Structure and stimulus familiarity: A study of memory in chess-players with functional magnetic resonance imaging.

A grandmaster and an international chess master were compared with a group of novices in a memory task with chess and non-chess stimuli, varying the structure and familiarity of the stimuli, while functional magnetic resonance images were acquired. The pattern of brain activity in the masters was different from that of the novices. Masters showed no differences in brain activity when different degrees of structure and familiarity where compared; however, novices did show differences in brain activity in such contrasts. The most important differences were found in the contrast of stimulus familiarity with chess positions. In this contrast, there was an extended brain activity in bilateral frontal areas such as the anterior cingulate and the superior, middle, and inferior frontal gyri; furthermore, posterior areas, such as posterior cingulate and cerebellum, showed great bilateral activation. These results strengthen the hypothesis that when performing a domain-specific task, experts activate different brain systems from that of novices. The use of the expertsversus- novices paradigm in brain imaging contributes towards the search for brain systems involved in cognitive processes

Intumescent paints Patent

Nitroaniline sulfate, intumescent paint

Deep Cover HCI

The growing popularity of methodologies that turn "to the wild" for real world data creates new ethical issues for the HCI community. For investigations questioning interactions in public or transient spaces, crowd interaction, or natural behaviour, uncontrolled and uninfluenced (by the experimenter) experiences represent the ideal evaluation environment. We argue that covert research can be completed rigorously and ethically to expand our knowledge of ubiquitous technologies. Our approach, which we call Deep Cover HCI, utilises technology-supported observation in public spaces to stage completely undisturbed experiences for evaluation. We complete studies without informed consent and without intervention from an experimenter in order to gain new insights into how people use technology in public settings. We argue there is clear value in this approach, reflect on the ethical issues of such investigations, and describe our ethical guidelines for completing Deep Cover HCI Research

Bismaleimides and related maleimido polymers as matrix resins

Significant processing and property improvements can be achieved by copolymerization of state-of-the-art bisimides with various vinyl stilbazole derivatives to give both fire resistance and high-temperature properties from hot-melt compositions. Significant improvement in mechanical properties is achieved through these modifications, which may make these new matrix resins ideal candidates for fireworthy secondary graphite composite structures. Phosphorous modifications of maleimido polymers through phosphonate structure and tricyclophosphazene derivatives provide families of new matrix resins for short-time applications in severe thermo-oxidative environments. With further research these may provide matrix resins for long-term thermo-oxidative stability of advanced composites at temperatures up to 400 to 500 C

Maleimido substituted aromatic cyclotriphosphazenes

4-Aminophenoxy cyclotriphosphazenes are reacted with maleic anhydride to produce maleamic acids which are converted to the maleimides. The maleimides are polymerized. By selection of starting materials (e.g., hexakis amino or trisaminophenoxy-trisphenoxy-cyclo-triphosphazenes), selection of molar proportions of reactants, use of mixtures of anhydrides and use of dianhydrides as bridging groups a variety of maleimides and polymers are produced. The polymers have high limiting oxygen indices, high char yields and other useful heat and fire resistant properties making them useful as, for example, impregnants of fabrics

PRISM: a tool for automatic verification of probabilistic systems

Probabilistic model checking is an automatic formal verification technique for analysing quantitative properties of systems which exhibit stochastic behaviour. PRISM is a probabilistic model checking tool which has already been successfully deployed in a wide range of application domains, from real-time communication protocols to biological signalling pathways. The tool has recently undergone a significant amount of development. Major additions include facilities to manually explore models, Monte-Carlo discrete-event simulation techniques for approximate model analysis (including support for distributed simulation) and the ability to compute cost- and reward-based measures, e.g. "the expected energy consumption of the system before the first failure occurs". This paper presents an overview of all the main features of PRISM. More information can be found on the website: www.cs.bham.ac.uk/~dxp/prism

Laminate comprising fibers embedded in cured amine terminated bis-imide

Amine terminated bisaspartimides are prepared by a Michael type reaction of an aromatic bismaleimide and an aromatic diamine in an aprotic solvent. These bisaspartimides are thermally polymerized to yield tough, resinous polymers crosslinked through -NH- groups. Such polymers are useful in applications requiring materials with resistance to change at elevated temperatures