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Computing History and Ethics: The Relevance of the Real World for Social Change
No full textWe discuss the use of real-world scenarios in a computing history and ethics course to promote social change.
CS-300, The Computing Professional , is a course offered by Kettering University\u27s Department of Computer Science. The course has an equal focus on computing history and computing ethics. Besides completing assigned readings and participating in classroom discussions, students are required to research an important figure or artifact from the history of computing, as well as a contemporary issue in computing ethics. Historical research is informed by considerations of the significance of the idea\u27s value proposition. Ethics research is informed by a required analysis using the technique of paramedic ethics. Both research projects culminate in an oral presentation and a written research paper.
Teaching computing history and ethics in a single course has been an effective combination. Anecdotally, students appreciate the variety of topics covered each week, as too much history or ethics in one sitting can drain interest. Together, students find themselves looking both backwards and forwards in time, seeing how decisions in the past led to the computing world we know today.
Historical discussions are informed by consideration of the value equation (essentially, an elevator pitch ) that a new computational artifact provides. Often, advocates for a new technology focus on the attributes of the technology itself, rather than the need of the customer that the new technology might fulfill. An effective value equation focuses instead on the customer\u27s need. Similarly, advocates for social change ought to focus on how the change they want to see addresses the needs of those making the change (for example, recent research showing how diverse research teams produce more valuable patents).
Ethical discussions often begin with classic imaginary case studies (e.g. the trolley problem). In our experience, students tend to react to imaginary case studies as if the case studies were games, seeking to change the parameters of each game, in order to avoid dealing with the ethical dilemma being presented, or to create an obvious winning condition for the game. In contrast, students react much more appropriately to real-world ethical scenarios. Students are much less likely to seek to change the conditions of the case study, since the events already occurred. Real scenarios contain a wealth of details that must be evaluated, with irrelevant details discarded. And students have an easier time visualizing themselves in the scenario (especially if the conclusion of the story is omitted)
Multi-Task Assignment for CrowdSensing in Mobile Social Networks
No full textMobile crowdsensing is a new paradigm in which a crowd of mobile users exploit their carried smart devices to conduct complex computation and sensing tasks in mobile social networks (MSNs). In this paper, we focus on the task assignment problem in mobile crowdsensing. Unlike traditional task scheduling problems, the task assignment in mobile crowdsensing must follow the mobility model of users in MSNs. To solve this problem, we propose an oFfline Task Assignment (FTA) algorithm and an oNline Task Assignment (NTA) algorithm. Both FTA and NTA adopt a greedy task assignment strategy. Moreover, we prove that the FTA algorithm is an optimal offline task assignment algorithm, and give a competitive ratio of the NTA algorithm. In addition, we demonstrate the significant performance of our algorithms through extensive simulations, based on four real MSN traces and a synthetic MSN trace
Reducing Fracture Risk Adjacent to a Plate With an Angulated Locked End Screw
No full textObjectives: Locking screws often are used in the treatment of osteoporotic fractures. Studies show that locking screws can increase bone stresses at the plate end, which increases the possibility of peri-implant fracture. This study evaluates whether the technique used to insert the end screw is related to the fracture tolerance adjacent to the plate.
Methods: Twelve groups of plate constructs were evaluated using a fibular diaphyseal surrogate with mechanical properties similar to osteoporotic bone. All inboard screws were nonlocked with only the end screw fixation differing among groups. The end screws were inserted either perpendicularly to the plate or at an angle of 30 degrees for 6- and 12-hole plates. For both orientations, the end screws were inserted nonlocked, locked, or by a locked overdrilling technique, resulting in 6 groups per plate length. The perpendicular nonlocked screws represented a control group. The constructs were tested to failure in 4-point bending to determine peak load, failure energy, and stiffness.
Results: All constructs failed by peri-implant fracture along a plane through the 2 cortical holes of the end screw. Compared with the control group, an angulated locked screw at the plate end significantly increased the peak bending moment and energy required to produce a fracture for both plate lengths (6-hole, P = 0.008, P \u3c 0.001; 12-hole, P = 0.006, P \u3c 0.001).
Conclusions: The use of an angulated locked end screw may enhance the resistance of osteoporotic bone to peri-implant fractures caused by bending forces
Integration of Process Safety from Introduction to Chemical Engineering to Reaction Engineering
No full textProcess safety is essential to undergraduate chemical engineering education to adequately prepare students to be conservative, yet innovative chemical engineers in practice. Even at schools where industrial cooperative education is integral to a college degree, it is important to emphasize chemical process safety throughout the curriculum to reinforce safety topics exposed on the job, or due to the variety of employers, introduce students to concepts that they may not have experienced. It is important that chemical engineering students are exposed to process safety starting their freshman year to prepare them for cooperative employment and have this carry through to the senior year. At Kettering University students were introduced to industrial hygiene, risk management, and literature review on plant disasters in a new freshman introduction to chemical engineering course in Fall 2014. In unit operations and separations laboratory courses, students prepare safety case studies. Safety is further reinforced in reaction engineering with case studies, reviews of MSDS, examples of consequences from run-away reactions, and student-inspired safety presentations. An elective course covers risk management plans and the associated issues when considering the design and start-up of chemical plants. Finally graduating seniors have the opportunity to take an independent study course on Process Safety where the deliverable is case studies for use in lower-level courses. The integration and impact of how safety is presented in the Kettering University chemical engineering curriculum will be presented
Effects of Pretensioners and Load Limiters on 50th Male and 5th Female Seated in Rear Seat during a Frontal Collision
No full textThis study was conducted to explore the effect of various combinations of seatbelt-related safety components (namely, retractor pretensioners and load limiting retractors) on the adult rear passenger involved in a frontal collision. The study was conducted on a 50th Male and a 5th Female Hybrid III ATD in the rear seat of a mid-sized sedan. Each ATD was seated in an outboard position with 3-point continuous lap-shoulder belts. On these belts were combinations of pretensioners and load limiters. Since the main objective of this test series was to cross-compare the seatbelt configurations, front seats were not included in the buck in order to avoid uncontrollable variables that would have affected the comparison study if the possibility of contact with the front seat were allowed. Nevertheless, there was a short barrier devised to act as a foot-stop for both ATDs. A design of experiment (DOE) was constructed as a full factorial with and without a pretensioner and three types of load limiters. Each ATD was tested with a progressive load limiter (PLL1). Additionally, the 50th Male was tested with a self-adaptive load limiter (SALL) and the 5th Female was tested with a second type of a progressive load limiter (PLL2). The test pulse was designed to approximate a 35 mph (56 kph) frontal rigid barrier test of a four-door sedan. In summary, for the specific configurations reported herein, it was found that pretensioners were an appreciable factor in improving ATD values, and that load limiters had a greater positive effect in the absence of pretensioners and more so for the 50th Male than for the 5th Female
Evidence of Superspin-Glass Behavior in Zn0.5Ni0.5Fe2O4 Nanoparticles
No full textWe have used dc-magnetization and ac-susceptibility to investigate the superspin dynamics in 9 nm average size Zn0.5Ni0.5Fe2O4 magnetic particles at temperatures (T) between 3 and 300 K. Dc-magnetization M versus T data collected in a H = 50 Oe magnetic field using a field-cooled–zero-field-cooled protocol indicate that the onset of irreversibility occurs in the vicinity of 190 K. This is confirmed by M versus H|T hysteresis loops, as well as by frequency- and temperature-resolved ac-susceptibility data. We demonstrate that this magnetic event is not due to the blocking of individual superspins, but can be unequivocally ascribed to their collective freezing in a spin-glass-like fashion. Indeed, the relative variation (per frequency decade) of the in-phase susceptibility peak temperature is ~0.032, critical dynamics analysis of this peak shift yields an exponent zν = 10.0 and a zero-field freezing temperature Tg = 190 K, and, in a magnetic field, Tg(H) is excellently described by the de Almeida–Thouless line δTg = 1 − Tg(H)/Tg ∝ H2/3. In addition, out-of-phase susceptibility versus temperature datasets collected at different frequencies collapse on a universal dynamic scaling curve. Finally, memory imprinting during a stop-and-wait magnetization protocol confirms the collective freezing nature of the state below 190 K
2015 Self-Study Report
No full textSelf-Study for Department of Business, written in response to Revision F, May 2013, of the Accreditation Council for Business Schools and Programs (ACBSP)
Standards and Criteria for Demonstrating Excellence in Baccalaureate/Graduate Degree Schools and Program
Heterogeneous Community-Based Routing in Opportunistic Mobile Social Networks
No full textWith the recent technical advances and popularization of smartphones, which are able to store, display, and transmit various types of media content, message forwarding in opportunistic mobile social networks has become a hot topic. In this paper, we propose a social-aware single-copy routing approach, which leverages the internal social feature information to resolve the social distance between the source and destination step-by-step. We introduce an optimal social feature forwarding set selection scheme for routing guidance, which is proven to achieve small message forwarding delay. We convert the routing process into an iterative 2-hop routing scheme, with a novel transition probability to measure the delivery delay of each hop. The transition probability is according to the community structure in each social feature space. Extensive simulations on both real and synthetic traces are conducted in comparison with several existing state-of-art approaches