Situating natural language understanding within experience-based design

Building useful systems with an ability to understand "real" natural language input has long been an elusive goal for Artificial Intelligence. Well-known problems such as ambiguity, indirectness, and incompleteness of natural language inputs have thwarted efforts to build natural language interfaces to intelligent systems. In this article, we report on our work on a model of understanding natural language design specifications of physical devices such as simple electrical circuits. Our system, called KA, solves the classical problems of ambiguity, incompleteness and indirectness by exploiting the knowledge and problem-solving processes in the situation of designing simple physical devices. In addition, KA acquires its knowledge structures (apart from a basic ontology of devices) from the results of its problem-solving processes. Thus, KA can be bootstrapped to understand design specifications and user feedback about new devices using the knowledge structures it acquired from similar devices designed previously.In this paper, we report on three investigations in the KA project. Our first investigation demonstrates that KA can resolve ambiguities in design specifications as well as infer unarticulated requirements using the ontology, the knowledge structures, and the problem-solving processes provided by its design situation. The second investigation shows that KA's problem-solving capabilities help ascertain the relevance of indirect design specifications, and identify unspecified relations between detailed requirements. The third investigation demonstrates the extensibility of KA's theory of natural language understanding by showing that KA can interpret user feedback as well as design requirements. Our results demonstrate that situating language understanding in problem solving, such as device design in KA, provides effective solutions to unresolved problems in natural language processing.     

Imperfections and impurity phases in flux grown RCrO3 (R = La,Yb) single crystals

Results of scanning electron microscopy (SEM) and energy dispersive X-ray analytical (EDAX) investigations, conducted on some elevated structures displayed by flux grown rare earth orthochromite, RCrO₃ (R = La, Yb) crystals, are presented. The peculiar structures exhibited by crystal surfaces indicate imperfections and impurity phases. EDAX of elevated structures reveals the various phases to be composed of lead associated materials which may probably be either Pb₂CrO₅ or Pb₂OF₂ (flux). Other secondary crystallization of impurity phases, ROF (R = La, Yb) is illustrated in the case of RCrO₃ (R = La, Yb) crystals. The elevated structures illustrate their non-stoichiometric behaviour. Precipitation of impurity phases and formation of imperfections during the growth of RCrO₃ (R = La, Yb) crystals and their effect on the crystalline quality is discussed.     

Effect of gamma irradiation on the optical properties of CR-39 polymer

The UV-Visible absorption spectra of virgin and gamma irradiated (20–800 kGy) CR-39 polymer have been deduced by using Shimadzu Double beam Double Monochromator UV-Visible Spectrophotometer (UV-2550). The existence of the peaks, their shifting and broadening as a result of gamma irradiation has been discussed. Finally the indirect and direct band gap in virgin and gamma irradiated CR-39 has been determined. The values of indirect band gap have been found to be lower than the corresponding values of direct band gap.     

Electrochemical Aspects of Electroosmotic Dewatering of Clay Suspensions

An attempt is made to elucidate the electrochemical aspects of the electroosmotic dewatering (EOD) of clays as reported in some recent work, especially that on interrupted DC power electroosmotic dewatering published by Rabie, Mujumdar and Weber (2). These authors showed that the dewatering by EOD stops after the DC power has been on for several minutes or hours; on interruption of their power and on short-circuiting of the electrodes, conditions can be created again for some further dewatering by DC power EOD. This discovery, of Rabie et al. is interpreted as a fuel cell effect and it is shown that it affords clues to several other electrochemical strategies for the possible enhancement of the efficiency of the EOD by DC power.

Further, the open circuit potentials observed by Rabie et al. (2) on the interruption of DC power are given an electrochemical interpretation which leads to quantitative estimates in agreement with the experimental values.     

Termination of pregnancy at 9-13 weeks' amenorrhoea with mifepristone and misoprostol

The effectiveness of a combined regimen of mifepristone and vaginal misoprostol for termination of pregnancies of 9-13 weeks of gestation was investigated in 120 UK abortion patients (median age, 22.1 years; median duration of amenorrhea, 10.3 weeks). Each woman received a single oral dose of 200 mg of mifepristone 36-48 hours before admission, at which time 800 mcg of misoprostol was administered vaginally. Where indicated, a further two doses of 400 mcg of misoprostol (vaginal or oral) were provided every 3 hours. All 120 women aborted on the day of prostaglandin administration; however, 6 women (5%) required exploratory curettage after the procedure for retained placenta. The median prostaglandin dose was 1200 mcg (range, 800-1600 mcg). The median time from misoprostol administration to abortion was 4.33 hours (range, 1.3-16.0 hours). 60 women (50%) required oral analgesics and 26 (22%) received parenteral analgesia. Diarrhea occurred in 38 women (32%). The median duration of bleeding after abortion was 12.5 days (range, 3-43 days). In questionnaires administered to 73 women, only 3 (4%) expressed dissatisfaction with medical abortion, because of pain or prolonged bleeding. The relatively high dose of misoprostol used in this study and the vaginal route of administration are presumed to account for the 95% success rate. Extension of medical abortion to later gestation times would decrease the need for surgery and expand women's choice of methods of pregnancy termination.     

Hybrid of multi-signal processing methods for detection of small objects in containers filled with beverages using ultrasound

Ultrasound backscattered signals for object detection could be too weak to be perceived when superposed to strong reflection signals, and could also be complicated either in time or frequency domain. These peculiarities raise a challenge for signal processing methods. In this paper four signal processing methods were studied to detect objects in containers. Root mean squares (RMS) method was better in object detection but needed to combine other methods to increase detection success rate. Variance, center frequency pressure ratio (CFPR) and backscattered amplitude integral (BAI) methods have similar overall detection ratings. The optimal signal size, to increase the detection ability, corresponded approximately to the length of reverberation signals before it was dissipated.     

Properties and Performance of Cation-Doped Ceria Electrolyte Materials in Solid Oxide Fuel Cell Applications

Cation-doped CeO₂ electrolyte has been evaluated in single-cell and short-stack tests in solid oxide fuel cell environments and applications. These results, along with conductivity measurements, indicate that an ionic transference number of ∼0.75 can be expected at 800°C. Single cells have shown a power density >350 mW/cm². Multicell stacks have demonstrated a peak performance of >100 mW/cm² at 700°C using metallic separators.     

Influence of low-frequency electromagnetic fields on living organisms

Recent research reports appear to indicate a real possibility that the low-frequency electromagnetic field produced by the power transmission and distribution network presents a health problem. A critical assessment of the available information is presented here. The state of knowledge, available evidence and conflicting reports indicate a definite need for interim action by the power industry. New direction for analytical research, possible interim avoidance measures, proper advice to clients and the public are discussed. Detailed mathematical modeling for the linear and nonlinear dynamics of DNA and the chromosome as a whole is suggested.