NSF Grants Awarded To Rutgers Faculty

STEM for Education (STEM-E) Scholarship Program

2012-01-01T11:56:00.001-05:00

Start Date: 1/1/2012

Award Number: 1136381

NSF Funding Organization: DUE

Principal Investigator: Laffey, Evelyn

Co-PI: Mohan Kalelkar, Thomas Papathomas, Eugenia Etkina, Keith Weber

Award Amount: $135417

Program(s): ROBERT NOYCE SCHOLARSHIP PGM

Abstract: The goal of the STEM for Education (STEM-E) Scholarship Program at Rutgers University is to recruit, retain, and maintain a community of engineers and physicists who are dedicated to teaching in high-needs school districts. Intellectual Merit is encompassed in an overarching theme of "STEM for Humanity" and the program (1) blends the physics and engineering undergraduate programs with the existing graduate physics and mathematics teacher preparation programs, (2) strengthens the focus on teaching physics and mathematics to students in high-needs districts, (3) includes an e-mentoring network between pre- and in-service teachers, and (4) infuses seminars that illustrate the impact of STEM on society. Fifteen STEM-E scholars are being prepared to graduate ready to teach in high-needs K-12 math and science classrooms with strong pedagogical content knowledge and deep understanding of the importance of STEM professionals. Additionally, the program offers long-term continuing professional development to ensure the success of new teachers. Broader Impacts are achieved in that STEM-E scholars will be the nation's leading educational change agents serving in high-need school districts as highly qualified math and science teachers who integrate engineering into their math and physics courses. A mixed-method evaluation plan includes formative and summative assessment of program goals and components. Results are disseminated through the program's website and presentations at conferences.

Application for Grant to support ISVD2012, the 9th International Symposium on Voronoi Diagrams in Science and Engineering, July 2012

2012-01-01T11:56:00.000-05:00

Start Date: 1/1/2012

Award Number: 1143838

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Kalantari, Bahman

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $10000

Program(s): ALGORITHMIC FOUNDATIONS

Abstract: ISVD 2012 will be the continuation of a highly successful and innovative series of conferences within the geometric modeling and computer graphics disciplines. The eight previous events were held in Tokyo, Japan; Seoul, Korea; Banff, Canada; Kiev, Ukraine; Copenhagen, Denmark; Quebec City, Canada, and Quin Dao, China. While many conferences in the areas of computational geometry, computer graphics and engineering have touched some topics covered by the proposed event, it is only recently that the Voronoi diagram research has formed into a separate discipline and the unique forum on Voronoi Diagrams in Science and Engineering was created. The goal of the International Conferences on Voronoi Diagrams in Science and Engineering is to concentrate specifically on unique aspects of the research into the Voronoi diagrams and on practical applications of this research to manufacturing engineering, VLSI design, communication, geomatics, GIS (geographical information systems), urban planning, medicine, bioinformatics, high-performance computing, education and other applications. Another unique aspect is that this year will also feature a Voronoi Art Symposium that runs concurrently with the conference and showcases artistic drawings and interpretations of the Voronoi concept. This event, without a doubt, bridges the gap between Sciences and Arts.

Full Jet Reconstruction In Relativistic Heavy Ion Collisions

2011-12-06T11:41:00.024-05:00

Start Date: 7/15/2011

Award Number: 1067907

NSF Funding Organization: PHY

Principal Investigator: Salur, Sevil

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $282000

Program(s): NUCLEAR STRUCTURE & REACTIONS

Abstract: Quantum chromodynamics (QCD), the fundamental theory of the strong force, predicts the liberation of quarks and gluons to create a new phase of matter, the Quark Gluon Plasma (QGP). During the last 10 years, experiments performed at the Relativistic Heavy Ion Collider (RHIC) tested this prediction and explored the properties of this novel form of matter. While the naive interpretations of QCD calculations suggested that this QGP produced at RHIC should behave like a dilute gas, the experimental results provided evidence that it behaves more like a nearly `perfect' liquid, which is opaque to the passage of colored partons. In November 2010, LHC successfully delivered the first heavy ion collisions at an unprecedented center-of-mass energy of 2.76 TeV to explore new regions of the phase diagram. A wide variety of energetic hard probe measurements will be available over a broad extended kinematic range at LHC. These new measurements will quantify the fundamental properties of QGP. The intellectual merit of this proposal derives from the PI's focus on hard probes as a diagnostic tool to determine the detailed properties of the hot QCD matter. For a more complete, quantitative and discriminatory picture of quenching of the color partons and to avoid intrinsic biases of leading hadron measurements, the PI will reconstruct jets in relativistic heavy ion collisions at LHC using the CMS detector. She proposes to transform knowledge of the large color opaqueness of the QGP to the determination of its fundamental properties by the measurements of jet structure and its modification in terms of energy flow by an unbiased full jet reconstruction to measure nuclear modification ratios of jets. With these robust measurements, she will determine key features of QGP such as how hot QCD medium responds to jet energy loss and how QGP affects jet structures. For broader impacts of this project, the PI plans to establish a cultivating environment for a diverse and competitive work force in nuclear physics via integration of active research and education. She will recruit and mentor two minority and female junior undergraduates from Rutgers's Aresty program for the summer term and continue supporting them throughout the year. She plans to include these undergraduates in all phases of research, including data taking, analysis, presentation of results at meetings, and writing refereed papers.

Collaborative Research: Autotrophic carbon fixation at a shallow-water hydrothermal system: Constraining microbial activity, isotopic and geochemical

2011-10-01T11:56:00.007-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1124141

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Vetriani, Costantino

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $196665

Program(s): BIOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

Abstract: Currently, there is only limited information on the identity and activity of the microorganisms carrying out CO2-fixation in situ, despite the fact that these organisms form the basis of their respective ecosystems. Representatives that are able to grow autotrophically are known to exist in almost all major groups of prokaryotes, and these organisms play essential roles in ecosystems by providing a continuous supply of organic carbon for heterotrophs. Microorganisms present in extreme environments utilize CO2- fixation pathways other than the Calvin-Benson-Bassham (CBB) cycle. At present, five alternative autotrophic CO2 fixation pathways are known. Different carbon fixation pathways result in distinct isotopic signatures of the produced biomass due to the isotopic discrimination between light (12C) and heavy (13C) carbon by the carboxylating enzymes. Thus, inferences about the carbon fixation pathway predominantly utilized by the microbial community can also be made based on the stable carbon isotopic composition of the organic matter, in extant systems as well as in the geological record. However, at present little is known about the systematics and extents of fractionation during carbon fixation by prokaryotic organisms, and to our knowledge no studies exist that have systematically studied the relationship between the operation of different carbon fixation pathways and how this is reflected in the stable carbon isotopic composition in a natural system. This is a 2-year interdisciplinary, international research program that employs a powerful combination of cutting-edge research tools aiming to improve our understanding of autotrophic carbon fixation and its chemical and isotopic signature along environmental gradients in a natural hydrothermal system. The following hypotheses are addressed: 1. The diversity of microorganisms present along a thermal and redox gradient, and rates of CO2 fixation, will reflect adaptation to in situ temperatures and geochemical conditions 2. Microorganisms utilizing the CBB cycle for autotrophic CO2-fixation will represent a smaller percentage of the chemolithoautotrophic community at higher temperatures, where microorganisms utilizing alternative CO2-fixation pathways dominate 3. Isotopic values of biomass and specific biomarker molecules will vary along a thermal and redox gradient from zones characterized by a higher hydrothermal fluid flux and thus higher temperatures to the surrounding, cooler areas, corresponding to the physiology of the microorganisms utilizing different pathways for carbon fixation The PIs will use a multidisciplinary approach to delineate the relative contribution of the different carbon fixation pathways along an environmental gradient by combining metagenomic analyses coupled with: 1) an assessment of the frequency and the expression of specific key genes involved in carbon fixation, and 2) with the measurement of carbon fixation rates. These data will be integrated with the determination of stable C isotopic composition of biomass, DIC, and specific hydrocarbons/lipids. Due to its easy accessibility, well-established environmental gradients, and extensive background information, the shallow-water vents off Milos (Greece) will be used as a natural laboratory to perform these studies. Intellectual Merit. The data generated in this study will allow constraints on the relationship between autotrophic carbon fixation and the resulting isotopic signatures of biomass and specific biomarker molecules (e.g. CH4, C2+ alkanes, lipids) in a natural system.. This has implications for assessing the importance of carbon fixation in extant ecosystems, and it will also provide a tool to improve the interpretation of isotopic values in the geological record. Broader Impacts. This is an interdisciplinary and collaborative effort between US and foreign institutions, creating unique opportunities for networking and to foster international collaborations. This will also benefit the involved students (1 graduate, several undergraduates) and a postdoc. The PIs have been involved in several educational and public outreach activities over the years that have reached literally millions of individuals. Finally, the project fits with the focus of a number of multi-disciplinary and international initiatives, in which PIs are active members (e.g. SCOR working group on Hydrothermal energy and the ocean carbon cycle;and Deep Carbon Observatory at CIW).

International Collaboration in Chemistry: A Comprehensive Computational/Experimental Analysis of the Hofmeister Effect

2011-10-01T11:56:00.006-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1124776

NSF Funding Organization: CHE

Principal Investigator: Romsted, Laurence

Co-PI: Ronald Sauers, David Case

Award Amount: $570626

Program(s): MACROMOLEC/SUPRAMOLEC/NANO

Abstract: This International Collaboration in Chemistry award, co-funded in France by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR) and in the United States by the National Science Foundation, through the Macromolecular, Supramolecular, and Nanochemistry Program of the Chemistry Division, supports an international collaboration between Drs. Laurence Romsted, David Case, and Ronald Sauers, all from Rutgers University, New Brunswick, and Drs. Reiko Oda, Michel Laguerre (both from the Institut Europeen de Chimie et de Biologie, France), and Dario Bassani (from the Institut des Science Molecularier CNRS, France). The fundamental goal of the project is the characterization of ion-specific effects on the properties of aqueous solutions of primarily gemini amphiphiles. The team will systematically vary amphiphile structure and use a wide variety of counterions to identify the shifts in the balance of forces controlling aggregate structure from the molecular level to bulk solution properties. Cationic gemini amphiphiles with decyl and dodecyl tails will be synthesized, with fully and partially methylated headgroups and a variety of counterions, e.g., the typical inorganic counterions of the Hofmeister series, but also organic counterions, such as alkylcarboxylates and alkylphosphates of various chain lengths. By using a combination of physical, chemical, and simulation methods, the researchers will determine correlations between physical properties (e.g., critical micelle concentration, ionization degree, and aggregation number and interfacial concentrations of the counterions and water), as determined by chemical trapping and by simulation using a combined molecular dynamics/density functional theory approach. The simulations will also provide new information on the overall organization of the tails, headgroups, counterions, and water within the aggregate. Parallel studies on single chain analogs will highlight the importance of the methylene bridge of the gemini surfactants. Because chemical trapping and molecular dynamic simulations make no assumptions about aggregate structure, correlations discovered between amphiphile structure, counterion type and aggregate physical properties will deepen current understanding and provide new insight into the delicate balance of forces that controls aggregation behavior of association colloids. One of the oldest, unresolved challenges in colloid and surface chemistry is a coherent explanation for ion-specific effects on the properties of colloids and biointerfaces, first demonstrated in 1888 by Hofmeister as a specific salt effect on the solubility of a protein. Since then, many empirically observed orders have been published including ion-specific effects on a variety of aqueous solution properties of self-assembling ionic association colloids such as micelles, microemulsions and vesicles. This collaborative project offers a systematic approach toward understanding the interplay of intermolecular forces controlling amphiphile aggregate structures. Results should have real-life impact by aiding in selection of amphiphiles for particular applications (currently a trial-and-error procedure) and should enhance the utility of soft materials, e.g., by tuning their structures simply by changing the counterion. This project's novel multidisciplinary approach benefits from the complementary expertise of six collaborators in two countries: Drs. Oda and Bassani will obtain precise physical property measurements on the aggregation; Dr. Romsted will use his group's chemical trapping method to determine interfacial water and counterion concentrations; simulations by Drs. Laguerre, Case, and Sauers should provide new insight into specific interactions between headgroups, counterions, and water at gemini micelle interfaces. This research collaboration will also provide advanced training for undergraduate and graduate students and postdoctoral fellows. They will be immersed in a fundamental and intellectually challenging project that includes experience with a variety of experimental approaches combined with simulations in laboratories in the US and France, and in discussions on characterizing amphiphile solutions at the aggregate and molecular levels.

International Collaboration in Chemistry: Structure and dynamics of amino acids adsorbed on coinage metal surfaces

2011-10-01T11:56:00.005-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1124879

NSF Funding Organization: CHE

Principal Investigator: Hinch, Barbara

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $304006

Program(s): STRUCTURE,DYNAMICS &MECHANISMS

Abstract: With the support of the Chemical Structure, Dynamics and Mechanisms Program, Professor Hinch and her coworkers in the Department of Chemistry and Chemical Biology at Rutgers University are using high resolution angular diffraction and time of flight analysis of thermal helium scattering to investigate structure, assembly and low energy molecule surface vibrations of adsorbed amino acids. This International Collaboration in Chemistry award includes a collaborator, Professor Stephen J. Jenkins at Cambridge University in the United Kingdom. His work is supported by EPSRC in the United Kingdom. The interactions of alanine, glycine and proline adsorbates with coinage metal surfaces are the focus of this research. These systems are believed to adsorb as carboxylate species and the amino groups may or may not undergo protonation. Information about chirality and possible racemization of adsorbed phases will be evident in the surface sensitive diffraction measurements. The real time kinetics of film assembly of these molecules on the surfaces, determined with this non destructive probe, will provide an understanding of the long- and short- range intermolecular interactions. In transitioning from low to high coverage regimes, changes in the discrete vibrational modes, and the effective masses of the scattering centers, will elucidate the significance of hydrogen bonding in these self assembled films. The low energy vibrational spectra are also to determine the influence of coadsorbed hydrogen levels in film stability, kinetics of assembly and surface diffusion and reaction mechanisms. Through collaboration with Professor Jenkins' group at Cambridge University, the Hinch group at Rutgers will also be able to utilize high-resolution low-temperature scanning probe techniques for studies of amino acid films. The international collaboration also offers a powerful computational capability and understanding of the multi-dimensional potential energy surfaces governing vibrational motion in simple adsorbed amino acids. A mutual objective is to image, simulate, and measure the dynamics within hydrogen bonding networks established in the amino acid films. This research will advance the understanding of the behavior of molecules adsorbed on surfaces. The knowledge obtained will implications for a variety of fields and applications, including chirally-specific sensors, enantioselective chemical synthesis, and possibly medical implant materials with improved biocompatibility. The research also has considerable workforce development benefits, as graduate and undergraduate students and post-doctoral associates will engage in a richly interdisciplinary research experience, which entails a variety of experimental techniques as well as theory and computation. The student experience will be further augmented by the international exchange aspects; extended visits by Rutgers and Cambridge group researchers to the partnering laboratory will provide invaluable experience with research environments beyond each participant's home institution.

CDI-TYPE II--COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: Using Algebraic Topology to Connect Models with Measurements in Complex Nonequilibrium Systems

2011-10-01T11:56:00.004-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1125174

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Mischaikow, Konstantin

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $704040

Program(s): CDI TYPE II

Abstract: Numerous complex systems in nature and in technology defy concise characterization because they exhibit strongly nonlinear behaviors that lack all symmetries and are highly non-periodic on a wide range of spatial and temporal scales. Characterization by detailed measurement (in lab experiments or direct numerical simulations) is now possible in many cases using modern measurement technologies or computational techniques. However, the resulting deluge of data often leads to little insight; in particular, there is frequently no good way to connect quantitatively experimental measurements of a particular complex system with the output from simulations/models of the same system. New, computationally-based, mathematical tools from algebraic topology have the potential to bridge the gap between measurements and models; the proposed research will explore the use of algebraic topology to link numerical simulations and laboratory experiments in situations where complexity arises because the system under study is driven out of thermodynamic equilibrium. The research focuses on an outstanding paradigm for nonequilibrium complexity: fluid flow driven by temperature gradients (thermal convection). The planned work brings three unique capabilities together in a single effort: (1) the experimental ability both to measure and to manipulate precisely complex, convective flows; (2) efficient methods for state-of-the-art, large scale, high-resolution numerical simulations of convective flow; (3) open source, general purpose, and efficient computational algorithms and software for computing algebraic topological invariants on large data sets. Topological tools will be developed both to characterize and to minimize model error as well as to compare and to quantify dynamical properties including Lyapunov exponents, dimensionality and bifurcations between complex spatiotemporal flow states. This effort should ultimately identify ways in which homology-based metrics can be used for building reduced order models that permit prediction and, perhaps, control of convective flow. More generally, we expect the metrics developed for convection should find broad application to PDE-modeled problems ranging from the control of cardiac arrythmias to the prediction of weather and climate. The behaviors of complex systems in the world around us can now both be measured with high fidelity using advanced sensing technologies and simulated with great realism using modern computer techniques. However, the enormous data sets typically produced in these cases are often difficult to interpret because there exist few good mathematical tools to connect quantitatively the experimental measurements of a given complex system with the output of computer simulations of that same system. The proposed research explores the use of the mathematics of topology to relate lab measurements to computer outputs in a particular complex system, thermal convection. The results of this work should lead to new ways to understand, to predict, and, perhaps, to control convective flow, which plays a direct role in natural processes (e.g., volcanism, earthquake dynamics, continential drift) and industrial applications (e.g., thermal regulation of many devices, the growth of semiconductor materials). Moreover, the topological tools developed for thermal convection should apply more generally to a wide variety of other problems involving complex systems including the forecasting of weather and climate; the dynamics of the biomass in the oceans; the onset of turbulence; the evolution of reagent patterns on a catalytic metal surface; and ventricular fibrillation in a human heart.

BIOME-A Bio-Robotic Infrastructure for Oceanic Microbial Ecology

2011-10-01T11:56:00.003-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1131022

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Kerkhof, Lee

Co-PI: Scott Glenn, Oscar Schofield , Jingang Yi

Award Amount: $826509

Program(s): OCEAN TECH & INTERDISC COORDIN

Abstract: The PI's request funding to develop BIOME, a Bio-Robotic Infrastructure for Oceanic Microbial Ecology. Coastal ecosystems are central to global biogeochemical cycles despite their relatively small size; therefore, biological oceanography has focused on understanding microbial bloom dynamics on continental shelves. Unfortunately, our concepts of how a diverse bacterial community transitions between seasons remain incomplete because of our inability to sample on the appropriate time and spaces scales to resolve the processes influencing the microbiota. In order to address this limitation, we are proposing a build a biological sampler compatible with the Slocum Glider. What is missing is a component capable of collecting and returning intact biomass to the laboratory for molecular ecology studies to delineate the mechanisms driving bacterial evolution in the sea. this project will provide a platform to define the metabolic and genomic properties and mechanisms responsible for microbial growth, adaptation, and survival in the oceanic environment. The BIOME research will address fundamental questions in marine ecology and elucidate the mechanisms supporting the diversity of microorganisms in the ocean. Broader Impacts: The potential broad impacts of this proposal are greater than average because the device being designed has potential to be deployed widely if it is successful and would lead to more accurate models of ocean microbial community structure and activity. The PIs propose to develop a K-12 lesson plan about bacteria in the Mid-Atlantic Bight with the help of an education outreach specialist associated with the Mid Atlantic Center for Ocean Science Education Excellence, and have included this aspect of the project in the budget. There is a plan for disseminating the lessons to K-12 teachers through a variety of on-line and summer teacher training programs, to the public through lectures at local library, and to kids through the Rutgers 4-H after school programs. The PIs also intend (though don't lay out any specific plan) to include underrepresented ethnic groups in summer research through the RISE @ Rutgers program.

Dimensions: Collaborative Research: An Integrated Study of Energy Metabolism, Carbon Fixation, and Colonization Mechanisms in Chemosynthetic Microbial

2011-10-01T11:56:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1136451

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Vetriani, Costantino

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $420434

Program(s): Dimensions of Biodiversity

Abstract: Deep-sea hydrothermal vents, first discovered in 1977, are poster child ecosystems where microbial chemosynthesis rather than photosynthesis is the primary source of organic carbon. Significant gaps remain in our understanding of the underlying microbiology and biogeochemistry of these fascinating ecosystems. Missing are the identification of specific microorganisms mediating critical reactions in various geothermal systems, metabolic pathways used by the microbes, rates of the catalyzed reactions, amounts of organic carbon being produced, and the larger role of these ecosystems in global biogeochemical cycles. To fill these gaps, the investigators will conduct a 3-year interdisciplinary, international hypothesis-driven research program to understand microbial processes and their quantitative importance at deep-sea vents. Specifically, the investigators will address the following objectives: 1. Determine key relationships between the taxonomic, genetic and functional diversity, as well as the mechanisms of energy and carbon transfer, in deep-sea hydrothermal vent microbial communities. 2. Identify the predominant metabolic pathways and thus the main energy sources driving chemoautotrophic production in high and low temperature diffuse flow vents. 3. Determine energy conservation efficiency and rates of aerobic and anaerobic chemosynthetic primary productivity in high and low temperature diffuse flow vents. 4. Determine gene expression patterns in diffuse-flow vent microbial communities during attachment to substrates and the development of biofilms. Integration: To address these objectives and to characterize the complexity of microbially-catalyzed processes at deep-sea vents at a qualitatively new level, we will pursue an integrated approach that couples an assessment of taxonomic diversity using cultivation-dependent and -independent approaches with methodologies that address genetic diversity, including a) metagenomics (genetic potential and diversity of community), b) single cell genomics (genetic potential and diversity of uncultured single cells), c) meta-transcriptomics and -proteomics (identification and function of active community members, realized potential of the community). To assess function and response to the environment, these approaches will be combined with 1) measurement of in situ rates of chemoautotrophic production, 2) geochemical characterization of microbial habitats, and 3) shipboard incubations under simulated in situ conditions (hypothesis testing under controlled physicochemical conditions). Network approaches and mathematical simulation will be used to reconstruct the metabolic network of the natural communities. A 3-day long project meeting towards the end of the second year will take place in Woods Hole. This Data Integration and Synthesis meeting will allow for progress reports and presentations from each PI, postdoc, and/or student, with the aim of synthesizing data generated to facilitate the preparation of manuscripts. Intellectual Merit. Combining the community expression profile with diversity and metagenomic analyses as well as process and habitat characterization will be unique to hydrothermal vent microbiology. The approach will provide new insights into the functioning of deep-sea vent microbial communities and the constraints regulating the interactions between the microbes and their abiotic and biotic environment, ultimately enabling us to put these systems into a quantitative framework and thus a larger global context. Broader Impacts. This is an interdisciplinary and collaborative effort between 4 US and 4 foreign institutions, creating unique opportunities for networking and fostering international collaborations. This will also benefit the involved students (2 graduate, several undergraduate) and 2 postdoctoral associates. This project will directly contribute to many educational and public outreach activities of the involved PIs, including the WHOI Dive & Discover program; single cell genomics workshops and Cafe Scientifique (Bigelow); REU (WHOI, Bigelow, CIW); COSEE and RIOS (Rutgers), and others. The proposed research fits with the focus of a number of multidisciplinary and international initiatives, in which PIs are active members (SCOR working group on Hydrothermal energy and the ocean carbon cycle, http://www.scorint. org/Working_Groups/wg135.htm; Deep Carbon Observatory at CIW, https://dco.gl.ciw.edu/; Global Biogeochemical Flux (GBF) component of the Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI), http://www.whoi.edu/GBF-OOI/page.do?pid=41475)

MRI: Development of a Versatile High Energy Resolution Ion Nanosope for Nanoscale Ion Spectroscopy, Ion-based Materials Fabrication and Ion Milling

2011-10-01T11:56:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1126468

NSF Funding Organization: DMR

Principal Investigator: Gustafsson, Torgny

Co-PI: Eva Andrei, Leonard Feldman, Adrian Mann, Laura Fabris

Award Amount: $1640493

Program(s): MAJOR RESEARCH INSTRUMENTATION

Abstract: Technical abstract: The development of a new research instrument for nanoscale elemental analysis and materials modification using scattering of noble gas ions creates opportunities for materials science unachievable to date. Intellectual challenges include the creation of the tool, understanding energetic ion-solid interactions with a nano-beam, and applications, both in materials analysis and materials modification. Our project integrates two recent technological developments: Focused nanoscale ion beams available as the Zeiss ORION® He microscope and picosecond timing electronics with high throughput by Ionwerks®. Analysis applications include the first ion beam interrogation of individual nanostructures and determinations of lateral film uniformity. The instrument will also be used for materials modifications such as graphene based counters for single molecule analysis, development of qubit based superconducting junctions for quantum computing and studies of the behavior of defects within nano-structured materials. Also included is the development of nanoscale Ne beams for materials modification and sample preparation, an entirely new ion beam capability. Such beams may be used for ion milling on the nm scale, semiconductor amorphization and implantation with nm precision, spatial control of 'single ion upsets' in electronic devices, new tests of inter-granular defects for fusion applications and the creation of new materials from ion-carved graphene and other two dimensional materials. Non-technical abstract: Nanoscale materials have an enormous impact on basic and applied science. Unanticipated phenomena and functionalities are being discovered and exploited commercially at an ever increasing pace. New experimental tools are therefore needed to reliably perform materials characterization and modification at the same level. This project introduces a significant advance through the development of a versatile ion beam facility for true nano-scale ion spectroscopy, ion beam materials modification and ion beam milling. The project integrates new ion beam technologies to allow analysis of individual nano-particles as well as materials modification of nanostructures and ion sculpting and milling with unprecedented spatial control, involving the development of a new, heavy ion nano-beam. This represents a leap in ion beam oriented materials science. New science and technology is anticipated such as the investigation of the ligand binding of gold nanoparticles used in cancer drug delivery, the creation of nanometer orifices to explore DNA sequencing and the formation of quantum structures for advanced computing and communications. The direct and visually oriented nature of the information from this instrument will illustrate the excitement of materials science to students ranging from middle school to advanced graduate students through a well developed local infrastructure. As Rutgers has an extraordinarily diverse student body, the project will be particularly useful in attracting underrepresented groups. The instrument will provide excellent opportunities for hands-on experience in the development and use of sophisticated scientific equipment for undergraduate students and enrich the graduate curriculum. The general public will be involved through open houses and lectures. As a 'one of a kind' instrument this instrument will attract world leaders in the diverse fields addressed by nano-materials. Together with other recent NSF awarded instrumentation, this instrument will establish Rutgers as a national center for nano-scale microscopy.

CDI-Type II: Mapping Complex Biomolecular Reactions with Large Scale Replica Exchange Simulations on National Production Cyberinfrastructure

2011-10-01T11:56:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1125332

NSF Funding Organization: CHE

Principal Investigator: Levy, Ronald

Co-PI: Darrin York, Shantenu Jha

Award Amount: $1625000

Program(s): CDI TYPE II

Abstract: Large scale, realistic simulations of complex biological and chemical phenomena at the atomic level of resolution level present a grand challenge for molecular simulation. Effective sampling of conformational space may require large numbers of computationally intensive simulations which are coupled to one another. Enhanced conformational sampling algorithms based on the application of biasing forces and replica exchange generalized ensembles, whereby a large number of replicas of the system are simulated in parallel, among the most powerful methods to study a wide variety of physicochemical processes. Uncoupled methods currently in use are very slowly convergent and often of dubious reliability as the independent simulations are not in equilibrium with one another. The key aspect of replica exchange (RE) algorithms is that replicas of the system periodically exchange their state parameters allowing them to rapidly traverse conformational space and to enhance equilibration. Current synchronous formulations of the RE method in wide use, however, are highly limited in terms of scalability and control when many exchanging replicas are involved. This limitation precludes the use of RE simulations to new application areas that require the calculation of high-dimensional free energy surfaces, and necessitate the dynamic control of 103-104 replicas as the landscape evolves. This project involves the development of a robust adaptive force biasing procedure coupled with an asynchronous replica exchange method. The research team is developing a novel infrastructure, the Replica Exchange Frame work (REFW) to enable the execution of very large scale RE simulations on a broad range of production computational resources, including but not limited to NSF TeraGrid (and its successor XD), cloud and campus-level cluster environments, as well as the forthcoming Blue Waters supercomputer. The REFW is being applied to applications that present multiple levels of complexity, such as coupled ligand binding, conformational change and catalysis in the glmS ribozyme/riboswitch that were hitherto not possible. The cyberinfrastructure created by this research team enables realistic simulations of important biological processes that have relevance in many areas of biology, biophysics, medicinal chemistry, and biophysics with the potential to impact human health. Additionally, the REWF may be applied in many other scientific areas that increasingly rely on realistic simulation including catalysis, earthquake prediction and petroleum engineering. The project is also training the next generation of computational scientists to apply these methods to solve high-impact interdisciplinary research problems. The resulting technology and training enables the study of a host of new reactive chemical problems of unprecedented complexity, and greatly facilitates innovation and discovery through advanced computation. This is a Cyber-Enabled Discovery and Innovation Program award and is co-funded by the Division of Chemistry and the Division of Physics in the Directorate for Mathematical and Physical Sciences.

Studies in Statistical Mechanics

2011-10-01T11:42:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 10/1/2011

Award Number: 1104501

NSF Funding Organization: DMR

Principal Investigator: Lebowitz, Joel

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $141000

Program(s): CONDENSED MATTER & MAT THEORY|MATHEMATICAL PHYSICS|APPLIED MATHEMATICS

Abstract: TECHNICAL SUMMARY The Division of Materials Research, the Division of Mathematical Sciences, and the Physics Division contribute funds to this award. This award supports theoretical research and education aimed at advancing understanding of the properties of macroscopic systems originating in the collective behavior of their microscopic constituents. The methods used range from exact mathematical analysis to computer simulation. They provide a bridge between rigorous results and applications, for both equilibrium and nonequilibrium phenomena. The research is highly interdisciplinary, bringing together physicists, mathematicians, chemists and those working in theoretical areas of the biological and social sciences. Topics of study include: 1) The effects of randomness in quantum systems will be elucidated. This will extend the recent proof that the addition of randomness to a quantum system rounds a first-order phase transition in the conjugate order parameter in 2 dimensions or less, or for cases involving the breaking of a continuous symmetry in 4 dimensions or less. New inequalities for random systems will be explored. 2) The phase diagram of general systems with spatially asymmetric long range interactions will be investigated, extending the exact solution of the three species ABC model in 1D. 3) Results on the phase diagram of lattice systems with multispin interactions will be extended. 4) Pattern formation such as stripes, in equilibrium and nonequilibrium systems, due to short range attractions and long range repulsions will be elucidated. 5) The evolution of the macrostate of an open system given by an autonomous equation will be investigated. In analogy to the Boltzmann entropy in an isolated system, the large deviation function, with respect to the stationary measure of the nonequilibrium stationary state, is a Lyapunov function for this evolution. This yields new Lyapunov functions for nonlinear diffusion equations. The deviation function, considered as a relative free energy of an open system, will be explored from both a microscopic and macroscopic point of view. 6) A rigorous determination of transport coefficients is an important objective of this research project. Domains of validity of Fourier's law in various systems, for example weakly anharmonic crystals with random masses, will be elucidated. When noise is added to the dynamics Fourier's law holds rigorously, but will a small amount of anharmonicity destroy phonon localization? Violations of Fourier's law for momentum conserving models in 1D and 2D will be investigated. 7) Criteria for "typicality" in realistic systems will be investigated: for a "typical" large isolated quantum system every initial wave function from an energy shell evolves in such a way that, for most time it is macroscopically equivalent to the micro-canonical density matrix. This award supports the PI's efforts to organize two conferences every year in which both core subjects and new developments in statistical mechanics are discussed in a collegial atmosphere. Graduate students, postdocs and minority scientists are encouraged to present talks on their work and interact with leaders in the field. They also serve as a clearing house for positions and often lead to new collaborations. In addition to many invited lectures at scientific conferences the PI has given public lectures and has written an article for Scholarpedia on Time's Arrow. NONTECHNICAL SUMMARY This award supports theoretical research and education in a variety of subfields of statistical mechanics. This work is jointly supported by the Division of Materials Research and the Division of Mathematical Sciences. The central theme of the effort is a better understanding of the properties of material systems originating in the collective behavior of their elementary atomic constituents. The methods used range from exact mathematical analysis to computer simulations. These approaches bridge the gap between rigorous results and applications. Topics of study range from classical physics to quantum physics, from highly formal to applications of technological relevance and even to dynamics of disease propagation. The project aims to advance the theory of systems that are far from the balance of equilibrium with an impact on biological systems, biomaterials, and materials more generally. The research activities are highly interdisciplinary, bringing together physicists, mathematicians, chemists and those working in theoretical areas of the biological and social sciences. The expected applications are in material science, complex fluids and in biological systems. The project also includes the organization of two conferences every year in which both core subjects and new developments in statistical mechanics are discussed in a collegial atmosphere. Graduate students, postdocs and minority scientists are involved and present talks on their work and interact with established researchers in the field. The conferences also serve as an opportunity for professional networking and can lead to new collaborations.

Collaborative Research: Using Transcriptomics to Understand Mechanisms of Stress Response and Toxin Production in Pathogenic and Toxigenic Microbes in

2011-09-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 9/15/2011

Award Number: 1129203

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Bhattacharya, Debashish

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $276857

Program(s): CHEMICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

Abstract: In this project an interdisciplinary research team from the University of Hawaii at Manoa, Stanford University, and Rutgers University will study the transcriptomes of Gambierdiscus, Staphylococcus aureus, and Enterococcus in Hawaiian coastal waters - toxin-producing species that pose significant health hazards to humans. Their goal is to elucidate the mechanisms associated with toxin production by Gambierdiscus and inactivation by sunlight of the bacterial pathogen, S. aureus, and the fecal indicator, Enterococcus. Because the transcriptome of an organism reflects the genes that are actively being expressed at any given time, this study, by elucidating levels of messenger RNA expression in the target organisms, should provide valuable insights into the mechanisms responsible for toxin production, responses to stress and/or subsequent bacterial inactivation. The research program will be organized around four working hypotheses: H1: Production of ciguatoxin by Gambierdiscus reflects the physiological condition of the culture as influenced by temperature, irradiance, and growth phase. H2: High throughput transcriptome analysis from toxin (+) and toxin (-) cultures will allow the identification of genes involved in ciguatoxin production and understanding of the light and nutrient conditions that favor this function. H3: Whereas E. faecalis is susceptible to indirect photoinactivation under exposure to sunlight in seawater, S. aureus is not. This is likely due to the presence of carotenoid pigments within the cells, which are able to quench reactive oxygen species. H4: E. faecalis and S. aureus respond to photo-stress in clear seawater by up-regulating genes that encode for proteins to repair cellular damage and mitigate oxidative stress; this "stressome" will change with increasing exposure to photostress, revealing the stress at which repair is no longer possible. Broader Impacts: The information that will be gathered in this study is expected to contribute significantly to advancing the field of risk management with respect to recreational water use and seafood consumption beyond reliance on empirical correlations and towards policies that are based on a mechanistic understanding of the threats these organisms pose to human health.

NeTS: Large: Collaborative Research: Closing the loop between traffic/pollution sensing and vehicle route control using traffic lights and navigators

2011-09-15T11:42:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 9/15/2011

Award Number: 1111811

NSF Funding Organization: CNS

Principal Investigator: Iftode, Liviu

Co-PI: Badri Nath

Award Amount: $789543

Program(s): NETWORK SCIENCE & ENGINEERING

Abstract: Today, most urban traffic control is rudimentary: in smaller cities, many traffic signals remain isolated, and while most larger cities have integrated systems of signals, they are still not dynamically timed in response to real-time vehicle information. Congestion fees, which are increasingly popular as a traffic management tool, are usually based on historical traffic data rather than varying dynamically to reflect instantaneous conditions. Recent advances in communication, navigation, and sensor technologies present far more opportunities to increase the intelligence and efficiency of metropolitan streets than are in place today. This project focuses on designing a real-time networked sensing and actuation platform for future 'intelligent' metropolitan traffic management with the aim of simultaneously reducing congestion, pollution, and traveler delays. The pivotal element of the proposed Green City intelligent transport architecture is the ability to 'close the loop' between traffic/pollution sensing and traffic control; a system achieved through an incentivized collaboration between the central traffic management and the drivers. In this collaboration, the 'intelligent' traffic signals and the on-board navigators play key roles. Traffic signals sense traffic characteristics and vehicular emissions, collect data from vehicle sensors, and broadcast traffic advisories, routings, and restrictions to on-board navigators. The on-board navigators choose optimal routings taking into account drivers' preferences, local perceived traffic, and signal timing. All this is enabled by efficient vehicle to roadway infrastructure communications from 3G channels to DSRC radios. Broader Impact: This project is highly interdisciplinary; it benefits from the collaboration and expertise of computer science, atmospheric science, and urban planning faculty and students. New education opportunities will result from the multidisciplinary nature of the project.

Collaborative Research: Ionic Liquids- Cations in the Spotlight and Single Atom Changes with Large Consequences

2011-09-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 9/15/2011

Award Number: 1112077

NSF Funding Organization: CHE

Principal Investigator: Castner, Edward

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $171000

Program(s): STRUCTURE,DYNAMICS &MECHANISMS

Abstract: The Chemical Structure, Dynamics and Mechanisms Program of the NSF Chemistry Division supports a Collaborative Research effort by Assoc. Prof. Claudio J. Margulis (P.I.) at the University of Iowa Dept. of Chemistry and by Prof. Edward W. Castner, Jr. (co-P.I.) at the Dept. of Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. The goal is to study in detail the structural and dynamical properties of ionic liquids using a combination of theoretical and computational methods from the Margulis group with experimental investigations done by the Castner group. Ionic liquids consist of flexible, asymmetric molecular cations and anions. Several reports have shown that very small modification of either the cation or the anion components of the ionic liquid can make dramatic changes to its properties. For example replacing the central nitrogen atom of a tetralkylammonium cation by a phosphorus atom can lead to a drop in the liquid viscosity by a factor of two. Our current understanding of these liquids does not provide a straightforward explanation of these results; our goal is to combine x-ray and NMR experiments on these liquids with detailed molecular simulations and theoretical analyses to explain this phenomenon. The observed x-ray scattering patterns from ionic liquids that all share the same bis(trifluoromethylsulfonyl)amide anion are remarkably similar. This is because the anions have more electron-rich atoms than the hydrocarbon-based cations. Thus, whereas the cations may be the most important organizational components in many liquids, the information content in the x-ray scattering provides mostly detailed information about the anions with information about the cations being obtained only indirectly. We will invert this circumstance by preparing ionic liquids with smaller anions such as nitrate, dicyanamide and acetate, so that the observed x-ray scattering patterns result predominantly from scattering by the cations. This will provide a new perspective on the structure of ionic liquids. It will also help in testing and designing better parameters for simulations. While the research is of a fundamental nature, the outcomes will inform the design, testing and selection of ionic liquids for a range of electrolyte applications and interaction with biological molecules and assemblies. These liquids are providing solutions to a number of significant challenges in energy storage, nanotechnology, processing of biomass, and pharmaceutical research. Undergraduate students, graduate students and postdoctoral researchers will receive training in the latest experimental methods, including synchrotron-based x-ray scattering experiments, two-dimensional NMR spectroscopy, molecular dynamics simulations, and theoretical methods applied to the statistical physics of complex liquids.

New Developments on Confidence Distributions (CDs) and Statistical Inference: Theory, Methodology and Applications

2011-09-01T14:32:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1107012

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Xie, Minge

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $41,015

Program(s): STATISTICS

Abstract: Basic statistical methods, such as point estimators, confidence intervals and p-values, are common inferential tools for analyzing information and data. Confidence distribution (CD), also known as a "distribution estimator," contains a wealth of information and is a useful device for constructing all types of frequentists' statistical inferences. Some recent developments have highlighted promising potentials of the CD concept as an effective inferential tool. As an emerging new field of research, there are many important topics and interesting questions yet to be answered. The proposed research addresses several issues related to the theoretical framework of CD inference, and provides useful inference tools for a number of problems where frequentist methods with good properties were previously unavailable or difficult to obtain. Specifically, it proposes to: 1) Develop a general and new framework for resampling, utilizing a concept called CD random variables, and investigate theoretical issues related to the development. This resampling approach can be considered as an extension of the well-studied and widely-applied bootstrap methods, albeit one which is much broader. 2) Develop a new and effective meta-analysis approach to combine CDs of multivariate parameters. This development not only provides solutions to several existing problems in conventional meta-analysis, but also is extended to form a "split and conquer" strategy, with supporting asymptotic theory, which has potential applications in mining data of huge size and large dimensions. 3) Develop and generalize the theoretical framework for CD inference including: developing an exact CD concept and inference procedure for small samples from discrete distributions, and introducing a CD probability measure for infinite dimensional parameters (processes) and exploring its applications in survival analysis and growth curve models. Advanced data acquisition and storage technologies have made it easy for gathering of data and information. The demand for effective statistical inference methods for processing and analyzing those information and data has never been greater. The proposal addresses several fundamental theoretical issues in statistical inference as well as a set of important practical problems arising from various disciplines. Advances in statistical theory and methodological developments are key aspects of the proposed activities. These advances not only solve the specific set of problems set forth in this proposal, but also bring about new perspectives to frequentist, fiducial and Bayesian approaches. Progress from this proposal should further advance theory of statistical inference and development of statistical methodology. It can also facilitate many applications in a variety of fields, including medical research, agriculture, industry, decision making, among others. The proposed research activities are also ideal for engaging student participation and training. Through these projects, students can acquire hands-on experience with real life problems. Such training is essential for them to become effective statisticians in the future.

ICES: Small: Distributed Computing with Adaptive Heuristics

2011-09-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1101690

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Wright, Rebecca

Co-PI: Aaron Jaggard

Award Amount: $398,267

Program(s): Inter Com Sci Econ Soc S (ICE)

Abstract: Dynamic environments where computational nodes or decision makers interact repeatedly over time arise in a variety of settings, such as Internet protocols, large-scale markets, social networks, and multi-processor computer architectures. In many such settings, the prescribed behavior of the nodes is simple, natural, and myopic, reflecting either the desire or necessity for computational nodes (whether humans or computers) to provide quick responses and have a limited computational burden. These "adaptive heuristics" can often, in the long run, move the global system in good directions and yield highly rational and sophisticated behavior, such as in game-theoretic results demonstrating the convergence of best-response or no-regret dynamics to equilibrium points. However, these positive results for adaptive heuristics in game theory are primarily based on the often unrealistic premise that nodes' actions are somehow synchronously coordinated. In many settings, where nodes can act at any time, this kind of synchrony is not available; it has long been known that asynchrony introduces substantial difficulties in distributed systems. The project draws ideas from distributed-computing theory and from game theory to investigate provable properties and possible worst-case system behavior of adaptive heuristics in asynchronous computational environments. A central thrust of project research is understanding the convergence behavior of distributed computing with adaptive heuristics. Identifying dynamics that provably converge to equilibria even in the presence of asynchrony both strengthens classic results regarding game dynamics and has implications across a wide domain of applications, including: convergence of game dynamics to pure Nash equilibria; stabilization of asynchronous circuits; and convergence to a stable routing tree of the Border Gateway Protocol, which handles Internet routing. Project results strengthen classic results regarding game dynamics and guide the design of new protocols for routing, congestion control, and other Internet environments. The outcomes of this project include new applications of existing techniques from game theory and distributed computing and the development of new techniques that are of use to both communities. A thorough understanding of convergence behaviors of systems is both of scientific interest and has significant potential to affect real-world systems and policy decisions. With an improved understanding of the impact that assumptions about the environment and participants of a complex system have on possible global and local outcomes, policy makers, system designers, and system participants can engage in more informed discussion and make better decisions.

Motives for Backlash Against Gender and Racial Vanguards

2011-09-01T11:56:00.008-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1122522

NSF Funding Organization: BCS

Principal Investigator: Rudman, Laurie

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $349997

Program(s): SOCIAL PSYCHOLOGY

Abstract: When people violate unwritten rules about behavior that is considered appropriate for their gender or their race, they are often subject to backlash effects (social and economic penalties for behaving in unexpected or "atypical" ways). For example, a Hispanic woman who behaves in a highly dominant or assertive fashion might be shunned or punished in certain settings when the same behavior would actually be rewarded for a White man. Backlash is an important phenomenon worthy of scientific inquiry because it prevents people who violate stereotypes from achieving their goals and aspirations. Backlash is also problematic because it prevents such people from serving as visible, outstanding role models (as people who have overcome cultural stereotypes). Importantly, backlash is not engaged in arbitrarily; it must usually be justified. The proposed research builds on recent advances in backlash theory, which suggest that people justify backlash by charging atypical women and men with violating stereotypic proscriptions (for women, prohibitions against dominance, and for African Americans, prohibitions against intelligence). In other words, almost no one criticizes a dominant woman for being "too powerful for a woman." Instead they criticize her for being "extremely difficult," "overbearing," or "domineering." Because these gender rules punish women for behaving in ways that could increase women's economic and social status, these rules tend to maintain and perpetuate lower cultural status among women. In addition, several experiments will also investigate backlash against atypical African Americans, as well as uniquely examine the intersection of gender and race (e.g., Are African American women generally at greater risk for experiencing backlash than are Black men, or does it depend on which stereotype people violate?). In 11 experimental laboratory-based studies and drawing from preliminary research, the PI will investigate the potential psychological motives for gender and race backlash. The Status Incongruity Hypothesis (SIH), developed by the PI, posits that people are discomfited by the conflict between women's gender status (which is low) and their high-status behavior (when they are agentic). Although people readily acknowledge their competence, they use the dominance penalty to justify backlash against them. The SIH presents a significant breakthrough in illuminating why women's progress has stalled, or in some cases, reversed. It can similarly be used to explain the experience of many ethnic minority persons. Instead of blaming stereotype violation per se, it views status-violations as culpable. As a result, a key motive for backlash concerns system-justification, a process whereby people defend the status quo to preserve their need to believe the world is just and fair. By understanding which factors play the largest role in backlash, how the factors might sometimes operate together, and whether the factors operate differently or in similar fashion for women and men, and for Blacks and Whites, the investigator will begin to shed light on the exact psychological motives and mechanisms behind backlash. Ultimately, this work will advance understanding about what motivates backlash and at the same time facilitate the design of effective interventions to attenuate its effects on women and minorities.

MRI: Acquisition of a High-Performance Computing Cluster for the Interdisciplinary Research in Computational and Integrative Biology

2011-09-01T11:56:00.007-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1126052

NSF Funding Organization: DBI

Principal Investigator: Grigoriev, Andrey

Co-PI: Michael Palis, Joseph Martin, Kwangwon Lee

Award Amount: $452844

Program(s): MAJOR RESEARCH INSTRUMENTATION

Abstract: This Major Research Instrumentation (MRI) grant provides funding to acquire a high-performance computing cluster to support computational biology and affiliated research in the newly formed Center for Computational and Integrative Biology (CCIB) at Rutgers University-Camden (RUC). The CCIB brings together an inter-disciplinary group of faculty from the departments of Biology, Mathematics, Computer Science, Physics, and Chemistry, with a number of compute-intensive, data-driven projects. This proposed acquisition will contribute to, and substantially improve, the computing power available to CCIB projects, affecting both computational and experimental research efforts in up to 20 laboratories at RUC. The cluster will power a large multi-departmental project focused on the development of a common computational platform for multi-purpose modeling of networks and pathways and will significantly facilitate research on (a) how the development of complex body patterns in biological organisms is controlled; (b) mechanisms of biological rhythms and clocks; (c) how normally-occurring random fluctuations (noise) can enhance biological signaling; (d) analysis of biological images and (e) mining the rapidly expanding world store of genomic data. The computing cluster will significantly strengthen a new interdisciplinary graduate program in CCIB at RUC, and will also strongly contribute to inter-disciplinary curricular development as part of Q-STEP, an innovative NSF program designed to increase the numbers undergraduates completing degrees in the sciences and mathematics at RUC. The state-of-the-art facility will thus form an integral component of extensive computational training for some 20 doctoral and 60 Masters students of CCIB to be enrolled over the next six years, and for Masters students in the existing RUC programs. The research and educational projects enabled by this acquisition will contribute to the mission of RUC to engage the surrounding community the impoverished urban area of Camden, NJ. The remarkable recent success of RUC programs in increasing participation of talented students from populations underrepresented in undergraduate science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) disciplines will allow CCIB to recruit exceptionally talented students from those populations. The CCIB will strongly encourage the participation of graduate students in a long-running outreach program to the local community. The proposed management plan foresees providing access to the cluster for external users. Minority-serving organizations, as well as research institutions and industrial partners, particularly start-ups collaborating with the CCIB, will be given preference. The computing cluster will enable CCIB to broaden and strengthen collaborations with other research and medical institutions in the area, contributing to the creation of a regional hotspot in southern New Jersey for life science and biomedical research, stimulating the biotechnology industry, and enhancing employment opportunities for the residents of southern New Jersey and its vicinity (Pennsylvania and Delaware).

Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Conservation and Development Implications of a United Nations Environmental Initiative in Aceh, Indonesia.

2011-09-01T11:56:00.006-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1129400

NSF Funding Organization: BCS

Principal Investigator: Schroeder, Richard

Co-PI: Abidah Setyowati

Award Amount: $11320

Program(s): GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL SCIENCES

Abstract: This doctoral dissertation research will assess efforts to attain the potentially competing goals of a major United Nations-sponsored climate change mitigation initiative through a case study of the Ulu Masen project in Aceh, Indonesia, one of the largest and most well-established such projects in the world. The United Nations originally conceived of its Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation (REDD) initiative exclusively as a market based climate change mitigation strategy. Under pressure from critics, the UN and other agencies have recently expanded the program?s agenda to include conservation and sustainable human development goals (REDD+), hence the "plus." This re-envisioning of REDD promised a "triple win" solution because it simultaneously promoted green economic growth (via carbon markets), protected the environment, and enhanced local community well-being. To date, robust empirical studies that gauge the effectiveness of the broader REDD+ policy agenda have been absent. Existing studies have tended to focus on technical issues related to implementation whereas this study will specifically examine critical questions to assess the abilities of the REDD+ project to contribute to the conservation and development of the region in which it is being implemented. Fieldwork in two village sites in the Ulu Masen area, Banda Aceh will be conducted over a period of ten months, during which time data will be gathered via a household survey, focus group discussions, participant observation, semi-structured and in-depth interviews, and archival research. The proposed research will contribute to a better understanding of REDD+ in the climate change literature through documenting and analyzing the set of innovations that have been implemented under the 'plus' in REDD+ initiatives. It will constitute an empirical study that analyzes the effectiveness of the expanded agenda envisioned by REDD+ policy makers. The proposed study will also examine the significance of local agency in shaping the global REDD+ agenda. Given that the REDD+ project is being implemented in Indonesia, the world?s second largest contributor of carbon emissions resulting from deforestation and one of its most critical biodiversity hotspots, suggest its potential for close monitoring as a model for future climate mitigation initiatives. The broader impact of the new knowledge created by this research will be to assist policy makers to develop better tools for the assessment of climate change mitigation projects, thereby ensuring that such projects are more likely to improve human development and empower forest dependent communities in the future. As a Doctoral Dissertation Research Improvement award, this award will provide support to enable a promising student to establish a strong independent research career.

U.S.- South Africa Collaboration: Catalyzing a Deep Neutral Hydrogen Survey with MeerKAT

2011-09-01T11:56:00.005-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1132987

NSF Funding Organization: OISE

Principal Investigator: Baker, Andrew

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $45360

Program(s): Catalyzing New Intl Collab

Abstract: Understanding how galaxies form and evolve across cosmic time is one of the central challenges of modern astrophysics. In the last fifteen years, astronomers have learned a great deal about distant galaxies in the early universe by studying the properties of their stars; however, much less is known about the properties of their gas, especially the relatively cool and diffuse material in which hydrogen is atomic (rather than ionized or molecular) in form. This project will take an important first step toward understanding the universe's neutral atomic hydrogen by catalyzing a new international collaboration that has been approved to conduct a 5000-hour survey with an array of radio telescopes being built in South Africa. The new array is known as MeerKAT, and the new survey has adopted the name "Looking At the Distant Universe with the MeerKAT Array" or LADUMA. NSF funding will allow 12 U.S. scientists to attend the LADUMA survey's inaugural "all hands" collaboration meeting in Cape Town, South Africa in late 2011 or early 2012. The local host will be Dr. Sarah Blyth of the University of Cape Town, who shares leadership duties for LADUMA with Dr. Benne Holwerda of the European Space Agency and Dr. Andrew Baker of Rutgers, the State University of New Jersey. The U.S. delegation will feature student participation and include representation from Rutgers, the National Radio Astronomy Observatory, the University of Arizona, the University of California at Berkeley, the University of Colorado, the University of New Mexico, the University of North Carolina, the University of Wisconsin, and West Virginia University. The intellectual merit of this project derives principally from the immense scientific potential of a survey that will ultimately be able to detect neutral atomic gas at an epoch when the universe was less than half its present age. The collaboration's first "all hands" meeting will bring together radio, optical, and theoretical astronomers from across the 56-person team to determine the optimal strategy for the survey and to lay the groundwork for focused preparatory efforts in key areas, such as the acquisition of complementary data with other telescopes and the establishment of joint supervision of students. Because Cape Town is the location of the MeerKAT engineering office, the meeting will also allow face-to-face discussions between LADUMA scientists and MeerKAT engineers. The broader impacts of the LADUMA collaboration include an opportunity to engage U.S. scientists and students in a new international research collaboration. All U.S. members of the LADUMA team have strong records of supervising students, and all have appointments that will facilitate recruitment of students to the survey in the future. Half of the U.S. LADUMA team have affiliations with institutions that are part of the optical Southern African Large Telescope (SALT) partnership, strengthening the bonds that already exist between these institutions and South Africa and catalyzing new relationships among the collaborators. The partnership will also result in opportunities for education and outreach in S. Africa. This award is being funded by NSF's Office of International Science and Engineering.

Structure-Property Studies of Novel Multifunctionally-Doped Core-Shell-Shell Nanomaterials for Improving Efficiency and Stability in Decontamination o

2011-09-01T11:56:00.004-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1134289

NSF Funding Organization: CBET

Principal Investigator: Asefa, Tewodros

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $325000

Program(s): Enviro Health & Safety of Nano

Abstract: 1134289 Asefa This NSF award by the Environmental Health and Safety of Nanotechnology program supports work by Professor Tewodros Asefa to develop and investigate new classes of TiO2- and ZnO-based core-shell-shell nanoparticles (particles with one ten-thousandth the diameter of a human hair in size) capable of efficiently photo-decomposing or converting in the presence of sunlight common organic pollutants in the environment and in waste water into harmless or even useful substances such as CO2 and H2O. The successful accomplishment of the proposed work will result in not only robust materials useful for environmental decontamination but also easily recoverable and recyclable materials for multiple uses. Such materials will be useful for recycling waste water at a time of shortages of clean water at various locations in the U.S. and around the world. The research findings should also inform future research directions in synthetic approaches to novel multifunctionally-doped efficient nanomaterials for efficient photodegradation of organic pollutants in waste water. The project?s societal benefits include advancement of systematic, less costly synthetic methods to create materials capable of cleaning environmentally prevalent pollutants from waste water with the direct use of solar energy. The project will also allow the training of a number of post-doctoral researchers and graduate and undergraduate students who will be involved in the research project in the PI's lab. These students, including those from groups underrepresented in sciences and engineering fields, will be trained in a variety of synthetic methods involving nanomaterials synthesis, their characterization, photocatalysis, and scientific/engineering approaches utilized in environmental remediation. Furthermore, the PI will use results from the proposed work in his undergraduate and graduate course offerings in nanoscience, materials chemistry and nanotechnology at Rutgers, The State University of New Jersey. This project will also enable the PI to continue to involve high school senior students in research through Rutgers' Governor's School program during the summer semester. In addition, the PI will use the results of the research project in presentations to teach the potential implications of nanoscience and nanotechnology for general audiences attending Science Fairs, as well as in Discovery Day activities at Rutgers. The PI will further use these opportunities to draw students' interest into science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields and to change students' (and parents') perceptions about science and engineering disciplines.

Collaborative research: Controls affecting greenhouse gas fluxes in restored and natural tidal wetlands

2011-09-01T11:56:00.003-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1133275

NSF Funding Organization: CBET

Principal Investigator: Schafer, Karina

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $82687

Program(s): ENVIRONMENTAL SUSTAINABILITY

Abstract: 1133275 (Schafer). Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2) are largely unknown for estuarine wetland areas. The notion that constructed wetlands are net radiative sinks has not been verified for coastal wetlands and many of the studies informing this hypothesis have not considered N2O fluxes. Fluxes of nitrogen and carbon species between estuarine wetlands, the atmosphere, and an adjacent river will be measured along a hydroperiod-, salinity-, and mitigation gradient and scaled to the ecosystem level. The eddy covariance technique will be the principal method used to constrain estimates of the CO2 and CH4 fluxes. Flux chamber and subsurface dissolved CH4, N2O, and inorganic carbon measurements combined with modeling/scaling of these fluxes will be used to determine the N2O fluxes and verify the accuracy of this technique by comparing CO2 and CH4 fluxes from both techniques. Net losses of dissolved organic carbon, dissolved inorganic carbon, and dissolved nitrogen from selected marshes via tidal flow will also be monitored at point inlets to these marshes. Concurrent photosynthesis measurements of Phragmites australis, a C3-plant, and Spartina spp, C4-plants, will account for the CO2 exchange by these species. This gas-exchange is driven by biophysical, hydrological and hydrochemical drivers. The balance between carbon sequestration in brackish coastal wetlands and CH4 and N2O emissions from the same systems remains unclear. Thus, monitoring and modeling the effects of these drivers on overall greenhouse gas exchange, at the individual plant and ecosystem-level, will help assess these controls and scale GHG fluxes in urban tidal wetlands to the ecosystem level. A combination of bottom-up approaches, via measurements and process-based models developed by the PIs, and top-down approaches via eddy flux measurements will be used to tackle the different drivers of biosphere-atmosphere GHG exchange and enable scaling to ecosystem and regional levels. This research will enhance our understanding of coastal wetland GHG dynamics in urban tidal marshes. These new insights will be shared with the many visitors of the Meadowlands Environmental Center, including ca. 15,000 schoolchildren who participate in a wide range of workshops and educational activities about urban estuaries each year. This research will also include funding for a Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) student to be hired for a summer internship to assist the graduate students in field data collection and outreach activities. In addition, every four years since 2003, Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute (MERI) has collaborated with government agencies and universities to sponsor the Meadowlands Symposium, a gathering of over 200 research scientists, students, and professionals, to discuss and address environmental issues of urban estuaries. The project will also train two graduate students, one at Rutgers University and one at Princeton University. Results from this research will be disseminated via conference presentations and peer-reviewed journal articles. The experimental setup and data generated will be used by both PIs to augment hands-on experiences for students in their graduate and undergraduate experiments. This research will yield a rich data set, maintained by MERI, that will be highly valuable to the green-house-gas modeling scientific community 1133074 (Jaffe). Greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions of nitrous oxide (N2O), methane (CH4), and carbon dioxide (CO2) are largely unknown for estuarine wetland areas. The notion that constructed wetlands are net radiative sinks has not been verified for coastal wetlands and many of the studies informing this hypothesis have not considered N2O fluxes. Fluxes of nitrogen and carbon species between estuarine wetlands, the atmosphere, and an adjacent river will be measured along a hydroperiod-, salinity-, and mitigation gradient and scaled to the ecosystem level. The eddy covariance technique will be the principal method used to constrain estimates of the CO2 and CH4 fluxes. Flux chamber and subsurface dissolved CH4, N2O, and inorganic carbon measurements combined with modeling/scaling of these fluxes will be used to determine the N2O fluxes and verify the accuracy of this technique by comparing CO2 and CH4 fluxes from both techniques. Net losses of dissolved organic carbon, dissolved inorganic carbon, and dissolved nitrogen from selected marshes via tidal flow will also be monitored at point inlets to these marshes. Concurrent photosynthesis measurements of Phragmites australis, a C3-plant, and Spartina spp, C4-plants, will account for the CO2 exchange by these species. This gas-exchange is driven by biophysical, hydrological and hydrochemical drivers. The balance between carbon sequestration in brackish coastal wetlands and CH4 and N2O emissions from the same systems remains unclear. Thus, monitoring and modeling the effects of these drivers on overall greenhouse gas exchange, at the individual plant and ecosystem-level, will help assess these controls and scale GHG fluxes in urban tidal wetlands to the ecosystem level. A combination of bottom-up approaches, via measurements and process-based models developed by the PIs, and top-down approaches via eddy flux measurements will be used to tackle the different drivers of biosphere-atmosphere GHG exchange and enable scaling to ecosystem and regional levels. This research will enhance our understanding of coastal wetland GHG dynamics in urban tidal marshes. These new insights will be shared with the many visitors of the Meadowlands Environmental Center, including ca. 15,000 schoolchildren who participate in a wide range of workshops and educational activities about urban estuaries each year. This research will also include funding for a Louis Stokes Alliances for Minority Participation (LSAMP) student to be hired for a summer internship to assist the graduate students in field data collection and outreach activities. In addition, every four years since 2003, Meadowlands Environmental Research Institute (MERI) has collaborated with government agencies and universities to sponsor the Meadowlands Symposium, a gathering of over 200 research scientists, students, and professionals, to discuss and address environmental issues of urban estuaries. The project will also train two graduate students, one at Rutgers University and one at Princeton University. Results from this research will be disseminated via conference presentations and peer-reviewed journal articles. The experimental setup and data generated will be used by both PIs to augment hands-on experiences for students in their graduate and undergraduate experiments. This research will yield a rich data set, maintained by MERI, that will be highly valuable to the green-house-gas modeling scientific community

Electrodes for Large Area Electronics Based on Partially Oxidized Graphene

2011-09-01T11:56:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1128335

NSF Funding Organization: ECCS

Principal Investigator: Chhowalla, Manish

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $360000

Program(s): ELECT, PHOTONICS, & MAG DEVICE

Abstract: The concept of large area electronics builds on facile solution processing and inexpensive raw materials. Towards this end, the project has two primary technical tasks. In the first task, we intend to thoroughly characterize and optimize a novel form of solution processable graphene that has superior optical and electrical properties. In the second task, we intend to demonstrate a facile patterning method for integration into large area organic electronics. The intellectual merit of the proposal arises from its materials science impact ? a realistic material that is transparent, flexible, solution processable and can be readily implemented as universal electrodes in a variety of organic electronics devices has yet to be demonstrated. The broader impacts of the proposed project arise from the societal impact of a fast switching and low power consuming electronics that are inexpensive will be tremendous. Large area electronics are used in wide ranging consumer devices and the use of reduced graphene electrodes could lead to devices that would encourage more standby operations, save energy and extend battery life. The educational goals of this proposal are to provide research experience for undergraduates, provide laboratory modules for K ? 12 teachers that can be demonstrated in schools, and to participate in the enrichment activities of the Nanotechnology for Clean Energy IGERT Program (Director is the PI of this proposal). In addition to the above, an active international collaboration is planned with Imperial College London.

Three New DIMACS Special Focus Programs

2011-09-01T11:56:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1144502

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Wright, Rebecca

Co-PI: Fred Roberts

Award Amount: $698995

Program(s): ALGORITHMIC FOUNDATIONS|TRUSTWORTHY COMPUTING|IIS SPECIAL PROJECTS|INFRASTRUCTURE PROGRAM

Abstract: DIMACS, the Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science, has a long history of bringing together groups of researchers with different interests and backgrounds, to study and advance the state of the art in discrete mathematics, theoretical computer science, statistics, operations research, and related areas, as well as their applications in a wide variety of domains including telecommunications, homeland security, the physical sciences, engineering, and public health. DIMACS's signature activity is a "special focus" (SF), a multi-year program of coordinated activities involving hundreds of diverse participants and addressing a broad, important topic that is poised for rapid advancement and has high potential for scientific, industrial, and societal impact. The project consists of the following three interacting SFs: 1). Information Sharing and Dynamic Data Analysis: The ability to instrument, monitor and collect data provides huge potential to improve life: designing better systems, better managing interactions between large complex systems, identifying subtle problems and bad outcomes. More work is needed to realize systems that span multiple, diverse, noisy data sources and use them to correctly draw conclusions and make decisions. The SF addresses data preparation and quality, privacy and security, continual and distributed processing, and fusion and inference, exploring applications in areas including web search engines and online social networks, healthcare, urban planning and traffic management, and homeland security. 2). Algorithms and Energy: It has become a major national and global priority to maintain a robust supply of energy that meets the demands of a growing economy and balances costs and environmental constraints. Themes of the SF are multiscale temporal models, multiscale spatial models, risk and reliability measures, data representation and model sharing, and stochastic optimization that can contribute to our ability to analyze new dynamic energy pricing algorithms, optimize investments in energy generation, storage and transmission, manage a dynamic new power grid, and analyze plans and protocols for electric vehicles and green information technology. 3). Cybersecurity: New emerging networks and applications raise more than ever the challenge to provide security and privacy in a world where everything is connected via wired or wireless networks. SF themes address critical infrastructure systems such as the power grid, applications with a high societal, industrial and governmental impact such as the changing landscape of cyber attacks, mechanisms for identity management, security for new paradigms like cloud computing, and fundamental studies such as cryptography, information theory, and coding theory. These three SFs will lead to a great deal of research activity, including significant new scientific accomplishments and significant new directions of scientific research. The project has significant potential benefit to society: improved capabilities to handle diverse, dynamic data in turn enables advances in medicine, homeland security, commerce, and other areas; improving and diversifying the energy infrastructure helps maintain affordable access to energy while mitigating the environmental costs of doing so; and improvements in cybersecurity are needed to ensure that we can justifiably rely on systems we use throughout our daily lives. The project also enhances educational programs for students and faculty from K-12 to graduate students.

EAGER: Pulsed Laser Assisted Exfoliation of Single Crystalline SiC Thin Layers for Cost Effective Micro-Device Fabrication

2011-09-01T11:56:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1144637

NSF Funding Organization: CMMI

Principal Investigator: Ozel, Tugrul

Co-PI: George Celler

Award Amount: $130101

Program(s): MATERIALS PROCESSING AND MANFG

Abstract: This EArly-concept Grant for Exploratory Research (EAGER) grant provides funding for testing the feasibility of pulsed laser processing that would enable high rate and cost effective exfoliation of thin single crystalline silicon carbide (SiC) layers suitable for fabrication of micro-devices. The attractiveness of single crystalline SiC in a variety of device applications is counteracted by the very high cost of substrates. The main goal of this project is to exfoliate multiple thin layers from one standard thickness SiC wafer using hydrogen ion implantation and laser processing, and transferring such layers to silicon or polycrystalline SiC substrates in order to enable a broader use of this material. Hydrogen ion implantation into SiC can form a zone of voids and microcracks at a depth approximating the implantation range, and lead to exfoliation at subsequent very high temperatures. The proposed approach of laser-assisted exfoliation would utilize a lower implantation dose and lower annealing temperatures, thus reducing damage and allowing bonding of SiC to temperature-sensitive substrates. Interactions between ion implantation conditions, laser irradiation, and heating will be explored to gain preliminary understanding of the path leading to exfoliation of continuous single crystalline layers suitable for electronic devices. Feasibility studies of the proposed process will be conducted and structural and electrical properties of processed samples will be investigated. This research will concentrate on a 4H polytype of SiC, as it is of most relevance for power and high voltage applications, but laser-assisted exfoliation should also be extendable to other semiconductors and wide bandgap materials, such as gallium nitride (GaN). If successful, the results of this exploratory research will lead to development of a rapid and cost-effective method of exfoliating single crystalline layers of SiC and bonding them to lower cost substrates that are compatible with high performance electronic, photonic, sensor, or MEMS device operation.

CSR: Small: Scheduling Energy Consumption in Green Datacenters

2011-09-01T11:42:00.003-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1117368

NSF Funding Organization: CNS

Principal Investigator: Bianchini, Ricardo

Co-PI: Thu Nguyen

Award Amount: $420000

Program(s): COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Abstract: The massive energy consumption of today?s datacenters translates into high monetary and environmental costs; the latter because most of the electricity produced in the US comes from burning coal, a greenhouse-gas-intensive approach for producing energy. We refer to such energy as ?brown?, as opposed to the ?green? energy produced by clean energy sources. An increasingly popular approach for reducing both costs is for datacenters to generate their own green energy or draw power directly from a nearby green energy plant. In light of this trend, the goal of this project is to study how best to exploit solar and wind energy for lowering energy costs and brown energy consumption in datacenters. The major challenge in using these types of green energy is that they are not always available. In this context, our research focuses on: (1) Characterizing and modeling datacenter workloads and green energy production; (2) Designing load scheduling and energy usage policies; (3) Designing energy management policies that account for green energy; and (4) Designing systems that leverage our models and policies. Our project will impact society in many ways, including: (1) reducing the brown energy consumption and the carbon footprint of datacenters; (2) promoting the generation and consumption of green energy; and (3) creating the machinery needed to exploit green energy in datacenters for highest beneﬁt. Furthermore, we believe that undertaking work with such clearly deﬁned societal impact will help us attract and train a diverse and committed set of undergraduate and graduate students.

Collaborative Research: Computer-Supported Math Discourse Among Teachers and Students

2011-09-01T11:42:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1118888

NSF Funding Organization: DRL

Principal Investigator: Powell, Arthur

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $165702

Program(s): DISCOVERY RESEARCH K-12

Abstract: This full research and development project is to design, develop, and test a cutting-edge learning environment where students and teachers solve mathematical problems and communicate their thinking with others through the virtual environment. The major focus is to increase the quality and quantity of significant math discourse among mathematics teachers and their students by using the virtual learning environment. The researchers will test the usability of the learning environment for engaging students in high quality discourse. The researchers will also examine the impact of the virtual learning environment on student significant mathematical discourse and achievement. The project uses a design research method as well as summative evaluations to achieve research and development goals. Mixed methods will be used to examine the impact of the virtual learning environment on student significant mathematical discourse and achievement. The findings of the project contribute to the field in three ways: (1) The virtual learning environment can be both an effective pedagogical tool and a research tool in mathematics education; (2) It will contribute to our understanding about the nature of mathematical discourse online as well as about ways to foster the quality and quantity of significant math discourse among teachers and their students; and (3) This project can provide insights into effective online deliveries of courses.

TC: Small: Exploring Malware Detection on Mobile Platforms

2011-09-01T11:42:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1117711

NSF Funding Organization: CNS

Principal Investigator: Iftode, Liviu

Co-PI: Vinod Ganapathy

Award Amount: $140945

Program(s): TRUSTWORTHY COMPUTING

Abstract: Mobile devices such as smartphones, netbooks and laptops are increasingly beginning to store vast amounts of personal information, such as email, friend lists, current location, and passwords to online banking websites. They are therefore swiftly becoming prized bounties for malicious entities. This project is investigating new techniques to detect malicious software on mobile devices. This project is investigating three key thrusts (1) energy-aware malware detection, (2) malware detector protection using a new hardware architecture called Limited Local Memory, and (3) collaborative mobile malware detection in a social network environment. The first thrust develops a framework to quantitatively investigate how the energy-constrained nature of mobile devices impacts their ability to run malware detection tools. It is then using the framework to explore energy-aware malware detection. The second thrust explores how emerging multicore technology on smartphones can be usefully leveraged for security if each core is equipped with a small amount of private memory. The third trend explores how the convergence of smartphones and social networking can enable better malware detection. The primary contribution of the project is in acknowledging the need for novel approaches for mobile malware detection. As we increasingly rely on our smartphones to support our daily activities, their security becomes paramount. The outcomes of the project are being disseminated to increase public awareness of mobile malware and anti-malware. In addition, course material related to the project will be incorporated into the Master's degree curriculum at Rutgers.

Collaborative Research: BEST Synthesis: The variable transport of pollock eggs and larvae over the Bering shelf - A marriage of physics and biology

2011-09-01T11:42:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1107804

NSF Funding Organization: ARC

Principal Investigator: Curchitser, Enrique

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $193953

Program(s): ARCTIC NATURAL SCIENCES

Abstract: The recent Bering Sea Ecosystem Study (BEST) program and its partner the Bering Sea Integrated Ecosystem Research Program (BSIERP) have resulted in a better understanding of the roles of temperature and stratification in regulating the walleye pollock population, but the role of advection remains poorly understood. Therefore, funds are provided to elucidate how the ocean?s response to variable atmospheric forcing affects the distribution of walleye pollock (Theragra chalcogramma) eggs and larvae on the eastern Bering Sea shelf. The proposed approach builds on advances made under the BEST-BSIERP program and will use a combination of new modeling results and recent observations to examine historical dispersal pathways of pollock eggs and larvae and will simulate how these might change in the future under various scenarios. Advection, the transport of material or a property by the movement of a fluid, plays a major role in the life cycle of many fish populations because early life history stages depend on quasi-passive transport from spawning areas to suitable nursery grounds. Drift trajectories of eggs and larvae and the physical and biological conditions they encounter during the first few months after spawning are highly variable and are linked to regional and broad-scale climate conditions. Thus atmospheric and oceanographic variability affects the survival of early life stages and the resulting year class strength of fish populations, such as walleye Pollock, on the eastern Bering shelf. The results of this project will improve our understanding of the interactions of physical and biological processes on walleye Pollock and, consequently, lead to better management of this important fishery.

CAREER: Explaining the Connection between Lyman Alpha Emitters and Typical Present-day Galaxies

2011-09-01T11:41:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1055919

NSF Funding Organization: AST

Principal Investigator: Gawiser, Eric

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $843442

Program(s): CAREER: FACULTY EARLY CAR DEV

Abstract: The PI proposes to 1) use computer simulations and galaxy formation models to identify the properties of early progenitors of our Milky Way galaxy, 2) perform spectroscopy to measure the physical properties of early galaxies called Lyman Alpha Emitters and to compare them with those expected for Milky Way progenitors, and 3) identify the progenitors of various types of present-day galaxies by analyzing the spatial clustering of 800,000 Lyman Alpha Emitters discovered by the Hobby-Eberly Telescope Dark Energy Experiment (HETDEX). Integrating this research with education presents an opportunity to explain galaxy formation to undergraduate students. These students are motivated to learn about current research but require hands-on interaction to visualize challenging concepts such as dark matter "halos" and galaxy "merger trees". To this end, the PI will develop a new version of Rutgers University's introductory astronomy course, replacing half of the lectures with interactive computer visualization laboratories to improve students' conceptual understanding. The PI will teach this class each year, using standard assessment methods to measure effectiveness. This integrated program of research and education will have several broader impacts. It promises to improve understanding of galaxy formation by connecting the observable universe of galaxies to the invisible halos of dark matter that host them. Several undergraduates, two Ph.D. thesis students, a postdoctoral researcher, and an educational researcher supervised by the PI will be trained for their own careers in research and education. Results of the educational experiment will be published to allow successful techniques to be implemented at other institutions. The PI will disseminate computer visualization laboratories and education research results online and at AAS and AAPT meetings. The PI's research will reduce systematic uncertainties to assist HETDEX and the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope in determining the nature of the mysterious dark energy that fills the cosmos.

RI: Medium: Collaborative Research: Teaching Computers to Follow Verbal Instructions

2011-09-01T11:41:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 9/1/2011

Award Number: 1065195

NSF Funding Organization: IIS

Principal Investigator: Littman, Michael

Co-PI: Smaranda Muresan

Award Amount: $703922

Program(s): ROBUST INTELLIGENCE

Abstract: The goal of this research is to develop techniques that will permit a computer or robot to learn from examples to carry out multipart tasks specified in natural language on behalf of a user. It will study each of these components in isolation, but a significant focus will be on integrating them into a coherent system. The project will also leverage this technology to provide an entry point to educate non- or pre-computer science students about the capabilities and utility of computers as tools. Our approach uses three main subcomponents, each of which requires innovative research to solve its portion of the overall problem. In addition, the integrated architecture is a novel contribution of this work. The three components are (1) recognizing intention from observed behavior using extensions of inverse reinforcement learning, (2) translating instructions to task specifications using novel techniques in the area of natural language processing, and (3) creating generalized task specifications to match user intentions using probabilistic methods for creating and managing abstractions. The goal of the work is develop technology for an improved ability for human users to interact with intelligent agents, the incorporation of novel AI research insights and activities into education and outreach activities, and the development of resources for the AI educator community. In addition to permitting intelligent agents to be developed and trained in the future for a broad range of complex application domains, the interactive agents that we will develop will be used for outreach and student learning.

Collaborative Research: Genetic and Biochemical Dissection of Plant Sulfate Transceptor

2011-08-15T11:56:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1121521

NSF Funding Organization: IOS

Principal Investigator: Leustek, Thomas

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $340001

Program(s): PROCESSES STRUCS & INTEGRITY

Abstract: The goal is to understand how plants sense their nutritional status with respect to the macronutrient sulfur (S). Plants are able to adjust their growth and physiology in response to the level of mineral nutrients available to them in soil. When nutrient level is low they become more efficient at nutrient utilization. Very little is known about how plants sense nutrients or even what exactly is sensed. The current project could set the stage for improving nutrient use efficiency thereby reducing the input costs and environmental impact associated with the use of fertilizers in agriculture. A forward genetic approach has been used to identify a gene that is involved in S-sensing in the model plant Arabidopsis thaliana. The project will use both genetic and molecular approaches to understand how the sensor functions. What is learned will be a breakthrough not only for the field of plant S-nutrition, but also for the larger field of nutrient receptors. The results from these activities will be disseminated at symposia, conferences and in journal publications. The genetic resources generated by the project will be made available to the research community. This is a collaborative project between two institutions, Lehman College of the City University of New York, a federally designated Hispanic Institution, and Rutgers University. The project will recruit minority undergraduate students and high school teachers to participate in research at both institutions through an active exchange program. The aim is to use a provocative research project to stimulate the interest of students from minority groups to pursue careers in plant biology and to enhance the US competitiveness in science.

Collaborative Research: Towards Unified Cloud Computing and Management

2011-08-15T11:56:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1127974

NSF Funding Organization: IIP

Principal Investigator: Pompili, Dario

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $50000

Program(s): INDUSTRY/UNIV COOP RES CENTERS

Abstract: Center for Autonomic Computing (CAC) Proposal #1127965 This proposal seeks funding for the Center for Autonomic Computing (CAC) sites at the University of Florida (lead), Rutgers University, the University of Arizona, and Mississippi State University. Funding Requests for Fundamental Research are authorized by an NSF approved solicitation, NSF 10-601. The solicitation invites I/UCRCs to submit proposals for support of industry-defined fundamental research. A unified cloud computing environment enabling anytime, anyplace access to limitless computing resources still represents an ideal given the current environment of heterogeneous resources distributed geographically and offered by vastly different service providers. The proposed effort spans the expertise and capabilities of the four center sites. The work aims to apply autonomic computing principles to address elements such as security, inter-cloud networking, and resource provisioning via thermal sensing and model-based adaptive performance control in order to create a framework for realization and management of trustworthy unified cloud computing environments. Results will be derived from the implementation of the proposed approaches on a planned distributed cloud testbed. Advancement of the cloud computing paradigm has the potential to enable transformative change to user access to information technology enabling major advances in economic productivity and access to a broad range of new services. The proposed center effort works with a small member company and large systems integrator member. Industry will further benefit via dissemination of the results through the center membership and the extension of the center?s project portfolio into this area. Efficiency gains potentially realized at cloud computer centers from the proposed efforts has the potential to reduce energy costs system wide. The work plans to bring together a distributed cloud environment deployed across CAC sites to establish an open testbed for research and development of inter-cloud interoperability that has the potential to serve as a resource for the work of the broader community in this important area.

EAGER: Adaptive Methods for Scalable Dissemination and Retrieval of Scientific Information

2011-08-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1142251

NSF Funding Organization: IIS

Principal Investigator: Kantor, Paul

Co-PI: Paul Ginsparg, Thorsten Joachims, David Blei, Peter Frazier

Award Amount: $299501

Program(s): INFO INTEGRATION & INFORMATICS

Abstract: This project seeks dramatically improved access to, and dissemination of, scientific information. Working with cooperating scientific users, it exploits synergies among three important innovations. These are: (1) adaptive and domain specific automatic derivation of topical representations. These topics describe both the documents in the collection, and the interests of the users, during particular searches. The topics support mechanisms for collaborative recommendation, and for exploring the precise contours of each user,s need. (2) Recognition that a combination or set of several items, together, is worth much more (or perhaps much less) than the sum of the values of the items individually. The arXiv experimental system (arXiv_XS) uses topics, and user feedback, to model the complexity of the user's need and interests. (3) Based on these innovations, the system can probe user's interest, selecting items where the user's feedback greatly improves the system's model of that user and his or her search. This "exploration" is designed to improve the systems performance, with minimal degradation of the current search. All these innovations are studied together with complex experimental design and statistical analysis; users may also volunteer to be interviewed, by the researchers, to provide richer information about their experiences with the system. Researchers from Rutgers, Cornell and Princeton lead the project. This exploratory project focuses on the following tasks: (1) develop a richly instrumented voluntary alternative interface to the arXiv, with suitable IRB consent materials supporting active user feedback in the research process, as users search; (2) implement three specific innovative technologies (topics, sets, probes); (3) study their impact on system effectiveness, using experimental design and well-defined performance measures; (4) collect rich user assessments, by telephone and online interviews; (5) assess scalability with respect to the size of the collection, and the size of the "communities of interest" that define the topical user models; (6) seek relations at other domain-specific archives, for potential future studies. If successful, this research will refute a perception that improvement in access and dissemination of scientific literature requires massive techniques adapted from the commercial models for recommender systems and crowd-sourcing. This research will also add to on experimental design, user modeling, and the study of active learning and exploratory system designs. This research will accelerate the production and sharing of scientific information, initially at the arXiv, and subsequently, wherever these innovations are implemented. The research aims to enable researchers who never meet each other to form an "invisible college" by enriching the arXiv systems understanding of all of its users. The project entails some risks, as users may be unwilling to share information about their research interests. While malevolent persons might seek to spam the system, falsely marking information as useful, it is anticipated that scientific communities will generate far less spam than does the world at large. Results of the research will be made available to other researchers, and incorporated in courses at all three universities. The Web site (http://arxiv_xs.rutgers.edu) is used to disseminate information and results from this project.

Hyperbolic Kac-Moody Group Symmetry and Applications

2011-08-15T11:42:00.007-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1101282

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Carbone, Lisa

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $138041

Program(s): ALGEBRA,NUMBER THEORY,AND COM

Abstract: This project concerns hyperbolic Kac-Moody groups, which are infinite dimensional Lie groups that have yet been extensively studied. We are interested in the Lie groups of infinite dimensional hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebras which contain affine Kac-Moody subalgebras. Some of the proposed problems are physically motivated. Our study of physical theories such as supergravity,a theory that incorporates both supersymmetry and general relativity, has revealed a number of compelling and intriguing mathematical problems, consistent with open problems in Kac-Moody group theory. The proposed work is the first mathematical initiative that aims to apply the symmetry properties of hyperbolic Kac-Moody groups to the study of supergravity models in theoretical physics. While some of these correspondences of hyperbolic Kac-Moody symmetry with supergravity theories are conjectural, developing a full mathematical theory of hyperbolic Kac-Moody groups and their symmetric spaces amenable to computation will have a significant impact on the understanding of open problems concerning the symmetry groups of supergravity. The objective of this project is to advance understanding in the study of algebraic symmetries underlying high energy theoretic physics. Almost all finite dimensional semisimple Lie groups and Lie algebras occur in space-time symmetries and the development of the Standard Model of particle physics, which could not have progressed without an understanding of symmetries and group transformations. Infinite dimensional generalizations, known as Kac-Moody algebras and their associated groups, naturally form two distinct classes, namely affine and hyperbolic. By the 1980's the class of affine Kac-Moody algebras was shown to have wide applications in physical theories such as elementary particle theory, quantum field theory, gauge theory, conformal field theory, gravity and string theory. This project concerns Lie groups of infinite dimensional hyperbolic Kac-Moody algebras which contain affine Kac-Moody subalgebras.

Spherical varieties in the Langlands program

2011-08-15T11:42:00.006-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1101471

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Sakellaridis, Ioannis

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $116376

Program(s): ALGEBRA,NUMBER THEORY,AND COM

Abstract: The objective of this project is to investigate various aspects of the relationship between spherical varieties and the Langlands program. It is motivated by recent conjectures relating periods of automorphic forms over spherical subgroups to Euler products of functionals arising from the Plancherel formula of a spherical variety, and expressing the support of Plancherel measure in terms of Arthur parameters. A major part of the project is devoted to creating trace formula-theoretic tools, both locally and globally, necessary to put the conjectures in the correct setting, to clarify some aspects and to prove particular instances of them. Other parts include extending previous harmonic-analytic results and developing a relative trace formula in specific cases in order to analyze the pertinent periods of automorphic forms. L-functions are very central objects in various branches of number theory, and there are strong conjectures and results (in and around the Langlands program) relating most of the interesting types of L-functions to those L-functions which are called automorphic. Automorphic L-functions are studied by constructions of global harmonic analysis, that is explicit integrals of functions on the quotient of a Lie group by a discrete, arithmetic subgroup, but these constructions remain mysterious after many decades of use. A lot of them involve spherical ("large") subgroups, and a general theory has started to emerge which connects global harmonic analysis to Euler products (and hence L-functions) via local harmonic analysis on spherical varieties. According to this theory, which for now is mostly conjectural, the local Langlands conjecture admits a generalization to the harmonic analysis of a spherical variety over a local field, where a "dual group" is attached to the spherical variety and describes the representations distinguished by it; and spherical periods of automorphic forms, satisfying certain assumptions, are eulerian in a very explicit way and, hence, related to L-functions or special values of those. This project aims at improving these conjectures and investigating ways for their proof, mainly by trace formula-theoretic techniques.

Spectral theory of Complex Laplacians and Applications

2011-08-15T11:42:00.005-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1101678

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Fu, Siqi

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $147878

Program(s): ANALYSIS PROGRAM

Abstract: Complex analysis of several variables is a branch of mathematics where analysis, algebra, and geometry intertwine. The complex Laplacians studied in this project are the second-order differential operators associated with the Cauchy-Riemann or tangential Cauchy-Riemann complexes. The main goal of the project is to study the spectral theory of these Laplacians, in particular, the interplay between the spectral behavior of the complex Laplacians and the geometric structure of the underlying spaces. Problems to be addressed in this project include explicit computations, positivity, pure discreteness, and stability of the spectrum. The principal investigator will also study boundary behavior of the Bergman and Szego kernels, as well as the relationship between these kernels. Complex analysis is an essential tool in physics and engineering. The classical differential operators known under their technical names as the Dirichlet- and Neumann-Laplacians have been used to study heat diffusion and fluid dynamics by physicists and engineers for more than two centuries. The so-called complex Laplacians are the analogues of these classical operators in the setting of complex analysis in several variables. Spectral theory of differential operators plays an important role in many areas of biological, medical, and physical sciences. For example, the inverse problem--the problem of determining the shape from spectral properties--has applications in fields such as medical imaging. Pure discreteness of the spectra of the complex Laplacians is intimately related to diamagnetism and paramagnetism, topics widely studied in quantum physics and chemistry. Ideas and techniques developed in this project can potentially have repercussions in other branches of mathematics and sciences. The project also has significant impact on the development of human resources: the principal investigator will develop topics courses and engage graduate and undergraduate students in research activities. Research in this project will be incorporated into the teaching and learning process. In addition, this project will also facilitate interdisciplinary research activities among mathematicians, biologists, and computer scientists.

Volume Optimization on Triangulated 3-Manifolds

2011-08-15T11:42:00.004-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1105808

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Luo, Feng

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $95925

Program(s): TOPOLOGY

Abstract: This project investigates the connection between geometry and topology of 3-manifolds from the point of view of triangulations. This is closely related to the discretization of SL(2,C) Chern-Simon theory in 3-dimensions. The PI proposes to use the volume functional on the finite dimensional space of circle valued angle structures as the basic tool. Given a closed triangulated 3-manifold or pseudo 3-manifold, there are Haken's theory of normal surfaces, and Thurston's algebraic gluing equation associated to the triangulation. Haken's theory is topological and studies surfaces in 3-manifolds, and Thurston's equation is geometric and tries to construct hyperbolic metrics from triangulations. Solutions to Haken's equation are well understood. However, there is no known existence theorem for Thurston's equation. The main objective of the proposal is to establish conditions on the triangulation to guarantee the existence of solutions to Thurston's equation. The PI will focus on the following conjecture relating Haken's equation with Thurston's equation. It states that for any closed minimally triangulated irreducible oriented 3-manifold, either there exists a solution to Thurston's algebraic equation, or there exist three special solutions to Haken's normal surface equation which has exactly one or two non-zero quadrilateral coordinates all supported in a tetrahedron. A weaker form of the conjecture has been established by the PI recently using volume optimization. Recent work of Futer-Gueritaud, Segerman-Tillmann, and Luo-Tillmann shows that the conjecture in the case of simply connected 3-manifolds is equivalent to the Poincare conjecture in dimension three (without using the Ricci flow). Our universe is 3-dimensional. To understand the shapes of the universe and other 3-dimensional solids, mathematicians developed the theory of 3-manifolds using topology and geometry. To investigate these 3-dimensional spaces, one of the revolutionary ideas of William Thurston says that one should use geometry and geometric tools to understand the space. This program of Thurston is called the geometrization of 3-manifolds and has dominated the study of 3-dimensional topological investigation for the past 40 years. Recent work of G. Perelman, using the Ricci flow method developed by R. Hamilton, established the conjecture of Thurston and revolutionized the field. Perelman's work is widely considered to be one of the major mile-stones in the history of mathematics. However, there remains the problem of how to find those geometric structures theoretically predicated by Thurston, Perelman and Hamilton. One of the goals of the proposal aims at developing algorithms to find these geometries on 3-dimensional spaces.

Problems in Metric Riemannian Geometry

2011-08-15T11:42:00.003-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1106517

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Rong, Xiaochun

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $126938

Program(s): GEOMETRIC ANALYSIS

Abstract: The principal investigator plans to continue his research in Riemannian metric geometry; in particular some basic problems in two area: (1) collapsed Riemannian manifolds with bounded sectional curvature (in absolute value or from below) and (2) rigidity and stability problems in Alexandrov geometry. In his research, mathematics from several disciplines interact, such as metric Riemannian geometry, analysis and partial differential equations, compact transformation group theory and topology. This project is amplified by the fact that among the manifolds of same dimension whose sectional curvature is bounded from between below and whose diameter is bounded above by a constant, all but finitely many are collapsed and are close to some Alexandrov spaces. Mathematics is the foundation of the natural sciences, and differential geometry/ Riemannian geometry are among the most important branches of mathematics. The PI is pursuing solving some basic problems in this field that would have a broad intellectual impact. The PI will continue to actively pursue collaborations with other mathematicians in the United States and abroad and to speak at several national and international meetings a year.

Statistical Problems in Closed-Loop Diabetes Control

2011-08-15T11:42:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1106753

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Zhang, Cun-Hui

Co-PI: Larry Shepp

Award Amount: $300000

Program(s): STATISTICS

Abstract: The project focuses on developing statistical models, methods and related theory for closed-loop diabetes control. An artificial pancreas with a closed-loop insulin delivery system, still in an early stage of its development, is expected to revolutionize the way diabetes is treated. As the PIs and many others recognized, a major impediment to the goal of developing an artificial pancreas is the unreliability of the glucose sensor. Sensor technology is not so new and it is also remarkably clever, but frequent recalibration is needed because of the physical processes underlying the way sensors work. The proposed project will solve the problem of proper recalibration by appropriate physical modeling of the metabolic processes involved. Sensors measure current in interstitial space (subcutaneous fat) at fixed time increments all around the clock. The current is nominally proportional to the amount of glucose in the space, but there are two problems with the measurements. Firstly, there is a delay in diffusion of glucose from the bloodstream into fat so that the glucose density in the fat lags the glucose density in the bloodstream. Secondly, there is a defense mechanism (white blood cells) which surround the electrode as a foreign body and attempt to get rid of it via biofouling. The white blood cells interfere with current flow and produce erroneous measurements unless accurate recalibration is performed. The proposed approach has not been tried and is expected to significantly outperform the current implementation of the sensor technology based on more straightforward regression without gaining the benefit and insight of the proposed physical modeling. A new differential equation approach will be used to deal with the delay problem related to glucose sensor. The differential equation is widely accepted and the rate for the diffusion of glucose from the blood into interstitial space governs the relationship between the glucose densities in the bloodstream and interstitial spaces. The diffusion rate and the effect of biofouling will be estimated from finger stick metered measurements taken a few times a day. A main innovation in the proposed approach is statistical models using the physics of the delay and biofouling problems. An artificial pancreas will be a godsend to the millions of Americans faced with the 24 hour a day tedium of having to decide when and how much insulin to inject. If this could be done automatically for them then the only task they would continue to have is to remember to replace insulin in the well of their insulin pump. An artificial pancreas would give them an effective treatment for their disease.

Conjugated Organoboron Oligomers and Polymers: Functional Building Blocks for Supramolecular Structures

2011-08-15T11:42:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1112195

NSF Funding Organization: CHE

Principal Investigator: Jaekle, Frieder

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $400000

Program(s): MACROMOLEC/SUPRAMOLEC/NANO

Abstract: In this project funded by the Macromolecular, Supramolecular and Nanochemistry Program of the Chemistry Division, Frieder Jaekle of Rutgers University at Newark will use conjugated organoborane oligomers and polymers for the development of new rod-coil type amphiphiles, study their self-assembly into higher order structures, and probe their response to different chemical and physical stimuli. As a result of their electron-deficient nature, organoboranes offer a unique set of desirable features including strongly pi-accepting electronic properties and a pronounced tendency to form Lewis acid-base complexes. A diverse group of undergraduate and graduate students will be trained and high school students will be involved through the ACS project SEED. Their learning experience will be further enriched through international collaborations and student exchanges. As part of an effort to build bridges between research and undergraduate education a new experiment on conjugated polymers will be implemented in the Inorganic and Materials Chemistry undergraduate laboratory. This work will generate new fundamental knowledge in the field of main group element chemistry and in the areas of conjugated polymers and supramolecular materials. Studying these types of conjugated polymers could lead to novel functional materials with characteristics beneficial to optical, electronic, and sensing applications.

CSR:Small:Sensor-driven Thermal-aware Autonomic Management of Instrumented Datacenters

2011-08-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1117263

NSF Funding Organization: CNS

Principal Investigator: Pompili, Dario

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $120000

Program(s): COMPUTER SYSTEMS

Abstract: Due to the increasing demands for computing and storage, energy consumption, heat generation, and cooling requirements have become critical concerns both in terms of the growing costs as well as their environmental and societal impacts. Thus, thermal awareness, which is the knowledge of local unevenness in heat generation and extraction rates, and hence, heat imbalance at various points inside a datacenter, is essential to maximize energy and cooling efficiency as well as to minimize server failure rates. The objectives of this research are to acquire knowledge about the heat imbalance at different regions inside a datacenter and to enable thermal-aware self-configuration and self-optimization of computing resources inside a datacenter. These objectives are aimed at increasing the energy and cooling efficiency and at decreasing equipment failure rates so to minimize both the impact on the environment and the Total Cost of Ownership (TCO) of datacenters. Specifically, the project focuses on designing autonomic adaptive sampling solutions for enabling self-organization of heterogeneous sensors - composed of thermal cameras, scalar temperature and humidity sensors, and airflow meters - into a multi-tier sensing infrastructure, and on studying proactive, Quality of Service (QoS)-aware, heat-imbalance-based solutions for Virtual Machine (VM) consolidation and cooling system optimization in a virtualized air-cooled datacenter. This project will also result in the generation of computer-literate undergraduate and graduate researchers with a comprehensive knowledge of complex optimization problems in energy-efficient design and management of large datacenters. The PI will create new teaching modules on distributed sensing, provide opportunities for exchange programs, leverage existing minority student outreach networks at Rutgers, and incorporate student exchange programs as well as team-teaching approaches.

FRG: Collaborative research: Emerging issues in the sciences involving non standard diffusion

2011-08-15T11:41:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 8/15/2011

Award Number: 1065971

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Li, Yanyan

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $150001

Program(s): ANALYSIS PROGRAM

Abstract: The mathematical description and understanding of "diffusive processes" is central to many areas of science, from geometry and probability to continuum mechanics, fluid dynamics, population dynamics and game theory to name a few. Ricci flows, the Navier Stokes equation, non linear elasticity, futures options, all carry an element of diffusion, viscosity, uncertainty that correspond to a similar mathematical description. An extensive theory already permeates, under different circumstances and goals, wide areas of analysis, geometry and applied mathematics. The investigators perceive, however, that there are new, emerging areas of added complexity. It is expected that through the collaborative effort, new general methods will emerge providing some sort of unification and cohesion like the one existing today for classical infinitesimal diffusion processes and their role in the sciences (modeling, simulation, prediction). Problems which are to be studied include reaction diffusion phenomena in random environments, phase transition problems, non local diffusion processes and other applications motivated by questions of population dynamics, congestion issues in transportation, diffusion and segregation phenomena in social sciences, formation and dynamics of hotspots of criminal activity, phase transition problems involving nonlocal (long range) interactions and surface diffusion related to electric fluid droplets and complex fluids in nano technology and biology. The project involves a system of personnel exchanges between the home institutions, designed to provide a rich training experience for students and postdocs. In addition, there will be an emphasis month every year of the project in one of the home universities and a summer school designed to bring members of the group - including graduate students and postdocs - together to stimulate scientific progress. In this way the fruits of the research will be exposed to a broader audience, thereby, helping educate and attract a new generation of researchers to these exciting emerging mathematical challenges and ideas.

Structural and Dynamic Studies of Catabolite Activator Protein Complexes

2011-08-01T11:56:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 8/1/2011

Award Number: 1121896

NSF Funding Organization: MCB

Principal Investigator: Kalodimos, Charalampos

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $207143

Program(s): Biomolecular Dynam,Struc,Func

Abstract: Intellectual merit Genetic regulatory proteins target specific sites within the genome and either enhance or repress transcriptional activity to elicit cellular responses. The Escherichia coli catabolite activator protein (CAP; referred to also as the cAMP receptor protein, CRP) is a universal transcriptional activator that regulates the expression of over two hundred genes. CAP has long served as the textbook example for understanding transcription regulation. CAP has provided a classic model system for structural and mechanistic studies of transcription activation. Mechanistic descriptions of transcription activation, developed for CAP, are more nearly complete than descriptions of any other examples of transcription activation. Nevertheless, the complete structural basis for CAP-mediated transcription activation remains unknown. Notably, over the recent years CAP has provided an excellent system in which to examine the structure- and dynamics-function relationships that form the basis of allostery. CAP has provided the first experimentally identified system wherein allosteric interactions are mediated through changes in protein motions, in the absence of changes in the mean structure of the protein. The main objectives of this project are to use CAP as a model system to address fundamental questions regarding allosteric regulation and transcriptional activation. An integrated structural, dynamic, and thermodynamic approach will be used to (1) characterize the dynamics of CAP mutants with altered allosteric properties and their interaction energetics with DNA; (2) determine the solution structure of the class I and class II CAP-dependent promoter subassemblies and (3) determine the structural basis for the assembly of the entire CAP-mediated transcription initiation complex. Broader impact In addition to addressing fundamental biological questions, this project will be used to train students in structural biology, biophysics, and molecular biology, areas that are rapidly becoming integrated in 21st century science. Postdocs, graduate and undergraduate students will have the opportunity to be involved in a multi-disciplinary project that aims at the development of groundbreaking methodologies to enable the structural and dynamic characterization of supramolecular protein complexes by high resolution NMR spectroscopy. This will enable researchers to approach problems from a multidisciplinary and interactive perspective, thus experiencing first hand the utility of applying state-of-the-art methodologies to important biological problems. The paradigm of combining structural, dynamic, thermodynamic and kinetic approaches to study complex protein systems will be included in a new course, currently designed by the PI, to exemplify the value of using an interdisciplinary and quantitative approach to answer questions of scientific importance. The course is intended for a large, diverse audience consisting of graduate and advanced undergraduate students in the programs of Molecular Biosciences, Chemistry and Chemical Biology, Biomedical Engineering and BIOMAPS at Rutgers University.

Paleointensity of the time-averaged geomagnetic field at the Equator

2011-08-01T11:42:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 8/1/2011

Award Number: 1113569

NSF Funding Organization: EAR

Principal Investigator: Kent, Dennis

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $245086

Program(s): GEOPHYSICS

Abstract: The characterization of Earth's magnetic field over a broad range of time scales is of fundamental importance for understanding the core dynamo generating mechanism. Recently published results from the Erebus Volcanic Province in Antarctica at 78°S suggested that the high angular dispersion in virtual geomagnetic poles coupled with apparently anomalously low paleointensities may result from dynamic effects associated with the tangent cylinder. An alternative explanation is that the geomagnetic dipole moment of the time-averaged field is in fact only about 50% of the present-day value, which would imply that available paleointensity data from elsewhere are seriously biased. The equatorial belt, which should be least affected by tangent cylinder effects, is poorly represented by reliable paleointensities. We propose to generate paleointensity data from 0-5 Myr-old lava flows from the Galapagos Islands and from Kenya, which have recently provided consistent estimates of low paleosecular variation. The paleomagnetic, rock magnetic and preliminary paleointensity results indicate that these rocks have suitable magnetic properties for Thellier-type paleointensity experiments. Fresh subspecimens are available from most of these sites but we would like to collect additional samples from the Loiyangalani area of Kenya, where the limited data show remarkably coherent and stable magnetizations virtually free of lightning strikes. Our overall objective is to obtain a robust paleointensity dataset from the same lavas used to estimate paleosecular variation in directions and ideally, to produce a full-vector characterization of the time-averaged field at the Equator. Successful completion of this proposed work will provide a more accurate description of geomagnetic field behavior as a benchmark to gauge latitudinal variations, including possible effects associated with the tangent cylinder, and the underlying character of paleosecular variation in earlier epochs. The project will directly support thesis research of a PhD student and include training in laboratory, field and analytical techniques of general applicability.

Formation, Activation and Functionalization of Carbon-Element Bonds by Late Transition Metal Complexes

2011-08-01T11:42:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 8/1/2011

Award Number: 1112456

NSF Funding Organization: CHE

Principal Investigator: Goldman, Alan

Co-PI: Karsten Krogh-Jespersen

Award Amount: $273000

Program(s): CHEMICAL CATALYSIS

Abstract: This award in the Division of Chemistry to Alan Goldman at Rutgers University centers on the oxidative addition and reductive elimination of C-H bonds by late transition metal complexes. The factors that govern the thermodynamics, kinetics and selectivity of C-H, C-C, C-X and X-H bond addition and elimination with such complexes will be elucidated. As the insertion of unsaturated substrates into M-C, M-H, and M-X bonds is likely the most difficult step in many potential catalytic cycles related to C-H activation, these insertions will also be investigated. The approach will be based on the extensive integration of: 1) The synthesis of new late metal complexes, particularly pincer-ligated metal complexes, which offer high stability together with the ability to explore variation of ancillary coordinating groups in a well controlled fashion, while leaving open coordination sites for substrate activation and subsequent steps. 2) Mechanistic studies of addition/eliminations and insertion/de-insertions. 3) Screening new complexes for a broad array of stoichiometric and catalytic reactions. The latter will include additions of CH and X-H to unsaturates (olefins, alkynes, CO), and dehydrocoupling. When the potential for asymmetric catalysis exists, chiral pincer complexes will be investigated. The reactivity of C-H addition products will be investigated with respect to functionalization of the resulting M-C and M-H bonds (e.g. insertions) and for the effect of C-H addition on remote sites (e.g. increased susceptibility toward nucleophilic attack on homo- and heteroaromatics as a result of metallation). 4) Computational (DFT) studies will be used to provide leads for synthesis. Computational methods will be tested and calibrated by mechanistic and screening studies. New functionals and basis sets will be investigated to increase predictive value, and thus the ability to design and improve new catalysts. The development of catalytic C-H bond transformations, as well as reactions in which C-O and C-F bonds are broken or formed, has vast potential impact in areas ranging from the synthesis of fuels to pharmaceuticals. Students and postdoctoral associates will receive broad training in synthesis, analysis, and in the principles and strategy of catalyst design and development, including the use of computational methods. Graduate students, postdoctoral associates and undergraduates will gain industrial perspectives through collaboration with Chevron. Every summer, through the Project SEED program, high school students from under-represented backgrounds are exposed to research in this area and come to view of science as a portal to opportunity rather than a body of knowledge to be received.

Raman Spectroscopy of Quantum Spin Systems and Novel Superconductors

2011-08-01T11:42:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 8/1/2011

Award Number: 1104884

NSF Funding Organization: DMR

Principal Investigator: Blumberg, Girsh

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $120000

Program(s): CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS

Abstract: ****TECHNICAL ABSTRACT**** Coupling between electrons in ''strongly correlated materials'' is associated with many scientifically important and technologically useful phenomena, including superconductivity, ordered charge and spin density phases and quantum magnetism. This project will pursue spectroscopic studies of (1) recently discovered and technologically important superconductors from the iron-pnictide family which demonstrate high transition temperature and high critical fields, (2) other unconventional superconductors with competing ground states, and (3) prototypical low-dimensional quantum spin systems relevant for studying emerging quantum mechanical phenomena in strongly correlated materials. This project will also provide broad training to postdoc and undergraduate students in low-temperature high resolution magneto-optical spectroscopy. ****NON-TECHNICAL ABSTRACT**** In many newly discovered materials, there is a particularly strong interaction between the electron charges as well as between the magnetic moments leading to new collective behaviors such as superconductivity or various macroscopically long ranged ordered phases of charge and spin distributions. Understanding the unconventional behavior of these materials with strong interactions presents a great intellectual challenge and is critical to developing new technologies. This project will investigate the basic mechanisms responsible for unconventional properties of these strongly interacting materials by scattering light (i.e., "photons") from the materials while tuning the materials' properties through their novel phases by changing temperature and external magnetic fields. The goals of this project are to better understand the conditions responsible for the emerging properties of these materials: (i) explain the origin of superconductivity and other unconventional microscopically ordered phases, (ii) to elucidate how matter behaves under novel environmental conditions, and (iii) to develop new materials with enhanced functional properties. Equally important for the success of the project will be a dedicated effort to recruit talented undergraduate and graduate students into the research group, including students belonging to groups currently underrepresented in science. This project will also provide diverse interactions with leading international scientists and broad training to postdocs and students, and will be used as part of an outreach program to interest K-12 students in the sciences via tours of the advanced laser optical laboratory.

Collaborative Research: CI-ADDO-EN: Development of Publicly Available, Easily Searchable, Linguistically Analyzed, Video Corpora for Sign Language a

2011-08-01T11:41:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 8/1/2011

Award Number: 1059281

NSF Funding Organization: CNS

Principal Investigator: Metaxas, Dimitris

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $97908

Program(s): COMPUTING RES INFRASTRUCTURE

Abstract: The goal of this project is to create a linguistically annotated, publicly available, and easily searchable corpus of video from American Sign Language (ASL). This will constitute an important piece of infrastructure, enabling new kinds of research in both linguistics and vision-based recognition of ASL. In addition, a key goal is to make this corpus easily accessible to the broader ASL community, including users and learners of ASL. As a result of our long-term efforts, we have an extensive collection of linguistically annotated video data from native signers of ASL. However, the potential value of these corpora has been largely untapped, notwithstanding their extensive and productive use by our team and others. Existing limitations in our hardware and software infrastructure make it cumbersome to search and identify data of interest, and to share data among our institutions and with other researchers. In this project, we propose hardware and software innovations that will constitute a major qualitative upgrade in the organization, searchability, and public availability of the existing (and expanding) corpus. The enhancement and improved Web-accessibility of these corpora will be invaluable for linguistic research, enabling new kinds of discoveries and the testing of hypotheses that would otherwise have be difficult to investigate. On the computer vision side, the proposed new annotations will provide an extensive public dataset for training and benchmarking a variety of computer vision algorithms. This will facilitate research and expedite progress in gesture recognition, hand pose estimation, human tracking, and large vocabulary, and continuous ASL recognition. Furthermore, this dataset will be useful as training and benchmarking data for algorithms in the broader areas of computer vision, machine learning, and similarity-based indexing. The advances in linguistic knowledge about ASL and in computer-based ASL recognition that will be accelerated by the availability of resources of the kind proposed here will contribute to development of technologies for education and universal access. For example, tools for searching collections of ASL video for occurrences of specific signs, or converting ASL signing to English, are still far from attaining the level of functionality and usability to which users are accustomed for spoken/written languages. Our corpora will enable research that aims to bring such vision-based ASL recognition applications closer to reality. Moreover, these resources will afford important opportunities to individuals who would not otherwise be in a position to conduct such research (e.g., for lack of access to native ASL signers or high-quality synchronized video equipment, or lack of resources/expertise to carry out extensive linguistic annotations). Making our corpora available online will also allow the broader community of ASL users to access our data directly. Students of ASL will be able to retrieve video showing examples of a specific sign used in actual sentences, or examples of a grammatical construction. ASL instructors and teachers of the Deaf will also have easy access to video examples of lexical items and grammatical constructions as used by a variety of native signers for use in language instruction and evaluation. Thus, the proposed web interface to our data collection will be a useful educational resource for users, teachers, and learners of ASL.

Downscaling REDD Policies in Developing Countries: Assessing the Impact of Carbon Payments on Household Decision Making and Vulnerability to Climate C

2011-08-01T11:41:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 8/1/2011

Award Number: 1061862

NSF Funding Organization: BCS

Principal Investigator: McElwee, Pamela

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $74651

Program(s): GEOGRAPHY AND SPATIAL SCIENCES

Abstract: This research project will use the country of Vietnam, an early forest carbon policy development site, to test several questions regarding the United Nations Collaborative Programme on Reducing Emissions from Deforestation and Forest Degradation in Developing Countries (REDD). This project will analyze the ways in which payments for environmental services like carbon sequestration alter land-use decision making by smallholder households; evaluate if these changes in land use serve to increase or reduce overall social and biophysical vulnerability to future climate changes; and assess how local understandings of household decision making and land use influence subnational and national policy to implement global goals like REDD. A multi-scale, multi-method research design will be used, including observational data, surveys, household accounting diaries, key informant interviews, policy analysis, forest monitoring, and spatial analysis of land-use change. These methods are designed to capture local household decision making as well as multi-scale interactions that come about from changes in access and rights under payment plans for forest services. Forecasted future climate changes have the potential to exacerbate existing social vulnerabilities, especially in poorer developing countries. The ability of communities and individuals to cope with these challenges is likely to depend on their ability to access and mobilize natural resources. At the same time, new global policies are in development that would pay countries for "avoided deforestation" through REDD in order to sequester carbon and contribute to climate change mitigation. If access and use rights to forests change under REDD implementation, however, this may render some households and communities more vulnerable to the effects of climate change in the long term if these policies reduce their adaptive capacity by restricting access to natural resources. An understanding of the potential outcomes of carbon-credit policies on land-use decision making therefore is important, particularly before such large- scale global programs get more fully underway. This research project will provide an early and unique experimental opportunity to assess the relative impacts of a new global policy and help explain successes and failures through a fine-grained local analysis. This project will provide a baseline to explain the variation in performance of different possible REDD approaches over time. The project further addresses current concerns with driving forces of vulnerability and interactions between global and local scales in coupled socioecological systems through research on how global REDD policy affects local social vulnerabilities and dynamics. Outcomes from this study will include contributions to policy-relevant knowledge on social vulnerability to climate change in a country that is likely to be one of the most affected in the world to future changes in rainfall, storms, and sea-level rise. Finally, this project will foster collaboration among researchers and students in the US and Vietnam on the crucially important issue of climate change.

III: Medium: Collaborative Research: Scalable Kinship Inference in Wild Populations Across Years and Generations

2011-08-01T11:41:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 8/1/2011

Award Number: 1064752

NSF Funding Organization: IIS

Principal Investigator: Chaovalitwongse, Wanpracha

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $245409

Program(s): INFO INTEGRATION & INFORMATICS|ADVANCES IN BIO INFORMATICS

Abstract: Scalable kinship inference in wild populations across years and generations A cornerstone of research in molecular ecology is the reconstruction of family groups (kinship analysis). Understanding how individuals in free-living populations are related to each other provides the best opportunity to study many important biological processes, ranging from sexual selection to patterns of dispersal and recruitment. Recent advances in molecular DNA technologies and computational methods have made these studies possible. However, many conceptual and computational challenges remain and need to be addressed in order to advance these studies. To date, existing research work on kinship analysis has primarily focused on computational methods that address a single relationship, such as parentage assignment or reconstruction of full sib groups. Inclusion of multiple objectives, such as half-sib reconstruction with minimum parentage assignment, or hierarchy over multiple generations, makes formulation of the underlying computational problem extremely challenging, and simple extensions of previous methods do not address in a practical, scalable, and robust manner the problem of kinship reconstruction for data sets that include multiple generations of species or involve multiple optimization functions. The goal of the proposed research is to design robust, parsimonious, and versatile computational approaches for inferring multi-generation kinship relationships in wild populations from multiallelic markers. Parsimony assumption is fundamental to these approaches as it requires no prior knowledge, assumptions about sampling methodology, or existence of models, which is the case for most free-living populations. The diverse tasks of this project include formulating computational kinship inference problems based on existing biological studies, analyzing computational complexity of and providing solutions to the resulting combinatorial optimization problems, and designing robust, scalable and efficient high performance implementations. The resulting computational methods will be evaluated on datasets collected from existing biological studies and will be deployed to the biological community through the Kinalyzer web-based service, currently actively used for sibship inference only. The research proposed in this project will greatly impact diverse application areas including funda- mental research in combinatorial optimization and data mining, and within biology, areas as diverse as behavioral ecology, evolutionary genetics, conservation, forensics, and epidemiology. The multidisci- plinary nature of the project and the research team will enhance curriculum design of related areas and introduce new cross-disciplinary courses. This cohesive, multidisciplinary project will provide training opportunities in biology, operation research, algorithms analysis, bioinformatics and high performance computing, within a single application framework. The project will leverage the diverse scientific ex- pertise and extensive mentoring experience of the team to foster a true interdisciplinary collaboration and to provide a thriving environment for a new generation of interdisciplinary scientists.

Predictive Modeling and Optimization of Machining Induced Surface Integrity with Applications in Titanium and Nickel-Based Alloyed End Products

2011-07-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 7/15/2011

Award Number: 1130780

NSF Funding Organization: CMMI

Principal Investigator: Ozel, Tugrul

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $388345

Program(s): MANUFACTURING & CONST MACH EQP

Abstract: The research objective of this award is to establish an integrated physics-based, predictive modeling approach to improve surface integrity and optimize machining operations in the manufacturing of titanium and nickel-based alloyed end products. The goal is to control surface integrity, machining-induced layer thickness, depth-of-work hardening, tensile layer thickness, residual stresses, and micro-hardness of the end product, as well as representing the cutting tool parameter (material, coating and edge geometry) effects, and the effects of cutting conditions on these results. The proposed research will be conducted in a three-pronged approach, including physics-based modeling, experimental analyses and validation, and probabilistic-predictive modeling on (1) determination of detailed friction between tool and workpiece, and tool wear, (2) physics-based finite element simulations using temperature-dependent flow softening based constitutive material models to compute process outputs, including surface properties, and validating them with experiments, and (3) probabilistic predictive modeling and multi-criteria optimization. If successful, the benefits and broader impacts of this research will be the use of predictive and physics-based simulation modeling approaches applied to machining-induced surface integrity predictions in titanium and nickel alloys. It is expected that this award will result in methods to improve surface integrity on machined titanium and nickel alloy metal components used in aerospace, medical devices and other related industries. This award will also provide exposure for graduate and undergraduate students to methods of predictive modeling and physics-based simulation modeling in manufacturing processes.

AF: Small: Approximate Augmented Lagrangians: First-Order and Parallel Optimization Methods, with Applications to Stochastic Programming

2011-07-15T11:42:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 7/15/2011

Award Number: 1115638

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Eckstein, Jonathan

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $358499

Program(s): ALGORITHMIC FOUNDATIONS

Abstract: Continuous optimization is a mathematical discipline with extensive applications in engineering design and business/logistical planning. Its currently most common solution techniques are difficult to adapt to newly evolving computer architectures comprising dozens to thousands of processing elements working in parallel. Combining several existing techniques with some recent results of the principal investigator, this project explores a means of solving continuous optimization problems that should adapt more readily to parallel computer architectures than present standard solvers, allowing the architectures' full power to be brought to bear on large, time-consuming problems. Without such new solution approaches, solution of critical design and planning problems may not benefit from most of the advances in computing power anticipated for the next decade. The project will also involve cooperative work with the Brazilian research community. The technical approach is to capitalize on recent advances in augmented Lagrangian and conjugate gradient algorithms to produce a new kind of modular parallel continuous constrained optimization solver. The solver consists of a classical augmented Lagrangian outer loop, with subproblems solved by the a state-of-the art box-constrained conjugate gradient method terminated by a recently developed relative error criterion. The research consists of three stages: the goal of stage one is to create an object-oriented, modular serial implementation, test it extensively, and address some theoretical issues. Stage two aims to evolve the stage-one substrate into a parallel solver for which the user explicitly specifies how to map the problem structure to multiple processing elements. Stage three's goal is to automate the structure detection and mapping process. Stages two and three will use stochastic programming problems as test cases.

Descriptive Set Theory, Geometric Group Theory, and Combinatorial Model Theory

2011-07-15T11:42:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 7/15/2011

Award Number: 1101597

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Cherlin, Gregory

Co-PI: Simon Thomas

Award Amount: $150299

Program(s): FOUNDATIONS

Abstract: The research proposed involves the development and application of techniques of mathematical logic to a broad range of mathematical problems. First, the classical subject of descriptive set theory has been found, in combination with techniques of ergodic theory and superrigidity theory, to have extensive applications to the analysis of problems of classification in algebra and elsewhere. In particular the subject of Borel equivalence relations will be applied to problems in geometric group theory, revolving around the central notion of quasi-isometry. The now classical theory of Borel reductions will be sharpened by considering continuous reductions, which correspond in a number of cases to "natural" or "invariant" constructions. Second, the techniques of model theory will be applied to settle certain problems in combinatorics, notably the problem of the existence of universal graphs subject to one forbidden subgraph, and the classification of the metrically homogeneous graphs, first proposed in 1998 by Cameron and subsequently seen to have connections with topological dyamics in work of Kechris, Pestov, and Todorcevic. In both cases, new examples of homogeneous structures will be identified (in an appropriate refinement of the category of graphs), and then the relation to topological dynamics will involve the further study of structural Ramsey theory in the associated classes of finite structures. The proposal includes a visitors' program based on extended visits by Saharon Shelah, one of the world's preeminent mathematical logicians, and a variety of his collaborators, who will collaborate on aspects of the proposed research, both on the side of descriptive set theory and in the applications to combinatorics. The thrust of the research is interdisciplinary. The notion of classification is fundamental to many branches of mathematical research, and techniques of mathematical logic, in combination with more specialized tools from other branches of mathematics, some the result of very recent breakthroughs, make it possible to analyze the scope and limitations of this method, revealing a wealth of structure. The techniques of mathematical logic also provide a very broad perspective on problems of combinatorics, raising issues of computability and providing new and systematic techniques for the resolution of concrete problems regarding the complexity of classes of finite structures, and the problem of the existence of a single infinite limit of such a class with a tractable structure, which provides a way for distinguishing "chaotic" from "highly structured" classes, and the identification of new cases which can be analyzed structurally.

Collaborative Research: Quantifying Feedbacks Affecting High Altitude Climate Change

2011-07-15T11:41:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 7/15/2011

Award Number: 1064326

NSF Funding Organization: AGS

Principal Investigator: Miller, James

Co-PI: Ming Xu

Award Amount: $97249

Program(s): CLIMATE & LARGE-SCALE DYNAMICS

Abstract: In many mountain regions there is evidence that temperatures are changing at different rates than the global average. Three questions arise: Are temperatures in mountain regions increasing faster than the global average? Within mountain regions are warming rates dependent on elevation? And if the answers to the above are yes, why do such differences occur? Several different feedbacks can contribute, including those related to snow-albedo, atmospheric water vapor, cloud cover, and cloud properties. These feedbacks are difficult to quantify because the relationship between two climate variables is invariably interconnected with other variables as well. Also, the sparsity of observations in high-altitude regions exacerbates this difficulty. This project will combine surface-based and satellite observations with climate model simulations and a neural network analysis scheme to (1) quantify some of the principal relationships that contribute to feedbacks on temperature in high altitude regions, and (2) investigate how these relationships and feedbacks might change through the 21st century in response to increasing atmospheric greenhouse gases. The focus will be on the Tibetan Plateau and the Rocky Mountains in southwestern Colorado. The neural network analysis calculates partial derivatives between pairs of climate variables (e.g., downward longwave radiation and cloud cover) so that the strength of the various links in a feedback loop can be determined. Broader impacts of this work include: (1) The neural network can be applied in other regions and can enable researchers to quantify important feedbacks in the climate system and analyze non-linear processes; (2) By combining surface-based and satellite observations, a new spatially and temporally expanded observational data base will be available to the research community; (3) A better understanding of climate change in mountain regions will benefit the public by improving management practices that affect the future of water resources, agriculture, tourism, and ecosystems in high altitude regions; (4) A high-school teacher will be supported to work with the investigators to help develop and implement podcasts on mountains and climate change; (5) There will be training for a postdoctoral fellow and undergraduates; and (6) Educational materials will be developed in collaboration with the Mountain Studies Institute in Colorado.

Structure and Electromagnetic Moments Of Exotic Nuclei

2011-07-15T11:41:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 7/15/2011

Award Number: 1067906

NSF Funding Organization: PHY

Principal Investigator: Cizewski, Jolie

Co-PI: Noemie Koller

Award Amount: $750000

Program(s): NUCLEAR STRUCTURE & REACTIONS

Abstract: One of the frontier areas of nuclear physics is the study of the structure of atomic nuclei far from the valley of stability. In atomic nuclei the single-particle orbitals are expected to change as a function of neutron and proton number, and in addition are very sensitive to the presence of deformation. Single-particle characteristics can be probed in single-particle transfer reactions. Light-ion transfer reactions will be studied with beam energies near the Coulomb barrier and about 40-MeV per nucleon. Studies will concentrate on neutron-rich nuclei near the N=50 and N=82 neutron shell closures and light nuclei important to understand nucleosynthesis in stars. These studies will be carried out with accelerated beams of rare isotopes at the National Superconducting Cyclotron Laboratory (NSCL) at Michigan State University, the Argonne Tandem Linac Accelerator System (ATLAS) at Argonne National Laboratory and the Holifield Radioactive Ion Beam Facility (HRIBF) at Oak Ridge National Laboratory. One focus is to extract spectroscopic strengths with reduced dependence on theoretical model parameters. Another challenge in nuclear structure physics is to understand the balance between a microscopic description of the nuclear wave function and a model based on collective motions of the nucleons within the nucleus. This balance changes as a function of excitation energy and angular momentum and may be quite different in nuclei away from the valley of stability from the observed behavior of nuclei near stability. The focus of the second component of this proposal addresses, via measurements of the magnetic moments of excited states, the interplay of single-particle configurations with an underlying spherical or deformed core. The technique of Coulomb excitation in inverse kinematics is well established and has been tested on radioactive beams (RIBs). However, recent high statistics experiments carried out with heavier nuclei than in the past, and with higher energy beams, have uncovered several issues that need to be addressed before the methods are tried at the new RIB facilities. Semi-magic Tin-126 will be studied at HRIBF. A new program of research to be established at the ATLAS facility will focus initially on the low-lying states of Samarium-150 and Gadolinium-152 and on the efficacy of alpha transfer reactions. The structure of the proposed activities is designed to have as large an impact as possible on the education and training of graduate and undergraduate students, as well as postdoctoral associates. The project will also serve to enhance the diversity of the nuclear science workforce by including early career scientists who are women or come from other under-represented backgrounds. The participation of these early career scholars in the forefront research would prepare them for careers in higher education and basic and applied research, in national laboratories and industry. The anticipated nuclear physics results are also of importance in astronomy, to understand the abundance of elements observed in the cosmos; in condensed matter physics, to understand the microscopic components of the transient hyperfine field; and for nuclear energy and national security, to understand properties of and reactions on fission fragments.

Collaborative Research: The Amazon Groundwater and Its Impact on Evapotranspiration and the Climate of South America

2011-07-01T14:32:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1045110

NSF Funding Organization: AGS

Principal Investigator: Reinfelder, Ying Fan

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $90,237

Program(s): CLIMATE & LARGE-SCALE DYNAMICS

Abstract: This project focuses on the seasonal dynamics of Amazon evapotranspiration (ET), its control by land hydrology, and its consequences on regional and continental precipitation. It will tests two hypotheses, (1) the groundwater reservoir under the Amazon can enhance root-zone soil moisture and dry-season ET, and (2) this enhanced ET can influence local and downwind precipitation. Water table observations suggest that the groundwater is sufficiently shallow to influence the land surface, and the literature suggest that Amazon ET is a key driver of regional precipitation. These hypotheses will be tested in two steps. First, an integrated groundwater-land surface model (LEAF-Hydro, developed by the Rutgers Team) will be used to simulate land surface fluxes forced by observed atmospheric fields (South American Land Data Assimilation System (SALDAS)). LEAF-Hydro has a prognostic groundwater coupled to the soil moisture with hydraulic redistribution (roots as conduits to move water up and down). Various process combinations will be simulated to isolate the effect of deeper model soil, deeper roots, hydraulic redistribution and the presence of the groundwater. Second, the WRF-Hydro will be used as the land model to simulate the wind and humidity fields over South America, which will be used to trace vapor transport pathways using the Dynamic Recycling Model (DRM, developed by the Arizona Team). DRM will delineate, in space and time, the source and sink regions over the continent, and hence the Amazon groundwater will be linked to the climate of the continent. The research evaluates a potentially fundamental process in the Amazon water cycle: the role of groundwater in ET, and thus improves our understanding of the linkages among terrestrial water stores. It may also have implications to understanding the functions of the world's largest rainforest at the present and in the future under deforestation and climate change. A mechanism whereby deforestation affects the climate is the loss of deep roots and hence a reduced ET and precipitation. This study will shed lights on the functions of deep roots interacting with the groundwater. Under projected future climate with a longer dry season, some models have predicted an Amazon forest die-down, which, via positive carbon feedbacks, may accelerate warming. Improving our understanding of how the Amazon forest survives the dry season today will shed lights on how it may fare in the future.

P2C2: Mechanistic Interpretation of the Spatial Signatures of Mid-Holocene Precipitation over South America and the Atlantic

2011-07-01T14:32:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1103209

NSF Funding Organization: AGS

Principal Investigator: Lintner, Benjamin

Co-PI: Anthony Broccoli

Award Amount: $400,814

Program(s): PALEOCLIMATE PROGRAM

Abstract: This project seeks to better understand, generally, the extent to which proxies can be used to infer signatures of past climate variability and, specifically, how well proxies do with mid-Holocene precipitation variation over the tropical South America/Atlantic region. The research will focus on three activities: (i) quantifying changes in the spatial distribution of precipitation between mid-Holocene and preindustrial conditions; (ii) identifying the principal drivers of South America/Atlantic region hydroclimatic variability in the mid-Holocene as simulated by models; and (iii) examining the causal agents and feedback processes responsible for the signatures of mid-Holocene precipitation change and evaluate why the ensemble of current generation paleoclimate models often diverge substantially at the scales required to interpret paleoclimate proxies. Undergraduate students and a postdoctoral researcher will be supported. Output from the paleoclimate model simulations will be made accessible and incorporated into undergraduate and graduate classes.

Research in geometric group theory

2011-07-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1105193

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Feighn, Mark

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $88,283

Program(s): TOPOLOGY

Abstract: Three rather ambitious projects are proposed in the area of geometric group theory. The first is inspired by Zlil Sela's geometric solution of Tarski's logic problem. The PI and Mladen Bestvina plan to complete their program to solve by geometric means two forty-year-old problems of Mal'cev. They also propose to generalize their methods and provide an alternate proof to the Tarski problem. The second project, joint with Michael Handel, is to solve the conjugacy problem for the outer automorphism group Out(F) of a free group F. Much of the research in this area is driven by the similarities between linear groups, surface mapping class groups, and Out(F). The conjugacy problem has been solved for these other two classes. The final project, again joint with Mladen Bestvina, is to better understand the geometry of outer automorphism groups of free groups. In particular, it is proposed to show that a complex analogous to the curve complex in the mapping class group setting is word hyperbolic. Three projects are proposed in the area of geometric group theory. Geometric group theory is a relatively young branch of mathematics in which problems from other areas of mathematics are reformulated and then solved in geometric terms. This approach has been successful in areas that are sometimes viewed as distant from geometry. For example, Zlil Sela used geometric methods to solve an old logic problem of Tarski. Inspired by Sela's methods, the PI and Mladen Bestvina propose to solve two old logic problems of Mal'cev. Group theory is another area where these methods have been particularly successful. Groups are ubiquitous in math and the sciences. The set of symmetries of a molecule is an example. There is an important class of groups called "free groups" from which all other groups can be constructed. The set of symmetries of a free group F is another important group, denoted Out(F), which has been the subject of much current interest. The PI proposes two other projects focusing on Out(F). In one, he and Michael Handel propose to solve an old and fundamental problem on Out(F), namely that its conjugacy problem is solvable. In the other project, the PI and Bestvina propose to better understand the intrinsic geometry of Out(F).

ICES: Small: Auctions and Optimizations in Ad Exchanges

2011-07-01T11:42:00.005-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1101677

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Muthukrishnan, Shanmugavelayu

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $393556

Program(s): Inter Com Sci Econ Soc S (ICE)

Abstract: Viewers who browse web pages on the Internet are shown display ads such as images and video. Traditionally, web page publishers and advertisers negotiate a priori through sales teams to determine which ads are shown. An emerging way to buy and sell display ads is via automated ad exchanges, which are marketplaces where publishers and advertisers trade ad impressions via real time auctions. This project explores computational, informational and economic aspects of such ad exchange markets. It will abstract suitable models for such markets and study the fundamental challenges, including problems in auction design, online optimization, risk-bounded pricing, real time bidding strategies, and even cryptography. Specific examples include the design of an optimal auction in the presence of a hierarchy of intermediaries who are also auctioneers, determining at each level of this hierarchy which intermediary to call for bids, and proving the integrity of auctions at each level of the hierarchy. Solving these problems requires new methods, concepts and tools from Economics, Finance and Optimization, and Computer Science. Ad exchanges will impact nearly every user on the Internet. Progress on research challenges described here has the potential to directly impact such systems and the experience of nearly every user on the Internet. Further, facing the technical challenges will bring together Computer Scientists and Economists, and also push these disciplines to address very high performance challenges. For example, auction and optimization solutions have to work in tens of milliseconds, the time it takes for users to experience a web page access. This calls for new algorithmic techniques beyond the current start of the art. Finally, a detailed analysis of the role of information in ad exchanges-how much or little information is relevant for the working of the marketplace-is of great interest to Internet users and ultimately the society.

Evolution of disk galaxies

2011-07-01T11:42:00.004-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1108977

NSF Funding Organization: AST

Principal Investigator: Sellwood, Jerry

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $140575

Program(s): EXTRAGALACTIC ASTRON & COSMOLO

Abstract: Spiral patterns are one of the most important agents of dynamical evolution in disk galaxies. They redistribute angular momentum, cause the random speeds of stars to rise over time, cause radial mixing and large-scale turbulence, add stars to the thick disk, and flatten rotation curves. This project is a computational study of the effects of spiral patterns on disk evolution. The Prinicpal Investigator (PI) has several well-developed gravitational N-body codes that he will use with supported graduate students in two projects: (1) The Milky Way's thick disk is composed of old stars, in conflict with the "spiral churning" model for the formation of this component. The PI hypothesizes that the appearance of a bar in the inner Milky Way may have shut off thick disk growth by "churning." He plans simulations to test this idea, comparing the evolution of similar disks in which bars are or are not formed. (2) It is still ambiguous how spiral galaxies manage the so-called "disk-halo conspiracy," in which the different contributions of the disk and dark halo gravitational fields produce a flat observed rotation curve in the observable stars and gas. Simple models by the PI and collaborators showed that spiral waves could cause the mass distribution in a disk to rearrange itself until the rotation curve became flat; he plans further simulations including "live" halos to verify the generality of this behavior. Finally, the PI will continue work on recurring spiral patterns and their observable consequences in local stellar population. The PI plans careful N-body simulations of unprecedented quality for an in-depth study that will uncover the details of the recurrence mechanism in simplified models. Graduate students will assist with projects to show that the behavior persists when simplifying assumptions are relaxed. The PI will disseminate results of this work to the broader community through public lectures. He will involve undergraduate and graduate students, and postdocs, in the research, providing them with experience and training in the research process.

EAGER: Early-mid Pliocene Climate Change in Northern Chile

2011-07-01T11:42:00.003-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1117496

NSF Funding Organization: EAR

Principal Investigator: Godfrey, Linda

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $49851

Program(s): GLOBAL CHANGE

Abstract: Godfrey/EAR-1117496/Rutgers University The aim of this early-concept proposal for exploratory research is to determine the climate significance of the Opache formation, a carbonate rock unit deposited in the Atacama Desert of northern Chile between ~7.8 and 3.37 million years ago. Rainfall in the Atacama, both in its central area and in the Andes to its east, is strongly influenced by El Niño, the Pacific Decadal Oscillation, and on longer timescales by the South American monsoon. The Opache is made up of two carbonate facies, a laminated tufa which formed from basin over-spill and a palustrine unit. The aim of this study is to reconstruct climate (hydrologic balance) from sedimentological features such as lamina thickness. The investigators believe that two bands were deposited annually with the seasonal cycle strengthening roughly every seventeen years, but they want to demonstrate that two laminae form annually and are directly related to climate. The palustrine carbonate unit deposited in the Calama Basin will be used to infer the long-term climate of the region during a time of climate re-organization. This proposal will focus on modern analogs to aid in interpreting the rock record. The Opache is unique in the central Andes in regard to its size rather than formation mechanism. Within 30 km, active carbonate deposition occurs in and close to the Rio Loa from groundwater springs as well as in high altitude lakes and both can provide important insight to the formation of both Opache facies. In addition to study of sediment fabrics from thin section, the investigators will use stable isotopes to constrain kinetic effects on CO2 such as degassing. Dating for these modern analog studies will utilize Ra-226 (half life 1599 years), combined with U-Th dating at Rutgers. Laminae cyclicity can be determined by counting between dated horizon from active growth surface and compared with recorded climate data. This EAGER proposal includes addition of dates of the laminated unit by U-Pb, bringing the technique to Rutgers. Successful testing of the hypothesis that a decadal climate record is possible will result in a submission of a full proposal which will yield a rare continental decadal climate record from the early-mid Pliocene in a region influenced by ENSO. This project will include undergraduate involvement in international research and collaboration with Rutgers University which broadens their research experience. The investigators have high expectations that a recent climate record will be extracted from the modern analog studies.

Structural Studies of Thin Films for Microelectronics Applications

2011-07-01T11:42:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1106070

NSF Funding Organization: DMR

Principal Investigator: Gustafsson, Torgny

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $159081

Program(s): ELECTRONIC/PHOTONIC MATERIALS|CERAMICS

Abstract: This project is co-funded by the Electronic and Photonic Materials (EPM) and Ceramics (CER) Programs in the Division of Materials Research (DMR). Technical: The past several years have seen a significant increase in research of ultrathin (up to 5 nanometers) epitaxial films. Exciting, new phenomena, such as novel electronic functionalities found in oxide materials, have been discovered. The properties of interfaces and surfaces are central to an understanding of these new phenomena. This project is centered on developing an atomistic picture of the structure and composition of several materials systems. The main experimental approach is medium-energy ion scattering, which is complemented and correlated in particular with scanning transmission electron microscopy, and also with scanning probe microscopy, photoelectron spectroscopy and electrical measurements. Specific research projects include (i) investigations of the interfaces between complex oxide materials, (ii) studies of materials whose bandgap can be manipulated over a very large range, making them promising candidates for novel optical and photochemical applications, and (iii) epitaxial films of topological insulators with potential impact on quantum computing. Nontechnical: A central focus of materials science today is the creation of new materials with novel and useful properties. Entirely new functionalities can result in commercially important new devices for computation, communication and energy applications. In order to understand the properties of these materials it is crucial to know on an atomic level their composition and the way the different atoms are arranged. This project is centered on studies of the structure and composition of several new materials systems. The main experimental approach is based on using energetic ions to probe surface and interface composition, a powerful tool to probe buried interfaces. It is complemented with a wide variety of spectroscopies sensitive to the electronic structure. The research project provides excellent opportunities for hands-on experience for students in the development and use of sophisticated scientific equipment and broadens their scientific horizons through established collaborations with scientists from Latin America. The direct and visually oriented nature of the information obtained makes it easy to communicate the excitement of materials science to students all the way from middle school to advanced graduate students.

AF: Small: Collaborative Research: Algorithms for Reallocation Problems

2011-07-01T11:42:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1114930

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Farach-Colton, Martin

Co-PI: Miguel Mosteiro

Award Amount: $249990

Program(s): ALGORITHMIC FOUNDATIONS

Abstract: Virtualization typically involves remapping physical resources (e.g., storage, memory, processors) into logical resources so that these computational resources can be shared in dynamic environments. The remapping process has an online component, in that requests arrive and the system responds. In traditional online problems, resources are thought of as irrevocably assigned. However, in virtualized environments, previously allocated resources can be reassigned or reallocated. This project formalizes how computational resources can be reallocated efficiently when there is some cost for the reallocation. The project investigates the algorithmic complexity of reallocation problems arising from large-scale systems design, and especially reallocation algorithms that are universal with respect to reallocation-cost functions. The research plan addresses problems in memory and storage reallocation, scaleout and sharding in storage systems, reallocation for dynamic combinatorial and geometric structures (finite-element meshes, metric spaces), and classical online allocation problems (scheduling and bin packing). The aim of the project is three-fold: (1) to study the asymptotic performance of reallocation, (2) to obtain results that are universal with respect to a wide class of reallocation cost functions, and (3) to quantify the performance of known heuristics in widespread use. The way computation works today, on laptops and desktops, in supercomputers and data centers, and in cloud computing, critically depends upon virtualization. Hardware trends (e.g., multicore, solid state disks) and software trends (e.g., data-centric computing) mean that virtualization is becoming even more prevalent. Reallocation algorithms have a large impact on the performance of virtualized systems. The algorithmic approach outlined in this project promises to improve the performance, scalability, and predictably of large systems. As such, this research show great promise for improving the general infrastructure of computing in the next decade.

Functional Transport Properties of Multiferroics

2011-07-01T11:42:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1104484

NSF Funding Organization: DMR

Principal Investigator: Cheong, Sang-Wook

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $190000

Program(s): CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS

Abstract: ****Technical Abstract**** Charge conduction in ferroelectrics, more often called leakage, has been considered a serious problem that depreciates their functionality. However, remarkable electronic transport properties have been recently reported in ferroelectric domains and walls in multiferroics with non-zero d electrons. These novel properties include significant conduction in ferroelectric domain walls, polarization-modulated rectification, and switchable photovoltaic effects. The objective envisioned in the proposal is to characterize the underlying mechanisms of charge conduction and photovoltaic effects of individual domains and walls in high-quality single crystals of semiconducting multiferroics, including polar magnets, using standard transport measurements and Scanning Probe Microscopy (SPM) in controlled environments. Crystallographic and magnetic structural correlation with charge transport properties will be investigated using transmission electron microscopy (TEM), and synchrotron x-ray and neutron scattering. The results will be important in order to exploit potential technologies based on nanoscale functional transport properties, such as resistive ferroelectric memories, sensors, and novel energy-harvest devices. Integration of fundamental research and education of graduate, undergraduate and high-school students will be a critical part. High school students will be involved through the Partners in Science Program, organized by the liberty Science Center, New Jersey. New research results from the proposed projects will be a valuable part of a graduate course on up-to-date materials physics. ****Non-Technical Abstract**** Magnetism and ferroelectricity are imperative bases for current technology and multiferroic materials, where magnetism and ferroelectricity coexist, have been extensively investigated for great technological and fundamental scientific importance. However, the unprecedented functional charge transport properties in multiferroics have been only recently revealed. The objectives envisioned in the proposal include to characterize the mechanism of the functional charge transport properties in multiferroics, and to exploit potential technologies based on nanoscale functional transport properties, such as resistive ferroelectric memories, sensors, and novel energy-harvest devices. The centerpiece of the proposal is a wide spectrum of collaboration, so a multiplicity of techniques and skills will be utilized. The proposed study will further strengthen the role of research in all levels of education. For example, high school students will be involved in the proposed research through the Partners in Science program, organized by the Liberty Science Center, Jersey City, New Jersey, which the PI has been continuously involved in for the last 11 years, and new research results from the proposed projects will be a valuable part of a graduate course on up-to-date materials physics.

HCC: Medium: Collaborative Research: Generating Accurate, Understandable Sign Language Animations Based on Analysis of Human Signing

2011-07-01T11:41:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1064965

NSF Funding Organization: IIS

Principal Investigator: Metaxas, Dimitris

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $149703

Program(s): HUMAN-CENTERED COMPUTING

Abstract: American Sign Language (ASL) animations have the potential to make information accessible to many deaf adults in the United States who possess only limited English literacy. In this research, which involves collaboration across three institutions, the PIs' goal is to gain a better understanding of ASL linguistics through computational techniques while advancing the state of the art in the generation of ASL animations for accessibility applications for people who are deaf. To these ends, the PIs will develop linguistically based models of two aspects of ASL production: movements required for head gestures and facial expressions that carry essential grammatical information and frequently extend over domains larger than a single sign, and the timing and coordination of manual and non-manual elements of ASL signing. Preliminary work has shown that these issues significantly affect how well signers understand ASL animations, and that these aspects of current ASL animation technologies require improvement. How should the face of a human or animated character be articulated to perform, with accuracy, the linguistically meaningful facial expressions that are part of ASL grammar? How should the onsets, offsets, and transitions of these movements be produced? How should the facial expressions and hand movements be temporally coordinated so that the ASL production is as grammatically correct and understandable as possible? To answer open questions such as these, the PIs' novel approach will apply techniques from computer vision to linguistically annotated video data collected from human signers, in order to produce models for use in animation-production. The PIs will expand their existing annotated video ASL corpora through new data collection and annotation, and will analyze these data to study the use, timing, and synchronization of manual and non-manual components of ASL production. The annotated videos will be used to train high quality computer vision models for recognition of linguistically significant facial expressions and timing subtleties. Parameters of these computer vision models will be used to hypothesize computational models of ASL timing and facial movements, to be incorporated into ASL-animation generation software and evaluated by native signers. The models will be iteratively refined in cycles of user-based studies and incorporated into ASL animation technologies to more accurately mimic human signing. Project outcomes will include high quality models of the movement of virtual human characters for animations of ASL performance. The analysis of video corpora of ASL will produce new linguistic insights into the micro-facial expressions and the temporal coordination of the face and hands in ASL production, while advances in the analysis of ASL prosody will contribute to an understanding of the fundamental commonalities and modality-specific differences between signed and spoken languages that is essential to a full understanding of the human language faculty. The creation of new modeling approaches and recognition techniques will advance the field of computer vision, by benefiting the identification and tracking of the human face and body in video during the rapid and complex movements of ASL (and other forms of human movement). Broader Impacts: This research will lead to significant improvements to technology for generating linguistically accurate ASL animations, which will make information, applications, websites, and services more accessible to the large number of deaf individuals with relatively low English literacy. Advances in computer vision techniques for recognizing ASL in videos of humans will have general applicability in human-computer interaction, recognition and animation of facial expressions, and computer vision. The corpora created in this project will enable students and researchers in both linguistics and computer science (including those without access to the requisite technological and human resources to carry out their own data collection from native signers and time-intensive linguistic annotations) to engage in research on ASL. The techniques to be developed will also enable partial automation of the time-consuming creation of annotated ASL video corpora. As in the PIs' earlier work, the proposed research will create opportunities for people who are deaf and members of other underrepresented groups to participate in scientific research.

On-chip dynamic temperature monitoring and thermal evaluation of superconducting wires via optical whispering-gallery mode technique

2011-07-01T11:41:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 7/1/2011

Award Number: 1067141

NSF Funding Organization: CBET

Principal Investigator: Guo, Zhixiong

Co-PI: Yogesh Jaluria

Award Amount: $104629

Program(s): THERMAL TRANSPORT PROCESSES

Abstract: 1067141 Guo Traditional tools in temperature measurement such as thermocouples, thermistors, and platinum resistance thermometers are intensity modulated. It is well known that optical frequency has an enormous information capacity and accuracy that would be impossible to duplicate with intensity signals. The objective of this project is to develop an optical frequency-modulated whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) based on-chip dynamic ultrafine temperature measurement system that will enable high-temperature superconductor (HTS) on-chip dynamic thermal management and power applications. Although optical WGMs in dielectric resonators have great potentials in molecular level and nanoscale detection and measurement technologies, many applications with WGMs suffer from thermal fluctuations due to the thermo-optic and thermal expansion effects. Nevertheless, the thermal effects can be transferred into precise temperature measurement and thermal characterization. This project proposes on-chip dynamic temperature monitoring, in which the sensor head is directly coated to the superconductor wire to form a thin ring and the contact temperature is measured through the WGM resonance frequency shift. The system will determine the critical temperature (< 100 K) in HTS with unprecedented fine resolution and accuracy. A coating study of dielectric materials on superconductor wires will be conducted to enable the fabrication of practical on-chip WGM annular micro-resonators. The project will focus on an extensive evaluation of the coated sensors including electrical, optical, and thermal aspects. A heat transfer analysis will enhance understanding thermal transport in HTS and the proposed sensors for many thermal management and power applications. Intellectual Merit: This project will improve understanding the fundamentals of photo-electro-thermal effects of materials and the temperature dependence of superconductivity at the micro/nanoscale. It pushes cryogenic temperature measurement resolution to an unprecedented level, providing a new capability for high-end scientific, industrial, space and military systems. Other features of the proposed microsensor include high stability, fast response, and microelectronics compatibility. Superconductor electronics has been experiencing rapid development and the power applications of HTS rely on efficient on-chip dynamic thermal management. The proposed system will measure the actual superconducting wire temperature without interference; and thus, precisely determine the critical temperature. Any tiny temperature improvement in cryogenics and superconductivity could be a milestone. The investigators and their team have successfully conducted some initial studies. They are well-equipped and well-positioned to conduct the proposed research and to fulfill the education goals. Broader Impacts: Successful development of the microsensor system updates necessary tools for precise measurement and scientific discovery. Compatibility with microelectronics will lead to integrated sensors for on-chip temperature monitoring which is still a challenging task. The project could potentially provide a powerful tool to study the HTS wire stability and be beneficial to the HTS wire and devices development and power applications in cables, motors, and transformers. The results obtained will be disseminated to the relevant research and engineering communities through publications, conference presentations and seminars. They may foster a commercial interest in applications to meet the demand for miniaturization, integration, low temperature, and high accuracy detection. The research and education will be quite useful for training graduate students and gaining meaningful research experience for undergraduates, in particular underrepresented minorities. It offers students the opportunities to expand their intellectual horizon to a bridge connecting the state-of-the-art engineering technologies and basic science. The curriculum and instructional labs at Rutgers will be improved. The international research and education collaboration will be enhanced.

RAPID: Disasters, Resilience, and Vulnerability of Fishing Communities in Post-Tsunami Japan

2011-06-15T11:56:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 6/15/2011

Award Number: 1137856

NSF Funding Organization: BCS

Principal Investigator: McCay, Bonnie

Co-PI: Satsuki Takahashi

Award Amount: $24948

Program(s): CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Abstract: Dr. Bonnie J McKay (Rutgers University) and Dr. Satsuki Takahashi (Institute of Social Science, University of Tokyo) will undertake joint research on the rebuilding efforts in Japanese coastal fishing towns damaged by the recent earthquake, tsunami, and nuclear power crisis. The focus of the research will be on how combined natural and human disasters affect community responses. Previous research on the relationships between disasters, vulnerability, and resilience have led in different directions, depending on whether the disasters are understood as caused by human or natural agency. In these accounts, natural disasters encourage communities to work together to develop better systems in the future, while human-made problems, such as air and water pollution, disproportionally affect vulnerable communities and limit their ability to rebuild. Building upon and contributing to social scientific theories on resilience, vulnerability, and nature-culture relationships, this project will investigate the cultural and political outcomes of dual (natural and human-caused) disasters. The research will comprise historical and ethnographic fieldwork, including archival research, open-ended and semi-structured interviews, and participant observation, in two Japanese fishing towns for which the researchers have baseline data. This research is being supported through NSF's Rapid Response Research (RAPID) program, which is used for projects having severe urgency with regard to availability of or access to data, facilities or specialized equipment, including quick-response research on natural or anthropogenic disasters and similar unanticipated events. By addressing the responses in coastal Japan over five months shortly after the disaster, with follow-up research several months later, this project will be sensitive to any changes that may occur as time passes. It will investigate early and middle-term responses to the extraordinary disaster as a way to shed light on the complex relationships among "natural" and "human" hazards, resilience, and vulnerability, offering important lessons for researchers and policymakers.

Transforming the General Biology Laboratory for Undergraduate Students

2011-06-01T14:32:00.004-04:00

Start Date: 6/1/2011

Award Number: 1044699

NSF Funding Organization: DUE

Principal Investigator: Haviland, Martha

Co-PI: Gregg Transue, Andrew Vershon, Melanie Lenahan

Award Amount: $170,930

Program(s): TUES-Type 1 Project|S-STEM:SCHLR SCI TECH ENG&MATH

Abstract: This project is implementing and assessing an innovative model for transforming the introductory General Biology (GB) sequence at both Rutgers University (RU) and Raritan Valley Community College (RVCC). The new curriculum incorporates the type of educational and research experiences recommended in Bio2010, How People Learn, and the recent AAAS organized Vision and Change conference to include (1) increased opportunities for students to understand the process of science, i.e., how hypotheses are generated, experiments are conducted, how their outcomes are analyzed, and in general, how scientific knowledge advances; (2) instruction enabling students to develop metacognitive skills and effective learning strategies; and (3) class environments and structures that promote active learning. The new courses build upon the established lecture curricula and provide students with new engaging laboratory experiments, field experiences, and a peer-led workshop. The GB courses provide student-centered environments where active learning is emphasized. In the redesigned laboratory, students conduct an integrated series of experiments involving DNA sequence analysis and aquatic ecology that are part of a semester long research project focused on the aquatic plant, duckweed. These experiments enable students to be knowledge producers instead of simply consumers, leading to a deeper understanding of how science is conducted. The experimental structure of the project affords the opportunity to assess the transformed General Biology course by testing hypotheses concerning student achievement, learning, and attitudes at both institutions. Results of this assessment are informing and guiding the full integration of the transformed curriculum at the two participating institutions as well as providing direction to other institutions with very large introductory biology courses.

Doctoral Dissertation Research: Concepts of Time Among Settlers in Disputed Territories

2011-06-01T14:32:00.003-04:00

Start Date: 6/1/2011

Award Number: 1061319

NSF Funding Organization: BCS

Principal Investigator: Goldstein, Daniel

Co-PI: Assaf Harel

Award Amount: $10,000

Program(s): CULTURAL ANTHROPOLOGY

Abstract: Rutgers University doctoral student, Assaf Harel, under the guidance of Dr. Daniel Goldstein, will undertake research on concepts of time and local politics in contemporary pioneer settlements. Pioneer settlement is a source of both opportunity and conflict in the contemporary world. How settlers assign meaning to the past, the present, and the future appears to be significant for predicting the potential for territorial disputes. The research will be carried out among two ideologically different Jewish settlement blocs in the West Bank. Through the use of qualitative and ethnographic methods that include interviews, archival research and participant observation, the researcher will investigate (1) how different groups of settlers assign meaning to events in time; (2) how they view their own capacity to influence the flow of history, and (3) how these conceptions of time relate to ideology as well as to settlement-making practices. The research is important because it may offer a lens into the local-level roots of seemingly intractable conflicts in many parts of the world today. Findings from the research also will contribute to social scientific understanding of the relations between time and space and thus will deepen understanding of temporal dimensions of territorial disputes. Funding this research also supports the education of a social scientist.

Function Theory of Several Complex Variables

2011-06-01T14:32:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 6/1/2011

Award Number: 1101481

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Huang, Xiaojun

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $120,855

Program(s): ANALYSIS PROGRAM

Abstract: In this project, the principal investigator will continue his work on several basic problems in multivariate complex analysis that are closely related to research in differential geometry, nonlinear analysis, and classical dynamics. More specifically, the principal investigator would like to continue his research on the equivalence problem in several complex variables and carry further his work on the complex structure of the holomorphic hull of a real submanifold in a complex space through the use of the attached holomorphic disks. He will continue his investigation of various rigidity problems in several complex variables, as well as their applications and interactions with super-rigidity problems in the theory of complex singularities and complex geometry. He intends to investigate the simultaneous embedding and filling problem for a Cauchy-Riemann (CR) family of embeddable, compact, strongly pseudo-convex, three-dimensional CR-manifolds. Finally, he will continue his work to understand whether an algebraic, strongly pseudo-convex hypersurface can be locally holomorphically embedded into the Heisenberg hypersurface in a complex space of higher dimension. Complex numbers and functions of complex variables have become, since the nineteenth century, indispensable tools in many areas of mathematics and its application to other areas of science and engineering. The solutions of many problems in the applied sciences could ultimately depend on improvements in these complex analytic tools and a deeper understanding of their basic properties. For example, in materials science the standard method for treating multidirectional stresses in a uniform way is to represent them as complex numbers or, in more complicated situations, as complex functions. It then turns out that, among other things, the direction of the propagation of cracks in materials is related to the properties of certain equations associated with these complex numbers or functions. Results of the research to be carried out in this project may lead to the discovery of new properties of solutions of these equations. This project has significant educational and training aspects: several graduate students and junior mathematicians will be actively involved in this project. Finally, the principal investigator will continue to organize international conferences on several complex variables and complex geometry, bringing together mathematicians to discuss their research and teaching.

P2C2: Rapid Climate Variations--A Speleothem-based High-resolution Record of Rainfall in the Equatorial South Pacific over the Last 83,000 Years

2011-06-01T14:32:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 6/1/2011

Award Number: 1103478

NSF Funding Organization: AGS

Principal Investigator: Sinclair, Daniel

Co-PI: Robert Sherrell

Award Amount: $528,195

Program(s): PALEOCLIMATE PROGRAM

Abstract: This project seeks to generate a Uranium/Thorium (U/Th) dated record of rainfall in the southern tropical Pacific at sub-century (~50 year/sample) resolution for most of the glacial and Holocene periods using stalagmites from the island of Niue and from Tonga. The speleothem from Niue dates to 83,000 years before the present. Specifically, the researchers will: 1) analyze the Niue specimen, as well as a Holocene-age stalagmite from Tonga, for Oxygen-18, Carbon-13, Magnesium/Calcium ratios, Strontium/Calcium ratios, and Barium/Calcium ratios; 2) generate a precise absolute-dated U/Th age model for the specimens; and 3) undertake drip-water sampling to validate paleoclimate interpretations. The goal of the project is to examine the following hypotheses: a) at times of increased Thermohaline Circulation (THC), a northward shift of the Pacific Inter-tropical Convergence Zone (ITCZ) dominated over a westward shift in the Walker Cell resulting in decreased rainfall at Niue; and b) rainfall records at Niue will show rapid shifts in phase with Greenland ice-core records, but will also show additional changes characteristic of Antarctic temperature records. The broader impacts include the potential for a high-quality paleoclimate record from an important and under-studied region. In addition to the scientific importance and support of a graduate student, the researcher will conduct outreach through a NSF-sponsored program through which high-school students and teachers from New Jersey participate in workshops on marine and climate science.

Spectral Methods, L-functions and Primes

2011-06-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 6/1/2011

Award Number: 1101574

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Iwaniec, Henryk

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $94,319

Program(s): ALGEBRA,NUMBER THEORY,AND COM

Abstract: The spectral methods of automorhpic forms are basic tools of analytic number theory for more than three decades. Recently new possibilities have been opened in the area of metaplectic forms. The Proposal offers to make substantial expansion of the classical results to this territory, such as for example the large sieve for cusp forms. Applications of the spectral theory of metaplectic forms to the distribution of roots of quadratic congruences are in progress. Here the point is that the resulting estimates are valid in great uniformity with respect to the discriminant. Less direct, yet motivating are applications of spectral estimates in conjunction with sieve methods to the distribution of prime numbers. In particular these could yield a very good bound for the first prime which splits completely in the Hilbert class field. The proposal also includes (jointly with B. Conrey and K. Soundararajan) study of zeros of L-functions, proving that a respectful percentage of such zeros lay on the critical line. This very basic problem (a progress towards the celebrated Riemann Hypothesis) will definitely attract graduate students. An interaction of the PI in the related research with students and postdoc is an indispensable part of the activity under the Proposal. In fact a current student Jorge Cantillo at Rutgers already began to work on improving the density theorems for the zeros of automorphic L-functions.

Collaborative Research: Development of 40Ar/39Ar Intercalibration Pipettes

2011-06-01T11:41:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 6/1/2011

Award Number: 1057650

NSF Funding Organization: EAR

Principal Investigator: Turrin, Brent

Co-PI: Carl Swisher

Award Amount: $212436

Program(s): INSTRUMENTATION & FACILITIES

Abstract: Potassium (K), one of the more abundant elements in the Earth?s crust is found in many rock forming minerals. One of the isotopes of K, 40K is radioactive and decays to 40Ar. This scheme forms the physical basis for one of the most common geochronologic techniques applied to rocks and minerals. In recent years, a special technique requiring neutron bombardment of samples to produce 39Ar from 39K has become more favored than the traditional ?K-Ar? method, referred to as the 40Ar/39Ar method. In fact, the 40Ar/39Ar method of radioisotopic dating has the broadest range of applicability of any geochronometer, being useful from early solar system formation (~4.56 billion years ago) to volcanic materials as young as 2,000 years old. These studies cover topics such as volcanic and seismic hazards, timing and extent of mineralization events, global climate change and variability, paleomagnetic reversal timescale, and dating the fossil record, including human evolution. Thus any improvement in the accuracy and precision 40Ar/39Ar method will improve our understanding of the timing and rates of geologic processes. Despite exemplary precision, recent experiments conducted via the EARTHTIME initiative have revealed significant interlaboratory inconsistencies such that ages determined by different labs may vary by us much as 4 %, approximately an order of magnitude larger than typical reported measurement precision. Four possible causes for these discrepancies have been identified; 1) differences in the data reduction protocols employed by the participating laboratories; 2) unaccounted nonlinearity of the mass spectrometer source/detector systems used to collect the data; 3) unrecognized heterogeneity in the mineral standards or an experimental artifact arising from variations in neutron irradiation dosage in some of the sample packages; and 4) incomplete degassing or isotopic fractionation of Ar from the analyzed sanidines in various laboratories. This research project addresses the issue of interlaboratory consistency by developing an argon pipette system that will travel between the participating 40Ar/39Ar labs within the United States. The pipette system will deliver gas samples with exactly the same isotopic composition(s) and similar gas volume(s), thus controlling the variables and issues associated with heterogeneity of natural samples. In addition, variable gas sample volumes from the pipette system will also be measured to assess the response linearity of noble gas mass spectrometers. The ultimate goal of this study is to intercalibrate the various NSF supported 40Ar/39Ar laboratories and allow for the direct comparison of the ages produced from the participating labs, at the level of 0.1% or better. The long-term use of the pipette system will maintain the calibration between the 40Ar/39Ar laboratories. Undergraduate and graduate students will be traveling with the intercalibration pipette assisting with the measurements. This will provide the students the opportunity to see, work, and interact with personnel from the different 40Ar/39Ar laboratories and serve as a unique training opportunity for the next generation of geochronologist/isotope geochemists.

AF: Medium: Computational Complexity Theory and Circuit Complexity

2011-06-01T11:41:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 6/1/2011

Award Number: 1064785

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Allender, Eric

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $426769

Program(s): ALGORITHMIC FOUNDATIONS

Abstract: This award focuses on problems in computational complexity theory, with the goal of clarifying the power and limitations of various important classes of algorithms (known as "complexity classes"). Complexity classes provide the best tools currently available for understanding the computational complexity of real-world computational problems. Part of the award supports a collaboration with researchers at the Czech Academy of Sciences. Kolmogorov complexity measures the amount of "information" in a finite string, and also provides a mathematical definition of what it means for a string to be "random". Although the Kolmogorov complexity of an arbitrary string cannot be computed, there are strong connections between the (non-computable) notion of randomness and questions about the circuit size required to compute various functions. This award will support an investigation into recent indications that computational complexity classes can be characterized in terms of efficient access to the Kolmogorov complexity function, thus possibly opening a new portal for techniques from the theory of computability and algorithmic randomness to be applied in complexity theory. The award will also support an investigation into the limits of computation by arithmetic circuits. (In an arithmetic circuit, data can only be manipulated by arithmetic operations such as addition and multiplication; operations that directly access the individual bits of numeric data are not supported.) The long-term goals of research in computational complexity, if finally achieved, will have profound impact on the society---for instance, by providing firm mathematical underpinnings to public-key cryptography, which currently rests upon many unproven conjectures. This research activity offers concrete plans for incremental progress toward this long-range goal. The award also supports graduate education. As such, it will assist with training new researchers and educators. The research results will be broadly disseminated, not only through journal publication but also through survey articles in various venues.

REU Site: Research Internships in Ocean Sciences (RIOS)

2011-05-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 5/15/2011

Award Number: 1062894

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Taghon, Gary

Co-PI: Kenneth Able

Award Amount: $103,480

Program(s): |EDUCATION/HUMAN RESOURCES,OCE

Abstract: This award provides renewed funding for a Research Experience for Undergraduates (REU) program at the Rutgers Institute of Marine & Coastal Sciences and Rutgers University Marine Field Station. The Research Internships in Ocean Science (RIOS) program will support ten students each summer for three years during a ten week summer research internship. Through independent projects and team research experiences, students will focus on process-oriented concepts and techniques applicable in any marine ecosystem. Students can choose to focus on a wide variety of research topics and technologies including remote sensing, ocean observatories, autonomous vehicles, numerical modeling, and molecular biology. The faculty and research facilities at IMCS allow undergraduates to explore these technologies to understand marine ecosystems. An initial five-day orientation introduces students to ongoing research, focusing on the Raritan River-Raritan Bay and the Mullica River-Great Bay systems. The two estuaries provide a sharp contrast in their human impacts on coastal ecosystems. The orientation includes two days at the Rutgers University Marine Field Station in Tuckerton, with hands-on experience in the coastal LEO-15 research area, and on the Mullica River. During the first week students also consult with mentors, and learn how to formulate a research question and write a proposal. Other orientation activities include workshops on effective teamwork and an online course on responsible conduct of research. Ethics training will be supplemented by group discussions of case studies. Students make oral progress reports of their research in a mid-program workshop. Discussions of careers in ocean science and when and how to apply to graduate school take place towards the end of the program. All participants receive instruction on how to write up and analyze their data, and how to prepare a poster for the final poster session. Students complete questionnaires and concept maps at the beginning and end of the program. Additionally, educational research methodologies are used to provide insight into how learning takes place during the internships. Support provided by NSF and DOD includes funding for student stipends, student travel to and from the site, student housing and meals and some administrative costs. The site is co-funded by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program.

Workshop on Measuring and Modeling at the Interface of Air Quality and Climate to Understand Biosphere-Atmosphere Interactions

2011-05-01T14:32:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 5/1/2011

Award Number: 1135038

NSF Funding Organization: AGS

Principal Investigator: Carlton, Ann Marie

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $19,951

Program(s): ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY

Abstract: This workshop convenes many of the nation's experts on atmospheric measurements of biogenic volatile organic compounds (BVOCs) to define the current state of the science in this area. The emphasis will be on the Southeastern U.S., which previous field studies and modeling suggest is a "hotspot" for BVOC emissions to the atmosphere. BVOCs are a globally significant emission to the atmosphere; they have a major impact on ozone production, with secondary effects on ecosystems and human health. New techniques and infrastructure will also be discussed. A major goal of the workshop is to bring together established senior researchers and early career scientists with new and different perspectives to provide opportunities for professional interactions in a focused and productive forum. The discussion outcomes will be reported in a peer-reviewed journal publication.

Workshop on Foundations of Algorithms in the Field

2011-05-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 5/1/2011

Award Number: 1131447

NSF Funding Organization: CCF

Principal Investigator: Muthukrishnan, Shanmugavelayu

Co-PI:

Award Amount:$99,165

Program(s): ALGORITHMIC FOUNDATIONS

Abstract: Ongoing technological revolutions continually bring forth new research challenges and myriad research communities within Computer Science usually respond to them on their own. It has been generally recognized that we need tighter collaboration across these communities: researchers from different communities working jointly "in the field," constantly informing each other, inventing in their respective areas in response to their experience in the field, and forging systems and solutions that are simultaneously validated by both algorithmic and systems communities. Such an experience will produce algorithms that are practical as well as powerful, and systems and applications that are efficient and effective, without working to make independent research threads meet ex post. We believe that the time is appropriate for "Algorithms in the Field." We propose to initiate discussions and collaborations on understanding the challenges and promises of algorithmic foundations in various CS fields, and further establish the vision of algorithmic foundations forged in these fields in practice. The development of successful examples will increase awareness that collaborations across the subdisciplines should be customary, and not exceptional. The main goal of the workshop is to provide a working vision for such examples of Algorithms in the Field, and a prioritization of near term goals and directions for scientific investigation.

International Conference: Perspectives and Future Directions in Systems and Control Theory

2011-04-15T14:32:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 4/15/2011

Award Number: 1132241

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Ocone, Daniel

Co-PI: Yuan Wang

Award Amount: $35,000

Program(s): ENERGY,POWER,ADAPTIVE SYS|APPLIED MATHEMATICS

Abstract: This award supports travel for participants in a Conference on Perspectives and Future Directions in Systems and Control Theory, to take place at Rutgers University, NJ, May 23-27, 2011. A primary goal of this conference is to bring together leaders and junior researchers in the field of control theory, in order to exchange ideas and results contrasting different theoretical approaches, and to explore and discuss emerging application areas such as systems biology and networks. Expository talks, technical presentations, and panel discussions will provide opportunities for fostering collaborations among researchers working in various different subfields, as well as for junior researchers, postdocs, and graduate students interested in system and control theory to interact with the established control theory community. The conference will cover a variety of topics including nonlinear stability analysis, construction of feedback mechanisms, systems with impulses, networked systems, control with communication constraints, monotone systems, graph-theoretic approaches to biological networks, and synchronization of interconnected systems. Control systems and feedback loops are ubiquitous in engineering, in areas such as aerospace control, manufacturing and robotics, active damping, climate control of buildings, process control in chemical plants, electrical power systems, bioengineering, consumer products, and active suspensions, automatic braking systems, and engine timing in the automobile industry. One finds control and feedback in nature, as well, for example in the homeostatic mechanisms that allow organisms to finely tune their internal variables such as temperature, pressure, or chemical levels. The mathematical theory of control formulates the basic theoretical principles and provides tools to study problems in these fields. The conference will highlight the interplay between theory and applications, will review some of the main past achievements in the field, and will lead to discussions of future research directions.

GOALI: Multiscale Modeling of Adsorption Equilibrium and Dynamics in Polymer Chromatography

2011-04-15T14:32:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 4/15/2011

Award Number: 1064170

NSF Funding Organization: CBET

Principal Investigator: Neimark, Alexander

Co-PI: Yefim Brun

Award Amount: $299,997

Program(s): GRANT OPP FOR ACAD LIA W/INDUS|CHEMICAL & BIOLOGICAL SEPAR

Abstract: 1064170 Neimark This project will research critical conditions of adsorption, which allow for molecular weight-independent separation of macromolecules with respect to their chemical composition, microstructure, and topology. Novel modeling methods based on gauge cell Monte Carlo simulation, selfconsistent field theory, and stochastic Fokker-Plank diffusion equation, will be elaborated and tested for studies of polymer adsorption equilibrium and dynamics. These methods will be applied to and verified with experimental data collected at DuPont on molecular weight-independent separation of linear homopolymers and copolymers with the example of styrene-butadiene systems separated on unmodified and modified silica substrates of different pore structure in typical chromatographic binary solvents. Adsorption of chain molecules on nanostructured surfaces and within nanoscale pores is the key mechanism of chromatographic separation and characterization of polymers, which is commonly employed in almost all branches of chemical and petroleum industries, as well as in biology and medicine. Currently, separation methods for new applications are developed by trial-and-error approaches. The main obstacle in developing new chromatographic processes is the absence of an adequate theory describing the behavior of macromolecules within confining porous medium with adsorbing surfaces, and, as the result, the lack of a fundamental understanding of the mechanism of retention and the pore structure effects, such as pore size and shape. The objective of the proposed program is to design novel molecular simulation tools capable of predicting equilibrium partitioning and dynamics of chain molecules on nanoporous substrates and to advance fundamental understanding of the physico-chemical mechanisms of retention in polymer chromatography. The success of the proposed project will enable the development of a strategic approach to guided optimization of the conditions of polymer chromatography. The novel simulation methods may find various applications in modeling of complex macromolecular systems beyond polymer chromatography. They can be extended to the problems of DNA and protein translocation through biological and solid state nanopores, biopolymer sequencing, and DNA packaging in bacretiophages. Improved understanding of the physico-chemical mechanisms of interactions of macromolecules with nanostructured and porous substrates is the key for a rational design of novel nanocomposites, polymer modification of surfaces, pharmaceutical tablets, and films. The results of this research will have a significant transformative interdisciplinary impact since it addresses currently unresolved topical problems that are common across different chemical and biomedical technologies, and focuses on developing and testing innovative modeling tools that can be adapted and employed for simulation and optimization of various processes which involve polymer and biopolymer adsorption and diffusion on nanostructured substrates and membranes, such DNA sequencing and packaging. The research project and minority student recruitment will be coordinated with the current NSF IGERT program on Nano-Pharmaceuticals and NSF ERC project on Structured Organic Particulate Systems (ERC-SOPS); the PI is a faculty researcher in these projects. Minority undergraduate students will be recruited through the REU initiative; the PI has an established record of supervising REU minority students. A special study module on "Polymers and Nanoparticles" will be prepared for students and teachers from K-12 attending the New Jersey Governor's School of Engineering and Technology and the Education and Training Institute facilitated by ERC-SOPS. The results of this work will be disseminated through peer reviewed publications, presentations at national and international meetings, and by creating a dedicated webpage for making project reports and presentations available for educational purposes. The novel simulation methods and case-study systems will be included into the new graduate course on "Nanoscale Thermodynamics and Transport" developed by PI for the IGERT curriculum. The students will benefit from industrial training and research facilities of DuPont Experimental Station. Guided by the industrial Co-PI, they will produce computer programs of practical relevance and get a hands-on experience in chromatographic experimentation.

RAPID: Identification of Genes Associated with Resistance to Epizootic Disease in a Marine Invertebrate

2011-04-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 4/15/2011

Award Number: 1136530

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Guo, Ximing

Co-PI: Susan Ford, Deborah Bouchard

Award Amount: $51,285

Program(s): BIOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

Abstract: Funding was requested to identify MSX disease resistance genes in oysters to better understand the genetic mechanisms of host defense, which are poorly known in marine invertebrates. These genes or markers are valuable for studying host-pathogen interactions and predicting host population response. The team will collect and analyze pre-epizootic samples and establish a baseline population genetics signature of a natural population that is potentially about to undergo a heavy selective mortality by MSX. They will also collect samples as the epizootic progresses and after mortality has occurred to validate markers for MSX-resistance and document genetic changes caused by MSX outbreaks. The team has previously worked at this location through a NSF Ecology of Infectious Disease award and has already identified a set of genes/markers that are associated with resistance to MSX and/or Dermo. Because MSX and Dermo occurred together, they could not separate MSX from Dermo resistance. This MSX outbreak in Maine, where Dermo is negligible, provides a rare opportunity to do so and observe the timeline of a genetic response of the host population and possibly rapid development of resistance. This request was made through a Rapid Response Research Grant (RAPID) rather than through a regular proposal because a new outbreak of MSX disease, caused by water-borne protozoan parasite Haplosporidium nelsoni, is being observed in eastern oysters in Maine. The prevalence has reached 96%, and heavy mortalities are expected soon when water temperature increases this spring and summer. The study must be undertaken without delay in order to understand the genetic mechanisms of oyster defense to MSX disease and observe the timeline of genetic response and development of resistance of the host population. Broader Impacts of this proposal include participation of one graduate student. The study will take advantage of the new outbreak of MSX disease being observed in eastern oysters in Maine to understand the response of oyster populations to MSX disease. The results will be useful for understanding the consequences of future similar outbreaks.

Specificity of Synapse Formation

2011-04-01T14:32:00.005-04:00

Start Date: 4/1/2011

Award Number: 1051594

NSF Funding Organization: IOS

Principal Investigator: Plummer, Mark

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $167,500

Program(s): ORGANIZATION

Abstract: Cognition in the human brain depends upon extraordinarily precise connections between brain cells (neurons). If neural pathways do not form correctly or become damaged, then impairments of brain function will inevitably result. Although a great deal is known about molecules that comprise connections between brain cells (synapses) there is only a rudimentary understanding of the molecular markers that direct any particular neuron to its correct target destination. The goal of this project is employ electrophysiological, molecular, and immunocytochemical approaches to identify molecules that specify selective synaptic connectivity between brain cells. The brain area to be studied is the hippocampus, a structure known to be important for learning and memory in all mammals, including humans. The hippocampus is highly organized, with clear patterns of connectivity between distinct cell populations. The initial focus will be to build upon preliminary data which indicate that potential "signpost" molecules show cell-type specific distribution patterns. Subsequent experiments will manipulate these molecules to test directly their role in directing synapse formation between specific populations of cells. Student participation will be encouraged throughout all aspects of this work and results will be disseminated at public meetings and via scientific publications. The significance and impact of these studies is clear. In order to fully understand how brains form in embryos and young organisms throughout the animal kingdom, fundamental knowledge must be obtained about how individual cells are able to seek out and form synapses with their correct targets. The work described here will make an important contribution to achieving that goal.

International Research Experience for Students (IRES): Climate Change and Threatened Salmonid Fishes in Northern Mongolia

2011-04-01T14:32:00.004-04:00

Start Date: 4/1/2011

Award Number: 1064843

NSF Funding Organization: OISE

Principal Investigator: Jensen, Olaf

Co-PI: Timothy Zimmerman

Award Amount: $149,988

Program(s): IRES/DDEP

Abstract: Understanding the impacts of climate change on aquatic ecosystems requires disentangling the web of direct and indirect climate effects from other anthropogenic changes. There are very few undisturbed lakes and rivers in the world in which this might be possible. The Lake Hovsgol - Eg River system is one of them. This project team will bring a small group of U.S. graduate and undergraduate students to Lake Hovsgol (the 17th largest lake in the world by volume) and the Eg River (Lake Hovsgol's only outflow) to conduct ecological research with a focus on effects of climate change on threatened salmonid fishes. Specific projects include: (1) using tagging and genetics to understand spawning site fidelity and population structure; (2) diet and stable isotope studies to characterize the current food web compared to historical conditions; (3) developing a novel non-invasive photo markrecapture technique for estimating growth of taimen; (4) bioenergetic studies of threatened salmonids to understand their physiological responses to warming; (5) developing water and nutrient budgets to understand the effects of changing inputs from tributary streams into Lake Hovsgol; and (6) a variety of limnological and fish community sampling to understand long-term change and inter-annual variability. Students will be paired with a mentor from among the 13 U.S. project collaborators, most of whom have already conducted research in the Lake Hovsgol - Eg River ecosystem. Students' prepartion will include plans for sample processing, data analysis, and manuscript writing to be completed upon their return from the field. Two U.S. mentors (rotating) and a Mongolian mentor will accompany students and supervise the field research. Broader Impacts of this project include: (1) improving the knowledge base for management of aquatic ecosystems and threatened fishes in Mongolia and in other high latitude temperate environments; (2) providing an international research experience early in the academic careers of the student participants and extending their professional networks by working with project collaborators (11 institutions in 10 states in addition to our Mongolian collaborator); (3) engaging students in independent research projects (the majority of which should be publishable on their own) that also contribute to the broader goal of understanding how salmonid fishes respond to climate change in an otherwise nearly undisturbed system.

EAGER: Collaborative Research: Dye-anchored nanocatalysts for improved solar energy conversion efficiency

2011-04-01T14:32:00.003-04:00

Start Date: 4/1/2011

Award Number: 1107278

NSF Funding Organization: CBET

Principal Investigator: Galoppini, Elena

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $51,226

Program(s): CATALYSIS AND BIOCATALYSIS

Abstract: Dye-sensitized solar cells (DSSC) are a very promising technology for low-cost conversion of solar energy to electricity. The device has three essential components: a wide-bandgap semiconductor (nanocrystalline TiO2) film deposited on a transparent conducting glass electrode and coated with a dye; a platinized counterelectrode; and an electrolyte solution containing the iodide/triiodide redox couple. However, cell efficiencies have been limited due largely to the high electrochemical overpotential (about 0.5 V) needed to drive the critical dye regeneration reaction, where iodide reduces an oxidized dye molecule bound to a TiO2 nanoparticle, yielding triiodide and the uncharged dye as products. The PIs, Professors Alex Agrios of the University of Connecticut, Storrs, CT, and Elena Galoppini of Rutgers University, Newark, NJ, propose to attach catalytic Pt nanoparticles to the dye molecules anchored to the TiO2 surfaces. They hypothesize that Pt bound to the dye molecule can catalyze dye regeneration, routing the reaction through less energetic intermediates and greatly reducing the overpotential required between oxidized dye and iodide. This work will employ catalysis to remove a longstanding limitation on the energy conversion efficiency of low-cost dye-sensitized solar cells. This collaborative EAGER proposal covers experiments to carry out the initial syntheses and experiments to test the main hypothesis to demonstrate the possibility of nanocatalysts to improve DSSC solar energy conversion efficiency. About half of the electrochemical energy of each electron hole pair is lost due to energy losses in the electrochemical processes driving the cell. It is generally acknowledged that the next breakthrough in DSSC research will be the recovery of this lost energy. The significance of this work will be both practical and fundamental, with the concept of molecularly anchored nanocatalysts having potential implications in diverse fields.

Collaborative Research: Secondary Organic Aerosol Production in Real Atmospheric Waters

2011-04-01T14:32:00.002-04:00

Start Date: 4/1/2011

Award Number: 1052611

NSF Funding Organization: AGS

Principal Investigator: Turpin, Barbara

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $130,694

Program(s): ATMOSPHERIC CHEMISTRY

Abstract: This collaborative project addresses a newly recognized (aqueous) pathway for the formation of secondary organic aerosol (SOA) in the atmosphere. The poor understanding of SOA formation is a major source of uncertainty in predictions of atmospheric aerosol concentrations and properties that affect climate, visibility and health. Current models do not capture the magnitude, distribution and dynamics of measured organic aerosol concentrations, and smog chamber experiments form SOA that is substantially less oxygenated and, therefore, less hygroscopic than aged atmospheric organic aerosol. There is growing evidence that these and other atmospheric observations can be explained, at least in part, by multiphase SOA formation involving aqueous reactions in clouds, fogs and wet aerosols. When this process is included in models, predicted SOA formed through aqueous chemistry is comparable in magnitude to that formed through the traditional pathway (e.g., gas phase reaction and partitioning to particulate organic matter) in the northeastern United States and globally. Several types of atmospheric measurements also provide evidence for this process. This project addresses the following questions: 1) Is aqueous SOA formation clearly observable in the field? 2) How does aqueous SOA formation influence the oxygen-to-carbon ratio of the organic aerosol? 3) How much of the observed aqueous SOA produced can be explained by known mechanisms? What precursors are important? 4) To what extent does SOA formation depend on light, liquid water, and organic matter? How much can be attributed to aqueous formation processes? Field measurements will be conducted during the PEGASOS campaign in the Po Valley, Italy, where conditions are ideal for SOA formation through reactions in aerosol water. In conjunction with these field studies, controlled aqueous photooxidation experiments will be conducted in the laboratory with detailed chemical analysis and chemical modeling using 1) water-soluble (filtered) mixtures of compounds scrubbed from the ambient air, 2) collected (filtered) fog water, and 3) selected compounds identified as potential aqueous precursors based on project findings. Broader Impacts: This work will further elucidate an important pathway for secondary organic aerosol formation and provide an assessment of the relative importance of this pathway in locations where conditions are favorable to SOA formation in wet aerosols and fogs. This project will provide a measurements database and a unique archive of characterized fog samples for use by other investigators. This research is designed to contribute ultimately to improved global/regional prediction of aerosol effects from precursor emissions. This project will facilitate the education of scientists. The planned K-12 outreach is designed to reach large numbers of students and to increase interest in and understanding of the process of scientific discovery by youth.

NeTS: Medium: Visual MIMO Networks

2011-04-01T14:32:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 4/1/2011

Award Number: 1065463

NSF Funding Organization: CNS

Principal Investigator: Gruteser, Marco

Co-PI: Narayan Mandayam, Kristin Dana

Award Amount: $182,236

Program(s): RES IN NETWORKING TECH & SYS

Abstract: The increasingly ubiquitous use of cameras creates an exciting novel opportunity to build camera-based optical wireless networks. Optical wireless is not only a potential low-cost alternative where it can take advantage of existing cameras and light emitting devices, but it's highly directional transmissions can present advantages over radio-frequency (RF) based wireless communications. While the optical channel differs fundamentally from the RF channel, this project recognizes that it also allows multiple spatially separated channels between an array of transmitter elements and the array of camera pixels, akin to an RF multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) system. This inter-disciplinary project therefore brings together expertise in the areas of mobile networks, communications, and computer vision to analyze, design, and prototype a network stack for such visual MIMO communications. This stack addresses the fundamentally different visual channel and receiver constraints through innovative visual signal acquisition, tracking, interference cancellation, and modulation techniques at the physical layer as well as vision-aware link and MAC layer protocols. Visual MIMO networks can potentially support applications ranging from secure communication between cell phones, over localization of 911 callers through surveillance cameras, to interference-free car-to-car communications. The project also makes an experimental visual MIMO testbed available to the research community at large. In addition to publications, the project takes advantage of WINLAB's biannual industry meetings to disseminate results and provides a variety of appealing educational activities involving K-12 and undergraduate students.

Relative Influence of Turbulence and Waves on Larval Behavior

2011-04-01T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 4/1/2011

Award Number: 1060622

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Fuchs, Heidi

Co-PI: Francisco Diez-Garias, Gregory Gerbi

Award Amount: $645,439

Program(s): BIOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY|PHYSICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

Abstract: This study will investigate how snail larvae from distinct habitats respond to fluid-mechanical cues in turbulence and surface gravity waves. Turbulence and waves are common features of coastal flows and may provide larvae with behavior cues that aid transport toward specific flow regimes or habitats. Turbulence induces some mollusk larvae to sink more frequently, but still unknown are the detection mechanism and the response to waves. Larvae may sense spatial velocity gradients (strain rate and vorticity) or acceleration. Larval-scale flows are affected differently by turbulence and waves; turbulence can generate larger strain rates and vorticity whereas waves can generate larger accelerations. Larvae that sense multiple flow characteristics may be able to distinguish between turbulence-dominated coastal embayments and wave-dominated regions of the continental shelf. In this study, larval behaviors will be quantified in several devices that generate steady strain rates and vorticity, simple acceleration, homogeneous turbulence, and complex flow with turbulence plus waves. Data will be used to develop stochastic models of larval behavior as a function of hydrodynamics and to test hypotheses about ecological and size-based controls on behavior. Intellectual Merit: The proposed research addresses the following fundamental aspects of larval behavior and the ecological impacts of turbulence and waves: 1) Novel approaches to gain insights on behavioral signaling. Two-phase infrared particle-image velocimetry techniques will be applied in multiple flow tanks to study effects of both turbulence and waves at the scale of larvae. Statistical protocols will be developed for converting behavior observations into empirical models, laying the groundwork for careful integration of more complex behaviors with physical circulation models. Results will identify the key fluid characteristics affecting behavior in species from intertidal and shelf habitats. 2) Impact of waves on behavior. Many habitats are influenced or even dominated by waves, yet no study to date has explored the potential for waves to provide a larval behavioral signal. This study will be the first to explore larval response to the large accelerations present only in waves. 3) Role of behavior in dispersal. Benthic recruitment variability arises partly from vagaries of dispersal that result from larval responses to the physical environment. Turbulence and waves vary spatially and also temporally due to stratification, water depth, tides, and winds. Small-scale symptoms of turbulence and waves could elicit larval behaviors that contribute to differences in dispersal trajectories. This study will describe larval responses to hydromechanical cues that ultimately could explain uncertainty in dispersal and recruitment. 4) Adaptation to physical environments. Shears and acceleration are potential behavior signals that could be enhanced or dampened by human impacts such as boating, shoreline modification, or storms. If behaviors are tuned to specific flow regimes, larvae may have difficulty adapting to changing marine environments. This work will be instrumental in assessing potential ecological impacts of changing physical processes on larval behavior and dispersal. Broader Impacts: The proposed study integrates ecology, ocean physics, and state-of-the-art technology to promote interdisciplinary research, teaching, and infrastructure. Co-PI Gerbi is a postdoctoral associate, and his career will benefit from mentoring and experience on a highly interdisciplinary project. One graduate student will do dissertation research while gaining expertise in marine ecology, fluid mechanics, and flow-measurement technology. Two undergraduates will be recruited to participate through the NSF RIOS program and the Rutgers Aresty program for minority students, and the Rutgers student will do a senior thesis on part of this project. Results of this research will be incorporated into a new course in biological-physical interactions for graduate and undergraduate students. The project offers several opportunities to improve and expand the Larval Zoo, a web archive that provides movies of swimming larvae to a wide audience. The PIV and flow tanks will complete a new Plankton-Fluid Interactions Laboratory, leveraging a substantial contribution from Rutgers. The PIV is an invaluable upgrade to the flow-measurement capabilities of the Rutgers seawater flume facility.

CAREER: Investigating Core Issues in Learning Progressions Research

2011-03-15T14:32:00.001-04:00

Start Date: 3/15/2011

Award Number: 1053953

NSF Funding Organization: DRL

Principal Investigator: Duncan, Ravit

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $96,727

Program(s): REESE

Abstract: This project conducts two parallel studies on learning progressions (LPs). LPs embody a developmental approach to learning as they describe the paths that students might take as students develop progressively more sophisticated ways of reasoning about scientific concepts and practices in a domain. Therefore, this project investigates the theoretical validity of LPs based on the outcomes of earlier studies to better understand what can be learned about how student knowledge develops in genetics. Two research questions will guide the studies. 1. To what extent does the notion of well-defined and highly constrained learning paths reflect the actual development of students? learning in a domain? 2. In what ways do the learning of scientific content and scientific practices interact in science LPs? That is, what are the affordances and constraints that particular content learning paths pose on the learning of scientific practices? The first study addresses both research questions by comparing two genetics LPs through a dual implementation of instructional units that also include a focus on modeling practice. This comparison provides additional evidence regarding the type and relative strength of the conceptual constraints and affordances that drive the development of student knowledge in genetics. The participating mid-sized suburban district uses a physics-first curriculum where biology is taught last in the science sequence at the11th grade. Participants include four high school teachers and their students. The project impacts about 70 students per teacher or 560 over two implementations. The second study addresses only the first research question and employs a cross-sectional design to examine the development of the genetics knowledge of students from late elementary to college. This cross-sectional design provides additional evidence about the conceptual constraints and affordances in the development of genetics knowledge given a much broader sample from varying instructional contexts. Students at 5th, 7th, 9th, and 11th grades from public and private schools as well as undergraduates and graduates from Rutgers, Montclair, and Princeton participate in the second study. The sample includes about 200 students from each group.

Phase I: I/UCRC: Center for Dynamic Data Analytics (CDDA)

2011-03-15T14:32:00.000-04:00

Start Date: 3/15/2011

Award Number: 1069258

NSF Funding Organization: IIP

Principal Investigator: Metaxas, Dimitris

Co-PI: Vladimir Pavlovic, Ahmed Elgammal, Tina Eliassi-Rad, Hui Xiong

Award Amount: $78,101

Program(s): INDUSTRY/UNIV COOP RES CENTERS

Abstract: 1069258 Rutgers University; Dimitris Metaxas 1069147 Arie Kaufman; SUNY at Stony Brook The Center for Dynamic Data Analysis (CDDA) will focus on conducting innovative research and applications based on the collaborative efforts between the two universities and member companies in the emerging field of dynamic data analysis. The end result will be novel science, algorithms and applications that transform chaos into knowledge. Rutgers University (RU) and SUNY at Stony Brook are collaborating to establish the proposed center, with RU as the lead institution. The proposed Center will investigate algorithms and potential solutions to analyze and visualize massive, complex, multidimensional and multi-scale dynamic data. The algorithm design will be tested, validated and improved based on the close collaboration and research between the two participating universities and industry. The participating universities have research and education programs whose strengths cover the technical scope of the center. The proposed research projects will be useful to industry and homeland security, and the proposed Center will transform traditional research in computer science. Analysis and visualization of large-scale dynamic data will also become a new area of research for many graduate students. CDDA plans to have students spend time with the industrial affiliates in the form of summer internships and during the academic year so they can improve their skills. The participating universities also plan to leverage existing outreach programs at their institutions, and programs sponsored by the NSF, to encourage the participation of under-represented groups in the research..

COLLABORATIVE RESEARCH: INVESTIGATING HYDROLOGY-DRIVEN MODELS FOR METHANE CYCLING IN NORTHERN PEATLANDS

2011-03-01T14:32:00.007-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1045084

NSF Funding Organization: EAR

Principal Investigator: Slater, Lee

Co-PI: Karina Schafer

Award Amount: $149,938

Program(s): HYDROLOGIC SCIENCES

Abstract: Project Abstract A major contributor to the current uncertainty regarding how carbon cycling in peatlands will respond to climate warming is the incomplete understanding of the production, storage and emission of free phase gas (FPG), a previously under-appreciated source of methane and carbon dioxide emissions to the atmosphere. It is increasingly clear that FPG production, storage and emission are regulated by hydraulic forcing, as well as the mechanical properties of the peat, i.e. that the carbon and water cycles in a peatland are intimately connected. The focus of this project is field-scale hydrological and hydrogeophysical research to further investigate the importance of recently invoked "shallow" versus "deep" peat models for the production, storage and emission of FPG in northern peatlands. Specific objectives of the project include [1] quantifying vertical variations in storage and release of methane with depth over a minimum six month time period at each of three locations within a peatland, [2] determining the hydrological forcing mechanisms that drive releases from both deep and shallow gas, [3] estimating spatial variations in storage and release as a function of subsurface heterogeneity, and [4] quantifying relative contributions of shallow versus deep gas to methane emissions from a northern peatland. This research will be conducted by coupling hydrogeological methods with novel chamber, geophysical and geodetic sensing technologies sensitive to FPG production, storage and emissions. The field site is Caribou Bog, a well-studied multi-unit peatland complex in central Maine. Empirical predictive models and simple mechanistic models will be developed to assess the relative importance of key forcing mechanisms on FPG emissions. Time-frequency analysis of time-series datasets will also be employed to improve understanding of likely forcing components regulating production, storage and release of FPG. This research will significantly advance our understanding of hydrological controls on FPG dynamics in northern peatlands, with important implications for the response of peatland carbon dynamics to climate change. Northern peatlands globally cover more than 350 million ha and contain about one third of the terrestrially stored carbon. The fate of this carbon in response to continued climate warming is highly uncertain. Peatlands are also a source of atmospheric methane, a potent greenhouse gas that contributes to climate warming. This research will provide fundamental scientific knowledge needed to advance the understanding of the cycling of methane in peatlands, and how peatland hydrology controls the emission of methane from peatlands to the atmosphere. The work has direct societal relevance given the concerns about the environmental and economical affects of climate warming. In this project, Lois Stokes Alliance for Minority Participation undergraduate students will be exposed to a hands-on interdisciplinary research among three institutions. Furthermore, an international community of graduate students will participate in a student-focused session on methane cycling in northern peatlands at American Geophysical Union meetings. Community outreach in the vicinity of the Caribou Bog will occur via annual guided tours using the Orono Bog Boardwalk that served +30,000 visitors in 2009.

Collaborative Proposal: Developing Proportional Reasoning in a Physics Context with Invention Tasks

2011-03-01T14:32:00.006-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1045250

NSF Funding Organization: DUE

Principal Investigator: Brahmia, Suzanne

Co-PI: Kathleen Scott, Eugenia Etkina

Award Amount: $65,216

Program(s): TUES-Type 1 Project|S-STEM:SCHLR SCI TECH ENG&MATH

Abstract: Workers in science and technology-related fields use proportional reasoning extensively when making sense of quantitative data. Mathematics instruction in middle school and high school often places a corresponding emphasis on ratios and proportions, however many students still have difficulty reasoning about product and ratio quantities in introductory physics classes. This project is developing curricular materials to strengthen the ability of students to reason in the context of the topics regularly covered in introductory physics. These materials employ "invention instruction," an approach shown to be effective in facilitating mathematical reasoning. In an invention task, students are given a "job" that they complete by inventing a quantity to characterize a set of physical situations and make meaningful comparisons. The tasks are sequenced so students can start by reasoning about ratios and proportions in a familiar, everyday context, and they progress toward more abstract physical quantities for which physicists commonly use the same type of reasoning. These invention sequences are designed to highlight the similarity of the reasoning required. The project workers are developing invention sequences for use in both high school and introductory college classes and are measuring their effectiveness in developing students' content knowledge and reasoning ability with more abstract quantities. In parallel, they are also conducting basic research into how students are actually using proportions in various settings. This work is contributing to our understanding of how and why students struggle with reasoning about abstract quantities in introductory physics and provides instructional approaches that more efficiently develop reasoning skills for maturing students of science.

Type 2: A CRI-EaSM Collaborative proposal: Climate-to-humans: A study of urbanized coastal environments, their economics and vulnerability to climate

2011-03-01T14:32:00.005-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1049088

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Curchitser, Enrique

Co-PI: Francisco Werner, Ying Fan Reinfelder, Nina Fefferman, Frank Felder

Award Amount: $2,314,487

Program(s): CR, Earth System Models|CR-Water Sustainability & Clim

Abstract: A unified framework for studying global change in the Earth System allowing for scale interactions (up/down-scaling) and explicitly modeled dynamic feedbacks between the sub-components will be developed. The investigator team will build an Earth System Model (EaSM) that couples multi-scale ocean, atmosphere, watershed, biogeochemistry and human system models. The projected variability of the coupled environmental and human systems, represented with bio-economic and social network models, will be used to study management and other socio-economic decisions affecting future sustainable practices and the long-term evolution of the Earth System. The target for this study is the northeast U.S., a highly urbanized and densely populated region with approximately 33% of the US population hosting one the world's largest economies. It is also a region where vulnerability to global change is heightened, experiencing significant climate and ecosystem changes, shifting land use, and a complex western boundary current oceanic regime with significant implications to the northern hemisphere climate. Since many of the global change issues can be attributed to anthropogenic perturbations (e.g., a warming climate, ecosystem stress, declining biodiversity) the interface of the physical environment with human systems is central to this project. Intellectual merit: This project will use disciplinary and computational developments of the last 20 years to assemble, test and use an Earth System Model. The proposed model emerges from the realization that humans and their political, economic and social structures are an integral part of the Earth System dynamically interacting with its climate and ecosystems. Therefore, the ultimate goal of the proposed model is to be able to study present and future climate and ecosystems, accounting for both physical and anthropogenic forcings and the relevant human decision-making structures. To that end, this project aims to increase the skill of contemporary climate models by implementing a strategy that permits multi-scale interactions in the physics and biogeochemistry, improving upon known biases in the models and where necessary improve the dimensional representation of the physics and the ecosystems (e.g., the land-sea boundary). Broader impacts: The project aims to develop tools that can be used to study and address some of the biggest long-term challenges facing humans namely, a changing climate and limited natural resources. It achieves this first, by addressing known deficiencies in global climate model and second, by developing a model that includes economics and the human impact on the climate system. The target region for the study is the northeast U.S. and adjacent coastal ocean. This is a region with a significant population size and economic activity, which are particularly vulnerable to climate change. However, all the components of the proposed Earth System Model can be implemented in any region of interest. The resulting model will be available both to scientists for research purposes and to policy makers as a decision support tool. The framework for the model development is the community-based NCAR-Community Climate System Model. As such all development becomes part of the scientific community repository with significant technical support, education and outreach infrastructure. A significant outreach activity proposed is to hold a workshop for scientists and policy people with the main goal of teaching potential users of the model its capabilities with hands on tutorials, and particular examples developed during this work. This proposal will also support students and post-doctoral fellows during various stages of the work. Finally, this work brings together scientific communities that do not typically work together. The challenges facing society due to a changing climate, population growth and resource limitations are multi-faceted and it will take an interdisciplinary approach to study, mitigate and solve them. Arguably, the biggest impact of this work is the assembly of scientists with varied interests and disciplines ready to work towards a common goal.

CAREER: Investigating Fundamental Problems for Underwater Multimedia Communication with Application to Ocean Exploration

2011-03-01T14:32:00.004-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1054234

NSF Funding Organization: OCI

Principal Investigator: Pompili, Dario

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $599,825

Program(s): CAREER: FACULTY EARLY CAR DEV

Abstract: Wireless acoustic communication is the typical physical-layer technology underwater because of the high medium absorption of radio frequencies and of the scattering problem affecting optical waves. As of today, however, acoustic communication solutions support only delay-tolerant low-bandwidth monitoring applications. Conversely, this research enables near-real-time acquisition and processing of heterogeneous data from mobile and static ocean exploration platforms. Reaching this goal will improve the efficiency of monitoring key dynamic oceanographic phenomena such as phytoplankton growth and rate of photosynthesis, salinity and temperature gradient, and concentration of pollutants. Toward this end, this research studies underwater inter-vehicle communication solutions aimed at enhancing the capabilities of the NSF's Ocean Observatories Initiative (OOI) cyberinfrastructure. The primary intellectual merit of this project offers the distinction between two forms of position uncertainty. Typically, uncertainty in the position of a mobile vehicle as estimated in relation to itself (which the PI refers to as internal uncertainty) is the focus of distributed underwater robotics and networking. By contrast, the PI introduces the new notion of external uncertainty, in which uncertainty in the position of a mobile vehicle is estimated by others. Specifically, this project focuses on modeling external uncertainty, on designing reliable underwater communication solutions that exploit the external-uncertainty notion, and on demonstrating the effectiveness of integrating computation and communication resources on marine science and technology through emulations and field experiments. One of the broader impacts of this work is the generation of computer-literate undergraduate and graduate researchers with a comprehensive knowledge in underwater sensing, communication, and coordination. The PI will create new teaching modules on distributed sensing, provide opportunities for exchange programs, leverage existing minority student outreach networks at Rutgers, and incorporate student exchange programs as well as team-teaching approaches.

Collaborative Research: Lipid lubrication of oceanic carbon and sulfur biogeochemistry via a host-virus chemical arms race

2011-03-01T14:32:00.003-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1061883

NSF Funding Organization: OCE

Principal Investigator: Bidle, Kay

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $725,035

Program(s): BIOLOGICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

Abstract: Intellectual Merit: Despite the critical importance of viruses in shaping marine microbial ecosystems, very little is known about the molecular mechanisms mediating phytoplankton-virus interactions. As a consequence, we currently lack biomarkers to quantify active viral infection in the oceans, significantly hindering our understanding of its ecological and biogeochemical impacts. The coccolithophore Emiliania huxleyi (Prymnesiophyceae, Haptophyte) is a cosmopolitan unicellular photoautotroph whose calcite skeletons account for about a third of the total marine CaCO3 production. E. huxleyi forms massive annual spring blooms in the North Atlantic that are infected and terminated by lytic, giant double-stranded DNA containing coccolithoviruses. Findings that lytic viral infection of E. huxleyi recruits the hosts programmed cell death (PCD) machinery demonstrate that viruses employ a sophisticated, co-evolutionary "arms race" in mediating host-virus interactions. The investigators recently demonstrated that viral glycosphingolipids (vGSLs), derived from unexpected cluster of sphingolipid biosynthetic genes, a pathway never before described in a viral genome, play a crucial functional role in facilitating infection of E. huxleyi. The observations of vGSLs in the North Atlantic and Norwegian fjords further suggest that they may be novel, diagnostic biomarkers for viral infection of coccolithophore populations. At the same time, the discovery of vGSLs and a distinct, protective 802 lipid argues that a host-virus, co-evolutionary chemical arms race plays a pivotal role in regulating viral infection and in lubricating upper ocean biogeochemical fluxes of Carbon and Sulfur. The focus of this project is to elucidate the molecular, ecological, and biogeochemical links between vGSLs (and other polar lipids) and the global cycles of carbon and sulfur. The team of investigators proposes a multi-pronged approach combing a suite of lab-based, mechanistic studies using several haptophyte-virus model systems along with observational studies and manipulative field-based experiments the Northeast Atlantic. Using these diagnostic markers, they will document active viral infection of natural coccolithophore populations and couple it with a suite of oceanographic measurements in order to quantify how viral infection (via vGSLs) influences cell fate, the dissolved organic carbon (DOC) pool, vertical export of particular organic (POC) and inorganic carbon (PIC; as calcium carbonate, CaCO3) (along with associated alkenone lipid biomarkers and genetic signatures of viruses and their hosts) and the upper ocean sulfur cycle (via the cycling of dimethylsulfide [DMS] and other biogenic sulfur compounds). Furthermore, given they are unique to viruses, the investigators propose that vGSLs can be used to trace the flow of virally-derived carbon and provide quantitative insights into a "viral shunt" that diverts fixed carbon from higher trophic levels and the deep sea. The overarching hypothesis for this study is that vGSLs are cornerstone molecules in the upper ocean, which facilitate viral infection on massive scales and thereby mechanistically "lubricate" the biogeochemical fluxes of C and S in the ocean. Broader Impact: This research blends concepts in physiology, molecular biology, biochemistry, viriology and lipid chemistry, with oceanography and biogeochemistry, thereby providing an opportunity whereby researchers with different educational backgrounds can interact and develop. This project provides excellent hands-on training for development of postdocs, graduate students and undergraduate students. The research provides resources and opportunities for inter-institutional exchange Rutgers-WHOI-College of Charleston and builds both on established national and international collaborations and will foster new ones. The PIs will work with COSEE NOW and Networked Ocean World to increase ocean literacy by integrating scientific research with K-12 educators and public audiences. An important component of this project is to bring scientists at sea in touch with classroom students and the general public. As such, the project incorporates several concrete strategies, including: (1) posting web/video blogs from sea; (2) incorporating a freelance videographer to collect multimedia content on a cruise to the Northeast Atlantic, which will be used in diverse post-cruise deliverables; (3) producing "Ocean Gazing" podcasts so the general public can look at, listen to and touch the ocean and unpack some of its secrets by presenting ongoing oceanographic research and interviewing oceanographers; and (4) integrating the research activities with ongoing K-12 teacher workshops as part of the Marine Activities, Resources and Education program and through interactions with Laura Dunbar, a Science/Technology teacher at Sea Girt Elementary School (Sea Girt, NJ).

REU Site: Perceptual Science and Technology

2011-03-01T14:32:00.002-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1062735

NSF Funding Organization: CNS

Principal Investigator: Stone, Matthew

Co-PI: Eileen Kowler

Award Amount: $101,765

Program(s): |RSCH EXPER FOR UNDERGRAD SITES

Abstract: This REU site brings eight undergraduate students to Rutgers each summer for a ten-week research internship in the area of perceptual science and technology. This research area centers on the challenges and opportunities of building novel computational models that systems may use to understand their environment and act intelligently in it. The area affords a range of research methods, including designing algorithms, building systems, gathering and analyzing data, and understanding intelligence in its human context. Research projects cover topics such as: computational approaches to the perception and recognition of objects, faces, scenes, depth and motion; perceptual categorization and perceptual decisions; data mining and statistical analysis of perceptual input; search, attention, and visuo-motor learning; visual experiences in human-computer interaction; and computational depiction and design. The site strives to recruit and support interns from underrepresented populations and to foster collaborative research. Accepted students work closely with a faculty mentor from drafting a project plan through carrying out and presenting their research. Each project includes a pathway for two or more interns to bring different results, data, or methods to bear on a shared problem. The site holds workshops on research practice, research ethics, skills for collaboration, and careers in perceptual science and technology. Social events reinforce the sense of community. The integrative, collaborative focus of the site offers interns a deeper sense of range of the different careers, topics and work environments available to them, and allows them to fine-tune a match between their research plans and their personal goals, backgrounds, and interests. The site is co-funded by the Department of Defense in partnership with the NSF REU program

Conference on Mathematical Finance and Partial Differential Equations

2011-03-01T14:32:00.001-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1059206

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Feehan, Paul

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $20,000

Program(s): APPLIED MATHEMATICS

Abstract: Partial differential equations, probability, and analytical methods are fundamental tools in the modeling and description of financial markets. The purpose of this meeting is to showcase new methods, directions and the most recent research in partial differential equations, probability, stochastic control, numerical analysis, and their application to mathematical finance. Invited presentations by leading academic and industry researchers highlight the latest research in the application of partial differential equations to option pricing, portfolio optimization, risk management, and high-frequency trading. Their presentations focus on degenerate-elliptic and degenerate-parabolic variational equations and inequalities for stochastic volatility models in finance; free-boundary value problems; stochastic control and the Hamilton-Jacobi-Bellman equation; non-linear partial differential equations in finance; stochastic optimal control, high-frequency finance and algorithmic trading; and numerical solution of partial-integro differential equations and inequalities. The invited talks are complemented by presentations on these themes contributed by promising young researchers. The conference will help foster academic and industry research collaborations; introduce industry problems to academic researchers; introduce academic research and methods to industry practitioners; facilitate scientific networking opportunities for junior practitioners and graduate students; and foster mathematical finance and partial differential equations as a research discipline for Ph.D. students in pure and applied mathematics. We especially welcome participation by women, minorities, and other underrepresented groups, as well as students and junior researchers.

REU Site: The Biogeography of Biotransformations for Halogenated Organic Compounds, a Comparison of the Tropics, Temperate and Sub-Arctic Environment

2011-03-01T14:32:00.000-05:00

Start Date: 3/1/2011

Award Number: 1062477

NSF Funding Organization: EEC

Principal Investigator: Young, Lily

Co-PI: Max Haggblom

Award Amount: $375,000

Program(s): HUMAN RESOURCES DEVELOPMENT

Abstract: The objective of this three year summer REU program is to engage students in an international research effort to compare the ability of aquatic and sediment microbial communities in geographically distinct regions to mediate the biotransformation of historic chlorinated compounds , e.g. PCBs and a important class of emerging global contaminants, brominated flame retardants (BFRs), e.g.PBDE. All students will meet for a one week "scientific boot camp" to prepare to carry out experiments that compare the geographical differences in microbial communities and their metabolism of BFRs. Several students will then travel to China, to examine tropical microbial communities and carry out their experiments at the South China University of Technology (SCUT) and the Chinese National Academy Guangzhou Institute of Geochemistry (GIG). Several students will do the same with sub-Arctic microbial communities and work at the University of Helsinki (UH). The other students will be doing parallel experiments at Rutgers with temperate climate microbial communities. All students will reconvene for one week to compare their results, share their findings and develop a set of conclusions regarding the role of biogeography on the fate of BFRs in aquatic and sediment environments. The overall impact is to have students recognize the universality of scientific inquiry regardless of international borders and the global distribution of contaminants, as well as to determine the diversity of microorganisms and their biochemical mechanisms for metabolizing new anthropogenically created organic pollutants in the environment. The project aims to promote international exchange of students to foster science across global and cultural boundaries. The educational component will be coordinated with the research component as follows: 1) all students will meet for a week at Rutgers University at the start of the program to plan, prepare and learn about the project objectives and the coordination of efforts; 2) weekly videoconferences will take place with all participants; 3) all students and their international student partners and mentors will meet for a Student Symposium at Rutgers University at the end of the program to follow-up on their results and conclusions. The partner institutions will co-support the activities, including support of students from their own institution (SCUT and UH) to travel and participate in the Student Symposium at Rutgers. Rutgers University is one of the most diverse AAU institutions and a broad range of applicants will be sought from all over the US with special outreach to underrepresented groups through the RISE program at Rutgers and with personal contacts and recruitment visits to undergraduate institutions.

Doctoral Dissertation Research in DRMS: How Do People Value Life in Health Care Allocation? Inconsistencies and Mechanisms

2011-02-15T14:26:00.000-05:00

Start Date: 2/15/2011

Award Number: 1061726

NSF Funding Organization: SES

Principal Investigator: Chapman, Gretchen

Co-PI: Meng Li

Award Amount: $14,300

Program(s): DECISION RISK & MANAGEMENT SCI

Abstract: This dissertation research examines the decision processes underlying how people value lives saved in situations of resource scarcity. Three policies a person could use are examined: (1) treating all lives are equal, (2) prioritizing people who will gain the most benefit (e.g. additional life years) from an intervention, and (3) prioritize young people regardless of the number of years they have left to live. These metrics imply different strategies for health resource allocation, especially when such resources are scarce. Vaccination scenarios are used to probe which metrics lay people use in different situations and how the type of question influences the metric used. In direct questions, people are asked about their abstract principles (e.g., all lives are equal, prioritize the young, etc.). In indirect questions, people are given an allocation problem (e.g., there are 1000 people at risk but only 500 vaccines; who should get the vaccines?). The co-PI will test different psychological accounts for why people might express different metrics in these two types of questions. The broader impacts of this research derive from the fact that the public's support for health policies may be malleable: While the pro-young tendencies may drive support for specific policies for how to prioritize scarce health resources (i.e. the 2009 H1N1 vaccine was prioritized for people under age 25), they depart from the oft-cited moral standard that "all lives are equal". Such tendencies may be concealed in more direct measures, such as in questions directly asking whether lives of young people are more valuable than those of older people, because answering yes in this case is a more apparent contradiction to the deep-rooted "all lives equal" moral standard. Studying these inconsistencies provides important information on how to design public health policies and how to present them to the public.

Midwest Several Complex Variables Conference

2011-02-01T14:26:00.000-05:00

Start Date: 2/1/2011

Award Number: 1101665

NSF Funding Organization: DMS

Principal Investigator: Fu, Siqi

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $26,750

Program(s): ANALYSIS PROGRAM

Abstract: This award provides funding to help defray the expenses of participants, especially women, graduate students, postdocs, and junior faculty, in the "Midwest Several Complex Variables Conference" that will be held from May 12-14, 2011, on the campus of Washington University in St. Louis. This conference, which is the latest event in a long-running and highly influential series of conferences in the theory of several complex variables, will cover a wide spectrum of topics in the field (e.g., pluripotential theory and complex dynamics, CR-geometry and conformal geometry, invariant metrics and their applications, automorphism groups). All of the topic areas cited in the proposal are central to analysis and extremely active subjects of current research. The format of the meeting is such that young people will have ample opportunities to speak and be otherwise engaged in the various conference activities.

Collaborative Research (OSU, USC, RU): Continental Shelf Diagenesis II: The Importance of Increasing Oceanic Hypoxia to Coastal Iron Supply and the Oc

2011-01-15T15:45:00.000-05:00

Start Date: 1/15/2011

Award Number: 1029739

NSF Funding Organization: ANT

Principal Investigator: Severmann, Silke

Co-PI:

Award Amount: $76,335

Program(s): CHEMICAL OCEANOGRAPHY

Abstract: Abstract Coastal zone hypoxia (oxygen depletion) has both natural and, increasingly, anthropogenic dimensions that can lead to host of changes to the biogeochemical processes taking place on continental shelves. Continental shelf regions are well known to be important transition zones between terrestrial sources and the deep ocean. The objectives of this collaborative study are to determine the efflux rates of iron from coastal zone and continental shelf sediments to overlying water columns during the development of seasonal anoxia cycles. The underlying hypothesis being tested at selected study sites in the Gulf of Mexico, and on previously sampled materials from Peru and Namibia continental margins, is that the redox gradients occurring in these shelf sediments will deliver both increasing flux rates and with characteristically isotopically lighter Fe signatures as anoxia develops. If the extent of anoxia transitions to a sulfidic sediment regime, the benthic iron flux may decrease in a negative feedback loop due to solubility constraints, but with even lighter isotopic Fe escaping to the water column. A better understanding of the diagenetically delivered flux of iron, an essential micronutrient for phytoplankton growth, from sediments is sought to account for the global balance of ocean productivity under changing oceanic conditions. The ability of Fe-isotopic systematics to trace coastal benthic iron sources is a potentially transformative outcome of this research. The work will also strengthen the international collaboration between US, and German researchers, and provide an opportunity to develop these ideas with methodologies such as benthic chambers for bottom water sampling, as well as sediment pore fluids and core incubations, and water column isotopic studies. A range of educational and outreach activities will also be carried out.