United Kingdom Department Research Articles

Traffic Separation in the Dover Strait

The recent collisions in the English Channel and the Dover Strait have caused a great deal of public disquiet in this country and the United Kingdom's Department of Trade and Industry's Safety of Navigation Committee were invited to discuss what, if any, measures should be recommended to Imco to improve the routing system in the Strait. The Institute of Navigation, with its French and German counterparts, was largely responsible for the introduction of the routing scheme in force in the Strait and has since its introduction in 1967, by means of a series of international working groups, kept a watchful eye on how things were going, and on occasions made recommendations for its improvement.

Fault Diagnosis In Complex Engineering SystemsUsing Qualitative, Casual Modelling

1 ABSTRACT This paper presents some of the results from MOB SIM (which stands for 'MOdel Based System Identification and Monitoring'), a collaborative research project involving BA^SEMA, Dowty Maritime and the University of Strathclyde (Signal Processing Division), supported by the United Kingdom Department of Trade and Industry. The aim of MOBSIM is to develop techniques and tools that allow experienced domain engineers to build advanced, real-time, health and condition monitoring systems for high value engineering systems. MOBSIM provides architectures and tools that allow system identification, signal processing and knowledge based methods to be combined. This provides a range of advanced but complementary modelling and diagnostic techniques. This paper looks in detail at the manner in which knowledge based diagnosis is performed within MOBSIM. It describes the methods and tools for diagnostic problem solving. By using a static knowledge base and dynamic data (observations) obtained from the monitored system, the reasoning mechanisms employed can produce and dynamically refine single and multiple fault diagnostic hypotheses. For a particular hypothesis, prognoses can also be generated which indicate the likely future behaviour of the monitored system if no action is taken. The system is also capable of advising a system operator or maintainer of the corrective or preventative action that should be taken. An illustrative example is given of the application of the system to a marine gas turbine, which is being used as the system's testbed. The diagnosis system described here is a general purpose system that is application independent. The use of an application specific knowledge base determines how it will operate.

Cambridge Conference on Some Aspects of Development

This conference, organised jointly by the Overseas Studies Committee of Cambridge University and the United Kingdom Department of Technical Co-operation, was primarily concerned with economic planning in Commonwealth Africa. The largest delegation, made up of Ministers and civil servants, came from the Federal Government and the three regions of the Federation of Nigeria. Other delegations came from Sierra Leone, Gambia, Ghana, Uganda, Kenya, Tanganyika, Zanzibar, Northern Rhodesia, Southern Rhodesia, Basutoland, and Swaziland, the last four territories being represented primarily by British administrative officers. There were staff members of eight African universities, from Accra, Kumasi, Dar es Salaam, Makerere, Salisbury, Ibadan, Zaria, and Ife. From outside Africa there were delegates from the United Kingdom, the United States, France, Canada, India, and the International Bank for Reconstruction and Development. Several participants, including the chairman of the conference, Dr R. E. Robinson, came from Cambridge University.

THE FINE STRUCTURE OF REPRODUCING TOXOPLASMA GONDII.

1. Different shapes and forms found in Toxoplasma gondii are associated with reproduction and growth. The functions of the toxoneme and the conoid are discussed.2. A new structure, ‘lamella spiralis', is described in relation to the nucleus and the endoplasmic reticulum.3. T. gondii reproduces either by dividing into two (binary fission) or by multiple division (schizogony), and by a type of endogenous budding. In the latter case small portions pinched off from the nucleus are rounded up to form several small organisms named ‘morulae'.The author gratefully acknowledges the interest and valuable suggestions of Dr G. A. Gresham, M.D., who supervised this work; Dr J. M. Davis and Mr F. Allen, who were kind enough to read the manuscript critically, and Mr W. A. Mowlam for his technical help and advice on fixation techniques.This work was carried out during the tenure of a research scholarship awarded by the United Kingdom Department of Technical Co-operation and the Eastern Nigerian Government.