Personal ideology polarity: Its emotional foundation and its manifestation in individual value systems, religiosity, political orientation, and assumptions concerning human nature.

Personal ideology is an individual's philosophy of how life should be lived and of what forces influence human living. In this study S. S. Tomkins's (1963, 1965, 1978, 1987) polarity theory of ideology was used to examine the manifestation of personal ideology in 4 value-laden domains of personality. Tomkins's theoretical postulates concerning the emotional foundation of personal ideology also were tested. Analyses revealed that the 2 defining dimensions of polarity theory—humanism and normativism—are related in the predicted meaningful ways to value systems, assumptions concerning human nature, religiosity, and political orientation. Evidence also was found for Tomkins's contention that specific affect clusters serve as the foundation of personal ideology. Participants who scored high in humanism ideology related autobiographical memories containing the emotion cluster of joy, distress, fear, and shame, whereas the memories of participants with normative ideologies contained relatively more anger. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Synthesis and Structure of Hg1−xCrxSr2CuO4+δ Mercurocuprates

We report preliminary results concerning the synthesis and structural characterisation of the chromium stabilised 1201 phases: Hg_1?xCr_xSr₂CuO_4+δ. A systematic study of the formation of phases in this system has been undertaken, together with a combined powder neutron and synchrotron x-ray diffraction study, to address the issue of chromium clustering and ordering in this system.     

Epistemic uncertainty and stochastic time reliability correlations

A time reliability correlation is a stochastic model used in quantifying human response to offnormal events in a risk analysis. This article examines this type of model in light of the recent concern with separating models of randomness and uncertainty. It is shown that the separation may only be conceptual or numerical but not mathematical. On the way a direct proof of an old intuition is offered and two errors in previous documentation of TRCs are corrected.     

Strain-induced crystallization kinetics of vinylidene chloride/vinyl chloride (VDC/VC) copolymers

The strain-induced crystallization (SIC) behavior of VDC/VC copolymers has a significant effect on processibility on the blown film process. However, data on SIC of VCD/VC copolymers has been very limited due to the difficulty of measuring the rapid crystallization rates induced by strain; whereas, crystallization under quiescent conditions has been studied extensively. In this work, SIC of VDC/VC copolymers has been calculated from measurements of the adiabatic temperature rise upon stretching of amorphous specimens. The effect of stretching conditions such as strain rate, total strain, and initial temperature and the effect of polymer variables such as copolymer composition, molecular weight, and plasticizer content are determined. It is found that the performance of different VDC/VC copolymers on the film-blowing process correlates much better with measurements of SIC than with quiescent crystallization behavior.     

8088 development system programmed in C

An 8088 development system is described which combines the advantages of a personal computer (IBM PC), with high-level language support in the form of a c compiler, and a rack-based system. A suite of programs has been developed to enable the c compiler output to be converted into a form suitable for execution on the rack-based target as either ROM- or RAM-resident applications.     

Investigation into the correct statistical distribution for oxide breakdown over oxide thickness range

A critical aspect of integrated circuit manufacturing is the reliability of the components, in particular the gate oxide of transistors and capacitors. There are two statistical distributions, which can be applied to accelerated stress test failure data, namely the Lognormal or the Weibull distributions. The failure data can fit each distribution equally well. However both distributions will give vastly different lifetime predictions and their correct use is crucial for accurate lifetime prediction. A statistical based test, developed with Monte Carlo data, which is designed to decide if a failure data set has an underlying Lognormal or Weibull distribution is applied to empirical Time Dependent Dielectric Breakdown (TDDB) failure tests. The TDDB tests are carried out on 7 nm, 15 nm and 20 nm thick gate oxides. The results generated show the importance of making the correct choice between the two distributions for accurate lifetime prediction and validate the test for different oxide thickness. Also investigated are the effects of choosing the incorrect statistical distribution has on the voltage and temperature acceleration factors.     

Automatic design and partitioning of systolic/wavefront arrays for VLSI

In this paper we show how systolic/wavefront arrays can be automatically designed and partitioned to solve problems of arbitrary size. Buffer memory and control of a resulting array is regular and simple, and is generated automatically. Also, the throughput of the array is matched with the I/O speed of the host to which it is to be attached. The approach strongly relies upon classical concepts in signal processing, such as signal flow graphs and state transition functional behavior. Some illustrative examples are included.This research was supported in part by the Dutch National Applied Science Foundation under Grant STW DEL 44.0643 and by the Commission of the EEC under the ESPRIT 991 program.     

Ele-type: an automated feeding and testing device for elephants

An automated feeding and testing device was developed to provide behavioral enrichment and research instrumentation for the elephants at the National Zoological Park/Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC     

A VLSI system architecture for high-speed radiative transfer 3D image synthesis

In this paper we describe a VLSI system architecture for high-speed synthesis of 3D images composed of diffusely reflective surfaces. The system consists of two loosely coupled sub-systems. The first sub-system computes the form-factor matrixF. The form-factors are computed by an efficient ray-tracing algorithm. The second sub-system, a multiprocessor Gauss-Seidel iterative system solver, solves the sparse system of radiosity equations(I–F)b=e.This work has been supported by the Dutch National Applied Science Foundation under grant STW DEL 47.0643This article is the second part of the Special Feature onGraphics Hardware, guest-edited by T. Nakamura. (For the first part, see The Visual Computer 4:175–221)