Cobol: perception and reality

The authors list the perceptions they have uncovered and counter them with the reality of Cobol. Some of the perceptions are: Cobol is a mainframe language-it has been available on PCs since their inception; Cobol stopped evolving in the 1970s, stopped growing in popularity in the 1980s, and stopped being used to develop client-server and Web-based applications in the 1990s; and Cobol is not an object-oriented language, when, in fact, it has objects galore     

Optical fiber vibration sensor using (Pancharatnam) phase stepinterferometry

A fiber-optic vibration sensor based on polarization and phase-step interferometry is reported. Left- and right-circularly polarized light coming back from the reference and signal arms of a modified Michelson fiber interferometer is processed with an array of five linear analyzers separated angular steps of π/4 (rad) from each other. Thus, five interference patterns are acquired simultaneously and the dynamical phase retrieval problem is reduced to five-step interferometry in the time-domain. A vibration sensor as described above was built by the authors and its performance was investigated     

Scalar quantisation using a fast systolic array

A systolic array capable of outperforming a table look-up quantiser is proposed. The design has high throughput, can perform uniform or non-uniform quantisation and is suitable for VLSI or field programmable gate array (FPGA) implementation. In the latter case, the array can be used dynamically to both reduce latency and switch between quantisers without the need to reset look-up tables     

Photoacoustic spectroscopy of condensed media with a phase transition

The gas-microphone method of recording a photoacoustic (PA) Rosencwaig—Herschow signal is extended theoretically for consideration of material evaporation of a sample. For an excitation source of constant intensity and exponential saturation of vapor concentration, relations are derived to describe the transient dynamics of the PA response. Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 70, No. 1, pp. 153–155, January–February, 1997.     

Metabolic activation and inactivation of metanil yellow and orange II in the Salmonella typhimurium his-reversion assay.

Among a variety of experimental protocols used, the combined use of 0.5% dextrose in bottom agar and 1 micromol of flavin mononucleotide (FMN) in preincubation mixtures without fraction S9 mix resulted in the highest level of induced Salmonella typhimurium his reversions with both dyes metanil yellow and orange 11 with strain TA100. Strain TA98 yielded notably lower levels of reversions under the same conditions. The presence of uninduced hamster liver S9 fraction resulted in a weak mutagenic response while Aroclor 1254-induced rat liver S9 fraction resulted in the complete absence of mutagenicity with both strains and with both dyes.     

The composition and microbial quality of pre-packed dates purchased in Greater Glasgow

Composition and microbiological contamination was measured in samples of pre-packed dates purchased from a number of stores and retail outlets in Greater Glasgow. The sugar content of dried pitted dates was c . 74%, about 10% more than reported on those packs where nutritional information was given. Potentially pathogenic bacteria like Escherichia coli, Staphylococcus aureus and Bacillus cereus were identified in some of the samples together with lactic acid bacteria, yeasts and moulds, Aspergillus flavus and A. parasiticus . Fresh dates were the most heavily contaminated of all samples, probably owing to the high moisture content.