Thermodynamic model for MnO-containing slags and gas-slag-metal equilibrium in ferromanganese smelting

The thermodynamics of MnO-containing slags was reviewed, and the properties of such slags were correlated by application of the cell model. This model, together with a previously developed unified interaction parameter model for the metal phase, was used to simulate the gas-slag-metal conditions in the hearth of a ferromanganese submerged arc furnace. The calculated slag and metal compositions and distribution of Mn, Si, and K between slag, metal, and fume were compared with plant data and satisfactory agreement was obtained. A steady recirculation of potassium inside the furnace was also predicted. For a potassium percentage in the raw materials of 0.63 pct, the amount of the recirculating potassium was about 160 kg per metric ton of ferromanganese. Due to the recirculation, the average potassium content in the solid mix coming down to the hearth could be as high as 7 pct.     

Towards efficient partial evaluation in logic programming

Partial evaluation is a symbolic manipulation technique used to produce efficient algorithms when part of the input to the algorithm is known. Other applications of partial evaluators such as universal compilation and compiler generation are also known to be possible. A partial evaluator receives as input a program and partially known input to that program, and outputs a residual program which should run at least as efficient as the input program with restricted input. In this paper we study the case where both the input and residual programs are logic programs, being the partial evaluator itself a logic program. Up to now, partial evaluators have failed to process large “non=toy” examples. Here we present extensions to partial evaluators whic will allow us to produce more efficient residual programs using less computing resources, during partial evaluation. First, the introduced extensions allow the processing of large examples, which is not possible with the previous techniques. This is now possible since the extensions use less CPU time and memory consumption during the partial evaluation process. Second, the extended partial evaluator produces smaller residual programs, producing important CPU time optimizing effects. With the standard techniques, a partial evaluator will most probably act as a pessimizer, not as an optimizer. Examples are given.     

Timing and causality in process algebra

 There has been considerable controversy in concurrency theory between the ‘interleaving’ and ‘true concurrency’ schools. The former school advocates associating a transition system with a process which captures concurrent execution via the interleaving of occurrences; the latter adopts more complex semantic structures to avoid reducing concurrency to interleaving. In this paper we show that the two approaches are not irreconcilable. We define a timed process algebra where occurrences are associated with intervals of time, and give it a transition system semantics. This semantics has many of the advantages of the interleaving approach; the algebra admits an expansion theorem, and bisimulation semantics can be used as usual. Our transition systems, however, incorporate timing information, and this enables us to express concurrency: merely adding timing appropriately generalises transition systems to asynchronous transition systems, showing that time gives a link between true concurrency and interleaving. Moreover, we can provide a complete axiomatisation of bisimulation for our algebra; a result that is often problematic in a timed setting. Another advantage of incorporating timing information into the calculus is that it allows a particularly simple definition of action refinement; this we present. The paper concludes with a comparison of the equivalence we present with those in the literature, and an example system specification in our formalism. Received December 20, 1993/February 23, 1995     

Electrocortical desynchronization after microinfusion of kainic acid into the locus coeruleus in rats

CD-1, a genetically-engineered CHO cell line, was cultivated with a Biosilon microcarrier culture system. We successfully cultivated CD-1 cells to a very high density (over 1 x 10(7) cells/ml). Prourokinase was stably secreted at about 180 IU/10(6) cells/24 h. Experiments showed that CD-1 cells growing on Biosilon microcarriers were able to spontaneously release from the microcarriers, then reattach and proliferate on fresh microcarriers. This makes it very easy to scale up production. The microcarriers could be reused several times without affecting adhesion, proliferation and prourokinase secretion. With CM-PECC membrane radial flow chromatography and MPG chromatography, the prourokinase in conditioned medium could be purified to a specific activity of 1 x 10(5) IU/mg of protein. The purification factor was about 600 fold, and approximately 90% of the biological activity was recovered.     

Design of Filter Banks/Wavelets Using TROV: A Survey

The design problem of multirate filter banks can be divided into two parts. The first part involves the issue of reconstruction error of the signal which consists of three components—aliasing, magnitude, and phase. The second part of the design problem involves the issue of designing good-quality subband filters. There has been a lot of research addressing the first part but there are relatively few good and simple design techniques for the second part. There is a class of techniques which we will refer to as TROV (TRansformation Of Variables) which satisfactorily addresses the two parts of the design problem. Techniques which fall under this class include the McClellan Transformation, Generalized Transformation of Variables, and Frequency Rotation. A survey of the design techniques proposed by different authors in the literature which falls under this class is presented here. First, the similarity and differences of the approaches adopted by different authors is studied. Second, it is shown that the different approaches can be unified. An extension to the design technique is presented which will enhance its flexibility and effectiveness.     

Error handling in a parallel LR substring parser

Parallel parsing is currently receiving attention but there is little discussion about the adaptation of sequential error handling techniques to these parallel algorithms. We describe a noncorrecting error handler implemented with a parallel LR substring parser. The parser used is a parallel version of Cormack's LR substring parser. The applicability of noncorrecting error handling for parallel parsing is discussed. The error information provided for a standard set of 118 erroneous Pascal programs is analysed. The programs are run on the sequential LR substring parser.     

Action semantics-directed prototyping

We present a methodology for compiler synthesis based on Mosses-Watt's action semantics. Each action in action semantics notation is assigned specific “analysis functions”, such as a typing function and a binding-time function. When a language is given an action semantics, the typing and binding-time functions for the individual actions compose into typing and binding-time analyses for the language; these are implemented as the type checker and static semantics processor, respectively, in the synthesized compiler. Other analyses can be similarly formalized and implemented. We show a sample language semantics and its synthesized compiler, and we describe the compiler synthesizer that we have developed.     

Automated zebrafish chorion removal and single embryo placement: optimizing throughput of zebrafish developmental toxicity screens

The potential of the developing zebrafish model for toxicology and drug discovery is limited by inefficient approaches to manipulating and chemically exposing zebrafish embryos-namely, manual placement of embryos into 96- or 384-well plates and exposure of embryos while still in the chorion, a barrier of poorly characterized permeability enclosing the developing embryo. We report the automated dechorionation of 1600 embryos at once at 4 h postfertilization (hpf) and placement of the dechorionated embryos into 96-well plates for exposure by 6 hpf. The process removed ≥95% of the embryos from their chorions with 2% embryo mortality by 24 hpf, and 2% of the embryos malformed at 120 hpf. The robotic embryo placement allocated 6-hpf embryos to 94.7% ± 4.2% of the wells in multiple 96-well trials. The rate of embryo mortality was 2.8% (43 of 1536) from robotic handling, the rate of missed wells was 1.2% (18 of 1536), and the frequency of multipicks was <0.1%. Embryo malformations observed at 24 hpf occurred nearly twice as frequently from robotic handling (16 of 864; 1.9%) as from manual pipetting (9 of 864; 1%). There was no statistical difference between the success of performing the embryo placement robotically or manually.     

Limited width parallel prefix circuits

In this paper, we present lower and upper bounds on the size of limited width, bounded and unbounded fan-out parallel prefix circuits. The lower bounds on the sizes of such circuits are a function of the depth, width, and number of inputs. The size requirement of an N input bounded fan-out parallel prefix circuit having limited width W and extra depth k (the difference between allowed and minimum possible depth) is shown to be (N log₂ W/2 ^k + N) for k log₂ W. This implies that insisting on minimum depth causes the circuit size to be nonlinear, while as little as log₂log₂ W of extra depth can possibly reduce the size to linear. Also, we show that there is a clear difference between the two cases of bounded and unbounded fan-out by proving the size of a limited width, unbounded fan-out parallel prefix circuit lies between a lower bound of ((2 + 2^1–k /3)N) and an upper bound of O((2 + 2^1–k )N).Uniform, systolic constructions of limited width parallel prefix circuits are provided here and shown to be asymptotically optimal. By associating the width of the circuit with the number of processors and the fan-out capabilities of the circuit with the interconnection structure of a multiprocessor, time- and processor-efficient algorithms may be developed.     

Segmentation by Continuous Latent Semantic Analysis for Multi-structure Model Fitting

International Journal of Computer Vision - In this paper, we propose a novel continuous latent semantic analysis fitting method, to efficiently and effectively estimate the parameters of model...