Visual search along the colour dimension.

Conducted 2 experiments in which 3 adults with normal or corrected-to-normal vision searched for a chromatic target among colored background items. Findings suggest that visual behavior as based on the operations of the preattentive visual system was either unaffected by factors (e.g., extent of target background similarity, background variance) that determined the level of complexity of a display or task or inhibited by their occurrence. In attention-based visual behavior, these factors exerted influence in a graded manner by modulating ease and speed with which the display was searched. Results support the heuristic value of the notion of A. Treisman (1985, 1986) of the availability of a feature map as a basis for determining the nature of a color search. (French abstract) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Impact of Ozone Treatment on Selected Microbiological Parameters

A pilot plant study was conducted to evaluate the effects of ozonation on the quality of Colorado River water delivered to the Phoenix (Arizona) Union Hills Water Treatment Plant through the Central Arizona Project canal. Raw and finished water were monitored for basic chemical water quality parameters and for microorganisms including total coliforms, heterotrophic plate count, enteric viruses, Giardia and Crvptosporidium cysts. Ozone, applied through diffusion contactors in dosages optimized to provide the required CT (concentration x contact time) value, was used as a primary disinfectant in two of the four 10 gpm (37.8 L/min) treatment trains.     

A study of words relating to youth and old age in the plays of euripides and its special implications for Euripides'' Suppliant Women

This study focuses on the imagery of youth and old age in the plays of Euripides, especially the Suppliant Women, considering frequently used words in each play according to a formula developed by Guiraud. The study identifies a motif, the rejuvenation theme, an elaborate interaction between young and old, in the Suppliant Women and in: Alcestis, Heraclidae, Andromache, Hecabe, and Heracles. The difference between the use of neos (young, new) in the Suppliant Women and in the other plays is statistically significant. This word helps Euripides contrast two different kinds of youth: the fearful, rash, and animalistic (Theban); and that which has been properly schooled and led (Athenian). The greatest ground in the Suppliant Women for praising Athens is in her treatment of the young as a politically valuable force.Eva M. Thury is associate professor of Humanities and Communications at Drexel University in Philadelphia, Pa. She is currently working with computers to produce a concordance of the Latin prose work of John Milton. She has described that process in the Winter 1987–88 issue of Academic Computing (volume 2.4, pages 6–9, 57–61). She has also recently published in Rheinisches Museum für Philologie, Arethusa and American Journal of Philology.     

Differential effects of double and triple lesions of the cat's limbic system on subsequent learning behavior.

Investigated the effects of multiple lesions of the chain-linked subicular cortex, mamillary bodies, and anterior thalamus on the acquisition of a visual reversal and an active 2-way avoidance task by 45 cats. Compared with controls, Ss with lesions of the anterior thalamus and the mamillary bodies (Group AT/MM), of the anterior thalamus and the subiculum (Group AT/SUB), or of the mamillary bodies and the subiculum (Group MM/SUB) were strongly impaired in acquiring the reversal task; Ss with lesions of all 3 structures (Group AT/MM/SUB) were unimpaired. Similarly, in the active avoidance task, 2 of the 3 groups with double lesions (MM/SUB and AT/SUB) were impaired, but Groups AT/MM and AT/MM/SUB were not, compared with the control group. It is suggested that lesion-induced shifts possibly act on intact cortical and/or thalamic structures that, prior to massive limbic lesion, remained inhibited or otherwise suppressed. It is assumed that the influence of 1 of the 3 core regions of the modified Papez-circuit is sufficient for inhibiting the action of such structures, which, following a complete lesion of the system, may control essential parts of the behaviors tested. (60 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Glasses as Nonlinear Photonic Materials

The success of photonic switching depends on the development of the materials and devices that are capable of processing light signals without converting them to electronic forms. Glasses are promising materials for these all-optical devices because of their fast-responding nonlinearities and low absorption. The aim of this paper is to apprise the ceramic community of the development of nonlinear optics research. The relative merits and trade-offs of glasses as nonlinear photonic material are discussed.     

Automation and ISO 17025 test validation of a Toxoplasma Gondii antibodies enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay

The authors automated an enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay to detect porcine serum antibodies to Toxoplasma gondii. Two thousand swine sera can be assayed in two eight-hour shifts using a robotic workstation. The automated-ELISA programming is not complex and the test configuration is flexible. This high-throughput screening (HTS) a-ELISA can achieve a 10-fold increase (100→1000 tests) in test capacity over the manual method. The assay has been validated according to the requirements of the ISO/IEC 17025 standard. These include repeatability, reproducibility, and optimal threshold value studies. Other requirements are proficiency panel testing, analyst training, standard operation procedure, and equipment certifications.     

Ambivalent attitudes towards technical progress and steps to overcome them: Reflections and results of an empirical investigation

The Bremen research group (the psychologists Birgit Volmerg and Thomas Leithäuser and the social scientist Eva Senghaas-Knobloch) was concerned with investigation into criteria for social compatibility in the area of information and communication technology, as well as with the perspectives for action in different occupational situations experienced by engineers. One central problem that remained unresolved during discussions with nine groups of engineers was the relationship between economy and culture. Only within the context of a cooperative cost-benefit or means-and-ends discussion (in which all groups in society participate) are problem-conscious engineers able to utilise their professional responsibility in the sense of achieving socially responsible technological development.     

VXQR: derivative-free unconstrained optimization based on QR factorizations

This paper presents basic features of a new family of algorithms for unconstrained derivative-free optimization, based on line searches along directions generated from QR factorizations of past direction matrices. Emphasis is on fast descent with a low number of function values, so that the algorithm can be used for fairly expensive functions. The theoretical total time overhead needed per function evaluation is of order O(n ²), where n is the problem dimension, but the observed overhead is much smaller. Numerical results are given for a particular algorithm VXQR1 from this family, implemented in Matlab, and evaluated on the scalability test set of Herrera et al. (, 2010) for problems in dimensions n ∈ {50, 100, 200, 500, 1,000}. Performance depends a lot on the graph {(t,f(x+th)) | t ? [0,1]}\{(t,f(x+th))\mid t\in[0,1]\} of the function along line segments. The algorithm is typically very fast on smooth problems with not too rugged graphs, and on problems with a roughly separable structure. It typically performs poorly on problems where the graph along many directions is highly multimodal without pronounced overall slope (e.g., for smooth functions with superimposed oscillations of significant size), where the graphs along many directions are piecewise constant (e.g., for problems minimizing a maximum norm), or where the function overflows on the major part of the search region and no starting point with finite function value is known.