Engineering Commons^™

Agents And Service-Oriented Computing For Autonomic Computing: A Research Agenda, Frances M.T. Brazier, Jeffrey O. Kephart, H. Van Dyke Parunak, Michael N. Huhns

Faculty Publications

Autonomic computing is the solution proposed to cope with the complexity of today's computing environments. Self-management, an important element of autonomic computing, is also characteristic of single and multiagent systems, as well as systems based on service-oriented architectures. Combining these technologies can be profitable for all - in particular, for the development of autonomic computing systems.

An Infrared Imaging Method For High-Throughput Combinatorial Investigation Of Hydrogenation-Dehydrogenation And New Phase Formation Of Thin Films, H. Oguchi, Jason R. Hattrick-Simpers, I. Takeuchi, E. J. Heilweil, L. A. Bendersky

Faculty Publications

We have developed an infrared imaging setup enabling in situ infrared images to be acquired, and expanded on capabilities of an infrared imaging as a high-throughput screening technique, determination of a critical thickness of a Pd capping layer which significantly blocks infrared emission from below, enhancement of sensitivity to hydrogenation and dehydrogenation by normalizing raw infrared intensity of a Mg thin film to an inert reference, rapid and systematic screening of hydrogenation and dehydrogenation properties of a Mg–Ni composition spread covered by a thickness gradient Pd capping layer, and detection of formation of a Mg₂Si phase in a …

A Miniature Spiral Diversity Antenna System With High Overall Gain Coverage And Low Sar, Abu T.M. Sayem, Sadia Khan, Mohammod Ali

Faculty Publications

A miniature spiral diversity antenna system operating at 1.85 GHz is proposed. Two 10 mm 6.25 mm antennas were placed at two corners of a printed circuit board at a height of 7 mm from the ground plane. Each antenna achieves nearly 7% bandwidth within 6 dB return loss. The mutual coupling between the two antennas is less than 10 dB. The proposed diversity antenna scheme exhibits high overall gain performance in all three principal planes compared to a single antenna solution. Computed specific absorption rate (SAR) data against a specific anthropomorphic mannequin (SaM) phantom and a hand model show …

Inhomogeneous Degradation Of Polymer Electrolyte Membrane In Pem Fuel Cells, Xinyu Huang, Wonseok Yoon

Faculty Publications

Membrane durability is one of the technical barriers for the commercialization of polymer electrolyte membrane (PEM) fuel cells. Membrane embrittlement (a form of mechanical weakening) can lead to the frequently observed “sudden death” behavior of PEM fuel cells. It is the objective of this study to explore the fundamental mechanisms of the mechanical weakening of perfluorosulfonic acid (PFSA) based electrolyte membranes during the accelerated degradation test.

Sulfur Dioxide Crossover During The Production Of Hydrogen And Sulfuric Acid In A Pem Electrolyzer, John A. Staser, John W. Weidner

Faculty Publications

A proton exchange membrane (PEM) electrolyzer has been investigated as a viable system for the electrolysis step in the thermochemical conversion of sulfur dioxide to sulfuric acid for the large-scale production of hydrogen. Unfortunately, during operation, sulfur dioxide can diffuse from the anode to the cathode. This has several negative effects, including reduction to sulfur that could potentially damage the electrode, consumption of current that would otherwise be used for the production of hydrogen, introduction of oxygen and SO₂ to the hydrogen stream, and loss of sulfur to the cycle. However, proper water management can reduce or eliminate the …

The Effect Of Copt Crystallinity And Grain Texturing On Properties Of Exchange-Coupled Fe/Copt Systems, H. Oguchi, A. Zambano, M. Yu, Jason R. Hattrick-Simpers, D. Banerjee, Y. Liu, Z. L. Wang, J. P. Liu, S. E. Lofland, D. Josell, I. Takeuchi

Faculty Publications

The effect of the crystallinity and the grain texturing of CoPt hard layers on exchange coupled Fe/CoPt soft/hard magnetic systems was studied using gradient thickness multilayer thin films. We have studied the hard layer structures by transmission electron microscopy and x-ray diffraction, and characterized the exchange coupling interaction through magnetization loops obtained by the magneto-optical Kerr effect measurement. We found that exchange coupling strongly depends on the crystalline characteristics of the CoPt hard layer. There is correlation between the mixture of different grain orientations of the CoPt hard layer and coupling efficiency. In particular, interlayer coupling is enhanced when there …

Polymer Composite And Nanocomposite Dielectric Materials For Pulse Power Energy Storage, P. Barber, S. Balasubramanian, Y. Anguchamy, S. Gong, A. Wibowo, H. Gao, Harry J. Ploehn, Hans-Conrad Zur Loye

Faculty Publications

This review summarizes the current state of polymer composites used as dielectric materials for energy storage. The particular focus is on materials: polymers serving as the matrix, inorganic fillers used to increase the effective dielectric constant, and various recent investigations of functionalization of metal oxide fillers to improve compatibility with polymers. We review the recent literature focused on the dielectric characterization of composites, specifically the measurement of dielectric permittivity and breakdown field strength. Special attention is given to the analysis of the energy density of polymer composite materials and how the functionalization of the inorganic filler affects the energy density …

Fingering Instabilities On Reaction Fronts In The Co Oxidation Reaction On Pt(100), D. Bilbao, Jochen A. Lauterbach

Faculty Publications

Fingering instabilities arising from local perturbations to planar reaction fronts in the CO oxidation reaction on Pt(100) are presented. CO oxidation represents a heterogeneous nonlinear system with the necessary kinetic and diffusive transport properties to support the development of fingered wave fronts. External forcing was utilized to create CO wave fronts on an otherwise monostable, O-covered surface, which, upon destabilization, gave rise to fingers of adsorbed CO extending into the O adlayer ahead of the reaction front. Finger spreading and tip-splitting were observed as the finger pattern evolved towards an intrinsic wavelength, independent of the length of the reaction front, …

Predicting Young’S Modulus Of Nanowires From First-Principles Calculations On Their Surface And Bulk Materials, Guofeng Wang, Xiaodong Li

Faculty Publications

Using the concept of surface stress, we developed a model that is able to predict Young’s modulus of nanowires as a function of nanowire diameters from the calculated properties of their surface and bulk materials. We took both equilibrium strain effect and surface stress effect into consideration to account for the geometric size influence on the elastic properties of nanowires. In this work, we combined first-principles density functional theory calculations of material properties with linear elasticity theory of clamped-end three-point bending. Furthermore, we applied this computational approach to Ag, Au, and ZnOnanowires. For both Ag and Aunanowires, our theoretical predictions …

Gene Order Phylogeny Of The Genus Prochlorococcus, Haiwei Luo, Jian Shi, William Arndt, Jijun Tang, Robert Friedman

Faculty Publications

Background
Using gene order as a phylogenetic character has the potential to resolve previously unresolved species relationships. This character was used to resolve the evolutionary history within the genus Prochlorococcus, a group of marine cyanobacteria.

Methodology/Principal Findings
Orthologous gene sets and their genomic positions were identified from 12 species of Prochlorococcus and 1 outgroup species of Synechococcus. From this data, inversion and breakpoint distance-based phylogenetic trees were computed by GRAPPA and FastME. Statistical support of the resulting topology was obtained by application of a 50% jackknife resampling technique. The result was consistent and congruent with nucleotide sequence-based and gene-content based …

A Special-Purpose Architecture For Solving The Breakpoint Median Problem, Jason D. Bakos, Panormitis E. Elenis

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we describe the design for a co-processor for whole-genome phylogenetic reconstruction. Our current design performs a parallelized breakpoint median computation, which is an expensive component of the overall application. When implemented on a field-programmable gate array (FPGA), our hardware breakpoint median achieves a maximum speedup of 1005times over software. When the coprocessor is used to accelerate the entire reconstruction procedure, we achieve a maximum application speedup of 417times. The results in this paper suggest that FPGA-based acceleration is a promising approach for computationally expensive phylogenetic problems, in spite of the fact that the involved algorithms are based …

Multi-Break Rearrangements And Breakpoint Re-Uses: From Circular To Linear Genomes, Max A. Alekseyev

Faculty Publications

Multi-break rearrangements break a genome into multiple fragments and further glue them together in a new order. While 2-break rearrangements represent standard reversals, fusions, fissions, and translocations, 3-break rearrangements represent a natural generalization of transpositions. Alekseyev and Pevzner (2007a, 2008a) studied multi-break rearrangements in circular genomes and further applied them to the analysis of chromosomal evolution in mammalian genomes. In this paper, we extend these results to the more difficult case of linear genomes. In particular, we give lower bounds for the rearrangement distance between linear genomes and for the breakpoint re-use rate as functions of the number and proportion …

Improving Reversal Median Computation Using Commuting Reversals And Cycle Information, William Arndt, Jijun Tang

Faculty Publications

In the past decade, genome rearrangements have attracted increasing attention from both biologists and computer scientists as a new type of data for phylogenetic analysis. Methods for reconstructing phylogeny from genome rearrangements include distance-based methods, MCMC methods, and direct optimization methods. The latter, pioneered by Sankoff and extended with the software suites GRAPPA and MGR, is the most accurate approach, but is very limited due to the difficulty of its scoring procedure—it must solve multiple instances of the reversal median problem to compute the score of a given tree. The reversal median problem is known to be NP-hard and all …

Evaluating Shape Correspondence For Statistical Shape Analysis: A Benchmark Study, Brent C. Munsell, Pahal Dalal, Song Wang

Faculty Publications

This paper introduces a new benchmark study to evaluate the performance of landmark-based shape correspondence used for statistical shape analysis. Different from previous shape-correspondence evaluation methods, the proposed benchmark first generates a large set of synthetic shape instances by randomly sampling a given statistical shape model that defines a ground-truth shape space. We then run a test shape-correspondence algorithm on these synthetic shape instances to identify a set of corresponded landmarks. According to the identified corresponded landmarks, we construct a new statistical shape model, which defines a new shape space. We finally compare this new shape space against the ground-truth …

Phylogenetic Reconstruction From Transpositions, Feng Yue, Meng Zhang, Jijun Tang

Faculty Publications

Background
Because of the advent of high-throughput sequencing and the consequent reduction in the cost of sequencing, many organisms have been completely sequenced and most of their genes identified. It thus has become possible to represent whole genomes as ordered lists of gene identifiers and to study the rearrangement of these entities through computational means. As a result, genome rearrangement data has attracted increasing attentions from both biologists and computer scientists as a new type of data for phylogenetic analysis. The main events of genome rearrangements include inversions, transpositions and transversions. To date, GRAPPA and MGR are the most accurate …

The 5 Ghz Airport Surface Area Channel: Part Ii, Measurement And Modeling Results For Small Airports, Indranil Sen, David W. Matolak

Faculty Publications

This paper describes results from a channel measurement campaign performed at several small airports in the U.S. in the 5-GHz band. This paper is a companion to another paper, which describes channel models for large airports. We classify the small airport surface channel into three propagation regions based upon different delay dispersion conditions. The channel characteristics of these regions in the delay and frequency domains are discussed with examples. We provide empirical stochastic channel models (of different bandwidths) to accurately represent the channel on the airport surface area for all propagation regions. The models are provided in the form of …

Predicting The Hydrogen Pressure To Achieve Ultralow Friction And Diamondlike Carbon Surfaces From First Principles, Haibo Guo, Yue Qi, Xiaodong Li

Faculty Publications

Hydrogen atmosphere can significantly change the tribological behavior at diamond and diamondlike carbon (DLC) surfaces and the friction-reducing effect depends on the partial pressure of hydrogen. We combined density functional theory modeling and thermodynamic quantities to predict the equilibrium partial pressures of hydrogen at temperature T, P_H2 (T), for a fully atomic hydrogen passivated diamondsurface. Above the equilibrium P_H2 (T), ultralow friction can be achieved at diamond and DLC surfaces. The calculation agrees well with friction tests at various testing conditions. We also show that P_H2 (T) …

Vehicle-Vehicle Channel Models For The 5 Ghz Band, Indranil Sen, David W. Matolak

Faculty Publications

In this paper, we describe the results of a channel measurement and modeling campaign for the vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) channel in the 5-GHz band. We describe measurements and results for delay spread, amplitude statistics, and correlations for multiple V2V environments. We also discuss considerations used in developing statistical channel models for these environments and provide some sample results. Several statistical channel models are presented, and using simulation results, we elucidate tradeoffs between model implementation complexity and fidelity. The channel models presented should be useful for system designers in future V2V communication systems.

Channel Modeling For Vehicle-To-Vehicle Communications, David W. Matolak

Faculty Publications

Physical layer channel modeling is critical for design and performance evaluation at multiple layers of the communications protocol stack. In this article we describe and provide results for modeling vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) wireless channels. V2V settings produce some unique conditions, and due to these conditions, V2V channels often exhibit greater dynamics than many conventional channels and, in addition, can also exhibit more severe fading. Thus, new channel models are needed to characterize this setting in order to evaluate contending transmission schemes and aid in V2V communication system design. A brief review of key statistical channel parameters is provided. Then both analytical …

Novel Wideband Directional Dipole Antenna On A Mushroom Like Ebg Structure, Mohammed Z. Azad, Mohammod Ali

Faculty Publications

A new method to design thin wideband directional dipole antennas on electromagnetic bandgap (EBG) structure is introduced. At the heart of this method is the idea to understand and properly utilize the complex interactions between the dipole impedance and the EBG reflection phase characteristics. Using the proposed technique a thin wideband printed dipole is designed, fabricated and tested. The antenna can satisfy applications, such as Digital Communication System (DCS, 1.71-1.88 GHz), Global System for Mobile Communication (GSM, 1.85-1.99 GHz), Personal Communication System (PCS, 1.85-2.05 GHz), Universal Mobile Telecommunication System (UMTS, 1.92-2.17 GHz) and Wireless Local area Network (WLAN, 2.4-2.485 GHz) …

Spectrally Shaped Generalized Mc-Ds-Cdma With Dual Band Combining For Increased Diversity, Wenhui Xiong, David W. Matolak

Faculty Publications

A new multicarrier spread spectrum modulation scheme is proposed in this paper. This scheme uses sinusoidal chip waveforms to shape the spectrum of each subcarrier of a multicarrier direct sequence spread spectrum (DS-SS) signal. As a result, each subcarrier has two distinct spectral lobes, one a lower sideband (LSB) and the other an upper sideband (USB). By properly selecting the parameters of the sinusoidal chip waveforms, the two sideband signals can be made to undergo independent fading in a dispersive fading channel. These two independently-faded sideband signals, when combined at the receiver, provide diversity gain to the system. Our analysis …

Gene Rearrangement Analysis And Ancestral Order Inference From Chloroplast Genomes With Inverted Repeat, Feng Yue, Liying Cui, Claude W. Depamphilis, Bernard M.E. Moret, Jijun Tang

Faculty Publications

Background
Genome evolution is shaped not only by nucleotide substitutions, but also by structural changes including gene and genome duplications, insertions, deletions and gene order rearrangements. The most popular methods for reconstructing phylogeny from genome rearrangements include GRAPPA and MGR. However these methods are limited to cases where equal gene content or few deletions can be assumed. Since conserved duplicated regions are present in many chloroplast genomes, the inference of inverted repeats is needed in chloroplast phylogeny analysis and ancestral genome reconstruction.

Results
We extend GRAPPA and develop a new method GRAPPA-IR to handle chloroplast genomes. A test of GRAPPA-IR …

Globally Optimal Grouping For Symmetric Closed Boundaries By Combining Boundary And Region Information, Joachim S. Stahl, Song Wang

Faculty Publications

Many natural and man-made structures have a boundary that shows a certain level of bilateral symmetry, a property that plays an important role in both human and computer vision. In this paper, we present a new grouping method for detecting closed boundaries with symmetry. We first construct a new type of grouping token in the form of symmetric trapezoids by pairing line segments detected from the image. A closed boundary can then be achieved by connecting some trapezoids with a sequence of gap-filling quadrilaterals. For such a closed boundary, we define a unified grouping cost function in a ratio form: …

Wideband Smaller Unit-Cell Planar Ebg Structures And Their Application, M. Faisal Abedin, Mohammed Z. Azad, Mohammod Ali

Faculty Publications

A new low-cost smaller unit-cell planar electromagnetic bandgap (ERG) structure operating at the lower GHz frequencies (below 6 GHz) is proposed. ERG structures based on this new geometry are designed on a number of commonly available substrates. Characteristics of such structures, such as bandgap and reflection phase profile are analyzed. a simple empirical model is proposed to predict the surface wave stopband frequency of the proposed ERG structure. Finally, a low-profile dipole antenna is designed and tested for operation on the ERG structure.

Acceptor Levels In Gase:In Crystals Investigated By Deep-Level Transient Spectroscopy And Photoluminescence, Y. Cui, R. Dupere, A. Burger, D. Johnstone, K. C. Mandal, S. A. Payne

Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Combinatorial Investigation Of Magnetostriction In Fe-Fa And Fe-Ga-Al, Jason R. Hattrick-Simpers, Dwight Hunter, Corneliu M. Craciunescu, Kyu Sung Jang, Makoto Murakami, James Cullen, Manfred Wuttig, Ichiro Takeuchi, Samuel E. Lofland, Leonid Bendersky, Noble Woo, Robert Bruce Vandover, Toshiya Takahashi, Yasubumi Furuya

Faculty Publications

A high-throughput high-sensitivity optical technique for measuringmagnetostriction of thin-film composition-spread samples has been developed. It determines the magnetostriction by measuring the induced deflection of micromachined cantilever unimorph samples. Magnetostrictionmeasurements have been performed on as-deposited Fe–Ga and Fe–Ga–Al thin-film composition spreads. The thin-film Fe–Ga spreads display a similar compositional variation of magnetostriction as bulk. A previously undiscovered peak in magnetostriction at low Ga content was also observed and attributed to a maximum in the magnetocrystalline anisotropy. Magnetostrictive mapping of the Fe–Ga–Al ternary system reveals the possibility of substituting up to 8at.%Al in Fe₇₀Ga₃₀ without significant degradation of magnetostriction.

High-Throughput Screening Of Shape Memory Alloy Thin-Film Spreads Using Nanoindentation, Arpit Dwivedi, Thomas J. Wyrobek, Oden L. Warren, Jason R. Hattrick-Simpers, Olubenga O. Famodu, Ichiro Takeuchi

Faculty Publications

We have demonstrated the utility of nanoindentation as a rapid characterization tool for mapping shape memoryalloy compositions in combinatorial thin-film libraries. Nanoindentation was performed on Ni–Mn–Al ternary composition spreads. The indentation hardness and the reduced elastic modulus were mapped across a large fraction of the ternary phase diagram. The large shape memoryalloy composition region, located around the Heusler composition (Ni₂MnAl), was found to display significant departure in these mechanical properties from the rest of the composition spread. In particular, the modulus and the hardness values are lower for the martensite region than those of the rest of the …

Hydrogen Peroxide Formation Rates In A Pemfc Anode And Cathode: Effect Of Humidity And Temperature, Vijay A. Sethuraman, John W. Weidner, Andrew T. Haug, Sathya Motupally, Lesia V. Protsailo

Faculty Publications

Hydrogen peroxide (H₂O₂) formation rates in a proton exchange membrane fuel cell (PEMFC) anode and cathode were estimated as a function of humidity and temperature by studying the oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) on a rotating ring disk electrode. Fuel cell conditions were replicated by depositing a film of Pt/Vulcan XC-72 catalyst onto the disk and by varying the temperature, dissolved O₂ concentration, and the acidity levels in hydrochloric acid (HClO₄). The HClO₄ acidity was correlated to ionomer water activity and hence fuel cell humidity. The H₂O₂ formation rates showed …

Web-Scale Workflow: Integrating Distributed Services, M. Brian Blake, Michael N. Huhns

Faculty Publications

Modular applications, components, and services are all ways of describing the product of an organization's efforts to embody its capabilities in autonomous software modules. In fact, the integration of services using well-established workflow paradigms could amplify an organization's capabilities with the creation of a full-blown, inter-organizational system of systems. This is the essence of Web-scale workflows. Considering the recent popularity and acceptance of service-oriented technologies, the application of such distributed systems is only limited by imagination, but it's also important to understand existing research challenges and their implications to various Web-scale workflow domains.

Durability Of Perfluorosulfonic Acid And Hydrocarbon Membranes: Effect Of Humidity And Temperature, Vijay A. Sethuraman, John W. Weidner, Andrew T. Haug, Lesia V. Protsailo

Faculty Publications

The effect of humidity on the chemical stability of two types of membranes [i.e., perfluorosulfonic acid type (PFSA, Nafion 112) and biphenyl sulfone hydrocarbon type, (BPSH-35)] was studied by subjecting the membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) to open-circuit voltage (OCV) decay and potential cycling tests at elevated temperatures and low inlet-gas relative humidities. The BPSH-35 membranes showed poor chemical stability in ex situ Fenton tests compared to that of Nafion membranes. However, under fuel cell conditions, BPSH-35 MEAs outperformed Nafion 112 MEAs in both the OCV decay and potential cycling tests. For both membranes, (i) at a given temperature, …