Parallel processing and expert systems

Whether it be monitoring the thermal subsystem of Space Station Freedom, or controlling the navigation of the autonomous rover on Mars, NASA missions in the 90's cannot enjoy an increased level of autonomy without the efficient use of expert systems. Merely increasing the computational speed of uniprocessors may not be able to guarantee that real time demands are met for large expert systems. Speed-up via parallel processing must be pursued alongside the optimization of sequential implementations. Prototypes of parallel expert systems have been built at universities and industrial labs in the U.S. and Japan. The state-of-the-art research in progress related to parallel execution of expert systems was surveyed. The survey is divided into three major sections: (1) multiprocessors for parallel expert systems; (2) parallel languages for symbolic computations; and (3) measurements of parallelism of expert system. Results to date indicate that the parallelism achieved for these systems is small. In order to obtain greater speed-ups, data parallelism and application parallelism must be exploited

Parallel processing and expert systems

Whether it be monitoring the thermal subsystem of Space Station Freedom, or controlling the navigation of the autonomous rover on Mars, NASA missions in the 1990s cannot enjoy an increased level of autonomy without the efficient implementation of expert systems. Merely increasing the computational speed of uniprocessors may not be able to guarantee that real-time demands are met for larger systems. Speedup via parallel processing must be pursued alongside the optimization of sequential implementations. Prototypes of parallel expert systems have been built at universities and industrial laboratories in the U.S. and Japan. The state-of-the-art research in progress related to parallel execution of expert systems is surveyed. The survey discusses multiprocessors for expert systems, parallel languages for symbolic computations, and mapping expert systems to multiprocessors. Results to date indicate that the parallelism achieved for these systems is small. The main reasons are (1) the body of knowledge applicable in any given situation and the amount of computation executed by each rule firing are small, (2) dividing the problem solving process into relatively independent partitions is difficult, and (3) implementation decisions that enable expert systems to be incrementally refined hamper compile-time optimization. In order to obtain greater speedups, data parallelism and application parallelism must be exploited

從權力與情慾鬥爭看潘金蓮的變態心理

歷來都有人考究《金瓶梅》這本小說，例如考究它的版本、成書年代等；但是最為人議論的莫過於書中的性慾描寫。因此，一談到性便使人聯想到《金瓶 梅》。 雖然文中有些性慾描寫史使人 慘不忍睹 但是性是人類生理上正常的需要，所謂 食、色，性也。 只是宋明理學 存天理，滅人慾 的觀念影響了我們對這本小說的看法。其實《金瓶梅》在其他方面也有它的意義，例如它反映了明代的社會和政治狀況、富貴人家的生活、佛教、道教對人們的影 響、商人的形象等。在藝術方面亦有它的價值，例如人物描寫鮮明、生活的描寫細膩和真實、文中的詞曲優美等。可是人們的著眼點只在它的性描寫， 因此忽略了其他值得談論的地方。女主角潘金蓮，更是從古到今受人非議的人物，與那些 三從四德 堅守貞潔的婦女比較，她的行為真是十分矚目。但其實她的所作所為是受到家庭和社會環境影響，使她感到自卑、焦慮和失去安全感。所以她在西門家常生事故，搬弄是非。一方面是自衛 (self defense)，一方面是引起西門慶的注意，希望他尊愛、關懷自己，因為這樣才使她感到安全、消除她的自卑感和焦慮情緒。正如荷妮(Karen Horney)說： 卻彷彿是他們的存在，幸福及安全，都有賴於受人歡迎似的。 此外她的行為就是對抗這個道德的社會，希望突破父權的約束。 除了潘金蓮外，故事中其他人物都有他(她)獨特的心理和性格，所以無論我們從甚麼角度、方法去看《金瓶梅》也可以在這塊肥泛的土地裏發掘到它的意義。 從古到今，大部分論者都認為潘金蓮是萬惡淫為首的代表人物。對於她殺死親夫式大，改嫁西門慶，並自願被他虐待，又經常勾搭男人的放蕩行為，甚是噁心。但是，我們只是罵她不守婦道、傷風敗德，我們又是否了解她的內心世界?明白她是基於甚麼心理有這些異常的行為呢?其實一個人的異常行為和心理，與他身處的環境有 很大的關係。同樣，潘金蓮的不平衡心理和不正常的行為，都與她的身份地位和社會環境有關。正如張竹坡說： 今看其一腔機詐，喪廉寡恥，若云本自天生，則良心為不可必，而性善為不可據也。吾知其二、三歲時，未必便如此涅蕩也。(二十三回評2) 可見環境對潘金蓮影響之大。 在小說裏，潘金蓮自出娘胎使標誌她在這個男尊女卑的父權社會的次等身份。由出生至嫁入西門家，她都沒有人身自由。壓逼的生活，使她感到自卑和缺乏安全感，形成她焦慮的情緒。因此引起了她要出人頭地的念頭，只有出人頭地，她才能重建自己的人格尊嚴，提高自己的地位，以及增加安全感。潘金蓮爭權、爭利、爭寵、爭愛就是一種自我保護的方法。但是，這種鬥爭生活，卻影響了她的心理，也導致她行為失常。 這篇文章裏的主題是希望透過她的遭遇、身份和身處的環境去了解她的變態心理和她種種行為的動機，並希望能為讀者提供微薄的見解和一個新角度去了解潘金蓮，而不是片面去評價她。 此外，我會從權力和情慾兩方面，以宗法制度、婚姻制度、女性主義及心理學四個理論，去探討和分析潘金蓮的受虐被虐心理、補償和報復心理及變態的嫉妒心理

PART I: FIELD DESORPTION MASS SPECTROMETRY OF PHOSPHOLIPIDS. PART II: CHARACTERIZATION OF MODIFIED NUCLEOSIDES AND NUCLEOTIDES BY FIELD DESORPTION MASS SPECTROMETRY.

Source: Dissertation Abstracts International, Volume: 37-06, Section: B, page: 2828. Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Windsor (Canada), 1976

Investigating the relationship between social capital and self-rated health in South Africa

Includes bibliographical references.Much research has examined the relationship between social capital and self-rated health in developed countries. Few studies, however, have investigated this important relationship in developing countries. This study examined this research gap using data from the National Income Dynamics Study (NIDS), the first nationally representative panel study in South Africa. Information regarding social capital - norms of reciprocity, association activity, trust and group membership - was assessed in NIDS. Self-rated health was collected at Wave 1 in 2008, and Wave 2 in 2010 - 2011. The final sample consisted of 8866 respondents. Mixed effects models were fitted to predict self-rated health in Wave 2, using lagged covariates (from Wave 1). The results indicated that individual personalised trust, individual community service group membership and neighbourhood personalised trust were beneficial to self-rated health. Reciprocity, associational activity and other types of group memberships were not found to be significantly associated with self-rated health. Results indicate that both individual- and contextual-level social capital are associated with self-rated health. Policy makers in South Africa may want to consider social capital, in addition to other well-known social determinants of health, when implementing policies to improve the health of its population

Screening of tropical medicinal plants for sporicidal activity

Bacterial spores have special significance in foods because they are much more resistant to physical and chemical antimicrobial treatment. Nowadays, there is interest in using natural products such as plant extract for food preservation. In this study, 26 of tropical medicinal plants and spices were screened for their sporicidal activity against the spores of Bacillus cereus. The spores of B. cereus was harvested after incubation at 30°C for 1 week and treated with various plant extracts using the method of Standard Operating Procedure for the AOAC (Association of Official Analytical Chemists) Sporicidal Activity. Glutaraldehyde was used as a positive control. Among them, Indonesian bay leaf (Eugenia polyantha Wight) inactivated more than 3 log of spores/ml of B. cereus (99.99%) at the concentration of 1% and completely killed B. cereus spores at concentration of 2.5%. These results suggest that Indonesian bay leaf extract has strong sporicidal activity against spores of B. cereus