Law,liability and expert systems

This paper examines some of the possible legal implications of the production, marketing and use of expert systems. The relevance of a legally useful definition of expert systems, comprising systems designed for use both by laymen and professionals, is related to the distinctions inherent in the legal doctrine underlying provision of goods and provision of services. The liability of the sellers and users of, and contributors to, expert systems are examined in terms of professional malpractice as well as product liability. A recurring theme indicates that legislators may be inclined to restrict possibilities of liability suits in order to avoid disincentives to the creation of expert systems.     

Recovering spectral data from natural scenes with an RGB digital camera and colored filters

Many spectral‐recovery methods using RGB digital cameras assume the underlying smoothness of illuminant and reflectance spectra, and apply low‐dimensional linear models. The aim of the present work was to test whether a direct‐mapping method could be used instead of a linear‐models approach to recover spectral radiances and reflectances from natural scenes with an RGB digital camera and colored filters. In computer simulations, a conventional RGB digital camera with up to three colored filters was used to image scenes drawn from a hyperspectral image database. Three measures were used to evaluate recovery with the direct‐mapping method: goodness‐of‐fit, root‐mean‐square error, and a color‐difference metric. It was found that with two and three filters both spectral radiances and reflectances could be recovered sufficiently accurately for many practical applications. With little increase in computational complexity, an RGB camera and a few colored filters can provide significantly better recovery of natural scenes than an RGB camera alone. © 2007 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 32, 352–360, 2007     

A Cold Model Aerodynamical Test of Air-Staged Combustion in a Tangential Firing Utility Boiler

The purpose of this paper is to present the flow field in the 300MW tangential firing utility boiler that used the Low NOx Concentric Firing System （LNCFS）. Using the method of cold isothermal simulation ensures the geometric and boundary condition similarity. At the same time the condition of self-modeling is met. The experimental results show that the mixture of primary air and secondary air becomes slower, the average turbulence magnitude the relative diameter of the tangential firing enlarges of the main combustion zone becomes less and when the secondary air deflection angle increases When the velocity pressure ratio of the secondary air to the primary air （p2/p1） enlarges, the mixture of the secondary air and the primary air becomes stronger, the average turbulence magnitude of the main combustion zone increases, and the relative diameter of the tangential firing becomes larger. Because the over fire air （OFA） laid out near the wall has a powerful penetration, the relative diameter of the tangential firing on the section of the OFA is very little, but the average turbulence magnitude is great. When the velocity pressure ratio of the OFA to the primary air POFA/p1 increases, the relative diameter of the tangential firing on the section of the OFA grows little, the average turbulence magnitude becomes larger and the penetration of the OFA becomes more powerful.     

An accurate and practical buffer allocation model for the buffer cache based on marginal gains

A new dynamic buffer allocation strategy based on the notion of marginal gains is presented for the buffer cache that is used by the operating system to store frequently accessed disk blocks in main memory, and the performance of the proposed strategy is compared with those of previous allocation strategies. In the proposed strategy, marginal gain values are predicted by exploiting functions that approximate the expected number of buffer hits per unit time. Experimental results from both trace-driven simulation and an actual implementation in the FreeBSD operating system show that the proposed strategy accurately predicts the marginal gain values for various workloads resulting in significantly improved buffer hit ratios.     

Facile synthesis of nanocrystalline zinc ferrite via a self-propagating combustion method

Macroporous nanocrystalline zinc ferrite with single spinel-phase was prepared by a facile self-propagating combustion method using zinc nitrate, iron nitrate and glycine. The as-prepared ZnFe₂O₄ were characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, N₂ adsorption, scanning electron microscopy (SEM), high-resolution transmission electron microscopy (HRTEM), selected area electron diffraction (SAED) and energy dispersive X-ray spectrum (EDS). The magnetic properties of the prepared ZnFe₂O₄ were also studied.     

The value of certification: an empirical assessment of the perceptions of end-users of local area networks

Abstract. Certification is one criterion that employers seek when hiring network professionals. Many employers assume a certified network professional is better able to manage networked resources than is a non-certified counterpart. Therefore, employers often offer a monetary premium to attract certified network professionals. By measuring end-user perceptions, the current study empirically assesses the popular industry assumption that certified network professionals are more adept managers of network resources than those individuals who are not certified network professionals. Analyses of a data derived from 299 end-users of 11 separate local area networks indicate no statistically significant difference exists between the capabilities of certified network professionals and non-certified network professionals.     

Intelligent SQL

Intelligent SQL is an intelligent database engine interface language which incorporates object-oriented, inferencing, and multi-media constructs. It is intended to be a powerful extension of existing SQL dialects. It also provides querying capabilities for object-oriented databases. Intelligent SQL was prototyped at Ashton-Tate. This paper discusses the main features of Intelligent SQL.     

Convolutional solutions of partial difference equations

A significant part of the theory of one-dimensional linear shift-invariant systems is based on the concept of weighting function (or impulse response): the output is the convolution of the weighting function with the input. This paper introduces the concept of linear translation-invariant systems and uses this notion in studying impulse response, z-transforms, and transfer functions for multidimensional systems.     

On the relationship between parity space and approaches to fault detection

Parity space approach and H₂ approach are two important fault detection approaches. This paper studies the relationship between these two approaches, which reveals frequency domain characteristics of the optimal solution of the parity space approach on the one side and provides a numerical solution of the H₂-optimal design of residual generators on the other side.