Telerobotic activities at Johnson Space Center

The Johnson Space Center telerobotic efforts span three major thrusts: (1) sustaining and expanding the capability of the Shuttle manipulator; (2) developing and integrating the multiple telerobotic system of the Space Station; and (3) fostering and applying research in all areas of telerobotics technology within the government, private, and academic sectors

Uniform task level definitions for robotic system performance comparisons

A series of ten task levels of increasing difficulty was compiled for use in comparative performance evaluations of available and future robotics technology. Each level has a breakdown of ten additional levels of difficulty to provide a layering of 100 levels. It is assumed that each level of task performance must be achieved by the system before it can be appropriately considered for the next level

Ridge Fusion in Statistical Learning

We propose a penalized likelihood method to jointly estimate multiple precision matrices for use in quadratic discriminant analysis and model based clustering. A ridge penalty and a ridge fusion penalty are used to introduce shrinkage and promote similarity between precision matrix estimates. Block-wise coordinate descent is used for optimization, and validation likelihood is used for tuning parameter selection. Our method is applied in quadratic discriminant analysis and semi-supervised model based clustering.Comment: 24 pages and 9 tables, 3 figure

Reforming Welfare Reform Postsecondary Education Policy: Two State Case Studies in Political Culture, Organizing, and Advocacy

Welfare reform had the unforeseen effect of causing large numbers of public assistance recipients to drop out of college, discouraging their pursuit and acquisition of postsecondary education (PSE) credentials. There is a growing body of research that shows the value of postsecondary education in getting public assistance recipients onto a path toward occupational and social mobility. The restrictions of Temporary Assistance to Needy Families PSE policy, coupled with the recognition that college participation should be an option for qualified welfare recipients, influenced the emergence of many successful state and county-level movements focused on reforming welfare reform PSE policy. Their work provides the few contemporary examples of civil society groups shaping welfare policy through advocacy and organizing. This article summarizes some of the issues and research on welfare and PSE, and chronicles the activities of TANF PSE reform movements in Maine and Kentucky. The case study conceptual framework draws upon Daniel Elazar\u27s (1972; 1994) conception of political culture to provide historical, institutional, political and social context. Through documentation of how reform occurred in different states, the account provided may be useful to people interested in welfare reform and PSE, especially in regard to the lingering uncertainty of what will be the final provisions that constitute the reauthorization of welfare reform

Hierarchical ordering of reticular networks

The structure of hierarchical networks in biological and physical systems has long been characterized using the Horton-Strahler ordering scheme. The scheme assigns an integer order to each edge in the network based on the topology of branching such that the order increases from distal parts of the network (e.g., mountain streams or capillaries) to the "root" of the network (e.g., the river outlet or the aorta). However, Horton-Strahler ordering cannot be applied to networks with loops because they they create a contradiction in the edge ordering in terms of which edge precedes another in the hierarchy. Here, we present a generalization of the Horton-Strahler order to weighted planar reticular networks, where weights are assumed to correlate with the importance of network edges, e.g., weights estimated from edge widths may correlate to flow capacity. Our method assigns hierarchical levels not only to edges of the network, but also to its loops, and classifies the edges into reticular edges, which are responsible for loop formation, and tree edges. In addition, we perform a detailed and rigorous theoretical analysis of the sensitivity of the hierarchical levels to weight perturbations. We discuss applications of this generalized Horton-Strahler ordering to the study of leaf venation and other biological networks.Comment: 9 pages, 5 figures, During preparation of this manuscript the authors became aware of a related work by Katifori and Magnasco, concurrently submitted for publicatio

Charles S Price ARC2012 -000 - Finding Aid

https://place.asburyseminary.edu/findingaids/1031/thumbnail.jp

Film boiling from inclined flat surfaces

The object of this investigation was to determine the effect of inclination on the heat transfer for saturated film pool boiling from a flat plate heater. Nitrogen at atmospheric pressure was used as the test fluid. The test plate was oriented at various angles from the horizontal position and the convective film coefficient was determined for each angle. Tests were conducted for heater angles of 0°, 30°, 60°, and 90°. The heater strip was placed in a container of the liquid and was heated electrically. Heat transfer results were obtained for plate temperatures ranging from 100 to 800°F. As the angle of inclination was increased from 0° (horizontal) to 90° (vertical) a uniform increase in the heat transfer coefficient was observed. Good correlation of the data is achieved by a slight modification of the Berenson Equation --Abstract, page i