competing models quantitatively by performance metrics, and qualitatively by effective visualization. This paper presents our research on model selection and visualization in the development of a knowledge discovery system called D2MS. The paper addresses the motivation of model selection in knowledge discovery and related work, gives an overview of D2MS, and describes its solution to model selection and visualization. It then presents the usefulness of D2MS model selection in two case studies of discovering medical knowledge in hospital data—on meningitis and stomach cancer—using three data mining methods of decision trees, conceptual clustering, and rule induction.     

Sound isolation by piezoelectric polymer films connected to negative capacitance circuits

Sound isolation has been achieved using a piezoelectric polymer film connected to a negative capacitance feedback circuit. A curved PVDF film was located in the middle of an acoustic tube and the transmission loss of sound through the film was determined in the audio frequency range. At any chosen frequency, the complete isolation of sound was achieved by adjusting the feedback, i.e. the complex capacitance of the circuit was matched precisely to that of the film.