A Few Notable Diptera from Windsor Forest.

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Allen Linear (Interval) Temporal Logic --Translation to LTL and Monitor Synthesis--

The relationship between two well established formalisms for temporal reasoning is first investigated, namely between Allen's interval algebra (or Allen's temporal logic, abbreviated \ATL) and linear temporal logic (\LTL). A discrete variant of \ATL is defined, called Allen linear temporal logic (\ALTL), whose models are \omega-sequences of timepoints, like in \LTL. It is shown that any \ALTL formula can be linearly translated into an equivalent \LTL formula, thus enabling the use of \LTL techniques and tools when requirements are expressed in \ALTL. %This translation also implies the NP-completeness of \ATL satisfiability. Then the monitoring problem for \ALTL is discussed, showing that it is NP-complete despite the fact that the similar problem for \LTL is EXPSPACE-complete. An effective monitoring algorithm for \ALTL is given, which has been implemented and experimented with in the context of planning applications

IMPACT OF STRATEGIC CHANGES ON THE PERFORMANCE OF TRUCKING FIRMS IN THE AGRICULTURAL COMMODITY TRANSPORTATION MARKET

Econometric models were developed to estimate factors that influence strategic changes and evaluate the impacts that strategic changes will have on the subsequent performance of agricultural commodity trucking firms. Results reveal that GDP and change in firm size will have positive impacts on strategic changes made by firms.Public Economics,

Adequacy of Bristol stool form scale in the assessment of stools by mothers of healthy infants in Ibadan, Nigeria

Background: An important complaint of mothers is the stool form of their infants. In the evaluation of stool forms, healthcare workers usually depend on mothers’ reports which are subjective and influenced by interpretation bias by health care personnel. There is therefore the need for an objective method of describing stool forms. In the present study, we evaluated the utility of the 7-point Bristol Stool Form Scale (BSFS) when used by mothers of healthy Nigerian infants. Materials and Methods: The mothers of 122 healthy infants delivered at term, with infants less than six months of age attending the Infant Welfare Clinics of two health facilities in Ibadan, South West, Nigeria for routine immunisation were enrolled. Mothers were requested to identify their child’s most recent stool form using the 7-point BSFS. Results: The mean ± SD age of the 122 study infants was 80 ±41.6 days (range 4-180 days). Eighty-eight (72.1%) infants were exclusively breastfed and 34 (27.9%) were on mixed feeding. Almost all (120; 98.4%) mothers felt that the BSFS adequately described their infants’ stools. The most commonly reported stool types were T ype 6 (56.7%) and T ype 7 (33.3%). There was no association between reported stool consistency and infant feeding type, level of maternal education and number of previous babies nursed. Conclusion: This study indicated that BSFS may be a reliable tool for mothers to describe stool consistency in healthy Nigerian infants

Grain-size distribution of volcaniclastic rocks 2: Characterizing grain size and hydraulic sorting

Quantification of the grain size distribution of sediments allows interpretation of processes of transport and deposition. Jutzeler et al. (2012) developed a technique to determine grain size distribution of consolidated clastic rocks using functional stereology, allowing direct comparison between unconsolidated sediments and rocks. Here, we develop this technique to characterize hydraulic sorting and infer transport and deposition processes. We compare computed grain size and sorting of volcaniclastic rocks with field-based characteristics of volcaniclastic facies for which transport and depositional mechanisms have been inferred. We studied pumice-rich, subaqueous facies of volcaniclastic rocks from the Oligocene Ohanapecosh Formation (Ancestral Cascades, Washington, USA), Pliocene Dogashima Formation (Izu Peninsula, Honshu, Japan), Miocene Manukau Subgroup (Northland, New Zealand) and the Quaternary Sierra La Primavera caldera (Jalisco State, Mexico). These sequences differ in bed thickness, grading and abundance of matrix. We propose to evaluate grain size and sorting of volcaniclastic deposits by values of their modes, matrix proportion (< 2 mm; F-1) and D16, instead of median diameter (D50) and standard deviation parameters. F-1 and D16 can be uniformly used to characterize and compare sieving and functional stereology data. Volcaniclastic deposits typically consist of mixtures of particles that vary greatly in density and porosity. Hydraulic sorting ratios can be used to test whether inferred density of mixed clast populations of pumice and dense clasts are hydraulically sorted with each other, considering various types of transport under water. Evaluation of this ratio for our samples shows that most studied volcaniclastic facies are deposited by settling from density currents, and that basal dense clast breccia are emplaced by shear rolling. These hydraulic sorting ratios can be applied to any type of clastic rocks, and indifferently on consolidated and unconsolidated samples

Effect of magnetic and non-magnetic impurities on highly anisotropic superconductivity

We generalize Abrikosov-Gor'kov solution of the problem of weakly coupled superconductor with impurities on the case of a multiband superconductor with arbitrary interband order parameter anisotropy, including interband sign reversal of the order parameter. The solution is given in terms of the effective (renormalized) coupling matrix and describes not only $T_c$ suppression but also renormalization of the superconducting gap basically at all temperatures. In many limiting cases we find analytical solutions for the critical temperature suppression. We illustrate our results by numerical calculations for two-band model systems.Comment: 18 pages (12pt) RevTeX, 4 postscript figure

Wireless adiabatic power transfer

We propose a technique for efficient mid-range wireless power transfer between two coils, by adapting the process of adiabatic passage for a coherently driven two-state quantum system to the realm of wireless energy transfer. The proposed technique is shown to be robust to noise, resonant constraints, and other interferences that exist in the neighborhood of the coils.Comment: 11 pages, 6 figure

Toward one-band superconductivity in MgB2

The two-gap model for superconductivity in MgB2 predicts that interband impurity scattering should be pair breaking, reducing the critical temperature. This is perhaps the only prediction of the model that has not been confirmed experimentally. It was previously shown theoretically that common substitutional impurities lead to negligible interband scattering - if the lattice is assumed not to distort. Here we report theoretical results showing that certain impurities can indeed produce lattice distortions sufficiently large to create measurable interband scattering. On this basis, we predict that isoelectronic codoping with Al and Na will provide a decisive test of the two-gap model.Comment: 4 pages, 2 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.

Observation of the Holstein shift in high TcT_c superconductors with thermal modulation reflectometry

We use the experimental technique of thermal modulation reflectometry to study the relatively small temperature dependence of the optical conductivity of superconductors. Due to a large cancellation of systematic errors, this technique is shown to a be very sensitive probe of small changes in reflectivity. We analyze thermal modulation reflection spectra of single crystals and epitaxially grown thin films of YBa$_2$Cu$_3$O$_{7-\delta}$ and obtain the ${\alpha_tr}^2F(\omega)$ function in the normal state, as well as the superconductivity induced changes in reflectivity. We present detailed model calculations, based on the Eliashberg-Migdal extension of the BCS model, which show good qualitative and quantitative agreement with the experimental spectra. VSGD.93.12.thComment: 6 pages, figures on request. Revtex, version 2, Materials Science Center Internal Report Number VSGD.93.12.t

Extracting finite structure from infinite language

This paper presents a novel connectionist memory-rule based model capable of learning the finite-state properties of an input language from a set of positive examples. The model is based upon an unsupervised recurrent self-organizing map [T. McQueen, A. Hopgood, J. Tepper, T. Allen, A recurrent self-organizing map for temporal sequence processing, in: Proceedings of Fourth International Conference in Recent Advances in Soft Computing (RASC2002), Nottingham, 2002] with laterally interconnected neurons. A derivation of functionalequivalence theory [J. Hopcroft, J. Ullman, Introduction to Automata Theory, Languages and Computation, vol. 1, Addison-Wesley, Reading, MA, 1979] is used that allows the model to exploit similarities between the future context of previously memorized sequences and the future context of the current input sequence. This bottom-up learning algorithm binds functionally related neurons together to form states. Results show that the model is able to learn the Reber grammar [A. Cleeremans, D. Schreiber, J. McClelland, Finite state automata and simple recurrent networks, Neural Computation, 1 (1989) 372–381] perfectly from a randomly generated training set and to generalize to sequences beyond the length of those found in the training set