The Japanese species of Asteiidae are revised. Six species of Asteia Meigen, 1830, are recorded here in addition to Astiosoma okinawae Sabrosky, 1957, hitherto recorded from Japan. Among them, Asteia gemina, A. longistylus, A. lunaris, and A. nigrigena are described as new to science. Asteia angustipennis Duda, 1934, and A. megalophthalma Duda, 1927, are recorded from Japan for the first time. There are conspicuous morphological differences in the male and female genitalia of the seven species of Asteia. It is suggested that Asteia angustipennis, A. concinna, and A. gemina are very closely related and may be reproductively isolated because of their body markings and male genitalia. These species are assigned to the concinna group of Asteia, newly designated in this study. A key to Japanese species and distribution maps are provided.
In this paper a fuzzy relation-based framework is shown to be suitable to describe not only knowledge-based medical systems, explicitly using fuzzy approaches, but other ways of knowledge representation and processing. A particular example, the practically tested medical expert system Disco, is investigated from this point of view. The system is described in the fuzzy relation-based framework and compared with CADIAG-II-like systems that are a "pattern" for computer-assisted diagnosis systems based on a fuzzy technology. Similarities and discrepancies in - representation of knowledge, patient's information, inference mechanism and interpretation of results (diagnoses) - of the systems are established. This work can be considered as another step towards a general framework for computer-assisted medical diagnosis.
Utilizing the theory of fixed point index for compact maps, we establish new results on the existence of positive solutions for a certain third order boundary value problem. The boundary conditions that we study are of nonlocal type, involve Stieltjes integrals and are allowed to be nonlinear.