The purpose of the present study was to investigate the relationship between performance on a comprehensive battery of neuropsychological tests and the presence of clinical, subclinical or no cardiovascular disease in an elderly community-dwelling population. The results confirm previous reports of significant associations of age, education and gender with test performance. When performance was examined controlling for these variables, significant associations of disease group were seen with five measures emphasizing speed of performance; Parts A and B of the Trail Making Test, the WAIS-R Digit Symbol and Block Design subtests and category verbal fluency. These results add to the evidence that, in addition to other health implications, cardiovascular disease is related to cognitive functioning in the elderly even at subclinical levels.

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An experimental study is made on the synchronized continuous-rotation of multiple air-levitated autonomous model spacecraft about a xed axis by means of simple rule-based controls. These controls differ from the conventional ones, which require processing of numerical sensor data. The controls depend solely on the occurrence and timing of certain discrete event sequences. Thus, the controlled model spacecraft is a hybrid continuous-time and discrete-event system. Experimental results show that the proposed rule-based controls are effective in achieving rotational motion with synchronized angular velocity and phase. A description of the experimental setup and a brief discussion of the design of the air-levitated model spacecraft is given. Then, the details on the development of rule-based controls and the derivation of a dynamic model for the resulting hybrid system are presented followed by the presentation and interpretation of the experimental results.

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