SWAN: A distributed knowledge infrastructure for Alzheimer disease research

SWAN – a Semantic Web Application in Neuromedicine – is a project to develop an effective, integrated scientific knowledge infrastructure for Alzheimer Disease (AD) researchers, enabled by Semantic Web technology and deployed on Alzforum (www.alzforum.org), a scientific web community for AD research. This infrastructure may later be deployed for research communities in other neuromedical disorders. SWAN incorporates the full biomedical research knowledge lifecycle in its ontological model, including support for personal data organization, hypothesis generation, experimentation, lab data organization, and digital pre-publication collaboration. Community, laboratory, and personal digital resources may all be organized and interconnected using SWAN's common semantic framework.     

Computer support for learning in collaborative contexts: prompted hypothesis testing in physics

An enormous amount of work has been carried out into the ways in which computers can support collaboration in the service of learning. Less attention has been paid to computer support for learning when collaboration is non-problematic, yet this is arguably of equal significance. Recognizing this, the present paper reports software which was developed to help collaborating pupils test hypotheses, an activity thought by many to be relevant to conceptual learning. The software addressed hypotheses relating to: (a) the factors which influence the pressure of water; and (b) the factors which influence the formation of shadows. It required collaborating pupils to formulate hypotheses about such factors, decide which factors must be manipulated to check correctness, formulate predictions about outcomes prior to testing, observe the results of tests, and draw conclusions across test series. Pupils were asked to input their decisions at key points as they used the software, and they received prompts to the extent that their decisions were inappropriate. The prompts became increasingly explicit as inappropriate decisions persisted. The paper describes the use of the software by 9–14-year-old pupils, comparing their activity with that of similarly aged pupils who worked with otherwise equivalent software which lacked any prompts. Evidence is presented for the value of prompting, with implications not simply for the use of hypothesis testing as an instructional strategy but also for the design of computer-based support for other complex and co-ordinated activities.     

A statistical approach to model simplification and multiobjective analysis

Evolving national energy supply/demand distribution systems rely, at least in part, on quantifiable factors such as local and national environmental restrictions, resource availability (type, price, and quantity) and the associated transportation infrastructure, the amount and price of capital available to consumers and suppliers of energy, total annualized system cost, including the annualized cost of end-use devices, and the demands for energy and their price/supply responsiveness. The evolution also depends on nonquantifiable factors such as personal, regionally aggregated, or even national “utility functions” and institutional or social barriers. Many models have been formulated which attempt to simulate these complex interactions.This paper describes a systematic statistical methodology for capturing, both visually and quantitatively, the trade-offs between competing quantifiable, differentiable objective functions in a model of the national energy system (Brookhaven Energy System Optimization Model). The aim is to provide decision makers with a more easily understood tool and a more easily defensible methodology on which trade-offs between certain sensitive and competing energy issues can be based. The methodology has the additional advantage of providing insights into the inherent structural relationships of the model (model simplification).     

Experimental and theoretical evidence for the magic angle in transmission electron energy loss spectroscopy

We present experimental measurements of the C K-ELNES of high temperature pyrolysed graphite and related crystalline materials as a function of collection angle and sample tilt. These results together with a corresponding theoretical analysis indicate that the so-called "magic angle" for EELS measurements of an anisotropic crystal such as graphite, where spectra are independent of sample orientation, is approximately two times the characteristic scattering angle. We briefly discuss the implications of this result for the experimental measurement of anisotropic structures, including interfaces, as well as for the detailed modelling of ELNES structures using advanced electronic structure calculations.     

Bearing parameter identification of rotor–bearing system using clustering-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm

A new bearing parameter identification methodology based on global optimization scheme using measured unbalance response of rotor–bearing system is proposed. A new hybrid evolutionary algorithm which is a clustering-based hybrid evolutionary algorithm (CHEA), is proposed for global optimization scheme to improve the convergence speed and global search ability. Clustering of individuals by using a neural network is introduced to evaluate the degree of mature of genetic evolution. After clustering-based genetic algorithm (GA), local search is carried out for each cluster to judge the convexity of each cluster. Finally, random search is adapted for extrasearching to find a potential global candidate, which could be missed in GA and local search. The proposed methodology can identify not only unknown bearing parameters but also unbalance information of disk by simply setting them as unknown parameters. Numerical example and experimental results were used to verify the effectiveness of the proposed methodology.     

Numerical Modeling of Cemented Mine Backfill Deposition

In current underground mining practice, it is common to use tailings, without added cement, to fill mined-out voids (“stopes”). If fine-grained tailings are used, the high placement rates and low permeability can often result in undrained loading conditions and, hence, lower effective stress, when assessed in the conventional manner. Where cement is added, the cement modifies the consolidation characteristics in a number of ways, including increasing the strength and stiffness, reducing the permeability, and inducing volumetric changes associated with the hydration reactions leading to “self-desiccation.” As a result, conventional consolidation-analysis techniques are unsuitable for assessing the behavior. The one-dimensional mine-tailings-consolidation program (MinTaCo) has been modified, and renamed CeMinTaCo, to couple cement hydration with conventional consolidation analysis. The fundamental theory behind the modifications is presented. The model is used to undertake a sensitivity study, which highlights some of the important features of the behavior of cemented backfill, and shows how complex interactions between the various properties produce some outcomes that are counterintuitive.     

An efficient algorithm for superresolution in medium field imaging

In this paper, we study the problem of reconstruction of a high-resolution (HR) image from several blurred low-resolution (LR) image frames in medium field. The image frames consist of blurred, decimated, and noisy versions of a HR image. The HR image is modeled as a Markov random field (MRF), and a maximum a posteriori (MAP) estimation technique is used for the restoration. We show that with the periodic boundary condition, a HR image can be restored efficiently by using fast Fourier transforms. We also apply the preconditioned conjugate gradient method to restore HR images in the aperiodic boundary condition. Computer simulations are given to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach. This research was conducted with support from the Army Research Office Grant DAAD 19-03-1-0261 and the National Science Foundation Grant CCF-0429481. Research supported in part by RGC Grant Nos. 7130/02P, 7046/03P, 7035/04P and 7035/04P and FRG/04-05/II-51.