Physical Sciences and Mathematics Commons^™

Blind Separation Of Speech With A Switched Sparsity And Temporal Criteria, Daniel Smith, Ian Burnett

Faculty of Informatics - Papers (Archive)

A blind signal separation algorithm (SCAtemp) that exploits both the sparse time-frequency representation and temporal structure of speech is proposed. SCAtemp compares each speech signal's adherence to the sparsity and temporal criteria, before switching to the most appropriate criteria to estimate each signal. This algorithm is shown to improve the real time separation performance of conventional BSS algorithms exclusively exploiting either the temporal structure, sparsity or statistical independence of signals. The improvement of SCAtemp over conventional BSS algorithms can be attributed to the use of additional a priori knowledge of speech in the temporal short term.

Compressional Mode Softening And Euler Buckling Patterns In Mesoscopic Beams, W. E. Lawrence, M. N. Wybourne, S. M. Carr

Dartmouth Scholarship

We describe a sequence of Euler buckling instabilities associated with the transverse modes of a mesoscopic beam subjected to compressional strain. As the strain is increased, successively higher normal mode frequencies are driven to zero; each zero signals an instability in the corresponding normal mode that can be realized if all lower instabilities are suppressed by constraints. When expressed in terms of the critical buckling modes, the potential energy functional takes the form of a multimode Ginzburg–Landau system that describes static equilibria in the presence of symmetry breaking forces. This model is used to analyse the complex equilibrium shapes that …

All About 1089, Lara Pudwell

Lara K. Pudwell

No abstract provided.

A Decentralized Reinforcement Learning Controller For Collaborative Driving, Luke Ng, Christopher M. Clark, Jan P. Huissoon

Computer Science and Software Engineering

Research in the collaborative driving domain strives to create control systems that coordinate the motion of multiple vehicles in order to navigate traffic both efficiently and safely. In this paper a novel individual vehicle controller based on reinforcement learning is introduced. This controller is capable of both lateral and longitudinal control while driving in a multi-vehicle platoon. The design and development of this controller is discussed in detail and simulation results showing learning progress and performance are presented.

Complete And Scalable Multi-Robot Planning In Tunnel Environments, Mike Peasgood, John Mcphee, Christopher M. Clark

Computer Science and Software Engineering

This paper addresses the challenging problem of finding collision-free trajectories for many robots moving to individual goals within a common environment. Most popular algorithms for multi-robot planning manage the complexity of the problem by planning trajectories for robots sequentially; such decoupled methods may fail to find a solution even if one exists. In contrast, this paper describes a multi-phase approach to the planning problem that guarantees a solution by creating and maintaining obstacle-free paths through the environment as required for each robot to reach its goal. Using a topological graph and spanning tree representation of a tunnel or corridor environment, …

Parallel Randomized State-Space Search, Matthew B. Dwyer, Sebastian Elbaum, Suzette Person, Rahul Purandare

CSE Technical Reports

Model checkers search the space of possible program behaviors to detect errors and to demonstrate their absence. Despite major advances in reduction and optimization techniques, state-space search can still become cost-prohibitive as program size and complexity increase. In this paper, we present a technique for dramatically improving the cost-effectiveness of state-space search techniques for error detection using parallelism. Our approach can be composed with all of the reduction and optimization techniques we are aware of to amplify their benefits. It was developed based on insights gained from performing a large empirical study of the cost-effectiveness of randomization techniques in state-space …

On A Notion Of Maps Between Orbifolds Ii. Homotopy And Cw-Complex, Weimin Chen Chen

Weimin Chen

This is the second of a series of papers which are devoted to a comprehensive theory of maps between orbifolds. In this paper, we develop a basic machinery for studying homotopy classes of such maps. It contains two parts: (1) the construction of a set of algebraic invariants – the homotopy groups, and (2) an analog of CW-complex theory. As a corollary of this machinery, the classical Whitehead theorem which asserts that a weak homotopy equivalence is a homotopy equivalence is extended to the orbifold category.

Procedure Models, C. F. Bartley, W. W. Watson

Publications (YM)

This procedure establishes the responsibilities and process for documenting activities that constitute scientific investigation modeling. Planning requirements for conducting modeling are contained in LP-2.29Q-BSC, Planning for Science Activities.

Crude Cumulative Incidence In The Form Of A Horvitz-Thompson Like And Kaplan-Meier Like Estimator, Laura Antolini, Elia Mario Biganzoli, Patrizia Boracchi

COBRA Preprint Series

The link between the nonparametric estimator of the crude cumulative incidence of a competing risk and the Kaplan-Meier estimator is exploited. The equivalence of the nonparametric crude cumulative incidence to an inverse-probability-of-censoring weighted average of the sub-distribution function is proved. The link between the estimation of crude cumulative incidence curves and Gray's family of nonparametric tests is considered. The crude cumulative incidence is proved to be a Kaplan-Meier like estimator based on the sub-distribution hazard, i.e. the quantity on which Gray's family of tests is based. A standard probabilistic formalism is adopted to have a note accessible to applied statisticians.

Rapid Assessment For A New Invasive Species Threat: The Case Of The Gambian Giant Pouched Rat In Florida, Richard M. Engeman, John W. Woolard, Neil D. Perry, Gary W. Witmer, Scott Hardin, Lawrence Brashears, Henry Smith, Britta Muiznieks, Bernice Constantin

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

The Gambian giant pouched rat (Cricetomys gambianus) is a large rodent that has established a breeding population in the Florida Keys. Should it successfully disperse to mainland Florida, it could continue spreading through much of North America where significant negative ecological and agricultural consequences could result. We rapidly developed the information for implementing an efficient and successful eradication program before dispersal to the mainland occurs. This included development of monitoring and indexing methods and their application to define the animal’s range, the development of baits attractive to Gambian giant pouched rats, efficacy testing of toxicants, and development of …

Synthesis Of Some Cyclic Indolic Peptoids As Potential Antibacterials, Vicki S. Au, John B. Bremner, Jonathan Coates, Paul A. Keller, Stephen G. Pyne

Faculty of Science - Papers (Archive)

The synthesis of cyclic peptoids containing an indole hydrophobic scaffold has been realised through the ring-closing metathesis of diallylated precursors. The precursors and their cyclic counterparts possessed poor antibacterial activity in contrast to previously reported cyclic peptoids containing hydrophobic scaffolds.

West Nile Virus Antibody Prevalence In Red-Winged Blackbirds (Agelaius Phoeniceus) From North Dakota, Usa (2003-2004), Heather Sullivan, George M. Linz, Larry Clark, Mo Salman

United States Department of Agriculture Wildlife Services: Staff Publications

This study was designed to explore the role that red-winged blackbirds (Agelaius phoeniceus) may have played in disseminating West Nile virus (WNV) across the United States. Using enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays designed to detect WNV antibodies in avian species we were able to determine the WNV antibody prevalence in a cohort of red-winged blackbirds in central North Dakota in 2003 and 2004. The peak WNV antibody prevalence was 22.0% in August of 2003 and 18.3% in July of 2004. The results of this study suggest that red-winged blackbird migratory populations may be an important viral dispersal mechanism with the …

Virginia Wetlands Report Vol. 21, No. 2, Virginia Institute Of Marine Science, Center For Coastal Resources Management

Virginia Wetlands Reports

Tools of the Tidal Shoreline Management Trade

An Elliptic Equation With No Monotonicity Condition On The Nonlinearity, Gregory S. Spradlin

Mathematics - Daytona Beach

An elliptic PDE is studied which is a perturbation of an autonomous equation. The existence of a nontrivial solution is proven via variational methods. The domain of the equation is unbounded, which imposes a lack of compactness on the variational problem. In addition, a popular monotonicity condition on the nonlinearity is not assumed. In an earlier paper with this assumption, a solution was obtained using a simple application of topological (Brouwer) degree. Here, a more subtle degree theory argument must be used. © EDP Sciences, SMAI 2006.

State Of The Arctic October 2006, J. Richter-Menge, J. Overland, A. Proshutinsky, V. Romanovsky, L. Bengtsson, L. Brigham, M. Dyurgerov, J.C. Gascard, S. Gerland, R. Graversen, C. Hahaas, M. Karcher, P. Kuhry, J. Maslanik, H. Melling, W. Maslowski, J. Morison, D. Perovich, R. Przybylak, V. Rachold, I. Rigor, A. Shiklomanov, J. Stroeve, D. Walker, J. Walsh

United States Department of Commerce: Staff Publications

This State of the Arctic Report presents a review of recent data by an international group of scientists who developed a consensus on the information content and reliability. The report highlights data primarily from 2000 to 2005 with a first look at winter 2006, providing an update to some of the records of physical processes discussed in the Arctic Climate Impact Assessment (ACIA, 2004, 2005). Of particular note:

• Atmospheric climate patterns are shifting (Fig. 1). The late winter/spring pattern for 2000–2005 had new hot spots in northeast Canada and the East Siberian Sea relative to 1980–1999. Late winter 2006, …

A Measurement Of The Top Quark Mass With A Matrix Element Method, Adam Paul Gibson '96

Doctoral Dissertations

We present a measurement of the mass of the top quark. Our event sample is selected from proton-antiproton collisions, at 1.96 TeV center-of-mass energy, observed with the CDF detector at Fermilab's Tevatron. We consider a 318 pb^-1 dataset collected between March 2002 and August 2004. We select events that contain one energetic lepton, large missing transverse energy, exactly four energetic jets, and at least one displaced vertex b tag. Our analysis uses leading-order tt and background matrix elements along with parameterized parton showering to construct event-by-event likelihoods as a function of top quark mass. From the 63 events observed …

Can Two Planar Sources With The Same Sets Of Stokes Parameters Generate Beams With Different Degrees Of Polarization?, Mohamed Salem, Olga Korotkova, Emil Wolf

Physics Articles and Papers

It is shown that two stochastic electromagnetic beams that propagate from the source plane z=0 into the half-space z>0 may have different degrees of polarization throughout the half-space, even though they have the same sets of Stokes parameters in the source plane. This fact is due to a possible difference in the coherence properties of the field in that plane, but other reasons are also possible. The result is illustrated by an example.

Prevalence And Association Of The Laboulbenialean Fungus Hesperomyces Virescens (Laboulbeniales: Laboulbeniaceae) On Coccinellid Hosts (Coleoptera: Coccinellidae) In Kentucky, Usa, James D. Harwood, Carlo Ricci, Roberto Romani, Kevin M. Pitz, Alex Weir, John J. Obrycki

Entomology Faculty Publications

The laboulbenialean fungi occur throughout the world and are closely associated with a range of arthropods, including many coleopteran hosts. Throughout the summer of 2004, coccinellids were collected from a Bluegrass savanna woodland ecosystem, dominated by blue ash Fraxinus quadrangulata and Chinkapin Oak Quercus muehlenbergii, and the adults were examined for the presence of Hesperomyces virescens using binocular and scanning electron microscopy. Over 80% of adult Harmonia axyridis, a species previously reported as having a persistent association with the fungus, were infected. No significant differences were observed in incidence on male and female hosts, however, the distribution of …

An Active-Shield Method For The Reduction Of Surface Contamination In Cuore, M Pedretti, F. Alessandria, R. Ardito, C. Arnaboldi, F.T. Avignone Iii, M. Balata, I. Bandac, M. Barucci, J. W. Beemann, F Bellini, C. Brofferio, C. Bucci, S. Capelli, L Carbone, S Cebrian, M. Clemenza, C Cosmelli, S. Cuneo, O Cremonesi, R. J. Creswick, I Dafinei, S. Di Domizio, M Diemoz, M. Dolinski, H. A. Farach, F. Ferroni, E. Fiorini, L. Foggetta, S.J. Freedman, C Gargiulo, A. Giachero, E. Guardincerri, A Giuliani, P Gorla, Thomas D. Gutierrez, E.E. Haller, K. M. Heeger, Ig Irastorza, Yu. G. Kolomenski, E Longo, G. Maier, R. H. Maruyama, C. Martinez, S Morganti, S. Nisi, C Nones, E.B. Norman, A. Nucciotti, M. Olcese, P Ottonello, M. Pallavicini, E. Palmieri, M. Pavan, G Pessina, S Pirro, E Previtali, L Risegari, C. Rosenfeld, C. Salvioni, S Sangiorgio, M Sisti, A. R. Smith, L Torres, G. Ventura, M Vignati, N. Xu, C. Zarra, L Zanotti

Physics

The main goal of the CUORE experiment is to search for the neutrinoless double beta decay of ¹³⁰Te. As it is a rare nuclear decay, the sensitivity of the experiment strongly depends on the background level in the transition energy region. In this paper we describe the R&D work performed to develop an active method for the reduction of radioactive background in CUORE. The idea is to reject events originated by surface contamination in large mass bolometric detectors by using bolometers sensitive to surface events. Results obtained with the first prototypes and tests made with large mass surface sensitive …

Passive Shielding In Cuore, F Bellini, F Alessandria, E. Andreotti, R Ardito, C Arnaboldi, F. T. Avignone Iii, M Balata, I Bandac, M Barucci, J. Beeman, B. Berger, C Brofferio, A. Bryant, C Bucci, L. Capelli, L Carbone, S Cebrian, M Clemenza, C Cosmelli, S. Cuneo, O Cremonesi, R.J. Creswick, I Dafinei, M.P. Decowski, S Di Domizio, M Diemoz, M. Dolinski, H.A. Farach, R. Faccini, F Ferroni, E Fiorini, L. Foggetta, S.J. Freedman, C Gargiulo, A Giachero, E Guardincerri, A Giuliani, P Gorla, Thomas D. Gutierrez, E.E. Haller, K.M. Heeger, I. G. Irastorza, R. Gadel, Yu. G. Kolomensky, E Longo, G Maier, R. Maruyama, C. Martinez, S Morganti, S Nisi, C Nones, E.B. Norman, A Nucciotti, M. Olcese, P Ottonello, M Pallavicini, E. Palmieri, M Pavan, M Pedretti, G Pessina, S Pirro, E Previtali, L Risegari, A. Rosenfeld, S Sangiorgio, M Sisti, A. R. Smith, L Torres, C. Tomei, G Ventura, M Vignati, N. Xu, C. Zarra, L Zanotti

Physics

The nature of neutrino mass is one of the friontier problems of fundamental physics. Neutrinoless Double Beta Decay (0νDBD) is a powerful tool to investigate the mass hierarchy and possible extensions of the Standard Model. CUORE is a 1‐Ton next generation experiment, made of 1000 Te bolometers, aiming at reaching a background of 0.01 (possibly 0.001) counts keV ⁻¹ kg ⁻¹ y ⁻¹ and therefore a mass sensitivity of few tens of meV The background contribution due to environmental neutrons, muon‐induced neutrons in the shieldings and external gamma is discussed.

Magnetic Microstructure Of Iron Sulfide Crystals In Magnetotactic Bacteria From Off-Axis Electron Holography, T. Kasama, Mihály Pósfai, R. K. K. Chong, A. P. Finlayson, R. E. Dunin-Borkowski, Richard B. Frankel

Physics

Transmission electron microscopy, off-axis electron holography and energy-selected imaging were used to study the crystallography, morphology, and magnetic microstructure of nanoscale greigite (Fe₃S₄) magnetosomes in magnetotactic bacteria from a sulfidic habitat. The greigite magnetosomes were organized in chains, but were less ordered than magnetite magnetosomes in other bacteria. Nevertheless, the magnetosomes comprise a permanent magnetic dipole, sufficient for magnetotaxis.

Minutes: Council Meeting

Virginia Journal of Science

Minutes of the VAS Council meeting Friday May 26, 2006, 8 - 9:40 AM, at Skelton Conference Center Inn, Virginia Tech, Blacksburg VA. Minutes were edited for publication.

2004 Jeffress Research Grant Awards

Virginia Journal of Science

List of winners of the 2004 Jeffress Research Grant Awards.

Performance Rights For Software, Mark Perry, Stephen M. Watt

Law Publications

As we use software in increasingly varied contexts, the concept of a software license has become progressively more complex. Software is embedded in devices that do not obviously resemble computers. Web services make software on one computer available to anyone with internet access. An individual may use several computers over the course of the day so the concept of a node locked or individual license is no longer clear. How should time based and single use and consumptive licenses be governed and interact? This paper examines how these and other issues in software licensing can be seen as instances of …

Verifiable Electronic Voting System: An Open Source Solution, Halina Kaminski, Mark Perry

Computer Science Publications

Elections, referenda and polls are vital processes for the operation of a modern democracy. They form the mechanism for transferring power from citizens to their representatives. Although some commentators claim that the pencil-and-paper systems used in countries such as Canada and UK are still the best method of avoiding voterigging, recent election problems, and the need for faster, better, cheaper vote counting, have stimulated great interest in managing the election process through the use of electronic voting systems. While computer scientists, for the most part, have been warning of the possible perils of such action, vendors have forged ahead with …

A Scoping Paper : Matters Relevant To The Development Of A Sustainable Allocation And Growout Modul For Western Lobster Pueruli, Department Of Fisheries Western Australia

Fisheries management papers

This Scoping Paper has been prepared as a first step in the development of a management framework for a commercial western rock lobster puerulus growout aquaculture industry in Western Australia. The purpose of this Scoping Paper is to identify and scope the issues associated with the development of such an industry and to identify matters which should be considered in the development of a management framework.

Ceg 210: Pc Networking I, Chris P. Fickert

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

An introduction to PC networking hardware, software, concepts, and technologies. Focus is on LAN administration, hardware, and software configuration.

Course Goals

At the end of the quarter the student will be able to:

• design and configure a client/server network
• create and manage network objects
• plan and implement directory services and the network file systems
• plan and implement network security
• design and write network login scripts
• manage and solve problems related to a client/server network

Ceg 434/634: Concurrent Software Design, Natsuhiko Futamura

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

This course provides an introduction to concurrent program design in the UNIX environment. Classical problems of synchronization, concurrency , and their solutions are examined through the course projects and through readings on operating system design text book.

Ceg 333: Introduction To Unix, Thomas Wischgoll

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

By the end of this quarter, you should be able to:

• Describe the basic methodology of UNIX filters, including pipes and redirection of stdin/stdout

• Program simple UNIX utilities at the command-line and shell-script level • Discuss the advantages and disadvantages of common user interfaces {such as UNIX vs. PC/Windows)

• Discuss the philosophy of UNIX development and the open source movement

• Work comfortably in the UNIX environment

• Edit and manage files and user-level security for UNIX development

• Use standard UNIX development tools for C or C++

Ceg 221: Advanced C Programming For Engineers, Robert Helt

Computer Science & Engineering Syllabi

This course introduces advanced constructs, algorithms, and data structures in the C programming language. Emphasis is on problem solving and techniques useful to engineers. Topics include functions, array, pointers, structures as well as sorting algorithms, linked lists, complex numbers, stacks, queues, hash tables, and binary trees. 4 credit hours. Prerequisite: CEG220 (Introduction to C Programming for Engineers).