Intelligent assistance for software development and maintenance

An environment is described, called Professor Marvel, that provides early error checking and answers questions about the program under development. The environment has a certain understanding of the systems being developed and how to use tools to produce software. It aids individual programmers and helps coordinate programming teams. The key components of Marvel are a database that stores data represented as objects, as in object-oriented languages, and a model of the development process that imposes a structure on programming activities. Marvel's support of insight and of opportunistic processing is discussed at length, as is the handling of side effects. A sample session is described     

A Multinational Survey of the Quality of Carbamazepine Tablets

The results of a multinational survey of the quality of carbamazepine tablets are reported. A total of 22 laboratories in nineteen countries worldwide participated in the study conducted under the auspices of the Official Laboratories and Medicines Control Services (OLMCS) Section of FIP. The results of tests conducted on 86 samples representing at least 34 different products, comprising the innovator's product Tegretol, 13 other branded products and 20 generic products, are presented. Most products fulfilled the requirements of pharmacopoeial quality standards. However, there were marked differences in dissolution behaviour which suggest that not all products are bioequivalent with each other. Most of the products tested would not comply with a requirement for the percentage of carbamazepine released at 15 minutes, that is proposed for inclusion in the USP monograph for Carbamazepine Tablets.     

Structure formation of hard alloys (Ti,W)C-WC-Co upon interaction with metallic melts of the iron group

Translated from Poroshkovaya Metallurgiya, No. 6(306), pp. 40–44, June, 1988.     

Influence of water uptake on the mechanical properties of jute fiber-reinforced polypropylene

Jute fiber-reinforced polypropylene composites have been produced and characterized in order to investigate the influence of water on their mechanical properties. Being hydrophilic, jute fibers absorb a high amount of water causing swelling of fibers. On the other hand, the thermal shrinkage of polypropylene melt leaves some gaps between jute fibers and matrix material. We investigated whether these gaps could be filled by the swelling of wetted fibers. The fillup of these gaps would result in a higher shear strength between fibers and matrix during fracture. Our results suggest that swelling of jute fibers in a composite material can have positive effects on mechanical properties. © 1994 John Wiley & Sons, Inc.