Systems engineering is a discipline with methods and techniques to address complex problems. We want to study how Systems Engineering methods can help to address today’s grand challenges, such as the energy problem. The first step is problem definition which aims at articulating the problem in its context as clearly as possible. Humanity will have to cope with the energy problem, one of the mos...

This paper summarizes the findings and recommendations of a recent panel on Future Directions in Control, Dynamics, and Systems, sponsored by the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research. A set of grand challenges that illustrate some of the recommendations and opportunities are provided. Finally, the paper describes two new courses being developed at Caltech that are aligned with the recomme...

One of the grand challenges for society is global security in food and nutrition. The ‘‘perfect storm’’ metaphor has been used by Sir John Beddington to describe the scenario that wemight be heading for, with simultaneous shortages for food, water, and energy within the foreseeable future. This Select highlights the need for a truly multipronged approach across scientific disciplines and countr...

The results for heavy-light mesons are summarized in Table 1. The results presented here are based on the same statistical sample, consisting of 102 quenched configurations at β = 6.0 with lattice size 16 × 48, as used in our study of fB and fBs [1]. The details of the NRQCD action, the evolution equation for calculating the heavy quark propagator, the method used for setting the lattice scale,...