Showing papers by "Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute published in 1992"

Dust in the galactic environment

Abstract: Dust in the Galaxy: Our view from within. Abundances and depletions. Extinction and scattering. Polarization and grain alignment. Infrared absorption features. Continuum and line emission. Dust in stellar ejecta. Evolution of dust in the interstellar medium. The early phases of stellar evolution. Towards a unified model for interstellar dust. Appendices. References. Index.

Genetic search strategies in multicriterion optimal design

Abstract: The present paper describes an implementation of genetic search methods in multicriterion optimal designs of structural systems with a mix of continuous, integer and discrete design variables. Two distinct strategies to simultaneously generate a family of Pareto optimal designs are presented in the paper. These strategies stem from a consideration of the natural analogue, wherein distinct species of life forms share the available resources of an environment for sustenance. The efficacy of these solution strategies are examined in the context of representative structural optimization problems with multiple objective criteria and with varying dimensionality as determined by the number of design variables and constraints.

A toolbox for power system dynamics and control engineering education and research

Abstract: The design concept and use of the power system toolbox (PST), a Matlab-based power system dynamics simulation and control design package, are discussed. The motivation for developing the package was to provide a flexible environment for teaching power system simulation techniques and control design concepts to advanced undergraduate and graduate students, and for graduate students to perform research and development on power systems. The authors discuss the capabilities of PST and the software development philosophy. Sample applications are given. Some potential educational usage is suggested. The future enhancement to the package is outlined. >

Steric mass-action ion exchange: Displacement profiles and induced salt gradients

Abstract: The study of nonlinear competitive equilibrium is of fundamental importance in understanding the behavior of proteins in preparative ion-exchange chromatographic separations. In this work we present a steric mass-action (SMA) ion-exchange equilibrium formalism, which explicitly accounts for the steric hindrance of salt counterions upon protein binding in multicomponent equilibria. An analytical solution has been derived for the calculation of isotachic effluent profiles of displaced proteins and induced salt gradients under ideal chromatographic conditions. A stability analysis has been employed to establish the order of the feed components in the displacement train. Theoretical predictions are compared to experimental results for the separation of proteins by cation-exchange displacement chromatography. These results demonstrate the efficacy of the SMA formalism in predicting complex behavior present in ion-exchange displacement systems. Furthermore, the analytical solution of ideal isotachic displacement profiles with the SMA formalism enables rapid methods development and optimization of ion-exchange displacement separations.

Transformation field analysis of inelastic composite materials

Abstract: A new method is proposed for evaluation of local fields and overall properties of composite materials subjected to incremental thermomechanical loads and to transformation strains in the phases. The composite aggregate may consist of many perfectly bonded inelastic phases of arbitrary geometry and elastic material symmetry. In principle, any inviscid or time-dependent inelastic constitutive relation that complies with the additive decomposition of total strains can be admitted in the analysis. The governing system of equations is derived from the representation of local stress and strain fields by novel transformation influence functions and concentration factor tensors, as discussed in the preceding paper by G. J. Dvorak and Y. Benveniste. The concentration factors depend on local and overall thermoelastic moduli, and can be evaluated with a selected micromechanical model. Applications to elastic-plastic, viscoelastic, and viscoplastic systems are discussed. The new approach is contrasted with some presently accepted procedures based on the self-consistent and Mori-Tanaka approximations, which are shown to violate exact relations between local and overall inelastic strains.

A prototype document image analysis system for technical journals

Abstract: Gobbledoc, a system providing remote access to stored documents, which is based on syntactic document analysis and optical character recognition (OCR), is discussed. In Gobbledoc, image processing, document analysis, and OCR operations take place in batch mode when the documents are acquired. The document image acquisition process and the knowledge base that must be entered into the system to process a family of page images are described. The process by which the X-Y tree data structure converts a 2-D page-segmentation problem into a series of 1-D string-parsing problems that can be tackled using conventional compiler tools is also described. Syntactic analysis is used in Gobbledoc to divide each page into labeled rectangular blocks. Blocks labeled text are converted by OCR to obtain a secondary (ASCII) document representation. Since such symbolic files are better suited for computerized search than for human access to the document content and because too many visual layout clues are lost in the OCR process (including some special characters), Gobbledoc preserves the original block images for human browsing. Storage, networking, and display issues specific to document images are also discussed. >

Electrical method for detection of endothelial cell shape change in real time: assessment of endothelial barrier function.

Abstract: We have developed an electrical method to study endothelial cell shape changes in real time in order to examine the mechanisms of alterations in the endothelial barrier function. Endothelial shape changes were quantified by using a monolayer of endothelial cells grown on a small (10(-3) cm2) evaporated gold electrode and measuring the changes in electrical impedance. Bovine pulmonary microvessel endothelial cells and bovine pulmonary artery endothelial cells were used to study the effects of alpha-thrombin on cell-shape dynamics by the impedance measurement. alpha-Thrombin produced a dose-dependent decrease in impedance that occurred within 0.5 min in both cell types, indicative of retraction of endothelial cells and widening of interendothelial junctions because of "rounding up" of the cells. The alpha-thrombin-induced decrease in impedance persisted for approximately 2 hr, after which the value recovered to basal levels. Pretreatment of endothelial cells with the protein kinase C inhibitor, calphostin C, or with 8-bromoadenosine 3',5'-cyclic monophosphate prevented the decreased impedance, suggesting that the endothelial cell change is modulated by activation of second-messenger pathways. The alpha-thrombin-induced decrease in impedance was in agreement with the previously observed increases in transendothelial albumin permeability and evidence of formation of intercellular gaps after alpha-thrombin challenge. The impedance measurement may be a valuable in vitro method for the assessment of mechanisms of decreased endothelial barrier function occurring with inflammatory mediators. Since the rapidly occurring changes in endothelial cell shape in response to mediators such as thrombin are mediated activation of second-messenger pathways, the ability to monitor endothelial cell dynamics in real time may provide insights into the signal-transduction events mediating the increased endothelial permeability.

A hybrid methodology for synthesis of Petri net models for manufacturing systems

Abstract: Beginning with a bounded (safe), live, or reversible Petri net as a first-level net model for a system, Petri nets are synthesized by first refining operation places through basic design modules in top-down modular ways, then adding nonshared resource places stepwise, and finally adding shared resource places step by step in a bottom-up manner. Refinement theory is extended to include reversibility of Petri nets. Parallel and sequential mutual exclusions are used to model shared resources. Design of the first-level Petri nets is discussed, and two basic kinds of Petri nets, choice-free and choice-synchronization, are given to cope with different types of manufacturing systems. The major advantages of the method are that the modeling details can be introduced in incremental ways such that complexity can be handled, and the important properties of the resulting Petri net are guaranteed so that costly mathematical analysis for boundedness, liveness, and reversibility can be avoided. A manufacturing system consisting of four machines, one assembly cell, two shared robots, and two buffers is used to illustrate the design methodology. >

Photonic bands: Convergence problems with the plane-wave method.

Abstract: The problems associated with the poor convergence of the Fourier transform of the hard-sphere dielectric function are discussed. A significant band gap between the eighth and ninth levels has been found for air spheres in fcc. We also consider a periodic array of Gaussian spheres, which converges well and allows a consistent and reliable determination of the general features of photonic bands. It is found that when \ensuremath{\epsilon}(r) is sharply peaked, photonic levels become almost degenerate throughout the Brillouin zone, corresponding to standing waves.

Self-emulsifying drug delivery systems: formulation and biopharmaceutic evaluation of an investigational lipophilic compound.

Abstract: Self-emulsifying drug delivery systems (SEDDSs) represent a possible alternative to traditional oral formulations of lipophilic compounds. In the present study, a lipophilic compound, WIN 54954, was formulated in a medium chain triglyceride oil/nonionic surfactant mixture which exhibited self-emulsification under conditions of gentle agitation in an aqueous medium. The efficiency of emulsification was studied using a laser diffraction sizer to determine particle size distributions of the resultant emulsions. An optimized formulation which consisted of 25% (w/w) surfactant, 40% (w/w) oil, and 35% (w/w) WIN 54954 emulsified rapidly with gentle agitation in 0.1 N HCl (37 degrees C), producing dispersions with mean droplet diameters of less than 3 microns. The self-emulsifying preparation was compared to a polyethylene glycol 600 (PEG 600) solution formulation by administering each as prefilled soft gelatin capsules to fasted beagle dogs in a parallel crossover study. Pharmacokinetic parameters were determined and the absolute bioavailability of the drug was calculated by comparison to an i.v. injection. The SEDDS improved the reproducibility of the plasma profile in terms of the maximum plasma concentration (Cmax) and the time to reach the maximum concentration (tmax). There was no significant difference in the absolute bioavailability of WIN 54954 from either the SEDDS or the PEG formulations.

Generalized mutual exclusion contraints on nets with uncontrollable transitions

Abstract: The authors study a class of specifications, called generalized mutual exclusion constraints, for discrete event systems modeled using place/transition nets. These specifications may be easily enforced by a set of places called monitors on a net system where all transitions are controllable. However, when some of the transitions of the net are uncontrollable, this technique is not always applicable. For some classes of nets, the authors prove that generalized mutual exclusion constraints may always be enforced by monitors, even in the presence of uncontrollable transitions. >

On transformation strains and uniform fields in multiphase elastic media

Abstract: The effect of local eigenstrain and eigenstress fields, or transformation fields, on the local strains and stresses is explored in multiphase elastic solids of arbitrary geometry and material symmetry. The residual local fields caused by such transformation fields are sought in terms of certain transformation influence functions and transformation concentration factor tensors. General properties of these functions and concentration factors, and their relation to the analogous mechanical influence functions and concentration factors, are established, in part, with the help of uniform strain fields in multiphase media. Specific estimates of the transformation concentration factor tensors are evaluated by the self-consistent and Mori-Tanaka methods. It is found here that although the two methods use different constraint tensors in solutions of the respective dilute problems, their estimates of the mechanical, thermal, and transformation concentration factor tensors, and of the overall stiffness of multiphase media have a similar structure. Proofs that guarantee that these methods comply with the general properties of the transformation influence functions, and provide diagonally symmetric estimates of the overall elastic stiffness, are given for two-phase and multiphase systems consisting of, or reinforced by, inclusions of similar shape and alignment. One of the possible applications of the results, in analysis of overall instantaneous properties and local fields in inelastic composite materials, is described in the following paper.

Conformationally restrained analogues of pravadoline: nanomolar potent, enantioselective, (aminoalkyl)indole agonists of the cannabinoid receptor.

Abstract: Pravadoline (1) is an (aminoalkyl)indole analgesic agent which is an inhibitor of cyclooxygenase and, in contrast to other NSAIDs, inhibits neuronally stimulated contractions in mouse vas deferens (MVD) preparations (IC50 = 0.45 microM). A number of conformationally restrained heterocyclic analogues of pravadoline were synthesized in which the morpholinoethyl side chain was tethered to the indole nucleus. Restraining the morpholine diminished the ability of these pravadoline analogues to inhibit prostaglandin synthesis in vitro. In contrast, mouse vas deferens inhibitory activity was enhanced in [2,3-dihydro-5-methyl-3-[(4-morpholinyl)methyl] pyrrolo[1,2,3-de]-1,4-benzoxazin-6-yl]-(4-methoxyphenyl)methano ne (20). Only the R enantiomer of 20 was active (IC50 = 0.044 microM). An optimal orientation of the morpholine nitrogen for MVD inhibitory activity within the analogues studied was in the lower right quadrant, below the plane defined by the indole ring. A subseries of analogues of 20 and a radioligand of the most potent analogue, (R)-(+)-[2,3-dihydro-5-methyl-3-[(4-morpholinyl)methyl]pyrrolo [1,2,3-de]-1,4-benzoxazin-6-yl](1-naphthalenyl)methanone (21) were prepared. Inhibition of radioligand binding in rat cerebellar membranes was observed to correlate with functional activity in mouse vas deferens preparations. Binding studies with this ligand (Win 55212-2) have helped demonstrate that the (aminoalkyl)indole binding site is functionally equivalent with the CP-55,940 cannabinoid binding site. These compounds represent a new class of cannabinoid receptor agonists.

Effects of indoor lighting (illuminance and spectral distribution) on the performance of cognitive tasks and interpersonal behaviors: The potential mediating role of positive affect.

Abstract: Three studies examined the effects of key aspects of indoor lighting (illuminance, spectral distribution) on the performance of tasks that did not primarily involve visual processing. It was hypothesized that lighting conditions which generated positive affect among subjects would influence behavior and cognition in ways consistent with the findings of previous research on the influence of such affect. Results of all three studies offered partial support for this hypothesis. In Study 1, male and female subjects exposed to relatively low levels of illuminance (150 lux) assigned higher performance appraisals to a fictitious employee and included a broader range of words in specific word categories than subjects exposed to relatively high levels of illuminance (1500 lux). In Study 2, subjects exposed to warm white light reported stronger preferences for resolving interpersonal conflicts through collaboration and weaker preferences for resolving conflicts through avoidance than subjects exposed to cool-white light. Additionally, illuminance and spectral distribution (color) interacted to influence subjects' self-set goals on a clerical coding task. In Study 3, receipt of a small, unexpected gift and exposure to warm-white light both increased the amount of time subjects were willing to donate as unpaid volunteers. In addition, in the absence of a gift, subjects volunteered more time under low than under high illuminance.

Blind deconvolution of quantum-limited incoherent imagery: maximum-likelihood approach

Abstract: Previous research presented by the author and others into maximum-likelihood image restoration for incoherent imagery is extended to consider problems of blind deconvolution in which the impulse response of the system is assumed to be unknown. Potential applications that motivate this study are wide-field and confocal fluorescence microscopy, although applications in astronomy and infrared imaging are foreseen as well. The methodology incorporates the iterative expectation-maximization algorithm. Although the precise impulse response is assumed to be unknown, some prior knowledge about characteristics of the impulse response is used. In preliminary simulation studies that are presented, the circular symmetry and the band-limited nature of the impulse response are used as such. These simulations demonstrate the potential utility and present limitations of these methods.

Oligomerization of ribonucleotides on montmorillonite: reaction of the 5'-phosphorimidazolide of adenosine.

Abstract: The regiospecific formation of oligomers from unblocked monomers in aqueous solution is one of the central tenets in research on the origins of life on earth. Direct experimental support for this hypothesis has been obtained in studies of the condensation of the 59-phosphorimidazolide of adenosine (ImpA) with itself and with P1,P2-diadenosine-59,59-pyrophosphate (AppA) in water in the presence of a montmorillonite clay. Oligomers of up to ten nucleotides in length are formed. Analysis of the trimers, tetramers, and pentamers formed from a 9:1 ImpA:AppA mixture has shown that 85% of the bonds formed are 39,59-linked and that any 29,59-linkages present are at the phosphodiester bond next to the 39-terminus of the oligomers.

Homogeneity of Variance in the Two-Sample Means Test

Abstract: In the two-sample means test, the need for a preliminary variance test and the special emphasis given to the equal variance assumption are questioned. The conclusions can be easily used in the classroom to teach the two sample means test.

Comet Halley as an aggregate of interstellar dust and further evidence for the photochemical formation of organics in the interstellar medium

Abstract: Photolysis of mixtures of CO:NH3:H2O at 12 K results in the formation of an organic residue which is not volatile in high vacuum at room temperature. Analysis of this fraction by GC-MS resulted in the detection of C2-C3 hydroxy acids and hydroxy amides, glycerol, urea, glycine, hexamethylene tetramine, formamidine and ethanolamine. Use of isotopically labeled gases made it possible to establish that the observed products were not contaminants. The reaction pathways for the formation of these products were determined from the position of the isotopic labels in the mass spectral fragments. The significance of these findings to the composition of comets and the origins of life is discussed.

Uniform fields and universal relations in piezoelectric composites

Abstract: Binary piezoelectric composites with unidirectional fibers are considered. The phase boundaries are cylindrical but otherwise the microgeometry is totally arbitrary. The constituents are transversely isotropic. The existence of uniform fields which can be generated by the application of certain mechanical and electrical boundary conditions in such composites is established. The results are used to derive universal relations for the pointwise fields as well as for the effective piezoelectric constants of such composites.

Non-hierarchic system decomposition in structural optimization

Abstract: Decomposition methods provide a systematic approach for decoupling large engineering systems into smaller, coupled subsystems identified by disciplines or by engineering tasks. The paper develops a general decomposition approach for multidisciplinary optimization that is applicable for non-hierarchic systems in which a distinct system hierarchy is difficult to identify. The approach is implemented in a structural synthesis problem for verification purposes. The optimal design of a ten-bar truss for minimum weight subject to displacement and stress constraints is considered. Subsystems are defined in terms of sizing and space variables. The approach allows for implementation of specialized methods for analysis in each subsystem and the ability to incorporate human intervention and decision making. Results demonstrate that the Concurrent Subspace Optimization approach is a versatile method that potentially offers exceptional computational as well as data management advantages.