Technical publications and papers

This is a small collection of technical publications and papers that I have written over the years.

Artificial Intelligence

I was fortunate enough to have the lead article, "Why Artificial Intelligence Isn't (yet)" in the July 1987 issue of AI Expert.  When I was visiting Chile in 1999 to give a technical paper at a conference, one of the attendees said this paper was "required reading" in one of his university classes in Chile.  I found that rather surprising but I was pleased.  I have been interested in Artificial Intelligence since 1965 when I first began programming the Philco 2000, Philco 1000, and IBM 1130 computers.  The views in this paper were developed over many years.

Why Artificial Intelligence Isn't (Yet)    (MS Word Document)

Neural Network Machines

Neural networks became a very active area of research in the late 80's.  It was thought to be the answer to the question:  "How do we make machines that think?"  It currently enjoys reduced significance.  My work in this area did however lead to my 1991 U.S. Patent  # 5,058,049 showing how to do a Fourier Transform using a purely resistive network.  Over the years many "solutions" to the Artificial Intelligence problem have been advanced but I am still typing on a keyboard instead of talking to a machine that understands me and knows what I want.  (The computer in Star Trek would be sufficient.  That day will come.  It is going to take more time perhaps than many of us thought/hoped.)  This article appeared in the February 1989 issue of IEEE Potentials.

Neural Network Machines    (MS Word Document)

Cartography

Years ago I developed some algorithms to display maps of the world and additional routines to accurately display circles on the maps and other odds and ends.  The algorithms are based on simple rotation matrices.  They greatly simplify the problem of mapping to different map projections.  They also provide a means of reading latitude and longitude directly from the screen no matter what map projection is used.  Very handy if you are doing map projection work.  This paper was the lead article in the October 1991 issue of Amiga World Tech Journal.  They actually used my title.  (Publishers often change the titles.)  The title is a pun:  "Global Parlor Tricks"  - Global Politics and the subtitle also goes along with this - "Change the world with these geographic mapping algorithms."

Global Parlor Tricks    (MS Word Document)

Lecture Presentation: General Theory of Relativity

My original goal in life was to be a PhD physicist, work on Relativity and the problem of how gravitational fields relate to electromagnetic fields, assuming there is a definable relationship.  I wanted to work on new methods of propulsion to allow us to explore the solar system and the galaxy if possible.  (Fortunately or unfortunately, the Viet Nam war led to my becoming a mathematician doing software work which probably prevented me from living in abject poverty.)  While at Creighton University doing graduate work in Physics, I prepared a lecture on General Relativity and presented it at a symposium.  I preserved the transparencies that I had done for that lecture.  Recently I typed all of the equations into MathCad and created the accompanying drawings.  This presentation is covers Einstein's General Theory of Relativity from the elements of geometry as expressed in Tensor notation through the Schwarzschild solution to the gravitational field equations and resultant predictions of the theory.  Inside the paper, you might note that the title refers also to "super-light expansion phenomina".  I have omitted that section because I am still working on it as time permits.  I thought I had it all figured out years ago but in looking at it more recently, I decided it needs more work.  It is essentially related to observations of Quasars that appeared to be expanding faster than light.  I was attempting a relativistic explanation of the phenomina.  Other explanations have since been offered and accepted by the astronomical community but my work may still apply to objects in the universe.  Its a big universe...

 Outline of General Relativity    (Adobe Acrobat Reader pdf file)

Temperature of a Glass Plate Exposed to the Night Sky (or Why Does Dew Form so Readily on My Corrector Plate?)

I had often wondered about whether it was possible to predict when dew would form on a corrector plate. I did not find anything quantitative out on the internet. I did find some work related to the temperature of an infinitely thin leaf which provided a first approximation but I wanted the result for a piece of glass of finite thickness.

I found that I could not leave the problem alone and studied a book on "Heat Transfer" while in Wyoming on vacation. Finally I was able to derive a solution to the problem. I used Mathcad to solve the system of equations I derived.

I was surprised to find, for example, that if the air temperature is 40 F, the ground temperature is 45 F, and the sky is -70 C, that the top surface of a piece of 1/4 inch thick glass suspended above the ground will achieve equilibrium when its top surface reaches 25.2 F!  That's about 7 degrees below freezing!

That explains a lot... Ice on the roof, ice on a windshield, dew on a corrector plate when the air temperature is nowhere near freezing or near the dew point.

The radiative effect is much stronger than intuition had led me to believe...

Temperature of a Glass Plate Exposed to the Night Sky 

Apple II Copy Protection Scheme

In the 1980's I developed an unbeatable copy protection scheme for the Apple II: 
Apple II Disk Copy Protection

Copyright 1997 - 2008 Howard C. Anderson
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