Optimal provision of distributed reserves under dynamic energy service preferences

We propose and solve a stochastic dynamic programming (DP) problem addressing the optimal provision of regulation service reserves (RSR) by controlling dynamic demand preferences in smart buildings. A major contribution over past dynamic pricing work is that we pioneer the relaxation of static, uniformly distributed utility of demand. In this paper we model explicitly the dynamics of energy service preferences leading to a non-uniform and time varying probability distribution of demand utility. More explicitly, we model active and idle duty cycle appliances in a smart building as a closed queuing system with price-controlled arrival rates into the active appliance queue. Focusing on cooling appliances, we model the utility associated with the transition from idle to active as a non-uniform time varying function. We (i) derive an analytic characterization of the optimal policy and the differential cost function, and (ii) prove optimal policy monotonicity and value function convexity. These properties enable us to propose and implement a smart assisted value iteration (AVI) algorithm and an approximate DP (ADP) that exploits related functional approximations. Numerical results demonstrate the validity of the solution techniques and the computational advantage of the proposed ADP on realistic, large-state-space problems

The first IEEE workshop on the Future of Research Curation and Research Reproducibility

This report describes perspectives from the Workshop on the Future of Research Curation and Research Reproducibility that was collaboratively sponsored by the U.S. National Science Foundation (NSF) and IEEE (Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers) in November 2016. The workshop brought together stakeholders including researchers, funders, and notably, leading science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) publishers. The overarching objective was a deep dive into new kinds of research products and how the costs of creation and curation of these products can be sustainably borne by the agencies, publishers, and researcher communities that were represented by workshop participants.National Science Foundation Award #164101

Tracking a nanosize magnetic particle using a magnetic force microscope

Abstract-A scheme for tracking nano-sized magnetic particles using a magnetic force microscope (MFM) is introduced. The stray magnetic field of the particle induces a shift in the phase of the oscillation of the MFM tip. The magnitude of this shift depends on the distance between the tip and the particle and can be expressed as a spatial field. We present a control law which steers the tip to a level set of this field. The approach is based on the previous work of two of the authors on a novel method for mapping unknown potential fields using sensorenabled mobile robots. Because the method involves geometric properties of the field and its domain, it is not surprising that it can be applied to problems where the characteristic length scales are small. Additionally, we introduce to the original control law an adaptive term to compensate for uncertainties in the parameter values in the model of the magnetic force. The efficacy of this approach is illustrated through simulation. This approach to tracking will provide the capability to investigate the dynamics of single molecules with a higher resolution (in both space and time) than is currently possible