ABSTRACTS
The Abstracts are preceded by a Table
of Contents, which is divided into two sections: the highlights of the
Conference followed by an alphabetical listing of the participating Affiliates.
Entries in the Table of Contents are linked to the Abstracts of their
respective Affiliates.
AAAS DISCUSSION
ON SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING IN THE COURTROOM: ETHICS AND THE EXPERT
WITNESS
Reception |
Science and Engineering in the Courtroom: Ethics and the Expert Witness Speakers: Judge Barbara Jacobs Rothstein, U.S. District Judge for the Western District of Washington and Director of the Federal Judicial Center and Mark S. Frankel, Ph.D., Director of the Scientific Freedom, Responsibility and Law Program, American Association for the Advancement of Science.In addressing an AAAS Annual Meeting, Supreme Court Justice Stephen Breyer observed that the law “increasingly requires access to sound science because society is becoming more dependent for its well-being on scientifically complex technology.” A critical issue facing judges is how to distinguish between scientific evidence that should be admitted into a legal dispute and that which is unacceptable because of its poor scientific foundation. This session will discuss factors that judges rely on to make those decisions, and the role of the expert in presenting scientific and technical information in legal proceedings. When scientists or engineers engage the legal system as experts, they are subject to norms and practices not always familiar to them. This raises questions about how they can act responsibly in that setting. The session will identify ethical issues that have confronted experts recruited to participate in litigation, and the extent to which long-standing professional norms provide useful guidance. |
AMERICAN
METEOROLOGICAL SOCIETY – DC CHAPTER
Panel of local TV broadcasters, including Bob Ryan and Joe Witte, as well as Steve Zubrick, the Science and Operations Officer (SOO) at the Washington/Baltimore National Weather Service Forecast Office and Jason Samenow, Chief Meteorologist of the Washington Post’s Capital Weather Gang WEATHER AND YOU – A Town Hall Meeting |
Weather is perhaps one of the most ubiquitous subjects of informal conversation. It affects just about everyone every day as they make decisions on whether to set forth for the day with umbrellas to preparing for an impending snowstorm, severe thunderstorms, flooding rains, etc., etc. This session is about, the nature, issues, and problems of observing and predicting the weather. The panel members will provide a brief overview of a relevant and topical subject. The remainder of the session and most important aspect of the Town Hall will be an open question, answer and discussion period. |
AMERICAN
SOCIETY OF PLANT BIOLOGISTS/BOTANICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON/VIRGINIA NATIVE
PLANT SOCIETY/MARYLAND NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY
Greg Zell, Natural Resource Specialist, Arlington County, VA A Case Study: The Challenge of Protecting Natural Resources in an Urban Environment |
Arlington County is in the process of completing a comprehensive Natural Heritage Resource Inventory (NHRI) of natural lands and public open spaces within a highly urbanized corridor. The County is approximately 40% impervious and is considered “built out” from a development standpoint. The project has collected data relating to local flora, fauna, geology, hydrology, and has documented significant remaining resources. The next step is to develop a County-wide Natural Resource Management Plan. Part I of the presentation will be an overview of the techniques used to collect natural resource data and will share some of the interesting results to date. Part II of the presentation will be a Roundtable discussion, where participants will be asked to provide insight, experience, and suggestions on what elements should be included in the development of a Natural Resource Management Plan and Policy. |
Jerry Dieruf, Arborist/Gypsy Moth Coordinator, City of Alexandria Department of Recreation, Parks, and Cultural Activities, Park Planning Division GypCheck Pesticide Application for Gypsy Moth Caterpillars Suppression in the City of Alexandria, Virginia |
Populations of Gypsy Moth Caterpillars surged throughout the Washington, D.C. area in 2007, causing widespread damage to native oak species and oak dominated forests. In Alexandria as throughout much of the region, oak species comprise the dominant vegetation of our forests. This presentation will include the reason for the application, the application coverage, follow-up survey of gypsy moth caterpillars, other variables affecting the gypsy moth population, results of the suppression program, and others’ experiences with Gypchek in 2007. |
Alain Touwaide, PhD, and Alice Tangerini, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History, Department of Botany Botanical Illustration: Past and Present |
In the first part of this presentation, Alain Touwaide will examine the creation of ancient botanical illustration in classical antiquity, particularly the question of the supposed schematic nature of such representations in ancient Greek manuscripts, as well as the transformation of botanical illustrations from manuscripts to printed books during the 15th and 16th centuries. In the second part, Alice Tangerini will discuss the changes in the way contemporary botanical illustrations reproduce plants and communicate the knowledge contained in such representations to a world wide audience. She will devote a special attention to the methods of reproduction of illustrations as illustrated by the transformation from woodcuts and etchings to digital images to be consulted on the Internet. |
Marion Lobstein, Associate Professor of Biology, NVCC The Flora of Virginia Project: A Perspective of 401 Years of Exploration of Virginia Botanical Diversity |
Virginia has the greatest diversity of plant species for its surface area of all of the 50 states in the U.S. In this presentation, Marion Lobstein will discuss reasons for this diversity and botanical exploration in Virginia since the founding of Jamestown in 1607. In 1737, the Colony of Virginia had the first flora of any of the original thirteen colonies, The Flora Virginica by John Clayton in 1737, but the Commonwealth of Virginia has not had a modern flora since that time period. This presentation will cover the progress being made to produce a modern Flora of Virginia in the next three years. |
Rod Simmons, Plant Ecologist, City of Alexandria Department of Recreation, Parks, and Cultural Activities, Park Planning Division A Survey of Native Oaks and Their Hybrids in the Greater Washington, D.C. Area |
The Washington-metro region contains a wide diversity of native oak species and natural oak hybrids. Live material will be used in this hands-on workshop, which will cover all of the native oak species throughout the region and the known natural hybrids. Species range and distribution, habitats, and rarity will also be discussed. |
Kimberly L. Hunter PhD, and Richard B. Hunter, Department of Biological Sciences, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD Plants, Polyploidy, and Undergraduate Research at Salisbury University |
Sunday 2:00PM Room 390 |
The goal of the program was to increase undergraduate botanical research, and to find innovative methods for recruiting students. In most departments on college campuses, there are independent study/research courses. Such faculty members mentor 1-6 students working on projects that the faculty member designs. We have increased the number of students to 20, and have students work on common projects as a team. Each project involves most of the following: field collection of plant samples, modern genetic analysis, intensive literature research, grant writing, lab work, data analysis, and presentation of the research. There were biweekly meetings with each group and the faculty mentor. Progress of the projects depended upon the effort each group. This method was evaluated in four ways: 1) number of presentations, 2) students continuing beyond the first semester, and 3) monitoring students going on to graduate or professional school. |
Mark Holland, PhD, Head of the Department of Biological Sciences, Richard A. Henson School of Science and Technology, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD PPFM bacteria: Plant symbionts with applications in agriculture |
Sunday 2:30PM Room 390 |
Pink-pigmented facultatively methylotrophic (PPFM) bacteria in the genus Methylobacterium are ubiquitously distributed on plant surfaces. Although once thought to be insignificant or accidental visitors on plants, we have demonstrated that their metabolic activities have a positive effect on plant growth and development and that their relationship with plants is a true symbiosis. We have also developed strategies for exploiting the symbiosis to the benefit of agriculture. |
Emily N. Burnett, Kimberly Hunter and Richard Hunter, Department of Biological Sciences, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD Genetic Diversity of Liquidambar styraciflua in Cusuco National Park, Honduras |
Sunday 3:00PM Room 390 |
Liquidambar, the sweet gum tree has classic disjunct distributions in western Asia, eastern North America and Central America. In collaboration with Operation Wallacea, who operates biological conservation expeditions in regions of the world with high biodiversity, Liquidambar styraciflua was gathered from five sites in the cloud forest of Cusuco National Park, Honduras. The goal of this research was to find the genetic diversity of this species in a primitive field location. DNA extraction using DNeasy Qiagen kits were used along with puReTaq Ready-To-Go PCR beads to amplify the DNA. Through ISSR (inter-simple sequence repeats) the genetic variability was mapped using primers 825, 840 and 855. These repeats recognized by the primers occurred in individuals in varying numbers. The differences in the numbers of repeats were visualized as bands on a gel which were separated according to molecular weight. A Cambrex Flash Gel was used to analyze the DNA indicating variability among individuals. Analyzing DNA in field situations is possible due to the stability of the PCR bead and Cambrex Flash Gel at room temperature. The mean gene diversity ranged from 0.23 to 0.36 while the percent polymorphic loci ranged from 61% to 90%. The importance of this research was to aide in the conservation research taking place in Cusuco National Park. Our research provided a stepping stone into genetic research for Operation Wallacea as well as an accurate representation of the genetic diversity of Liquidambar styraciflua in Cusuco National Park, Honduras. |
Katharine Spencer, Emily N. Burnett, Mary E. Cockey, Kimberly Hunter, Richard Hunter, and Katherine Miller, Department of Biological Sciences, Salisbury University, Salisbury, MD Nordihydroguaiaretic Acid (Ndga) Localization and Quantification in Three Ploidy Levels of Larrea Tridenta |
Sunday 3:30PM Room 390 |
Larrea is one of the dominant perennials in the deserts of North and South America. North American Larrea tridentata has three ploidy levels in three distinct regions: Chihuahuan Desert –diploid; Sonoran Desert – tetraploid; Mojave Desert – hexaploid. Nordihydroguaiaretic acid (NDGA) is one of the most widely investigated phytochemicals within this genus. NDGA is a tetrahydroxy lignan found in Larrea leaves at a concentration of 5-10% dry weight. It is a powerful antioxidant that inhibits cancer, microbes, fungi, and viruses. Larrea tridentata ploidy levels were examined to determine a relationship between higher ploidy levels and concentrations of NDGA. Methanol was used to extract NDGA from 20mg (2 leaves) of plant tissue, which was quantified using high performance liquid chromatography (HPLC). Plant tissue from the three different ploidy levels was analyzed and results suggest NDGA concentrations are variable across the landscape. However, a correlation does exist between NDGA concentration and time of year collected. There is an increase in NDGA concentration during August. August is the hottest and driest month in these regions. Secondly, subcellular fractionation was used to determine the unknown location of NDGA in Larrea leaf cells. A density gradient was formed in Percoll and gradient layers were tested for NDGA concentration. A high concentration of NDGA was found in Larrea chloroplasts. |
AMERICAN
SOCIETY FOR TECHNICAL INNOVATION
Thomas Meylan, PhD EvolvingSUCCESS Can the features of elective virtual communities be used to create effective virtual workforces? |
Saturday 9:00AM Room 370 |
Virtual communities are springing up as quickly as people can identify enough points of mutual identification to justify the establishment of a virtual meeting space. The communities being considered in this presentation are built around “elective” membership. People WANT to build software products on SourceForge. People WANT to play simple games together on Horse Isle. People WANT to formulate different methods of interaction on Second Life. The question is: Can virtual community models based on elective membership be transferred to workforce deployment needs? Three factors considered in this presentation are: 1) the intellectual price of entry into an elective community and how it relates to the financial costs of setting up an online, virtual workforce; 2) metrics of pleasure and fulfillment in elective communities, and how they relate to productivity and job satisfaction in virtual-but-definitely-real task-driven workforces; 3) structures, rules, customs and conformity enforcement procedures in elective communities that can transfer to virtual workforce environments. |
Gene Allen, MSC.Software Corporation Simulation-supported Decision Making |
Saturday 9:25AM Room 370 |
Engineering provides a Knowledge Base for decision making. An Engineering Knowledge Base is the culmination of education, training, and experience that provides insight and understanding of how things work or don’t work. A program’s Engineering Knowledge Base consists of the knowledge and expertise of all the personnel involved over the lifecycle of a program with all accompanying documentation. The majority of an Engineering Knowledge Base is learned from experience in testing and operations. However, learning from prototype testing and operational accidents/problems is both costly, time consuming, and risky. In the past, this has been an accepted cost of adopting new technologies, as it has been the only way we learn about what we do not know. The unanticipated and often non-intuitive results of new technologies are often realized in operations, and sometimes only after decades. This uncertainty is the result of combinations of factors or characteristics, all of which have natural ranges of variability. This variability and uncertainty has historically been taken into account through the use of safety factors, based on experience. The advances and availability of compute capability can be used as a substitute for the experience-based safety factors used in design. Virtual data can be generated by running multiple physics-based analyses of a parameterized computer model, varying parameters across their natural ranges with each run. This process provides an accurate simulation of reality. Results are a cloud of points with each point being an accurate result of that specific combination of variables. The simulation process includes as many variables as possible. A simulation consists of 100 analysis runs, sampling all variables using advanced Monte Carlo sampling methods. 100 analysis runs provides a simulation resolution equivalent to the resolution of inputs. This process minimizes the need for making initial assumptions, which are often a source of problems as people most often do not know what they do not know at the time of making their assumptions. Different correlation methods are used to filter the number of variables in the simulation result to those individual variables, or groups of variables, that are most significant. This provides information that can be used to understand what can happen. Additionally, automatic outlier detection can be used to quickly identify those combinations of variables what generate anomalies. The combination of 1) correlation information and 2) the knowledge gained through understanding outliers provides accurate input to the Engineering Knowledge Base that can be used for Decision Making. Simulation, using today’s readily available compute capability, is being used to learn and gain otherwise unavailable knowledge for making decisions. |
Dr. Geoffrey P Malafsky, TECHi2 A New Technology for Unifying Knowledge and Semantics to Harness the Fusion of People-Process-TechnologySimulation-supported Decision Making |
Saturday 9:50AM Room 370 |
The information universe continues to expand from what can be considered its own big bang of the advent of the openly available Internet while producing only a few regions of viable systems. The potential for widespread knowledge sharing and automated processes based on human concepts remains an abstract goal except for these few systems. Some of these are focused on the positive inclinations of humanity, such as global knowledge sharing amongst like-minded professionals and hobbyists, others on the entertainment interests of groups, and finally others on the more banal human tendencies. Yet, in each case processing and managing these information clouds into useful environments has been extremely costly and replete with low-quality products. Data quality is the foundation of using data for effective management and operations. Data in and of itself is not the goal of an enterprise data management system nor business process. Rather, it is the use of the data to support decision-making and operations that is the goal. Yet, data quality is inextricably tied to business processes, governance regulations, and technical standards. This inherent integration across people, process, and technology has impeded, and in many cases, derailed attempts to ensure that data is accurate, trustworthy, secure, interoperable, and shareable. Even more important to the operation and difficult to achieve is maintaining data quality in continuous operations. Data is frequently stored and used in widely different technologies, formats, and varying levels of quality. Attempts at using the previous generation of data technologies (e.g. relational databases, data warehouses, business intelligence tools, client-server architectures, data brokers, metadata management, case based reasoning, natural language processing, expert systems, object modeling) have failed to solve this challenge. The real solution of semantically integrated data explicitly tied to governance defined rules remains unsolved. The data must be authoritative and correct at the element level in both organizational and technical terms. We have created a new technology that meets the architectural requirements of modern standards based modular components like a Services Oriented Architecture (SOA), and also ties together human knowledge to machine processing rules and semantics to provide a light-weight, adaptive, highly functional solution to harnessing enterprise-scale data that is authoritative. This technology is poised to yield a dramatic increase in organizational capabilities from the combination of the knowledge held by people with the rules required by processes to the intelligent automation enabled by semantic data. |
F. D. Witherspoon, HyperV Technolgies Corp High Velocity Dense Plasma Jets for Fusion Applications* |
Saturday 10:15AM Room 370 |
High velocity dense plasma jets are under development at HyperV Technologies Corp. for a variety of fusion applications. The initial motivation for this line of research was Magneto-Inertial Fusion using high density, high velocity plasma jets as standoff drivers to implode a magnetized plasma target. Additional applications include fusion reactor feuling, injection of angular momentum into centrifugally confined plasmas, high energy density plasmas (HEDP), plasma thrusters, and others. The near term technical goal is to accelerate plasma slugs of density greater than 10^17 per cc and total mass above 200 micrograms to velocities above 200 km/s. The approach utilizes symmetrical injection of very high density plasma into a coaxial electromagnetic accelerator having a tailored cross-section geometry designed to prevent formation of the blow-by instability. The injected plasma is generated by an array of radially oriented ablative capillary discharges arranged uniformly around the circumference of an angled annular injection region of the accelerator, or by a similar array of small non-ablative parallel plate minirailguns now under development. We describe computer modeling and experiments to develop these plasma jets, including descriptions of an injection experiment currently underway at the University of Maryland, and an early test of jet merging using 64 capillary injectors to form an imploding ring of dense plasma. *Work supported by the U.S. DOE Office of Fusion Energy Sciences |
D. A. Tidman* and F. D. Witherspoon** Slingatron – A Hypervelocity Mechanical Mass Accelerator |
Saturday 10:40AM Room 370 |
The slingatron(1) is a mechanical mass accelerator that is dynamically similar to the ancient sling, but unlike the classical sling it appears capable of accelerating projectiles of large mass to extremely high velocity, possibly to above 10 km/sec. In this machine a projectile slides on its self-generated gas bearing in a steel accelerator tube that guides the projectile along a curved path that is typically circular or spiral. The projectile accelerates when the tube is moved with an inward component along the radius of curvature of the tube at the projectile location, i.e., along the direction of the centripetal force acting on the projectile so that work is done on the projectile. This motion of the tube can be implemented by mounting the entire curved tube on distributed swing arms that propel the tube around a gyration circle of relatively small radius without changing its orientation, i.e., the structure gyrates but does not spin. A projectile accelerating in a gyrating sling tube initially slides on its thin outer Teflon film. This film wears off, and evaporation of a polycarbonate layer (or energetic plastic) then provides a low friction gas film in the range from ~ 1 to many km/sec. Heat from this hot bearing gas does not have sufficient time to diffuse far into a projectile during its acceleration. For a phase-locked projectile accelerating in a spiral the acceleration time is the number of turns times the gyration period, e.g., 0.05 seconds for a 3-turn spiral with a gyration frequency of 60 cps. A theoretical model and experimental data also show that the projectile gas bearing is thicker than asperity heights on the steel track, so that sling-tube damage is avoided. For large projectiles, the bearing gas film is thicker than for small projectiles so that its viscous drag per cm2 on the track and the sliding friction coefficient are smaller. This occurs because the “residence time” of gas evaporated into the bearing of a large projectile is longer than for a small projectile. The slingatron mechanics is similar to rolling a ball bearing around in a circular frying pan (or sliding an ice cube in a cooled pan) in a horizontal plane and gyrating the pan around a small circle, except that the slingatron gyration speed is much higher, e.g., ~ 150 m/sec for a projectile velocity gain of ~ 1 km/sec per turn, and the projectile slides at high velocity and low friction along the curved path on its self-generated gas film. We will discuss the dynamics, mechanics, and some preliminary experimental results for this hypervelocity mass accelerator. *ALCorp, 6801 Benjamin Street, McLean, VA 22101, 703-790-0620, datidman@cox.net **HyperV, 13935 Willard Road, Chantilly, VA 20151, 703-378-4882, witherwspoon@hyperV.com (1)”Slingatron, A Mechanical Hypervelocity Mass Accelerator”, D. A. Tidman, Aardvark Global Publishing, 2007. A book available at www.slingatron.com |
James Jordan and James Powell, Maglev-2000, Inc. Maglev Transport – A Necessity in the Age of No Oil |
Saturday 2:00PM Room 370 |
World oil production will peak in the next few years and then steadily decline, causing prices to rapidly escalate far beyond the present $100 per barrel. To maintain affordable transport of people and goods in the oncoming Age of No Oil, a crucial requirement for the U.S. and World economy, new modes of transport that can operate without oil must be quickly developed and implemented on a large scale. The 3 new options proposed to date – biofuels, hydrogen, and coal-to-liquids – do not appear to be practical solutions. Biofuels are very limited in supply capability, and will cause major increases in food prices and World hunger, and seriously degrade long-term soil fertility. Hydrogen fuel requires an enormous increase in expensive electrical generation capacity, much greater than now exists. Coal to liquid fuel greatly increases greenhouse gas emissions and drastically accelerates global warming. Electrically powered transport can meet U.S. and World future transport needs in an affordable, energy efficient, and environmentally acceptable manner. Maglev transport will play a major role in electric transport. The advanced Maglev-2000 system which can transport passengers, highway trucks, freight, and passenger autos at speeds of 300 mph with much less energy usage and at much lower cost than present transport systems, is described. Implemented as a 25,000 mile National Maglev Network, using the rights-of-way along the Interstate Highways and existing railroad trackage, it would serve all major U.S. Metropolitan regions in a seamless high speed web. The first phase of the National Maglev Network, a transcontinental East-West and North-South routes could be operating by 2019 AD. The Network would be financed by private investment, with a payback time of 5 years, using revenues generated by transporting long-distance highway trucks. |
John Bosma, NRAC, Arlington, VA Tech Futures 2008-2030 |
Saturday 2:25PM Room 370 |
The key elements of tech trends influencing global security, economics and business through 2030 are discussed, covering the following nine major topics: 1) ‘Bio-fication’ and MEMS-ification of ‘primary industry’ processes: hydrocarbon energy mining, renewables (solar), farming and forestry, metals mining and metallurgy, metals/radionuclides cleanup, extremophile industrial biologies; 2) Conventional-oil exhaustion (50% drop by 2030?) – vs. massive North American hydrocarbon stocks for liquefaction; can US/Canada become ‘new Persian Gulf’? 3) Step-jump productivity/ROI improvements in ‘big iron’ industrial activities (fast intermodal shipping, solid free-form manufacturing…) will outrank IT whoopee; 4) ‘Big iron’ ops in extreme environments (deep offshore oil, Arctic oil and minerals, heavy lift (4000 tons) across tundra/wetlands, in-situ coal mining; 5) 4-5 orders-of-magnitude reduction in size-weight-cost of future military ops (including terrorist ops) from current state-of-the-art – e.g. 25-lb SUAVs (small unmanned air vehicles) crossed Atlantic unrefueled in Dec 1998, mass production cost <$15,000; 6) Personalized medicine (self-diagnosis via electronic/sensor-textile underwear, noninvasive wearable ultrasound, cheap personal medical imagers, global Web-enabled ‘on call’ medical expertise w/ ‘smart agent’ software assist, telemedicine; 7) Rapid development of poor-country Internet, telephony/WiMAX, women-owned startups, communications-based rural take-off – but medical MUST be solved; 8) Dirt-cheap space launch via all-mechanical Slingatrons (www.slingatron.com) – enables cheap missile defense, cheap distributed-aperture solar power satellites; 9) Downsides/’bad news’: high probability of 1-2 regional nuclear wars (Pakistan, Iran) and/or terror nukes in US, Europe (7-12 cities) – w/ TBD aftermaths but assuredly strong anti-nuclear, anti-terror tech, ‘defensive emphasis’/BMD drives. |
Richard Smith, MS President Flexible Medical Sysems, LLC Micro- and Nanotechnologies for Near Term Medical Diagnostics |
Saturday 2:50PM Room 370 |
Micro- and nanotechnologies are allowing university and lab scientists to create medical diagnostic capabilities never before seen. These new capabilities can facilitate the realization of telemedicine and make universal health care affordable. While these capabilities were once thought to be far in the future, commercial products are in the human trials stage right now. The CEO of a local medical diagnostics company will discuss the science, the commercialization process (including traversing the “valley of death”) and the remarkable near-term possibilities. |
Jim Burke Manager Futures, Forecasting, and Change Management Northrop Grumman Scientific Leaders and the Workforce of 2015 |
Saturday 3:15PM Room 370 |
This talk emphasizes that 2015 is not that far off, but that a lot can happen in eight years, especially in the workforce. The pace of change calls for attention to the trends that are driving change within technical organizations and the rest of the world. Some trends are micro-trends (e.g., the growth of self-storage businesses in the US), while others are macro-trends (e.g., population growth or decline). The three buckets of trends that will affect most scientific organizations in the next eight years fall are:
People People across the US and around the world, |
Limor Schafman, Keystone Tech Group Fairfax, Virginia . Distributed Business: How IPv6 Will Change Business and Government Operations |
Saturday 3:40PM Room 370 |
Central command and control is a concept of the past. We are seeing many technological developments and the human response to these new products and services that indicate a mind and behavioral shift taking place at a fundamental, root level. IPv6, the New Internet protocol is more than just an address structure. It is a mindset. Its impact on the social, mobile and connected world will alter how businesses and government agencies are structured, how employees work, how opportunity is identified and acted upon, and how value is brought to an organization. This presentation will discuss what IPv6 and other technologies mean to business operations, reasons for these changes and what the implications and opportunities for business and government can be going forward. |
ANTHROPOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF
WASHINGTON
Recent Research in Human Skeletal Biology |
Sunday 2:00PM Room 330 |
Martin C. Solano, PhD, Contractor, Repatriation Osteology Laboratory, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Sex differences in skeletal trauma among the 19th century working class. |
2:05PM |
Skeletal trauma is analyzed in individuals from an almshouse cemetery skeletal sample from Albany, NY. The cemetery served as a potter’s field for almshouse decedents and unclaimed bodies from Albany County from 1826 to 1926. Marked differences in the patterns of fractures were observed with respect to age and sex, reflecting occupational hazards and interpersonal violence. |
Ryan W. Higgins, George Washington University, Department of Anthropology (graduate student) Limb Proportion Inheritance and Ancestry Determination from Fetal Crural and Brachial Indices |
2:20PM |
Relative distal limb length is found to correlate with climate in modern human populations. The question remains whether this trait is determined by adaptation or epigenetic influences. Experiments on laboratory animals support the hypothesis that cold temperature influences limb development by reducing growth plate kinetics and/or vascular supply. Reduction in vascular supply would theoretically have a more pronounced effect on the smaller limb segments. Furthermore, differences in nutritional uptake between generations (i.e., secular trends) may affect distal limb segments more than proximal segments. Together these findings suggest intergenerational plasticity in (1) distal limb segments and ultimately (2) brachial and crural indices. Conversely, if upper and lower limb segment proportions are genetic traits shaped over generations by natural selection and affected little by ambient temperature and nutritional uptake during development, then limb segment proportions may aid forensic scientists in determining ancestry from the postcranial remains of immigrant populations adapted to different ancestral climates. The present study seeks to use (1) a natural experiment, the migration of Africans and Europeans to North America, to examine the role of genetic and epigenetic influences on human limb proportions, and (2) discriminant function analysis to assess the forensic value of limb proportion data for determining ancestry in adult and fetal African Americans and European Americans. |
Marilyn R. London, MA, Lecturer, Department of Anthropology, University of Maryland and Erica B. Jones, MA, Department of Anthropology, Smithsonian Institution Complete fusion of the mandible to the cranium during childhood in an Eskimo from southwestern Alaska |
2:35PM |
A rare case of fusion between the mandible and the cranium is seen in an individual from a cemetery in southwestern Alaska. Although the fusion appears to have occurred in early childhood, the remains are those of an adult female, aged 30 to 45 years at death. The effects of the fusion on the life of the individual must have been significant. The mouth could not be opened, although some movement prevented atrophy of the mandible. The food passage was narrow and her food may have been softened or liquefied. Speech may have been somewhat difficult. However, there are indications throughout the skeleton of osteoarthritis, and both tibiae exhibit squatting facets. This suggests that the individual lived an active life and performed routine activities. The etiology of the fusion is discussed. |
David R. Hunt, PhD and Deborah Hull-Walski, MS, COllections and Archives Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution “All That Remains” – Multidisciplinary study of a mid-19th Century Iron Coffin and Identification of the Individual Within |
2:50PM |
In April 2005, a cast iron coffin was discovered during construction in the Columbia Heights neighborhood of Washington, DC. A multidisciplinary study of the coffin and the contents was done to investigate preservation of bodies in iron coffins, the historical funerary significance of this type of burial, and, if possible, the identity of the individual inside. The biological profile of the individual was determined, by CT scanning and autopsy, to be an approximately 15 year old male of European ancestry. He died of lung infection with probable complications due to a heart valve disorder. Samples were taken and analyses performed for DNA, isotopes, and various pathogens that might be present in the coffin and body. The analysis of the clothing and coffin manufacture established the date of death at approximately 1851-2. After two years of extensive historical and genealogical research, the possible identity of the boy in the coffin was narrowed to three individuals. Smithsonian anthropologists obtained DNA from living relatives of each lineage and an absolute match to the boy was made. William Taylor White was from Accomack Co. Virginia, was attending Columbia College and died January of 1852. Many of his descendents still live in the Virginia eastern shore area. “Thus is cut off, in the morning of his days, one in whom many hopes were centred—and who had the fairest prospects of happiness and usefulness in life.”—Excerpt from White’s obituary, published Feb. 8, 1852, in the Religious Herald (Richmond, Va.). |
Lynn Snyder, PhD, Science Director, Azoria Project, Crete; Researcher/Contractor, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution Faunal and human remains from a 2nd century BCE well in the Athenian Agora; evidence of animal sacrifice and infanticide in Late Hellenistic Athens? |
3:05PM |
The human and animal bones recovered from Well G5:3 in the Athenian Agora received little notice when they were first discovered in 1937/38, beyond a short note that the well contained human remains and “over eighty-five dogs”. In 1945, J. Lawrence Angel published a short description of the human remains, noting the presence of “about 175 infants”, an adult male and an 11-year-old child; he posited that the infants represented either deaths by exposure, or victims of disease and/or starvation. In 1996, a thorough re-examination of the skeletal materials from the well was begun, leading to the identification of the remains of 450 human infants, plus more than 150 dogs. Restudy of these remains indicate that the human infants were placed in this isolated location, away from the more urban and public areas of the Agora, with some care, and may represent still births and newborns who failed to thrive. References in ancient sources on childbirth indicate that infants were not accepted as full members of society until several weeks or months after death, and thus not afforded full burial rites; they also suggest that the dogs may have been sacrificed in purification rites associated with female fertility or childbirth. |
J. Christopher Dudar, PhD. Repatriation Office, Smithsonian Institution, National Museum of Natural History Archaeological discovery of a previously undocumented case of an anencephalic infant from a 19th Century Upper Canadian cemetery |
3:20PM |
Anencephaly is defined as the absence of normal brain development due to a severe neural tube defect, and is among the leading causes of perinatal death in the developed world. While the incidence of anencephaly ranges between 1 to 5 per 1000 births, there is only one published example of anencephaly from the archaeological record, an Egyptian mummy described by Étienne and Isidore Geoffroy Saint-Hillaire in the early 19th century. Compelling evidence will be presented for the diagnosis of only the second case of anencephaly in the paleopathological literature, an archaeologically recovered 8.5 to 9.5 lunar month gestation fetus from a pioneer Upper Canadian cemetery |
Matthew W. Tocheri, PhD, Human Origins Program, Department of Anthropology, National Museum of Natural History, Smithsonian Institution Concerning the Evidence for “Hobbits”: An Overview of Homo floresiensis |
3:35PM |
The hominin skeletal remains discovered four and a half years ago at Liang Bua cave on Flores, Indonesia have intrigued scientists and the general public alike. The initial analyses suggested that the remains belonged to a previously unknown species of hominin, prompting the discoverers to name a new species, Homo floresiensis, and to nickname them the “hobbits” of human evolution. Some researchers have rejected the new species claim, arguing that the remains more likely represent modern humans with skeletal pathologies or growth disorders. However, the physical evidence in favor of the new species hypothesis continues to expand as more researchers conduct detailed comparative analyses of different aspects of H. floresiensis anatomy. As such, most experts of human evolutionary anatomy recognize the Flores hominin remains, which currently date between approximately 95 and 12 thousand years ago, as a legitimate taxon. In this presentation, I provide an overview of H. floresiensis anatomy in comparison to that of modern humans (normal and abnormal), other fossil hominin species, and extant great apes. I also discuss how this evidence applies to current and future debates about the paleobiology of H. floresiensis—a debate which is no longer centered on whether the “hobbits” are pathological modern humans or a distinct hominin species, but rather on the particular details of their evolutionary history and functional morphology. |
ASSOCIATION FOR WOMEN IN SCIENCE. DC-METRO
CHAPTER
Managing Your Career in Science: This session will begin with an overview of current data on gender equity in science and the impact that workplace culture, climate, and policies have on the recruitment, retention, and success of women working in scientific disciplines. In this context, speakers from both academe and industry will address the skills necessary for success in building scientific careers beyond the bench with particular emphasis on the different expectations and challenges faced by women as they advance to managerial/professorial and executive/department chairperson roles. Speakers will discuss how to identify and use opportunities both to hone and expand the needed skill sets. The session will also highlight ways to successfully navigate career transitions, focusing on issues such as setting career goals, deciding when to make a career change, and identifying opportunities suited to individuals’ strengths and interests. The session will conclude with a moderated panel discussion, offering participants and panelists an additional opportunity to share insights and exchange ideas. |
Sunday 2:00PM Room 380 |
Natalia Melcer-Program Officer, National Academy of Sciences Welcome and Introduction |
2:00PM Room 380 |
Ruth Fassinger-Professor, Department of Counseling and Personnel Services, University of Maryland, College Park Surveying the Landscape for Women in Science |
2:10PM Room 380 |
Gretchen Schieber-Vice President, Product Development, Adlyfe, Inc. and Rachelle Heller-Associate Dean for Academic Affairs, The George Washington University Skills for Succeeding in Science |
2:30PM Room 380 |
Alicia M. Rodriguez-Certified Executive Leadership Coach, Sophia Associates and Leanne Posko-Managing Director, Community Partnerships, Constellation Energy Successfully Navigating Career Transitions |
Sunday 3:00PM Room 380 |
Jennifer A. Hobin-Science Policy Analyst, Federation of American Societies for Experimental Biology Moderated Panel Discussion |
3:30PM Room 380 |
ASSOCIATION FOR
COMPUTING MACHINERY – DC CHAPTER
Bill Spees, PhD, Forensic Software Engineer, Division of Electrical and Software Engineering Center for Devices and Radiological Health Office of Science and Technology, Food and Drug Administration and Practitioner Faculty, University of Phoenix OnlineLightweight Java State Machine |
Sunday 2:00PM Room 365 |
Classical state machines offer clarity, efficiency, and precision. Recent technology has provided opportunities to update and improve state machines, but the usual updates have clouded the simple workings of state machines with burdensome object oriented decoration.We will revisit the state machine and discover how it can appropriately enhance an object oriented system. We will explore a Java program for a basic board game and extend it with house rules. |
BIOLOGICAL SOCIETY OF
WASHINGTON
W. Ronald Heyer President, Biological Society of Washington Can long-established, narrow-niche scientific societies such as the Biological Society of Washington survive the digital age? |
Saturday 2:00PM Room 365 |
The Biological Society of Washington was formed in 1880 primarily as a forum for the Washington based biologists to meet and discuss current biological research, with publication of those discussions and other submitted articles to the Society’s journal, the Proceedings of the Biological Society of Washington. A few years after formation, there was a general trend toward emphasizing the journal over the meetings and moving from all aspects of biology to the related topics of systematics and taxonomy. This trend culminated in the late 1950s, with the stated purpose of the Society to be: “For the furtherance of taxonomic study of organisms and for diffusion of biological knowledge among interested persons.” This purpose served the Society well through the 1990s. Perhaps associated with the decline in support for systematics and taxonomy by the US academic community, the membership of the Society has been in slow decline since 1993. This decline, combined with competition from the new (2001) journal Zootaxa (an electronically produced and distributed journal dedicated to animal taxonomy), together with younger scientists preferring pdf files of publications over hard copy, sounded an alarm to the elected officers and Councilors of the Society. Deliberations resulted in undertaking major changes in the management and delivery system of the Society’s publications together with activities to garner new members and institutional subscribers. The actions taken are recent and it is too early to assess whether they will be successful or hasten the demise of the Society. |
BOTANICAL
SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON (see American Society of Plant
Biologists)
CHEMICAL SOCIETY OF WASHINGTON
Jesse Gallun and Jennifer Young, ACS Green Chemistry Institute, American Chemical Society Green Chemistry and the ACS Green Chemistry Institute |
Sunday 11:00AM Room 310 |
Green chemistry finds sustainable solutions through innovative technologies while preventing pollution, through the reduction or elimination in the use and generation of hazardous substances. The American Chemical Society Green Chemistry Institute (ACS GCI) has a mission to advance the implementation of green chemistry and engineering principles into all aspects of the chemical enterprise. To achieve this mission, ACS GCI works in several strategic areas: research, education, industrial implementation, international collaboration, communication and outreach, and policy advocacy. A brief overview about ACS GCI and its activities will be shared, as well as opportunities open to you, such as grants, awards, conferences, teaching materials, and more. Since the green chemistry movement began in the early 1990’s, there are many real world examples of green chemistry, such as: new adhesives that mimic nature while eliminating hazardous chemicals like VOCs, redesigned pathways to important pharmaceuticals that significantly reduce the use of hazardous chemicals and generation of waste, and other consumer products that feature greener components and production. A number of these examples will be presented, with an interactive discussion of factors that may lead industry to utilize new green technologies or products. |
INSTITUTE OF ELECTRICAL AND ELECTRONICS ENGINEERS
(IEEE), DC AND NORTHERN VIRGINIA SECTIONS
Invited Talk by Frederika Darema, NSF Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems |
Saturday 9:00AM Room 310 |
This talk will discuss the Dynamic Data Driven Applications Systems (DDDAS) concept, driving novel directions in applications and in measurements, as well as in computer sciences and cyber-infrastructure. DDDAS entails the ability to incorporate dynamically additional data into an executing application (these data can be archival or collected on-line), and in reverse the ability of the applications will be able to dynamically steer the measurement process. The dynamic environments of concern here encompass dynamic integration of real-time data acquisition with compute and data intensive -systems. Enabling DDDAS requires advances in the application modeling methods and interfaces, in algorithms tolerant to perturbations of dynamic data injection and steering, in systems software, and in infrastructure support. Research and development of such technologies requires synergistic multidisciplinary collaboration in the applications, algorithms, software systems, and measurements systems areas, and involving researchers in basic sciences, engineering, and computer sciences. Such capabilities offer the promise of augmenting the analysis and prediction capabilities of application simulations and the effectiveness of measurement systems, with a potential major impact in many science and engineering application areas. The concept has been characterized as revolutionary and examples of areas of DDDAS impact include computer and communication systems, information science and technologies, physical, chemical, biological, medical and health systems, environmental (hazard prediction, prevention, mitigation, response), and manufacturing, transportation and critical infrastructure systems. The talk will address technology advances enabled and driven the DDDAS concept, as well as challenges and opportunities, motivating the discussion with application examples from ongoing research efforts. |
Ronald L. Ticker National Aeronautics and Space Administration The US National Laboratory on the International Space Station |
Saturday 9:20AM Room 310 |
The International Space Station (ISS) is rapidly approaching the long-awaited completion of assembly in 2010. All US core elements have been integrated and tested on-orbit, and the attention of NASA has turned to deployment of the European, Japanese, and Russian laboratories. Section 507 of the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 designated the US segment of the ISS as a “national laboratory”, opening up use to other US Government agencies, US private firms and US academic institutions. This paper summarizes strategy and plans for implementation of the ISS National Laboratory as well as applicable research and support facilities. The original 1984 vision of a robust, multi-mission space station serving as a platform for the advancement of US science, technology and commerce will soon be achieved. |
Gerard Christman Sr., Systems Engineer & PM OSD Technical Services Femme Comp Inc. In the Aftermath of the Indian Ocean Basin Tsunami: An Information Sharing Pilot Program in Support of Humanitarian Assistance / Disaster Relief |
Saturday 9:40 AM Room 310 |
On December 26th, 2004, the world was shaken by a magnitude 9.0 earthquake. The epicenter was located in the Indian Ocean Basin that resulted in a tsunami wave extending around the world. Most of its devastating effects were felt in Sri Lanka, India and Thailand. The US Department of Defense (DoD) characterizes such an event as a Humanitarian Assistance Disaster Relief Operation (HADR). With humanity impacted on such a scale, the key to saving lives and providing relief is the ability to triage, assess, and determine accurate situational awareness. Situational awareness can lead to aid and services being directed for maximum benefit. This paper will discuss activities and describe how the DoD is approaching the way forward to share information with non governmental organizations (NGOs), other governmental organizations (OGOs), private voluntary organizations (PVOs), host nations civil authorities, agencies across the Interagency of the US Government, and international Organizations (IOs). The DoD has through outreach developed a dialog and a plan to create a Community of Interest (COI) to map out the business processes and the information to be shared in order to enable non-DoD entities to marry-up their capabilities with emerging requirements around theater of operations. |
Tim Weil – Associate (CISSP/CISA) Booz | Allen | Hamilton Securing Wireless Access for Vehicular Environments (WAVE): A Case Study of the Department of Transportation VII Project |
Saturday 10:00AM Room 310 |
The Department of Transportation Vehicular Infrastructure Integration (DOT VII) program has paved the way for the Intelligent Transportation Systems of tomorrow. VII envisions a future in which intelligent vehicles routinely communicate with each other and the transportation infrastructure in real time. Booz Allen Hamilton has led the Systems Integrator’s role for building a model DOT VII network based on the deployment of network and software infrastructure using a newly published set of IEEE standards. The VII technical architecture is based on IEEE 1609 Wireless Access for Vehicular Environments (WAVE) standards which define an architecture and a complementary set of services that enable secure vehicle-to-vehicle and vehicle-to-infrastructure wireless communication. The IEEE WAVE family of standards(1609) provide the foundation for a broad range of applications in the transportation environment, including vehicle safety, public safety, communication fleet management, automated tolling, enhanced navigation, traffic management and other operations. The recently published WAVE Networking standard (IEEE 1609.3) provides an Intelligent Transportation Systems framework from which a Proof of Concept VII Service Oriented Architecture, WAVE Networking Stack, and the Real-Time Messaging VII have been implemented. This VII model also includes a detailed description of the Publish / Subscribe MQ Architecture developed to support collection/parsing of vehicle probe data and the scheduling/delivery of standard SAE J2735 messages to vehicles in a limited connectivity environment. The suite of WAVE protocols provides application services and Dedicated Short Range Communication (DSRC) communication channels, allowing secure messaging and application services between wireless roadside access points and vehicle radio transceiver units. This wireless security technology, IEEE 1609.2, WAVE Security Services for Applications and Management Messages, presents the VII program with Identity and Access Management challenges An examination of the working model will demonstrate the use of Mobile PKI to manage VII actors, messaging and applications using DSRC/WAVE communication services. The discussion will conclude with an overview of how the Communications Industry is positioned to take advantage of the IEEE 1609 standards for Application Services, IPv6 Networking and Multi-Channel Radio Operation. |
Haik Biglari – Fairchild Controls CorporationPast, Present and Future of Safety-Critical Real-time Embedded Software Development |
Saturday 10:20 AM Room 310 |
Safety-Critical systems are those systems whose failure could result in loss of life, cause significant property damage or cause damage to the environment. These complex systems tend to have sufficient kinetic or potential energy which can become uncontrollable and thus pose a hazardous condition. Therefore, the system controller must be designed in such a way as to guarantee system stability during all of the system operational modes. Furthermore, when a fatal fault occurs, the controller shuts down the system safely. This paper will present the evolution of software development for these systems, current certification issues, the gap that exists between systems engineering and software engineering disciplines, software reuse, use of productivity tools and the future of safety-critical real-time embedded software development. |
Ashwin Swaminathan (University of Maryland, College Park) Digital Detective for Electronic Imaging |
Saturday 10:40 AM Room 310 |
Electronic imaging has experienced tremendous growth in recent decades, and digital images including those taken by digital cameras have been used in a growing number of applications. With such increasing popularity and the availability of low-cost image editing software, the integrity of digital image content can no longer be taken for granted. Rapid technology development has also led to a number of new problems related to protecting intellectual property rights, handling patent infringements, authenticating acquisition source, and identifying content manipulations. In this presentation, we consider the problem of image acquisition forensics and introduce a fusion of a set of signal processing features to identify the source of digital images. We show that traces of the in-device processing operations such as color interpolation along with the noise characteristics of devices’ image acquisition process jointly serve as good forensic features to help accurately reconstruct the history of the input image to its production process and differentiate between images produced by cameras, cell phone cameras, scanners, and computer graphics. Through analysis and extensive experimental studies, we demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed framework for image acquisition forensics. (Include joint work with Prof. Min Wu, Prof. K.J. Ray Liu, Dr. Hongmei Gou, and Ms. Christine E. McKay.) |
X. Zhu 1, 2, Y. Yang 1, Q. Li 1, D. E. Ioannou 1, J. S. Suehle 2 and C. A. Richter 2 High Performance Silicon Nanowire Field Effect Transistor and Application to Non-Volatile Memory 1. ECE Department, George Mason University, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA 2. CND Group, Semiconductor Electronics Division, NIST, Gaithersburg, MD 20899, USA |
Saturday 2:00PM Room 310 |
We report the fabrication and characterization of double-gated silicon nanowire field effect transistors (SiNWFET) with excellent current-voltage characteristics, low subthreshold slope (~ 85mV/dec) and high on/off current ratio (~ 106). The silicon nanowire devices were fabricated by using a self-aligned technique with standard photolithographic alignment and metal lift-off processes, ensuring large-scale integration of high-performance nanowire devices. We have studied the effect of device structure and forming gas rapid thermal annealing on the nanowire transistor’s electrical properties. We attribute the excellent current-voltage characteristics displayed by our devices to the low interface state densities achieved by the above fabrication process. We also report non-volatile memory cells (NVM) based on these nanowires. The SiNWs are integrated into memory devices by using a self-alignment technique. The top gate dielectric, which surrounds most of the nanowire, consists of three stacked layers: blocking SiO2, charge-storing layer HfO2 and thin tunneling oxide. Prior to the SiNW growth a thermal SiO2 was grown on a p-type silicon wafer by dry oxidation to form the bottom-gate oxide of these dual-gated structures. The diameter of the SiNW is ~ 20 nm and the gate length ranges from 2 µm to 8 µm. When these devices are electrically characterized, a large threshold voltage shift is observed under voltage sweep of either the top or the bottom gate. The top gate control is superior to that of the bottom gate control as demonstrated by the large memory windows and large on/off current ratios (~107) observed in these devices. |
Boris Veytsman(1), Leila Akhmadeyeva(2), Fernando Morales(3,4), Grant Hogg(3), Tetsuo Ashizawa(5), Patricia Cuenca(4) Gerardo del Valle(4), Roberto Brian(4), Mauricio Sittenfeld(4), Alison Wilcox(3), Douglas E. Wilcox(3) and Darren G. Monckton(3) Microsatellite Expansion: The Search for Underlying Pattern 1. George Mason University, MS 5A2, Fairfax, VA 22030, USA 2. Bashkir State Medical University, 3 Lenina Str., Ufa, 450077, Russia 3. University of Glasgow, Glasgow G11 6NU, UK 4. Universidad de Costa Rica, San Jose, Costa Rica 5. The University of Texas Medical Branch, Galveston, TX 77555-0539, USA |
Saturday 2:20PM Room 310 |
Microsatellite expansion is the cause of a number of severe diseases like Fragile X, Huntington disease, Myotonic Dystrophy and others. An interesting common feature of the expansion in these case is the instability of the mutation: once expanded, the number of microsatellites continues to change in the patient’s cells. An understanding of the mechanism of microsatellite expansion will help in the prediction of the individual development of the disease and planning the medical care. Recently (J. Theor. Biol., v. 242, 401–408, 2006) we proposed a mathematical model to describe the mechanism of the microsatellite expansion and resulting distribution of repeats lengths in the patient’s DNA. Here we compare the theoretical predictions with the data on the repeat lengths of a wide group of patients having Myotonic Dystrophy I (DyM I). We find that the theoretical predictions agree fairly well with the clinical data. The distribution of repeats lengths is close to the one predicted by the mathematical model. We used the clinical data to estimate the theoretical parameters: the rate of increase of the number of repeats and the rate of widening the distribution. We find that while these parameters have large individual variations, the average values give reasonable predictions for the development of mutations. These values can be used to estimate the initial mutation (the number of repeats in the progenitor allele) and to predict the development of the disease. |
Hojin Kee1, Newton Petersen2, Jacob Kornerup2, Shuvra S. Bhattacharyya1 Synthesis of FPGA-Based FFT Implementations 1Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering, and Institute for Advanced Computer Studies, University of Maryland, College Park, 20742, USA. 2National Instruments Corporation, Austin, 78759, USA. {hjkee, ssb}@umd.edu, {newton.petersen, jacob.kornerup}@ni.com |
Saturday 2:40PM Room 310 |
In this paper, we propose a systemic approach for synthesizing field-programmable gate array (FPGA) implementations of fast Fourier transform (FFT) computations. We also demonstrate these methods in the dataflow-based programming environment of LabVIEW FPGA, and through our experiments, we show efficiency levels that are comparable to, and in some cases better than, commercially-available intellectual property cores for the FFT. Our approach considers both cost (in terms of FPGA resource requirements), and per-formance (in terms of throughput), and optimizes for both of these dimensions based on user-specified requirements. By appropriately combining complementary forms of loop unrolling, we systematically achieve cost-optimized FFT implementations in terms of FPGA slices or block RAMs in FPGA, subject to the given throughput constraints. Furthermore, our approach provides the advantages of being able to optimize implementations based on arbitrary, user-specified performance levels with general formulations of FFT loop unrolling trade-offs, which can be retargeted to different kinds of FPGA devices. |
Raj Madhavan, Stephen Balakirsky and Chris Scrapper, Intelligent Systems Division, NISTAn Open-Source Virtual Manufacturing Automation Competition |
Saturday 3:00PM Room 310 |
Automated Guided Vehicles (AGVs) represent an integral component of today’s manufacturing processes. They are widely used on factory floors for intra-factory transport of goods between conveyors and assembly sections, parts and frame movements, and truck-trailer loading/unloading. Automating these systems to operate in unstructured environments presents an exciting area of current research in robotics and automation. Unfortunately, the traditional entry barrier into this research area is quite high. Researchers need an extensive physical environment, robotic hardware, and knowledge in research areas ranging from mobility and mapping to behavior generation and scheduling. An accepted approach to lowering this entry barrier is through the use of simulation systems and open source software. This talk will present an overview of research and collaboration being undertaken by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) with a grant received under the IEEE Robotics and Automation Society’s New Initiatives Competition. It is our belief that competitions are an effective means of stimulating interest and participation among students by providing exciting technological problems to tackle. Under this effort, faculty members and their interested students from six universities in the Greater Washington Area (Washington D.C., Northern Virginia and Baltimore) were introduced to this time-critical research area through the creation of a factory automation regional competition and tutorial. Since all code used in these competitions is open source, participants are able to learn from their competitors and self-sustain their research in their areas of expertise. This talk will also outline the performance metrics that were used to judge the competition. The competition arenas and metrics used for scoring were specifically designed to create a “level” playing field for the various research disciplines. The specific metrics, the way in which the competition was run, and the future directions of the competition will be discussed in detail. Defects that were noted in the metrics will also be outlined. |
Kiki Ikossi, I-Cube Inc. and George Mason University Antimonides for High Efficiency Solar Cells |
Saturday 3:20 PM Room 310 |
Solar cells generate electricity utilizing the photovoltaic effect. The energy band gap of the semiconductor materials comprising the solar cells determine which part of the solar spectrum is utilized for electrical generation. Currently the record high efficiency solar cells are multijunction solar cells based on germanium and combined with different compound semiconductor cells. Cost considerations however limit these high efficiency cells to space applications. In this work we examine the possibility of using new materials in a novel way that uses a variable energy bandgap and spatial dimensions to convert into electricity most of the solar spectrum. Realistic modeling with position dependant material parameters, degeneracy effects, bandgap narrowing effects, surface and interface recombination are used to design the optimum parameters for the novel solar cell. A simple graded antimonide based monolithic solar cell with a 37.4% efficiency current matched at a current density of 23 A/cm2 under AM1.5 global illumination is demonstrated. The results show that efficiencies as high as the ultra high efficiency space solar cells are possible and are promising for development of low cost high efficiency solar cells for terrestrial applications. |
Brian Borak, Engineering team student leader for the DC electrical systems on the 2007 University of Maryland Solar Decathlon team, Dan Feng, a recent graduate from the University of Maryland, John Kucia, one of the project managers on the 2007 University of Maryland Solar Decathlon team, and Dan Vlacich is a Senior Consultant at Booz Allen Hamilton, Inc., and a mentor to the 2007 University of Maryland Solar Decathlon team.What it Takes to Design and Build a Successful Solar Home. |
Saturday 3:40PM Room 310 |
The Department of Energy Solar Decathlon is an international competition where students teams build fully-functional 100% solar-powered homes. The students then compete in a week long competition on the National Mall in Washington, D.C. to determine who has the best solar home. Homes are judged on a variety of criteria ranging from the amount of excess electricity produced, to heating and cooling comfort, to how far they can drive an electric car that is charged from the house. The University of Maryland has competed in all three Solar Decathlon events to date (2002, 2005, 2007) and recently placed 2nd in the world (and 1st in the United States) last October. This presentation will discuss the competition, what it takes to design and build a successful solar home, the student’s experiences and plans for future competitions. |
INSTITUTE OF
INDUSTRIAL ENGINEERS, NATIONAL CAPITAL CHAPTER/WASHINGTON CHAPTER OF THE
INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND MANAGEMENT
SCIENCES
Computational Modeling of Decision-Making Chair / Organizer: Douglas A. Samuelson, Serco |
Douglas A. Samuelson, Serco Modeling Attention Management in Organizational Decision-Making |
Saturday 9:00AM Room 120 |
Consider how to improve organizational decision-making by streamlining the process of seeking and allocating the attention of top decision-makers. These decision-makers try to optimize the value they receive by allocating their attention, taking uncertainty into account. Establishing a “bidding” process for attention-seeking improves efficiency and reduces problems. Now consider agent-based models of teams of workers. Workers have skills and various numbers of units of work they can accomplish, per skill area, per time period. The version of the model in which problems arrive and drift through the organization’s space randomly until they encounter a team that can solve them appears to approximate – and explain – the behavior of the Cohen, March and Olsen Garbage Can Model. Other, more hierarchical versions are likely to deadlock, overwhelming the managers and unnecessarily idling many of the workers, in a manner that fits intuition for certain large, tightly controlled bureaucracies. Explicitly modeling the attention required by managers and supervisors to assign problems and monitor progress adds another level of complexity and realism. This approach promises a rich variety of interesting results. |
H. Ric Blacksten and Joseph C. Chang, Homeland Security Institute Fermi model estimation of illegal immigration deterrence as function of apprehension probability |
Saturday 9:40AM Room 120 |
While U.S. leaders and legislators demand that our Southwestern borders be secured and controlled to stop illegal immigration, operators and researchers express reservations as to how easily that can be achieved. Recidivism statistics and surveys suggest that once an alien decides to cross into the USA, he or she will persist until successful. Does this mean that deterrence is hopeless? We present a “Fermi” framework, implemented in Excel, to explore this question. Using educated estimates of economic variables, we project the reduction in economic immigrant demand, i.e., deterrence, as a function of probability of apprehension. |
Steven Wilcox, Serco GOSSIP: A Computational Model of Team-Based Intelligence Gathering |
Saturday 10:20AM Room 120 |
The Goal-Oriented Sales-Specific Information Processing (GOSSIP) simulation model is a prototype for computationally modeling task complexity and the effect of team communication on the performance of intelligence gathering and exploitation tasks such as selling insurance or finding terrorists. In GOSSIP, Kauffman’s NK model of environmental complexity meets the Garbage Can model (Cohen, March & Olsen, 1972) and the phenomenon of diffusion along social networks, thus allowing one to use the power of simulation modeling for performing organizational design and analyzing impacts on search performance for elusive targets. In lieu of employing social network analysis measures in regression models of organizational effectiveness data, GOSSIP models the information passing process and the complexity of the task directly, thus pointing the way to enhanced clarity in quantitative modeling and analysis. |
Emergency Preparedness and Disaster Response Chair / Organizer: Douglas A. Samuelson, Serco |
Pete Hull, Homeland Security Institute and Skills That Serve, Inc. What Faith-Based Organizations Can Teach Us about Disaster Response: Post-Katrina Lessons Learned |
Saturday 2:00PM Room 120 |
Faith-based organizations (FBOs) and non-governmental organizations (NGOs) stepped in to fill the gaps when the geographic scales, intensities, and durations of Hurricanes Katrina and Rita overwhelmed the existing disaster response resources. FBOs and NGOs undertook a surprisingly large, varied, and demanding set of activities with extraordinary effectiveness. They provided shelter, food, medical services, hygiene services, mental health and spiritual care, physical reconstruction, logistics management and services, transportation, children’s services, and case management. The FBOs’ and NGOs’ successes in providing these services are a stark contrast to the many chronicled deficiencies and failures of government during the catastrophic 2005 hurricane season. We will discuss these organizations’ successes and glean lessons that may make the nation better prepared for future disasters. |
Douglas A. Samuelson, Serco Agent-Based Simulation of Mass Egress from Public Facilities and Communities |
Saturday 3:00PM Room 120 |
We review computer simulation models of selected attack scenarios on civilian targets and of the effects of possible counter-measures. In particular, these models focus on representing mass egress from large facilities, following one or more detonations, to evaluate some proposed ways to facilitate evacuation and reduce casualties. This review focuses on models developed by Homeland Security Institute (HSI) and Redfish Group (Santa Fe, New Mexico) to analyze two venues: a sports stadium and a subway station. Innovations include an order-of-magnitude increase, relative to previous models, of the number of people represented (70,000 in the stadium), and new computational portrayals of crowd movement and explosions. These approaches appear to conform especially well to real events, according to their developers’ experiments and comparisons. We also discuss, more briefly, recent models of wide-area evacuations in response to wildfires and nuclear terrorism. We conclude that the development and analysis completed to date, while far from exhaustive, suffice to demonstrate the utility of models such as these for evaluating proposed countermeasures, for indicating policy and technology issues that should be analyzed further, and for response planning. We also address the unusual problems such models pose for validation and evaluation. |
Papers of the Institute of Industrial Engineers/ Program Chair: Joseph Scheibeler |
Donald E. Crone, Program Director for the Flats Sequencing System (FSS), Headquarters Engineering, U.S. Postal Service Postal Automation and the Flats Sequencing System |
Sunday 10:00AM Room 120 |
Over the past 25 years automation has revolutionized the US Postal Service. This Session will explore the many technologies used by the US Postal Service in its day to day operations. The first half of the session will focus on key technologies such as bar code sorting, Delivery Point Sequencing (DPS), Optical Character Recognition (OCR), and package sorting systems used by the US Postal Service to process mail. The second half the session will provide an in-depth review of the Flats Sequencing System (FSS), the Postal Service’s latest advancement in flat mail sorting technology. The Flats Sequencing System advances flat mail processing by sorting flat mail in the order that postal carriers walk their route. This significantly improves the efficiency of flat mail processing and allows postal carriers more time to serve customers. FSS is designed to automatically sequence flat mail at a rate of approximately 16,500 pieces per hour, and is capable of sorting and sequencing up to 75,000 pieces of flat mail in one sequencing session. The machine is designed to sequence 280,500 pieces to more than 125,000 delivery addresses on a typical 17 hour daily operating window. |
Michael E. McCartney, Program Performance Specialist, Capital and Program Evaluation at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters Finance Project Management Shared Network Reporting System for Tracking Capital Investment Projects |
Sunday 11:00AM Room 120 |
US Postal Service (USPS) Project Managers submit quarterly status reports on investment projects for consolidation by USPS Headquarters Finance using a shared network Access-based reporting system. Finance edits the Project Managers’ submittals, incorporating individual project financial data from the corporate data base to create a Quarterly Investment Highlights Report for the USPS Board of Governors, the Postmaster General, the Chief Financial Officer and other Postal executives comprising the Capital Investment Committee. Project progress, previously reported using individual Word files by Project Managers for each project, followed by tedious copying and pasting in Headquarters Finance to create the consolidated report, is now input into a shared network by Project Managers using an Access data base and uploaded to the Finance reporting system for editing. In each subsequent Quarter, the updated and edited information from the previous Quarter is downloaded to the respective Project Managers who have access to their assigned projects for updating and the report consolidation process for the Quarterly report is repeated with the updated information. Project Managers now add only the updated or changed information instead of modifying the entire project report and Finance consolidates only the new information into each project’s report records. The enhanced reporting process is transparent to the complete consolidated Quarterly Investment Highlights Report. Required approval of the Project Managers’ input by Project Management executives is built into the system whereby each executive reviews only the projects of the executive’s assigned Project Managers. |
Charles L. Hochstein, Purchasing and Supply Management Specialist, Commodity Management Center (CMC) Mail Transport Equipment (MTE) and Spares at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters Supply Management Acquisition Cost Optimization Through Supply Chain Management |
Sunday 2:00PM Room 120 |
The Postal Service drives down its material and services acquisition costs by applying optimization techniques and expressive bidding methodologies to drive supply chain efficiencies. Advanced computer modeling methodologies, web based tools, and strategic sourcing methodologies are used to achieve these results. The Postal Service’s accomplishments in these areas were recently recognized with the Technology Innovation Award from the November 2007 Chief Purchasing Officer’s Summit. The Postal Service will present the framework it uses to make these accomplishments and a case study demonstrating its success |
Joseph J. Scheibeler, Program Performance Specialist, Capital and Program Evaluation at U.S. Postal Service Headquarters Finance After Cost Review Process for Capital Investments |
Sunday 3:00PM Room 120 |
This talk focuses on the methodology underlying the US Postal Service’s (USPS) capital investment justification and review process. In the preparation of both Decision Analysis Reports (DARs) to facilitate investment decision-making of approval authorities and in subsequent cost study reviews, cash flows – of project investments and incremental costs and benefits – are projected for a ten year benefit period to determine the return on investment (ROI). The cash flows are discounted at the appropriate interest rate (based on project risk and cost of capital) to calculate a project’s net present value (NPV). “After cost studies” for capital investment projects exceeding $25 million are undertaken as directed by the USPS Board of Governors (BOG) to evaluate the results of BOG-approved projects after at least one full year of normal continuous operation. Utilizing discounted cash flow methodology, a given project’s “actual” ROI and NPV of its after cost analysis are compared with the DAR’s. The information contained in the DARs and the after cost study reports includes subject matter experts’ estimates, vendors’ estimates and prices and data from USPS’s extensive corporate data base, which includes operation work hours and volumes processed, and actual project capital and expense payments. Information is also obtained by direct contact with field operations personnel, as well as the use of data collection, modeling and analysis techniques such as sensitivity analysis and productivity analysis, to estimate future costs and benefits. Inflation factors are applied to the estimates for the projection of anticipated results over a ten-year post-investment time horizon. |
MARIAN
KOSHLAND SCIENCE MUSEUM OF THE NATIONAL ACADEMY OF
SCIENCES
Erika Shugart Presenting Current Science: Lessons from the Marian Koshland Science Museum |
Sunday 10:00AM Room 110 |
Global warming, vaccination, and forensic DNA evidence are all topics that have been in the headlines. What approaches can be used to help the public understand these complex issues? The Marian Koshland Science Museum presents exhibits on topics such as climate change, infectious disease, and DNA technology since it opened in 2004. Dr. Erika Shugart, deputy director of the Koshland Museum, will show examples of a variety of approaches for making complex science accessible, share what she is learning about museum visitors, and explore some of the lessons learned and how they can be applied beyond the museum environment. |
MARYLAND
NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY (see American Society of Plant
Biologists)
NATIONAL CAPITAL SECTION/OPTICAL SOCIETY OF AMERICA
& IEEE/LEOS
Invited Talk by Dr. Michael Haney, DARPA & the Univ. of Delaware Photonic Integrated Circuits: Ready for Prime Time? |
Saturday 9:00AM Room 330 |
In recent years, Photonic Integrated Circuits (PICs) – in which information is encoded and manipulated as optical (rather than electrical) signals – have begun to emerge. Optical fiber networks are a natural application domain for PICs as there is an inherent match between the signal generation, detection, and multiplexing capabilities of emerging PICs and the optical signals being transported over the network. However, as with electronics over the last 4 decades, the transition from discrete to integrated circuits is opening up new opportunities for information processing based on photonics. There is increasing demand for integrated photonic sensing and processing solutions in chemical, biological, medical, communications, and remote sensing applications. Moreover, the advancement of PICs is being accelerated by leveraging the lithographic design and fabrication tools that have already been developed for the electronics IC industry. This talk explores the status of PIC R&D and highlights the key similarities and differences between electronic and photonic IC technologies that will ultimately influence the transition of PICs into real applications. |
Pavlo Molchanov1 , Vincent M. Contarino2, Olha Asmolova1 Gated Optical Sensors 1Aerospace Mass Properties Analysis Inc., North Wales, PA, USA 2 US Naval Air Systems Command, Patuxent River, MD, USA |
Saturday 9:30AM Room 330 |
Gated optical sensors can be divided into two groups: gated optical sensors (one anode optical sensors) and gated imaging optical sensors (multianode optical sensors, CCD cameras and TV cameras). Gated optical sensors are usually used for receiving laser pulsed signals from determinate distances in different LIDAR, LIVAR, Laser-Radar systems. An optimal adjusted gate allows the excision of noise signals reflected from objects before and after the area of observation. Gating of optical sensors in a confined area of observation protects the optical sensor and decreases noise background. The area of observation and application of gated optical sensors may be different depending on gating pulse width. For example, for a 1-10 ns pulse width area of observation confined by 0.3-3 meters can be used for underwater measurements, target detection and imaging [1-4]. For a 1 picosecond pulse width area of observation confined by 0.3 millimeters, this technology can be used for baggage and human body screening. Femtosecond gating pulses can be used for biomedical tomography with micrometer resolution. Results of investigating the nanosecond gated photodetectors for underwater target detection and underwater imaging are presented in this paper. 20 nanosecond gating pulses have been used for FireLidar, where 1574 nm laser light was pulsed through hydrocarbon smoke generated by wood. FireLidar is being developed for use in search and rescue in smoke and flame environments [5]. 1. M. Bristov. Suppression of afterpulsing in photmultpliers by gating the photcathode// Applied Optics,vol 41; No24;4975-4987, 2002. 2. V. M. Contarino, P. A. Molchanov, O.V. Asmolova. Large Area Intensified Photodiodes for Ocean Optics Applications// Remote Sensing of the Atmosphere, Ocean, Environment, and Space, 2004, 8-12 November 2004, Honolulu, Hawaii USA. 3. P. Molchanov, V.Contarino, B.Concannon, O.Asmolova, Investigation and Design of Wide Dynamic Range Gating Photosensor Module on the Base Hamamatsu Photomultiplier Tube R7400U with Output Signal Compression for LIDAR-RADAR Applications// Int. Semiconductor Device Research Symposium, Bethesda, Maryland, Dec. 7-9, 2005. 4. P.Molchanov, V.Contarino, B.Concannon, O.Asmolova, Nanosecond Gated Optical Sensors for Ocean Optics Applications// SAS 2006, Sensors Applications Symposium, Houston, Texas, Feb. 7-9, 2006. 5. E.T.Dressler, R.I. Bilmers, E.J.Bilmers, M.E.Ludwig. FireLidar development: light scattering from wood smoke, experiments, and theory at 1574 nm //SPIE Optics, Photonics Conf. San Diego, CA, Aug.13-17, 2006. |
Dr. Spilios Riyopoulos, SAIC Slow light propagation across coupled micro-laser arrays |
Saturday 9:50AM Room 330 |
Closely packed micro-laser cavities, such as VCSEL arrays, can interact through their evanescent fringe-fields, so that radiation confined in one cavity causes stimulated emission and carrier depletion [1] in neighbor cavities. Active coupling differs from optical interference in “passive” photonic lattices, including photonic crystals and CROWS, as here the radiation in one cavity modulates the complex gain of nearby cavities. Such nonlinear cross-cavity interactions endow active photonic lattices with a rich multifaceted, behavior. Since each cavity possesses a characteristic (slow compared to optical) oscillation frequency, a phase-locked array behaves as a coupled oscillator lattice. Theory and numerical simulations demonstrate that driving one of the cavities generates periodic variations in amplitude and phase around the steady-state values, propagating over the entire array. The dispersion for such lattice waves has been derived for small amplitude variations around the steady-state [2,3]. Stable low frequency (GHz) optical waves exist in a wide region of coupling strengths and line-width factor values. For parameters near the stability boundary the decay constant approaches zero and these waves propagate over long range. (Beyond that stability boundary the lattice breaks into self-excited oscillations and steady-state does not exist in the first place.) Typical propagation speeds ~ km/s show a 5 orders of magnitude reduction below the vacuum light speed c. While the group velocity decreases with the coupling strength, the coupling cannot go to zero, to maintain coherence. Because such waves involve oscillations in the coupled fermion-boson gas (carrier and photon densities) near the material sound speed, they are characterized [2] as photonic sound. [1] Coherent phase locking, collective oscillations and stability in coupled VCSEL arrays, S. Riyopoulos, Phys. Rev. A 66, 53820 (2002). [2] “Photonic Sound Excitation in Active Photonic Lattices, S. Riyopoulos, Optics Express 12, 3190-3195 (2004). [3] “Slow light waves at sonic propagation speed in active photonic lattices, S. Riyopoulos, Phys. Rev. A 75, 013801 (2007). |
Alexander Efros, NRL Multi-Exciton Generation by a Single Photon in Nanocrystals |
Saturday 10:10AM Room 330 |
Very efficient multi-exciton generation has been recently observed in nanocrystals where an optically excited electron-hole pair with an energy greater than the effective bandgap produces one or more additional electron-hole pairs [1,2]. We present a theory of multiple exciton generation in nanocrystals [3]. We have shown that very efficient and fast exciton generation in nanocrystals is caused by the breaking the single electron approximation for carriers with kinetic energy above the effective energy gap. The concept allows us to define the condition for dominant two-exciton generation by a single photon: the thermalization rate of a single exciton, initiated by light, should be lower than the both the two exciton thermalization rate and the rate of Coulomb coupling between single and two exciton states. We have also explained why the threshold of highly efficient multiple exciton generation in PbSe nanocrystals begins at photon energy close to the 3 times of the effective energy gap of the nanocrystals. 1. R. Schaller and V. Klimov, Phys. Rev. Lett. 92, 186601 (2004) 2. R. J. Ellingson, M. C. Beard, P.Yu, O. I. Micic, A. J. Nozik, A. Shabaev, and Al. L. Efros, NanoLetter 5, 865 (2005) 3. A. Shabaev, Al. L. Efros, and A. J. Nozik, NanoLetter 6, 2856 (2006). |
Jeffrey O. White, ARL Continuous ‘system level’ scale for laser gain media |
Saturday 10:45AM Room 330 |
A “system level” scale from is proposed, based on the probability of occupation of absorbing and emitting pump and laser levels. The numerical value coincides with conventional usage of the terms 2-, 3- and 4-level system. The physical significance is that for , the laser beam gains photons at the expense of the pump beam, in steady state. For , the opposite occurs. The proposed definition is general enough to apply to semiconductor lasers, but is particularly useful for comparing systems with discrete levels that are pumped with a narrow-band source, in near-resonance with the laser wavelength. When pumping Er3+ at 1470 nm, and lasing at 1645 nm, varies smoothly from 4 to 2 as the temperature increases, so this pair of transitions is effectively a 3.3-level system at 300°K. When pumping at 1532 nm, a maximum value of is reached at ~200°K. |
Emily Schultheis, Student, Glenelg H.S., Howard County, MD (Science Fair Winner in Optics) Machine Vision Assessment to Tomatoes of Unknown Diameter |
Saturday 11:10AM Room 330 |
The objective of these experiments was to determine the distance to an object of unknown size using binocular digital vision in an algorithm that may be automated for use by a robot. The eventual goal is to develop a robot that can autonomously harvest ripe tomatoes or similar delicate agricultural products.In a series of three studies, analyses from binocular digital images were performed using a desktop computer running LabVIEW 8.0 with Vision Assistant 8.0. A measurement from the center of a target’s ROI (region of interest) to the viewing axes of each camera’s viewing axis was used to calculate the camera-to-target distance using the principle of proportional lengths within similar triangles. The calculation utilized a reference scale of known dimensions and known distance from the cameras.The results demonstrated that the distance to a target of unknown size may be calculated from digital images made from parallel binocular views of the target within a limited camera-to-target range. |
Dr. H. John Wood, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Hubble Discoveries |
Saturday 11:30AM Room 330 |
Orbiting high above the turbulence of the earth’s atmosphere, the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) is providing breathtaking views of astronomical objects never before seen in such detail. This medium-size telescope can reach the faintest galaxies ever seen by mankind.. Some of these galaxies are as young as 2 billion years old in a 14 by universe. Up until recently, cosmologists assumed that all of the laws of physics and astronomy applied back then as they do today. Now, using the discovery that certain supernovae can be used as “standard candles”, astronomers have found that the universe is expanding faster today than it was back then: the universe is accelerating in its expansion. In recent years, a major breakthrough has been made in the field of cosmology. Using HST and ground-based images, astronomers and physicists have discovered a new means for measuring the distances to faint galaxies. Using the light from exploding stars called supernovae of type Ia, observers can measure distances by comparing their known intrinsic brightness to their apparent brightness’s. When compared with distances derived from Doppler shifts in their spectra, supernovae distances of faint young galaxies show that the universe was expanding more slowly than it does today. The simplest hypothesis is that because of the Big Bang, the mean density of the universe is decreasing rapidly with time while the cosmological constant (also known as dark energy) is there, unchanging, throughout space. Today, dark energy has command of the universe. |
Invited talk by Dr. Ken Stewart, NRL Mesh Filters for Infrared Astronomy |
Saturday 1:30PM Room 330 |
Metal meshes or screens have been used as infrared filters since at least the 1960s. Different metal/dielectric structures can be used to make lowpass, highpass, and bandpass filters as well as dichroic beamsplitters and polarizers. Recent advances in numerical simulation and nanotechnology fabrication techniques permit design and construction of structures with improved optical performance. New simulation codes and faster computers permit exploration of novel, more complex three-dimensional structures and can largely eliminate a costly trial-and-error approach to filter design. The new computer codes can predict filter and beamsplitter transmittance and reflectance at any angle of incidence in focused as well as collimated beams. Nanotechnology fabrication facilities can produce nearly ideal structures which eliminate fabrication errors as a source of disagreement between theory and experiment, and extend the technology to shorter wavelengths than previously possible. I will describe our project at the Naval Research Laboratory’s Nanoscience Institute and Columbia University to design, fabricate, and test metal mesh optical components for infrared astronomy. |
Geary Schwimmer1, Tom Wilkerson2, Jed Hancock2, Jason Swasey2, Adam Shelley2, Bruce Gentry3 and Cathy Marx3 Holographic Scanning UV Telescope for the Tropospheric Wind Lidar Technology Experiment 1 Science and Engineering Services, Inc., Columbia, MD 21046 2 Space Dynamics Lab, Utah State University, Logan, Utah 84322-4405 3 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center |
Saturday 2:00PM Room 330 |
The first ever Ultraviolet Telescope based on a transmission Holographic Optical Element (HOE) as the primary optic has recently been completed as part of the Tropospheric Wind Lidar Technology Experiment (TWiLiTE). The HOE is mounted in a ring bearing and rotates about its center normal to effect a 45-degree conical scan while the remainder of the telescope remain stationary. Preceded by two other similar telescopes at visible and near IR wavelengths, this is the first UV version of an HOE based telescope. The telescope and the TWiLiTE instrument are designed for use in the uncontrolled environment of the NASA WB-57 bomb bay. TWiLiTE will use the HOE telescope with a pulsed UV laser to profile tropospheric winds from the WB-57 cruise altitude of 15-18 km down to the surface. The HOE is 40-cm in diameter, 1 cm thick, has a 1-m focal length and a 45-degrees off-normal field of view. The telescope is a twice-folded coaxial design, with a flat secondary and a convex tertiary mirror that directs the light through a hole in the secondary. A 2-cm diameter laser beam is transmitted coaxially through a 2-mirror periscope mounted in a hole in the center of the HOE. |
Peter Blake1, Joseph Connelly1, Babak Saif2, Bente Eegholm2, Perry Greenfield2, and Warren Hack2 Spatially Phase-Shifted DSPI for Measurement of Large Structures 1 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center 2 Space Telescope Science Institute |
Saturday 2:20PM Room 330 |
Successful development of large, lightweight, deployable, cryogenic metering structures for infra-red space optics requires verification of structural deformations to nanometer level accuracy in representative test articles at cryogenic temperature. We review a Spatially Phase-Shifted Digital Speckle Pattern Interferometer (SPS-DSPI), which was designed for the testing of optical structures and related technology development structures for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). This instrument is capable of measuring dynamic deformations of the surfaces of large structures to nanometer accuracy at cryogenic temperatures. Verification of the instrument was performed using a single-crystal silicon gauge, which has four islands of different heights that change in a predictable manner as a function of temperature. |
Dr. Joseph Howard, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Optical Modeling Activities for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope: Overview and Introduction of Matlab based toolkits used to interface with optical design software |
Saturday 2:40PM Room 330 |
The work here introduces some of the math software tools used to perform the optical modeling activities for NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope project. NASA has recently approved these in-house tools for public release as open source, so this presentation also serves as a quick tutorial on their use. The tools are collections of functions written in Matlab, which interface with optical design software (CodeV, OSLO, and Zemax) using either COM or DDE communication protocol. The functions are discussed, and examples are given. |
Dr. Raymond Ohl, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Recent developments in the alignment and test plans for the James Webb Space Telescope Integrated Science Instrument Module |
Saturday 3:00PM Room 330 |
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is a 6.6m diameter, segmented, deployable telescope for cryogenic IR space astronomy (~40K). The JWST Observatory architecture includes the Optical Telescope Element (OTE) and the Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) element that contains four science instruments (SI) including a Guider. The SIs and Guider are mounted to a composite metering structure with outer dimensions of 2.1×2.2×1.9m. The SI and Guider units are integrated to the ISIM structure and optically tested at NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center as an instrument suite using an OTE SIMulator (OSIM). OSIM is a high-fidelity, cryogenic JWST telescope simulator that features a ~1.5m diameter powered mirror. The SIs are aligned to the structure’s coordinate system under ambient, clean room conditions using laser tracker and theodolite metrology. Temperature-induced mechanical SI alignment and structural changes are measured using a photogrammetric measurement system at ambient and cryogenic temperatures. OSIM is aligned to the ISIM mechanical coordinate system at the cryogenic operating temperature via internal mechanisms and feedback from alignment sensors in six degrees of freedom. SI performance, including focus, pupil shear and wavefront error, is evaluated at the operating temperature using OSIM. We present an updated plan for the assembly and ambient and cryogenic optical alignment, test and verification of the ISIM element. |
Bert A. Pasquale and Ross M. Henry, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Functional Testing of Hubble Relative Navigation Sensor Flight Cameras |
Saturday 3:40PM Room 330 |
The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Mission 4 will run a live test of the Relative Navigation Sensor (RNS) system for autonomous rendezvous and capture. The cameras will be mounted on a yoke-type device – the Multi-Use Lightweight Equipment (MULE) carrier in the Space Shuttle cargo bay. Using three fixed-pointing cameras with various fields of view and fixed focus distances, the RNS system will be used to determine the relative spatial orientation of HST fixtures to the shuttle’s grappling arm. RNS will run real-time with an on board processor, but the system also stores all the images and data for post-mission processing. If this on-orbit test is successful, future missions may rely on autonomous RNS systems as the primary method to safely dock with HST or other spacecraft. This presentation will discuss details associated with testing of the RNS cameras and supporting avionics, including both individual camera laboratory evaluation and full-system tests using reduced scale and full-sized models. |
Dr. J.C. (Chuck) Strickland, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center Fast Optical Processor for Laser Comm |
Saturday 4:00PM Room 330 |
Real-time compensation of atmospheric turbulence is an important unsolved problem limiting the effectiveness of a Laser Communications (Lasercomm) system. A special purpose optical processor is proposed to compensate these effects using a DSP (Digital Signal Processor) in combination with a WFS (Wavefront Sensing) camera and Fast Steering Mirror (FSM). If successful, the technology facilitates an end-end demo of the GSFC Lasercom system. The processor will be built and tested at GSFC and then implemented at the GSFC Optical Test Site. |
Athanasios N. Chryssis, Geunmin Ryu and Mario Dagenais, University of Maryland, College Park, MD High Resolution Incoherent Optical Frequency Domain Reflectometry |
Saturday 4:20PM Room 330 |
In this paper we present the performance characteristics of a tabletop incoherent optical frequency domain reflectometer used for fault detection in a fiber optic network. The system is based on measuring the beating of a linearly chirped signal and its delayed reflection after it has propagated down a fiber network. The beat frequency is proportional to the delay of the signal and thus the fault distance from the transmitter. In our experiment we use a chirped microwave signal which is ramped from 0 to 1GHz in 5 seconds to modulate a laser. We were able to obtain a 10cm fault resolution. The system was tested on fibers as long as 25km. Experimental plots were confirmed by numerical simulations. Simultaneous multiple faults detection was also realized on a single fiber branch as well as on a fiber network. Narrow bandwidth detection favors this scheme over standard time domain techniques. A high optical dynamic range of over 70dB was obtained. Another advantage of the frequency domain method is that there is no intrinsic deadtime for acquiring the reflected signal, allowing continuous monitoring of the network. This results in a lower peak laser power requirement for this technique opening the possibility for providing built in test capability using the existing network transceiver |
Christopher Stanford, Mario Dagenais, Juhee Park, Philip DeShong, University of Maryland, College Park, MD An Etched FBG Sensor: Modeling Bio-attachment and Improving Sensitivity |
Saturday 4:40PM Room 330 |
Fiber Bragg gratings continue to be used in chemical and biological detection because they offer high sensitivity to bulk refractive index changes. The minimum index resolution of our etched FBG sensor is 1×10-6 riu. We devised a multilayer model and simulation to show how adsorbed materials shift the effective refractive index around the grating sensor thus shift the reflection spectrum. Applying this method to characterize our silanization attachment (essential to protein adsorption on silica surfaces), results show that the etched FBG sensor can detect adsorbed monolayers. We recently fabricated a fiber Fabry Perot by fusion-splicing two pre-fabricated FBGs which created a 20cm cavity with a finesse of ~30. In order to increase the cavity’s finesse we need more control over cavity length, FBG reflectivity, and intracavity loss. The effective cavity length may be altered by etching the fiber in the region of the cavity thereby allowing adsorbed molecules to shift the FFP spectral resonances. By fabricating the FBGs in-house we may control the spectral properties (e.g. resonance linewidths) and enhance the sensitivity of our etched-fiber chemical sensor. Interrogating the short-cavity fiber Fabry Perot sensor with a tunable laser will allow us to further reduce the minimum index resolution by more than an order of magnitude relative to our current set-up (i.e. EDFA and Advantest spectrum analyzer). By directly modulating the laser with a slowly-ramped voltage, we can improve our wavelength resolution to a value around .01 pm and correspondingly decrease the index resolution to lower than 1 x 10-8 riu. |
NATIONAL
CAPITAL SOCIETY OF AMERICAN FORESTERS
Dialogue Among Natural Resource Societies in the National Capital Area |
Saturday 9:00AM Room 375 |
This session will include science leaders from a number of professional societies that share a focus on natural resource issues. Representatives will be asked to participate in a roundtable discussion on the impacts and future challenges among a number of trends, such as: global warming; bio-energy development; the threat of invasive species; and growing populations in the United States. Panel Members include, Chris Farley, Land Use, Forests and Agriculture in a Post-Kyoto Change Climate Agreement: Prospects and implications for natural resources management, Nicolas W. R Lapointe Non-indigenous species introductions – benefit or threat?, David L. Trauger The Role of Environmental Societies and Conservation Organizations |
Society of American Foresters Science Exhibition and Showcase |
Saturday 2:00PM Room 375 |
This session will include posters, journals and resource exhibits of SAF and NCSAF information for networking with other affiliated societies and the general public. NCSAF members and leaders will be on hand to discuss the science mission and roles of the Society, as well as network with other WAS-affiliated science groups. |
NATIONAL
INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NIST) – PHYSICS
DEPARTMENT
Inside a Closed Box: Ionizing Radiation in Imaging Chair: Lisa Karam, Deputy Chief Ionizing Radiation Division, Physics Laboratory, NIST |
Saturday 2:00PM Room 330 |
Jeff Cessna. Ionizing Radiation Division, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology New Paradigms in Diagnostic and Therapeutic Nuclear Medicine, New Standards |
2:00 PM |
Medical procedures using unsealed radioactive sources require the benefit of the procedure to be weighed against the possible risks to the patient due to radiation exposure. The prescribed dosages for radiopharmaceuticals, both diagnostic and therapeutic, are generally determined using “rules of thumb” or canonical values based on patient weight or surface area. Current research suggests that this method of prescribing dosages for some procedures may result in overdosing in certain patient populations, most notably pediatric and geriatric, and can lead to inadequate doses being delivered to obese patients, requiring that the procedure be repeated. In either case, the result is unnecessary radiation exposure. A new paradigm is currently being promoted that seeks to optimize the dosage that a patient receives by using patient-specific information to predict the correct dosage. While this represents a major advance in safety and effectiveness in nuclear medicine, it places greater demands on the accuracy and consistency of the data used to develop the treatment plan. Perhaps the most limiting factor in the application of this technique is the quantitation of the Positron Emission Tomography (PET) or Single Photon Emission Computed Tomography (SPECT) images that provide the radioactivity uptake data that form the input for the dosimetry calculations. Additionally, the current lack of suitable standards makes it difficult to reliably compare imaging data from different scanners and even between scans of the same patient with the same scanner, a comparison necessary to track disease response to treatment. A new primary standard and secondary standards are currently being developed that will allow PET scanners to be calibrated for activity in absolute terms and will also provide a way to check and renormalize scanner performance between scans. |
Larry Hudson, Steve Seltzer, Paul Bergstrom, Fred Bateman, and Frank Cerra Ionizing Radiation Division, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology Standards for X-Ray and Gamma-Ray Security Screening Systems |
2:30PM |
Since the 1920’s, the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), now the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) has been a world leader in promoting accurate and meaningful measurements, methods, and measurement services for ionizing radiation and radioactivity. Among other things, the institute develops, maintains, and disseminates the national standards for ionizing radiation and radioactivity thereby providing credible and absolute measurement traceability for the nation’s medical, industrial, environmental, defense, homeland-security, energy, and radiation-protection communities. This experience and infrastructure, which includes fundamental research and radiation-transport modeling, enabled NIST to respond to rapidly emerging homeland-security needs in the area of x-ray and gamma-ray security screening. In particular, with funding from the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), and in alliance with the American National Standards Institute (ANSI), we report on efforts to develop of a suite of national voluntary consensus standards that that encompasses all the nation’s security systems that screen using x-rays or gamma-rays. These include screening of carried items at checkpoints, airline checked baggage, trucks, cargo containers, human subjects, and abandoned objects suspected of containing bulk explosives. These documentary standards focus primarily on imaging quality and radiation safety, and each specifies test artifacts, test methods, and in some cases required minimum performance levels. All modalities are treated: transmission and backscatter geometries as well as computed tomography (CT). The goal is to provide tools that for the first time provide governmental users and industrial partners uniform methods to compare technical aspects related to performance and safety, inform procurement decisions, and stimulate and quantify future technological improvements. |
Svetlana Nour1,2, Matthew Mille1,3, Kenneth Inn1, Douglas W. Fletcher4 1Ionizing Radiation Division, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology 2University of Maryland, 3Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, 4National Naval Medical Center, Bethesda MD Population Radiation Measurement – the Monte Carlo option |
3:00PM |
In the event of a radioactive accident or incident, one of the biggest tasks is to estimate the radiation internal dose received by people to determine the appropriate emergency response needed. As part of these radiation dose evaluations, accurate evaluation of the contaminated people require the use of measurement efficiencies based on the geometry of the radiation detectors and of the human body. This implies that a prohibitively large number of calibration human body standards (phantoms) would be needed. A more flexible alternative approach would be to use Monte Carlo computations of the measurement efficiencies that have been validated against a set of standard radionuclide phantoms. The scope of the project is to create standard human body phantoms, to validate their estimated measurement efficiencies from Monte Carlo computations, and to develop tools to expand the range of body shape and sizes for Monte Carlo use for individual radioactive victims or patients. This project begins with a Bottle Manikin Absorption (BOMAB) phantom spiked with Ga-67 as a standard geometry. The radioactive BOMAB is measured at a number of distances from HPGe detector, and the experimental efficiency for our gamma spectrometry system is determined. The same set of experiments is then modeled using the Monte Carlo N-Particle Transport Code (MCNP). Each of the plastic bottles which comprise the BOMAB phantom were individually CT scanned at the National Naval Medical Center. Using the Monte Carlo software Scan2MCNP (White Rock Science), the resulting tomograms underwent a process called segmentation in which materials of interest are assigned to appropriate regions of the medical images according to their density. Measurement efficiencies were estimated for the 5 photon energies of Ga-67 with the greatest intensity. Agreement between the computationally determined and experimentally measured efficiencies has been achieved to within a few percent, and all within the estimated uncertainties. With further optimization of the input file, it is expected that results will improve, and we will be able to move on to more complicated geometries such as the anthropomorphic phantom, and ultimately to CT-scanned human individuals. |
Daniel S. Hussey Ionizing Radiation Division, Physics Laboratory, National Institute of Standards and Technology Neutron Imaging: The key to understanding water management in hydrogen fuel cells |
3:30PM |
Since proton exchange membrane fuel cells (PEMFCs) have high fuel efficiency and emit only water as a byproduct, they are an attractive alternative to the internal combustion engine. Water management in PEMFCs critically impacts fuel cell performance, durability, and materials of construction. Neutron radiography has been the only method able to measure, in situ, the trace amount of water produced and stored within standard, commercially viable PEMFCs. This talk will provide an overview of the PEFMC research performed at the NIST neutron imaging facility, ranging from the fundamental water transport in the membrane to the impacts of water on a fuel cell engine.byproduct, they are an attractive alternative to the internal combustion engine. Water management in PEMFCs critically impacts fuel cell performance, durability, and materials of construction. Neutron radiography has been the only method able to measure, in situ, the trace amount of water produced and stored within standard, commercially viable PEMFCs. This talk will provide an overview of the PEFMC research performed at the NIST neutron imaging facility, ranging from the fundamental water transport in the membrane to the impacts of water on a fuel cell engine. |
NATIONAL SCIENCE
FOUNDATION (NSF) OFFICE OF POLAR PROGRAMS PLENARY SESSION ON INTERNATIONAL
POLAR RESEARCH
Fifty years after the International Geophysical Year, scientists around the world are now engaged in a coordinated program of International Polar Year (IPY) Research, Education and Outreach. Guided by the U.S. National Academies of Science “A Vision for the International Polar Year 2007-2009” report, U.S. scientists are joining in research partnerships with colleagues in 30 nations to improve our understanding of the world’s great ice sheets in Antarctica and Greenland, to study how ecosystems and human institutions respond to climate change, and to advance our understanding of climate change and how it will evolve at a fundamental level. The National Science Foundation is the lead U.S. agency for the IPY and has worked closely with NASA, NOAA and many other U.S. agencies to build a common legacy. This keynote session will showcase several forefront research projects that exemplify the goals of U.S. and international IPY efforts. |
Saturday 11:00AM Room 375 |
1. Dr. Kelly Falkner, Program Director Antarctic Science Division NSF Office of Polar Programs |
Saturday 11:00AM Room 375 |
PLENARY SESSION ON TISSUE
OWNERSHIP: ETHICAL, LEGAL, AND POLICY CONSIDERATIONS.
Improved scientific understanding of genetic mechanisms, coupled with recent dramatic advances in technical capabilities, has put within our grasp the molecular fingerprints and “recipes” of all tissues, including those harboring disease. These genetic messages may remain intact in preserved tissues for long periods of time e.g., centuries. Currently, many millions of tissue specimens reside in hospital, clinic and research laboratories throughout the world. Deciphering the genetic messages in these tissues introduces questions of access, ownership, commercial capabilities, etc. Ethical, legal and sociological answers will influence the ultimate utility of such tissues and everyone has a potential stake in how these questions are answered. This session will put these general questions into perspective and will tease out individual cases. |
Saturday 4:00PM Room 1235 |
Dr. William Gardner, Executive Director, American Registry of Pathology, IntroductionRobin Stombler President, Auburn Health Strategies, LLC Giving Yourself Away – A Patient’s Guide to Specimens Col. Glenn Sandberg, AFIP Tissue RepositoryMajor Catharine M With Tissue Ownership: Legal Considerations |
NORTHERN
VIRGINIA REGIONAL PARK AUTHORITY – MEADOWLARK BOTANICAL GARDENS AND POTOMAC
OVERLOOK PARK
Martin Ogle, Chief Naturalist, NVRPA Birds of Prey of Virginia |
Sunday 10:00AM Room 365 |
This presentation will cover identification and ecology of birds of prey regularly found in the state of Virginia. Species of hawks, falcons, eagles, owls and also vultures will be discussed. Ecological information will include life histories, migration patterns, behavior, sexual dimorphism, and how these birds fit into the living system. Approximately 15 species of raptors nest in Virginia, and a number of others regularly migrate through or to the state. Many of these species have been adversely affected in the past by DDT and other pesticides and habitat loss continues to be of concern for some species. Many birds of prey are relatively easy to find and distinguish while others are rare or secretive. All are excellent “windows” through which to understand the natural order of Planet Earth. Places to view birds of prey and techniques/hints for finding them will also be discussed |
Keith Tomlinson, Manager Meadowlark Botanical Gardens A Floristic Natural History of the Greater Washington DC Region in the Potomac River Basin |
Sunday 11:00AM Room 365 |
Forests of the greater Washington DC Region have evolved over time on the eastern margin of the ancestral North American continent as part of the Potomac River Basin. Plant migration and geomorphic processes are considered as integral to modern distribution. Components of both ancient tropical and temperate forests exist in woody taxa of the Washington region today. This paper reviews the composition and distribution of these ancient floras and the resulting contemporary forest diversity. |
PHILOSOPHICAL SOCIETY OF
WASHINGTON
Joe Coates, Joseph F. Coates Consulting Futurist Inc. Washington, DC Homeland Insecurity |
Saturday 9:00AM Room 320 |
Public surveys show that our fellow citizens do not feel significantly more secure after 9/11, and the government’s homeland security responses. Part of the shortfall is due to the creation of an enormous new organization which will be slow to come together organically, if it ever does. Far more significant in the shortfall, is the absence of a clearly expressed theory of terrorism, and consequently of what it might or might not be up to. A theory of terrorism will be presented, and the implications for public and private action. |
Kenneth Haapala, President, Philosophical Society of Washington ECONOMICS 21: America’s Post Industrial Economy |
The 20th Century was one of remarkable transformation for the American economy. Although it always remained a strong trading nation, in the early 20th Century the America changed from a primarily agrarian, rural economy to a primarily industrial, urban economy. By mid-Century the United States was the world’s leading industrial power. America is changing from an industrial economy into a post industrial economy – or more poetically stated: from a “perspiration economy” to an “inspiration economy.” Using established sources, the speaker will trace the important components of these remarkable transformations. He will emphasize certain characteristics that may surprise many and suggest what may happen as the transformation to a post industrial economy continues. |
POTOMAC
CHAPTER OF THE HUMAN FACTORS AND ERGONOMICS SOCIETY
A Mini-Symposium on “Human Factors and Driver Safety” |
Sunday 10:00 AM Room 330 |
Gerald P. Krueger, Ph.D.,Krueger Ergonomics ConsultantsEffects of Health, Wellness and Fitness on Commercial Driver Safety: A Review of the Issues |
Sunday 10:00AM Room 320 |
This presentation: (1) identifies the most common health and fitness concerns for commercial truck and bus drivers; (2) addresses the relationship of the most important health risks as they affect on-the-road driver safety; (3) provides a snapshot of the most promising occupational health and wellness programs that can be applied to alleviate many driver health concerns; (4) highlights case studies exemplifying successes by employers who have already successfully addressed important driver health and safety issues; and (5) offers suggestions on how government transportation oversight agencies can positively impact highway safety by setting the proper tone, and by pointing the way to templating programs to offer vast improvements to produce win-wins for transportation industries, highway safety advocates, and the driving public. |
Ronald R. Knipling, Ph.D., Virginia Tech Transportation Institute What Does Instrumented Vehicle Research Tell Us About Crash Risk and Causation? |
Sunday 10:30AM Room 320 |
“Naturalistic” driving studies involve instrumenting the vehicles of volunteer car and truck drivers with video cameras and other sensors to provide dynamic data on crashes, near-crashes, and other incidents. Drivers quickly revert to their normal driving habits, which often include many driving errors and misbehaviors. “Instant replays” of driver behavior and traffic interactions can be viewed and analyzed. The method also permits other types of safety analysis that are not possible based on conventional crash investigation and reconstruction. Naturalistic driving easily provides the missing ingredient in most driving safety research: customized exposure data. This presentation discusses and demonstrates three research applications of naturalistic driving: 1. Review and analysis of safety-critical events (a la “instant replays”). 2. Baseline-event comparisons to identify high-risk driving situations. 3. Driver exposure-risk comparisons to identify high-risk drivers. |
Christopher A. Monk, George Mason University Driver Interrupted: The Costs of Shifting Attention While Driving |
Sunday 11:00AM Room 320 |
To best understand how people manage multiple tasks, and the costs of shifting attention between tasks, it is critical to understand how people resume suspended task goals after interruptions. Several studies have explored the characteristics of interruptions that make them most disruptive to resuming the interrupted task; however, there is little task resumption data directly connected to the driving context. There is ample evidence that people are attempting to optimize their time by talking on the phone, checking email, etc. while driving. This situation is potentially dangerous if the costs associated with shifting attention interfere with required reactions to roadway situations (e.g., reacting to unexpected object in the road). In this study, a desktop driving simulator was used to investigate how drivers react to an unexpected lane drift during an interruption (i.e., when attention was off the road). Results showed that driver reaction to the lane drift was affected by the presence of a cognitive task during the interruption. The implications of these findings for understanding the costs associated with drivers shifting their attention between the road and in-vehicle tasks will be discussed, as well as future research plans with this new paradigm. |
David M. Cades1, 2, Stephen M. Jones1, Nicole E. Werner1, Deborah A. Boehm-Davis1 Knowing When to Switch Tasks: Effectiveness of Internal versus External Cues 1George Mason University, 2Correpsonding Author |
Sunday 11:30AM Room 320 |
It is now commonplace in both our personal and professional environments to be performing multiple concurrent tasks. Sometimes people switch between tasks under their own volition (e.g., reach a good stopping point, finish the task), but other times they are forced to switch by some external cue (e.g. phone call, knock at the door). While research on task switching has shown that there is a time cost every time tasks are switched, it is unclear if there are any performance differences when these switches are forced as opposed to when a person chooses to switch tasks. The current research used a category naming paradigm in which participants had to generate words from four categories. In one condition they could switch between the categories whenever they wanted and in another condition they could only switch when cued by the computer. IN both conditions there was a time cost associated with switching categories that was longer than the time between words within a category. No differences, however, were found between these conditions in the total number of words generated or the time to switch categories. These results suggest that people were able to perform multiple concurrent tasks with equal proficiency regardless of whether they switched between them on their own or were explicitly told when to switch. |
SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING APPRENTICE PROGRAM, GEORGE
WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY
Kelly Colas, James Madison High School Virginia Heppner, James Madison High School Mentored by: Charlotte Lanteri, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, SS, MD Jacob Johnson, Walter Reed Army Institute of Research, SS, MD Assessment of 96- and 384- Well Malaria SYBR Green I- Based Fluorescence Assay for Use in In Vitro Malaria Drug Screening |
Saturday 9:00AM-9:40AM Room 365 |
New methods for identifying drug candidates and monitoring drug resistance trends are required for the devastating tropical disease, malaria. Malaria parasites, Plasmodium falciparum, are adapted for in vitro growth. In vitro malaria drug assays are used for the screening of new drug candidates and surveying the resistance of malaria within a region. An ideal in vitro assay is time efficient, inexpensive, accurate, and reproducible. One such assay that fulfills these important criteria is the SYBR Green I assay, developed by Johnson et al 2007. The SYBR Green fluorescent dye binds to parasitic DNA, which allows for the measurement of malaria growth. The Malaria SYBR Green fluorescence (MSF) assay is used to screen compounds for anti-malarial activity. This fluorescence based assay is also useful to identifying drug resistant populations of parasites from clinical samples. This SYBR Green assay is efficient, inexpensive, and has proven to be both accurate and reproducible. In this study, we first verified the efficacy of the Johnson SYBR Green I Assay by quantifying the 50% inhibitory concentration (IC50) value associated with various standard antimalarial drugs required for inhibiting P. falciparum culture growth. The P. falciparum strain D6, a known chloroquine sensitive strain, and the W2 strain, a chloroquine and multi-drug resistant strain, were tested in the assay. We then micronized the 96 well assay to a 384 well assay. Adapting the assay to a 384 well format makes the screen more time efficient because more tests can be run at the same time with more wells; and it is less expensive because roughly the same amount of materials are used to yield a greater amount of results. A volume to volume scale down from the 96 well format was used to micronize the 384 well assay. P. falciparum D6 cells were applied to the 384 well malaria SYBR Green I MSF assay. Several factors were taken into consideration when micronizing the assay and analyzing data; these factors were time, edge effect, transparent versus black plates, and background. We compared results from 72 and 96 hour long incubation periods to examine the most effective condition for running these plates. Black and transparent plates were tested because it was anticipated that the black plates would yield more effective results than the transparent plates, since fluorescent dyes (such as SYBR Green) are more likely to yield stronger signals with the black background. Fluorescence readings of the outer most wells of the plate sometimes are weakened based on the plate reader’s capabilities, referred to as the “edge effect.” The Z’ score is an effective method for assessing the robustness of a biological assay. The results from the Z’ indicate whether this test is reproducible in a high throughput screening (HTS) capacity. Thus, all of the assay variables were assessed using a Z’ calculation. In conclusion, the 384 well MSF assay appears to be a reliable HTS for the discovery of novel anti-malarial drug candidates in a cost and time efficient manner. |
John Russo Jr., St. Vincent of Pallotti High School Mentored by: Heather O’Brien, and Dr. Marc Litz, ARL, MD Pulse Power Applications |
Saturday 9:40AM-10:00AM Room 365 |
A numerical simulation of a millisecond pulse width transmission line was modeled in PSpice. The numerical results were compared to a transmission line built using six capacitors each about 42degreesF. The numerical and measured results compared well. This transmission line was used to evaluate a single silicon-carbide (SiC) Gate Turn-Off thyristor (GTO) high-current pulsed power switch. The results to-date indicate that these new SiC devices can switch without damage, a 1 mSec, 350 A pulse, charged to 620 V. Further evaluation on this new test-bed will be pursued to identify the limits of these switches. |
Muneer Zuhurudeen, Eleanor Roosevelt High School Mentored By: Dr. Mostafiz Chowdhury, ARL-WMRD, Adelphi, MD A Study of the Scaling Relationships between Full-Scale and Sub-Scale Vehicle Ballistic Shock Response |
Saturday 9:40AM-10:00AM Room 365 |
When testing the potency of armor made to protect vehicles from bomb blasts, ammunition rounds, other dangers of war, and even more importantly, the soldiers inside, it can become very costly to perform tests on full-sized prototypes. An alternative is to conduct tests on sub-scale models because they are less costly to manufacture and easier to handle. However, determining whether sub-scale models will accurately predict the responses of full-scale prototypes seems to cause uncertainty. The efficient solution to this problem is to use finite-element model simulators, such as the program ABAQUS, to recreate real-life situations in order to test the robustness of the armor. This report is an analysis of the scaling methods used to design these simulations, and a test of their validity and effectiveness when predicting full-scale response during ballistic tests on armor panels. During experimentation, a full-scale model and a sub-scale model of the right-side panel of the SAC-11 vehicle were created with a replica scaling ratio of 1:3 and then tested using ABAQUS. Another case was created with full-scale thickness and threat, but with sub-scale geometry. When creating a life-like model in a computer simulator, it is important to address environmental conditions such as physical, material, loading, and boundary conditions. A force can be introduced in the ABAQUS code by applying amounts of pressure over a period of time to simulate ballistic impact. Material properties such as the modulus of elasticity, Poisson’s ratio, and density were also included in the ABAQUS code. Boundary conditions were also applied to the test panels in order to simulate forces on the model, such as weight, that were factored into the simulation in order to make it suitable. The data collected in ABAQUS was imported into MATLAB in order to compute each model’s Shock Response Spectra (SRS), or a plot of its maximum acceleration responses versus its frequency. The comparison plots of the SRS data proved that the replica scaling model (1:3) was an accurate representation of full-scale response at low and high threat velocities. |
VIRGINIA
NATIVE PLANT SOCIETY (see American Society of Plant
Biologists)
WASHINGTON
CHAPTER OF THE INSTITUTE FOR OPERATIONS RESEARCH AND MANAGEMENT SCIENCES (see
Institute for Industrial Engineers)
WASHINGTON
SOCIETY FOR THE HISTORY OF MEDICINE
Health and Disease in American Public Education Movies, 1930s-1950s A presentation of public health movies from the collections of the U.S. National Library of Medicine. Selected and Presented by David Cantor for The Washington Society for the History of Medicine. |
Saturday 9:00AM Room 380 |
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This film presentation provides a selection of rarely seen public health movies released between 1938 and 1957. The presentation includes movies about cancer, tuberculosis, and ‘quackery’ aimed at a variety of audiences, and produced by an assortment of private, philanthropic, professional and governmental organizations. Together, they emphasize the importance to disease control of early detection and treatment; of seeking care from a recognized physician; and of avoiding ‘quack’ healers and home remedies. They encourage the public to learn medically-approved danger signals of disease; to go for regular medical examinations from a recognized physician; and to involve themselves in campaigns of medical education and outreach. Thus, they are as much about the marketing of medicine as they are about the education of the public. As such, they provide a window onto how orthodox American medical agencies sought to promote their own authority, expertise and cultural legitimacy in the twentieth century. |
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Introductory MessagesAdvertisements & AnnouncementsPublic Health Messages from the American Dental Association (c.1955-1959) |
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Main Program | ||
Man Alive, 1952 (11:35 minutes) American Cancer Society Let My People Live, 1938 (13:20 minutes) National Tuberculosis Association Fraud Fighters, 1949 (15:50 minutes) RKO Pathe, Inc. Men of Medicine, 1938 (16:55 minutes) American Medical Association March of Time The Man on the Other Side of the Desk, 1957 (12:30 minutes) American Cancer Society |