University of Maine presents 3D-printed Dirigo Star to the Maine Bicentennial Commission for bicentennial time capsule

The University of Maine Advanced Structures and Composites Center presented a 3D-printed Dirigo Star to the Maine Bicentennial Commission to be the core component of the Maine State Bicentennial Time Capsule

Delyte Morris\u27 furniture- a collection of mid-century modern ideas

In the 1970s, gone were the days of a rapidly increasing student population and major building projects and gone were the days of an only 3,006 student body. Instead, there was a world-class academic university with an environment rooted in innovation and advancement. The pieces from Delyte Morris’ presidency show a dedication to a very specific vision he had: to create a university that is both supporting of the students and pushing towards advancement. He and C. D. May, the associate architect for the university, supported this idea by buying furnishings that were manufactured in Illinois and sticking to a strict budget. By choosing post-WWII, mid-century modern furniture, the interior design of the university appealed to many of the new students at the school; middle-class suburbanites who wanted sophisticated, clean designs without luxury materials. Herman Miller Inc and Knoll Inc provided a large amount of furniture to the university, much of which is now housed in the Delyte Morris Furniture Collection in the University Museum Archives. Even after the end of his presidency, Delyte Morris’ legacy drew on, in part through the Knoll Inc furniture that was acquired because of its connection to handmade fabric and wooden bases. The pieces in this collection directly mirror the progression of Southern Illinois University, and its dedication to being a campus that is constantly expanding, yet with strong Illinois roots

Pond IDE: Machine level program development environment and register transfer level simulator for a massively parallel computer architecture

As computing architectures are being implemented in late and post silicon technologies, fault tolerance and concurrent operation are becoming increasingly important. It is already common knowledge that manufacturers are putting two, four or even more cores on a single silicon die to improve computing performance. The proposed architecture far exceeds this number by grouping thousands or even millions of simple reduced instruction set computing (RISC) processors, each of which is capable of a single operation at a time, and to communicate with its eight nearest neighbors. In this architecture, if a single core or cluster of cores have defects at the time of manufacture, or later in the life of the system, it is possible to test and disable them as necessary. A fine-grained architecture of this kind calls for a parallel programming style. One approach to this problem is the use of a parallelizing compiler. Another approach may be to use one of the several application programming interfaces (APIs) available for standard text based programming languages, with some built-in features for parallel programming. This work has generated a solution for creating machine level parallel programs for the massively parallel computer architecture described above using text and graphical means. To support this programming method, an integrated development environment (IDE) and a zero communication latency, register transfer level (RTL) simulator have been developed. Experimental results include the implementation of fundamental data processing algorithms and complex functions

The role of reward signal in deep reinforcement learning

The goal of the thesis is to study the role of the reward signal in deep reinforcement learning. The reward signal is a scalar quantity received by the agent, and it has a big impact on both the training process of a reinforcement learning algorithm and its resulting behaviour. Firstly, we study the behaviour of an agent that is learning with different reward signals in the same environment with the same learning algorithm. We introduce and measure agents’ happiness as a relation between agents’ actual reward obtained from the environment, as compared to the possible maximum and minimum rewards in a given setting. The experiments show that the rewards intended to result in a given behaviour during training do not result in the same behaviour when agents interact with each other. Secondly, we use these observations to investigate the role of the reward signal further. Namely, we explore the space of all possible reward signals in a given environment through an evolutionary algorithm. Through experiments, we demonstrate that it is possible to learn complex behaviours of winning, losing, and cooperating through reward signal evolution. Some of the solutions found by the algorithm are surprising, in the sense that they would probably not have been chosen by a person trying to hand-code a given behaviour through a specific reward signal. The results presented in the thesis indicate that the role of the reward signal in reinforcement learning is likely bigger than indicated by its current coverage in the literature and is worth investigating in greater detail. Not only can it lead to programmes with less overfitting, but it can also improve our understanding of what reinforcement learning algorithms are really learning. This in turn will give us more robust, explainable, and overall safer systems

Same/Different Concept Learning and Category Discrimination in Honeybees.

Ph.D. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Heat transfer characteristics of hydrid microjet-microchannel cooling module

This paper was presented at the 4th Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2014), which was held at University College, London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute, ASME Press, LCN London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL University College London, UCL Engineering, the International NanoScience Community, www.nanopaprika.eu.The paper presents the experimental investigation of heat transfer intensification in a microjetmicrochannel cooling module. Applied technology takes benefits from two very attractive heat removal techniques. When jets are impinging on the surface, they have a very high kinetic energy at the stagnation point, also in microchannels boundary layer is very thin allowing to obtain very high heat fluxes. Main objective of this paper was to experimentally investigate the performance of a microjet-microchannel cooling module. Intense heat transfer in the test section has been examined and described with precise measurements of thermal and flow conditions. Reported tests were conducted under steady state conditions for single phase liquid cooling. Obtained database of experimental data were compared to standard cooling techniques, and compared with superposed semi-empirical models for minichannels and microjet cooling, Mikielewicz and Muszynski (2009). Gathered data with analytical solutions and numerical computer simulation allows the rational design and calculation of hybrid modules and optimum performance of these modules for various industrial applications

Comparison of heat transfer characteristics in surface cooling with boiling microjets of water, ethanol and HFE7100

This paper was presented at the 4th Micro and Nano Flows Conference (MNF2014), which was held at University College, London, UK. The conference was organised by Brunel University and supported by the Italian Union of Thermofluiddynamics, IPEM, the Process Intensification Network, the Institution of Mechanical Engineers, the Heat Transfer Society, HEXAG - the Heat Exchange Action Group, and the Energy Institute, ASME Press, LCN London Centre for Nanotechnology, UCL University College London, UCL Engineering, the International NanoScience Community, www.nanopaprika.eu.The basis of microjet technology is to produce laminar jets which when impinging the surface have a very high kinetic energy at the stagnation point. Boundary layer is not formed in those conditions, while the area of film cooling has a very high turbulence resulting from a very high heat transfer coefficient. Applied technology of jet production can result with the size of jets ranging from 20 to 500μm in breadth and 20 to 100μm in width. Presented data are used in order to validate authors own semi-empirical model of surface cooling by evaporating microjet impingement in the stagnation point. Main objective of this paper was to investigate the physical phenomena occurring on solid surfaces upon impingement of the single microjet in case of three fluids. Intense heat transfer in the impact zone of microjet has been examined and described with precise measurements of thermal and flow conditions of microjets. Reported tests were conducted under steady state conditions for surface cooling by single microjet producing an evaporating film. Obtained database of experimental data with analytical solutions and numerical computer simulation allows the rational design and calculation of microjet modules and optimum performance of these modules for various industrial applications