Engineering Commons^™

Positive Rate-Dependent Action Potential Prolongation By Modulating Potassium Ion Channels, Candido Cabo

Publications and Research

Pharmacological agents that prolong action potential duration (APD) to a larger extent at slow rates than at the fast excitation rates typical of ventricular tachycardia exhibit reverse rate dependence. Reverse rate dependence has been linked to the lack of efficacy of class III agents at preventing arrhythmias because the doses required to have an anti-arrhythmic effect at fast rates may have pro-arrhythmic effects at slow rates due to an excessive APD prolongation. In this report we show that, in computer models of the ventricular action potential, APD prolongation by accelerating phase 2 repolarization (by increasing I_Ks) and decelerating …

Spotlight Report #6: Proffering Machine-Readable Personal Privacy Research Agreements: Pilot Project Findings For Ieee P7012 Wg, Noreen Y. Whysel, Lisa Levasseur

Publications and Research

What if people had the ability to assert their own legally binding permissions for data collection, use, sharing, and retention by the technologies they use? The IEEE P7012 has been working on an interoperability specification for machine-readable personal privacy terms to support this ability since 2018. The premise behind the work of IEEE P7012 is that people need technology that works on their behalf—i.e. software agents that assert the individual’s permissions and preferences in a machine-readable format.

Thanks to a grant from the IEEE Technical Activities Board Committee on Standards (TAB CoS), we were able to explore the attitudes of …

Designing Respectful Tech: What Is Your Relationship With Technology?, Noreen Y. Whysel

Publications and Research

According to research at the Me2B Alliance, people feel they have a relationship with technology. It’s emotional. It’s embodied. And it’s very personal. We are studying digital relationships to answer questions like “Do people have a relationship with technology?” “What does that relationship feel like?” And “Do people understand the commitments that they are making when they explore, enter into and dissolve these relationships?” There are parallels between messy human relationships and the kinds of relationships that people develop with technology. As with human relationships, we move through states of discovery, commitment and breakup with digital applications as well. Technology …

Messiness: Automating Iot Data Streaming Spatial Analysis, Christopher White, Atilio Barreda Ii

Publications and Research

The spaces we live in go through many transformations over the course of a year, a month, or a day; My room has seen tremendous clutter and pristine order within the span of a few hours. My goal is to discover patterns within my space and formulate an understanding of the changes that occur. This insight will provide actionable direction for maintaining a cleaner environment, as well as provide some information about the optimal times for productivity and energy preservation.

Using a Raspberry Pi, I will set up automated image capture in a room in my home. These images will …

On Communication For Distributed Babai Point Computation, Maiara F. Bollauf, Vinay A. Vaishampayan, Sueli I.R. Costa

Publications and Research

We present a communication-efficient distributed protocol for computing the Babai point, an approximate nearest point for a random vector X∈Rn in a given lattice. We show that the protocol is optimal in the sense that it minimizes the sum rate when the components of X are mutually independent. We then investigate the error probability, i.e. the probability that the Babai point does not coincide with the nearest lattice point, motivated by the fact that for some cases, a distributed algorithm for finding the Babai point is sufficient for finding the nearest lattice point itself. Two different probability models for X …

Distributed Cross-Community Collaboration For The Cloud-Based Energy Management Service, Yu-Wen Chen, J. Morris Chang

Publications and Research

Customers’ participation is a critical factor for inte-grating the distributed energy resources via demand response and demand-side management programs, especially when customers become prosumers. Incentives need to be delivered by the energy management service to attract prosumers to operate their distributed energy resources and electricity loads grid-friendly actively. The cloud-based energy management service enables virtual trading for customers within the same community to minimize cost and smooth the fluctuation. With the potential fast-growing number of service providers and customers, the needs exist for efficiently collaborating across multiple service providers and customers. This paper proposes the distributed cross-community collaboration (XCC) for …

Technological Challenges And Innovations In Cybersecurity And Networking Technology Program, Syed R. Zaidi, Ajaz Sana, Aparicio Carranza

Publications and Research

This era is posing a unique challenge to the Cybersecurity and related Engineering Technology areas, stimulated by the multifaceted technological boom expressed in accelerated globalization, digital transformation, the cloud, mobile access apps, and the Internet of Things (IoT)—where more and more devices are connected to the Internet every day. As the use of new Internet-based technologies increase; so does the risk of theft and misuse of sensitive information. This demands the awareness of cyber-criminality and the need for cyber hygiene in corporations, small businesses, and the government. As the need for experienced cybersecurity specialists has skyrocketed in recent years and …

An Optimized Encoding Algorithm For Systematic Polar Codes, Xiumin Wang, Zhihong Zhang, Jun Li, Yu Wang, Haiyan Cao, Zhengquan Li, Liang Shan

Publications and Research

Many different encoding algorithms for systematic polar codes (SPC) have been introduced since SPC was proposed in 2011. However, the number of the computing units of exclusive OR (XOR) has not been optimized yet. According to an iterative property of the generator matrix and particular lower triangular structure of the matrix, we propose an optimized encoding algorithm (OEA) of SPC that can reduce the number of XOR computing units compared with existing non-recursive algorithms. We also prove that this property of the generator matrix could extend to different code lengths and rates of the polar codes. Through the matrix segmentation …

Open Source Foundations For Spatial Decision Support Systems, Jochen Albrecht

Publications and Research

Spatial Decision Support Systems (SDSS) were a hot topic in the 1990s, when researchers tried to imbue GIS with additional decision support features. Successful practical developments such as HAZUS or CommunityViz have since been built, based on commercial desktop software and without much heed for theory other than what underlies their process models. Others, like UrbanSim, have been completely overhauled twice but without much external scrutiny. Both the practical and the theoretical foundations of decision support systems have developed considerably over the past 20 years. This article presents an overview of these developments and then looks at what corresponding tools …

A Dexterous, Glove-Based Teleoperable Low-Power Soft Robotic Arm For Delicate Deep-Sea Biological Exploration, Brennan T. Phillips, Kaitlyn P. Becker, Shunichi Kurumaya, Kevin C. Galloway, Griffin Whittredge, Daniel M. Vogt, Clark B. Teeple, Michelle H. Rosen, Vincent A. Pieribone, David F. Gruber, Robert J. Wood

Publications and Research

Modern marine biologists seeking to study or interact with deep-sea organisms are confronted with few options beyond industrial robotic arms, claws, and suction samplers. This limits biological interactions to a subset of “rugged” and mostly immotile fauna. As the deep sea is one of the most biologically diverse and least studied ecosystems on the planet, there is much room for innovation in facilitating delicate interactions with a multitude of organisms. The biodiversity and physiology of shallow marine systems, such as coral reefs, are common study targets due to the easier nature of access; SCUBA diving allows for in situ delicate …

An Application Of Game Theory In Distributed Collaborative Decision Making, Angran Xiao

Publications and Research

In a distributed product realization environment, new paradigms and accompanying software systems are necessary to support the collaborative work of geographically dispersed engineering teams from different disciplines who have different knowledge, experience, tools and resources. To verify the concept of collaboration by separation, we propose a generic information communication medium to enable knowledge representation and exchange between engineering teams, a digital interface. Across digital interfaces, each engineering team maintains its own perspective towards the product realization problem, and each controls a subset of design variables and seeks to maximize its own payoff function subject to individual constraints. Hence, we postulate …

Insights Into The Binding Mode Of Mek Type-Iii Inhibitors. A Step Towards Discovering And Designing Allosteric Kinase Inhibitors Across The Human Kinome, Zheng Zhao, Lei Xie, Philip E. Bourne

Publications and Research

Protein kinases are critical drug targets for treating a large variety of human diseases. Type- III kinase inhibitors have attracted increasing attention as highly selective therapeutics. Thus, understanding the binding mechanism of existing type-III kinase inhibitors provides useful insights into designing new type-III kinase inhibitors. In this work, we have systematically studied the binding mode of MEK-targeted type-III inhibitors using structural systems pharmacology and molecular dynamics simulation. Our studies provide detailed sequence, structure, interaction-fingerprint, pharmacophore and binding-site information on the binding characteristics of MEK type-III kinase inhibitors. We hypothesize that the helix-folding activation loop is a hallmark allosteric binding site …

Toward Measuring Network Aesthetics Based On Symmetry, Zengqiang Chen, Matthias Dehmer, Frank Emmert-Streib, Abbe Mowshowitz, Yongtang Shi

Publications and Research

In this exploratory paper, we discuss quantitative graph-theoretical measures of network aesthetics. Related work in this area has typically focused on geometrical features (e.g., line crossings or edge bendiness) of drawings or visual representations of graphs which purportedly affect an observer’s perception. Here we take a very different approach, abandoning reliance on geometrical properties, and apply information-theoretic measures to abstract graphs and networks directly (rather than to their visual representaions) as a means of capturing classical appreciation of structural symmetry. Examples are used solely to motivate the approach to measurement, and to elucidate our symmetry-based mathematical theory of network aesthetics.

Ensemble Forecasts: Probabilistic Seasonal Forecasts Based On A Model Ensemble, Hannah Aizenman, Michael D. Grossberg, Nir Y. Krakauer, Irina Gladkova

Publications and Research

Ensembles of general circulation model (GCM) integrations yield predictions for meteorological conditions in future months. Such predictions have implicit uncertainty resulting from model structure, parameter uncertainty, and fundamental randomness in the physical system. In this work, we build probabilistic models for long-term forecasts that include the GCM ensemble values as inputs but incorporate statistical correction of GCM biases and different treatments of uncertainty. Specifically, we present, and evaluate against observations, several versions of a probabilistic forecast for gridded air temperature 1 month ahead based on ensemble members of the National Centers for Environmental Prediction (NCEP) Climate Forecast System Version 2 …

Sefo: A Package For Generating Probabilistic Forecasts From Nmme Predictive Ensembles, Nir Krakauer

Publications and Research

Long-range weather forecasts based on output from ensembles of computer simulations are attracting increasing interest. A variety of methods have been proposed to convert the ensemble outputs to calibrated probabilistic forecasts. The package presented here (SeFo, for Seasonal Forecasting) implements a number of methods for producing forecasts of monthly surface air temperature anomalies up to 9 months in advance using output from the North American Multi-Model Ensemble (NMME). The package contains modules for downloading and reading past observations and ensemble output; producing forecast probability distributions; and verifying and calibrating a user-determined subset of methods using arbitrary past periods. By changing …

Design And Analysis Of A Single-Camera Omnistereo Sensor For Quadrotor Micro Aerial Vehicles (Mavs), Carlos Jaramillo, Roberto G. Valenti, Ling Guo, Jizhong Xiao

Publications and Research

We describe the design and 3D sensing performance of an omnidirectional stereo (omnistereo) vision system applied to Micro Aerial Vehicles (MAVs). The proposed omnistereo sensor employs a monocular camera that is co-axially aligned with a pair of hyperboloidal mirrors (a vertically-folded catadioptric configuration). We show that this arrangement provides a compact solution for omnidirectional 3D perception while mounted on top of propeller-based MAVs (not capable of large payloads). The theoretical single viewpoint (SVP) constraint helps us derive analytical solutions for the sensor’s projective geometry and generate SVP-compliant panoramic images to compute 3D information from stereo correspondences (in a truly synchronous …

Framing The Question, "Who Governs The Internet?", Robert J. Domanski

Publications and Research

There remains a widespread perception among both the public and elements of academia that the Internet is “ungovernable”. However, this idea, as well as the notion that the Internet has become some type of cyber-libertarian utopia, is wholly inaccurate. Governments may certainly encounter tremendous difficulty in attempting to regulate the Internet, but numerous types of authority have nevertheless become pervasive. So who, then, governs the Internet? This book will contend that the Internet is, in fact, being governed, that it is being governed by specific and identifiable networks of policy actors, and that an argument can be made as to …