Distributed stream reasoning

Stream Reasoning is the combination of reasoning techniques with data streams. In this paper, we present our approach to enable rule-based reasoning on semantic data streams in a distributed manne

Upgrading the Splinter Bot

Thesis (S.B.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Mechanical Engineering, 2006.Includes bibliographical references (leaf 11).Today, we are seeing the beginning of the robotics revolution. In the United States, the company iRobot has developed robots to vacuum the house and scrub the floors. In Japan, Mitsubishi has designed an autonomous robot to live with families, with the ability to take the initiative as well as take commands.2 One of the allures of robotics is the fusion of many academic areas, from mechanical engineering to artificial intelligence. However, this combination of academic fields also leads to the difficulty in teaching robotics. Noticing the future demand for robotics, MIT and other top universities have started teaching undergraduate robotics courses to educate new roboticists. In the fall of 2005, the MIT Computer Science and Artificial Intelligence Lab launched the second part in a two term class, Robotics: Systems and Science II (RSSII). The main goal of this class was to have the students apply all the principles learned over the previous semester on solving a complicated problem. The challenge for the term was to have the robot for the course, SplinterBot, autonomously navigate around the MIT campus and retrieve the plastic bricks scattered around. Once SplinterBot returned to base, it would build a simple structure with the bricks it collected.by Nicholas Martinez.S.B

Sr. Hillery: Catholic Youth Retention

I interviewed Sr. Hillery in January of 2018 regarding her experiences as a woman religious. This paper includes a portion of of the interview where she spoke on her experience with retaining youth in the Catholic Church

Solar Supply Chain and Market Driver Analysis

This study aims to explore the evolution of the photovoltaic supply chain in the United States and the drivers which foster growth of the solar market. The study will gather knowledge on the growth of the solar market and roles of different firms in the supply chain as the solar market moves toward maturity. Based on different drivers including, but not limited to, government incentives, electricity prices, and component prices, the study will build a methodology to conduct a solar market potential analysis for each state. During this process, the study aims to interpret the trends in the supply chain and assess the impact of these trends on the solar marke

Election Administration within the Sphere of Politics: How Bureaucracy Can Facilitate Democracy with Policy Decisions

Public bureaucracy finds itself in a strange place at the intersection of political science and public administration. Political science finds that, within representative democracy, discretion granted to bureaucrats threatens the nature of democracy by subverting politicians who represent the will of the people – bureaucracy vs democracy. At the same time, public administration holds that, in the interest of promoting democracy, bureaucracy should be objective in its implementation of policy in a way that eliminates the influence of politics from decision-making – politics vs bureaucracy. Those positions are seemingly contradictory in nature. From one perspective, bureaucracy is undemocratic because it is outside of politics, yet an overreach of politics into the bureaucracy yields undemocratic outcomes. Bureaucracy can facilitate democracy outside of politics. This study looks to empirically test whether local bureaucrats, who should be willing to act in-line with influential co-partisans, might still promote democratic outcomes for their constituents with their discretionary decision-making. Florida provides an empirical backdrop for testing bureaucracy’s impact on democracy with a natural experimental scenario created with the passing of new early voting limitations in 2011. Florida’s Republican (R) lawmakers passed House Bill 1355 (HB 1355), which was signed into law by Governor Scott (R), that dramatically limited the early voting days allowed for federal elections. HB 1355 changed the early voting (EV) period from fourteen (14) days to eight (8) days and eliminated the last Sunday before Election Day as well. The move was widely seen as a political calculation aimed at stifling the participation of Democrats in the 2012 General Election. In seeming lockstep, local Supervisors of Elections (SOEs) from both parties utilized their statutory discretion over the location of early voting sites to alter the distribution of sites before the 2012 General Election. I find that Republican SOEs did not distribute early voting locations in a way that negatively impacted early voting participation rates (EVPR) for their local precincts. Furthermore, I find that, all else equal, their decisions did not statistically impact EVPR differently than the EVPR in communities managed by Democrats. Republican SOEs did not add new costs to voters in their communities. I provide new evidence that demonstrates that bureaucrats can indeed limit the impact of undue politics from their influential co-partisans to promote more democratic outcomes

Investigation of indentation derived creep response using constant load and constant strain rate methods

Time dependent plastic deformation in metals can occur at high temperatures. Typically the creep test is conducted to characterize the deformation features; however, the conventional uniaxial power-law creep test may be impractical for small scale materials. Accordingly, instrumented indentation techniques are frequently employed. This study concerns the employment of instrumented indentation to characterize the power-law creep response of metallic materials. Indentation derived creep response using constant load-hold and constant indentation strain rate methods were investigated through systematic numerical finite element analysis of conical indentation. The model system of pure tin (Sn) and Sn-based alloy with known uniaxial power-law creep parameters is used for direct comparison between constant indentation strain rate and constant load-hold methods. It was found that each method accurately yielded the corresponding creep stress exponent (n); thus, leading to parallel lines of strain rate versus creep stress on the logarithmic scale. It is evident that the constant indentation strain rate method produced more uniform results. A parametric analysis taking into account a wide range of power-law parameters was conducted for the constant indentation strain rate method. A unique trend of strain rate ratio between the uniaxial creep test and indentation creep test was identified

Temperature dependent charge transport mechanisms in carbon sphere/polymer composites

Carbon spheres (CS) with diameters in the range $2 - 10 \mu m$ were prepared via hydrolysis of a sucrose solution at $200^o C,$ and later annealed in $N_2$ at $800^o C.$ The spheres were highly conducting but difficult to process into thin films or pressed pellets. In our previous work, composite samples of CS and the insulating polymer polyethylene oxide (PEO) were prepared and their charge transport was analyzed in the temperature range $80 K < T < 300 K.$ Here, we analyze charge transport in CS coated with a thin polyaniline (PANi) film doped with hydrochloric acid (HCl), in the same temperature range. The goal is to study charge transport in the CS using a conducting polymer (PANi) as a binder and compare with that occurring at CS/PEO. A conductivity maxima was observed in the CS/PEO composite but was absent in CS/PANi. Our data analysis shows that variable range hopping of electrons between polymeric chains in PANi-filled gaps between CS takes on a predominant part in transport through CS/PANi composites, whereas in CS/PEO composites, electrons travel through gaps between CS solely by means of direct tunneling. This difference in transport mechanisms results in different temperature dependences of the conductivity.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure

Non-symmetric liquid crystal dimer containing a carbohydrate-based moiety

Peer reviewedPublisher PD