亚洲是否会成为全球技术创新的中心

亚洲在技术应用和创新方面获得了突飞猛进的发展，并将继续保持这种发展势头。亚洲的技术创新能力长期以来已经得到公认。现在与过去不同的是，创新正在与市场增长齐头并进。中国也正在用技术增强实力。看看“数字北京”工程和为主办2008北京奥运会开展的各项工作吧。北京有志提供非常先进的服务，这些服务要比现有数字城市基础设施提供的服务先进得多，甚至与亚洲一些先进城市相比也高出一筹。印度也在用技术增强实力，只要看看印度班加罗尔过去10年的兴旺发展就足够了。     

Cytoprotective effects of anthocyanins and other phenolic fractions of Boysenberry and blackcurrant on dopamine and amyloid β‐induced oxidative stress in transfected COS‐7 cells

There is growing interest both from consumers and researchers in the role that berries play in human health. In the experiments reported here, we assessed the ability of anthocyanins and phenolic fractions of Boysenberry and blackcurrant to ameliorate the deleterious effect of the amyloid β_25–35 (100 µmol L^?1, 24 h) and dopamine (1 mmol L^?1, 4 h) on calcium buffering (recovery) of M1 muscarinic receptor‐transfected COS‐7 cells. Cell viability was also studied. Our results demonstrate that extracts of Boysenberry and blackcurrant showed significant protective effect and restored the calcium buffering ability of cells that had been subjected to oxidative stress induced by dopamine and the amyloid β_25–35. Blackcurrant polyphenolics showed slightly higher protective effect against dopamine, whereas Boysenberry polyphenolics had a higher effect against the amyloid β_25–35. In viability studies, all extracts showed significant protective effects against dopamine and amyloid β_25–35‐induced cytotoxicity. Our results provide further evidence for the protective effects of berries against the neurotoxic effect of dopamine and amyloid β_25–35 in brain cells. Copyright © 2007 Society of Chemical Industry     

Engine autoignition: The relationship between octane numbers and autoignition delay times

The research octane (RON) and motor octane (MON) numbers, carefully measured in standardized tests, are the principal parameters for characterizing autoignition of gasoline in engines. Increasingly, engines operate under different conditions of temperature, pressure, and mixture strength from those in these tests. As a result, RON and MON values become an incomplete guide to the onset of knock, and the octane index (OI), an octane number under operational conditions, is often measured. Values of the OI were measured with different fuels in a controlled autoignition single-cylinder engine, at different initial temperatures and pressures, at the instant of 10% heat release. Fundamental understanding of engine autoignition was sought by finding the OIs of different non-primary reference fuels (non-PRFs) by identifying the corresponding PRFs that give 10% heat release under identical conditions. The autoignition delay times of the PRFs were obtained from the shock tube data, for different temperatures and pressures, of the Aachen group. It was sufficiently accurate to equate the delay time of a non-PRF to that of the corresponding PRF under the same conditions for 10% heat release. The PRFs exhibited a higher value of the inverse pressure exponent for the delay time than the non-PRFs. Together with different temperature dependencies, these gave autoignition delay times of non-PRFs that could be higher than those of their associated RONs. This tendency increased with pressure and decreased with temperature and was most marked with olefenic and toluenic fuels. This could result in values of the OI that were higher than the RON of the fuel. This is important because, for a number of evolutionary reasons, engine pressures are tending to increase and temperatures to decrease.     

Models of visual word recognition: When obscuring the stimulus yields a clearer view.

It is well known that visual word recognition is influenced by context, word frequency, and stimulus quality. A processing account is outlined in which stimulus quality affects the orthographic input lexicon, whereas context influences both the orthographic input lexicon and the semantic system. Word frequency exerts its primary effects on the pathways that link lexical systems with each other and with the semantic system. Previous findings that are problematic for alternative models along with the results of 2 new experiments are consistent with this account. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Assessing worry in older adults: Confirmatory factor analysis of the Penn State Worry Questionnaire and psychometric properties of an abbreviated model.

The assessment of worry among older adults typically has involved measures designed with younger cohorts. Because of special concerns in assessing older adults, modifications to existing instruments may be necessary. Addressing equivocal factor analytic data on the Penn State Worry Questionnaire (PSWQ) among younger adults, the authors conducted confirmatory factor analyses to evaluate the generalizability of previous models to older adults with generalized anxiety disorder. Data fit poorly with established single- and two-factor models. The single-factor model was modified, resulting in the elimination of 8 items, strong fit indices, high internal consistency, adequate test-retest reliability, and good convergent and divergent validity. Further psychometric work is required to assess whether the revised model is a more parsimonious method to assess late-life anxiety. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

An architecture for a self-improving instructional planner for intelligent tutoring systems

Machine instructional planners use changing and uncertain data to incrementally configure plans and control the execution and dynamic refinement of these plans. Current instructional planners cannot adequately plan, replan, and monitor the delivery of instruction. This is due in part to the fact that current instructional planners are incapable of planning in a global context, developing competing plans in parallel, monitoring their planning behavior, and dynamically adapting their control behavior. In response to these and other deficiencies of instructional planners a generic system architecture based on the blackboard model was implemented. This self-improving instructional planner (SUP) dynamically creates instructional plans, requests execution of these plans, replans, and improves its planning behavior based on a student's responses to tutoring. Global planning was facilitated by explicitly representing decisions about past, current, and future plans on a global data structure called the plan blackboard. Planning in multiple worlds is facilitated by labeling plan decisions by the context in which they were generated. Plan monitoring was implemented as a set of monitoring knowledge sources. The flexible control capability for instructional planner was adapted from the blackboard architecture BB1. The explicit control structure of SUP enabled complex and flexible planning behavior while maintaining a simple planning architecture.     

Toward optimisation of electrolytic reduction of solid chromium oxide to chromium powder in molten chloride salts

Electrochemical reduction of solid Cr₂O₃, in the form of an assembled cathode of porous pellets attached to a current collector, to chromium powder was investigated in molten CaCl₂ and a molten equimolar mixture of CaCl₂ and NaCl. The study focused on the influence of pellets preparation conditions, cell voltages and temperatures on the reduction process. Analyses were reported of the characteristics of the current-time plots of the constant voltage electrolysis under different conditions, cyclic voltammograms of solid Cr₂O₃ in the molten equimolar mixture of CaCl₂ and NaCl, the microstructures and elemental compositions of the reduced pellets. Particularly, attention was given to the intermediate product of the electrolysis, calcium chromites of various stoichiometries, aiming to achieve a better understanding and optimisation of the reduction process.     

The process of lexical decision: More words about a parallel distributed processing model.

Central to M. S. Seidenberg and J. L. McClelland's (1989) parallel distributed processing model's account of lexical decision is the assumption that performance is determined by the amount of overlap in the distribution of the orthographic error scores between words and nonwords. The present experiment demonstrates lexical decision performance that is independent of the distribution of orthographic error scores between words and nonwords. Furthermore, the orthographic error scores from the model capture no variance in the reaction time (RT) data to words, even in a condition in which the orthographic overlap between words and nonwords is minimal. Other issues are discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)