An Integrated Refinement and Testing Method for Stream X-machines

 Over the last decade, stream X-machines have been used in order to specify a range of systems. One of the strengths of this approach is that, under certain well defined conditions, it is possible to produce a test set that is guaranteed to determine the correctness of the implementation under test. However, if X-machines are to be used in practice as a tool for specification and test generation, there needs to be ways of developing existing specifications into more complex and more detailed versions through a process of refinement. Associated with the refinement of the specification, there needs to be methods of refining the corresponding test sets, that is to construct the test set in parallel with the specification and to distribute the testing into smaller chunks, with major cost and time savings. A few such specification and testing refinements of X-machine have already been investigated. This paper introduces a new type of X-machine refinement, called simple covering, which expands the input-output behaviour of an existing X-machine. Associated with this process, the corresponding refinement of the test set is described and a method of testing X-machines constructed as simple coverings is developed. Received: March 29, 2000; revised version: December 2, 2001     

Networked Surfaces: A New Concept in Mobile Networking

Networked Surfaces are surfaces which provide networking to specially augmented objects when these objects are physically placed on top of the surface. When an object (e.g., a notebook computer) connects, a handshaking protocol assigns functions such as data or power transmission to the various conducting paths that are established. This paper describes the position occupied by this concept in the world of networking, presents an overview of the technology used in its realisation, describes the current prototype implementation, and outlines the implications in the fields of Ubiquitous and Sentient Computing.     

An Overview of the Development of Handy 1, a Rehabilitation Robot to Assist the Severely Disabled

The Handy 1 was developed in 1987 by Mike Topping to assist an 11 year old boy with cerebral palsy to eat unaided. The system is the most successful low-cost, commercially available robotic system in the world today [10] capable of assisting the most severely disabled with several everyday functions such as eating, drinking, washing, teeth cleaning, shaving and makeup application. This paper will chart the development of the system, give an overview of some individual Handy 1 studies and will also look at the development of the RAIL (Robotic Aid to Independent Living) system funded by the European Commission BIOMED II program.     

The impact of childhood abuse on treatment outcomes of substance users.

The impact of childhood emotional, physical, and sexual abuse on treatment outcomes for substance users is not well understood. This study assessed the prevalence and impact of these kinds of maltreatment among a sample of American Indian, Mexican American, and Anglo American female and male substance users in residential treatment programs. Compared to men, women in all ethnic groups reported more abuse. Compared to a no-abuse group, respondents who reported abuse had lower self-esteem scores and higher depression scores at treatment entry and lower self-esteem scores at treatment completion. Although childhood abuse was not related to treatment outcome, gender and ethnicity were. Treatment implications for providers of drug abuse services and services to victims of violence are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Linguistic patterns of academic Web use in Western Europe

A survey of linguistic dimensions of Web site hosting and interlinking of the universities of sixteen European countries is described. The results show that English is the dominant language both for linking pages and for all pages. In a typical country approximately half the pages were in English and half in one or more national languages. Normalised interlinking patterns showed three trends: 1) international interlinking throughout Europe in English, and additionally in Swedish in Scandinavia; 2) linking between countries sharing a common language, and 3) countries extensively hosting international links in their own major languages. This provides evidence for the multilingual character of academic use of the Web in Western Europe, at least outside the UK and Eire. Evidence was found that Greece was significantly linguistically isolated from the rest of the EU but that outsiders Norway and Switzerland were not. This revised version was published online in August 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

A comparison of impact measures from hybrid and synthetic techniques: A case study of the Foothills Model Forest

This article presents an applied framework for selective precision in the insertion of superior data into hybrid regional models where regional purchasing coefficients are absent or unattainable. Due to the lack of regional-level data, crude top-down methods are the most frequently applied methods in Canadian regional studies. However, they may lead to inaccurate policy analysis where significant variation exists between the technical coefficients and trade flows of two economies. This article discusses an alternative, hybrid approach that involves the collection of region-specific information and therefore promises greater accuracy and validity of impact analysis. The robustness of the hybrid model is tested against the results derived from a synthetically regionalized model. The Foothills Model Forest (FMF) in west-central Alberta is used as a case study for the development of a sub-provincial economic database for the purpose of regional impact modeling. Received: September 1999/Accepted: September 2001     

Heterosexual risk behaviors in at-risk young men from early adolescence to young adulthood: Prevalence, prediction, and association with STD contraction.

Health-compromising lifestyles involve stable patterns of behavior and are associated with high-risk social environments and accelerated developmental trajectories. Developmentally, antisocial behavior is associated with such lifestyles. Mediational models predicting a measure of lifetime average sexual risk behavior assessed over a 10-year period (from ages 13-14 to 22-23 years) were examined for a sample of at-risk young men. The measure included years of abstinence from intercourse as well as levels of 3 key heterosexual indicators of risk: frequency of intercourse, number of intercourse partners, and condom use. Predictors included lifetime average measures of contextual, family, and peer process variables and individual behaviors. In addition, similar models for prediction of STD contraction were assessed. A younger age of onset of intercourse was associated with higher numbers of intercourse partners after onset. As hypothesized, findings indicated mediational associations of socioeconomic status, parental monitoring, deviant-peer association, antisocial behavior, and substance use in the prediction of sexual risk behavior. Lower condom use also predicted STD contraction. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

On the relations between seen objects and components of potential actions.

Accounts of visually directed actions usually assume that their planning begins with an intention to act. This article describes three experiments that challenged this view through the use of a stimulus-response compatibility paradigm with photographs of common graspable objects as stimuli. Participants had to decide as fast as possible whether each object was upright or inverted. Experiments 1 and 2 examined the effect of the irrelevant dimension of left-right object orientation on bimanual and unimanual keypress responses. Experiment 3 examined wrist rotation responses to objects requiring either clockwise or anticlockwise wrist rotations when grasped. The results (a) are consistent with the view that seen objects automatically potentiate components of the actions they afford, (b) show that compatibility effects of an irrelevant stimulus dimension can be obtained across a wide variety of naturally occurring stimuli, and (c) support the view that intentions to act operate on already existing motor representations of the possible actions in a visual scene. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)