Effects of artificial neural networks characterization on prediction of diesel engine emissions

More than a century after its invention, diesel remains the fuel of choice for buses and freight trucks. Diesel exhaust contains three gases that are regulated by the United States Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), as well as particulate matter (PM). There is a societal need both to lower emissions and to predict or model emissions more accurately for inventory purposes. Engine modeling, and real time control are the most indispensable steps towards lowering engine emissions, and it is argued that this modeling can be achieved by implementation of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN). Effects of ANN design, architecture, and learning parameters on the accuracy of emissions predictions were studied along with the variation of embedded activation functions. An optimization strategy was followed to attain the most suitable network in the defined framework for five emissions of NOx, PM, HC, CO, and CO2. The emissions data were obtained from five engine transient test schedules, namely the E-CSHVR, ETC, FTP, E-Highway and E-WVU-5 Peak schedules. These were performed on a 550 hp General Electric DC engine dynamometer-testing unit at the West Virginia University Alternative Fuels, Engine and Emissions Research Center. The 3-Layer and Jump Connection networks were the most promising architectures and it was found that the radial basis functions such as the Gaussian and Gaussian Complement functions outperform the sigmoidal functions in all of the examined architectures. The accuracy of an excellent typical instance of CO2 prediction was as good as 0.009% error of accumulated value over the course of a FTP cycle

Paternalism, Tolerance, and Acceptance: Modeling the Evolution of Equal Protection in the Constitutional Canon

This Article proposes a legal taxonomy through which we can model changes in interpretations and applications of antidiscrimination principles to best understand the evolution of equal protection doctrine. The goal for doing so is two-fold. First, through a careful exegesis of a wide range of equal protection cases from the past hundred and fifty years, the analysis provides a positive theory to chart how respect for minority rights can progress within a given doctrinal space. Second, the analysis provides an unabashedly normative assessment of how closely a given legal regime comes to accepting and celebrating the inherent dignitary interests of marginalized groups and the extent to which its jurisprudence begins to subvert subordination practices. Consequently, the Article attempts to trace both how far we have come and to criticize the potential shortcomings of the extant body of jurisprudence from the Supreme Court on issues related to equality. In advancing this evolutionary model of civil rights jurisprudence, the Article charts the key characteristics of the three stages in the development of equal protection under the law: paternalism, tolerance, and acceptance. In the process, the Article scrutinizes and reassesses some of the most canonical decisions in the civil rights firmament and considers how these purported hallmarks of progressive jurisprudence—from Justice Harlan’s prescient dissent in Plessy v. Ferguson and the Supreme Court’s rare moment of post- Reconstruction racial awakening in Strauder v. West Virginia to Mendez v. Westminster and Brown v. Board of Education, right through the modern-day sexual-orientation triumvirate of Lawrence v. Texas, Windsor v. United States, and Obergefell v. Hodges—fell short in critical ways. In the end, the goal of this Article and the model it presents is to encourage a more robust and fulsome notion of equal protection—one that is proactive rather than reactive; one that affirmatively renounces, rather than stays silent on, supremacist ideologies; and one that uses the legal machinery of the state to accept and celebrate the inalienable rights and worth of individuals who are members of targeted groups

Curbing Copyblight

This Article identifies and analyzes the growing problem of copyblight the use of overreaching claims by putative copyright holders to ownership of public domain works, and, more broadly, to exclusive rights which they do not hold in copyrighted works. Despite the fact that copyblight circumscribes political and social discourse, stifles creativity, and constricts the dissemination of information, present law provides few, if any, disincentives against the practice. Building on the groundbreaking work of Paul Heald and Jason Mazzone, this Article advances three proposals to temper the problems of overreach in order to restore a needed balance in our copyright system: (1) strengthening section 512(f) of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act to provide a more viable claim against those who make false representations to force the removal of allegedly infringing content online; (2) forcing the adoption of an evenhanded approach to the assessment of fees in copyright cases--something that many trial courts have failed to do despite the explicit exhortations of the Supreme Court and the significant policy interest at stake; and (3) resurrecting a qui tam civil cause of action for false markings under the Copyright Act in order to disincentivize the presently ubiquitous use of fraudulent legal language that erodes and chills protected user activities. As a society, we rightfully offer meaningful remedies for the infringement of legitimate owner rights. It only makes sense to offer meaningful remedies for the infringement of legitimate user rights