The design of a long range megatransport aircraft

During the period from August 1991 - June 1992 two design classes at Purdue University participated in the design of a long range, high capacity transport aircraft, dubbed the megatransport. Thirteen Purdue design teams generated RFP's that defined passenger capability and range, based upon team perception of market needs and infrastructure constraints. Turbofan engines were designed by each group to power these aircraft. The design problem and the variety of solutions developed are described in an attached paper

The design of a computer system to determine the causes of edema using magnetic resonance spectroscopy

Diabetes is a growing problem in the U.S.A., closely linked to the current obesity epidemic. Two common complications of diabetes, osteomyelitis of the foot, and Charcot\u27s joint, are impossible to differentiate via traditional Magnetic Resonance Imaging. The background of Magnetic Resonance Spectroscopy, which transforms the time-domain MRI signal into the frequency domain spectrum, is explored, and its use to aid in this differentiation is proposed. Artificial Neural Networks can be employed to evaluate the MRS data and to automate the process

A Methodology for The Determination and Communication of Requirements for an Information Processing System

A Requirements Statement Methodology is developed and coupled with a solution to the database design problem. The need for the Requirements Statement Methodology is discussed with the viewpoint of management texts and systems design guidelines. The methodology is developed using forms, computer generated forms, a data dictionary and interactive dialogue. A detailed explanation of PSL (the Problem Statement Language) and PSA (Problem Statement Analyzer) in the context of the Requirements Statement Methodology is presented. A formal discussion of data base design, specifically record and set design, appears. A theoretical model to solve record design is developed and a hueristic and an algorithmic approach to record design are implemented, tested and discussed

Usage and refactoring studies of python regular expressions

Though regular expressions provide a powerful search technique that is baked into every major language, is incorporated into a myriad of essential tools, and has been a fundamental aspect of Computer Science since the 1960\u27s, no one has ever formally studied how they are used in practice, or how to apply refactoring principals to improve understandability and conformance to community standards. This thesis presents the original work of studying a sample of regexes taken from Python projects mined from GitHub, determining what features are used most often, defining some categories that illuminate common use cases, and identifying areas of significance for language and tool designers. Furthermore, this thesis defines an equivalence class model used to explore comprehension of regexes, identifying the most common and most understandable representations of semantically identical regexes, suggesting several refactorings and preferred representations. Opportunities for future work include the novel and rich field of regex refactoring, semantic search of regexes, and further fundamental research into regex usage and understandability

IVA the robot: Design guidelines and lessons learned from the first space station laboratory manipulation system

The first interactive Space Station Freedom (SSF) lab robot exhibit was installed at the Space and Rocket Center in Huntsville, AL, and has been running daily since. IntraVehicular Activity (IVA) the robot is mounted in a full scale U.S. Lab (USL) mockup to educate the public on possible automation and robotic applications aboard the SSF. Responding to audio and video instructions at the Command Console, exhibit patrons may prompt IVA to perform a housekeeping task or give a speaking tour of the module. Other exemplary space station tasks are simulated and the public can even challenge IVA to a game of tic tac toe. In anticipation of such a system being built for the Space Station, a discussion is provided of the approach taken, along with suggestions for applicability to the Space Station Environment

Shoemaker Crater-Going Where We Can "See"

The recommended impact site for LCROSS is Shoemaker crater, centered at 88.1 S, 45 E. This 51-km diameter crater is in permanent shadow. However, more than half of its floor has been imaged by Earth-base radar. This degree of target knowledge will strongly constrain impact models and significantly increase the confidence of data interpretation

Analogies Explained: Towards Understanding Word Embeddings

Word embeddings generated by neural network methods such as word2vec (W2V) are well known to exhibit seemingly linear behaviour, e.g. the embeddings of analogy "woman is to queen as man is to king" approximately describe a parallelogram. This property is particularly intriguing since the embeddings are not trained to achieve it. Several explanations have been proposed, but each introduces assumptions that do not hold in practice. We derive a probabilistically grounded definition of paraphrasing that we re-interpret as word transformation, a mathematical description of "$w_x$ is to $w_y$". From these concepts we prove existence of linear relationships between W2V-type embeddings that underlie the analogical phenomenon, identifying explicit error terms