Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

A Very Small Pond: Discovery Systems That Can Be Used With Folio In Academic Libraries, Jaime Taylor, Aaron Neslin

University Libraries Presentations Series

FOLIO, an open source library services platform, does not have a front end patron interface for searching and using library materials. Any library installing FOLIO will need at least one other software to perform those functions. This article evaluates which systems, in a limited marketplace, are available for academic libraries to use with FOLIO.

Nens, Jaime Taylor

University Libraries Presentations Series

NENS (non-student non-employee) are a group of designations for people who are somehow connected to UMass, but who are neither students nor employees. A person’s NENS designation determines what they have access to at UMass, including at the Libraries.

A Just Energy Transition Requires Research At The Intersection Of Policy And Technology, Erin Baker

Publications

The current energy system, in the US and around the world, is rife with inequities. The coming energy transition to a low carbon world has the potential to right some of these; but, without intention, it is more likely to perpetuate the current inequities. Enabling a just energy transition will require multiple categories of action, including fair policies and regulations; data and metrics; and knowledge generation. I focus on this last point, and particularly research at intersection of energy technology and social equity.

Data-Driven Decarbonization Of Residential Heating Systems: An Equity Perspective., John Wamburu, Emma Grazier, David Irwin, Christine Crago, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

Since heating buildings using natural gas, propane and oil makes up a significant proportion of the aggregate carbon emissions every year, there is a strong interest in decarbonizing residential heating systems using new technologies such as electric heat pumps. In this poster, we conduct a data-driven optimization study to analyze the potential of replacing gas heating with electric heat pumps to reduce carbon emissions in a city-wide distribution grid. We seek to not only reduce the carbon footprint of residential heating, but also show how to do so equitably. Our results show that lower income homes have an energy usage …

Sustainable Computing - Without The Hot Air, Noman Bashir, David Irwin, Prashant Shenoy, Abel Souza

Publications

The demand for computing is continuing to grow exponentially. This growth will translate to exponential growth in computing's energy consumption unless improvements in its energy-efficiency can outpace increases in its demand. Yet, after decades of research, further improving energy-efficiency is becoming increasingly challenging, as it is already highly optimized. As a result, at some point, increases in computing demand are likely to outpace increases in its energy-efficiency, potentially by a wide margin. Such exponential growth, if left unchecked, will position computing as a substantial contributor to global carbon emissions. While prominent technology companies have recognized the problem and sought to …

Towards Equity In Energy Efficiency Analyses, John Wamburu, Emma Grazier, David Irwin, Christine Crago, Prashant Shenoy

Publications

The electric grid has begun a profound transition from primarily using carbon-intensive energy to instead using carbon-free renewable energy. In parallel, smart meters and other sensors are now providing us unparalleled visibility into the energy-efficiency of building and grid operations. Researchers are actively using building and grid energy data from these sensors to develop analytics techniques, e.g., using machine learning, that can improve energy-efficiency and facilitate the energy transition. Unfortunately, much of this research ignores the impact of these analytics on equity. That is, while current data analytics techniques may accurately identify energy-inefficiencies, they generally do not contextualize the underlying …

Quantifying The Impact Of Non-Stationarity In Reinforcement Learning-Based Traffic Signal Control, Lucas N. Alegre, Ana L.C. Bazzan, Bruno C. Da Silva

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

In reinforcement learning (RL), dealing with non-stationarity is a challenging issue. However, some domains such as traffic optimization are inherently non-stationary. Causes for and effects of this are manifold. In particular, when dealing with traffic signal controls, addressing non-stationarity is key since traffic conditions change over time and as a function of traffic control decisions taken in other parts of a network. In this paper we analyze the effects that different sources of non-stationarity have in a network of traffic signals, in which each signal is modeled as a learning agent. More precisely, we study both the effects of changing …

Cloud And Edge Computation Offloading For Latency Limited Services, Ivana Kovacevic, Erkki Harjula, Savo Glisic, Beatriz Lorenzo, Mika Ylianttila

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) is recognised as a solution in future networks to offload computation and data storage from mobile and IoT devices to the servers at the edge of mobile networks. It reduces the network traffic and service latency compared to passing all data to cloud data centers while offering greater processing power than handling tasks locally at terminals. Since MEC servers are scattered throughout the radio access network, their computation capacities are modest in comparison to large cloud data centers. Therefore, offloading decision between MEC and cloud server should minimize the usage of the resources while maximizing the …

Agenda, Shubha Tewari

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Abstracts for six Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars.

Arduino Microcontrollers In The Classroom: Teaching How To Phrase Effective Science Questions And How To Answer Them With Original Data, Tony Dinsmore

Science and Engineering Saturday Seminars

Arduino microcontrollers in the classroom: teaching how to phrase effective science questions and how to answer them with original data. Prof. Tony Dinsmore, UMass Physics This workshop will develop course modules that address a challenge in the science curriculum: how do we teach basic problem-solving and curiosity-based research skills in a classroom setting? The standard science curriculum teaches concepts and theory quite well but leaves rather little opportunity for students to take the lead in designing and implementing their own investigations. The workshop will use the Arduino, an inexpensive microcontroller that is simple to set up. A huge range of …

The River Process Corridor: A Modular River Assessment Method Based On Process Units And Widely Available Data In The Northeast Us., John D. Gartner, Christine E. Hatch, Eve Vogel, Et. Al.

Water Reports

We define the river process corridor (RPC) as the area adjacent to a river that is likely to affect and be affected by river and floodplain processes. Here we present a novel approach for delineating the RPC that utilizes widely available geospatial data, can be applied uniformly across broad and multi-scalar spatial extents, requires relatively low levels of expertise and cost, and allows for modular additions and adaptations using additional data that is available in particular areas. Land managers are increasingly using a variety of delineated river and floodplain areas for applied purposes such as hazard avoidance, ecological conservation, and …

World Librarians: A Peer-To-Peer Commons For Closing The Global Digital Divide, Jeremy Smith, Charlie Schweik, Carl Meyer

University Libraries Publication Series

INTRODUCTION An estimated 53% of the world’s population do not have Internet access. As a consequence, they lack information capital that could be key to bettering their lives. In this practice article, we introduce a sociotechnical system called “World Librarians.” This system, facilitated by a knowledge commons, provides educators, librarians, students, and medical professionals in remote Internet-poor areas of Malawi with access to digital content that they request. OBJECTIVE We describe the social and technical methods by which a team of educators, librarians, students, and information technology specialists in information-privileged environments share educational content to information-disadvantaged communities. METHODS After briefly …

Gemini: A Computationally-Efficient Search Engine For Large Gene Expression Datasets, Timothy Defreitas, Hachem Saddiki, Patrick Flaherty

Mathematics and Statistics Department Faculty Publication Series

Background

Low-cost DNA sequencing allows organizations to accumulate massive amounts of genomic data and use that data to answer a diverse range of research questions. Presently, users must search for relevant genomic data using a keyword, accession number of meta-data tag. However, in this search paradigm the form of the query – a text-based string – is mismatched with the form of the target – a genomic profile.

Results

To improve access to massive genomic data resources, we have developed a fast search engine, GEMINI, that uses a genomic profile as a query to search for similar genomic profiles. GEMINI …

Free Wake Potential Flow Vortex Wind Turbine Modeling: Advances In Parallel Processing And Integration Of Ground Effects, Nathaniel B. Develder

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Potential flow simulations are a great engineering type, middle-ground approach to modeling complex aerodynamic systems, but quickly become computationally unwieldy for large domains. An N-body problem with N-squared interactions to calculate, this free wake vortex model of a wind turbine is well suited to parallel computation. This thesis discusses general trends in wind turbine modeling, a potential flow model of the rotor of the NREL 5MW reference turbine, various forms of parallel computing, current GPU hardware, and the application of ground effects to the model. In the vicinity of 200,000 points, current GPU hardware was found to be nearly 17 …

Multi-Sensor Mobile Robot Localization For Diverse Environments, Joydeep Biswas, Manuela M. Veloso

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

Mobile robot localization with different sensors and algorithms is a widely studied problem, and there have been many approaches proposed, with considerable degrees of success. However, every sensor and algorithm has limitations, due to which we believe no single localization algorithm can be “perfect,” or universally applicable to all situations. Laser rangefinders are commonly used for localization, and state-of-theart algorithms are capable of achieving sub-centimeter accuracy in environments with features observable by laser rangefinders. Unfortunately, in large scale environments, there are bound to be areas devoid of features visible by a laser rangefinder, like open atria or corridors with glass …

Episodic Non-Markov Localization: Reasoning About Short-Term And Long-Term Features, Joydeep Biswas, Manuela M. Veloso

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

Markov localization and its variants are widely used for localization of mobile robots. These methods assume Markov independence of observations, implying that observations made by a robot correspond to a static map. However, in real human environments, observations include occlusions due to unmapped objects like chairs and tables, and dynamic objects like humans. We introduce an episodic non-Markov localization algorithm that maintains estimates of the belief over the trajectory of the robot while explicitly reasoning about observations and their correlations arising from unmapped static objects, moving objects, as well as objects from the static map. Observations are classified as arising …

Reflections On The Fog Of (Cyber) War, Diego Rafael Canabarro, Thiago Borne

National Center for Digital Government

No abstract provided.

Brazil And The Fog Of (Cyber) War, Diego Rafael Canabarro, Thiago Borne

National Center for Digital Government

No abstract provided.

Localization And Navigation Of The Cobots Over Long-Term Deployments, Joydeep Biswas, Manuela M. Veloso

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

For the last three years, we have developed and researched multiple collaborative robots, CoBots, which have been autonomously traversing our multi-floor buildings. We pursue the goal of long-term autonomy for indoor service mobile robots as the ability for them to be deployed indefinitely while they perform tasks in an evolving environment. The CoBots include several levels of autonomy, and in this paper we focus on their localization and navigation algorithms. We present the Corrective Gradient Refinement (CGR) algorithm, which refines the proposal distribution of the particle filter used for localization with sensor observations using analytically computed state space derivatives on …

Mapping “Diversity Of Participation” In Networked Media Environments, Martha Fuentes Bautista

National Center for Digital Government

In the United States the transition to an increasingly digital communication environment under pro-market policies has challenged traditional formulations of media diversity and localism regulation centered on content origination requirements and media ownership. Building on an overview of the participatory development and media policy literatures, this paper argues for a participatory community development approach to the redefinition of these public interest policies in networked scenarios. Asking who is participating in what, and for whose benefit, I propose a diversity matrix of various modalities of community participation in key public service functions of digital information organizations. The paper discusses …

A Paleoclimate Modeling Experiment To Calculate The Soil Carbon Respiration Flux For The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum, David M. Tracy

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM) (55 million years ago) stands as the largest in a series of extreme warming (hyperthermal) climatic events, which are analogous to the modern day increase in greenhouse gas concentrations. Orbitally triggered (Lourens et al., 2005, Galeotti et al., 2010), the PETM is marked by a large (-3‰) carbon isotope excursion (CIE). Hypothesized to be methane driven, Zeebe et al., (2009) noted that a methane based release would only account for 3.5°C of warming. An isotopically heavier carbon, such as that of soil and C3 plants, has the potential to account for the …

A Combined Quadtree/Delaunay Method For 2d Mesh Generation, Simon Tang

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Unstructured simplicial mesh is an integral and critical part of many computational electromagnetics methods (CEM) such as the finite element method (FEM) and the boundary element method (BEM). Mesh quality and robustness have direct impact on the success of these CEM methods.

A combined quadtree/Delunay 2D mesh generator, based on the early work of Schroeder (1991, PhD), is presented. The method produces a triangulation that approximates the original geometric model but is also topologically consistent. The key advantages of the method are: (a) its robustness, (b) ability to create a-priori graded meshes, and (c) its guaranteed mesh quality.

The method …

Large Scale Image Retrieval From Books, Mao Zhao

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

Search engines play a very important role in daily life. As multimedia product becomes more and more popular, people have developed search engines for images and videos. In the first part of this thesis, I propose a prototype of a book image search engine. I discuss tag representation for the book images, as well as the way to apply the probabilistic model to generate image tags. Then I propose the random walk refinement method using tag similarity graph. The image search system is built on the Galago search engine developed in UMASS CIIR lab.

Consider the large amount of data …

Depth Camera Based Indoor Mobile Robot Localization And Navigation, Joydeep Biswas, Manuela M. Veloso

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

The sheer volume of data generated by depth cameras provides a challenge to process in real time, in particular when used for indoor mobile robot localization and navigation. We introduce the Fast Sampling Plane Filtering (FSPF) algorithm to reduce the volume of the 3D point cloud by sampling points from the depth image, and classifying local grouped sets of points as belonging to planes in 3D (the “plane filtered” points) or points that do not correspond to planes within a specified error margin (the “outlier” points). We then introduce a localization algorithm based on an observation model that down-projects the …

Planar Polygon Extraction And Merging From Depth Images, Joydeep Biswas, Manuela M. Veloso

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

— There has been considerable interest recently in building 3D maps of environments using inexpensive depth cameras like the Microsoft Kinect sensor. We exploit the fact that typical indoor scenes have an abundance of planar features by modeling environments as sets of plane polygons. To this end, we build upon the Fast Sampling Plane Filtering (FSPF) algorithm that extracts points belonging to local neighborhoods of planes from depth images, even in the presence of clutter. We introduce an algorithm that uses the FSPF-generated plane filtered point clouds to generate convex polygons from individual observed depth images. We then contribute an …

Bringing Institutions Back In To Strategic Management: The Politics Of Digitally Mediated Institutional Change, Jane E. Fountain

National Center for Digital Government

No abstract provided.

Determinants Of Health Care Use Among Rural, Low-Income Mothers And Children: A Simultaneous Systems Approach To Negative Binomial Regression Modeling, Swetha Valluri

Masters Theses 1911 - February 2014

The determinants of health care use among rural, low-income mothers and their children were assessed using a multi-state, longitudinal data set, Rural Families Speak. The results indicate that rural mothers’ decisions regarding health care utilization for themselves and for their child can be best modeled using a simultaneous systems approach to negative binomial regression. Mothers’ visits to a health care provider increased with higher self-assessed depression scores, increased number of child’s doctor visits, greater numbers of total children in the household, greater numbers of chronic conditions, need for prenatal or post-partum care, development of a new medical condition, and …

Corrective Gradient Refinement For Mobile Robot Localization, Joydeep Biswas, Manuela M. Veloso, Brian Coltin

Computer Science Department Faculty Publication Series

Particle filters for mobile robot localization must balance computational requirements and accuracy of localization. Increasing the number of particles in a particle filter improves accuracy, but also increases the computational requirements. Hence, we investigate a different paradigm to better utilize particles than to increase their numbers. To this end, we introduce the Corrective Gradient Refinement (CGR) algorithm that uses the state space gradients of the observation model to improve accuracy while maintaining low computational requirements. We develop an observation model for mobile robot localization using point cloud sensors (LIDAR and depth cameras) with vector maps. This observation model is then …

The Office For Harmonization In The Internal Market: Creating A 21st Century Public Agency, Jane Fountain, Raquel Galindo-Dorado, Jeffrey Rothschild

National Center for Digital Government

(first paragraph) President Wubbo de Boer and his department directors, his top management team, prepared for critical meetings of the Administrative Board and the Budget Committee in the winter of 2010. The European Union’s trademark and design registration agency in Alicante, Spain, grandly named the Office of Harmonization for the Internal Market (Trade Mark and Design) (OHIM), had exceeded all expectations for the establishment of the Community trade mark (CTM) and the Registered Community design (RCD). The new agency also could be proud of impressive achievements in productivity and transparency since it began registering trademarks in 1996. Through productivity gains, …

Oficina De Armonización Del Mercado Interior: La Creación De Un Organismo Público Para El Siglo Xxi, Jane Fountain, Raquel Galindo-Dorado, Jeffrey Rothschild

National Center for Digital Government

(primer párrafo) En el invierno de 2010, el presidente Wubbo de Boer, en compañía de sus directores de departamento y de su equipo de alta dirección, preparaba las cruciales reuniones del Consejo de Administración y del Comité Presupuestario. La oficina de registro de marcas, dibujos y modelos de la Unión Europea, con sede en Alicante, España, pomposamente denominada Oficina de Armonización del Mercado Interior (Marcas, Dibujos y Modelos) (OAMI), había superado todas las expectativas generadas por la creación de la marca comunitaria (MC) y los dibujos o modelos comunitarios registrados (DMCR). El nuevo organismo también podía jactarse de los impresionantes …