Designing a Collaborative Visual Analytics Tool for Social and Technological Change Prediction

This paper discussed about GreenOracle which an interdisciplinary team designed and developed. GreenOracle is a collaborative visual analytics tool for predicting global climate change's impact on US power grids and its implications for society and national security. These future scenarios provide critical assessments and information to help policymakers and stakeholders formulate a coherent and unified strategy toward shaping a safe and secure society.     

Scanning Electron Microscopy of Fe79.5B6.5C14 Network Alloys: Part I

Molten Fe_79.5B_6.5C₁₄ melts can be cast into ingots of networklike microstructure. According to microstructural classification, a Fe_79.5B_6.5C₁₄ network specimen can be divided into three zones. Zone A is occupied by a random network, zone B by a uniformly aligned network, and zone C by a severely aligned network that exhibits network patterns.     

Wetting behaviors of hyperbranched polymer composites within ordered porous template under vibration

The wetting characteristics of hyperbranched polyesters (HBP) added cyclic olefin copolymer (COC) melt in microchannels of anodized alumina oxide (AAO) template were studied. The wetting displacements in microchannels were measured by scanning electronic microscopy (SEM). Compared with pure COC matrix, the composite flowed much longer in the microchannels under normal molding conditions. This may be attributed to the spherical shape of the HBP molecules. The flow study was extended by applying a series of high frequency vibration on the AAO template. Results show that vibration can enhance the wetting of the composite melts if phase separation does not occur. This paper provides useful information for micromolding based microfabrication, especially additives and vibration assisted micromolding. POLYM. ENG. SCI., 2012. © 2011 Society of Plastics Engineers     

Within- and between-culture variation: Individual differences and the cultural logics of honor, face, and dignity cultures.

The CuPS (Culture × Person × Situation) approach attempts to jointly consider culture and individual differences, without treating either as noise and without reducing one to the other. Culture is important because it helps define psychological situations and create meaningful clusters of behavior according to particular logics. Individual differences are important because individuals vary in the extent to which they endorse or reject a culture's ideals. Further, because different cultures are organized by different logics, individual differences mean something different in each. Central to these studies are concepts of honor-related violence and individual worth as being inalienable versus socially conferred. We illustrate our argument with 2 experiments involving participants from honor, face, and dignity cultures. The studies showed that the same “type” of person who was most helpful, honest, and likely to behave with integrity in one culture was the “type” of person least likely to do so in another culture. We discuss how CuPS can provide a rudimentary but integrated approach to understanding both within- and between-culture variation. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2011 APA, all rights reserved)     

Evaluating overflow probability for voice over internet protocol buffer dimensioning

The provision of quality of service to different service types in broadband packet networks requires techniques for the evaluation of the probabilities of packet delays and loss. The authors analyse the multiplexing of independent and homogeneous Markovian ON-OFF traffic sources into a single buffer, extending earlier work. The resulting closed-form equation provides a virtually zero-complexity approach to the calculation of the buffer overflow probability via the burst-scale decay rate of the buffer state probabilities. Graphical results are provided, comparing our expression with the results from simulations and the -standard- formula of Anick, Mitra and Sondhi. These show that our new formula provides excellent accuracy for medium to high loads, i.e. those load values at which queuing becomes important. This makes it ideal for quick calculations, with practical utility when dimensioning checks are required in many networking situations involving the accurate estimation of loss probabilities in e.g. buffer multiplexing VoIP traffic sources.     

NUMERICAL SIMULATION OF LAMINAR FORCED CONVECTION IN AN AIR-COOLED HORIZONTAL PRINTED CIRCUIT BOARD ASSEMBLY

A numerical solution of the steady-state forced convection for air flowing through a horizontally oriented simulated printed circuit board (PCB) assembly under laminar flow condition has been developed. The considered assembly consists of a channel formed by two parallel plates. The upper plate is thermally insulated, whereas the bottom plate is attached with uniformly spaced identical electrically heated square ribs perpendicular to the mean air flow. The bottom plate is used to simulate the PCB, and the ribs with heat generation are used to simulate the electronic components. A second-order upwind scheme is adopted in the calculation and a very fine mesh density is arranged near the obstacle and the channel surface to achieve higher calculation accuracy. Four Nusselt numbers (Nu) are of particular interest in this analysis: local distribution along the rib's surfaces, mean value for individual surfaces of the rib, overall obstacle mean value, and overall PCB mean value between the central lines of two obstacles. The effect of the obstacle size and the separation between two obstacles is discussed systematically.     

Analytical Mode III electromagnetic permeable cracks in magnetoelectroelastic materials

Fracture mechanism is pertinent to minimize the catastrophic failures and optimize the structural design. An exact treatment on the electromagnetic permeable crack problems in a magnetoelectroelastic medium is presented by establishing a Hamiltonian system in terms of the symplectic eigenfunctions. The coefficients of the series are determined from the lateral boundary conditions at the crack surfaces and the outer boundary conditions along the geometric domain. Analytical formulations of intensity factors and distributions of dual variables are obtained by the symplectic expansion method. The various intensity factors are directly related to the first few terms of the non-zero eigenvalue solutions.     

Modal transmission-line theory of three-dimensional periodic structures with arbitrary lattice configurations

The scattering of waves by multilayered periodic structures is formulated in three-dimensional space by using Fourier expansions for both the basic lattice and its associated reciprocal lattice. The fields in each layer are then expressed in terms of characteristic modes, and the complete solution is found rigorously by using a transmission-line representation to address the pertinent boundary-value problems. Such an approach can treat periodic arbitrary lattices containing arbitrarily shaped dielectric components, which may generally be absorbing and have biaxial properties along directions that are parallel or perpendicular to the layers. We illustrate the present approach by comparing our numerical results with data reported in the past for simple structures. In addition, we provide new results for more complex configurations, which include multiple periodic regions that contain absorbing uniaxial components with several possible canonic shapes and high dielectric constants.     

Reliability and validity of self-reported assessment of exposure and outcome variables for manual lifting tasks: a preliminary investigation

The reliability and validity of self-reported assessment of exposure and outcome variables were examined for manual lifting activities among ten physiotherapists. In this study, the participants evaluated the effects of five lifting variables on perceived effort, twice separated by a one-week period. One hundred and sixty-two lifting conditions were evaluated by each subject. The exposure and outcome lifting variables were described in linguistic terms. Intra-class correlation coefficient (ICC(1,1)) analysis revealed a mean value of 0.62 for all lifting activities. The self-reported assessment was cross-validated with the NIOSH lifting index by mapping the linguistic variables into numerical ranges. Moderate correlations (r = 0.54 and 0.53, p<0.01) were obtained between perceived physical exertion/perceived risk and lifting index. The findings of this study provide preliminary indications that human-based methodologies may be further explored on experienced workers.     

A Trust/Honesty Model with Adaptive Strategy for Multiagent Semi-Competitive Environments

In multiagent semi-competitive environments, competitions and cooperations can both exist. As agents compete with each other, they have incentives to lie. Sometimes, agents can increase their utilities by cooperating with each other, then they have incentives to tell the truth. Therefore, being a receiver, an agent needs to decide whether or not to trust the received message(s). To help agents make this decision, some of the existing models make use of trust or reputation only, which means agents choose to believe (or cooperate with) the trustworthy senders or senders with high reputation. However, a trustworthy agent may only bring little benefit. Another way to make the decision is to use expected utility. However, agents who only believe messages with high expected utilities can be cheated easily. To solve the problems, this paper introduces the Trust Model, which makes use of trust, expected utility, and also agents’ attitudes towards risk to make decisions. On the other hand, being a sender, an agent needs to decide whether or not to be honest. To help agents make this decision, this paper introduces the Honesty Model, which is symmetric to the Trust Model. In addition, we introduce an adaptive strategy to the Trust/Honesty Model, which enables agents to learn from and adapt to the environment. Simulations show that agents with the Adaptive Trust/Honesty Model perform much better than agents which only use trust or expected utility to make the decision