Expert identification and selection: Legal liability concerns and directions

Legal liabilities pertaining to the identification and selection of domain experts is an issue that could adversely impact expert systems developers. Problems pertaining to flawed knowledge, improperly defined expertise, and behavioural and psychological impediments are just some of the issues. This paper examines the torts of strict products liability and negligence that system developers could incur as a result of expert-related difficulties. Parallels from legal scholars and federal and state court decisions are discussed relevant to expert system projects and developers. The paper concludes with a presentation of steps that systems developers can take to minimize potential legal liability.     

The effects of EPM long chain branching on TPO properties

In this paper the effects of EPM long chain branching are examined in terms of reheological, processing, and physical property responses in mechanically blended TPOs. Morphological effects induced by this polymer variable as indicated by SEM are detailed as well. The EPMs used in this study were produced by DSM Copolymer, Inc., in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.     

Lexical familiarity and processing efficiency: Individual differences in naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization.

College students were separated into 2 groups (high and low) on the basis of 3 measures: subjective familiarity ratings of words, self-reported language experiences, and a test of vocabulary knowledge. Three experiments were conducted to determine if the groups also differed in visual word naming, lexical decision, and semantic categorization. High Ss were consistently faster than low Ss in naming visually presented words. They were also faster and more accurate in making difficult lexical decisions and in rejecting homophone foils in semantic categorization. Taken together, the results demonstrate that Ss who differ in lexical familiarity also differ in processing efficiency. The relationship between processing efficiency and working memory accounts of individual differences in language processing is also discussed. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Integration of knowledge-based systems with data processing

Transaction Oriented Prolog-Online Environment is a multi-user, mainframe implementation of the logic programming language Prolog, specially designed and developed for the data processing environment. This article describes the background, functionality, implementation and use of TOP-ONE, stressing that applications of knowledge-based systems technology to data processing environments will achieve full success only when existing systems and existing conventional data are incorporated within the applications.     

Adolescent egocentrism and formal operations: Tests of a theoretical assumption.

The theoretical relation between adolescent egocentrism and formal operations was addressed in 2 studies. In Study 1, this relation was assessed with the Adolescent Egocentrism Scale (AES; R. Enright et al, see PA, Vols 63:5127 and 65:10218) and a battery of formal reasoning tasks administered to 183 6th-, 8th-, 10th-, and 12th-graders. The results reveal only significant negative or nonsignificant correlations between the measures in early adolescence. There was also no evidence of significant developmental covariation from early to middle adolescence. The validation effort was extended in Study 2 to include 2 measures of adolescent egocentrism (AES and the Imaginary Audience Scale [IAS; D. Elkind and R. Bowen, see PA, Vol 62:5769]) and a 2nd battery of formal operations problems. These measures were administered to 117 7th-, 9th-, and 11th-graders and to 56 undergraduates. There was once again no evidence of significant developmental covariation among the measures. The correlations between the AES and IAS were modest, reflecting differences in the nature and content of the measures. It is concluded that little support exists in this study or in the literature for the crucial theoretical assumption of adolescent egocentrism. (19 ref) (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Complexity theory of parallel time and hardware

The parallel resources time and hardware and the complexity classes defined by them are studied using the aggregate model. The equivalence of complexity classes defined by sequential space and uniform aggregate hardware is established. Aggregate time is related to (bounded fanin) circuit depth and, similarly, aggregate hardware is related to circuit width. Interelationships between aggregate time and hardware follow as corollaries. Aggregate time is related to the sequential resource reversal. Simultaneous relationships from aggregate hardware and time to sequential space and reversal are shown (and conversely), and these are used as evidence for an “extended parallel computation thesis.” These simultaneous relationships provide new characterizations for the simultaneous parallel complexity class NC and for the complementary class SC. The evaluation of monotone planar circuits is shown to be in NC, in fact in LOGCFL.     

Feasibility Study of Batteryless Temperature Transponders Using Miniature Microwave Cavity Resonators

Batteryless temperature transponders have been constructed and tested. The design employs a sensing element consisting of a miniature cavity resonator loaded with a ceramic material of high dielectric constant and large temperature coefficient of resonant frequency. This is connected by thin coaxial cable to a small dipole or sector antenna. Prototypes with sensors 3 mm in diameter have been fabricated and can resolve temperature differences of 0.1°C in air. Signals have been obtained from transponders implanted in anesthetized rats, but antenna orientation is a critical and limiting factor that will require further efforts before a system is capable of operating in freely roaming animals.     

Evidence for Remote Effects of Dreissenid Mussels on the Amphipod Diporeia: Analysis of Lake Ontario Benthic Surveys, 1972–2003

The status of invasive dreissenid mussels (Dreissena polymorpha and D. bugensis) and native amphipods (Diporeia spp.) in Lake Ontario was assessed in 2003 and compared with historical data. D. polymorpha (zebra mussels) were rarely observed in 2003, having been displaced by D. bugensis (quagga mussels). D. bugensis expanded its depth range from 38 m depth in 1995 to 174 m in 2003 and this dreissenid reached densities averaging 8,000/m² at all sites < 90 m. During the same time period, Diporeia populations almost completely disappeared from 0–90 m depth, continuing a declining trend from 1994–1997 reported in previous studies. The average density of Diporeia in the 30–90 m depth interval decreased from 1,380/m² to 63/m² between 1997 and 2003. Prior to 2003, areas deeper than 90 m represented a refuge for Diporeia, but even these deep populations decreased, with densities declining from 2,181/m2 in 1999 to 545/m2 in 2003. Two common hypotheses for the decline of Diporeia in the Great Lakes are food limitation and a toxin/pathogen associated with dreissenid pseudofeces. The Diporeia decline in deep waters preceded the expansion of D. bugensis to these depths, and suggests that shallow dreissenid populations remotely influence profundal habitats. This pattern of decline is consistent with mechanisms that act from some distance including nearshore dreissenid grazing and downslope transport of pseudofeces.     

Mutual information based registration of multimodal stereo videos for person tracking

Research presented in this paper deals with the systematic examination, development, and evaluation of a novel multimodal registration approach that can perform accurately and robustly for relatively close range surveillance applications. An analysis of multimodal image registration gives insight into the limitations of assumptions made in current approaches and motivates the methodology of the developed algorithm. Using calibrated stereo imagery, we employ maximization of mutual information in sliding correspondence windows that inform a disparity voting algorithm to demonstrate successful registration of objects in color and thermal imagery. Extensive evaluation of scenes with multiple objects at different depths and levels of occlusion shows high rates of successful registration. Ground truth experiments demonstrate the utility of the disparity voting techniques for multimodal registration by yielding qualitative and quantitative results that outperform approaches that do not consider occlusions. A basic framework for multimodal stereo tracking is investigated and promising experimental studies show the viability of using registration disparity estimates as a tracking feature.