Adequate instructions are essential to the correct performance of actions. An instruction is adequate if its action(s) and objects are identified sufficiently and unambiguously, given the instruction’s context. For instance, the instruction Turn the knob would be inadequate if, in the context, more than one knob or one way of turning a knob were salient. However, even if the knob and the manner...

Texas Instruments, Inc. Stafford, Texas ([email protected]) I am often introduced as an expert in how integrated circuits work. This is not all that accurate. My field of expertise is in how integrated circuits fail and more specifically how they fail in end systems. I find this perspective biases my positions in a different direction from many experts in the fields of silicon test or silicon quali...

In past decades, researchers in various countries have studied the consequences of iodine deficiency on the mental and physical development of children and adults. Iodine deficiency proved to have disastrous consequences on cognitive and psychomotor development for a limited group (i.e., DeLong 1989). These are the so-called cretins, who make up more than 10% of the population in some areas. Th...

BACKGROUND We aimed to construct a timeline for nontreponemal titer decline specific to pregnancy and evaluate factors associated with inadequate decline by delivery. METHODS This was a retrospective medical records review from September 1984 to June 2011 of women diagnosed with syphilis after 18 weeks of gestation. Women were treated according to stage of syphilis per Centers for Disease Con...

Our approach to mind-design derives from the view of language as a mirror of mind – a view compatible with the linguistic orientation of the Turing Test, and more concretely, with the remarkably tight coupling between linguistic structure and semantic entailment demonstrated by Richard Montague. Additional evidence for the power of this perspective comes from recent work in Natural Logic (NLog)...

We study the complexity of computation in finitely generated free left, right and two-sided adequate semigroups and monoids. We present polynomial time (quadratic in the RAM model of computation) algorithms to solve the word problem and compute normal forms in each of these, and hence also to test whether any given identity holds in the classes of left, right and/or two-sided adequate semigroups.

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are integrations of computation with physical processes. Embedded computers and networks monitor and control the physical processes, usually with feedback loops where physical processes affect computations and vice versa. In the physical world, the passage of time is inexorable and concurrency is intrinsic. Neither of these properties is present in today’s computing...

Avoiding unauthorized access in an information system usually means enforcing access control mechanisms. Traditional access control only aims at deciding if an access can be granted or not. Dynamic access control goes further as it aims at controlling also if an ongoing access is still authorized while it is running. Rights Expression Languages, such as MPEG-REL, take into account dynamic aspec...

The potential use of stem cell based therapies for the repair and regeneration of various tissues offers a paradigm shift that may provide alternative therapeutic solutions for a number of diseases. The use of either embryonic stem cells (ESCs) or induced pluripotent stem cells in clinical situations is limited due to cell regulations and to technical and ethical considerations involved in gene...