In The Thicke Of It

If you’ve been anywhere near your Facebook newsfeed in the last few days, you’re probably familiar with the most recent images of Miley Cyrus at her less-than-graceful VMA performance. From CNN’s front page headline, “What Was Miley Thinking?” to Buzzfeed’s gifset of a cartoon Cyrus twerking on famous paintings, her antics have, for better or for worse, become a hyper-inflated mega-sensation that I, frankly, don’t care about at all. I’m not going to talk about Miley anymore. Instead, let’s talk about her co-performer, Robin Thicke. [excerpt

Paradoxes of Porn

So I have a confession: I’m kind of obsessed with porn. Which is weird considering that I have never actually seen any. [excerpt

Trajectory and sighting analysis for first- apparition comets

Statistical, trajectory, and sighting analysis for first-apparition comets - flight path parameters - astronom

Analysis of Adjoint Error Correction for Superconvergent Functional Estimates

Earlier work introduced the notion of adjoint error correction for obtaining superconvergent estimates of functional outputs from approximate PDE solutions. This idea is based on a posteriori error analysis suggesting that the leading order error term in the functional estimate can be removed by using an adjoint PDE solution to reveal the sensitivity of the functional to the residual error in the original PDE solution. The present work provides a priori error analysis that correctly predicts the behaviour of the remaining leading order error term. Furthermore, the discussion is extended from the case of homogeneous boundary conditions and bulk functionals, to encompass the possibilities of inhomogeneous boundary conditions and boundary functionals. Numerical illustrations are provided for both linear and nonlinear problems.\ud \ud This research was supported by EPSRC under grant GR/K91149, and by NASA/Ames Cooperative Agreement No. NCC 2-5431

Propellant grain for rocket motors Patent

Grain configuration for solid propellant rocket engine

Connected to the Organization: A Survey of Communication Technologies in the Modern Organizational Landscape

In today’s organizations, traditional and cutting-edge technologies compete for increased usage. This exploratory project provides a snapshot of the communication technology (CT) landscape by examining the use of 25 different CTs and their relations to a variety of common demographic variables. Results suggest that, although newer CTs are in use today, more traditional and established CTs such as e-mail, Internet, telephones, and voicemail still dominate the landscape

Carbon, Cookstoves, and Kitchens: Case Studies of Fuelwood Use and the Potential for Ethanol Substitutability in Rural India, Vietnam, and Tanzania

Fuelwood constitutes the primary domestic cooking fuel in many rural communities throughout the Global South. Unsustainable levels of fuelwood consumption, however, contribute not only to local forest degradation but also to global climate change through the release of black carbon and carbon dioxide into the atmosphere. Moreover, as a driver of indoor air pollution, it also negatively affects human health. Indoor air pollution linked to cooking smoke is among the leading causes of preventable respiratory disease, and negatively impacts women and children through disproportionate and repeated exposure. While many cleaner and more efficient alternate stove designs have been developed for use in fuelwood-dependent communities, culturally-based user incompatibilities and technical design problems can lead to lack of widespread adoption. Although fuelwood dependence has also been offset by the availability of subsidized commercially-available fuels such as kerosene or liquid petroleum gas (LPG), the need persists for a clean, efficient, locally available, and sustainable fuel source for use in household cooking. This poster presents the results of three related, pilot project case studies about the potential for alcohol-fueled stoves to serve as a pathway to fuelwood substitution. The poster explores questions of cultural feasibility and the related roles of gender/class/ethnicity dynamics within a community, cooking and fuel preferences of stove users, and religious considerations related to non-consumptive alcohol use. Our study raises important issues for advocates of alternative technologies to consider, including the potential for resource capture by elites, openings for promotion of gender equity, and opportunities for socially and environmentally sustainable development

Paradigms for computational nucleic acid design

The design of DNA and RNA sequences is critical for many endeavors, from DNA nanotechnology, to PCR‐based applications, to DNA hybridization arrays. Results in the literature rely on a wide variety of design criteria adapted to the particular requirements of each application. Using an extensively studied thermodynamic model, we perform a detailed study of several criteria for designing sequences intended to adopt a target secondary structure. We conclude that superior design methods should explicitly implement both a positive design paradigm (optimize affinity for the target structure) and a negative design paradigm (optimize specificity for the target structure). The commonly used approaches of sequence symmetry minimization and minimum free‐energy satisfaction primarily implement negative design and can be strengthened by introducing a positive design component. Surprisingly, our findings hold for a wide range of secondary structures and are robust to modest perturbation of the thermodynamic parameters used for evaluating sequence quality, suggesting the feasibility and ongoing utility of a unified approach to nucleic acid design as parameter sets are refined further. Finally, we observe that designing for thermodynamic stability does not determine folding kinetics, emphasizing the opportunity for extending design criteria to target kinetic features of the energy landscape