Engineering Commons^™

Acuta Enews August 2011, Vol 40, No. 8

ACUTA Newsletters

ln This lssue

From ACUTA Headquarters.......... Corinne Hoch, lnterim Executive Director

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ACUTA Webinar: Transitioning to lPv6 on Your Campus

Connecting in the Digital Age............. . Buck Bayliff, PCR

Campus Tech a Top Factor in College Selection and Perceived Career Success

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Efficient Geophysical Technique Of Vertical Line Elements As A Natural Consequence Of General Constraints Techniques, Rolando Cardenas, Martine Ceberio

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

One of the main objectives of geophysics is to find how density d and other physical characteristics depend on a 3-D location (x,y,z). In general, in numerical methods, a way to find the dependence d(x,y,z) is to discretize the space, and to consider, as unknown, e.g., values d(x,y,z) on a 3-D rectangular grid. In this case, the desired density distribution is represented as a combination of point-wise density distributions. In geophysics, it turns out that a more efficient way to find the desired distribution is to represent it as a combination of thin vertical line elements that start at some …

Quantitative Characterization Of Microstructure Features For 1st Generation Advanced High Strength Steels, Margarita Vidrio, Ellen Liu, Donsheng Li, Kyoo Sil Choi, Xin Sun

STAR Program Research Presentations

The role of Advanced High Strength Steels (AHSS) in the automotive industry is important because of its affordability and excellent mechanical properties. The 1st generation of AHSS achieves its preferred combination of strength and ductility by embedding harder martensite grains into softer ferritic matrix. Ductility and strength of these steels are important to safety, formability, application, and life. However, a noticeable degree of inconsistent forming behaviors has been observed in the 1st generation AHSS in production, which seems to be related to the microstructure-level inhomogeneity. The objective of this project is to grain fundamental understandings on how different microstructure level …

Simulation Of Wing Tip Vortices, Ryan Termath, Jason Lechniak, Keerti Bhamidipati

STAR Program Research Presentations

Modeling and Simulation (M&S) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) techniques were used to better understand wing tip vortices about a wing section. The CFD results were compared to experimental wind tunnel data derived from the University of Iowa (Ref. 2). The experiment used Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) to measure the flow field. The SPIV data from the experiment illustrates the vortex core development and behavior downstream of the trailing edge of the wing section. Three CFD simulations using various mesh sizes and time steps were completed and compared to the experimental results. Two dimensional plots of modeled local flow field …

Effect Of Au Content On Microstructural Evolution Of Snagcu Solder Joints That Undergo Isothermal Aging And Reliability Testing, Patrick J. Hyland

Master's Theses

Electronics, especially, printed circuit boards (PCBs) are a widespread technology. Metal coatings or “surface finishes” are often added to PCB board pads and component leads during manufacturing to improve their performance. Electroplated nickel/gold over copper is a popular surface finish for printed circuit boards and component leads. The presence of gold in solder joints, however, is known to have detrimental effects referred to as gold embrittlement. It is generally understood that tin-lead solder joints with less than 3 weight percent (wt%) of gold will not experience reliability issues. The acceptable level of gold in lead-free solder joints, however, is less …

Chaotic Bandgaps In Hybrid Acousto-Optic Feedback And Their Implications, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Mohammed A. Al-Saedi

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The nonlinear dynamics of a hybrid acousto-optic device was examined from the perspective of the Lyapunov exponent (LE) and bifurcation maps. The plots for LE versus system parameters and bifurcation maps have recently been examined against known simulation results including chaotic encryption experiments [1]. It is verified that the "loop gain" (feedback gain (β) times incident light amplitude (Iin) needs to be greater than one as a necessary , but not sufficient condition for the onset of chaos.

It is found that for certain combinations of β, Iin, net bias voltage (αtοt), and the initial value of the first-order scattered …

Prediction In Econometrics: Towards Mathematical Justification Of Simple (And Successful) Heuristics, Vladik Kreinovich, Hung T. Nguyen, Songsak Sriboonchitta

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Many heuristic and semi-heuristic methods have been proposed to predict economic and financial processes. Some of these heuristic processes are intuitively reasonable, some seemingly contradict to our intuition. The success of these heuristics leads to a reasonable conjecture that these heuristic methods must have a more fundamental justification. In this paper, we provide such a justification for two simple (and successful) prediction heuristics: of an intuitive exponential smoothing that provides a reasonable prediction for slowly changing processes, and of a seemingly counter-intuitive idea of an increase in volatility as a predictor of trend reversal. As a possible application of these …

Reconstructing An Open Order From Its Closure, With Applications To Space-Time Physics And To Logic, Francisco Zapata, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In his logical papers, Leo Esakia studied corresponding ordered topological spaces and order-preserving mappings. Similar spaces and mappings appear in many other application areas such the analysis of causality in space-time. It is known that under reasonable conditions, both the topology and the original order relation can be uniquely reconstructed if we know the "interior" < of the order relation. It is also known that in some cases, we can uniquely reconstruct < (and hence, topology) from the original order relation. In this paper, we show that, in general, under reasonable conditions, the open order < (and hence, the corresponding topology) can be uniquely determined from its closure.

The Cleanjava Language For Functional Program Verification, Yoonsik Cheon, Cesar Yeep, Melisa Vela

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Unlike Hoare-style program verification, functional program verification supports forward reasoning by viewing a program as a mathematical function from one program state to another and proving its correctness by essentially comparing two mathematical functions, the function computed by the program and its specification. Since it requires a minimal mathematical background and reflects the way that programmers reason about the correctness of a program informally, it can be taught and practiced effectively. However, there is no formal notation supporting the functional program verification. In this article, we describe a formal notation for writing functional program specifications for Java programs. The notation, …

High-Concentration Chemical Computing Techniques For Solving Hard-To-Solve Problems, And Their Relation To Numerical Optimization, Neural Computing, Reasoning Under Uncertainty, And Freedom Of Choice, Vladik Kreinovich, Olac Fuentes

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Chemical computing -- using chemical reactions to perform computations -- is a promising way to solve computationally intensive problems. Chemical computing is promising because it has the potential of using up to 10^{23} molecules as processors working in parallel -- and thus, has a potential of an enormous speedup. Unfortunately, for hard-to-solve (NP-complete) problems a natural chemical computing approach for solving them is exponentially slow. In this chapter, we show that the corresponding computations can become significantly faster if we use very-high-concentration chemical reactions, concentrations at which the usual equations of chemical kinetics no longer apply. We also show that …

All Kinds Of Behavior Are Possible In Chemical Kinetics: A Theorem And Its Potential Applications To Chemical Computing, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Linear Neural Networks Revisited: From Pagerank To Family Happiness, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The study of Artificial Neural Networks started with the analysis of linear neurons. It was then discovered that networks consisting only of linear neurons cannot describe non-linear phenomena. As a result, most currently used neural networks consist of non-linear neurons. In this paper, we show that in many cases, linear neurons can still be successfully applied. This idea is illustrated by two examples: the PageRank algorithm underlying the successful Google search engine and the analysis of family happiness.

Density-Based Fuzzy Clustering As A First Step To Learning The Rules: Challenges And Possible Solutions, Gözde Ulutagay, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, it is necessary to cluster given situations, i.e., to divide them into groups so that situations within each group are similar to each other. This is how we humans usually make decisions: instead of taking into account all the tiny details of a situation, we classify the situation into one of the few groups, and then make a decision depending on the group containing a given situation. When we have many situations, we can describe the probability density of different situations. In terms of this density, clusters are connected sets with higher density separated by sets …

Arsenic Accumulation In Rice Grains: Effects Of Cultivars And Water Management Practices, Bin Hua, Wengui Yan, Jianmin Wang, Baolin Deng, John Yang

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Arsenic (As) accumulation in rice grains is a threat to human health and marketability of rice products. in an effort to minimize as uptake by rice grains, field experiments were conducted to investigate as accumulation in rice grains of three cultivars in monosodium methane arsonate-treated soil under saturated and flooded water management practices. Results indicated that as concentrations in rice grains were cultivar-dependent and influenced by water management. Soil flooding would substantially enhance the as accumulation with a great variation among cultivars. Extractable as in the soil was positively correlated with sodium dithionite-sodium citrate-sodium bicarbonate solution-extractable Fe, suggesting a strong …

Decisive Disaster Debris Management, Nazli Yesiller

Civil and Environmental Engineering

No abstract provided.

Measuring Robustness Of Feature Selection Techniques On Software Engineering Datasets, Huanjing Wang, Taghi Khoshgoftaar, Randall Wald

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Feature Selection is a process which identifies irrelevant and redundant features from a high-dimensional dataset (that is, a dataset with many features), and removes these before further analysis is performed. Recently, the robustness (e.g., stability) of feature selection techniques has been studied, to examine the sensitivity of these techniques to changes in their input data. In this study, we investigate the robustness of six commonly used feature selection techniques as the magnitude of change to the datasets and the size of the selected feature subsets are varied. All experiments were conducted on 16 datasets from three real-world software projects. The …

Rail Freight In The Republic Of Ireland, Juan Carlos Carrasco Gimenez, Edward Sweeney, John Harvey

Conference papers

In a world where freight transport is increasing, efficiency is essential. Transport by rail is characterised by its low fuel consumption per tonne. This mode of transport became extremely important during the last century but unfortunately it has been losing its importance in the logistics sector with the passing of time. However, we are currently witnessing an important transformation in the railway sector throughout Europe. This has been promoted by the European Union, with a significant allocation of resources to this issue. With the objective of increasing the volume of goods transported by rail, European nations are conducting a transformation …

Supply Chain Management: Scm Key To Competitiveness, Edward Sweeney

Practitioner Journals

Any meaningful attempt to eliminate waste and improve cost competitiveness in the Irish packaging sector must have a strong focus on how the supply chain is designed and managed.

How To Encourage Imperfect Individuals To Care More About Society In General: A Utility-Theory Approach, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Year Seven Annual Report: Activities, Findings And Evaluators' Reports, Ncete Faculty

Reports to NSF

The National Center for Engineering and Technology Education (NCETE) is a collaborative network of scholars with backgrounds in technology education, engineering, and related fields. Our mission is to build capacity in technology education and to improve the understanding of the learning and teaching of high school students and teachers as they apply engineering design processes to technological problems. This year’s accomplishments include: completion of doctoral dissertations and post-doctoral research; continuation of research program; exploration of a strategic alliance of engineering and technology education groups in major doctoral-degree-granting universities; development of a caucus on high school engineering design challenges; and ongoing …

Empirical Critical Loads Of Atmospheric Nitrogen Deposition For Nutrient Enrichment And Acidification Of Sensitive Us Lakes, Jill S. Baron, Charles T. Driscoll, John L. Stoddard, Eric E. Richer

Civil and Environmental Engineering - All Scholarship

No abstract provided.

A Simple Physics-Motivated Equivalent Reformulation Of P=Np That Makes This Equality (Slighty) More Plausible, Jaime Nava, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In our opinion, one of the reasons why the problem P=NP? is so difficult is that while there are good intuitive arguments in favor of P=/=NP, there is a lack of intuitive arguments in favor of P=NP. In this paper, we provide such an argument -- based on the fact that in physics, many dependencies are scale-invariant, their expression does not change if we simply change the unit in which we measure the corresponding input quantity (e.g., replace meters by centimeters). It is reasonable to imagine similar behavior for time complexity t_A(n) of algorithms A: that the form …

An Integrated System Dynamics Model For Analyzing Behaviour Of The Social-Energy-Economic-Climatic System: User’S Manual, Mohammad Khaled Akhtar, Slobodan P. Simonovic, Jacob Wibe, Jim Macgee, Jim Davies

Water Resources Research Report

The User's Manual is planned to assist the user in (i) understanding the ANEMI model structure; and (ii) learning how to use the model for policy simulation. ANEMI model is a research product and is not developed as a commercial software. This manual contains a brief description of the main features of the Vensim system dynamics simulation software (Ventana, 2010), as well as integrated simulationoptimization procedure developed by incorporating MATLAB (MathWorks, 2007) functionalities with Vensim system dynamics simulation. With the help of Vensim and MATLAB software packages, the user can use, modify and/or run the ANEMI models provided with the …

An Integrated System Dynamics Model For Analyzing Behaviour Of The Social-Energy-Economic-Climatic System: Model Description, Mohammad Khaled Akhtar, Slobodan P. Simonovic, Jacob Wibe, Jim Macgee, Jim Davies

Water Resources Research Report

The feedback based integrated assessment model ANEMI represents the society-biosphereclimate- economy-energy system of the earth and biosphere. The development of ANEMI model is done using the system dynamics simulation approach that (a) allows understanding and modeling of complex global change and (b) assists in the investigation of possible policy options for mitigating, and/or adopting to global changing conditions, within an integrated assessment modeling framework. This report presents ANEMI model and its nine individual sectors: climate, carbon cycle, land-use, population, food production, hydrologic cycle, water demand, water quality, and energy-economy. Two versions of the model are developed and presented in the …

A Method For Evaluating Manufacturing Change In Engineering Design, Christopher Brooks

All Theses

Design changes are a frequent occurrence over the life of a product that may be initiated by an update to the product functionality, new customer needs, or generational improvements. The costs associated with these changes are undesirable, and are often times greatly inflated by additional, unanticipated changes that result from change propagating throughout the system. Propagation paths occur when an initiating change to a component necessitates subsequent changes to coupled components, as the change continues to propagate throughout the product architecture. The nature of this change propagation is challenging to characterize and accurately predict. To address this issue, a change …

Laboratory Evaluation Of Dynamic Characterization Methods For Rapid Condition Assessment Of Bridges, Jason Kyle Herrman

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis was to devise and refine Structural Health Monitoring methods and the associated quantitative characterization methods with the specific goal of enabling rapid and reliable safety evaluations of bridges following natural or manmade hazards. Presently, the safety and serviceability of these transportation infrastructure assets for use in emergency response and recovery operations are evaluated through on-site visual inspections of individual structures by teams of specially trained engineers or technicians; a process that is manpower-intensive, subjective, and slow. Specifically, the researcher was able to identify and evaluate strategies and procedures for using dynamic testing methods to rapidly …

How Accurately Should We Write On The Board? When Marking Comments On Student Papers?, Martine Ceberio, Olga Kosheleva

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Writing on the board is an important part of a lecture. Lecturers' handwriting is not always perfect. Usually, a lecturer can write slower and more legibly, this will increase understandability but slow down the lecture. In this paper, we analyze an optimal trade-off between speed and legibility.

I-Complexity And Discrete Derivative Of Logarithms: A Symmetry-Based Explanation, Vladik Kreinovich, Jaime Nava

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical applications, it is useful to consider Kolmogorov complexity K(s) of a given string s, i.e., the shortest length of a program that generates this string. Since Kolmogorov complexity is, in general, not computable, it is necessary to use computable approximations K_~(s) to K(s). Usually, to describe such an approximations, we take a compression algorithm and use the length of the compressed string as K_~(s). This approximation, however, is not perfect: e.g., for most compression algorithms, adding a single bit to the string $s$ can drastically change the value K_~(s) -- while …

A New Justification For Weighted Average Aggregation In Fuzzy Techniques, Jaime Nava

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many practical situations, we need to decide whether a given solution is good enough, based on the degrees a_i to which different criteria are satisfied. In this paper, we show that natural requirements lead to the weighted average decision, according to which a solution is acceptable if w₁ * a₁ + ... + w_n * a_n > t for some weights w_i and threshold t.

Computation In Quantum Space-Time Could Lead To A Super-Polynomial Speedup, Vladik Kreinovich, Michael Zakharevich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)