Engineering Commons^™

United States Air Force Posture Statement 2008, U.S. Air Force

United States Air Force: Publications

The United States Air Force provides the Nation with a powerful deterrent force in times of peace, and it sets the conditions for Joint and Coalition victory in times of war. For over seventeen years, since Operation DESERT SHIELD, the United States Air Force has been engaged in continuous combat operations. Our Airmen have maintained constant watch, deployed continuously, engaged America’s adversaries directly, responded to human crises around the world, and provided the Global Vigilance, Global Reach, and Global Power to secure our Nation.

Scale-Dependent Desorption Of Uranium From Contaminated Subsurface Sediments, Chongxuan Liu, John M. Zachara, Nikolla P. Qafoku, Zheming Wang

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Column experiments were performed to investigate the scale-dependent desorption of uranyl [U(VI)] from a contaminated sediment collected from the Hanford 300 Area at the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Hanford Site, Washington. The sediment was a coarse-textured alluvial flood deposit containing significant mass percentage of river cobble. U(VI) was, however, only associated with its minor fine-grained (<2 mm) mass fraction. U(VI) desorption was investigated both from the field-textured sediment using a large column (80 cm length by 15 cm inner diameter) and from its <2 mm U(VI)- associated mass fraction using a small column (10 cm length by 3.4 cm inner diameter). Dynamic advection conditions with intermittent flow and stop-flow events of variable durations were employed to investigate U(VI) desorption kinetics and its scale dependence. A multicomponent kinetic model that integrated a distributed rate of mass transfer with surface complexation reactions successfully described U(VI) release from the fine-grained U(VI)-associated materials. The field-textured sediment in the large column displayed dual-domain tracer-dependent mass transfer properties that affected the breakthrough curves of bromide, pentafluorobenzoic acid (PFBA), and tritium. The tritium breakthrough curve showed stronger nonequilibrium behavior than did PFBA and bromide and required a larger immobile porosity to describe. The dual-domain mass transfer properties were then used to scale the kinetic model of U(VI) desorption developed for the fine-grained materials to describe U(VI) release and reactive transport in the field-textured sediment. Numerical simulations indicated that the kinetic model that was integrated with the dual-domain properties determined from tracer PFBA and Br best described the experimental results. The kinetic model without consideration of the dual-domain properties overpredicted effluent U(VI) concentrations, while the model based on tritium mass transfer underpredicted the rate of U(VI) release. Overall, our results indicated that the kinetics of U(VI) release from the field-textured sediment were different from that of its fine-grained U(VI)-associated mass fraction. However, the desorption kinetics measured on the U(VI)-containing mass fraction could be scaled to describe U(VI) reactive transport in the contaminated field-textured sediment after proper consideration of the physical transport properties of the sediment. The research also demonstrated a modeling approach to integrate geochemical processes into field-scale reactive transport models.

Development Of A Research Roadmap Related To Safe And Reliable Transportation Of Ethanol In Pipelines, Raymond R. Fessler

United States Department of Transportation: Publications

Scope

Phase 1 Results Suggested Projects for Near Future

Phase 1 Results Other Recommendations

Phase 2 Results Roadmap of All Future Projects

Phase 2 Results Roadmap of All Future Projects (cont.)

Recommended Project 1: Safety of Transporting Blends Containing More than 10 Percent Ethanol

Recommended Project 3: Technical and Economic Feasibility of Preventing SCC Through Control of Oxygen

Recommended Project 4: Feasibility of Preventing SCC by Using Inhibitors

Recommended Project 5: Compatibility of Non-ferrous Metals with Ethanol

Recommended Project 6: Phenomenological Understanding of Ethanol SCC

Other Recommended Actions

Full Project Plan

Peer Review Report 2008

United States Department of Transportation: Publications

The purpose of this document is to report findings from the research peer reviews held May 1, May 6 and May 14, 2008 for PHMSA’s Pipeline Safety Research and Development Program. The findings and recommendations in this report derive from the scoring and comments collected from the peer review panelists.

Department of Transportation (DOT) Operating Agencies (OA) are required to develop and execute a systematic process for peer reviews and for all influential and highly influential information that the OA plans to disseminate in the foreseeable future.

Through the Information Quality Act, Congress directed the Office of Management and Budget …

Did State Regulation Of Power Plants Cause An Increase In Pollution Exportation?, Allen S. Bellas, Ian Large

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

The 1970 Clean Air Act divided responsibility for achievement of air quality standards between the EPA and states. It is widely believed that, as a result, state-regulated sources received taller stacks, but analysis suggests that this is not true.

Acute Respiratory Health Effects Of Air Pollution On Children With Asthma In Us Inner Cities, George T. O'Connor, Lucas Neas, Benjamin Vaughn, Meyer Kattan, Herman Mitchell, Ellen F. Crain, Richard Evans, Iii, Rebecca Gruchalla, Wayne Morgan, James Stout, G. Kenneth Adams, Morton Lippmann

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Background: Children with asthma in inner-city communities may be particularly vulnerable to adverse effects of air pollution because of their airways disease and exposure to relatively high levels of motor vehicle emissions.

Objective: To investigate the association between fluctuations in outdoor air pollution and asthma morbidity among inner-city children with asthma.

Methods: We analyzed data from 861 children with persistent asthma in 7 US urban communities who performed 2-week periods of twice-daily pulmonary function testing every 6 months for 2 years. Asthma symptom data were collected every 2 months. Daily pollution measurements were obtained from the Aerometric Information Retrieval System. …

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms: Chapter 9: Causes, Prevention, And Mitigation Workgroup Report, Paul Berger, Justin Brooks, Terence Evens, Christopher Gobler, Jennifer Graham, James Hyde, Dawn Karner, Dennis (Kevin) O'Shea, Valerie Paul, Hans Paerl, Michael Piehler, Barry Rosen, Mary Santelmann, Pat Tester, Judy Westrick

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Cyanobacteria (blue-green algae) are estimated to have evolved 3.5 billion years ago, at which time they began to add oxygen to the existing anaerobic atmosphere, actually changing the chemistry of the planet and allowing new life forms to evolve. These ubiquitous microbes are capable of tolerating desiccation, hypersalinity, hyperthermal conditions, and high ultraviolet radiation, often for extensive periods of time. Recently, cyanobacteria have responded to human alterations of aquatic environments, most notably nutrient-enhanced primary production, or eutrophication. In fact, cyanobacterial blooms are now viewed as widespread indicators of freshwater, brackish and marine eutrophication.

Due to the complex interactions between physical …

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms: Chapter 20: Analytical Methods Workgroup Report, Armah De La Cruz, Parke Rublee, James Hungerford, Paul Zimba, Steven Wilhelm, Jussi Meriluoto, Kathy Echols, Michael Meyer, Gerard Stelma, Rosemonde Mandeville, Linda Lawton, Kaarina Sivonen, Ambrose Furey

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

The topic of exposure assessment overlaps with other topic areas of this workshop. It includes considerations of establishment of long term monitoring and event response, sampling protocols, development and standardization of organism and toxin assays, funding mechanisms, and public outreach. The development of a coordinated infrastructure (funding, human resources, and facilities, materials and equipment) is key to successfully addressing the threat posed by CHABs.
The establishment of validated standardized protocols to detect cyanobacteria and cyanotoxins is of considerable importance given the increased occurrence of CHABs worldwide. Standardized methods are needed for studies assessing occurrence, monitoring and toxicity studies which are …

Cyanobacterial Harmful Algal Blooms: Chapter 18: Determining Important Parameters Related To Cyanobacterial Alkaloid Toxin Exposure, Adam Love

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

The United States is faced with having to address critical issues that have not been addressed in the past, as recent security interests have placed new and more pressing demands on the assessment of risk from exposure to potential threats resulting from deliberate contamination. Such assessments are the basis for decisions about future research priorities, actions taken to prevent intentional contaminant releases, and developing detailed plans for response if such an event was to occur. High fidelity assessments are based on robust knowledge of the numerous parameters that can be used to predict the fate, transport, persistence, and toxicity for …

Nitrogen In The Environment: Chapter 10. Nitrogen Effects On Coastal Marine Ecosystems, J.R. Kelly

United States Environmental Protection Agency: Publications

Throughout the 20th century, a rapidly growing human population increased the global circulation of nitrogen (N). In the United States and elsewhere, human populations and activities have been disproportionately distributed towards coastlines, leading to markedly increased N inputs to coastal receiving waters. Nitrogen inputs to coastal waters come from the land, from the sea, and from the air; because of these multiple sources and the complexity of the N cycle, confident estimates of total N loading to coastal systems are not routine. Ecological problems from increasing inputs of N to coastal waters are well known and arise from stimulation of …

Enhanced Polymer Grafting From Multiwalled Carbon Nanotubes Through Living Anionic Surface-Initiated Polymerization, Georgios Sakellariou, Haining Ji, Jimmy W. Mays, Durairaj Baskaran

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Anionic surface-initiated polymerization of ethylene oxide and styrene has been performed using multiwalled carbon nanotubes (MWNTs) functionalized with anionic initiators. The surface of MWNTs was modified via covalent attachment of precursor anions such as 4-hydroxyethyl benzocyclobutene (BCBEO) and 1-benzocyclobutene-1′-phenylethylene (BCB-PE) through Diels-Alder cycloaddition at 235 °C. Surface-functionalized MWNTs-_g-(BCB-EO) _n and MWNTs-_g-(BCB-PE) _{n with 23 and 54 wt % precursor initiators, respectively, were used for the polymerizations. Alkoxide anion on the surface of MWNTs-g-(BCB-EO) n was generated through reaction with potassium triphenylmethane for the polymerization of ethylene oxide in tetrahydrofuran and phenyl substituted alkyllithium was …}

Generic Simulation Models For Facilitating Stakeholder Involvement In Water Resources Planning And Management: A Comparison, Evaluation, And Identification Of Future Needs, H. Assata, E. Van Beek, C. Borden, P. Gijsbers, A. Jolma, S. Kaden, M. Kaltofen, J.W. Labadie, D.P. Loucks, N.W.T. Quinn, J. Sieber, A. Sulis, W.J. Werick, D.M. Wood

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Water resources planning and management tools have been moving away from a top down (command and control) approach to a bottom up (grass-roots) approach - which emphasizes the involvement of stakeholders, not only specialists, in all stages of planning - from the identification of problems and issues, the selection of potential solutions to project implementation and operation. Ideally, a participatory grassroots planning process should provide a transparent and flexible platform for all stakeholders to collectively: examine the main elements of their shared water system; understand the main issues and problems to be addressed; participate in identifying alternative policies; and select …

Advective Removal Of Intraparticle Uranium From Contaminated Vadose Zone Sediments, Hanford, U.S., Eugene Ilton, Nikolla P. Qafoku, Chongxuan Liu, Dean Moore, John M. Zachara

United States Department of Energy: Publications

A column study on U(VI)-contaminated vadose zone sediments from the Hanford Site, WA, was performed to investigate U(VI) release kinetics with water advection and variable geochemical conditions. The sediments were collected from an area adjacent to and below tank BX-102 that was contaminated as a result of a radioactive tank waste overfill event. The primary reservoir for U(VI) in the sediments are micro-meter size precipitates composed of nanocrystallite aggregates of a Na- U-Silicate phase, most likely Na-boltwoodite, that nucleated and grew within microfractures of the plagioclase component of sand-sized granitic clasts. Two sediment samples, with different U(VI) concentrations and intra-particle …

Direct Involvement Of Type Ii Secretion System In Extracellular Translocation Of Shewanella Oneidensis Outer Membrane Cytochromes Mtrc And Omca, Liang Shi, Shuang Deng, Matthew Marshall, Zheming Wang, David Kennedy, Alice Dohnalkova, Heather Mottaz, Eric Hill, Yuri Gorby, Alexander Beliaev, David Richardson, John M. Zachara, James K. Fredrickson

United States Department of Energy: Publications

MtrC and OmcA are cell surface-exposed lipoproteins important for reducing solid metal oxides. Deletions of type II secretion system (T2SS) genes reduced their extracellular release and their accessibility to the proteinase K treatment, demonstrating the direct involvement of T2SS in translocation of MtrC and OmcA to the bacterial cell surface.

The Influence Of Acidity On Microbial Fuel Cells Containing Shewanella Oneidensis, Justin C. Biffinger, Jeremy Pietron, Orianna Bretschger, Lloyd J. Nadeau, Glenn R. Johnson, Cynthia C. Williams, Kenneth H. Nealson, Bradley R. Ringeisen

United States Navy: Publications

Microbial fuel cells (MFCs) traditionally operate at pH values between 6 and 8. However, the effect of pH on the growth and electron transfer abilities of Shewanella oneidensis MR-1 (wild-type) and DSP10 (spontaneous mutant), bacteria commonly used in MFCs, to electrodes has not been examined. Miniature MFCs using bare graphite felt electrodes and nanoporous polycarbonate membranes with MR-1 or DSP10 cultures generated >8W/m³ and ∼400μA between pH 6–7. The DSP10 strain significantly outperformed MR-1 at neutral pH but underperformed at pH 5. Higher concentrations of DSP10 were sustained at pH 7 relative to that of MR-1, whereas at pH …

The Army Dietetic Mentorship Program: Making The Most Out Of Mentoring, M.A. Worley, M.B. Salgueiro, D.R. Hernandez, C.J. Buck

United States Army: Publications

To describe the Army’s Dietetic Mentorship Program and its effect on personnel and professional development of recent internship graduates.

On Constitutive Models For Limited Elastic, Molecular Based Materials, Millard F. Beatty

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Faculty Publications

The response function for a general class of elastic molecular based materials characterized by their limiting molecular chain extensibility and depending on only the first principal invariant of the Cauchy–Green deformation tensor together with a certain molecular based limiting extensibility parameter is introduced. The constitutive response function for the Gent material is then derived inversely as the [0/1] Padé approximant of this class, a result that leads naturally to an infinite geometric series representation of its response function. Truncation of this series function characterizes a familiar class of quadratic materials now having physically relevant material constants. It is shown that …

Economic Benefits, Carbon Dioxide (Co2) Emissions Reductions, And Water Conservation Benefits From 1,000 Megawatts (Mw) Of New Wind Power In Nebraska, Eric Lantz, Suzanne Tegen

United States Department of Energy: Publications

Wind power is one of the fastest-growing forms of new power generation in the United States. Industry growth in 2007 was an astounding 45%. New wind power installations constituted 35% of all new electric power installations. This growth is the result of many drivers, includ¬ing increased economic competitiveness and favorable state policies such as Renewable Portfolio Standards. However, new wind power installations provide more than cost-competitive electricity. Wind power brings economic development to rural regions, reduces water consumption in the electric power sector, and reduces greenhouse gas production by displacing fossil fuels.
The U.S. Department of Energy’s Wind Powering America …

Practical Schedulability Analysis For Generalized Sporadic Tasks In Distributed Real-Time Systems, Yuanfang Zhang, Donald K. Krecker, Christopher Gill, Chenyang Lu, Guatam H. Thaker

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Existing off-line schedulability analysis for real-time systems can only handle periodic or sporadic tasks with known minimum inter-arrival times. Modeling sporadic tasks with fixed minimum inter-arrival times is a poor approximation for systems in which tasks arrive in bursts, but have longer intervals between the bursts. In such cases, schedulability analysis based on the existing sporadic task model is pessimistic and seriously overestimates the task's time demand. In this paper, we propose a generalized sporadic task model that characterizes arrival times more precisely than the traditional sporadic task model, and we develop a corresponding schedulability analysis that computes tighter bounds …

Local Neighborhoods For Shape Classification And Normal Estimation, Cindy Grimm, William Smart

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

We introduce the concept of local neighborhoods, a generalization of the one-ring on a mesh to unlabeled 3D data points arising from sampling a 2D surface embedded in 3D. The local neighborhood supports both local shape classification and robust normal estimation. In particular, local neighborhoods out-perform traditional approaches in unevenly sampled, curved regions. We show that the local neighborhood can be used in place of a full mesh structure for applications such as smoothing, moving least-squares reconstruction, and parameterization. Longer version of paper submitted to CAGD

Financial Monte Carlo Simulation On Architecturally Diverse Systems, Naveen Singla, Michael Hall, Berkley Shands, Roger D. Chamberlain

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Computational finance relies heavily on the use of Monte Carlo simulation techniques. However, Monte Carlo simulation is computationally very demanding. We demonstrate the use of architecturally diverse systems to accelerate the performance of these simulations, exploiting both graphics processing units and field-programmable gate arrays. Performance results include a speedup of 74× relative to an 8 core multiprocessor system (180× relative to a single processor core).

A Practical Schedulability Analysis For Generalized Sporadic Tasks In Distributed Real-Time Systems, Yuanfang Zhang, Donald K. Krecker, Christopher Gill, Chenyang Lu, Guatam H. Thakar

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Existing off-line schedulability analysis for real-time systems can only handle periodic or sporadic tasks with known minimum inter-arrival times. Modeling sporadic tasks with fixed minimum inter-arrival times is a poor approximation for systems in which tasks arrive in bursts, but have longer intervals between the bursts. In such cases, schedulability analysis based on the existing sporadic task model is pessimistic and seriously overestimates the task's time demand. In this paper, we propose a generalized sporadic task model that characterizes arrival times more precisely than the traditional sporadic task model, and we develop a corresponding schedulability analysis that computes tighter bounds …

Reliable Data Collection From Mobile Users For Real-Time Clinical Monitoring, Octav Chipara, Christopher Brooks, Sangeeta Bhattacharya, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Real-time patient monitoring is critical to early detection of clinical patient deterioration in general hospital wards. A key challenge in such applications is to reliably deliver sensor data from mobile patients. We present an empirical analysis on the reliability of data collection from wireless pulse oximeters attached to users. We observe that most packet loss occur from mobile users to their first-hop relays. Based on this insight we developed the Dynamic Relay Association Protocol (DRAP), a simple and effective mechanism for dynamically discovering the right relays for wireless sensors attached to mobile users. DRAP enables highly reliable data collection from …

Real-Time Performance And Middleware On Multicore Linux Platforms, Yuanfang Zhang, Christopher Gill, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

An increasing number of distributed real-time applications are running on multicore platforms. However, existing real-time middleware (e.g., Real-Time CORBA) lacks support for scheduling soft real-time tasks on multicore platforms while guaranteeing their time constraints will be satisfied. This paper makes three contributions to the state of the art in real-time system software for multicore platforms. First, it offers what is to our knowledge the first experimental analysis of real-time performance for vanilla Linux primitives on multicore platforms. Second, it presents MC-ORB, the first real-time object request broker (ORB), designed to exploit the features of multicore platforms, with admission control and …

Verification Of Component-Based Distributed Real-Time Systems, Huang-Ming Huang, Christopher Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Component-based software architectures enable reuse by separating application-specific concerns into modular components that are shielded from each other and from common concerns addressed by underlying services. Even so, concerns such as invocation rates, execution latencies, deadlines, and concurrency and scheduling semantics still cross-cut component boundaries in many real-time systems. Verification of these systems therefore must consider how composition of components relates to timing, resource utilization, and other properties. However, existing approaches only address a sub-set of the concerns that must be modeled in component-based distributed real-time systems, and a new more comprehensive approach is thus needed. To address that need, …

Animal Microrna Target Prediction By Incorporating Diverse Sequence-Specific Determinants, Yun Zheng, Weixiong Zhang

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

More recent evidence has shown that access of animal microRNAs (miRNAs) to their complementary sites in target mRNAs is determined by more sequence-specific determinants than the seed regions in the 5' end of miRNAs. Although these factors have been shown to be related to the repressive power of miRNAs and used, in separate programs, to predict the efficacy of miRNA complementary sites, it remains unclear whether these factors can help to improve miRNA target prediction. We develop a new miRNA target prediction algorithm, called Hitsensor, by incorporating more sequence-specific features that determine complementarities between miRNAs and their targets, in addition …

Multi-Application Deployment In Integrated Sensing Systems Based On Quality Of Monitoring, Sangeeta Bhattacharya, Abusayeed Saifullah, Chenyang Lu, Gruia-Catalin Roman

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

No abstract provided.

Transcriptome Analysis Of Alzheimer's Disease Identifies Links To Cardiovascular Disease, Monika Ray, Jianhua Ruan, Weixiong Zhang

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

No abstract provided.

Reconfigurable Real-Time Middleware For Distributed Cyber-Physical Systems With Aperiodic Events, Yuanfang Zhang, Christopher Gill, Chenyang Lu

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Different distributed cyber-physical systems must handle aperiodic and periodic events with diverse requirements. While existing real-time middleware such as Real-Time CORBA has shown promise as a platform for distributed systems with time constraints, it lacks flexible configuration mechanisms needed to manage end-to-end timing easily for a wide range of different cyber-physical systems with both aperiodic and periodic events. The primary contribution of this work is the design, implementation and performance evaluation of the first configurable component middleware services for admission control and load balancing of aperiodic and periodic event handling in distributed cyber-physical systems. Empirical results demonstrate the need for, …

Software And Hardware Acceleration Of The Genomic Motif Finding Tool Phylonet, Justin Brown

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

No abstract provided.