Collaborative Research: North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium

EPS-0918284, University of Vermont & State Agricultural College, J. L. Van Houten, linked to EPS-0918033 (University of New Hampshire), EPS-0918078 (University of Delaware), EPS-0918018 (University of Maine), EPS-0918061 (University of Rhode Island) Collaborative Research: North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium This award is funded under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (Public Law 111-5). The North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium (NECC) unites Maine (ME), New Hampshire (NH), Vermont (VT), Rhode Island (RI), and Delaware (DE) to support cyber-enabled research that requires analyses of large datasets. The project is organized around sharing resources, expertise and facilities in order to make cyber-enabled collaborative research possible in a sparsely populated region and among non-contiguous states. Intellectual Merit. The consortium has three primary needs to support regional, cyber-enabled research: 1) long-term leases on fiber in specific reaches across the northeast to provide high-speed connectivity with dense-wave division capability; 2) redundant, distributed Data Centers for regional cyber-enabled collaborations; and 3) cyber-knowledgeable personnel to allow researchers to access regional compute, analysis and visualization resources. Much of the physical infrastructure required for the NECC network exists, but there are four key reaches of fiber needed in ME, NH, RI and VT. In ME, two stretches are required to provide a redundant route for national and international connectivity through CANARIE (Canada\u27s advanced network organization) and along the I-95 corridor. A fiber route along the I-89 corridor provides connectivity to Boston for Vermont and New Hampshire to Boston. The researchers have been working with the Northeast Research and Education Network (NEREN) to manage the fiber network once it is in place. Broader Impacts. The possibility of a fiber network that would provide adequate bandwidth for videoconferencing has led to the NECC regional organization around outreach programs for STEM workforce development and diversity. It is planned to create a new Watershed Project through partnerships among multiple state-based programs for high school and undergraduate students. Students in this project from all the NECC states, NY and Puerto Rico, who otherwise would not even meet, will work together in collaborative watershed research. Following training, teams of high school students and teachers or undergraduates join with state programs to work on watershed science during the summer or through the summer and the academic year. The individual NECC state programs are effective in improving participation in STEM majors and diversity, but with the new fiber network and the ability to communicate over the new cybernetwork, a larger, region-wide effective program, with emphasis on cyber-based communication and research tools, is envisioned. The researchers develop a multi-faceted communication plan that will spread the word about the importance of the cyber-enabled research to the public through innovative television shows, podcasts and educational materials. An Ambassador Program will partner with citizen science groups to inform the public about the importance of a fiber network to education and science and about the potential impact of the cyber-enabled metagenomics study to the economies of the states. The fiber network will have an enormous economic impact on the region. The pilot project on metagenomics of the bacterial communities in blooms in lakes in VT, NH, ME and RI will contribute to the understanding of the origin of these blooms and their toxins that shut down access to recreational and drinking water sources. Lakes in the northeast are extremely important to economies, with estimates of $1.5B in lake-related revenues to NY, VT and Quebec each year from Lake Champlain;$2B annually from lake recreational revenues to Maine; 14,000 jobs and bring in $1.8B in revenues from boating, fishing, swimming, drinking water and property taxes to New Hampshire

Spectral Representations of One-Homogeneous Functionals

This paper discusses a generalization of spectral representations related to convex one-homogeneous regularization functionals, e.g. total variation or $\ell^1$-norms. Those functionals serve as a substitute for a Hilbert space structure (and the related norm) in classical linear spectral transforms, e.g. Fourier and wavelet analysis. We discuss three meaningful definitions of spectral representations by scale space and variational methods and prove that (nonlinear) eigenfunctions of the regularization functionals are indeed atoms in the spectral representation. Moreover, we verify further useful properties related to orthogonality of the decomposition and the Parseval identity. The spectral transform is motivated by total variation and further developed to higher order variants. Moreover, we show that the approach can recover Fourier analysis as a special case using an appropriate $\ell^1$-type functional and discuss a coupled sparsity example

Enhancing Linkages between Universities and Small Businesses in EPSCoR Jurisdictions

This conference will be held October 15-16, 2007, in the Portland, Maine, area. The objective of the conference is development of research and economic infrastructure in EPSCoR states through enhancing linkages between universities and small businesses. Research focus areas of alternative energy, environmental science and engineering, and communication technology will be featured in the conference sessions, and were chosen to correspond with NSF, USDA, and commercial opportunities. Presentations within these focus areas will be made by people from a variety of successful small businesses, federal agencies, state government organizations, economic and social development organizations, and private and public research centers and universities. Specific sessions will also be allotted to technology transfer and incubator programs, finding seed/venture/angel capital, instrumentation, and protecting technology through contracts and patents. Conference presentations and materials will be publicly disseminated via the Maine EPSCoR website

Maine\u27s Sustainability Science Initiative

Goals: Maine\u27s Sustainability Science Initiative (SSI) seeks to catalyze and expand the state\u27s interdisciplinary research capacity for understanding the coupled dynamics of social-ecological systems (SES) and determining how such knowledge can best inform stakeholders and their decision-making processes. The core SSI objective is to create a new statewide Center for Sustainability Solutions (CSS) where place-based systems research, knowledge to action focus, and strong stakeholder partnerships will serve as a testbed for developing solutions to sustainable development challenges in and beyond Maine. The research focuses on three interacting drivers of landscape change (urbanization, forest ecosystem management, and climate change) that affect Maine and other regions. Although Maine has faced some serious environmental challenges, its ecosystems have not reached crisis points. As a result, Maine can be a valuable model for exploring proactive, cost-effective approaches to sustainable development, The proposed research will employ three innovative strategies: 1) model development and testing based on an integrated analysis of interactions among drivers of landscape change; 2) a quasi-experimental approach to evaluate the ability of alternative modeling techniques to account for SES thresholds, feedbacks, and resilience; and 3) close stakeholder partnerships to ensure that the work is shaped by the demands of social and institutional systems to enhance the value of the research for decision-making. These strategies depend upon a high-level of interdisciplinary integration, and build on past EPSCoR investments that created research teams characterized by diverse expertise. This project aims to increase the capacity and productivity of those teams, and create the foundation for a green innovation economy in Maine. In concert with the novel approach to innovative research, the project activities effectively integrate research and education to bolster the STEM training and scientific expertise of Maine\u27s future workforce. In collaboration with Maine STEM Coalition Initiative , the project engages K-12 students, integrates the Center for Sustainability Solutions\u27 research (a center that would be created with funding requested in this proposal) with K-12 education, and coordinates teacher professional development. At the postsecondary education levels, the project includes design of new courses that emphasize interdisciplinary and systems modeling and that integrate stakeholders into service-learning activities; development of interdisciplinary academic research and private sector internships; design of a mentoring program; and engagement of students in the development of use of innovative technology

Collaborative Research: North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium

The North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium has finished its third year of Track-2 funding. In this report we summarize our overall progress and progress for Year 3. In 2006, we began to organize as the five North Eastern EPSCoR states (ME, NH, VT, Rl, DE) around cyberinfrastructure. The box below describes the state of cyberinfrastructure in 2008 by which time we had developed the North East Cyberinfrastructure Consortium to position ourselves for grant opportunities that would help us to address our cyber deficits. The Track-2 collaborative proposal submitted in January 2009 was designed to address these barriers in order enable our researchers to access and share data and compute resources that will make them more competitive and allow their research to have a broader impact on society. Summary of our goals: • Provide cyberinfrastructure for research and education in the North East EPSCoR region by creating fiber networks within and between jurisdictions; • Establish regional distributed data centers to support cyber-enabled research • Develop human infrastructure to create a virtual organization for distributed bioinformatics and data analysis; • Launch pilot cyber-enabled research projects to develop the regional expertise to analyze genomics data, especially deep sequencing data, in a distributed manner;• Encourage pilot projects to foster collaborations around water research across the region for future collaborations; • Establish collaborations on cyber education in order to foster cyber-knowledgeable workforce development, diversity and outreach; • Leverage resources to accomplish our goal

Compact electrically detected magnetic resonance setup

Electrically detected magnetic resonance (EDMR) is a commonly used technique for the study of spin-dependent transport processes in semiconductor materials and electro-optical devices. Here, we present the design and implementation of a compact setup to measure EDMR, which is based on a commercially available benchtop electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) spectrometer. The electrical detection part uses mostly off-the-shelf electrical components and is thus highly customizable. We present a characterization and calibration procedure for the instrument that allowed us to quantitatively reproduce results obtained on a silicon-based reference sample with a “large-scale” state-of- the-art instrument. This shows that EDMR can be used in novel contexts relevant for semiconductor device fabrication like clean room environments and even glove boxes. As an application example, we present data on a class of environment-sensitive objects new to EDMR, semiconducting organic microcrystals, and discuss similarities and differences to data obtained for thin-film devices of the same molecule