Production system chunking in SOAR: Case studies in automated learning

A preliminary study of SOAR, a general intelligent architecture for automated problem solving and learning, is presented. The underlying principles of universal subgoaling and chunking were applied to a simple, yet representative, problem in artificial intelligence. A number of problem space representations were examined and compared. It is concluded that learning is an inherent and beneficial aspect of problem solving. Additional studies are suggested in domains relevant to mission planning and to SOAR itself

Additions to the Known Endemic Flora and Fauna of Arkansas

Robison and Smith\u27s (1982) list of endemic species of Arkansas rendered a valuable service to the community of biologists interested in the endemic biota of the state. These authors listed seven species of plants and forty species of animals endemic to Arkansas. This paper stimulated my interest in the endemic biota of the Ozark/Ouachita Mountain region of Missouri, Arkansas, and Oklahoma. During the course of compiling a list of Ozark/Ouachita endemic species several references were found that listed Arkansas endemic taxa inadvertently overlooked by Robison and Smith. Most notable among these references was Chamberlin and Hoffman (1958), Checklist of the Millipeds of North America. This paper chronicles the work of N. B. Causey and R. V. Chamberlin who describe thirty-two species of endemic Arkansas Millipeds. These records as well as a few additional records for other animal and plant taxa are presented in this paper

Toward an Interactive Directory for Norfolk, Nebraska: 1899-1900

We describe steps toward an interactive directory for the town of Norfolk, Nebraska for the years 1899 and 1900. This directory would extend the traditional city directory by including a wider range of entities being described, much richer information about the entities mentioned and linkages to mentions of the entities in material such as digitized historical newspapers. Such a directory would be useful to readers who browse the historical newspapers by providing structured summaries of the entities mentioned. We describe the occurrence of entities in two years of the Norfolk Weekly News, focusing on several individuals to better understand the types of information which can be gleaned from historical newspapers and other historical materials. We also describe a prototype program which coordinates information about entities from the traditional city directories, the federal census, and from newspapers. We discuss the structured coding for these entities, noting that richer coding would increasingly include descriptions of events and scenarios. We propose that rich content about individuals and communities could eventually be modeled with agents and woven into historical narratives

New Species of Occasjapyx From the Interior Highlands (Insecta: Diplua: Japygidae)

A new species of Japygidea, Occasjapyx carltoni is described from the Ozark Mountains of the Interior Highlands. This is the first record of the genus outside of California in North America. The genus is also known from China and Japan

Instability conditions for some periodic BGK waves in the Vlasov-Poisson system

A one-dimensional, collisionless plasma given by the Vlasov-Poisson system is considered and the stability properties of periodic steady state solutions known as Bernstein-Greene-Kruskal (BGK) waves are investigated. Sufficient conditions are determined under which BGK waves are linearly unstable under perturbations that share the same period as the equilibria. It is also shown that such solutions cannot support a monotonically decreasing particle distribution function.Comment: 8 pages; PACS codes 52.25.Dg, 02.30.Jr, 52.35.-

Long Duration Space Materials Exposure (LDSE)

The Center on Materials for Space Structures (CMSS) at Case Western Reserve University is one of seventeen Commercial Centers for the Development of Space. It was founded to: (1) produce and evaluate materials for space structures; (2) develop passive and active facilities for materials exposure and analysis in space; and (3) develop improved material systems for space structures. A major active facility for materials exposure is proposed to be mounted on the exterior truss of the Space Station Freedom (SSF). This Long Duration Space Materials Exposure (LDSE) experiment will be an approximately 6 1/2 ft. x 4 ft. panel facing into the velocity vector (RAM) to provide long term exposure (up to 30 years) to atomic oxygen, UV, micro meteorites, and other low earth orbit effects. It can expose large or small active (instrumented) or passive samples. These samples may be mounted in a removable Materials Flight Experiment (MFLEX) carrier which may be periodically brought into the SSF for examination by CMSS's other SSF facility, the Space Materials Evaluation Facility (SMEF), which will contain a Scanning Electron Microscope, a Variable Angle & Scanning Ellipsometer, a Fourier Transform Infrared Spectrometer, and other analysis equipment. These facilities will allow commercial firms to test their materials in space and promptly obtain information on their materials survivability in the LEO environment

Re-imagining French lexicography: The dictionnaire vivant de la langue française

The Dictionnaire vivant de la langue française (DVLF), developed by The ARTFL Project at the University of Chicago, represents an experimental, interactive, and community-based approach to French lexicography. The DVLF enables broad public access to a wide variety of linguistic tools and resources, with the goal of changing user interaction with dictionaries and providing better descriptions of emergent word use. In this article we describe the history of the DVLF and provide a survey of similar community-oriented electronic dictionaries. We then proceed to a presentation of the dictionary’s many features, including the variety of its definitions and mechanisms for user interaction. The article concludes with a discussion of ARTFL’s plans for the future developement of the DVLF