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Background The underlying relationship between viral infections and allergic diseases of the upper respiratory tract has not been well clarified. Methods In order to clarify the relationship between viral infection and nasal hypersensitivity, mice were sensitized with ovalbumin (OVA) and then infected intranasally with respiratory syncytial virus (RSV), after which their nasal sensitivity to histamine or antigen was examined. Results Non-sensitized mice showed transient mild nasal hypersensitivity following nasal administration of histamine after intranasal RSV inoculation. In mice sensitized with OVA, RSV infection significantly exaggerated their nasal hypersensitivity to histamine and OVA. Treatment of these mice with a neurokinin (NK)-1/NK-2 receptor antagonist, but not with anti-IL-5 antibodies, reduced their hypersensitivity. The infiltration of nasal mucosa with eosinophils was temporarily associated with accelerated rate of RSV elimination in these animals. Conclusion RSV infection induced transient nasal hypersensitivity. Several mechanisms, including impairment of nasal epithelial cells are thought to mediate this effect. In allergen-sensitized mice, RSV inoculation strongly enhanced nasal hypersensitivity.

This paper examines receiving antenna selection (RAS) and receiving antenna combination (RAC) techniques from the viewpoint of receiver structure with the aim of improving bit error rate (BER) performance for receivers in MIMO (multi-input multi-output) systems. We assume two receiver structures. One is a structure for controlling gain in received signals centrally for all receiving antennas (CC receiver). The other is a structure for controlling gain in received signals individually in each receiving antenna (CI receiver). We show that a CC receiver can obtain good BER performance when utilizing RAS/RAC techniques using the channel matrix eigenvalue (RAS/RAC-E). Additionally, we consider RAS/RAC techniques using the phase of the channel component (RAS/RAC-PC) and received power (RAS/RAC-RP) in a CI receiver. We then simulate BER performance when employing the proposed RAS-PC and RAS-RP techniques under Rayleigh fading channels. The results clearly show that the RAS/RAC-PC techniques are able to obtain good BER performance for a CI receiver.

In this paper, we have modelled a moist soil as two layers of random medium and evaluated the scattering cross sections of the medium by a dense medium radiative transfer equation (DMRT). A multiple scattering method has been used to estimate the coefficients of the DMRT. The characteristics of the scattering cross sections have been made clear by changing the polarization and frequency of the incident wave, the fractional volume of water, and the layer thickness. The results have shown that the polarization ratio frequency characteristics may be useful in detecting the large discontinuity of water content in deep soil with respect to the low moisture soil near the surface.

An online automatic spoken word recognition system has been developed for the researches on the automatic recognition of speech. In this system, the spoken word is first frequency analysed with a filter bank of single tuned low selectivity filters. Three major local peaks in the spectrum and the amplitude of the speech wave are extracted every 10 ms. The frequencies of two local peaks are used for classifying the vowels, and the frequencies of three local peaks, the movements of them and the amplitude are used for classifying the semi-vowels and consonants. Input speech is thus transformed into a sequence of the notations expressing the phonemes or phoneme groups every 10 ms. The sequence is again transformed into possible phonemic strings which are called input words henceforth and are convenient for the comparison with the contents of the dictionary. The Hamming's distance between each input word and each item of the contents of the dictionary is computed where the notations of phonemes and phoneme groups are expressed by 9 bits binary vectors. The item in the dictionary nearest to one of the input word is selected as the output of the recognition system. The experiments were carried out with the utterance of five speakers from whose utterances the standard patterns for P1, P2 and Pe3 distribution had been made. The recognition score was 96% for the 20 city names involving all kinds of phonemes. The speech samples were increased to 166 city names and 82% of the utterances of three speakers were correctly recognized by adding the possible combination of phonemes to every word. Next, 13 different speakers uttered 51 city names having long distance between each other, the recognition score was found to be 94% when the speakers were permitted to repeat their utterances for three times.

A 70-year-old woman was admitted with a complaint of weight loss and an abnormal shadow on the chest X-ray. On palpation, the unmobilized mass, measuring 5 cm, was located in the left lower abdomen. The barium-enema examination showed the filling defect of the sigmoid colon. Chest computed tomography (CT) showed a tumor, measuring 20 x 20 mm, located in the right upper lobe (S3) and a nodule, measuring 3 mm, located in the right lower lobe (S8). At first, we performed sigmoidectomy (D 3) for the colon cancer. Next, performed right upper lobectomy and a partial resection of the right lower lobe. Histopathologically, the one is a primary lung cancer, the other is a metastatic lung cancer. With an increase in colorectal and lung cancer, similar cases as ours seem to increase in number. When we treat multiple lung nodules with malignancy of other organs, we should consider 3 types of cases, 1) only primary, 2) primary and metastatic, 3) only metastatic.

Human peritoneal mesothelial cells (HPMCs) play an important role in peritoneal functions. During long term peritoneal dialysis, it has been reported that HPMCs are damaged by high glucose solution via the signal of transforming growth factor (TGF)- ß1 produced by HPMCs. In this study, we focused on the effect of hepatocyte growth factor (HGF), known as an anti-fibrotic and anti-TGF-ß1 agent, on HPMCs damaged by high glucose solution. HPMCs were isolated from specimens of the omentum from nonuremic patients after informed consent had been obtained. After confirming adhesion for 6 hours, 100 μL of DMEM with 0.5%FCS were added at different concentrations (D-glucose; 6, 30mM) with or without HGF (10, 30, 100 ng/mL) for 48 hours. We examined the effects of a high concentration of glucose and then focused on following four critical points: 1) the production of HGF from HPMCs exposed to a high concentration of glucose, 2) the expression of c-Met on HPMCs, 3) the viability of those cells, and 4) matrix metalloproteinase-2 (MMP-2) and tissue inhibitors of metalloproteinase-2 (TIMP-2). The following significant changes are described herein: high glucose solution and TGF-ß1 i) decreased HGF production from HPMCs and ii) up-regulated expression of c-Met on HPMCs, and addition of HGF iii) restored viability of HPMCs damaged by glucose, iv) suppressed TGF-ß1 production by HGF, and v) induced up-regulation of MMP-2 and decreased TIMP-2 production by HPMCs. Levels of HGF decreased by high concentrations of glucose in the peritoneal cavity may induce the loss of HPMCs and thereby result in peritoneal fibrosis. These results suggest that HGF is an effective agent in the regeneration of peritoneal membrane damaged by high glucose solution.

We investigated the association of habitual long-distance running with the thickness of skeletal muscles and subcutaneous fat in the body extremities and trunk in middle-aged men using ultrasonography.Three groups of healthy middle-aged men [mean (SD), 62.1 (2.8) years] took part in this investigation: a high-level group of 11 master runners who had competed in a 42.195 km race and run 51.6 (21.7) km every week, an intermediary-level group of 10 master runners who had competed in a 5-20 km race and run 9.3 (4.9) km every week, and a low-level group of 7 untrained men who continued to do no systematic training. The muscle thickness at 8 sites and the subcutaneous fat thickness at 10 sites were measured by B-mode ultrasonography, and were compared among the 3 groups.The high-level group had 10.0(-1)5.2% higher values for muscle thickness at the erector spinae, hamstrings, tibialis anterior, and triceps surae, compared with the intermediary-level and the low-level groups (p0.05-0.001). The thickness of the subcutaneous fat about the rectus abdominis and external oblique was lower in the high-level group than in the intermediary-level and the low-level groups (p0.05).Middle-aged male master athletes who habitually run at a high level have more muscle thickness in the lower extremities and trunk, and less subcutaneous fat thickness in the central regions of the body than do middle-aged men who habitually run at an intermediary level or do not run at all.

This paper examines an iterative decoder for reproducing transmitted data correctly and executing cancellation of interference channel signals accurately in convolutionally encoded MIMO (multi-input multi-output) systems. We propose the iterative decoder equipped with VIP (varying interleave patterns) for each transmission channel, and demonstrate the decoder can obtain a gain value close to full diversity gain in the MIMO systems. The results in a computer simulation indicate clearly that, due to mutual random interleave effect; a gain value near full diversity gain can be obtained under Rayleigh fading channels.

In this paper BER (bit error rate) performances in MIMO (multi-input multi-output) systems under Rayleigh and Rician fading channels are examined using the channel matrix eigenvalue. We show that BER performances employing inverse channel detection can approximate those by analysis using the channel matrix eigenvalue under Rayleigh fading channels. We then examine BER performances under Rician fading channels by simulation, adding the phase of the direct path as a parameter. The results clearly indicate that the phase of the direct path has a great influence on BER performances under Rician fading channels.

The transient response function of the density profile of the solvent around a solute during the translational diffusion of the solute is formulated based on the generalized Langevin formalism. The resultant theory is applied to both neat Lennard-Jones fluids and cations in liquid water, and the response functions are obtained from the analysis of the molecular dynamics simulations. In the case of the self-diffusion of Lennard-Jones fluids, the responses of the solvation structures are in harmony with conventional pictures based on the mode-coupling theory, that is, the binary collision in the low-density fluids, the backflow effect from medium to high density fluids, and the backscatter effect in the liquids near the triple point. In the case of cations in water, the qualitative behavior is strongly dependent on the size of cations. The pictures similar to simple dense liquids are obtained for the large ion and the neutral molecule, while the solvent waters within the first solvation shell of small ions show an oscillatory response in the short-time region. In particular, the oscillation is remarkably underdumped for lithium ion. The origin of the oscillation is discussed in relation to the theoretical treatment of the translational diffusion of ions in water.

Several phenomena, which were made clear by psycho-acoustic experiments, have not electric physiologic evidence data. The missing fundamental phenomenon is one of the phenomena. We try making clear the mechanism how the missing fundamental is produced. By psycho-acoustic experiments and Cochlear models experiments, we investigated its fundamental characteristics in the low frequency range where the influence of spontaneous discharge of primary auditory nerves and the influence of refractory period of primary auditory nerves can be ignored. In order to investigate the mechanism of the missing fundamental in the frequency range where these influence can not be ignored, we have made Anteroventral Cochlear Nucleus models (AVCN models). In this report, Cochlear models - AVCN models is mentioned. And it is also mentioned that the frequency information of the missing fundamental of input signals lower than 900Hz explicitly appeared in the interspike-interval histogram of the aggregated autocorrelogram of output pulse trains from Cochlear models - AVCN models. To confirm it by the perceptual experiments, psycho-acoustic experiments will be carried out in the future.

The ground vibration generated by the Shinkansen, Japanese super express train，can be problematic for people and structures nearby. The purpose of this study is to make clear the mechanism of the ground vibration generated by a train and to develop a numerical simulation tool which can quantitatively evaluate the effect of wave filtering. This study is consist with 2 parts: First, the Doppler effect in the field vibration data from train motion is shown to be found via FK spectrum. Second, the generation of ground vibration is classified by this numerical simulation. The ground vibration is caused by inhomogeneous media, inhomogeneous force from the train or discrete structure, like an elevated bridge. This work does not investigate the boundary problem between the train body and the ground, thus is a qualitative basic study.

This paper proposes a new soft-decision decoder employing the eigenvalue of the channel matrix as a weighting factor for conventional codes in MIMO (multi-input multi-output) systems. As is generally known, sufficient coding gain in a soft-decision decoder can only be obtained by employing the square Euclidean distance as a branch metric under AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) channels. On the other hand, this gain cannot be obtained by simply doing the same under Rayleigh fading channels. This paper studies a suitable weighting factor for obtaining the coding gain in soft-decision decoders under Rayleigh fading channels in MIMO systems. First, we propose that the minimum eigenvalue power of the channel matrix indicates an effective carrier power in MIMO systems. Next, we propose the effective carrier power as a weighting factor for soft-decision decoders. We then calculate BER performance. According to the results, the proposed decoder gives a margin of about 5 dB at BER=10/sup -4/ compared to a conventional decoder employing received power as a weighting factor. The results also demonstrate that the proposed weighting factor can enhance the ability of soft-decision decoders under frequency non-selective Rayleigh fading channels in MIMO systems.

This paper proposes a technique where non-spread and spread spectrum (SS) signals are combined in the same frequency band. It shows that the multiplex technique proposed is an effective method for making good use of a limited frequency band. Furthermore a system using this multiplex technique can transmit data of different speeds and quality at the same time. The multiplex signal presented here is where non-spread quadrature phase shift keying (QPSK) and direct sequence spread spectrum DS-SS signals are combined, with reference symbols being inserted without multiplexing for easy estimation of the channel condition. A technique is then proposed to divide the multiplex signal in the receiver. Using this technique, bit error rate (BER) performances of non-spread QPSK and DS-SS are calculated under additive white Gaussian noise (AWGN) and Rayleigh fading channels. According to the results of the BER performance for non-spread QPSK and DS-SS, it is clear that the multiplex signal can be divided and data can be retrieved in the receiver.

This paper proposes a novel technique to achieve secured access on the physical layer. This technique - the channel synthesized modulation - is designed to combine the channel parameters with a modulation signal to synthesize a signal on the receiving position through the channel between both terminals. The channel is formed uniquely by the terminals' position and their physical layout, and it is identical at both points. The channel parameters analyzed from the received signal are treated as unidentified information by the third terminal. Therefore this signal can be demodulated by the specific terminal. This paper describes a new modulation concept and its principles, shows some simulation results and its possibilities. A simulation is carried out using static and AWGN (additive white Gaussian noise) condition. Finally the secured access technique is introduced as an application.

It is considered that pitch of f/sub 0/ is produced in the auditory center when we hear a complex tone of f/sub 1/ = n f/sub 0/ and T/sub 2/= (n+k) f/sub 0/. f/sub 0/ is known as missing fundamental. We confirm, by psycho-acoustic experiments, that we can hear missing fundamental. Furthermore, we investigate how a/sub i/f/sub i/, and /spl theta//sub i/, in complex tones a/sub 1/sin(2/spl pi/f/sub 1/t+/spl theta//sub 1/)+a/sub 2/sin(2/spl pi/f/sub 2/t+/spl theta//sub 2/) in low frequency region, influence on producing f/sub 0/ . The low frequency region ( 250 Hz/spl sim/1000 Hz ) is chosen for considering the mechanism of perceiving missing fundamental without influence of spontaneous discharge and refractory period. The results of experiments are discussed by significant difference test. Finally, we confirm, by psycho-acoustic experiments, that we can hear missing fundamental in frequency region higher than 1000 Hz.

In this paper, we propose an autonomous multiagent system composed of an intelligent environment (static agents) and mobile agents (robots). We focus on procedure that autonomous mobile agents construct feasible paths. In the system, not a mobile agent but an environment gathers information and makes decisions. We formulate the optimal condition and an optimization algorithm by means of media agents that play the role of communication links between static agents. We also formulate the appropriate ratio of the media agents in the system. We discuss the efficiency of the system by results of simulations.

Refraction tomography nowadays has developed to unveil 3 dimensional structures of subsurface. Delineation of a rock bed which usually happens to be one of the main purpose of a survey in most engineering sites, however, is not easy because inversions usually produce images of gradual change of the material properties. From the survey designed for 3 dimensional refraction data acquisition, we can get the contours of first arrivals of a shot on the surface by applying an interpolation such as kriging. Re-sampling first arrivals form these contours, we get reciprocal traveltime curves between two shots respectively. Then, we applied the generalized reciprocal method (Palmer, 1982) using these data finally to get a pseudo 3 dimensional subsurface structure.

This paper provides a method for measuring permittivity using borehole radar from single hole. First we use numerical simulation to examine the suitability of borehole radar for measuring relative permittivity from single hole. We introduce a 2-D pseudospectral time domain (PSTD) algorithm that allows us to model the full EM wavefield for rotationally symmetric structure. The effect of the borehole mud and the response of surrounding formation are simulated. lt is found that the relative permittivity logging curve is sensitive to the formation interface of surrounding formation. The simulation results show that the measured relative permittivity is closed to the true parameters of the surrounding formation. We processed field data using a variance fractal dimension technique that can detect coherent borehole radar signal from background noise. The measured relative permittivity logging curve could be useful for identifying formation type and detecting water-bearing property.

The birefringence is induced in liquids and solutions containing certain amount of nonspherical molecules and particles as a result of the orientation of the molecules or particles due to longitudinal ultrasonic waves [1-23] This phenomenon was called as the ultrasonically induced birefringence. Early theoretical studies of the birefringence have been reviewed by Hilyard and Jerrard [1].

Geological structures of Vietnam，locating at the eastern margin of SE Asia, experienced numerous tectonic phases during Cenozoic Era that is especially marked by the collision of India-Eurasia. This collision caused strike-slip movements along the Red River Fault (RRF) and opening the South China Sea (SC Sea). The movements of the RRF affected structural styles in onshore and offshore northern Vietnam territory and the deformation history is recorded in the sediments of the Red River basin (RR basin). In this paper, the authors present some maiden results from seismic interpretation in the northern Vietnam for illustrating deformation of geological sequences under regional tectonics and how this deformation acts upon the oil and natural gas generating, migrating and accumulating, which are still remaining as hot topics for petroleum industry.

Al 2 O 3 thin films have been deposited by D 2 lamp photochemical vapor deposition (CVD) in N 2 + O 2 atmosphere using aluminum-tri-isopropoxide as source material. The D 2 lamp emission lines overlap the strong absorption band of the source material and O 2 gas. The deposition rate increased remarkably at low temperatures compared with thermal CVD. The refractive index of the sample prepared below 270°C increased with the irradiation, but above 270°C the value approached the values of the samples prepared by thermal CVD. The value of tan 8 at 100 Hz in the low-temperature deposited samples was also improved by photo-CVD. But it showed a large value just after deposition, and it decreased to a small value after the sample was kept at room temperature. A tentative model of this change is discussed briefly.

One hundred fifty five patients with completely resected peripheral non-small cell lung cancer, clinically diagnosed 2 cm or less in diameter, are retrospectively reviewed on their preoperative chest CT films, clinico-pathological features, and postoperative outcomes. Pathologic type was classified according to Noguchi's classification. 7% and 8% of all the patients had pathologic N 1 and N 2 diseases, respectively. 19% of all the patients undergone limited resection (segmentectomy or partial resection). Maximum area of the tumor/soft tissue density area of the tumor (M/S ratio) was manually measured by chest CT film. According to the logistic regression analysis, M/S ratio was the only predicting factor of regional lymph node metastasis among factors including pleural indentation, spiculation, and maximum area of the tumor. Univariate analysis showed that maximum area of the tumor, pleural indentation, and M/S ratio were the significant factor for postoperative disease free survival. According to multivariate analysis of postoperative disease free survival with adjustment for operative modality, the result was same as that of univariate analysis. In conclusion, our determined criteria of the chest CT accurately predicted pathological status and postoperative outcome of patients with small peripheral lung cancer. These factors would be useful for stratification factor of prospective clinical study.

Sitting comfort for wheelchairs has been based on the angle of the back-rest. The affect that wheelchair backs had upon the tactile sensation of elderly persons, was based upon wheelchair use via factor analysis. Wheelchair "sitting comfort" was based primarily upon two (2) factors: "Painless at the back" and "Soft at the seat". From a correlation between physical properties (body pressure) and sensory evaluation, it has been discovered that back-rest angle is closely related to how 'painless at the back and soft at the seat a wheelchair is'.

By applying 'simultaneous curing' substrates for core substrates, we developed an ultra high transmission speed build up substrate (called Super HDBU/spl reg/) which is applicable for flip chip packages with over 3,000 I/O. Most build up interconnected substrates have been using a PWB with plated through holes (PTH) as the core substrate. Considering the form density of interconnects and transmission speed, this core with PTH has become a barrier by dividing the top and bottom surface of the substrate. Also, design interconnection lines are limited to the top side of the build up substrate which mounts the LSI devices. As for the solution to these issues, we have developed a new process of simultaneous curing with a copper foil transfer method onto an uncured prepreg. The simultaneous curing substrate method makes it possible to design signal interconnection lines on build up layers on both the top and bottom surfaces of the core substrate. In addition, it provides much finer via and narrower via pitch design on the core substrate which enables full grid area design instead of peripheral design.

In iodine-bridged binuclear Pt compounds, R 4 [Pt 2 (pop) 4 I]nH 2 O and R' 2 [Pt 2 (pop) 4 I]nH 2 O (pop = P 2 O 5 H 2 - 2 ), electronic structures on the PtPtI chains have been controlled between a diamagnetic charge-density-wave (CDW) state and a paramagnetic charge-polarization (CP) state by modification of the counterions (R, R') located between chains. In the R = (C 2 H 5 ) 2 NH + 2 compound, a pressure-induced CP to CDW transition with a drastic color change is identified. This transition is accompanied by a large hysteresis loop within which photoinduced transition between CDW and CP can be driven by selecting the excitation photon energy.

Moist soil is regarded as the mixture of air, soil, bound water and free water; then it may be assumed a dense random medium. A radiative transfer equation in a dense random medium has been derived from a wave equation with quasi-crystalline approximation with coherent potential (QCA-CP) and ladder approximation, L. Tsang et al. (1987). Under these approximations, a random medium is considered as a homogeneous medium with the effective permittivity, and the scattering and extinction coefficients are evaluated by QCA-CP in Rayleigh scattering region. The radiative transfer equation includes more scattering effects than the conventional one (CRTE), but does not include the effect of backscattering enhancement. This paper considers a three layered model, composed of air, moist soil layer and perfect conductor for developing a method for detecting water contents in soil by active remote sensing. The moist soil layer may be regarded as a homogeneous soil layer with densely distributed water particles. For this model, they used a dense medium radiative transfer equation (DMRTE) with the parameters evaluated by their method to calculate the bistatic scattering coefficients of the soil layer and the degree of polarization of scattered waves by changing the polarization of incident plane waves and the fractional volume of particles.

Presently, via the solid-state stage, the evolution of the laser source is in the stage of integrated laser which is represented by laser diode. Since the integrated laser has advantages of stability, low power requirements and ease of handling, many new type of applications have been found by using such a laser source. Also in spectroscopy applications, the dominant tunable dye (liquid-state) laser source is replaced by solid-state media, for example Ti:sapphire laser, Cr:LiSAF laser, and optical parametric oscillator. It is expected that the integrated-tunable laser source can also be applied advantageously to spectroscopic applications. We are developing two types of integrated tunable laser. One of them is based on the solid-state laser medium, and another is based on organic dye. In this work, a Rhodamine 6G dye is doped in a poly methyl methacrylate (PMMA) waveguide. By using two beams holographic distributed feedback (DFB), the waveguide was pumped and operated as a tunable laser.

The breakdown strength of PPX (poly-p-xylylene) and space charge effects have been investigated. Temperature and thickness dependences of the breakdown strength of PPX supported avalanching as the breakdown mechanism. This is consistent with the results on high-field conduction of PPX. The prestress effect revealed a large influence of space charge on the breakdown strength of PPX, and dependence on the rest time was observed as well. >

Two types of micro mobile machines, of unimorph and stacked type piezoelectric element, respectively, have been investigated with respect to their basic performance and their mechanism. The geometrical size of both machines is less than 10 nm /spl times/ 10 mm, and their maximum speed on the horizontal plane and their climbable slope were found to be 100 mm/s and 15 degrees, respectively. Concerning the stacked type machine, various experiments have been conducted, and their results have been analyzed to understand the motion characteristics by solving boundary conditions of the elastic vibration equation. The vibration of the machine frames was observed by microscope to supplement the analytical data.

Studies Japanese large-vocabulary continuous-speech recognition (LV CSR) for a Japanese business newspaper. To enable word N-grams to be used, sentences were first segmented into words (morphemes) using a morphological analyzer. About five years of newspaper articles were used to train N-gram language models. To evaluate our recognition system, we recorded speech data for sentences from another set of articles. Using the speech corpus, LV CSR experiments were conducted. For a 7k vocabulary, the word error rate was 82.8% when no grammar and context-independent acoustic models were used. This improved to 20.0% when both bigram language models and context-dependent acoustic models were used.

Laboratory experiments on NO/sub x/ removal were carried out using a plasma chemical process. In order to improve the NO/sub x/ removal efficiency, several different wet-type plasma reactors were designed and tested using simulated gas. A dry-type reactor was also tested. Basically the reactors consist of a discharge electrode and a glass insulating tube surrounded by a ground electrode. The injection of ammonia and water vapor together enhanced the DeNO/sub x/ performance of the dry-reactor. The wet-type reactors performed better compared with the dry reactor. In the wet-type reactors, the DeNO/sub x/ performances using water, ammonia solution and NaOH solution as the absorbent, were about the same. When water was used, the DeNO/sub x/ performance of the wet-type reactors stayed constant, even when the pH value of the water dropped to less than 3. The experimental results suggested that about half of the NO removed by the plasma process dissociated to N/sub 2/ and O/sub 2/ and that the other half became NO/sub 2/ and was absorbed in water. >

We propose a new accurate string hypothesization algorithm to find the N-best multiple string hypotheses in continuous speech recognition. The algorithm differs from the conventional N-best search algorithms in that it allows the use of the same set of long term language model scores and the detailed context-dependent subword models such as inter-word context dependent triphone models in both forward and backward search for high performance speech recognition. It is an extension of the tree-trellis N-best search algorithm[1]. The inter-word context dependency is exactly preserved in both forward partial path map preparation and the proposed backward N-best multiple string hypothesis tree search. The search efficiency is maximized by applying the same high resolution acoustic and language models in both search directions. When search heuristics are used, the proposed approach provides a more accurate string model matching than that of the conventional frame-synchronous Viterbi beam search decoder. >

This paper describes a method of auto-tuning an I-PD controller for processes with long deadtimes using neural networks. As is well known, it is too difficult for most process engineers to determine gains of the I-PD controller for such controlled objects. In this paper, we try to use neural networks as a controller. Simulation results show that the proposed method is effective to the actual plant. >

We propose an automatic tuning method for I-PD (or PID) parameters using expert system with a rule base. The I-PD controllers based on optimal control are widely used because they have good disturbance rejection and low sensitivity. However, the effective method of auto-tuning I-PD controllers has not been presented yet. In this paper, we attempt to use fuzzy reasoning as a controller. Simulation results show that the proposed method is effective for actual plant control. >

An apparatus for measuring the mechanical properties of liquid crystals over the frequency range from 100 MHz to 1 kHz was constructed. It was used to study the effect of a static and longitudinal viscosity of a smectic-A liquid crystal having homeotropic alignment. The static electric field was applied perpendicularly to the smectic layers. The specimen used was octylcyanobiphenyl (8CB). The layer compression modulus was found to increase by 0.5% at 7.6 kV/cm, and the amount of increase is proportional to the square of the applied field. This change in the layer compression modulus is reversible with respect to the on-off characteristics of the electric field. This phenomenon is explained by the theory of G. Grinstein and R.A. Pelcovits (see Phys. Rev., vol.A26, p.916, 1982). >

In this paper, we propose a new method for detection and tracking of moving objects from a moving camera image sequence using robust statistics and active contour models. We assume that the apparent background motion between two consecutive image frames can be approximated by affine transformation. In order to register the static background, we estimate affine transformation parameters using LMedS (least median of squares) method which is a kind of robust statistics. Split-and-merge contour models are employed for tracking multiple moving objects which have been recently proposed by the authors. Image energy of contour models is defined based on the image which is obtained by subtracting the previous frame transformed with estimated affine parameters from the current frame. We have implemented the method on an image processing system which consists of DSP boards for real-time tracking of moving objects from a moving camera image sequence.

The paper reports on topic extraction in Japanese broadcast news speech. We studied, using continuous speech recognition, the extraction of several topic words from broadcast news. A combination of multiple topic words represents the content of the news. This is more detailed and more flexible than a single word or a single category. A topic extraction model shows the degree of relevance between each topic word and each word in the articles. For all words in an article, topic words which have high total relevance score are extracted from the article. We trained the topic extraction model with five years of newspapers, using the frequency of topic words taken from headlines and words in articles. The degree of relevance between topic words and words in articles is calculated on the basis of statistical measures, i.e., mutual information or the /spl chi//sup 2/ value. In topic extraction experiments for recognized broadcast news speech, we extracted five topic words using a /spl chi//sup 2/ based model and found that 75% of them agreed with topic words chosen by subjects.

Summary form only given. The electrodeless HID lamp excited by microwave has been intensively investigated because of its long life, high efficacy and environmental aspect. This study reports excellent emission and spectral characteristics of electrodeless HID lamp containing indium halides. We investigate InI and InBr as ingredients, and measure the microwave excited spectra and luminous intensities of lamps which are made from spherical silica glass in 10-40 mm outer diameter and with various amounts of halides.

A system in which multi autonomous robots with 40 mm diameter remove fragments from a narrow passage by a bucket brigade has been studied. In this system, under the condition of narrow passage and none of the robots passing each other, multi robots with limited functions and simple algorithms remove fragments efficiently and deliver them cooperatively. In this study, computer simulations have been carried out to extract the subject of functions and algorithms of the robot. As a result, it has been found that the time interval between each robot is important for a smooth bucket brigade without stagnation of fragments or their threefold collision with any initial interval. Both algorithms with a communication function and a pair of front and rear touch sensors of a robot have been prepared in order that the distributed robots can adjust their interval autonomously. An attempt has been made to apply the algorithms to actual robots.