The launching of the JOT provides a welcome opportunity to resume the Eiffel column that ran for many years in JOOP from 1998 (edited first by Rock Howard from whom I took over in 1998). It will run pretty much like its predecessor, with a mix of contributions by guest columnists and by me, and a mix of topics — from language matters to methodological issues of object-oriented software construc...

We describe novel computational techniques for constructing induction rules for deductive synthesis proofs. Deductive synthesis holds out the promise of automated construction of correct computer programs from specifications of their desired behaviour. Synthesis of programs with iteration or recursion requires inductive proof, but standard techniques for the construction of appropriate inductio...

Sign languages (SL) require a fundamental rethinking of many basic assumptions about human language processing because instead of using linear speech, sign languages coarticulate facial expressions, shoulder and hand movements, eye gaze and usage of a three-dimensional space. SL researchers have therefore advocated SL-specific approaches that do not start from the biases of models that were ori...

Construction Grammar has reached a stage of maturity where many researchers are looking for an explicit formal grounding of their work. Recently, there have been exciting developments to cater for this demand, most notably in Sign-Based Construction Grammar (SBCG) and Fluid Construction Grammar (FCG). Unfortunately, like playing a music instrument, the formalisms used by SBCG and FCG take time ...

The rapid growth of the construction industry in India has influenced key players in the industry to adopt alternative technologies addressing time, cost and quality. The rising demand in housing, infrastructure and other facilities have further highlighted the need for the construction industry to look at adopting alternate building technologies. Offsite construction has evolved as a panacea t...

Little has been written about the structural behavior of conical shells, while conical shells’ construction techniques due to the high rise and small span has always required special attention throughout the history of Islamic architecture. This paper aims to examine how conical shells bear weight loads and resist against bending through a qualitative analysis. After proving that ‘r...

Multi-Chip Modules (MCM's) provide a medium for integration of several bare dies on a multi-layer substrate. MCM technology has gained popularity in recent years with the promise of orders of magnitude reduction in inter-chip delay and power dissipation over single chip packaging [2]. By virtue of a faster interconnect MCM's aim at alleviating, to a large extent, the bottleneck o ered by conven...

We describe techniques used to fabricate the cold stage of an adiabatic demagnetization refrigerator that uses the paramagnetic salt ferric ammonium alum. We discuss the design of a leak-tight housing for the salt as well as a technique for growing ferric ammonium alum crystals that results in a housing filled with > 98% refrigerant. These techniques have proven to be reliable in creating robus...

Optical character recognition (OCR) is a classic example of a decision making problem where class identities of image objects are to be determined. This concerns essentially finding a decision function that returns the correct classification of input objects. This chapter proposes a method of constructing such functions by using an adaptive learning framework based on a multilevel classifier sy...

The performance modeller may attempt to quantitatively analyse the behaviour of computer systems by building performance models. Such models may become unwieldy, and so high-level structured modelling techniques have been developed. A stochastic process algebra (SPA) provides such a technique, a compositional modelling calculus. Hillston’s PEPA is an SPA, a classical process algebra enhanced to...