Retrievals of column water vapor using millimeter-wave radiometric measurements

The airborne Millimeter-wave Imaging Radiometer (MIR) measurements conducted over the Midwest region of the continental United States during January/February 1997 and over the Alaska-Arctic region during May 1998 are used to estimate column water vapor W<0.8 g/cm/sup 2/ under a clear sky. On board the same aircraft are two other instruments, the Cloud Lidar System (CLS) and MODerate-resolution Imaging Spectrometer (MODIS) Airborne Simulator (MAS), which provide cloud cover information and independent measurements of W, respectively. The MIR-estimated W values are compared and found to be in very good agreement with those measured by rawinsondes at near concurrence. A close correlation is found between the MIR-estimated W and that estimated from the MAS near-IR reflectance ratios. Water surface emissivities at several MIR frequencies are obtained in the process of the W retrieval from several flights over the Midwest lakes. These estimated emissivities compared favorably with values calculated for a calm water surface, which are based on a di-electric permittivity model and MAS-measured surface temperatures. The results from all comparisons strongly demonstrate the soundness of the technique for estimating W.     

Electromigration-induced damage in bamboo Al interconnects

Depletion and hillock formation were examined in-situ in a scanning electron microscope (SEM) during electromigration of bamboo Al interconnect segments. Hillocks formed directly at the anode ends of the segments by epitaxial addition of Al at the bottom Al/TiN interface. Depletion occurred nonuniformly from the cathode end and stopped once the distance between the leading void and the hillock reached the critical length for electromigration at the given current density. A modified equation for the drift velocity is proposed, which includes the effect of nonuniform depletion and predicts that interconnects with nonuniform depletion are more reliable than those with uniform depletion.     

Test Case Generation as an AI Planning Problem

While Artificial Intelligence techniques have been applied to a variety of software engineering applications, the area of automated software testing remains largely unexplored. Yet, test cases for certain types of systems (e.g., those with command language interfaces and transaction based systems) are similar to plans. We have exploited this similarity by constructing an automated test case generator with an AI planning system at its core. We compared the functionality and output of two systems, one based on Software Engineering techniques and the other on planning, for a real application: the StorageTek robot tape library command language. From this, we showed that AI planning is a viable technique for test case generation and that the two approaches are complementary in their capabilities.     

The road to maturity: navigating between craft and science

C. Ebert presents his views on the state of software engineering as a field, its roots and inherent conflicts, its relationship to other engineering disciplines, where it is headed, and what we can do to influence that direction. T. Matsubara, T. Webb, M. Pezze, and O.W. Bertelsen offer a spectrum of further insights     

Development of a recurrent Sigma-Pi neural network rainfall forecasting system in Hong Kong

At the moment, weather forecasting is still an art — the experience and intuition of forecasters play a significant role in determining the quality of forecasting. This paper describes the development of a new approach to rainfall forecasting using neural networks. It deals with the extraction of information from radar images and an evaluation of past rain gauge records to provide shortterm rainfall forecasting. All of the meteorological data were provided by the Royal Observatory of Hong Kong (ROHK). Preprocessing procedures were essential for this neural network rainfall forecasting. The forecast of the rainfall was performed every half an hour so that a storm warning signal can be delivered to the public in advance. The network architecture is based on a recurrent Sigma-Pi network. The results are very promising, and this neural-based rainfall forecasting system is capable of providing a rain storm warning signal to the Hong Kong public one hour ahead.     

A Metallographic Study of Abnormal Grain Growth During Aging of a β-Quenched Zr-1.14 Wt% Cr-0.08 Wt% Fe Alloy

Results are reported of a detailed optical and electron metallographic study of the effects of variations in quenching rate from the β-phase and aging temperature in the + ZrCr₂ phase region, on the recrystallization and grain growth characteristics of Zr-1.14 wt% Cr-0.08 wt% Fe alloy used for nuclear fuel sheathing. It is shown that certain quenching rates, which produce a mixed martensitic-Widmanstätten structure, should be avoided during the fabrication of fuel sheathing, since recrystallization and grain growth occurs at a much lower temperature than a material quenched at such a rate that the structure is wholly Widmanstätten or wholly martensitic. Preaging at 350 or 450°C prior to the high-temperature (700–750°C) aging reduces the incidence of recrystallization and grain growth.     

Direct evidence of high DNA binding activity of transcription factor AP-1 in rheumatoid arthritis synovium

Green fluorescent protein (GFP) is increasingly being used in plant biology from the cellular level to whole plant level. At the cellular level, GFP is being used as an in vivo reporter to assess frequency of transient and stable transformation. GFP has also proven to be an invaluable tool in monitoring trafficking and subcellular localization of protein. At the organ level and up, many exciting applications are rapidly emerging. The development of brighter GFP mutants with more robust folding properties has enabled better macroscopic visualization of GFP in whole leaves and plants. One interesting example has been the use of GFP to monitor virus movement in and among whole plants. GFP is also emerging as a powerful tool to monitor transgene movement and transgenic plants in the field. In a proof-of-concept study, tobacco was transformed with a modified version of the GFP gene controlled by a constitutive (35S) promoter. GFP expression in progeny plants ranged from 0% to 0.5%, and approximately 0.1% GFP was the minimal amount needed for unambiguous macroscopic detection. GFP is the first truly in vivo reporter system useful in whole plants, and we project its usefulness will increase even further as better forms of GFP genes become available.     

Artificial neural networks for coordination and control: The portability of experiential representations

It is time to locate connectionist representation theory in the new wave of robotics research. The utility of representations developed in artificial neural networks (ANNs) during learning has been demonstrated in cognitive science research since the 1980s. The research reported here puts learned representations to work in a decentered control task, the disembodied arm problem, in which a mobile robot operates an arm fixed to a table to pick up objects. There is no physical linkage between the arm and the robot and so the robot's point of view must be decentered. This is done by developing a modular Artificial Neural Net system in three stages: (i) a classifier net is trained with laser scan data to output transformationally invariant position classes; (ii) an arm net is trained for picking up objects; (iii) an inter net is trained to communicate and coordinate the sensing and acting. The completed system is shown to create new nonsymbolic transformationally invariant representations in order to perform the effective generalization of decentered viewpoints.     

The effect of topical corticosteroids on refractive outcome and corneal haze after photorefractive keratectomy

BACKGROUND: The effect of topical corticosteroids after excimer laser photorefractive keratectomy (PRK) remains a matter of some controversy. Refractive effects may be different according to the amount of myopia and timing of instillation. METHODS: Two groups of patients were studied: Study A consisted of 215 eyes (128 patients) with PRK (mean baseline myopia, -6.53 +/- 2.22 D) that received no corticosteroids (No Corticosteroid Group) unless significant regression or corneal haze appeared (Delayed Corticosteroid Group), and in Study B, we randomly assigned eyes to the Initial Corticosteroid Group (mean baseline myopia, -6.39 +/- 1.84 D) or the No/delayed Corticosteroid Group (mean baseline myopia -5.78 +/- 2.02 D). Clinical results after PRK for low-to-moderate and high myopia were compared. RESULTS: In the first group, 70.9% (73 eyes) of moderately myopic eyes (mean, -4.56 +/- 1.10 D) belonged to the No Corticosteroid Group that had a mean refraction of -5.39 +/- 1.77 D. Delayed Corticosteroid Group eyes were more myopic (mean, -7.52 +/- 2.10 D), and showed more severe haze than those in the No Corticosteroid Group. In study B, only in high myopes with more than -6.00 D (mean, -7.76 +/- 1.15 D) did refraction and corneal haze outcomes show significant difference between the Initial Corticosteroid Group and the No/delayed Corticosteroid Group. CONCLUSIONS: The effects of topical corticosteroids after PRK were less in moderate myopes compared to high myopes. Delayed instillation of corticosteroids did not reverse the regression or haze whereas initial instillation showed a beneficial effect on high myopes but not on moderate myopes.