The Development of an Effective Water-Soluble Receptor for Pyrene Derivative Dyes

A receptor with enhanced water solubility was synthesized from an existing receptor to be used as a pyranine fluorescence quencher in endovesiculation detection assays. The existing receptor consisted of a cyclen core with four protruding arms containing an aryl nitro group at each end. Its poor water solubility limited the accuracy and precision of the endovesiculation assay because the low concentration of receptor did not match the concentration of pyranine. To increase the water solubility, ethoxy groups were attached to the ends of each arm by first selectively reducing the nitro group to an amine with NaBHU4, H2, and a Raney nickel slurry, producing a 19% yield. A nucleophilic substitution was then performed to attach a 2-ethoxyethyl group to each amine group. Even though the new receptor’s maximum concentration in water increased, the ability to quench the fluorescence of pyranine decreased dramatically, thus preventing it from being useful in the endovesiculation detection assays

(MU-CTL-01-12) Towards Model Driven Game Engineering in SimSYS: Requirements for the Agile Software Development Process Game

Software Engineering (SE) and Systems Engineering (Sys) are knowledge intensive, specialized, rapidly changing disciplines; their educational infrastructure faces significant challenges including the need to rapidly, widely, and cost effectively introduce new or revised course material; encourage the broad participation of students; address changing student motivations and attitudes; support undergraduate, graduate and lifelong learning; and incorporate the skills needed by industry. Games have a reputation for being fun and engaging; more importantly immersive, requiring deep thinking and complex problem solving. We believe educational games are essential in the next generation of e-learning tools. An extensible, freely available, engaging, problem-based game platform that provides students with an interactive simulated experience closely resembling the activities performed in a (real) industry development project would transform the SE/Sys education infrastructure. Our goal is to extend the state-of-the-art research in SE/Sys education by investigating a game development platform (GDP) from an interdisciplinary perspective (education, game research, and software/systems engineering). A meta-model has been proposed to provide a rigourous foundation that integrates the three disciplines. The GDP is intended to support the semi-automated development of collections of scripted games and their execution, where each game embodies a specific set of learning objectives. The games are scripted using a template based approach. The templates integrate three approaches: use cases; storyboards; and state machines (timed, concurrent, hierarchical state machines). The specification templates capture the structure of the game (Game, Acts, Scenes, Screens, Challenges), storyline, characters (player, non-player, external), graphics, music/sound effects, rules, and so on. The instantiated templates are (manually) transformed into XML game scripts that can be loaded into the SimSYS Game Play Engine. As a game is played, the game play events are logged; they are analyzed to automatically assess a player’s accomplishments and automatically adapt the game play script. Currently, we are manually defining a collection of games. The games are being used to ensure the GDP is flexible and reliable (i.e., the prototype can load and correctly run a variety of game scripts), the ontology is comprehensive, and the templates assist in defining well-organized, modular game scripts. In this report, we present the initial part of an Agile Software Development Process game (Act I, Scenes 1 and 2) that embodies learning objectives related to SE fundamentals (requirements, architecture, testing, process); planning with Gantt charts; working with budgets; and selecting a team for an agile development project. A student player is rewarded in the game by getting hired, scoring points, or getting promoted to lead a project. The game has a variety of settings including a classroom, job fair, and a work environment with meeting rooms, cubicles, and a water cooler station. The main non-player characters include a teacher, boss, and an evil peer. In the future, semi-automated support for creating new game scripts will be explored using a wizard interface. The templates will be formally defined, supporting automated transformation into XML game scripts that can be loaded into the SimSYS Game Engine. We also plan to explore transforming the requirements into a notation that can be imported into a commercial tool that supports Statechart simulation

Education's Great Boondoggle

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/68837/2/10.1177_002248717602700214.pd

Potential impacts of connected-autonomous vehicles on congestion and safety : a look at Austin, Texas

Data is a central component of Connected-Autonomous Vehicle (CAV) systems: the advantages and potential challenges of both vehicle-to-vehicle (V2V) and vehicle-to-infrastructure (V2I) CAV data underlie the question of wide scale CAV implementation. This report looks at the potential congestion and safety benefits of a vehicle system highly saturated with CAVs in Austin, Texas. Traffic factors such as capacity, intersection delay, and crash rate are examined with respect to their effect on an urban corridor in Austin. The case study relies almost entirely on collected field data to be used as a comparison against potential CAV advantages. In addition to a presentation of the quantitative benefits of CAVs, an infrastructure placement scheme that maximizes data transmission efficiency is also proposed. The results find that vehicle systems can see large improvements in capacity, intersection delay, and number of crashes, and at a relatively inexpensive cost.Community and Regional Plannin

Who’s My Real Daddy? Reducing the Prevalence of False Paternity in Texas

False paternity occurs when a man is incorrectly presumed, acknowledged, or adjudicated to be the father of a child even though, contrary to his own belief, he has no biological relationship to the child. In Texas, over 85% of cases of false paternity result when paternity is initially established by a legal presumption or voluntary acknowledgement. However, instead of amending the laws on how paternity is initially established, Texas attempts to remedy false paternity merely by determining the situations in which paternity may be disestablished. The effects of disestablishing paternity vary wildly and can be devastating to the child, the alleged father, and the biological father. In Part II, this Comment will examine the prevalence of false paternity in Texas, the causes of false paternity, and the consequences of false paternity. In Part III, this Comment will propose proactive solutions that aim to deter incidents of false paternity while balancing the interests of the child against the interests of alleged fathers, biological fathers, and the state. Finally, in Part IV, this Comment proposes a solution that aims to remedy specific incidents of false paternity without destroying nurtured father-child relationships