Understanding the Role of Requirements in Engineering Design by Novices

Requirements play a critical role in the design process. The broader impact of this research is to develop a systematic understanding of the current use of requirements with an ultimate goal to develop guidelines and recommendations for more effective use of requirements throughout the design process. Thus, this research begins to answer the question about what is the role of requirements in design process and, specifically, its role in idea generation? The answer to this question is explored in three phases. The first phase is to understand how requirements are currently taught to students. To that end, two surveys were conducted. First, a review of ten design textbooks was conducted as an initial surrogate for understanding what is formally taught. This was done to understand the use of requirements within the design tools mentioned in the textbooks. Supplementing this, interviews of faculty involved in teaching design courses was conducted with faculty from mechanical engineering, industrial engineering, bioengineering, and materials science and engineering. While the interviews suggest that the use of requirements is distributed throughout the design process, in agreement with common practice, the instruction provided students, based on the survey of textbooks, focuses on requirements tools found exclusively in the conceptual design phase. Thus, a significant gap is identified in terms of lack of sufficient tools explaining the use of requirements. In order to understand the consequences of lack of tools and to develop a deeper understanding of how students are applying the requirements education imparted to them, a case study analysis was conducted with senior mechanical engineering design students in a capstone course. Data was collected from four teams working in parallel on the same design project in form of requirements documents from initial weeks and the final report deliverable. The findings from this study reveal that there is lack of uniformity in how students elicit requirements in the initial weeks of the project. The completeness and specificity of requirements increase from the initial weeks to the final week, as expected, as the students develop a better understanding of the problem. However, in terms of addressing the requirements, more requirements with one adjunct or numerical value, and thus low specificity, were addressed. Further, it was found that the requirements documents of novice designers (students) change in multiple ways. Currently, the students do not have tools or methods in place that would allow them to systematically manage the changes in requirements document. Finally, as a deeper dive into how requirements can impact a specific design activity, an empirical designer study was conducted to explore the impact of requirements elicitation in idea generation. The study was conducted, again, with senior mechanical engineering students at Clemson University. The findings from the experimental study suggest that the students elicit more non-functional requirements compared to functional requirements. However, the ratio of the number of non-functional to functional requirements decreases when considering only the requirements addressed during ideation. Further, comparing the requirements addressed in the solutions generated by the students, it is found that the group that was not primed with the task of eliciting requirements performed better in terms of addressing requirements when compared to other two groups. Ultimately, the findings from these studies are used to make several recommendations that will allow the students to systematically use the requirements at various design stages and enhance their current use of requirements. This dissertation presents both broad and focused research evidence with respect to the role that requirements play in engineering design based on student experiences. This does not imply that professionals behave in a similar manner. However, as the understanding of requirements in the education of the students is further developed, this can have a significant, albeit indirect, impact of the practice in industry as the students graduate

Term-driven E-Commerce

Die Arbeit nimmt sich der textuellen Dimension des E-Commerce an. Grundlegende Hypothese ist die textuelle Gebundenheit von Information und Transaktion im Bereich des elektronischen Handels. Überall dort, wo Produkte und Dienstleistungen angeboten, nachgefragt, wahrgenommen und bewertet werden, kommen natürlichsprachige Ausdrücke zum Einsatz. Daraus resultiert ist zum einen, wie bedeutsam es ist, die Varianz textueller Beschreibungen im E-Commerce zu erfassen, zum anderen können die umfangreichen textuellen Ressourcen, die bei E-Commerce-Interaktionen anfallen, im Hinblick auf ein besseres Verständnis natürlicher Sprache herangezogen werden

Antiviral chemotherapeutic agents against equine herpesvirus type 1: the mechanism of antiviral effects of porphyrin derivatives

Equine Herpesvirus-1 (EHV-1) is an important ubiquitous enzootic equine pathogen, causing significant economic losses to the horse industry. Despite extensive vaccination protocols, EHV-1 continues to be a major cause of epidemic abortion, perinatal mortality, respiratory disease and neurologic disease. EHV-1 infections are usually dealt with by using management practices that limit spread of the disease and secondary complications, providing symptomatic relief to infected horses, but no specific treatment is available. New therapeutic or virucidal agents could have great utility in slowing both the progression and spread of the disease in an epidemic situation. A number of porphyrins and their derivatives have been tested to have activity against HIV, vaccinia, and coronavirus. Porphyrin based compounds were suggested to inhibit virus infection by reducing the fusogenic potential of the virus (Vzorov et al., 2002). However, the mechanism of action of porphyrin-based compounds is not well understood. While current antiherpetic agents target viral DNA replication, interference with the upstream replicative events such as fusion would not adversely affect the host cell metabolism, and makes them important targets for chemotherapeutic intervention of virus dissemination. We screened a number of porphyrin and platinum compounds for EHV-1 antiviral activity by testing their ability to interfere with EHV-1 infection of rabbit kidney and equine cell cultures during the entry and post entry events of the viral life cycle in order to determine if compounds act at the level of binding, penetration, replication, or egress. We identified Cu (III) tetrasulfonated phenylporphyrin and Fe (II) tetrasulfonated phenylporphyrin as lead candidate antiviral compounds on the basis of their in vitro efficacy, cytotoxicity and therapeutic index. These compounds exhibited high antiviral potency during virus-to-cell fusion events, as well as no apparent cytotoxicity in cell culture assays at EHV-1 inhibitory concentrations. Specifically, selected porphyrin compounds inhibited free virus, gB-mediated virus entry, reduced the extent of virus spread, and cell-to-cell fusion in the virus-free cell fusion system. The EHV-1 antiviral properties and other pharmacological characteristics make porphyrins auspicious candidates for the treatment of EHV-1 infections and may promote understanding of membrane fusion events of EHV-1 life cycle

PaCTS 1.0: A Crowdsourced Reporting Standard for Paleoclimate Data

The progress of science is tied to the standardization of measurements, instruments, and data. This is especially true in the Big Data age, where analyzing large data volumes critically hinges on the data being standardized. Accordingly, the lack of community-sanctioned data standards in paleoclimatology has largely precluded the benefits of Big Data advances in the field. Building upon recent efforts to standardize the format and terminology of paleoclimate data, this article describes the Paleoclimate Community reporTing Standard (PaCTS), a crowdsourced reporting standard for such data. PaCTS captures which information should be included when reporting paleoclimate data, with the goal of maximizing the reuse value of paleoclimate data sets, particularly for synthesis work and comparison to climate model simulations. Initiated by the LinkedEarth project, the process to elicit a reporting standard involved an international workshop in 2016, various forms of digital community engagement over the next few years, and grassroots working groups. Participants in this process identified important properties across paleoclimate archives, in addition to the reporting of uncertainties and chronologies; they also identified archive-specific properties and distinguished reporting standards for new versus legacy data sets. This work shows that at least 135 respondents overwhelmingly support a drastic increase in the amount of metadata accompanying paleoclimate data sets. Since such goals are at odds with present practices, we discuss a transparent path toward implementing or revising these recommendations in the near future, using both bottom-up and top-down approaches

PaCTS 1.0: A Crowdsourced Reporting Standard for Paleoclimate Data

The progress of science is tied to the standardization of measurements, instruments, and data. This is especially true in the Big Data age, where analyzing large data volumes critically hinges on the data being standardized. Accordingly, the lack of community-sanctioned data standards in paleoclimatology has largely precluded the benefits of Big Data advances in the field. Building upon recent efforts to standardize the format and terminology of paleoclimate data, this article describes the Paleoclimate Community reporTing Standard (PaCTS), a crowdsourced reporting standard for such data. PaCTS captures which information should be included when reporting paleoclimate data, with the goal of maximizing the reuse value of paleoclimate data sets, particularly for synthesis work and comparison to climate model simulations. Initiated by the LinkedEarth project, the process to elicit a reporting standard involved an international workshop in 2016, various forms of digital community engagement over the next few years, and grassroots working groups. Participants in this process identified important properties across paleoclimate archives, in addition to the reporting of uncertainties and chronologies; they also identified archive-specific properties and distinguished reporting standards for new versus legacy data sets. This work shows that at least 135 respondents overwhelmingly support a drastic increase in the amount of metadata accompanying paleoclimate data sets. Since such goals are at odds with present practices, we discuss a transparent path toward implementing or revising these recommendations in the near future, using both bottom-up and top-down approaches

PaCTS 1.0: A Crowdsourced Reporting Standard for Paleoclimate Data

The progress of science is tied to the standardization of measurements, instruments, and data. This is especially true in the Big Data age, where analyzing large data volumes critically hinges on the data being standardized. Accordingly, the lack of community-sanctioned data standards in paleoclimatology has largely precluded the benefits of Big Data advances in the field. Building upon recent efforts to standardize the format and terminology of paleoclimate data, this article describes the Paleoclimate Community reporTing Standard (PaCTS), a crowdsourced reporting standard for such data. PaCTS captures which information should be included when reporting paleoclimate data, with the goal of maximizing the reuse value of paleoclimate data sets, particularly for synthesis work and comparison to climate model simulations. Initiated by the LinkedEarth project, the process to elicit a reporting standard involved an international workshop in 2016, various forms of digital community engagement over the next few years, and grassroots working groups. Participants in this process identified important properties across paleoclimate archives, in addition to the reporting of uncertainties and chronologies; they also identified archive-specific properties and distinguished reporting standards for new versus legacy data sets. This work shows that at least 135 respondents overwhelmingly support a drastic increase in the amount of metadata accompanying paleoclimate data sets. Since such goals are at odds with present practices, we discuss a transparent path toward implementing or revising these recommendations in the near future, using both bottom-up and top-down approaches

Inductive Pattern Formation

With the extended computational limits of algorithmic recursion, scientific investigation is transitioning away from computationally decidable problems and beginning to address computationally undecidable complexity. The analysis of deductive inference in structure-property models are yielding to the synthesis of inductive inference in process-structure simulations. Process-structure modeling has examined external order parameters of inductive pattern formation, but investigation of the internal order parameters of self-organization have been hampered by the lack of a mathematical formalism with the ability to quantitatively define a specific configuration of points. This investigation addressed this issue of quantitative synthesis. Local space was developed by the Poincare inflation of a set of points to construct neighborhood intersections, defining topological distance and introducing situated Boolean topology as a local replacement for point-set topology. Parallel development of the local semi-metric topological space, the local semi-metric probability space, and the local metric space of a set of points provides a triangulation of connectivity measures to define the quantitative architectural identity of a configuration and structure independent axes of a structural configuration space. The recursive sequence of intersections constructs a probabilistic discrete spacetime model of interacting fields to define the internal order parameters of self-organization, with order parameters external to the configuration modeled by adjusting the morphological parameters of individual neighborhoods and the interplay of excitatory and inhibitory point sets. The evolutionary trajectory of a configuration maps the development of specific hierarchical structure that is emergent from a specific set of initial conditions, with nested boundaries signaling the nonlinear properties of local causative configurations. This exploration of architectural configuration space concluded with initial process-structure-property models of deductive and inductive inference spaces. In the computationally undecidable problem of human niche construction, an adaptive-inductive pattern formation model with predictive control organized the bipartite recursion between an information structure and its physical expression as hierarchical ensembles of artificial neural network-like structures. The union of architectural identity and bipartite recursion generates a predictive structural model of an evolutionary design process, offering an alternative to the limitations of cognitive descriptive modeling. The low computational complexity of these models enable them to be embedded in physical constructions to create the artificial life forms of a real-time autonomously adaptive human habitat

The microbial ecology of bacterial lignocellulosic degradation in the ocean

The overarching theme of my dissertation is to study the role of bacteria in lignocellulose degradation. In recent years, more research has investigated the biodegradability of lignocellulose for biofuel production. The components of the lignocellulosic plant cell wall are considered intrinsically recalcitrant due to their structure. However, we hypothesize that these components are not intrinsically recalcitrant but their biodegradation is contingent on the environmental conditions, particularly the bacterial diversity. We believe bacteria will become especially important in lignocellulose degradation in conditions that are unfavorable for white-rot fungi. Therefore, we investigated the potential for lignin degradation by bacteria in the ocean where fungi would likely be rare. This knowledge would gather insight into allochthonous terrestrial organic carbon cycling in the ocean, a basic science knowledge gap in the complex ocean carbon cycle. Also, our investigation into the microbial ecology of marine lignocellulolytic bacteria may find new hosts of stress-tolerant commercial enzymes for biofuels and lignin valorization

PaCTS 1.0: a crowdsourced reporting standard for paleoclimate data

The progress of science is tied to the standardization of measurements, instruments, and data. This is especially true in the Big Data age, where analyzing large data volumes critically hinges on the data being standardized. Accordingly, the lack of community-sanctioned data standards in paleoclimatology has largely precluded the benefits of Big Data advances in the field. Building upon recent efforts to standardize the format and terminology of paleoclimate data, this article describes the Paleoclimate Community reporTing Standard (PaCTS), a crowdsourced reporting standard for such data. PaCTS captures which information should be included when reporting paleoclimate data, with the goal of maximizing the reuse value of paleoclimate datasets, particularly for synthesis work and comparison to climate model simulations. Initiated by the LinkedEarth project, the process to elicit a reporting standard involved an international workshop in 2016, various forms of digital community engagement over the next few years, and grassroots working groups. Participants in this process identified important properties across paleoclimate archives, in addition to the reporting of uncertainties and chronologies; they also identified archive-specific properties and distinguished reporting standards for new vs. legacy datasets. This work shows that at least 135 respondents overwhelmingly support a drastic increase in the amount of metadata accompanying paleoclimate datasets. Since such goals are at odds with present practices, we discuss a transparent path towards implementing or revising these recommendations in the near future, using both bottom-up and top-down approaches