Development of a polyimide for use as a temperature and solvent resistant sealant

Polyimide developed by the interaction of benzophenone tetracarboxylic dianhydride, polyoxypropylene diamine, and oxydianiline is used for fuel tanks that are exposed to extreme temperatures

Operational Semantics of Process Monitors

CSPe is a specification language for runtime monitors that can directly express concurrency in a bottom-up manner that composes the system from simpler, interacting components. It includes constructs to explicitly flag failures to the monitor, which unlike deadlocks and livelocks in conventional process algebras, propagate globally and aborts the whole system's execution. Although CSPe has a trace semantics along with an implementation demonstrating acceptable performance, it lacks an operational semantics. An operational semantics is not only more accessible than trace semantics but also indispensable for ensuring the correctness of the implementation. Furthermore, a process algebra like CSPe admits multiple denotational semantics appropriate for different purposes, and an operational semantics is the basis for justifying such semantics' integrity and relevance. In this paper, we develop an SOS-style operational semantics for CSPe, which properly accounts for explicit failures and will serve as a basis for further study of its properties, its optimization, and its use in runtime verification

Effect of Noise on the Standard Mapping

The effect of a small amount of noise on the standard mapping is considered. Whenever the standard mapping possesses accelerator modes (where the action increases approximately linearly with time), the diffusion coefficient contains a term proportional to the reciprocal of the variance of the noise term. At large values of the stochasticity parameter, the accelerator modes exhibit a universal behavior. As a result the dependence of the diffusion coefficient on the stochasticity parameter also shows some universal behavior.Comment: Plain TeX, 18 pages, 4 figure

Conformance relations for distributed testing based on CSP

Copyright @ 2011 Springer Berlin HeidelbergCSP is a well established process algebra that provides comprehensive theoretical and practical support for refinement-based design and verification of systems. Recently, a testing theory for CSP has also been presented. In this paper, we explore the problem of testing from a CSP specification when observations are made by a set of distributed testers. We build on previous work on input-output transition systems, but the use of CSP leads to significant differences, since some of its conformance (refinement) relations consider failures as well as traces. In addition, we allow events to be observed by more than one tester. We show how the CSP notions of refinement can be adapted to distributed testing. We consider two contexts: when the testers are entirely independent and when they can cooperate. Finally, we give some preliminary results on test-case generation and the use of coordination messages. © 2011 IFIP International Federation for Information Processing

Predictors of rater bias in the assessment of social-emotional competence

The Devereux Student Strengths Assessment Mini (DESSA-Mini) (LeBuffe, Shapiro, & Naglieri, 2014) efficiently monitors the growth of Social-Emotional Competence (SEC) in the routine implementation of Social Emotional Learning programs. The DESSAMini is used to assess approximately half a million children around the world. Since behavior rating scales can have ‘rater bias’, this paper examines rater characteristics that contribute to DESSA-Mini ratings. Rater characteristics and DESSA-Mini ratings were collected from elementary school classroom teachers (n=72) implementing TOOLBOX in a racially/ethnically diverse California school district. Teachers rated 1,676 students, who scored similarly to a national reference group. Multilevel modeling analysis showed that only 16% of variance in DESSA-mini ratings was attributable to raters. Relationships between teacher characteristics and ratings were estimated to examine rater variance. Collectively, four characteristics of teachers (perceived barriers to student learning, sense of their ‘typical’ student’s level of SEC, anticipation of SEL program implementation challenges, and intentions to fully implement a newly adopted SEL program) accounted for bias in teacher-generated DESSA scores, leaving only 10% of the variance unexplained. Identified sources of ‘rater bias’ can be controlled for in research and addressed through thoughtful program selection, training, and implementation.peer-reviewe

The Verifying Compiler: A Grand Challenge for Computing Research

Abstract. This contribution proposes a set of criteria that distinguish a grand challenge in science or engineering from the many other kinds of short-term or long-term research problems that engage the interest of scientists and engineers. As an example drawn from Computer Science, it revives an old challenge: the construction and application of a verifying compiler that guarantees correctness of a program before running it. Introduction. The primary purpose of the formulation and promulgation of a grand challenge is the advancement of science or engineering. A grand challenge represents a commitment by a significant section of the research community to work together towards a common goal, agreed to be valuable and achievable by a team effort within a predicted timescale. The challenge is formulated by th

Microstructural Characterization of Graphite Spheroids in Ductile Iron

The present work brings new insights by transmission electron microscopy allowing disregarding or supporting some of the models proposed for spheroidal growth of graphite in cast irons. Nodules consist of sectors made of graphite plates elongated along a hai direction and stack on each other with their c axis aligned with the radial direction. These plates are the elementary units for spheroidal growth and a calculation supports the idea that new units continuously nucleate at the ledge between sectors

Estimation and Bias Correction of Aerosol Abundance using Data-driven Machine Learning and Remote Sensing

Air quality information is increasingly becoming a public health concern, since some of the aerosol particles pose harmful effects to peoples health. One widely available metric of aerosol abundance is the aerosol optical depth (AOD). The AOD is the integrated light extinction coefficient over a vertical atmospheric column of unit cross section, which represents the extent to which the aerosols in that vertical profile prevent the transmission of light by absorption or scattering. The comparison between the AOD measured from the ground-based Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) system and the satellite MODIS instruments at 550 nm shows that there is a bias between the two data products. We performed a comprehensive analysis exploring possible factors which may be contributing to the inter-instrumental bias between MODIS and AERONET. The analysis used several measured variables, including the MODIS AOD, as input in order to train a neural network in regression mode to predict the AERONET AOD values. This not only allowed us to obtain an estimate, but also allowed us to infer the optimal sets of variables that played an important role in the prediction. In addition, we applied machine learning to infer the global abundance of ground level PM2.5 from the AOD data and other ancillary satellite and meteorology products. This research is part of our goal to provide air quality information, which can also be useful for global epidemiology studies

Effect of anisotropy and destructuration on behavior of Haarajoki test embankment

This paper investigates the influence of anisotropy and destructuration on the behavior of Haarajoki test embankment, which was built by the Finnish National Road Administration as a noise barrier in 1997 on a soft clay deposit. Half of the embankment is constructed on an area improved with prefabricated vertical drains, while the other half is constructed on the natural deposit without any ground improvement. The construction and consolidation of the embankment is analyzed with the finite-element method using three different constitutive models to represent the soft clay. Two recently proposed constitutive models, namely S-CLAY1 which accounts for initial and plastic strain induced anisotropy, and its extension, called S-CLAY1S which accounts, additionally, for interparticle bonding and degradation of bonds, were used in the analysis. For comparison, the problem is also analyzed with the isotropic modified cam clay model. The results of the numerical analyses are compared with the field measurements. The simulations reveal the influence that anisotropy and destructuration have on the behavior of an embankment on soft clay