The rapid evolution of scientific research has created a pressing need for efficient and versatile tools to aid researchers. While using artificial intelligence (AI) to write scientific articles is unethical and unreliable due to the potential for inaccuracy, AI can be a valuable tool for assisting with other aspects of research, such as language editing, reference formatting, and journal finding. Two of the latest AI-driven assistants that have become indispensable assets to scientists are ChatGPT and Gemini (Bard). These assistants (...) offer comprehensive support from literature review to journal suggestion, and they have the potential to revolutionize research. In the present study, a comprehensive set of queries and responses were designed to assess the capabilities of ChatGPT-3.5 and Gemini as scientific assistants. The results showed that Gemini achieved a perfect score of 100%, while ChatGPT-3.5 scored a less impressive 70%. Notably, ChatGP-3.5 fell short in specific areas that includes providing assistance with scientific paper explanations, exploring bibliographic databases, and formatting references. The qualitative assessment of responses also suggests that both the AI chatbots can be valuable tools for researchers, however, Gemini seems to be more appealing and accurate through the whole procedure of scientific writing. This work shall open new research dimensions in identifying adequate scientific utilization of the evolving AI tools and technologies, as embracing these advancements will be essential for staying at the forefront of scientific research. (shrink)

Artificial Intelligence (AI) applied to the legal domain is gaining ground. AI is argued to be particularly helpful with labour-intensive activities and repetitive tasks. Amongst the various AI solutions, ChatGPT has gathered momentum and its acclaimed advantages are, amongst others, document generation and contract review. This paper wishes to assess the effectiveness of two chatbots in contract drafting. To this aim, ChatGPT (by OpenAI) and Gemini (by Google) are prompted to write two supply contracts each, the first one written (...) in English according to the laws of England and Wales, and the other one still written in English, but according to the laws of the Republic of Italy. The paper finds that each contract pair generated by the AI solutions is identical, thus disregarding legal-system specificities and language conventions. Therefore, the drafts present a number of fallacies, either because they are incomplete, or because they include clauses that are redundant or inapplicable in a given legal system. The paper claims that human intervention and supervision are necessary to tackle the shortcomings generated by AI, at least as far as contract generation is concerned and with regard to the two chatbots addressed. (shrink)

This paper explores how generative AI technologies like ChatGPT and Gemini are reshaping knowledge production and dissemination. While AI offers democratized access to information, it also disrupts traditional norms of intellectual authority and epistemic rigor. Drawing on the role of the rejection mechanism in scholarly publishing, the essay argues that AI lacks critical filtering mechanisms, risking the amplification of bias, misinformation, and oversimplified narratives. It advocates for robust validation frameworks and intellectual humility in both human and machine learning processes. (...) Ultimately, it calls for careful reflection on AI’s epistemic limits and its role within evolving knowledge ecosystems. (shrink)

A survey conducted in 2023 surveyed 3,017 high school and college students. It found that almost one-third of them confessed to using ChatGPT for assistance with their homework. The rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as ChatGPT and Gemini has led to a surge in academic misconduct. Students can now complete their assignments and exams just by asking an LLM for solutions to the given problem, without putting in the effort required for learning. And, what is more worrying, (...) educators do not have the proper tools to detect it. The more advanced AI tools become, the more human-like text they generate, and the more difficult they are to detect. Additionally, some educators find it difficult to adapt their teaching and assessment methods to avoid plagiarism. This paper is focused on how LLMs and AI-Generated Content (AIGC) have affected education. It first shows the relationship between LLMs and academic dishonesty. Then, it reviews state-of-the-art solutions for preventing academic plagiarism in detail, including a survey of the main datasets, algorithms, tools, and evasion strategies for plagiarism detection. Lastly, it identifies gaps in existing solutions and presents potential long-term solutions based on AI tools and educational approaches to address plagiarism in an ever-changing world. (shrink)

The purpose of this report is to systematize the role of artificial intelligence for the teaching of anatomy in medicine. Experience of teachers in using new technologies (Google Classroom, 3D atlases, WordPress, Facebook, Virtual Reality, etc.) in teaching human anatomy to students of various health specialties for the last 4 years is described. Currently available tools such as ChatGPT 4, Google Gemini, Microsoft Bing Copilot, are not designed for this purpose and fail to generate anatomically correct training images. This (...) situation attends professional attention as well as needs some philosophical remarks on the problem. Popular directions for the development of AI technologies are video generators and editors, image and art generators, painting and drawing tools, writing tools and text generators, music and audio generators, face generators, avatar generators. The benefits and drawbacks of the introduction of artificial intelligence in the teaching of anatomy are discussed and the conclusion that there is a benefit and necessity of its practical inclusion in the pedagogical tools is substantiated. (shrink)

Given the widespread integration of Social AI like ChatGPT, Gemini, Copilot, and MyAI, in personal and professional contexts, it is crucial to understand their effects on information and knowledge processing, and individual autonomy. This paper builds on Bråten’s concept of model power, applying it to Social AI to offer a new perspective on the interaction dynamics between humans and AI. By reviewing recent user studies, we examine whether and how models of the world reflected in Social AI may disproportionately (...) impact human-AI interactions, potentially leading to model monopolies where Social AI impacts human beliefs, behaviour and homogenize the worldviews of its users. The concept of model power provides a framework for critically evaluating the impact and influence that Social AI has on communication and meaning-making, thereby informing the development of future systems to support more balanced and meaningful human-AI interactions. (shrink)

Substantial research over the last ten years has indicated that many generative artificial intelligence systems (“GAI”) have the potential to produce biased results, particularly with respect to gender. This potential for bias has grown progressively more important in recent years as GAI has become increasingly integrated in multiple critical sectors, such as healthcare, consumer lending, and employment. While much of the study of gender bias in popular GAI systems is focused on text-based GAI such as OpenAI’s ChatGPT and Google’s (...) class='Hi'>Gemini (formerly Bard), this article describes the results of a confirmatory experiment of gender bias in visual GAI systems. The authors argue that the potential for gender bias in visual GAI systems is potentially more troubling than bias in textual GAI because of the superior memorability of images and the capacity for emotional communication that images represent. They go on to offer four potential approaches to gender bias in visual GAI based on the roles visual GAI could play in modern society. The article concludes with a discussion of how dominant societal values could influence a choice between those four potential approaches to gender bias in visual GAI and some suggestions for further research. (shrink)

There are calls from various sectors, including the popular press, industry, and academia, to incorporate artificial intelligence (AI)-based technologies in general, and large language models (LLMs) (such as ChatGPT and Gemini) in particular, into various spheres of the South African higher education sector. Nonetheless, the implementation of such technologies is not without ethical risks, notably those related to bias, unfairness, privacy violations, misinformation, lack of transparency, and threats to autonomy. This paper gives an overview of the more pertinent ethical (...) concerns that may result from the deployment of various current AI technologies in the South African higher education context. It provides a broad overview of the relevant AI ethics literature and distills a few general AI-ethics principles that can serve as guidelines for the ethical development, adoption, and use of AI systems. Suggestions are made as to how these might be applied to mitigate the ethical concerns in the South African higher education context. Overall, it is argued that AI technologies should only be adopted if they offer demonstrable benefits to stakeholders affected by them and that care should be taken to ensure that any potential harms are adequately addressed. (shrink)

Artificial intelligence is now widely accessible and already being used by healthcare researchers throughout various stages in the research process, such as assisting with systematic reviews, supporting data collection, facilitating data analysis and drafting manuscripts for publication. The most common AI tools used are forms of generative AI such as ChatGPT, Claude and Gemini. Generative AI is a type of AI that can generate human-like text, audio, videos, code and images based on text-based prompts inputted by a human user. (...) Generative AI is trained on large amounts of data, and the outputs are sophisticated and can be indistinguishable from a response from a skilled human. In this article, we outline several AI applications that can be used in healthcare research, examining their benefits, limitations and outline best practices for maintaining research integrity and ethical standards. (shrink)

This essay analyzes the rise of Large Language Models (LLMs) such as GPT-4 or Gemini, which are now incorporated in a wide range of products and services in everyday life. Importantly, it considers some of their hidden human costs. First, is the question of who is left behind by the further infusion of LLMs in society. Second, is the issue of social inequalities between lingua franca and those which are not. Third, LLMs will help disseminate scientific concepts, but their (...) meanings' dissemination is at risk. Fourth, is the issue of information security and how nations and individuals might adapt. Fifth, is the issue of the environmental cost of LLMs for future generations. At the dawn of the conversational AI era, it would be wise to ponder what inequalities and empowerments will be co-created with LLMs. (shrink)

It is argued that a shared agency account of large-scale knowledge transmission provides a viable way forward for understanding a variety of phenomena, including the transmission of knowledge via diverse technologies such as Wikipedia, Google Search, and Siri. In fact, the lessons learned arguably apply more generally than this. If the arguments of the paper are sound, much of what is said here will apply to large-scale knowledge generation as well, including knowledge generation via large-scale technologies. Finally, the paper considers (...) generative AI technologies such as ChatGPT, Gemini, and Med-PaLM, and asks whether these can be understood as either transmitting knowledge or generating it. Several models are considered for each of these possibilities. (shrink)

This paper investigates the application of artificial intelligence (AI) language models in writing policy briefing notes within the context of public administration by juxtaposing the technologies’ performance against the traditional reliance on human expertise. Briefing notes are pivotal in informing decision-making processes in government contexts, which generally require high accuracy, clarity, and issue-relevance. Given the increasing integration of AI across various sectors, this study aims to evaluate the effectiveness and acceptability of AI-generated policy briefing notes. Using a structured evaluation-by-experts methodology, (...) the research scrutinizes and compares the output of three leading AI language models—OpenAI’s ChatGPT, Google’s Gemini, and Mistral’s Le Chat—across ten critical dimensions reflective of policy briefing notes quality. These dimensions encompass both structural and content-related aspects, ranging from linguistic precision to the depth and applicability of the generated information. The discussion is anchored in the technology acceptance model (TAM) theory and its extensions, which offer a theoretical framework for understanding the factors influencing the adoption and usefulness of technology in public administration. Our comparative analysis reveals that while AI models exhibit notable competencies in meeting some structural and linguistic benchmarks, they fail to address the nuances and depth required by policy experts for undertaking informed decision-making adequately. This discrepancy underscores the enduring value of human expertise in synthesizing complex information and navigating ethical considerations, even as AI enhances efficiency in certain aspects of the policy briefing note crafting process. (shrink)

In 2023, online search engine provider Microsoft integrated a language model that provides direct answers to search queries into its search engine Bing. Shortly afterwards, Google also introduced a similar feature to its search engine with the launch of Google Gemini. This introduction of direct answers to search queries signals an important and significant change in online search. This article explores the implications of this new search paradigm. Drawing on Donna Haraway’s theory of _Situated Knowledges_ and Rainer Mühlhoff’s concept (...) of _Sealed Surfaces_, I introduce the term _Sealed Knowledges_ to draw attention to the increasingly difficult access to the plurality of potential answers to search queries through the output of a singular, authoritative, and plausible text paragraph. I argue that the integration of language models for the provision of direct answers into search engines is based on a de-situated and disembodied understanding of knowledge and affects the subjectivities of its users. At the same time, the _sealing of knowledges_ can lead to an increasing spread of misinformation and may make marginalized knowledge increasingly difficult to find. The paper concludes with an outlook on how to resist the increasing _sealing of knowledges_ in online search. (shrink)

We suggest that as people move to construe robots as social agents, interact with them, and treat them as capable of social ties, they might develop (close) relationships with them. We then ask what kind of relationships can people form with bots, what functions can bots fulfill, and what are the societal and moral implications of such relationships.

In some languages every statement must contain a specification of the type of evidence on which it is based: for example, whether the speaker saw it, or heard it, or inferred it from indirect evidence, or learnt it from someone else. This grammatical reference to information source is called 'evidentiality', and is one of the least described grammatical categories. Evidentiality systems differ in how complex they are: some distinguish just two terms (eyewitness and noneyewitness, or reported and everything else), while (...) others have six or even more terms. Evidentiality is a category in its own right, and not a subcategory of epistemic or some other modality, nor of tense-aspect. Every language has some way of referring to the source of information, but not every language has grammatical evidentiality. In English expressions such as I guess, they say, I hear that, the alleged are not obligatory and do not constitute a grammatical system. Similar expressions in other languages may provide historical sources for evidentials. True evidentials, by contrast, form a grammatical system. In the North Arawak language Tariana an expression such as "the dog bit the man" must be augmented by a grammatical suffix indicating whether the event was seen, or heard, or assumed, or reported. This book provides the first exhaustive cross-linguistic typological study of how languages deal with the marking of information source. Examples are drawn from over 500 languages from all over the world, several of them based on the author's original fieldwork. Professor Aikhenvald also considers the role evidentiality plays in human cognition, and the ways in which evidentiality influences human perception of the world.. This is an important book on an intriguing subject. It will interest anthropologists, cognitive psychologists and philosophers, as well as linguists. (shrink)

The Salivaomics Knowledge Base (SKB) is designed to serve as a computational infrastructure that can permit global exploration and utilization of data and information relevant to salivaomics. SKB is created by aligning (1) the saliva biomarker discovery and validation resources at UCLA with (2) the ontology resources developed by the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry, including a new Saliva Ontology (SALO). We define the Saliva Ontology (SALO; http://www.skb.ucla.edu/SALO/) as a consensus-based controlled vocabulary of terms and relations dedicated to the salivaomics (...) domain and to saliva-related diagnostics following the principles of the OBO (Open Biomedical Ontologies) Foundry. The Saliva Ontology is an ongoing exploratory initiative. The ontology will be used to facilitate salivaomics data retrieval and integration across multiple fields of research together with data analysis and data mining. The ontology will be tested through its ability to serve the annotation ('tagging') of a representative corpus of salivaomics research literature that is to be incorporated into the SKB. Background Saliva (oral fluid) is an emerging biofluid for non-invasive diagnostics used in the detection of human diseases. The need to advance saliva research is strongly emphasized by the National Institute of Dental and Craniofacial Research (NIDCR), and is included in the NIDCR's 2004- 2009 expert panel long-term research agenda [1]. The ability to monitor health status, disease onset, progression, recurrence and treatment outcome through noninvasive means is highly important to advancing health care management. Saliva is a perfect medium to be explored for personalized individual medicine including diagnostics, offering a non-invasive, easy to obtain means for detecting and monitoring diseases. Saliva testing potentially allows the patient to collect their own saliva samples at home, yielding convenience for the patient and savings in health costs, and facilitating multiple sampling. Specimen collection is less objectionable to patients and easier in children and elderly individuals. Due to these advantages. (shrink)

This paper establishes several algebraic embedding theorems, each of which asserts that a certain kind of residuated structure can be embedded into a richer one. In almost all cases, the original structure has a compatible involution, which must be preserved by the embedding. The results, in conjunction with previous findings, yield separative axiomatizations of the deducibility relations of various substructural formal systems having double negation and contraposition axioms. The separation theorems go somewhat further than earlier ones in the literature, which (...) either treated fewer subsignatures or focussed on the conservation of theorems only. (shrink)

Why do people comply with coronavirus disease 2019 public health guidance? This study considers cultural-psychological foundations of variation in beliefs about motivations for such compliance. Specifically, we focused on beliefs about two sources of prosocial motivation: desire to protect others and obligation to society. Across two studies, we observed that the relative emphasis on the desire to protect others as an explanation for compliance was greater in the United States settings associated with cultural ecologies of abstracted independence than in Chinese (...) settings associated with cultural ecologies of embedded interdependence. We observed these patterns for explanations of psychological experience of both others and self, and for compliance with mandates for both social distancing and face masks. Discussion of results considers both practical implications for motivating compliance with public health guidance and theoretical implications for denaturalizing prevailing accounts of prosocial motivation. (shrink)

There is a need recognized by the National Institute of Dental & Craniofacial Research and the National Cancer Institute to advance basic, translational and clinical saliva research. The goal of the Salivaomics Knowledge Base (SKB) is to create a data management system and web resource constructed to support human salivaomics research. To maximize the utility of the SKB for retrieval, integration and analysis of data, we have developed the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. This article reviews the informatics advances in saliva (...) diagnostics made possible by the Saliva Ontology and SDxMart. (shrink)

L'expérience de théorisation d'Edgar Morin a été, pour nous sociologues, bien plus qu'un témoignage exemplaire. Elle a aidé à entamer un parcours épistémologique ; la discipline sociologique peut, en effet, apparaître comme une partition à plusieurs voix au travers d'une discussion non seulement sociologique, mais aussi, anthropologique et philosophique, et ce, en trois temps : la rupture, la construction et la constatation. Ce livre est, ainsi, conçu comme un "aide à penser", d'une part, la genèse de la sociologie, en revisitant (...) les auteurs canoniques (Marx, Durkheim, Weber) et les théories sociologiques contemporaines, et, d'autre part, la complexité des défis culturels, sociaux et politiques, dans nos sociétés. L'expérience d'une pensée aussi rigoureuse que la complexité ne peut se faire par procuration. Il fallait contribuer à l'initiation à la sociologie et beaucoup d'attention pour oser penser par soi-même. L'ouvrage porte sur des problèmes de "théorie", mais tous s'appuient sur des données ethnographiques (enquêtes de terrain). Enfin, l'ouvrage d'Ali Aït Abdelmalek s'inscrit dans son projet de création, à l'Université de Rennes 2, d'un Groupement d'intérêt scientifique "Institut de la complexité : Territoire, Identité, Patrimoine et Politique", en collaboration avec la Fondation Edgar Morin."--Page 4 of cover. (shrink)

This collection of quotes demonstrates the elegant simplicity of Ai Weiwei's thoughts on key aspects of his art, politics, and life. A master at communicating powerful ideas in astonishingly few words, Ai Weiwei is known for his innovative use of social media to disseminate his views. The book is organized into six categories: freedom of expression; art and activism; government, power, and moral choices; the digital world; history, the historical moment, and the future; and personal reflections. Together, these quotes span (...) some of the most revealing moments of Ai Weiwei's eventful career-from his risky investigation into student deaths in the 2008 Sichuan earthquake to his arbitrary arrest in 2011-providing a window into the mind of one of the world's most electrifying and courageous contemporary artists. Ai Weiwei is one of China's most influential and inspiring figures. Artist, architect, curator, and activist, he has been an outspoken critic of the Chinese government's stance on human rights and democracy. (shrink)

It is proved that the variety of relevant disjunction lattices has the finite embeddability property. It follows that Avron's relevance logic RMImin has a strong form of the finite model property, so it has a solvable deducibility problem. This strengthens Avron's result that RMImin is decidable.

We describe the rationale for an application ontology covering the domain of human body fluids that is designed to facilitate representation, reuse, sharing and integration of diagnostic, physiological, and biochemical data, We briefly review the Blood Ontology (BLO), Saliva Ontology (SALO) and Kidney and Urinary Pathway Ontology (KUPO) initiatives. We discuss the methods employed in each, and address the project of using them as starting point for a unified body fluids ontology resource. We conclude with a description of how the (...) body fluids ontology initiative may provide support to basic and translational science. (shrink)

In this paper, we will report annotation experiments which show the advantage of applying a formal ontological methodology for constructing a schema for semantic annotation to mark up terms in the...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:Toleration and Justice in the Laozi:Engaging with Tao Jiang's Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early ChinaAi Yuan (bio)IntroductionThis review article engages with Tao Jiang's ground-breaking monograph on the Origins of Moral-Political Philosophy in Early China with particular focus on the articulation of toleration and justice in the Laozi (otherwise called the Daodejing).1 Jiang discusses a naturalistic turn and the re-alignment of values in the Laozi, resulting in a naturalization (...) of justice (impartiality) by rejecting artificial humaneness and rigid hierarchical moral-political structures. In this Laozian just world, there is no room for human intervention and rigid top-down enforcement of values, thus leaving justice to naturalized Heaven or Dao as the ultimate source of the cosmos.Based on Jiang's interpretative context, I show that there is a twofold justification for the "paradoxical" and "elusive"2 value of political toleration.3 A negative expression of toleration focuses on non-interference with choices, and non-enforcement of values toward those whom one reasonably disagrees with and regards as morally wrong. Such an attitude of toleration results in practical advantages such as avoiding entrenchment in bloodshed, abandonment, and deprivation.A positive expression of toleration operating in the Laozian ideal world requires equal protection of people as capable knowers, including those to whom we object. Such protection includes their ways of expression and an unbiased recognition of them as equally capable knowers so that they are heard without bias and prejudice. Such a kind of toleration is revealed as a constituent component of justice since it enables equal contribution toward the shaping of society without discrimination. In other words, toleration is seen as naturalized justice in a Laozian world within which no one is "being wronged with the capacity as a knower"—a kind of epistemic justice articulated by Miranda Fricker (Fricker 2007).4 [End Page 466]This article discusses how Jiang's political reconstruction of Laozian philosophy contains the seeds for a discussion of toleration, a value associated with distributive justice and against epistemic injustice. First, it introduces Jiang's arguments on a naturalization of justice and impartiality as Heavenly attributes in the Laozi. Second, it articulates the value of tolerance in the Laozi. Finally, I compare Laozian toleration with Confucian toleration using youwei- wuwei metaethical criticism.Moral-Political Philosophy in the LaoziJiang's interpretative framework about the origins of distributive justice in the Laozi starts with a discussion of the cosmogonic-mystical worldviews that signal "a new understanding of the nature of the cosmos, as well as a broad reorientation in the Heaven-human relationship in the mid-Warring States period" (p. 192). Differing from the interests in the origins of human culture or civilization in the Ru and Mo traditions, Jiang agrees with Franklin Perkins and identifies a "cosmogonic turn" in the late fourth century b.c. that reveals a demotion of anthropomorphic Heaven. By paring Heaven with earth and accordingly decentering human beings in the intellectual discourse, the Laozi directs equal values to the ten thousand things, with humans as just one among them (Perkins 2016, quoted in Jiang 2021, p. 196).5 Laozi's philosophy thus stands out by rejecting Heaven as caring for human affairs while taking Dao as the ultimate origin of the cosmos, as claimed in chapter 5 of the received text: "Heaven and earth are not humane; they treat ten-thousand things in the world as straw dogs; the sage is not humane; he treats people as straw dogs" (p. 199).With Jiang's reading of a naturalistic heaven, we see a re-alignment between cosmos and the human since sage-rulers follow the Heaven-Dao. The Laozian Dao is "self-so-ing" (ziran 自然), "accommodating" (rong 容), and "impartial" (gong 公), and thus marks a sharp contrast to Confucian familial bias resulting in "actively intervening in human affairs on behalf of the (certain) humans by appointing them to carry out its mission" (p. 200). With the sage emulating the ultimate Dao, the Laozi replaces the Confucian anthropocentric Heaven, which focuses on partiality (qin 親) and humaneness (ren 仁).This Laozian understanding of the cosmos also grounds its philosophical departure from Mohism despite both having a political... (shrink)

This study investigates the mechanism of how sensory experiences influence visitors’ digital engagement with a destination through establishing a strong bond and identification between a destination and tourist utilizing a two-step process. First, visitors’ sensory experiences in a destination are identified through a content analysis of online review comments posted by visitors. Afterward, the effects of those sensory experiences on visitors’ digital engagement through destination dependence and identification with that destination are examined. Findings suggest that sensory experiences are critical antecedents (...) of visitors’ bond and identification with a destination. Visitors’ positive destination-related sensory experiences increase their dependence on and identification with the destination, and this dependence and identification positively influence their digital engagement behavior on social media. (shrink)

Objective: This study aimed to explore the relationship among cognitive fusion, experiential avoidance, and obsessive–compulsive symptoms in patients with obsessive–compulsive disorder.Methods: A total of 118 outpatient and inpatient patients with OCD and 109 healthy participants, gender- and age-matched, were selected using cognitive fusion questionnaire, acceptance and action questionnaire−2nd edition, Yale–Brown scale for obsessive–compulsive symptoms, Hamilton anxiety scale, and Hamilton depression scale for questionnaire testing and data analysis.Results: The levels of cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance in the OCD group were significantly (...) higher than those in the healthy control group. Regression analysis results showed that, in predicting the total score of obsessive–compulsive symptoms, AAQ-II and CFQ entered the equation, which explained 17.1% variance. In predicting anxiety, only AAQ-II entered the equation, which explained 13% variance. In the prediction of depression, AAQ-II entered the equation, which explained 17.7% variance.Conclusion: Cognitive fusion and experiential avoidance may be important factors for the maintenance of OCD, and experiential avoidance can positively predict the anxiety and depression of OCD patients. (shrink)

Ultrasonic excitation has been widely used in the detection of microcracks on metal surfaces, but there are problems such as poor excitation effect of ultrasonic pulse, long time to reach the best excitation, and difficult to find microcracks. In this paper, an adaptive ultrasonic pulse excitation device and infrared thermal imaging technology have been combined, as well as their control method, to solve the problem. The adaptive ultrasonic pulse excitation device adds intelligent modules to realize automatic adjustment of detection parameters, (...) which can quickly obtain reliable excitation; the multidegree-of-freedom base realizes the three-dimensional direction change of the ultrasonic gun to adapt to different excitation occasions. When the appropriate ultrasonic excitation makes microcracks in the resonance state, the microcracks can be frictionated, which produce heat rise with the temperature. Then, the microcrack defect can be detected by the infrared thermal instrument through the different surface temperatures with imaging recognition method. Our detection experiments of the titanium alloy plates and the aluminum alloy profiles of marine engineering show that the method can get reliable detection parameters in a short time and measure the crack length effectively. It can be used in many aspects such as crack detection in mechanical structures or complex equipment operating conditions and industrial production processes. (shrink)

It is demonstrated on the basis of the Dirac equation that quarks cannot be confined by a vector gluon potential of the form(r/r 0)a or[ln(r/r 0]a, a>0, if the quark-gluon interaction conserves parity. In order to confine quarks with the parity-conserving interaction, the effective gluon potential must be a pseudovector or a scalar. These are shown in a simple Yang-Mills field with theSU(2) group.