Renaming Detection

Finding changed identifiers is important for understanding the difference between two versions of a program and for detecting and resolving conflicts while merging variants of a program together. Standard practice for differencing and merging relies on line based techniques that do not recognize renamed identifiers. The design and implementation of a tool to automatically detect renamed identifiers between two versions of a program is presented. The system uses an abstract representation of language constructs to enable language awareness without introducing language dependence. Modules for Java and Scheme have been written. The detector works with multiple file pairs, taking into account renamings that span several files. A case study is presented that demonstrates proof of concept. The detector is part of a suite of intelligent differencing and merging programs that exploit the static semantics of programming languages.     

Editorial

Machine Vision and Applications -     

Personality and Emotion: Test of Gray's Personality Theory by Means of an fMRI Study.

Although it is known that there are fundamental personality differences in the behavioral responses to emotional stimuli, traits have scarcely been investigated in this context by means of functional imaging studies. To maximize the variance with respect to personality, the authors tested 12 control subjects and 12 subjects who had sadomasochistic experiences with respect to the relationship between J. A. Gray's (1970) personality dimensions, the behavioral approach system (BAS) and the behavioral inhibition system (BIS), and brain activity in regions of interest. The BIS was associated with activity in numerous brain areas in response to fear, disgust, and erotic visual stimuli, whereas few associations could he detected between the BAS and brain activity in response to disgust and erotic stimuli. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Twelve-Week Outcomes From an Investigation of High-Dose Nicotine Patch Therapy for Heavy Smokers With a Past History of Alcohol Dependence.

This study reports findings from an investigation of the efficacy of high-dose nicotine patch (NP) therapy for heavy smokers with a past history of alcohol dependence. One hundred thirty participants were randomly assigned to 42 mg or 21 mg of transdermal nicotine for 4 weeks, followed by an 8-week dose titration. Follow-up assessments were conducted at 4 and 12 weeks. Differences between dose conditions were nonsignificant, although unexpectedly, outcomes favored participants in the 21-mg NP condition. Nicotine abstinence at follow-up was related to longer length of alcohol abstinence at time of enrollment. Future research should investigate ways to improve smoking quit rates in this population, including more frequent counseling sessions and/or other pharmacotherapies. These investigations should focus primarily on smokers in early alcohol recovery. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Charging effect in electron-irradiated ice

To maintain the original distribution pattern of diffusible elements in biological samples, electron probe microanalysis is carried out with frozen hydrated bulk specimens and cryosections, analysed at temperatures below 130 K. Ice has a very low intrinsic conductivity at this working temperature and surface- and space-charging appears, when uncoated specimens are irradiated with non-penetrating electrons. Although coating with a grounded conductor abolishes the surface potential, the build-up of an internal space-charge field is possible, depending on the sample thickness and beam voltage used. Consequently, the geometry of the X-ray source volume and the spectral distribution of the emitted continuous and characteristic X-rays are affected. To simulate the situation for microanalysis of frozen hydrated specimens the charging process in electron irradiated ice is studied by recording simultaneous specimen currents from the top and bottom of ice layer preparations. The external currents yield information on the build-up of internal space-charge fields which result from the balance of charge injection, storage, and transport. Irradiation of uncoated bulk specimens with a finely focused beam results in the build-up of a space-charge field close to the surface, which causes a reduction of the depth of microprobe analysis. In coated bulk specimens the induced conductivity renders possible a current flow to the front electrode, thereby limiting the space-charge field. Sections with an effective rear electrode will not charge appreciably if the electron range is larger than about half the section thickness.     

Advances in micro assembly injection moulding for use in medical systems

In micro systems technology, the process of micro assembly injection moulding is used for the generation of hybrid micro systems. With this process, more functions are integrated in less space. In the field of medical technology, miniaturisation also means new methods of treatment with fewer side effects on the patient. New cures are developed by the miniaturisation of medical instruments, such as keyhole surgery. For detailed investigations a specific demonstration was developed to display the potential of micro assembly injection moulding in medical science. This part consists of a carbon-fibre reinforced PEEK puncture needle, which incorporates three lumens. The selected materials allow use of the needle during magnetic resonance imaging. In order to attach additional equipment a plastic connector needs to be overmoulded on the needle. The investigations focus on the injection moulding process by characterising the influences of temperature, moulding parameters and material combinations on the resulting bond strength between needle and connector.     

Restricted attacks on semi-quantum key distribution protocols

In this paper, we investigate single-state, semi-quantum key distribution protocols. These are protocols whereby one party is limited to measuring only in the computational basis, while the other, though capable of measuring in both computational and Hadamard bases, is limited to preparing and sending only a single, publicly known qubit state. Such protocols rely necessarily on a two-way quantum communication channel making their security analysis difficult. However, we will show that, for single-state protocols, we need only consider a restricted attack operation by Eve. We will also describe a new single-state protocol that permits “reflections” to carry information and use our results concerning restricted attacks to show its robustness.     

Motion analytics of zebrafish using fine motor kinematics and multi-view trajectory

Zebrafish is a useful animal model for studying human diseases such as muscle disorders. However, manual monitoring of fish motion is time-consuming and prone to subjective variations. In this paper, an automatic fish motion analytics framework is proposed. The proposed framework could be exploited to help validate zebrafish models of transgenic zebrafish that express human genes carrying mutations which lead to muscle disorders, thus affecting their ability to swim normally. To differentiate between wild-type (normal) and transgenic zebrafish, the proposed framework consists of two approaches to exploit discriminative spatial–temporal kinematic features which are extracted to represent zebrafish movements. First, the proposed approach studies precise quantitative measurements of motor movement abnormalities using a camera with the capability to record videos with high frames rates (up to 1,000 frames per second). This differs from previous works, which only tracked each fish as a single point over time. Second, the proposed approach studies multi-view spatial–temporal swimming trajectories. This differs from previous works which typically only considered single-view analysis of fish swimming trajectories. The proposed motion features are then incorporated into a supervised classification approach to identify abnormal fish movements. Experimental results have shown that the proposed approach is capable of differentiating between wild-type and transgenic zebrafish, thus helping to validate the zebrafish models.