Software in the new millennium: a virtual roundtable

What will software look like in the future? To answer this question, we conducted a survey of our editorial and industrial advisory boards, as well as a few outsiders. We constructed a set of 13 questions that we thought reflected the original query. We then circulated these questions to our boards, with a request to respond to the questions, or be extend them with additional are questions as appropriate. The answers were far ranging and sometimes surprising.     

Velocity Distribution in the Roughness Layer of Rough-Bed Flows

Several models for the vertical distribution of the double-averaged (in time and in the plane parallel to the mean bed) longitudinal velocity in the flow region between roughness troughs and roughness tops are suggested. We found that the same model for velocity distribution may be applicable to a range of flow conditions and roughness types, which share some common features. The suggested models for velocity distribution in the near-bed region are: (1) Constant velocity; (2) exponential velocity distribution; and (3) linear velocity distribution. The measured velocity distributions may be approximated by a single model or by a combination of models depending on roughness geometry and flow conditions. The validity of these models for velocity distribution is supported by laboratory data.     

Optimal classification methods for mapping agricultural tillage practices

The classification of agricultural tillage systems has proven challenging in the past using traditional classification methods due to the similarity of spectral reflectance signatures of soils and senescent crop residues. In this study, five classification methods were examined to determine the most suitable classification algorithm for the identification of no-till (NT) and traditional tillage (TT) cropping methods: minimum distance (MD), Mahalanobis distance, Maximum Likelihood (ML), spectral angle mapping (SAM), and the cosine of the angle concept (CAC). A Landsat ETM+ image acquired over southern Michigan and northern Indiana was used to test these classification methods. Each classification method was validated with 293 ground truth sampling locations collected commensurate with the satellite overpass. Classification accuracy was then assessed using error matrix analysis, Kappa statistics, and tests for statistical significance. The results indicate that of the classification routines examined, the two spectral angle methods were superior to the others. The cosine of the angle concept algorithm outperformed all the other classification routines for tillage practice identification and mapping, yielding an overall accuracy of 97.2% (Kappa=0.959).     

Is there a future for Internet voting?

Technology has long been used in the process of voting, and the use of electronic machines was introduced in the United States of America in the 1970s. More recently, vendors have encouraged the use of remote electronic voting methods, and politicians have begun to consider such options, including the use of the Internet, telephone, text messaging and interactive digital television. This paper considers some of the practical and security issues that affect remote electronic voting.     

Impact wear of a tool steel

Results from wear studies in repetitive impact sliding are described in this paper. The material pair studied consisted of steel CPM-10V (specimen) (where CPM denotes crucible particle metallurgy) and 17-4 precipitationhardened (PH) steel (counterface) with transverse sliding velocities of 4 and 8 m s^?1. By means of scanning electron microscopy, energy-dispersive analysis of X-rays and X-ray diffraction methods it is shown that the wear is due to a material transport of the counterface 17-4 PH steel to the CPM-10V surface. In the wear process, a change in microhardness of the counterface substrate is apparent, and X-ray diffraction of debris confirms the presence of transformed metal. These products include γ-Fe together with trace amounts of α-Fe₂O₃; however, virtually no carbide from the CPM-10V steel was detected.     

Atmospheric effects of friction,friction noise and wear with silicon and diamond. Part II. SEM tribometry of silicon in vacuum and hydrogen

Scanning electron microscope (SEM) tribometric data on polycrystalline silicon (poly-Si) vs. poly-Si, Si(100) vs. Si(100) and Si(111) vs. Si(111) interfaces, obtained in Torr and in 0.2 Torr partial pressure of hydrogen gas ( ) from room temperature to 850^°C, were performed under standard and much slower thermal ramping rates. The friction data were analyzed per the methodology described in part I of this paper series. The results indicate a highly beneficial friction- and wear-reducing regime within a relatively narrow thermal region. This desirable region coincides with some chemisorption of excited species of molecular hydrogen just before the mass thermal desorption of surface hydrides. These data represent the tribochemical equivalent of a method routinely used in electronics, whereby deep electron traps (dangling Si bonds) are passivated by baking in molecular hydrogen. The also exerts a moderating influence on the size of the friction noise at all test temperatures. However, the general level of friction beyond the beneficial thermal region is high. In parallel, the general wear rate of Si representative of the entire range of standard thermal ramping in both atmospheric environments is in the extremely high 10^-12m³/(N m) range. Operating strictly in the beneficial, low-friction thermal regime resulted in a several orders-of-magnitude reduction in the wear rate over those measured under standard thermal ramping conditions. Although the results confirm previous findings that Si is not a good material of construction for miniaturized moving mechanical assemblies (e.g., microbearings and gears), there seems to be some limited possibility of gas-phase lubrication of Si micromechanisms with rarefied hydrogen at surface temperatures between 100 and 300^°C. This revised version was published online in July 2006 with corrections to the Cover Date.     

Stability of the body-centered cubic gamma phase in the uranium-zirconium-niobium system

A thermodynamic representation of the stability of the binary gamma phases has been developed for the U-Zr, U-Nb and Zr-Nb binary systems. This has permitted the calculation of the miscibility gaps in the ternary system. The three binary gaps merge to form a large three-phase region in the middle of the composition trangle. Because of the large coherency energies, the spinodal decomposition in the U-Nb and Zr-Nb gaps will be drastically modified, but a large region remains in the ternary system where the decomposition products have small coherency energies such that spinodal decomposition is probable. From these results, we have identified the four decomposition processes in Mulberry (U-16.6 at% Nb-5.6 at% Zr) as being discontinuous and spinodal decomposition within the miscibility gap, the diffusionless formation of α and the formation of (α + γ) from the supersaturated gamma phase.     

A Recursive Orthogonal Least Squares Algorithm for Training RBF Networks

A recursive orthogonal least squares (ROLS) algorithm for multi-input, multi-output systems is developed in this paper and is applied to updating the weighting matrix of a radial basis function network. An illustrative example is given, to demonstrate the effectiveness of the algorithm for eliminating the effects of ill-conditioning in the training data, in an application of neural modelling of a multi-variable chemical process. Comparisons with results from using standard least squares algorithms, in batch and recursive form, show that the ROLS algorithm can significantly improve the neural modelling accuracy. The ROLS algorithm can also be applied to a large data set with much lower requirements on computer memory than the batch OLS algorithm.