Building Proteins in a Day: Efficient 3D Molecular Reconstruction

Discovering the 3D atomic structure of molecules such as proteins and viruses is a fundamental research problem in biology and medicine. Electron Cryomicroscopy (Cryo-EM) is a promising vision-based technique for structure estimation which attempts to reconstruct 3D structures from 2D images. This paper addresses the challenging problem of 3D reconstruction from 2D Cryo-EM images. A new framework for estimation is introduced which relies on modern stochastic optimization techniques to scale to large datasets. We also introduce a novel technique which reduces the cost of evaluating the objective function during optimization by over five orders or magnitude. The net result is an approach capable of estimating 3D molecular structure from large scale datasets in about a day on a single workstation.Comment: To be presented at IEEE Conference on Computer Vision and Pattern Recognition (CVPR) 201

An Economic Analysis of Landfill Costs to Demonstrate the Economies of Size and Determine the Feasibility of a Community Owned Landfill in Rural Oklahoma

New regulations have impacted landfill costs and changed solid waste management solutions. Communities must now decide between continued landfill operations and long-term uncertainties associated with contracted services. Preliminary cost analysis addresses these changes and demonstrates economies of size that make regional facilities more feasible than the once popular city-owned landfillsEnvironmental Economics and Policy,

Libraries Embrace the Engineering Grand Challenges

The National Academy of Engineering has put forward 14 Grand Challenges for Engineering in the 21st Century. These are addressed by students at participating universities through a Grand Challenge Scholars Program. Each program is unique, approved by application to the NAE, and administered by faculty and staff at the participating institution. There are obvious opportunities for libraries and librarians to be an active part of the GCSP. Students are required to develop a research project around one of the challenges. They may take courses designed with the Grand Challenges in mind, seek out opportunities to develop global perspectives, and participate in service learning projects. In all of these activities, the academic library can play an active role. At our university, a steering committee of faculty and staff from the College of Engineering, the College of Arts & Sciences, the Office of Civic Engagement, Library & Information Technology, and the Career Development Center all collaborate to provide GCSP students with special educational opportunities. The Librarian for Engineering Resources serves on the advisory committees for specific scholars. Familiarity with the program facilitates the develop of library collections and resources that support research. A LibGuide dedicated to the GSCP highlights information resources. Going forward, the development of an interactive course management page or WordPress blog managed by the library has been proposed. The librarian has also been an active advocate for the GSCP program of our institution, presenting and reporting on our activities at regional conferences and workshops, including the Northeast Regional Meeting of the ASEE. The NAE’s GSCP program creates opportunities for librarians to collaborate with faculty and administrators, to serve on university-wide committees, to work directly with student scholars, and to promote research into the solutions to these pressing engineering challenges