Evaluation of a Computer-Assisted, 2-D Virtual Reality System for Training People With Intellectual Disabilities on How to Shop.

Objective: To evaluate the effectiveness of a 2-D virtual reality (VR) program for training people with intellectual disabilities to shop. Study Design: Pretest and posttest quasi-experimental design. Participants: Sixteen persons with intellectual disabilities (age 17-23 years; IQ = 40-54). Intervention: A VR program or a conventional program training them in supermarket-shopping skills. Main Outcome Measure: Checklist for supermarket-shopping skills. Results: Participants in both training groups showed significant improvement. There was no significant difference in effectiveness between the two methods. Conclusions: The VR program appears effective in training people with intellectual disabilities in an important community living skill. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Security and privacy in sensor networks

Sensor networks offer economically viable solutions for a variety of applications. For example, current implementations monitor factory instrumentation, pollution levels, freeway traffic, and the structural integrity of buildings. Other applications include climate sensing and control in office buildings and home environmental sensing systems for temperature, light, moisture, and motion. Sensor networks are key to the creation of smart spaces, which embed information technology in everyday home and work environments. The miniature wireless sensor nodes, or motes, developed from low-cost off-the-shelf components at the University of California, Berkeley, as part of its smart dust projects, establish a self-organizing sensor network when dispersed into an environment. The privacy and security issues posed by sensor networks represent a rich field of research problems. Improving network hardware and software may address many of the issues, but others will require new supporting technologies.     

Symbolic connectionism in natural language disambiguation

Natural language understanding involves the simultaneous consideration of a large number of different sources of information. Traditional methods employed in language analysis have focused on developing powerful formalisms to represent syntactic or semantic structures along with rules for transforming language into these formalisms. However, they make use of only small subsets of knowledge. This article describes how to use the whole range of information through a neurosymbolic architecture which is a hybridization of a symbolic network and subsymbol vectors generated from a connectionist network. Besides initializing the symbolic network with prior knowledge, the subsymbol vectors are used to enhance the system's capability in disambiguation and provide flexibility in sentence understanding. The model captures a diversity of information including word associations, syntactic restrictions, case-role expectations, semantic rules and context. It attains highly interactive processing by representing knowledge in an associative network on which actual semantic inferences are performed. An integrated use of previously analyzed sentences in understanding is another important feature of our model. The model dynamically selects one hypothesis among multiple hypotheses. This notion is supported by three simulations which show the degree of disambiguation relies both on the amount of linguistic rules and the semantic-associative information available to support the inference processes in natural language understanding. Unlike many similar systems, our hybrid system is more sophisticated in tackling language disambiguation problems by using linguistic clues from disparate sources as well as modeling context effects into the sentence analysis. It is potentially more powerful than any systems relying on one processing paradigm     

加速基因方法在最大流量频率曲线参数估计中的应用

基因方法是基于自然选择和自然基因机制的并行随机自适应工程模型参数全局优化估计的通用数值方法。它不限制模型结构、优化准则、被估参数的数目、约束条件等，已开始广泛用于各种工程模型的优化设计之中。文中对它的原理、步骤、特点进行初步探讨，并针对基因方法的弱点，作者提出予以改进的加速基因方法，后者在最大流量频率曲线参数估计中得到成功应用     

Sydis and the voice/data terminal craze of 1984

In 1984, computing firms saw integrated voice/data terminals (IVDTs) as the solution to the proliferation of new forms of executive communication. The Sydis VoiceStation was hailed as the best of this new class of office machine but, like all IVDTs, it failed. Sydis succumbed to "integration stress," one danger of product development driven by the urge to integrate traditionally discrete functions. Sydis also failed from poor integration of financial and market actors.     

Electrostatic actuation of three-dimensional MEMS mirrors using sidewall electrodes

We propose and demonstrate electrostatic sidewall-electrodes actuation of three-dimensional (3-D) microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) gimbal mirrors. The linearity of the mirror angle dependence on actuation voltage is improved with the sidewall-electrodes actuation. In addition, the undesired spring-softening effect commonly found in electrostatic actuation, where the mirror resonance frequency decreases with increased tilt angle, is significantly reduced. Sidewall actuation enables superior performance of 3-D MEMS mirrors including large pull-in angles, reduced actuation voltages, improved device reliability, and fast switching times.     

珠钢续建工程炼钢系统中的引进工艺技术

本文介绍了珠钢续建工程炼钢系统中的不锈钢生产技术、废钢预热系统控制及工艺优化、续建电炉工艺设备操作参数优化、组织管理优化等先进技术，并从措施和步骤上探讨快速掌握、消化及管理引进的先进工艺技术。     

Characterization of PdAg/Al2O3 composite membrane by electroless co-deposition

In this work, PdAg/Al₂O₃ composite membranes prepared by electroless co-deposition technique have been studied. Effects of plating time, Ag composition and total concentration of metal ions on surface morphologies, composition and microstructure of the resulting layers were investigated. Scanning electron microscope, energy dispersive spectrometer and nitrogen permeation technique were used to characterize the as-prepared composite membranes. From the experimental results, it shows that the surface morphology of the deposited PdAg layer is strongly affected by the Ag content of the plating bath. Since large differences of deposition rates and growth modes are observed between Pd and Ag grains, the PdAg layer exhibits the dendritic structure. As the Ag content is approximately 50%, the dendritic structured PdAg layer reveals the largest nitrogen permeability with the smallest size of residual pores. Furthermore, a comprehensive electrochemical analysis is proposed to interpret the composition and structure of the PdAg layer. Eventually, the experimental results are quite consistent with those predicted from the electrochemical analysis.     

Calculating the elastic moduli of steel-fiber reinforced concrete using a dedicated empirical formula

The equivalent inclusion method (EIM) is adopted to study the characteristics of the equivalent material properties of steel-fiber reinforced concrete as a function of the volume fraction and the length to diameter ratio of the fibers. It is found that the equivalent material moduli of concrete reinforce with randomly orientated and distributed fibers are insensitive to the length to diameter ratio of the steel fibers. A set of empirical formulae is then proposed for the purposes of engineering applications. The proposed empirical model can simplify the calculation of the equivalent material moduli. Verifications of the proposed empirical formulae with the EIM model and with experimental data are performed with two examples. The first is a compression test. The second is 4 point bending test. The empirical formulae, based on the equivalent inclusion method proposed in this study, represent an alternative means of quickly calculating the effective elastic modulus of steel-fiber reinforced concrete materials.