Abstract: A remote research system, comprising: a central laboratory site equipped to be used for chemical research tests; one or several laboratory robots for performing chemical research tests; a central processing unit (CPU); one or several workstations linked to said central processing unit and set up to control said laboratory robots; one or several cameras for detecting actions of said laboratory robots when performing one of said chemical research tests, said one or several cameras being linked to said central processing unit via said one or several workstations; one or several remote user workstations linked to said central processing unit via a computer network and set up to allow remote user access to chemical research tests performed in said central laboratory site, the execution of a test performed being transmitted by said one or several cameras via said central processing unit and said computer network to said one or several remote user workstations.

Abstract: A disk is described for vertical magnetic data storage, which can be directly contacted by a read/write head, consists of a substrate made of silicon, the surface of which forms a layer of porous silicon. The layer of porous silicon preferably contains pores which run essentially perpendicular to the surface of the substrate and are at least partially filled with a magnetic material. To manufacture the disk, a substrate made preferably of monocrystalline silicon, is chemically treated to form the pores which are at least partially filled with a magnetic material. The magnetic material may be removed from the surface between the pores. The silicon surface may then be treated to improve the wear characteristics. With such a disk, the read/write head can come in direct contact with the treated silicon substrate surface without abrasion or damage.

Abstract: In this speech recognition system, the size of the language model is reduced by discarding those n-grams that the acoustic part of the system can recognize most accurately without support from a language model. The n-grams can be discarded dynamically during the running of the system or during the build or setup-time of the system. Trigrams occurring infrequently in the text corpora are substituted for the discarded n-grams to increase the accuracy of the word recognitions.

Abstract: The invention concerns a computer system for speech recognition with a word table and a triphone table in its memory. In response to a new word not contained in the word table and which is encountered by the computer system during recognition of an unknown spoken text, the fenemic baseform of this new word may be synthetically produced with the aid of a triphone table. For this purpose, the new word is decomposed into triphones, and the fenemic sequences associated with the individual triphones are read from the triphone table. The fenemic sequences are concatenated according to the phonetic baseform of the new word such that the fenemic baseform of the new word is obtained.

Abstract: Method for measuring the properties of a slider/disk interface in a magnetic disk storage apparatus by measuring a triboelectric current flowing between disk and slider. Rotational speed is adjusted between 100 and 500 rpm so as to obtain a frictional contact between disk and slider. The shape of the tribo current curve obtained during the measuring time interval is analyzed. An early maximum of the tribo current amplitude and a subsequent continual decay indicates a good slider/disk interface and a long lifetime.

Abstract: The magnetic disk contains on a disk substrate a magnetic layer comprising a binder, magnetic particles and abrasion-resistant particles, the abrasion-resistant particles being enveloped with a layer intensifying the bond between binder and abrasion-resistant particles. The enveloping layer either has a large specific surface and consists e.g. of SiO.sub.2 /Al.sub.2 O.sub.3 produced by processing the particles with an alkali metal silicate solution and an aluminum sulphate solution, or it is chemically bonded to the binder by enveloping the particles with poly(tetrafluroethylene) and coupling the latter, via an amino bridge to the binder, e.g. an epoxide resin.The magnetic disk according to the invention minimizes the abrasion of the magnetic layer as well as the damaging of the magnetic layer and of the magnetic head by knocked-out abrasion-resistant particles.

Abstract: The frictional coefficient and triboelectric current that exist between the magnetic-head carrying slider and the surface of a magnetic disk when both are in sliding contact are reduced by an appropriate pre-conditioning. The pre-conditioning comprises running the head-disk assembly for at least several minutes at a low velocity of, e.g. 200 to 400 rpm, in a dry gas atmosphere. By this pre-conditioning the lifetime of lubricated head-disk assemblies is increased.