bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Reliability testing of polyimides for GaAs MMIC applications
Authors: Conlon R. F. B. , Turner J. A.
Published: July 2007

Submission of test components and representative MMICs to an extensive range of environmental and endurance tests has confirmed the suitability of polyimide as a dielectric layer for a high performance, reliable GaAs foundry process. In particular, the ability to withstand 1000 hours of 85 per cent RH, 85°C humidity testing has been demonstrated.
Compact electro‐thermal simulation of ESD‐protection elements
Authors: Russ C. , Gieser H. , Egger P. , Irl S.
Published: July 2007

Numerical simulations at the circuit level can improve the understanding of the behaviour of protection structures under system aspects. Full protection circuits with the influence of HBM ESD tester parasitics and additional parasitic elements in the circuitry have been investigated. Compact electro‐thermal models for single protection elements (diodes and snapback nMOSFETs) have been developed. They help to explain differences between expected ESD‐hardness and HBM‐failure thresholds of protection structures.
Reliability prediction of pipes and valves
Authors: Strutt J. E. , Allsopp K. , Ouchet L.
Published: July 2007

A methodology for predicting the reliability of pipes and valves and for assessing the impact of testing and inspection policy on the safe life of a component is described. The method is based on the stress‐strength interference model and enables a combination of physical models and engineering experience to be used to estimate means, variances and associated uncertainties in the life of a component. Particular attention is paid to modelling failures arising from underlying degradation processes. Bayesian routines are used to update the model parameters and to reduce uncertainties using inspection, monitoring or test data. The paper describes the principles of the method together with examples related to subsea gate valves and pipelines.
Reliability analysis for the design of an inflator
Authors: Teng Sheng‐Hsien , Ho Shin‐Yann
Published: July 2007

Product reliability is determined at its design stage and must be identified to adequately evaluate the feasibility of the current design. Reliability prediction provides the means to design verification and optimum modification. A design team must detect any potential reliability problems before the completion of the product design. This paper presents an approach to include the use of a reliability block diagram for reliability prediction, a fault tree analysis for detecting possible failures, and the axiomatic design procedure in the product design evaluation process. The discussion includes the reliability analysis of a passenger side airbag inflator design. The modification of the current inflator design is also discussed.
Voltage contrast studies on 0·5 μm integrated circuits by scanning force microscopy
Authors: Böhm Christoph , Sprengepiel Jörg , Kubalek Erich
Published: July 2007

A scanning force microscope (SFM) test system is used for voltage contrast studies on 0·5 μm integrated circuits. Waveform measurements are performed on passivated 0·5 μm conducting lines up to 4 GHz. Additionally two‐dimensional measurements at 10 MHz demonstrate the potential for device internal function and failure analysis in the sub‐μm regime by direct correlation between voltage contrast and quantitative topography images.
Measuring system and software reliability using an automated data collection process
Authors: Murphy Brendan , Gent Ted
Published: July 2007

The factors which affect the behaviour of the customer's computing environment, which is undergoing a revolution away from a server or timeshare centric model to a client/server or distributed model, can no longer be identified solely through using traditional methods of data collection. Digital Equipment Corporation has developed an automated data collection process, collecting on‐system data logging information from customer sites that has yielded consistent, quantitative, high integrity information. This information has been used to proactively focus on direct product and process improvements. This paper describes the on‐system data logging process and analysis methodology used by Digital to measure system, product and operating system reliability with examples of the application of the techniques that provide insight into the causes of failures.
Display of drawing‐type mail by successive geometric/pattern conversion method
Authors: Hayama Satoshi , Kanada Youji , Ueda Teruo
Published: July 2007

In the videotex communication service system, a new matrix function is planned. The drawing pad may be used in writing the mail, where handwritten patterns can be accepted. However, this type of mail is composed of geometric information, and the conversion to pattern information (G/P conversion) is required in the communication device to produce the output processing in the communication device in the low‐level terminal. This paper proposes a G/P conversion method (successive conversion), which suffers less delay in the start of the display and preserves the order of writing. In the successive conversion, the expansion of a geometric primitive and the transmission of the result of expansion are executed alternately. Only the rectangular region containing the part for which the expansion has been made is sent as the pattern data. The proposed method is applied to the drawing mail. It is shown that the processing required in the conversion is twice that of the straight system, where the result is sent after expanding all geometric primitives. It is also shown that the adequate speed of display for the character is 2.7 character/s, if it is displayed following the writing order.
Decision problem concerning security for cryptographic protocols
Authors: Fujiwara Toru , Taniguchi Kenichi , Kasami Tadao
Published: July 2007

This paper discusses the decision problem concerning security for such cryptographic protocols as the cryptographic key distribution protocols and the digital signature protocols. A cryptographic protocol and its utilization environment are considered secure if an opponent cannot know the secret message or forge a signature successfully by wiretapping or communication function is secure. This paper presents a sufficient condition under which the security problem is decidable. Dolev et al. also investigated the decision problem of the security, but they discussed only the simple case where the cryptographic key is not the object of manipulation (i.e., key generation and distribution are not included in the protocol), and a decision method is presented in which the decision can be made in a polynomial time. By contrast, this paper discusses the problem including the case where the cryptographic key can be an object of manipulation. The key delivery protocol by Ehrsam et al. and the digital signature protocol by Needham et al. satisfy the sufficient condition for the decidability given in this paper. Under the sufficient condition given in this paper, the security can again be decided in a polynomial time.
Pulse‐type hardware neuron model using a lambda (Λ)‐shaped transistor and its application
Authors: Sekine Yoshifumi , Suyama Masatoshi , Noguchi Masayoshi , Ito Tohru
Published: July 2007

Information processing in living organisms is carried out by the nervous system. From an engineering viewpoint, the nervous system has various interesting features. Study of the hardware neuron model is necessary for its engineering applications. A hardware neuron model by lambda‐shaped transistors has been reported by the authors. This model has a voltage‐current characteristic similar to that of living neurons, suitable for engineering applications. However, this model simulates generation of only single action potential in response to constant current stimulus. It is not a sufficient hardware neuron model for transmitting information by pulse rate.

This paper describes a pulse‐type hardware neuron model using a lambda‐shaped transistor and its applications in information processing. First, analysis of the early circuit leads to a model generating continuous action potential by constant current stimulus. Then it is explained that a hardware neuron model showing ON‐response and a Sequence Detector can be constructed with application to temporal feature detection.
Unification parallelism for prolog processing
Authors: Inagawa Masayuki , Baba Takanobu , Yamazaki Katsuhiro , Okuda Kenzo , Ishikawa Ken
Published: July 2007

The unification is a basic component of Prolog processing. However, its parallel processing has not been well studied because the number of arguments, which corresponds to the degree of the unification parallelism, is small, and a consistency check operation is necessary after a parallel unification operation. On these issues, we have implemented the following ideas: (1) enhancing the degree of parallelism by decomposing a compound term into a functor and the arguments at compile‐time; (2) allocating decomposed unification processing to multiple processor units (PUs) at run‐time; (3) decreasing the number of consistency checks by the compile‐time clustering and reducing the overhead by embedding the consistency check operations into the unification processing; and (4) stopping the operations of the other processors if the unification fails. To clarify the effect, we have developed and evaluated a Prolog processor on a multiprocessor system. The results show that statistically: (1) the decomposition of compound terms makes the number of arguments 3.2 on the average even after clustering, and that dynamically, (1) the unification parallelism performs 41 percent speed up, and the effect is evident at a small number of processors; (2) the compile‐time clustering makes the consistency check unnecessary; (3) the stop operation of processors, running in parallel, attains 0.5 – 6 percent (and 10 percent for some problems) performance improvement; and (4) the processing of clause head occupies 60 – 70 percent of dynamic microsteps and is an important object of parallel processing.
An efficient reasoning method for syllogism and its application to knowledge processing
Authors: Morita Kenichi , Nishihara Noritaka , Emura Eriko
Published: July 2007

Aristotle's syllogism is known in Japan as the “three‐stage inference.” However, it is not correctly understood in general, nor is it in the mainstream of the theory of logic now due to the widespread use of predicate logic. Syllogism is a logic system obtained by the direct analysis and description of the logical structure of linguistic knowledge and notion. Consequently, it includes several aspects suited to the knowledge information processing. The authors have proposed “tuple logic” as the logical framework for representing general knowledge described by a natural language, etc., and explored the possibility for the semantic representation and inference, which are different from those of predicate logic. This paper aims at the realization of a natural and efficient knowledge information processing by combining syllogism into tuple logic as the additional inference mechanism. The technique for efficient realization is investigated. In particular, an efficient validity‐testing procedure for syllogistic expressions is given by improving Lukasiewicz' decision method. The procedure is an application of a graph algorithm. When the set of premises is consistent, the inference can be performed in linear time, which is a useful property in the actual knowledge processing. As an example, a question‐answering system is demonstrated which can perform an inference for a certain range of Japanese sentences including negative ones.
Built—in concurrent testing for semiconductor random access memories by concurrently testing cells on a word‐line
Authors: Miura Yukiya , Tamamoto Hideo , Narita Yuichi
Published: July 2007

With the recent development of high‐density logical circuits with complex functions, a problem is produced in the long time for the functional testing. One method to cope with this problem is to employ builtin testing, which is one of the designs for testability. The method includes the testing circuit in the IC chip (the circuit under test), and testing is performed by the chip itself to decide whether or not the function is normal. We have already proposed new built‐in testing, which can test concurrently all memory cells on a word‐line. The pattern‐sensitive fault is one of the faults which have been difficult to detect. This paper applies the previously proposed method to such a fault, and presents the result. Using the method in this paper, testing can be performed by the near‐optimal test sequence with the complexity of 302N1/2, which is a drastic decrease compared with other testing methods reported to date. The testing circuit can easily be constructed using counters and shift‐registers. The hardware overhead as evaluated by the equivalent number of gates is almost negligible when the memory capacity is increased.
A continuous speech recognition expert system—sprex
Authors: Mizoguchi Riichiro , Kakusho Osamu , Tanaka Yasunori , Fukuda Naoyuki , Tsujino Katsuhiko
Published: July 2007

In the continuously uttered speech, it is often difficult to extract the features of the individual phoneme due to the interaction between phonemes called co‐articulation. In such a case, a large amount of empirical knowledge is required for recognition. In the past, efforts have been made to realize the continuous speech recognition system by a procedural language such as FORTRAN, producing problems in the flexibility and expandability of the system. This paper describes the expert system SPREX for continuous speech recognition, which aims at the solution of those problems by introducing knowledge engineering techniques into the speech recognition. The proposed system is an expert system which simulates the behavior of a human expert by the knowledge engineering technique, where the phonemes are recognized by observing the time‐course of change of the acoustic feature parameters such as formant frequencies. The system can efficiently manage and utilize the empirical rules inherent to the continuous speech recognition. At present, the system is composed of 114 expert knowledges represented by production rules. The recognition rate of 85 percent is realized for 29‐s speech uttered by 3 adult males. Finally, problems left for the studies in this direction are discussed, aiming at the amalgamation of the study of speech and the knowledge engineering.
Time complexity of response time estimation of multichannel communication networks
Authors: Matsumoto Hiroshi , Cunha Wagner Chiepa , Yamashita Masafumi , Ae Tadashi
Published: July 2007

In the multichannel communication network, more than one message can be transmitted in parallel through several channels. This paper defines response time as the time from the origination of a transmission request to the transmission completion, and discusses the time complexity in estimating the maximum response time in the multichannel communication network. The messages are transmitted in the network using simultaneously a set of channels (called a channel set). In the transmission of a message, a request may be issued for one or more channel sets. It is shown that the computational complexity is either polynomial or NP‐hard, depending on the number of requested channel sets.
Role of prosody in cognitive process of spoken language
Authors: Kitahara Yoshinori , Tohkura Yoh'Ichi , Takeda Shoichi , Ichikawa Akira
Published: July 2007

The authors are developing an arbitrary text speech synthesis system, and aiming at the improvement of the synthesized speech quality, the effect of the prosodic information data of the speech, e.g., pitch structure and the time structure, on the speech intelligibility was evaluated by a listening experiment using synthesized speech. It was verified quantitatively by the result of experiment that the pitch information works efficiently in the speech listening without attention concentration, aiding the understanding of the speech. It was seen that the accent information is especially important, so that the accent should be attached to the text speech synthesis system resulting in an accuracy as high as 98 percent or more. It was shown that the existence or nonexistence of the phrase component does not affect speech intelligibility. Some results of the experiment suggest a direction toward improving the performance of the speech recognition system. It was seen that if the phrase recognition rate of 70 percent is achieved in the speech recognition system from the acoustic viewpoint, the rate can be improved up to 90 percent or more without using the pitch information by employing the lower‐ and higher‐level linguistic knowledge' processing. The importance of these factors in improving the intelligibility are in the order of lexicon, context, and accent information.
An approximate encoding scheme for line‐drawings using the concept of vector quantization
Authors: Handa Shiro , Inoue Hideki , Tanaka Hatsukazu
Published: July 2007

This paper proposes an encoding scheme based on the concept of vector quantization, an encoding method for storing a large amount of digital line‐drawings. The vector quantization is a well‐known concept as a highly efficient encoding method for speech and image at low transmission rate. In time‐series data such as speech, the mean‐square distortion per sample is employed as the measure for the distortion in quantization, while in the line‐drawing, it is difficult clearly to specify the correspondence to the sample points. This paper proposes a matching by dynamic programming and demonstrates its validity. From the viewpoint that the distortion in encoding depends greatly on the connections among vector patterns, an encoding method permitting the encoding delay is proposed. It is shown that the distortion‐rate performance is improved drastically. The method is applied to a geographical map, and it was verified that a satisfactory figure is reproduced by approximately 1.0 bit per line pixel.
Maximum PLA folding using inverters
Authors: Iguchi Yukihiro , Mukaidono Masao
Published: July 2007

It is desired to reduce the area of mask PLA to save the silicon area and improve the switching speed. In the usual methods for folding, the columns and/or rows are folded with cuts. On the contrary, recently, a new folding technique has been proposed by the authors. In that technique, a variable line and its negation are folded into one line by inserting an inverter. This paper formulates that folding by using the regular ternary logic function and then clarifies its properties. An algorithm is described which generates the maximum folding. Some experimental results indicate that this algorithm is effective. It is easy to implement the algorithm on computers.
Data compression of myoelectric signal—estimation of force and its long‐term monitoring
Authors: Akazawa Kenzo , Nire Katsuo , Fujii Katsuhiko
Published: July 2007

It is desired in medicine and sport science to develop a lightweight and small‐sized measuring device which can estimate the generated force of muscle from a myo‐electric signal and monitor that signal for a long time. The purpose of this study is to develop a data compression method for the myoelectric signal. First, the myoelectric signal is full‐wave rectified and smoothed to extract the generated force (equivalent isometric tension) of the muscle. The smoothing filter was designed based on the measurements of the myoelectric signal and the force in the isometric contraction. Next, the waveform of the signal (FEMG) after a full‐wave rectification and smoothing is encoded by the adaptive delta modulation (ADM), and the result is stored in the memory. The parameters of ADM were determined in the optimal way for the myoelectric signal. FEMG signals were constructed from fast motion such as occurs in sports, usual motion such as walking, and the delay motion of a neural‐diseased patient, at sampling intervals of 24, 48 and 100 ms. The S/N ratios of ADM data were calculated as above 37, 45 and 52 dB, respectively. A portable computer (8‐bit CPU and 64‐kB memory) with the data compression program was constructed which can measure continuously the myoelectric signal of a normal subject for up to 12 hours. The decoded signal agreed well with the original FEMG, indicating the usefulness of the developed data compression method and the measuring system.
Linguistic processing in an island‐driven speech understanding system
Authors: Kobayashi Yutaka , Niimi Yashuhisa , Uzuhara Shigeru
Published: July 2007

An island‐driven control strategy in a speech understanding system (SUS) would be effective when reliable phonetic recognition cannot be obtained due to poor performance of the acoustic processor or noisy conditions. Especially, in conversational speech, the signal suffers from a heavy smoothing effect. An island‐driven SUS begins with detecting the acoustically most probable islands of keywords, and then expands them by a “hypothesis and test” paradigm until it covers the whole utterance using various sources of knowledge. However, this control strategy demands a very complicated linguistic processing rather than a left‐to‐right control. The authors developed an algorithm for transforming a set of syntactic rules written in the definite clause grammar into an efficient word predicting program in Prolog which operates under an island‐driven control. The basic ideas and the algorithm are explained here with a few examples of word prediction activities.
A pointing method for graphics
Authors: Yoshiyuki Nishinaka, Associate  , Yoshihiro  , Nobuki
Published: July 2007

As interactive computer systems become popular, the study of pointing devices is becoming more important. This article discusses research on the efficiency of pointing methods which include the combination of a pointing device and its controlling software. One observation from this research is that the pointing efficiency is worse on a model with a smaller target size. Here, we propose a new pointing method—the Brake Type Method—in order to reduce the error rate. In this method, we try to make pointing easier through sufficient control of the movement of the mouse‐cursor. This method was evaluated in an experiment, which was also done with a digitizer (a popular pointing device for graphics). Conclusions indicate that the Brake Type Method proposed here is quite effective in reducing the error rate without losing other aspects of pointing efficiency.
A method of frame representation of moving objects for knowledge‐based coding
Authors: Kimoto Tadahiko , Members Yasuhiko Yasuda
Published: July 2007

In knowledge‐based coding which has attracted considerable attention as a new coding scheme for moving pictures, the model of the moving object must be controlled efficiently in the range from the rough motion of the whole body to the detailed displacement of each part when the scenes are synthesized at the receiving side.

This paper describes both a method of modeling of the structure and the motions of the object using the frame representation scheme, which is often used in the field of the knowledge engineering, and a scheme to synthesize the scenes based on the models. The objective of this paper is to represent the motion of the object rather than the changes of its surface. For simplicity, the object is limited to that which consists of connected rigid parts. In our method, the structure of the object and its motions are represented hierarchically.

Using the motion model, the motion of the whole body can be controlled by the semantic information and the displacement of each part can be controlled by the function. Furthermore, the speed and the amplitude of the motion can be changed efficiently. As an example, we have represented a simple stick model of the human body and its walking motion in the frames, and then synthesized the stick motions.
A highly performable window virtual function for the multiwindow system
Authors: Nonmember Tsukasa Maejima, , Nakamura Taichi , Sugawara Shohei
Published: July 2007

A multiwindow system is one in which several rectangular regions called windows are defined on the screen of CRT or other display devices, and the user can handle each of the windows as if they were separate display devices. The features of such a system are that it has the virtual function and multiwindow image synthesis function. One of the important requirements is to reduce the overhead due to those added functions.
A method of constructing cpu for programmable controllers
Authors: Yamashita Yoshiomi , Kawashima Yoshikazu , Nonmember Masami Sakakibara,
Published: July 2007

Recently, remarkable developments and performance improvements have been made in factory automation (FA). The programmable controller (PC) is becoming more important than ever as a general‐purpose key component in FA, and rapid improvement has been made in its performance. In addition, it is highly desired to improve the information processing performance. In addition to the bit operation which has been the core of the sequence control, a performance is required which can execute a large‐scale numerical data manipulation at a high speed. This paper aims at realization of a sufficiently high‐speed information processing power. Also, it proposes a new PC dedicated CPU architecture, which is the result of optimization considering the special nature of the PC execution scheme and the command set of the PC dedicated instructions, and demonstrates its effectiveness. The proposed architecture has the following features. The processing function of PC is divided into the system management function and the instruction execution function, each of which is realized by the optimal processor and executed in parallel. The parallelism as well as the execution pattern of the execution program are extracted from the PC dedicated instructions. The parallelism and the high speed are realized as far as possible. Applying the proposed architecture to PC, the speed improvement by 60 times at the maximum is realized, compared with the fastest previous PC of the company, while maintaining the compatibility to the traditional instruction set.
DDS: A declarative debugging system for functional programs
Authors: Takahashi Naohisa , Ono Satoshi
Published: July 2007

This paper describes the outline and implementation of the declarative debugging system DDS. The purpose of DDS is to provide the following debugging system for the functional program without a side effect: (1) The programmer specifies the result of execution and the intermediate result expected to the program (defines in a declarative way, and the system detects the bug automatically based on that specification; (2) an efficient guide is provided to the programmer so that the required input is less and the input can easily be given; and (3) the system has an efficient bug detection mechanism in terms of the memory capacity and the computational complexity. It is an interactive system which can be applied to a wide range of programs. This paper proposes a mechanism called filter, which gives an efficient realization of DDS. The filter is a mechanism which realizes the tabulation technique by a small‐capacity memory, by extending the technique from the viewpoint of the bug detection. The filter is a mechanism which selectively retains the instances needed in the bug detection and controls the function call of the program using the retained data. An experimental system of DDS is constructed on VAX/VMS using Common Lisp. Debugging examples are shown, indicating the usefulness of DDS.
Automatic extraction of roads denoted by parallel lines from 1/25,000‐scaled maps utilizing skip‐scan method
Authors: Nagao Tomoharu , Agui Takeshi , Nakajima Masayuki
Published: July 2007

Research on map processing using computers has been active recently. Data of road networks in a map often are required for processing an urban map. If these data are fed manually into a computer, not only is labor considerable but many errors would occur. A solution to this problem is to extract road networks automatically from the map using a computer. This paper proposes a skip‐scan method which automatically extracts parallel lines from 1/25,000–scaled maps. A given map is scanned at constant intervals so that each cross point of the scanning line and the central line of a road are extracted as feature points. Many short vectors are formed by connecting the feature points. Referring to the original map, connection of the vectors, elimination of noise, and interpolation of parts of roads interrupted by characters on the map are carried out automatically. An algorithm used for this operation is simple, since almost all the elements are vectors. This paper describes the algorithm, and examples of result applications to actual 1/25,000–scaled maps. These confirm the usefulness of the method.
An iterative image registration technique using local affine transformation
Authors: Wakahara Toru
Published: July 2007

For registration between images, algorithms of point correspondence searching type and deformation field analyzing type have been proposed in the past. The former had a problem of increasing processing quantity and the latter had a problem of assuming small displacement or deformation. This paper proposes a cooperative image registration technique which absorbs finite displacement and nonrigid body deformation by iteratively applying affine transformations from coarse to fine for binary images expressed by sets of loci vectors of characteristic points. The process consists of four steps: (1) for each characteristic point of a reference image, a local affine transformation (LAT) weighted by Gaussian window functions is applied; (2) based on the least‐squares method, LAT is optimized for each characteristic point of the reference image so that overlapping for a group of characteristic points of input images becomes best; (3) optimized LAT is applied for each characteristic point of the reference image and deformed reference image is generated; (4) iterating steps (1) through (3) while gradually decreasing the spreads of the Gaussian window functions, when the deformed image coincides with the input image, displacement between images is determined. We have applied this method to binary character images including large deformation and random‐dot stereograms and obtained good results. Also, we evaluated the processing quantity by this method and showed that extension to gray scale images is easily formulated.
Pattern matching of 2‐D shape using hierarchical descriptions
Authors: Morita Satoru , Kawashima Toshio , Aoki Yoshinao
Published: July 2007

This paper introduces a system for hierarchical description of two‐dimensional shapes on the basis of scale space analysis. We propose a group of simple primitives for describing curved line segments; they are suitable for hierarchical analysis. To realize effective matching, nineteen rules are necessary and sufficient to derive a tree. The tree derived from the analysis yields the hierarchical structure of a shape and enables efficient matching of objects in a top‐down manner. An algorithm to create a compact database from trees is also shown. The sophisticated database is shown to be useful for recognizing objects by their category. Several examples showed that matching for skewed or occluded shapes can be done by searching for a subtree in the database.
Set partition of real numbers by hopfield neural network
Authors: Hisanaga Yutaka , Yamashita Masafumi , Ae Tadashi
Published: July 2007

The Hopfield neural network is attracting attention as a high‐speed solver for optimization and other problems. However, it contains a problem in that the network may not arrive at the globally optimal solution but stops at a locally optimal solution unless the initial state is selected appropriately. In other words, the selection of the initial state is important in solving a problem using the Hopfield neural network.

This paper considers the real number partition problem, the problem of finding the k largest elements from a given set of real numbers, given integer k. A network to solve this problem is constructed. It is shown that the network arrives at the globally optimal solution if the initial state satisfies a certain condition. Its basin also is examined. As an application example of the network, the sorting problem is considered.
NCC: A concurrent description language for scientific calculation on multiprocessors
Authors: Boku Taisuke , Kudoh Tomohiro , Amano Hideharu , Kimura Tetsuro
Published: July 2007

This paper proposes a concurrent description language called NCC for scientific calculations that are executed on a multiprocessor. NCC is based on a static concurrent process model called “NC model.” NCC's minimal features allow scientific calculations to be efficiently executed on a large‐scale multiprocessor. Having obtained less overhead in execution by restricting NCC's ability to describe concurrent processes, NCC allows users to write scientific calculation programs which are both highly easy to analyze and read.
Stereo‐based description by generalized cylinder complexes from occluding contours
Authors: Etoh Minoru , Tomono Akira , Kishino Fumio
Published: July 2007

This paper proposes a stereo‐based description technique as a preprocessing step for three‐dimensional (3‐D) recognition of an object representable by a straight homogeneous generalized cylinder (SHGC). The 3‐D position estimate of SHGC model be computed if the object being modeled is either a solid of revolution or a body whose contour is symmetrical with respect to its axial.

The proposed algorithm is applicable to a complex object if that object can be partitioned into a set of multiple SHGC's. The most important task of the algorithm is the extraction of a symmetry axis for each GC section of the object. The contour lines are analyzed in a scale space. The analysis is performed recursively to obtain each GC section that has stable contour lines. The effectiveness of the proposed algorithm for 3‐D description of an object has been demonstrated via experimentation.
Methods for realizing a priority bus system
Authors: Nakano Koji , Masuzawa Toshimitsu , Tokura Nobuki
Published: July 2007

Several bus models have been proposed for simultaneous message‐passing on a bus. The priority model is a bus model in which the rightmost processor among processors trying to send to the bus actually succeeds and the common model is a bus model in which simultaneous sending is permitted only if the same value is sent by each processor. Obviously, the priority model is more powerful than the common model. We show two practical methods for realizing a priority bus using common buses.
Relaxation neural network model for optimal binary representation of images and its implementation on a parallel computer
Authors: Sonehara Noboru
Published: July 2007

A relaxation neural network model is proposed to solve the binary image representation problem. This network iteratively minimizes the computational energy defined by the quantization error in neighboring picture elements in local and parallel computations. For effective binary representation depending on local features such as edges, a relaxation neural network is proposed. Interactions between binary processes and line processes represent discontinuities of the image. It is shown that the proposed neural models can generate high‐quality binary images. It is also shown that the proposed models can be efficiently implemented on loosely coupled, hypercube multiple‐instruction, multiple data stream (MIMD) and single instruction‐multiple data stream (SIMD) parallel computers by parallel computational models and programming methods.
Inertial waves in rotating grid turbulence
Authors: Bewley Gregory P. , Lathrop Daniel P. , Maas Leo R. M. , Sreenivasan K. R.
Published: July 2007

Using liquid helium, liquid nitrogen, and water as test fluids, we attempt to generate homogeneous turbulence in a steadily rotating system. We create turbulence by pulling a grid in rotating channels with both square and round cross sections, and observe large-scale inertial waves in the flow. These inertial waves quickly sense the boundaries, and resonate at frequencies characteristic of the container. We describe some of their properties and argue that the resultant inhomogeneity is a feature of any real system.
Is there an indigenous European social psychology?
Authors: Smith Peter B.
Published: July 2007

European social psychology does not fit readily into the characterisations of indigenization that can be applied in other parts of the world. This is partly because Europe has provided the earliest origins of the academic study of psychology, and partly because of the great historical and linguistic diversity of the continent. It is shown that both before and after the upheavals caused by the Second World War, European social psychologists have consistently tended to give greater emphasis to contextual determinants of behaviour than have their North American counterparts. In recent decades this has led to the formulation of distinctive theories that focus upon social identity, social representation, and minority influence, each of which has been vigorously pursued in centres of excellence that are spread across differing regions of Europe. The genesis and maintenance of these indigenous attributes is attributed to the transnational cohesion that has been provided by the congresses and publications of the European Association for Experimental Social Psychology and to some extent by the strength of its indigenous doctoral training programmes. However, indigenization is not an all‐or‐nothing state, nor is it necessarily a stable one. Specific aspects of globalization, such as the pressure to allocate resources on the basis of citation counts and the impact indices of journals, provide powerful continuing incentives to merge indigenous and mainstream paradigms, and there is much current research conducted by European social psychologists that does not differ noticeably in its focus from North American work. The continuing cultural diversity of Europe is such that European theories cannot be thought of as expressing attributes of a specific and distinctive culture. It is more likely that despite their origins, they will prove to have value in a broad range of cultural contexts.
Social psychology in Australia: Past and present
Authors: Feather N. T.
Published: July 2007

This paper reviews the development of social psychology in Australia from its early beginnings, through post‐World War II, to the current situation. Social psychology became an integral part of the psychology curriculum after the Second World War, with a strong emphasis at the University of Melbourne. It received an impetus in the 1960s with the creation of Flinders, Macquarie, and La Trobe universities. Currently, teaching and research in social psychology is widespread, with major centres at the Universities of Queensland and New South Wales, and at the Australian National University, but with universities such as Flinders, Macquarie, and Melbourne continuing to contribute. In general, social psychologists in Australia have not deliberately set out to develop a distinctive local identity. Instead, they have a strong international focus and are eclectic in their interests, drawing on theories and methodologies from major centres in North America, the United Kingdom, and Europe. They have made distinctive contributions in many areas, including research on acculturation, achievement motivation, the psychological impact of unemployment, values, expectancy–value theory, role theory, social identity and self‐categorization theory, deservingness, gender studies and household work, close relationships, decision‐making, social cognition, ostracism, and the effects of mood. Uniquely, Australian topics include research on tall poppies or high achievers, and on the cultural cringe. Social psychologists in Australia have also been active in industrial/organizational research and in cross‐cultural research, but there is little social psychological research involving the indigenous Australian population. Australian contributions to social psychology are not always recognized, partly because of Australia's distance from the major centres. However, social psychologists in Australia now have their own association, the Society of Australasian Social Psychologists (SASP), offer symposia and special academic appointments that draw international visitors, and compensate for the tyranny of distance by travelling widely and using the internet. Social psychology is now one of the strongest areas of Australian psychology internationally.
The Qajar Rock Reliefs
Authors: Luft J. P.
Published: July 2007

The Qajar rock reliefs are without doubt an anachronistic group of monuments in Iranian art. An expression of royal power in pre-Islamic Iran, with the emergence of Islam, they more or less disappeared. The reason is obvious—they were representing human beings in a demonstrative, outgoing fashion. But even more important was their public character. In contrast to book painting and probably less to painting on canvas, the art of rock reliefs is intentionally turned towards an audience beyond the walls of the court. In some way they belong to the public and were put there with the aim of glorifying and propagating rulership.

All together there are eight reliefs, seven from the period of Fath āAli Shah (1797-1834) although not all were commissioned by him, and one from the time of Nasir al-Din Shah (1848-96). This last one is situated on the Haraz Road, near Tangah-i Band-buridah.
Coinage of the Qajars: a System in Continual Transition
Authors: Soucek Priscilla
Published: July 2007

In Iran, long-standing traditions linked the power and prestige of a ruler with the quality and appearance of coins minted in his name. Normally each dynastic or generational shift was made visibly manifest by changes in the character and appearance of a region's coins. In general, coins issued by the Qajars from Fath ᶜAli Shah to Nasir al-Din Shah followed precedents established by earlier Muslim rulers but the Qajars also sponsored novel experiments, such as the elimination of religious phrases, the occasional use of figural designs and the replacement of hammered coins with machine made examples. It is these contradictory impulses of adherence to custom and the pursuit of innovation that give Qajar coinage its particular fascination. The richest and most varied examples were issued during the reign of Fath ᶜAli Shah (1797-1834). Not surprisingly his coins differ significantly from those issued by his less powerful predecessors, Muhammad Hasan Khan Qajar and Aqa Muhammad Khan Qajar.
Reflections on Qajar Art and Its Significance
Authors: Grabar Oleg
Published: July 2007

It is with some reluctance that I agreed to contribute a few remarks to conclude a learned and fruitful colloquium and to react, once again, to a wonderful exhibition on Qajar art. My reluctance is simple to explain and to justify. Such professional competencies as I have are those of a medievalist who begins to feel slightly uneasy by the middle of the fourteenth century. But, then, as a historian of the visual arts and as an individual curious about the lessons to be drawn from the making and uses of works of art everywhere and at any time, I became fascinated by the exhibition and many questions came to mind which may not be of immediate significance for the history and culture of Iran, but which have a lot to do with the arts in general.

For these reasons, I shall not comment directly on the papers published in this volume, which are, for the most part, beyond my competencies, except to make two observations.
Turanian Nomadism and Iranian Politics
Authors: Smith John Masson
Published: July 2007

The last millenium of Iranian history has been what might best be called the “Turanian period,” a time of Turkish and Mongol rule and nomad domination. It is a period viewed by Iranians and most students of Iranian history with mixed, largely negative, feelings that reflect the experience and writings of the conquered peoples. The experience of the Turanians tends to be disregarded, only in part because they wrote very little about it. This essay considers the nature and some of the experience of the conquering Turanian nomad society.

In discussing nomadism it is important to dispose of some perhaps tacit assumptions of cultural bias. The nomad should not be viewed as a mere vagabond or vagrant. He noves purposefully and he is far from lacking means of support, although they may be hidden over the hill or around the bend in the road.
Becoming Mollah: Reflections on Iranian Clerics in a Revolutionary Age
Authors: Fischer Michael M. J.
Published: July 2007

The role of religion and of clerics in the events leading to and during the Iranian revolution of 1977-79 provides an instructive exercise in formulating a theory of cultural influence. The institution of religious training (the madrasah system) has been in decay and under political pressure throughout this century. That the clergy should have emerged as central actors in the revolution, therefore, says something about their cultural, rather than institutional, centrality. The popular idioms of Islamic protest—deriving from the story of Karbala and from the modernist reformulations associated with Dr. Ali Shari'ati—are elaborated with reference to the learning of the madrasahs. That forms of open, secular, political discourse were suppressed under the Pahlavi monarchy helped ensure that Islamic rhetorics would become the idiom of political debate and helped give clerics (both preachers and teachers) extra leverage. The struggle over the role of the clerics continues, a struggle in which Ayatollah Khomeini himself has intervened by drawing ambiguous distinctions between obfuscatory clerics and revolutionary ones, and by chastising clerics for meddling beyond their competence.
The Hierarchy of the Arts in Buf-e Kur
Authors: Beard Michael
Published: July 2007

In recent years we have begun to see more of Sadeq Hedayat (1903-1951) as a political writer. An anonymously printed pamphlet of four previously unpublished works, including an excerpt from his political satire, Tup-e Morvari [The Pearl Cannon] (1947), appeared in Berkeley in 1973, giving us a glimpse of the other Hedayat, even at the height of Mohammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's power. In 1978 it became possible after many years to buy Haji Aqa (1945); and briefly in 1979 an edition of The Pearl Cannon was available. As we see more of Hedayat as an engaged political presence, and the Hedayat who spent two months in Uzbekistan in 1945 as a guest of the Soviet Government becomes less of an anomaly for us, Buf-e Kur [The Blind Owl] (1937, 1941) becomes more of a problem. It is patently his greatest work; and yet it is the work in which his referentiality is most in question.
Iranian Studies in France
Authors: Hourcade Bernard
Published: July 2007

There is, in France, a pronounced awareness of an “Iranian world” that can be identified in terms of cultural, linguistic, ethnic (Aryan peoples) or geographic (highlands, cold winters) characteristics common to the civilizations of all Iranian-speaking peoples living in Afghanistan, Iran, Kurdistan or south central USSR, in particular, Tajikistan. This “world” stands in contrast to the Arab, Indian and Turkish ones. The notion of a Middle East extending from Casablanca to Kabul does not exist in French. Newspapers usually refer to the Moslem lands to the south and east of the Mediterranean as the “Arab world,” as if Turkish- and Persian-speaking peoples were peripheral minorities therein.

Owing to its colonial and military heritage, France has long given special importance to theMaghrib(Morocco, Tunisia and Algeria), the Near East (Lebanon and Syria, in particular) and, as a result of the Napoleonic campaigns and Champollion's expeditions, Egypt.