Motion planning is a fundamental problem in robotics. It comes in a variety of forms, but the simplest version is as follows. We are given a robot system B, which may consist of several rigid objects attached to each other through various joints, hinges, and links, or moving independently, and a 2D or 3D environment V cluttered with obstacles. We assume that the shape and location of the obstac...

The notion of choice has been characterised as one of the regulating agents of intrinsicmotivation. A study being carried out at the Université H. Poincaré is investigating the effect ofchoice on cognitive and affective engagement during listening tasks. The study compares twogroups of English language learners specialising in other disciplines. The aim of the study is toattempt...

Some algorithms make critical internal use of updatable state, even though their external speciication is purely functional. Based on earlier work on monads, we present a way of securely encapsulating stateful computations that manipulate multiple, named, mutable objects, in the context of a non-strict, purely-functional language. The security of the encapsulation is assured by the type system,...

Nuclear Medicine is a medical speciality that uses the nuclear properties of radioactive elements in diagnosis or therapy of diseases. The most visible component of this is in the use of gamma-ray emitting radioisotopes to produce images (scans). There is also extensive use of in-vitro diagnostic tests (e.g. Cr 51-EDTA), and use of elements decaying with gamma and beta radiation producing highe...

Dear Sir. Today many subjects with beta thalassaemia major (β-thal) successfully survive into adult life, due to the remarkable improvement of medical care and better understanding of pathogenesis, clinical manifestations and prevention of endocrine complications. 1 However, involvement of the endocrine system still burdens the life of these patients. In fact, several studies have reported that...

Group A beta-haemolytic streptococci were isolated from 51 (9.8%) of 519 patients with pharyngitis. Throat culture results showed the mean sensitivity, specificity and predictive value of a positive Gram-stained smear of pharyngeal secretions as 70%, 89% and 69%. The data suggest that Gram staining of a smear directly from the swab is as accurate as and more speedy than a culture from the phary...