An adaptive tracking problem for a family of retarded time-delay plants

Most of the existing switching control techniques are developed specifically for finite-dimensional linear time-invariant (LTI) systems. In many practical applications, however, it is essential to take time delay into consideration in the modelling as the control system can be highly sensitive to delay. In this paper, a multi-model switching control algorithm is proposed for retarded time-delay systems. It is assumed that the plant is represented by a family of known multi-input multi-output, observable, LTI models with multiple delays in the states, and that corresponding to each model in the known family, there exists a high-performance finite-dimensional LTI controller. In addition, it is supposed that a bound on the magnitude of the external inputs and disturbances is available. It is then shown that the proposed switching controller can stabilize the uncertain system, and that under some mild conditions, output tracking can be achieved in the given problem setting. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

论当前家庭装修的几个误区

分析了当前家装存在的破坏结构，一味追求奢华，施工质量差等种种误区，提出了搞好家庭装修的关键环节，对促进家装行业健康发展有积极的意义。     

CIMSCLASS─—面向CIM的零件分类软件开发工具

介绍了一个能为工厂设置零件编码系统和开发零件分类系统的工具系统。该系统能适应用户的具体环境，能对零件的特征信息做较详细的描述和建立相应目标的零件分类系统，从而能在ＧＴ（成组技术）基础上为机械加工零件开发ＣＡＤ／ＣＡＰＰ／ＣＡＭ集成系统提供支持，以满足ＣＩＭＳ的需要。     

Daily impact of climate on the pattern of urban family life : Indigenous courtyard houses of Baghdad regions of the hot-dry climates Part I: Daily shifts or daily movements in summer

During the day, there are considerable variations in the climatic factors prevailing in these regions. This is especially so during the 24-hour daily cycle of the long, hot and dry summer (mid-May to midOctober). Such climatic conditions have had a considerable impact on the daily living pattern of family life in the same season, particularly in the urban areas. During the same 24-hour cycle, they have compelled the inhabitants to shift their living activities both vertically in section and horizontally in plan; they do this in pursuit of more acceptable, if not, desirable internal thermal environmental ambience.     

Review of Psychologie de la famille.

Reviews the book, Psychologie de la famille by Monique V. G. Morval (1985). Morval presents a book with two views: the first looks at the axis of the family in light of systemic approaches and the second centers on the cycle of family life. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Strategies for Coping With Business Trips: A Qualitative Exploratory Study.

This study aimed to better understand the impact of business trips on the traveler, the family, and the organization; to learn about maximizing the positive aspects of business travel; and to suggest measures to prevent and manage travel stress. Thirty-five business travelers (American, Israeli, and Swedish) were interviewed about the costs and benefits of their traveling, with a focus on gaining insight into coping strategies. Content analysis of the interviews showed that trips consist of 4 phases--(a) pretrip, (b) journey, (c) stay, and (d) posttrip--and that each phase is characterized by different coping strategies. Business travelers reported using proactive individual and organizational coping strategies in the pretrip phase and a combination of proactive and reactive coping strategies in the other phases. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

From abandonment to symbiosis: A developmental reversal in suicidal adolescents.

This article presents the abandonment-symbiosis hypothesis. This hypothesis pertains to the dynamics of suicide in youngsters who experience difficulties in separation from their symbiotic families. It is suggested that such youngsters have experienced various types of rejection and abandonment in early childhood and have developed insecure attachment styles and insufficient ego functions in order to cope with difficulties. It is also suggested that these youngsters have become scapegoats by their dysfunctional families and that they are held in a symbiotic grip in order to continue to bear the negative projections of their families. As such, they are prevented from developing a proper sense of individuation and autonomy. The sequence that begins with abandonment and continues with symbiosis is a reversal of normal development is critical for the emergence of suicidal behavior. The various aspects of the abandonment-symbiosis hypothesis are demonstrated by case studies and empirical data. A combination of individual and family treatment is recommended as the best approach for the treatment of such youngsters. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Alliance and Dropout in Family Therapy for Adolescents With Behavior Problems: Individual and Systemic Effects.

This study examined the relationship between alliance and retention in family therapy. Alliance was examined at the individual (parent and adolescent) and family levels (within-family differences). Participants were 34 families who received functional family therapy for the treatment of adolescent (aged 12-18 years) behavior problems. Families were classified as treatment dropouts (n=14) or completers (n=20). Videotapes of the first sessions were rated to identify parent and adolescent alliances with the therapist. Results demonstrated that individual parent and adolescent alliances did not predict retention. However, as hypothesized, dropout cases had significantly higher unbalanced alliances (parent minus adolescent) than did completer cases. These findings highlight the importance of alliances in functional family therapy and suggest that how the alliance operates in conjoint family therapy may be a function of systemic rather than of individual processes. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

The complexity of oblivious plans for orienting and distinguishing polygonal parts

In the problem ofparts feeding we are given a class of feasible operations for reorienting a part, and we are asked to find a fixed sequence of these operations which is guaranteed to bring the part into a known goal orientation from any possible initial orientation. Goldberg addressed this problem in [2], and showed that, for planar polygonal parts, there is always a sequence of simple operations which can be performed by a simple parallel-jaw gripper, which is guaranteed to orient the part (up to symmetry) without the use of any sensor information; he also conjectured thatO(n) steps are sufficient.In this paper we prove Goldberg's conjecture by explicitly constructing plans of at most2n – 1 steps for orienting polygonal parts in this model. We also give a lower bound on the number of steps required for such plans to show that this upper bound is tight.Finally, we extend these results to the problem ofdistinguishing among a finite set of parts using minimal sensing. Specifically, we assume that we are given a set of known polygonal parts, and a parallel-jaw gripper able to sense the distance between its jaws upon closure. We construct a simple oblivious plan of linear complexity which, when presented with a polygonal part, determines the index of this part.This research was supported in part by the NSF under Grant CCR-9207422, and by a Zumberge Fellowship. A preliminary version of this paper appeared in theProceedings of the Fourth Canadian Conference on Computational Geometry [1].     

基于超图的产品族结构模型的研究

产品族结构模型是对系列化和组合产品各种复杂关系的综合和表达，它的合理性是产品配置设计过程的基础，超图能够表达是一般离散结构，而结构化超图表达了集合元素之间的层次关系，利用结构化超图模型来构造产品族结构模型，并给出了配置设计算法，最后用一个实例来验证方法的可行性。