SRI International Research Articles

Developing an HLA Virtual Command Post

SRI International and Lionhearth Technologies have been developing an HLA-compliant version of the Virtual Command Post (VCP), a distributed simula tion in which users interact and share battlefield in formation. The project involves developing HLA federates for individual functional VCP capabilities. The goal is to develop an HLA-compliant VCP as a stand-alone federation, as well as a set of functional elements that can interact as separate HLA federates in other federations. As a federate, the VCP can par ticipate in federations requiring a command, control, communications, computers, and intelligence feder ate. The individual VCP federates can act as sepa rate elements in other federations. Among issues examined is run-time infrastructure (RTI) perfor mance sending high-volume audio and video data. We are now examining the H-Anim standard for representing human commanders. We have found that the HLA and the RTI are capable of meeting our functional requirements for a distributed simula tion. We also believe we can develop an HLA-com pliant simulation that will promote its use in HLA federations. This paper describes the HLA VCP, the experiments and results we have obtained to date, and efforts we have planned for the future.

Seismic testing of full-scale structures through applied ground motion

The Nevada Testing Institute (NeTI) and SRI International (SRI), in partnership with prominent research universities and state and federal government, and industry, have been evolving since 1995 a unique concept of generating earthquake-like ground motion to test large- and full-scale structures and structural systems at the Nevada Test Site. The RESCUE technique is used to produce strong ground motion by simultaneously expanding a planar array of buried vertical sources. The ground motion sources consist of a rubber bladder wrapped around a steel rectangular mandrel. Propellant is burnt in the source to produce low pressures that expand the bladder to move the soil bed. Because pressures are low, the soil is not damaged, allowing for sequential pulses and multiple tests on test structures. Eighty cycles of ground motion over durations of up to 120 s will be available in full scale. Proof-of-concept testing was successfully completed in 1998 in California and Nevada. The tests show that ground motions with accelerations of 1g to potentially 3g, velocities of 100 to 140 cm/s, and displacements of 60 cm to greater than 100 cm can be produced at the full scale test center. Construction of the full-scale testing center beginning in 2000 is planned.

Trajectories from Today's WWW to a Powerful Educational Infrastructure

Two previous Research News and Comment articles in Educational Researcher have examined the potential impact of the World Wide Web (web) in education. Owston (1997) offers a optimistic view of potential benefits of the today’s web, utilizing a framework that emphasizes: (a) making learning more accessible; (b) promoting improved learning; and (c) containing costs. Fetterman (1998) reviews the tools currently available on the web (such as search, video conferencing, and file sharing) and suggests potential uses among educational researchers. Although these articles offer valuable advice about today’s web capabilities, both authors acknowledge that the web is changing rapidly. They do not provide a sense of where the web is going, and how its trajectory of development may more fully meet educational needs. Such prospective information about emerging web technologies is important for the educational research community, and it is our intention to briefly highlight key trajectories of web development for learning communities. We recently hosted a workshop on “Tools for Learning Communities” under the auspices of the NSF-funded Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT, which is pronounced like “silt”), bringing together 125 leading researchers and developers from a balanced mix of 50 institutions, including universities, nonprofit organizations, corporations and schools. For example, corporate participants included IBM Global Education, Apple Computer, Netscape, Coopers-Lybrand, NetSchools, and Electric Schoolhouse, LLC as well as many smaller firms. Academic and non-profit participants included researchers from the four CILT partner institutions, SRI International, UC Berkeley, Vanderbilt University, and Concord Consortium, as well as organizations, universities and high schools from all over North America. The innovative format of this workshop encouraged rapid information exchange, followed by brainstorming about educational issues and opportunities, and concluded with the formation of cross-institutional teams to seek joint innovation. Over the course of two days, the participants generated a wealth of ideas about the limitations of today’s web, its near-term trajectories, and

Toward a Learning Technologies knowledge network

The National Science Foundation-funded Center for Innovative Learning Technologies (CILT) is designed to be a national resource for stimulating research and development of technology-enabled solutions to critical problems in K-14 science, math, engineering and technology learning. The Center, launched at the end of 1997, is organized around four themes identified as areas where research is likely to result in major gains in teaching and learning, and sponsors research across disciplines and institutions in its four theme areas. CILT brings together experts in the fields of cognitive science, educational technologies, computer science, subject matter learning, and engineering. It engages business through an Industry Alliance Program and is also training postdoctoral students. CILT's founding organizations are SRI International's Center for Technology in Learning, University of California at Berkeley (School of Education and Department of Computer Science), Vanderbilt University's Learning Technology Center, and the Concord Consortium. Through its programs, CILT seeks to reach beyond these organizations to create a web of organizations, individuals, industries, schools, foundations, government agencies, and labs, that is devoted to the production, sharing and use of new knowledge about how learning technologies can dramatically improve the processes and outcomes of learning and teaching. This paper describes the rationale and operations of the Center, and first-year progress in defining a set of CILT partnership projects with many other institutions that came out of our national theme-team workshops.

Book Reviews

Book reviewed in this article: Glen Banks and Chris Ballard (eds). The Ok Tedi Settlement: Issues, Outcomes and Implications. Marcus Banks and Howard Morphy (eds). Rethinking Visual Anthropology. Johanna M. Blows. Eagle and Crow: An Exploration of an Australian Aboriginal Myth. Malcolm Crick, Resplendent Sites, Discordant Voices: Sri Lankans and International Tourism. Gary W. Dowsett, Practicing Desire: Homosexual Sex in the Era of AIDS. Juliana Flinn, Leslie Marshall and Jocelyn Armstrong (eds). Fieldwork and Families: Constructing New Models for Ethnographic Research. James Fox (ed.) The Poetic Power of Place: Comparative Perspectives on Austronesian Ideas of Locality. Hamilton, Malcolm B. The Sociology of Religion ‐ Theoretical and Comparative Perspectives. Andro Iteanu and Eric Schwimmer (eds). Pane, etje t'ecouterai: Recits et traditions des Orokaiva de Papouasie‐Nouvelle‐Guinee James Jemut Masing. The Coming of the Gods: An Iban Invocatory Chant (Timang Gawai Amat) of the Baleh River Region, Sarawak. Monica Lindh De Montoya. Progress, Hunger and Envy: Commercial Agriculture, Marteting and Social Transformation in the Venezuelan Andes. R.G. Parker and J.H. Gagnon (eds). Conceiving Sexuality: Approaches to Sex Research in a Postmodern World R. Parkin. The Dark Side of Humanity: The Work of Robert Hertz and its Legacy. Raul Pertierra. Explorations in Social Theory and Philippine Ethnography. Carmel Schrire. Digging Through Darkness: Chronicles of an Archaeologist. William Scott Shelley. The Elixir: An Alchemical Study of the Ergot Mushroom. Andrew Shyrock. Nationalism and the Genealogical Imagination: Oral History and Textual Authority in Tribal Jordan. Nicholas Thomas. Oceanic Art. Elspeth Young. Third World in The First.

A state space analysis of propose-and-revise

A central research topic in the area of knowledge engineering is the reuse of problem-solving methods for developing knowledge based systems. For being able to reuse a problem-solving method it is important to know under which restrictions a problem-solving method is appropriate to solve a given problem. This paper describes the problem-solving method propose-and-revise as well as the way this problem-solving method searches in its problem space for a solution. A quantitative analysis of the efficiency of this search process is given. Additionally, task and domain specific properties and restrictions and their influence on the efficiency of the search process are considered. For these purposes an instance of the problem-solving method is transformed to a corresponding instance of a Stanford Research Institute Problem Solver (STRIPS) planning system. Then the problem-solving method is considered as an additional control strategy for such a planning system. By this way the various insights and analysis results which are available in the area of planning systems may be exploited for the analysis of problem-solving methods.

Preface: Volume 20

This volume contains the Proceedings of the Fifteenth Conference on the Mathematical Foundations of Programming Semantics. The Conference was held on the campus of Tulane University, New Orleans, LA from April 28 to May 1, 1999. The meeting was co-chaired by Stephen Brookes and Michael Mislove.The papers in this volume were selected by the Program Committee from submissions received in response to a Call for Papers, or were solicited by the Organizers and the Program Committee. As has been customary with past MFPS Conferences, these final Proceedings are being published after the meeting has concluded to allow the authors to have a chance to revise their papers. Thanks are due to a number of people who have helped organize and plan the conference. Among this group are the Program Committee chaired by Achim Jung (Birmingham) and Andre Scedrov (Pennsylvania), and whose members include the following: Stephen Brookes CMUPeter O'Hearn Queen Mary and WestfieldAdriana Compagnoni Stevens InstituteCatuscia Palamidessi Penn StateKathleen Fisher AT&TPrakash Panangaden McGillPaul Gastin LIAFADusko Pavlovic KestrelAndrew Gordon Microsoft ResearchAndrew Pitts CambridgeReinhold Heckmann SaarbrückenA. W. Roscoe OxfordCatherine Meadows NRLGiuseppe Rosolini GenoaMichael Mislove TulaneJan Rutten CWIEugene Stark Stony BrookAlso, thanks are due to the anonymous referees who helped review the submissions for the meeting.The invited speakers at the meeting were: Martin Abadi(Compaq Systems Research Center)Matthew Hennessy(University of Sussex)Tom Henzinger(University of California at Berkeley)Max Kanovich(Russian Humanities State University)Uday Reddy(University of Illinois)Peter Selinger(University of Michigan)There were two special sessions during the meeting. The first was organized by Uday Reddy (Illinois) and Peter O'Hearn (Queen Mary and Westfield College) on Object-Oriented Prorgamming. It began with an invited address by Professor Reddy, and included talks by Paulo Sergio Almeida (Universidade do Minho), Vivana Bono (Torino), Kim Bruce (Williams College), and Peter O'Hearn. The papers from this session are grouped together in this Proceedings volume.The second special session focused on Security Protocols. It was organized by Catherine Meadows (NRL) and Dennis Volpano (Naval Postgraduate School). It began with an invited address by Martin Abadi (Compaq Systems Research Center), and an introductory talk by Catherine Meadows, followed by by Paul Syverson (NRL), Geoff Smith (Florida International University), Dominique Bolignano (Trusted Logic), Carl Gunter (Pennsylvania), Pat Lincoln (SRI International) and George Necula (UC Berkeley). Cathy and Dennis have kindly prepared a short introduction to security protocols for this proceedings, which is followed by the group of papers from this session.The Organizers for the MFPS series are Stephen Brookes (CMU), Michael Main (Colorado), Austin Melton (Kent State), Michael Mislove (Tulane) and David Schmidt (Kansas State). On behalf of the participants, we wish to express our thanks both to the Office of Naval Research, and especially to Dr. Ralph Wachter, who have generously supported this series.Lastly, we also wish to thank Ms. Geralyn Caradona, who provided her usual efficient attention to discharging the many details of arranging for the meeting needs. Without her efforts, the meeting would not have run as {smoothly} nor have been as productive and enjoyable as it was for the participants.

SRI International : An Example of Outsourcing in R&D

SRI International : An Example of Outsourcing in R&D

The open agent architecture: A framework for building distributed software systems

The Open Agent Architecture (OAA), developed and used for several years at SRI International, makes it possible for software services to be provided through the cooperative efforts of distributed collections of autonomous agents. Communication and cooperation between agents are brokered by one or more facilitators, which are responsible for matching requests, from users and agents, with descriptions of the capabilities of other agents. Thus it is not generally required that a user or agent know the identities, locations, or number of other agents involved in satisfying a request. OAA is structured so as to minimize the effort involved in creating new agents and "wrapping" legacy applications, written in various languages and operating on various platforms; to encourage the reuse of existing agents; and to allow for dynamism and flexibility in the makeup ofagent communities. Distinguishing features of OAA as compared with related work include extreme flexibility in using facilitator-based delegation of complex goals, triggers, and data management requests; agent-based provision of multimodal user interfaces; and built-in support for including the user as a privileged member of the agent community. This article explains the structure and elements of agent-based systems constructed using OAA. The characteristics and use of each major component of OAA infrastructure are described, including the agent library, the Interagent Communication Language, capabilities declarations, service requests, facilitation, management of data repositories, and autonomous monitoring using triggers. To provide technical context, we describe the motivations for OAA's design, and situate its features within the realm ofalternative software paradigms. A summary is given of OAA-based systems built to date, and brief descriptions are given of several of these.

Special section on Intrusion Detection

In this issue of the Journal of Computer Security, there is a special section on Intrusion Detection organized and edited by Phil Porras of SRI International. It includes papers that describe research beyond the scope of, or orthogonal to, what the commercial intrusion-detection community is producing. The intent was to capture results from key efforts in the field, and to understand the directions and motivations that are driving current and future research in this area. The call for papers set the stage as follows:

Evaluation of electrical conductivity and thermal diffusivity of vanadyl naphthalocyanine

Metal phthalocyanines have attracted much attention because of their potential application in electronic devices, optical data storage, photoconductors and sensors [1, 2]. They are also very good candidates for high density optical data recording (ODR) media due to their thermal and chemical stability and facility for synthetic modification. An essential requirement for the ODR material is the long wavelength absorption. Metal naphthalocyanines absorb at a longer wavelength than the phthalocyanines because of their additional benzoannulation [3]. For constructing practical ODR devices the thermal properties of the organic dyes are of considerable importance [4–7]. It is also necessary to investigate the electrical properties of metal naphthalocyanines prior to their utilization in optoelectronic devices. Although there are a number of reports on the optical properties of metal naphthalocyanines [8, 9], only very few investigations are found on the electrical properties of these interesting materials. In the present study, we report the electrical conductivity and thermal diffusivity of pristine and iodine doped vanadyl naphthalocyanine (VONc). VONc was synthesized and purified by the method reported by Yanagi et al. [9]. The compound was characterized by elemental analysis, IR and electronic spectra. The data were in good agreement with those reported in the literature [3]. VONc was doped with iodine in the solution phase [10, 11] by stirring 100 mg of powdered sample with a saturated solution of iodine in carbon tetrachloride for 48 h. The doped material was filtered and washed with carbon tetrachloride to remove excess iodine. The iodine doped vanadyl naphthalocyanine (VONcI) was dried at 360 K in vacuo for 2 h. The pellet samples of 5.0 mm diameter and 0.8 mm thickness were prepared at a pressure of 2000 kg cm−2. The electrical conductivity was measured in a shielded cell under dynamic vacuum in the temperature range 100–450 K using a Keithley model 617 electrometer. The samples studied were heated to 375 K and cooled to ambient temperature before measurement, to avoid the interference of moisture and adsorbed oxygen. A photoacoustic method was used to measure the thermal diffusivity of the pellet samples (see Fig. 1). The light source used was a 488 nm radiation from an Ar+ laser (Liconix-5000 series) at a power level of 30 mW. The laser beam was chopped by a mechanical chopper (Stanford Research System model SR 540). By varying the chopping rate the characteristic frequency ( fc) was determined by front surface illumination of the sample. The Arrhenius plot of the temperature dependence of electrical conductivity (σ ) for VONc and VONcI are shown in the Fig. 2. In the pristine sample, the temperature dependence is very weak below 300 K. Above this temperature the behavior is in accordance with an Arrhenius relationship. The increase in conductivity at higher temperature must be due to an enhancement in carrier density with increase in thermal energy. The activation energies at different temperature ranges are given in Table I. The electrical conductivity of vanadyl naphthalocyanine increases when doped with iodine. The behavior of VONcI indicates that considerable changes have

Low-cost matrix development for an Oxide-Oxide composite

Continuous oxide fiber/oxide matrix composites are attractive for use as high temperature structural materials because they can combine composite properties with long-term oxidative stability. The development of a matrix for such a composite and prevention of matrix-fiber coating interaction is described here. The goal use temperature of this composite is 1100°C to 1200°C. The composite is being developed by the M C Consortium comprising 3M, Rockwell International, and SRI International. The composite consists of an alumina-based woven-tow fiber preform, coated with lanthanum phosphate (monazite) to promote fiber debonding and pullout, in an oxide matrix derived from a preceramic-polymer slurry filled with active and inert powders. This approach to the matrix enables conventional polymer matrix composite technology to be used in composite part fabrication. Only one infiltration of the matrix is required, a critical factor in keeping the cost low.

Shipboard sunphotometer measurements of aerosol optical depth spectra during ACE-2

submitted to Fifth International Aerosol Conference Edinburgh, Scotland, 14-18 September 1998 SHIPBOARD SUNPHOTOMETER MEASUREMENTS OF AEROSOL OPTICAL DEPTH SPECTRA DURING ACE-2 J. M. LIVINGSTON, V. KAPUSTIN, B. SCHMID, P. B. RUSSELL, P. A. DURKEE, T. S. BATES, and P. K. QUINN SRI International, Menlo Park, CA 94025 USA 2 Department of Oceanography, University of Hawaii, Honolulu, HI 96822 USA Bay Area Environmental Research Institute, San Francisco, CA 94122 USA NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035 USA Naval Postgraduate School, Monterey, CA 93943 USA NOAA-Pacific Marine Environmental Laboratory (NOAA-PMEL), Seattle, WA 98115 USA

An ischaemic switch for gene therapy vectors

SRI International (Menlo Park, CA, USA) have developed a system to regulate the expression of foreign genes in response to ischaemia or hypoxia in specific target tissues. They believe this novel approach could provide an internal sensor to trigger endogenous sources of medication (transferred genes) for the treatment of a range of diseases including coronary artery disease, ischaemic heart disease, renal ischaemia, stroke and even some cancers.

Report On ?Technology and Assessment in Chemistry?

The workshop ‘Technology and Assessment in Chemistry’ discussed a University of California at Los Angeles based and National Science Foundation funded project that is heavily invested in new instructional technology. Issues related to the convergence of technology and student learning and assessment were examined. The workshop was run by Bob Kozma of the Stanford Research Institute. Kozma first outlined the goals of the UCLA project entitled the ‘Molecular Science Project’ developed by Arlene Russell and Orville Chapman. Unlike other curriculum-reform projects, assessment is an integral part of the innovation. Kozma proceeded to describe his efforts to develop new assessment tools.

Over-the-horizon radar surveillance of airfields for counterdrug applications

Airfield surveillance utilizing over-the-horizon radar (OTHR) offers the opportunity to gather significant intelligence concerning activity levels at suspect drug smuggling airports. It also provides the potential to classify aircraft initially from observed takeoff data, which would be helpful in interdiction efforts. This paper discusses the radar signal components and signal processing techniques required to accomplish this capability. An actual takeoff, observed by SRI International's Wide Aperture Research Facility (WARF), illustrates how the range-Doppler display plays an important role in developing and automating this capability. The ultimate capability is automatic takeoff recognition, initial target classification, rate of climb indication, and track to destination-all important contributions to the counterdrug command, control, and interdiction team.

Environmentally acceptable waste disposal by hydrothermal decomposition of labile compounds with nitrite : Ross David S; Jayaweera Indir Palo Alto, CA, United States assigned to SRI International

Environmentally acceptable waste disposal by hydrothermal decomposition of labile compounds with nitrite : Ross David S; Jayaweera Indir Palo Alto, CA, United States assigned to SRI International

Olah's 70th birthday draws a devoted crowd

George Olah was no ordinary adviser, recalls Ripudaman Malhotra, one of his former graduate students. When Olah won the ACS Award for Creative Work in Synthetic Organic Chemistry in 1979, the University of Southern California chemistry professor used the prize money to send his students and postdoctoral researchers on a vacation to Hawaii. Such acts of generosity epitomize Olah's character, says Malhotra, now director of the organic materials and energy department at Stanford Research Institute in Menlo Park, Calif. Along with more than 230 scientists from all reaches of the globe, most of them former Olah students and postdoctoral associates, Malhotra came to Los Angeles last month to celebrate the esteemed chemist's 70th as well as the 20th anniversary of Olah's academic homestead, USC's Loker Hydrocarbon Research Institute. Longtime friends and colleagues toasted Olah at a banquet in his honor. I would prefer that this were my 25th birthday, Olah quipped. Participants also ...

Transition Metal Catalyzed Cycloadditions: An Intramolecular [4 + 4] Cycloaddition Strategy for the Efficient Synthesis of Dicyclopenta[a,d]cyclooctene 5−8−5 Ring Systems

ADVERTISEMENT RETURN TO ISSUEPREVCommunicationNEXTTransition Metal Catalyzed Cycloadditions: An Intramolecular [4 + 4] Cycloaddition Strategy for the Efficient Synthesis of Dicyclopenta[a,d]cyclooctene 5−8−5 Ring SystemsPaul A. Wender, John M. Nuss, David B. Smith, Angel Suárez-Sobrino, Jan Vågberg, Debra Decosta, and Jon BordnerView Author Information Department of Chemistry, Stanford University, Stanford, California 94305, and Pfizer Central Research, Groton, Connecticut 06340 Cite this: J. Org. Chem. 1997, 62, 15, 4908–4909Publication Date (Web):July 25, 1997Publication History Received12 May 1997Published online25 July 1997Published inissue 1 July 1997https://doi.org/10.1021/jo970841xCopyright © 1997 American Chemical SocietyRIGHTS & PERMISSIONSArticle Views1030Altmetric-Citations90LEARN ABOUT THESE METRICSArticle Views are the COUNTER-compliant sum of full text article downloads since November 2008 (both PDF and HTML) across all institutions and individuals. These metrics are regularly updated to reflect usage leading up to the last few days.Citations are the number of other articles citing this article, calculated by Crossref and updated daily. Find more information about Crossref citation counts.The Altmetric Attention Score is a quantitative measure of the attention that a research article has received online. Clicking on the donut icon will load a page at altmetric.com with additional details about the score and the social media presence for the given article. Find more information on the Altmetric Attention Score and how the score is calculated. Share Add toView InAdd Full Text with ReferenceAdd Description ExportRISCitationCitation and abstractCitation and referencesMore Options Share onFacebookTwitterWechatLinked InReddit Read OnlinePDF (104 KB) Get e-AlertsSupporting Info (1)»Supporting Information Supporting Information SUBJECTS:Alcohols,Cyclization,Hydrocarbons,Molecular structure,Redox reactions Get e-Alerts

A Silicon Valley of the East: Creating Taiwan's Semiconductor Industry

A thriving semiconductor industry has been created in Taiwan over the course of the past two decades by the use of advanced organizational techniques of technology leverage and accelerated technology diffusion. By the mid-1990s, the industry had reached a level of output that placed it behind only the U.S., Japan, and Korea. Almost all of Taiwan's semiconductor industry is located in the Hsinchu Science-Based Industry Park, which was created in emulation of California's Stanford Research Park, but with more direct government involvement. This article explores the extent to which this emergent Silicon Valley in Taiwan shares the industrial ecology that has powered innovation in California and examines the extent to which the Taiwan industry suffers from weaknesses attributable to its rapid creation through technology leverage.