15,264 research outputs found
Freehand Sketching for Engineers: A Pilot Study
This paper describes a pilot study to evaluate Freehand Sketching for Engineers, a one credit, five week course taught to undergraduate engineering students. The short-term goal of this course was to improve engineering studentsâ freehand sketching ability and to assess their progress with metrics. The long-term objective (desired learning outcome) of this course is to improve the creativity and innovation of student design projects by enhancing studentsâ ability to visualize their ideas with freehand sketches. The class met two days a week for 75 min per day. Students were taught to draw simple objects such as electrical boxes, with orthographic, isometric, and oblique views on 8 Âœ x 11 in. sheets of blank paper (no grid lines) and wooden #2 pencils. No instruments, such as rulers and compasses, were allowed. The course required students to apply what they learned in the classroom and included many examples of hands-on, active and student-centered learning activities.
Two assessments were performed to measure whether students improved their ability to freehand sketch. The first involved two outside reviewers (industrial designers) who evaluated each studentâs sketch of a pipe fitting that was drawn in the first class (pre-test) and a sketch of the same pipe fitting in the eighth class (after 7 hours of instruction - post-test). Sketches were evaluated using a 1 (poor) to 7 (excellent) Likert scale. The second assessment consisted of an evaluation of the final projects, which were a collection of five sketches with different views of an engineered product. Evaluations of the pre- and post-test drawings and the final projects by outside reviewers and positive observations by engineering faculty suggest that this course has the potential to improve studentsâ ability to sketch objects.
This paper discusses details of the course, provides examples of student sketches, and presents results of outside reviewer assessments. It includes suggestions for a more rigorous assessment of the course to determine its potential to improve studentsâ ability to sketch objects
Community detection in complex networks using Extremal Optimization
We propose a novel method to find the community structure in complex networks
based on an extremal optimization of the value of modularity. The method
outperforms the optimal modularity found by the existing algorithms in the
literature. We present the results of the algorithm for computer simulated and
real networks and compare them with other approaches. The efficiency and
accuracy of the method make it feasible to be used for the accurate
identification of community structure in large complex networks.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figure
Properties of Nucleon Resonances by means of a Genetic Algorithm
We present an optimization scheme that employs a Genetic Algorithm (GA) to
determine the properties of low-lying nucleon excitations within a realistic
photo-pion production model based upon an effective Lagrangian. We show that
with this modern optimization technique it is possible to reliably assess the
parameters of the resonances and the associated error bars as well as to
identify weaknesses in the models. To illustrate the problems the optimization
process may encounter, we provide results obtained for the nucleon resonances
(1230) and (1700). The former can be easily isolated and thus
has been studied in depth, while the latter is not as well known
experimentally.Comment: 12 pages, 10 figures, 3 tables. Minor correction
Gravitational waves from binary systems in circular orbits: Convergence of a dressed multipole truncation
The gravitational radiation originating from a compact binary system in
circular orbit is usually expressed as an infinite sum over radiative multipole
moments. In a slow-motion approximation, each multipole moment is then
expressed as a post-Newtonian expansion in powers of v/c, the ratio of the
orbital velocity to the speed of light. The bare multipole truncation of the
radiation consists in keeping only the leading-order term in the post-Newtonian
expansion of each moment, but summing over all the multipole moments. In the
case of binary systems with small mass ratios, the bare multipole series was
shown in a previous paper to converge for all values v/c < 2/e, where e is the
base of natural logarithms. In this paper, we extend the analysis to a dressed
multipole truncation of the radiation, in which the leading-order moments are
corrected with terms of relative order (v/c)^2 and (v/c)^3. We find that the
dressed multipole series converges also for all values v/c < 2/e, and that it
coincides (within 1%) with the numerically ``exact'' results for v/c < 0.2.Comment: 9 pages, ReVTeX, 1 postscript figur
Surface criticality in random field magnets
The boundary-induced scaling of three-dimensional random field Ising magnets
is investigated close to the bulk critical point by exact combinatorial
optimization methods. We measure several exponents describing surface
criticality: for the surface layer magnetization and the surface
excess exponents for the magnetization and the specific heat, and
. The latter ones are related to the bulk phase transition by the
same scaling laws as in pure systems, but only with the same violation of
hyperscaling exponent as in the bulk. The boundary disorders faster
than the bulk, and the experimental and theoretical implications are discussed.Comment: 6 pages, 9 figures, to appear in Phys. Rev.
Equatorial X-rays and their effect on the lower mesosphere
On the night of May 23/24, 1975, a sequence of rocket and balloon experiments was launched from Chilca Base, Peru (12.5 deg S, 76.8 deg W, magnetic dip = - 0.7 deg). Detailed analysis and comparisons of the data yielded the first direct measurement of lower mesospheric response to a galactic X-ray source. This result could only have been determined at the equator, where cosmic ray background effects are minimal. The objective of the experiments was to seek out the equatorial energetic electron belt, sporadically reported to contain fluxes near auroral levels, measure the bremsstrahlung radiation produced by this particle belt, and determine the influence of this radiation on the middle atmosphere. High altitude rocket payloads (Nike Tomahawk 18.170 and 18.171) were launched to probe the thermosphere during and following the anticipated downward drift period. Each carried an on-axis X-ray scintillation detector and Geiger Mueller energetic electron detectors. Magnetometers and lunar sensors were used to determine payload aspect
CMB Lensing Reconstruction on the Full Sky
Gravitational lensing of the microwave background by the intervening dark
matter mainly arises from large-angle fluctuations in the projected
gravitational potential and hence offers a unique opportunity to study the
physics of the dark sector at large scales. Studies with surveys that cover
greater than a percent of the sky will require techniques that incorporate the
curvature of the sky. We lay the groundwork for these studies by deriving the
full sky minimum variance quadratic estimators of the lensing potential from
the CMB temperature and polarization fields. We also present a general
technique for constructing these estimators, with harmonic space convolutions
replaced by real space products, that is appropriate for both the full sky
limit and the flat sky approximation. This also extends previous treatments to
include estimators involving the temperature-polarization cross-correlation and
should be useful for next generation experiments in which most of the
additional information from polarization comes from this channel due to
sensitivity limitations.Comment: Accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. D; typos correcte
Women, Health and Aging: Building a Statewide Movement
Provides an overview of current policy and program environments that affect the state's most vulnerable elder population, and considers some effective strategies to address the growing needs of older persons in California
Reionization Revisited: Secondary CMB Anisotropies and Polarization
Secondary CMB anisotropies and polarization provide a laboratory to study
structure formation in the reionized epoch. We consider the kinetic
Sunyaev-Zel'dovich effect from mildly nonlinear large-scale structure and show
that it is a natural extension of the perturbative Vishniac effect. If the gas
traces the dark matter to overdensities of order 10, as expected from
simulations, this effect is at least comparable to the Vishniac effect at
arcminute scales. On smaller scales, it may be used to study the thermal
history-dependent clustering of the gas. Polarization is generated through
Thomson scattering of primordial quadrupole anisotropies, kinetic (second order
Doppler) quadrupole anisotropies and intrinsic scattering quadrupole
anisotropies. Small scale polarization results from the density and ionization
modulation of these sources. These effects generically produce comparable E and
B-parity polarization, but of negligible amplitude (0.001-0.01 uK) in adiabatic
CDM models. However, the primordial and kinetic quadrupoles are observationally
comparable today so that a null detection of B-polarization would set
constraints on the evolution and coherence of the velocity field. Conversely, a
detection of a cosmological B-polarization even at large angles does not
necessarily imply the presence of gravity waves or vorticity. For these
calculations, we develop an all-sky generalization of the Limber equation that
allows for an arbitrary local angular dependence of the source for both scalar
and symmetric trace-free tensor fields on the sky.Comment: 14 pages, 12 figures, minor changes and typo fixes reflect published
versio
Running Genetic Algorithms in the Edge: A First Analysis
Nowadays, the volume of data produced by different kinds of devices is continuously growing, making even more difficult to solve the
many optimization problems that impact directly on our living quality. For instance, Cisco projected that by 2019 the volume of data will reach 507.5 zettabytes per year, and the cloud traffic will quadruple. This is not sustainable in the long term, so it is a need to move part of the intelligence from the cloud to a highly decentralized computing model. Considering this, we propose a ubiquitous intelligent system which is composed by different kinds of endpoint devices such as smartphones, tablets, routers, wearables, and any other CPU powered device. We want to use this to solve tasks useful for smart cities. In this paper, we analyze if these devices are suitable for this purpose and how we have to adapt the optimization algorithms to be efficient using heterogeneous hardware. To do this, we perform a set of experiments in which we measure the speed, memory usage, and battery consumption of these devices for a set of binary and combinatorial problems. Our conclusions reveal the strong and weak features of each device to run future algorihms in the border of the cyber-physical system.Universidad de MĂĄlaga. Campus de Excelencia Internacional AndalucĂa Tech.
This research has been partially funded by the Spanish MINECO and FEDER projects TIN2014-57341-R (http://moveon.lcc.uma.es), TIN2016-81766-REDT (http://cirti.es), TIN2017-88213-R (http://6city.lcc.uma.es), the Ministry of Education of Spain (FPU16/02595
- âŠ