TRIANGULATOR: Excel spreadsheets for converting relative bearings to XYZ coordinates, with applications to scaling photographs and orienting surfaces

TRIANGULATOR comprises two Microsoft Excel spreadsheets for processing relative bearing data from an electronic total station. Program XYZ converts bearings to positions. It determines x, y, z coordinates of points from relative bearings from two base stations of known relative position. Program LINES uses the output of XYZ. It converts the x, y, z coordinates of three points into the equation of a plane, yielding strike and dip of that plane. Then it uses bearings from one base station to points on a cliff face, and calculates their x′, z′ coordinates for either direct measurement of features, or determination of the scale of a photograph. An example demonstrates the application of the program to scale the photograph of an exfoliation fracture.     

Required Unfactored Strength of Geosynthetic in Reinforced Earth Structures

Current reinforced earth structure designs arbitrarily distinguish between reinforced walls and slopes, that is, the batter of walls is 20° or less while in slopes it is larger than 20°. This has led to disjointed design methodologies where walls employ a lateral earth pressure approach and slopes utilize limit equilibrium analyses. The earth pressure approach used is either simplified (e.g., ignoring facing effects), approximated (e.g., considering facing effects only partially), or purely empirical. It results in selection of a geosynthetic with a long-term strength that is potentially overly conservative or, by virtue of ignoring statics, potentially unconservative. The limit equilibrium approach used in slopes deals explicitly with global equilibrium only; it is ambiguous about the load in individual layers. Presented is a simple limit equilibrium methodology to determine the unfactored global geosynthetic strength required to ensure sufficient internal stability in reinforced earth structures. This approach allows for seamless integration of the design methodologies for reinforced earth walls and slopes. The methodology that is developed accounts for the sliding resistance of the facing. The results are displayed in the form of dimensionless stability charts. Given the slope angle, the design frictional strength of the soil, and the toe resistance, the required global unfactored strength of the reinforcement can be determined using these charts. The global strength is then distributed among individual layers using three different assumed distribution functions. It is observed that, generally, the assumed distribution functions have secondary effects on the trace of the critical slip surface. The impact of the distribution function on the required global strength of reinforcement is minor and exists only when there is no toe resistance, when the slope tends to be vertical, or when the soil has low strength. Conversely, the impact of the distribution function on the maximum unfactored load in individual layers, a value which is typically used to select the geosynthetics, can result in doubling its required long-term strength.     

Feedback as a source of control in decision support systems: an experiment with the feedback specificity

Well-designed feedback can improve decision-making, but to date, there has been no comprehensive study of feedback in decision support systems that could guide developers in its design. This work examines the opportunities and means to enhance the user's consistency in implementing a decision strategy (a plan for making the decision) by providing appropriate feedback. It concentrates on the specificity of feedback. Feedback is said to be specific if it provides details about the decision-making process that help correct the process; feedback is non-specific if it merely reports outcome without indicating what caused it. The paper builds on concepts from cognitive engineering, behavioural decision-making, and systems design to examine how computer-generated feedback enhances the user's decision consistency, and reports on a laboratory experiment. Specific feedback is found to be effective in enhancing decision consistency, but its impact its compromised by the presence of additional non-specific feedback.     

Dependence of Hertzian fracture angle on Poissons ratio and indentation techniques

Sub-parallel concentric conic fractures can be produced consecutively in Perspex by liquid indentation. There is a linear relationshp between the conic angle, , of Hertzian fracture and the Poisson's ratio, , of the material. This angle is about 10 higher than the calculated path of the principal stress trajectory for a given . decreases with the increase of stress application rate. This dependence of is very marked in materials with high Poisson's ratios.     

Energy considerations in crack deflection phenomenon in single crystal silicon

Crack deflection in single-crystal brittle occurs when a crack, propagating on one cleavage plane, ‘chooses’, from energy considerations, to continue propagating on another cleavage plane. This phenomenon was identified during dynamic crack propagation experiments of thin, rectangular [0 0 1] single-crystal (SC) silicon specimens subjected to three-point bending (3PB). Specimens with long pre-cracks (hence propagating at a ‘low’ energy and velocity) cleave along the vertical (1 1 0) plane, while the same specimens but with short pre-cracks (and therefore with higher propagation energy and velocity) cleave along the inclined (1 1 1) plane. The same specimens with intermediate pre-crack length show that the crack first propagates on the (1 1 0) plane and then deflects to the (1 1 1) plane. We show that the deflection is due to variations of the material property that resists cracking, Γ, the dynamic cleavage energy, with velocity and crystallographic orientation. We propose selection criteria to explain the deflection: The crack will deflect to the plane with the lowest dynamic cleavage energy. We further suggest that crack deflection is the basic mechanism controlling the way the crack consumes energy while propagating and is the main cause of surface perturbations. The spatial temporal fracture energy along the (1 1 0) cleavage plane is evaluated.     

Partial Fairness in Secure Two-Party Computation

A protocol for secure computation is fair if either both parties learn the output or else neither party does. A seminal result of Cleve (STOC ’86) is that, in general, complete fairness is impossible to achieve in two-party computation. In light of this, various techniques for obtaining partial fairness have been suggested in the literature. We propose a definition of partial fairness within the standard real-/ideal-world paradigm. We also show broad feasibility results with respect to our definition: partial fairness is possible for any (randomized) functionality f:X×Y→Z ¹×Z ² at least one of whose domains or ranges is polynomial in size. Our protocols are always private, and when one of the domains has polynomial size our protocols also achieve the usual notion of security with abort. We work in the standard communication model (in particular, we do not assume simultaneous channels) and, in contrast to some prior work, rely only on standard cryptographic assumptions (e.g., enhanced trapdoor permutations).     

Molecular circuits for associative learning in single-celled organisms

We demonstrate how a single-celled organism could undertake associative learning. Although to date only one previous study has found experimental evidence for such learning, there is no reason in principle why it should not occur. We propose a gene regulatory network that is capable of associative learning between any pre-specified set of chemical signals, in a Hebbian manner, within a single cell. A mathematical model is developed, and simulations show a clear learned response. A preliminary design for implementing this model using plasmids within Escherichia coli is presented, along with an alternative approach, based on double-phosphorylated protein kinases.     

A generalization of analytic deduction via labelled deductive systems. Part I: Basic substructural logics

In this series of papers we set out to generalize the notion of classical analytic deduction (i.e., deduction via elimination rules) by combining the methodology of labelled deductive systems (LDS) with the classical systemKE. LDS is a unifying framework for the study of logics and of their interactions. In the LDS approach the basic units of logical derivation are not just formulae butlabelled formulae, where the labels belong to a given labelling algebra. The derivation rules act on the labels as well as on the formulae, according to certain fixed rules of propagation. By virtue of the extra power of the labelling algebras, standard (classical or intuitionistic) proof systems can be extended to cover a much wider territory without modifying their structure. The systemKE is a new tree method for classical analytic deduction based on analytic cut.KE is a refutation system, like analytic tableaux and resolution, but it is essentially more efficient than tableaux and, unlike resolution, does not require any reduction to normal form.We start our investigation with the family of substructural logics. These are logical systems (such as Lambek's calculus, Anderson and Belnap's relevance logic, and Girard's linear logic) which arise from disallowing some or all of the usual structural properties of the notion of logical consequence. This extension of traditional logic yields a subtle analysis of the logical operators which is more in tune with the needs of applications. In this paper we generalize the classicalKE system via the LDS methodology to provide a uniform refutation system for the family of substructural logics.The main features of this generalized method are the following: (a) each logic in the family is associated with a labelling algebra; (b) the tree-expansion rules (for labelled formulae) are the same for all the logics in the family; (c) the difference between one logic and the other is captured by the conditions under which a branch is declared closed; (d) such conditions depend only on the labelling algebra associated with each logic; and (e) classical and intuitionistic negations are characterized uniformly, by means of the same tree-expansion rules, and their difference is reduced to a difference in the labelling algebra used in closing a branch. In this first part we lay the theoretical foundations of our method. In the second part we shall continue our investigation of substructural logics and discuss the algorithmic aspects of our approach.     

A Generic Integrated Line Detection Algorithm and Its Object–Process Specification

A generic integrated line detection algorithm (GILDA) is presented and demonstrated. GILDA is based on the generic graphics recognition approach, which abstracts the graphics recognition as a stepwise recovery of the multiple components of the graphic objects and is specified by the object–process methodology. We define 12 classes of lines which appear in engineering drawings and use them to construct a class inheritance hierarchy. The hierarchy highly abstracts the line features that are relevant to the line detection process. Based on the “Hypothesis and Test” paradigm, lines are detected by a stepwise extension to both ends of a selected first key component. In each extension cycle, one new component which best meets the current line's shape and style constraints is appended to the line. Different line classes are detected by controlling the line attribute values. As we show in the experiments, the algorithm demonstrates high performance on clear synthetic drawings as well as on noisy, complex, real-world drawings.     

Adding a temporal dimension to a logic system

We introduce a methodology whereby an arbitrary logic system L can be enriched with temporal features to create a new system T(L). The new system is constructed by combining L with a pure propositional temporal logic T (such as linear temporal logic with Since and Until) in a special way. We refer to this method as adding a temporal dimension to L or just temporalising L. We show that the logic system T(L) preserves several properties of the original temporal logic like soundness, completeness, decidability, conservativeness and separation over linear flows of time. We then focus on the temporalisation of first-order logic, and a comparison is make with other first-order approaches to the handling of time.