Our Commitment to Economic Development

When I arrived at UNLV, I gave considerable thought to how the university could better embrace the identity of our city. What I didn’t quite anticipate at the time was just how much the city wanted to embrace UNLV

Dial It In: Rotating RF Sensors to Enhance Radio Tomography

A radio tomographic imaging (RTI) system uses the received signal strength (RSS) measured by RF sensors in a static wireless network to localize people in the deployment area, without having them to carry or wear an electronic device. This paper addresses the fact that small-scale changes in the position and orientation of the antenna of each RF sensor can dramatically affect imaging and localization performance of an RTI system. However, the best placement for a sensor is unknown at the time of deployment. Improving performance in a deployed RTI system requires the deployer to iteratively "guess-and-retest", i.e., pick a sensor to move and then re-run a calibration experiment to determine if the localization performance had improved or degraded. We present an RTI system of servo-nodes, RF sensors equipped with servo motors which autonomously "dial it in", i.e., change position and orientation to optimize the RSS on links of the network. By doing so, the localization accuracy of the RTI system is quickly improved, without requiring any calibration experiment from the deployer. Experiments conducted in three indoor environments demonstrate that the servo-nodes system reduces localization error on average by 32% compared to a standard RTI system composed of static RF sensors.Comment: 9 page

A note on stratification errors in the analysis of clinical trials

Stratification in both the design and analysis of randomized clinical trials is common. Despite features in automated randomization systems to re-confirm the stratifying variables, incorrect values of these variables may be entered. These errors are often detected during subsequent data collection and verification. Questions remain about whether to use the mis-reported initial stratification or the corrected values in subsequent analyses. It is shown that the likelihood function resulting from the design of randomized clinical trials supports the use of the corrected values. New definitions are proposed that characterize misclassification errors as `ignorable' and `non-ignorable'. Ignorable errors may depend on the correct strata and any other modeled baseline covariates, but they are otherwise unrelated to potential treatment outcomes. Data management review suggests most misclassification errors are arbitrarily produced by distracted investigators, so they are ignorable or at most weakly dependent on measured and unmeasured baseline covariates. Ignorable misclassification errors may produce a small increase in standard errors, but other properties of the planned analyses are unchanged (e.g., unbiasedness, confidence interval coverage). It is shown that unbiased linear estimation in the absence of misclassification errors remains unbiased when there are non-ignorable misclassification errors, and the corresponding confidence intervals based on the corrected strata values are conservative.Comment: 15 page

Magnetized Accretion and Dead Zones in Protostellar Disks

The edges of magnetically-dead zones in protostellar disks have been proposed as locations where density bumps may arise, trapping planetesimals and helping form planets. Magneto-rotational turbulence in magnetically-active zones provides both accretion of gas on the star and transport of mass to the dead zone. We investigate the location of the magnetically-active regions in a protostellar disk around a solar-type star, varying the disk temperature, surface density profile, and dust-to-gas ratio. We also consider stellar masses between 0.4 and 2 $M_\odot$, with corresponding adjustments in the disk mass and temperature. The dead zone's size and shape are found using the Elsasser number criterion with conductivities including the contributions from ions, electrons, and charged fractal dust aggregates. The charged species' abundances are found using the approach proposed by S. Okuzumi. The dead zone is in most cases defined by the ambipolar diffusion. In our maps, the dead zone takes a variety of shapes, including a fish-tail pointing away from the star and islands located on and off the midplane. The corresponding accretion rates vary with radius, indicating locations where the surface density will increase over time, and others where it will decrease. We show that density bumps do not readily grow near the dead zone's outer edge, independently of the disk parameters and the dust properties. Instead, the accretion rate peaks at the radius where the gas-phase metals freeze out. This could lead to clearing a valley in the surface density, and to a trap for pebbles located just outside the metal freeze-out line.Comment: 58 pages, 25 figures, 2 tables, accepted to Ap

Woman\u27s Work: Female Lighthouse Keepers in the Early Republic, 1820–1859

During the Early Republic between 1820 and 1859, women, on average, comprised about five percent of the principal lighthouse keepers in the United States. These women represent a unique exception to the experience of the majority of working women during the Early Republic. They received equal pay to men, and some supervised lower-paid male assistants. They filled these predominately male positions because lighthouse work had much in common with stereotypical woman\u27s work, they were most often related to the previous keeper, and they fit within cultural ideals of gender roles. Inquiry beyond the romantic image crafted for these light keepers reveals real woman struggling to survive in a turbulent period of American history. The history of female lighthouse keepers from 1820 to 1859 thus broadens our understanding of American women\u27s occupational history as well as the interplay of cultural constraints on women\u27s employment