Managing Structural Information by Higher-Order Colored Unification

Coloring terms (rippling) is a technique developed for inductive theorem proving that uses syntactic differences of terms to guide the proof search. Annotations (colors) to symbol occurrences in terms are used to maintain this information. This technique has several advantages; for example, it is highly goal oriented and involves little search. In this paper we give a general formalization of coloring terms in a higher-order setting. We introduce a simply typed calculus with color annotations and present appropriate algorithms for the general, pre-, and pattern unification problems. Our work is a formal basis to the implementation of rippling in a higher-order setting, which is required, for example, in the case of middle-out reasoning. Another application is in the construction of natural the language semantics, where the color annotations rule out linguistically invalid readings that are possible using standard higher-order unification.     

Condensation, heating and ventilation in small homes

Gary Raw, Head, Human Factors and Health Section, at the UK Building Research Establishment, and T. A. Fox present the results of the investigations into condensation problems and give an indication of the related factors. Ventilation devices, air movement, heating and insulation, were more important than occupants' behaviour and energy consciousness.     

Long-term potentiation in vivo in layers II/III of rat barrel cortex

Long-term potentiation was studied in vivo in the rat barrel cortex. It was found that LTP lasting several hours could be induced in layer II/III by tetanic stimuli applied in layer IV. The probability of inducing LTP at a given site was high (86%) provided that the electrodes were not displaced too far horizontally. LTP was not observed if the stimulating electrode was located on the far side of the neighbouring barrel-column from the recording electrode. The strongest LTP was induced by stimulating layer IV septal locations or the edge of the barrel and recording in the near half of the neighbouring barrel. However, examples were found of LTP from layer IV to II/III within the same barrel, within the same septum and from barrel to adjacent septum. The probability of inducing LTP on a particular occasion was greatly increased by iontophoresis of bicuculline at the recording site during the tetanus (from 20 to 55% judged by a change in peak amplitude). The average increase in the peak amplitude was 29 +/- 3.2% for protocol 1 (urethane anesthesia, monopolar stimulation) and 23 +/- 7% for protocol 2 (barbiturate anesthesia, bipolar stimulation). The probability of inducing LTP was greater if the first tetanus was accompanied by BMI application (67%) than for any subsequent attempts (39%). These results suggest it should be possible to study the effect of LTP on sensory processing in defined positions within the barrel field.     

Activation of bovine lymphocyte subpopulations by staphylococcal enterotoxin C

Staphylococcus aureus is a major mastitis-causing pathogen in cattle. The chronic nature of bovine staphylococcal mastitis suggests that some products or components of S. aureus may interfere with the development of protective immunity. One class of molecules that could be involved are superantigens (SAgs). Although a significant number of mastitis isolates produce SAgs, the effect of these molecules on the bovine immune system is unresolved. To determine if immunosuppression caused by SAgs could play a role in pathogenesis, we monitored bovine lymphocytes exposed to staphylococcal enterotoxin C1 (SEC1). Activation of bovine lymphocytes by either SEC1 or concanavalin A (ConA) was influenced by the gammadelta/alphabeta T-cell ratio in the culture. Compared to ConA-induced stimulation, cultures stimulated with SEC1 generated small numbers of CD4+ alphabeta T cells expressing high levels of interleukin-2 receptor alpha chain (IL-2R alpha) and major histocompatibility complex class II (MHCII), suggesting that SAg exposure does not lead to full activation of these cells. This state of partial activation was most pronounced in cultures with a high gammadelta/alphabeta ratio. In contrast, significant numbers of CD8+ alphabeta T cells expressed high levels of IL-2R alpha and MHCII, regardless of the gammadelta/alphabeta ratio and the stimulant used. CD8+ blasts in cultures stimulated with SEC1 also expressed another activation marker, ACT3, previously detected predominantly on thymocytes and CD4+ T cells. Although gammadelta CD2- and CD2+ T cells expressed MHCII and IL-2R alpha following stimulation with SEC1, only a few cells increased to blast size, suggesting that they were only partially activated. The results suggest ways in which SAgs might facilitate immunosuppression that promotes the persistence of bacteria in cattle and contributes to chronic intramammary infection.     

Three-dimensional Doppler velocimetry of flow jets

A closed-form solution is derived of the Doppler equation for the magnitude and angle to the three-dimensional velocity vector. The resultant solution is more general than previous formulations and, since it is based on multiple conventional transmit-receive Doppler probes, it can be readily applied by adapting existing Doppler units. Turntable experiments demonstrated that the three-dimensional angle-independent theory correctly predicted velocity within average 32% over a 26.°-range of Doppler angles. Experiments with a flow phantom showed general agreement with the angle-independent theory in the more demanding setting of an actual flow stream. Experiments utilizing a jet stream which modeled the clinically important conditions that exist in stenotic vessels, valvular abnormalities, and septal defects within 1.4-3.8% of the actual velocity, over an 18° range of Doppler angles     

Microwave Rejection Networks

This is an extension of the Bridged-T infinite rejection network idea transformed into microwave concepts. These devices achieve approximately 100db of attenuation with skirt attenuations approximately 5db. The tuning range between 1 KMc and 10 KMc is continuously covered with 4 units at present. Work is continuing to reduce the number of units to 2. Design parameters, performance curves, and application to MILSTD 826 will be discussed.