Effect of fenfluramine on food intake, mood, and performance of humans living in a residential laboratory

Five male and four female normal weight research volunteers, participating in 13-day residential studies, received oral fenfluramine (20, 40 mg) or placebo at 09:30 and 17:00. Food intake, performance, and subjective ratings were measured throughout the day. Carbohydrate intake was manipulated by providing lunch meals high (males: 120 g; females: 80 g) or low (males: 25 g; females: 16 g) in carbohydrate on 8 days; on the remaining days subjects self-selected lunch. Total caloric intake (approximately 2800 Kcal) did not differ among the low- and high-carbohydrate, and self-selected lunch conditions when subjects received placebo, indicating caloric compensation. Total carbohydrate intake was significantly less, however, when subjects consumed the low-carbohydrate lunch compared to the other lunch conditions. Fenfluramine significantly decreased total caloric intake (approximately 500 kcal) by decreasing meal size, not number, only when subjects consumed the low-carbohydrate lunch. Fenfluramine was only an effective anorectic drug when subjects consumed a lunch with fewer calories and a lower carbohydrate:protein ratio than self-selected baseline. Also, fenfluramine improved performance on a range of computer tasks and increased ratings of "Alert," "Friendly," and "Talkative," while decreasing ratings of "Tired" and "Irritable."     

Beyond loop bounds: comparing annotation languages for worst-case execution time analysis

Worst-case execution time (WCET) analysis is concerned with computing a precise-as-possible bound for the maximum time the execution of a program can take. This information is indispensable for developing safety-critical real-time systems, e. g., in the avionics and automotive fields. Starting with the initial works of Chen, Mok, Puschner, Shaw, and others in the mid and late 1980s, WCET analysis turned into a well-established and vibrant field of research and development in academia and industry. The increasing number and diversity of hardware and software platforms and the ongoing rapid technological advancement became drivers for the development of a wide array of distinct methods and tools for WCET analysis. The precision, generality, and efficiency of these methods and tools depend much on the expressiveness and usability of the annotation languages that are used to describe feasible and infeasible program paths. In this article we survey the annotation languages which we consider formative for the field. By investigating and comparing their individual strengths and limitations with respect to a set of pivotal criteria, we provide a coherent overview of the state of the art. Identifying open issues, we encourage further research. This way, our approach is orthogonal and complementary to a recent approach of Wilhelm et al. who provide a thorough survey of WCET analysis methods and tools that have been developed and used in academia and industry.     

Driving Automotive User Interface Research

Cars offer an interesting but challenging microcosm for pervasive computing research and, in particular, for interaction with pervasive computing systems. Increasingly, researchers are looking at interactive applications in the car and investigating human-car interaction from a computer science—rather than an ergonomics or mechanical engineering—perspective. This article reports on the International Conference on Automotive User Interfaces and Interactive Vehicular Applications, wherein participants shared presentations on topics such as aesthetics, user interaction and distraction, safety, and driver monitoring.     

The Chinese Room: Visualization and Interaction to Understand and Correct Ambiguous Machine Translation

We present The Chinese Room , a visualization interface that allows users to explore and interact with a multitude of linguistic resources in order to decode and correct poor machine translations. The target users of The Chinese Room are not bilingual and are not familiar with machine translation technologies. We investigate the ability of our system to assist such users in decoding and correcting faulty machine translations. We found that by collaborating with our application, end-users can overcome many difficult translation errors and disambiguate translated passages that were otherwise baffling. We also examine the utility of our system to machine translation researchers. Anecdotal evidence suggests that The Chinese Room can help such researchers develop better machine translation systems.     

Explicit,optimal stability functionals and their application to cyclic discretization methods

The present paper contains a stability concept for discretization methods of a certain, very general classM, which is optimal (in the sense of yielding the best general, two-sided error bounds) without being more restrictive than any of the classical stability definitions. The optimal stability functional Ψ_h related to it depends on the linear part of the discretization operator, and has the important property that Ψ_h [δ] may be of orderq+1, i.e. Ψ_h [δ] = O(h ^q+1), even if the local error δ only has orderq, δ = O(h ^q). This result may be used for the construction of methods with maximum order. Its application to linear cyclic methods, for example, furnishes a new approach to the theory of linearM-cyclick-step methods of maximum order.     

A-IMilano apoprotein. Decreased high density lipoprotein cholesterol levels with significant lipoprotein modifications and without clinical atherosclerosis in an Italian family

Significant hypertriglyceridemia with a very marked decrease of high density lipoproteins (HDL)-cholesterol levels (7-14 mg/dl) was detected in three members (father, son, and daughter) of an Italian family. The three affected individuals did not show any clinical signs of atherosclerosis, nor was the atherosclerotic disease significantly present in the family. Lipoprotein lipase and lecithin:cholesterol acyltransferase activites were normal or slightly reduced. Morphological and compositional studies of HDL in the subjects showed a significant enlargement of the lipoprotein particles (approximately 120 vs. approximately 94 A for control HDL) and a concomitant increase in the triglyceride content. Analytical isoelectric focusing of HDL apoproteins provided evidence for multiple isoproteins in the apoprotein(apo)-A-I range, with nine different bands being detected instead of the usual four bands observed in normal subjects. Two-dimensional immunoelectrophoresis against apo-A antiserum indicated a clear reduction of apo-A in the alpha electrophoretic region, with splitting of the protein "peak." The observation in otherwise clinically healthy subjects of hypertriglyceridemia, reduced HDL-cholesterol, and marked apoprotein abnormalities, without a significant incidence of atherosclerotic disease in the family suggests this is a new disease entity in the field of lipoprotein pathology, very probably related to an altered amino acid composition of the apo-A-I protein (see Weisgraber et al. 1980. J. Clin. Invest. 66: 901-907).     

Using situation calculus for e-business agents

As the Internet grows, it is becoming less feasible for customers and merchants to manually visit each web site, analyze the information there, and make sound business decisions regarding the trading of goods or services. To cope with this evolution, software agents can be designed that are capable of automating the more routine, tedious, and time-consuming tasks involved in current trading processes. At a higher level agents may also be able to negotiate and make autonomous decisions and commitments on behalf of their owners.

This paper describes an agent implementation using the situation calculus, which offers a possibly unifying paradigm for dynamic agents. Interesting applications are currently being developed. Our contribution is a situation calculus agent system developed for e-business. Ongoing work is focused on implementing this system in an open marketplace environment.     

An Algorithm for Parametric Quadric Patch Construction

An algorithm for constructing arbitrary parametric quadratic quadric triangles in rational Bézier form is presented. The algorithm does not require the knowledge of the underlying quadric, an important property in view of applying this method for the interpolation of triangulated 3D data points. The algorithm consists of four steps starting with the arbitrary choice of the three corner points and corner weights of the patch, by then constructing a certain triangle and a tetrahedron by means of which the remaining inner control points and weights are obtained guaranteeing the resulting patch to lie on a quadric surface.