The success of the electronics industry over the last decade in developing the mass consumer market for computers, cellphones and other personal electronic equipment has been phenomenal. Society must now finds ways of safely and economically recovering the materials that are embedded in these products. This will require significant investment by governments, industry and individuals, in technol...

We present a novel adaptive dynamics algorithm with efficient contact handling for articulated robots. Our algorithm automatically computes a fraction of the joints whose motion provides a good approximation to overall robot dynamics. We extend Featherstone’s Divide-and-Conquer algorithm and are able to efficiently handle all contacts and collisions with the obstacles in the environment. Overal...

Recent research has shown that when people multitask, both the subtask structure and the temporal constraints of the component tasks strongly influence people’s task-switching behavior. In this paper, we propose an integrated theoretical account and associated computational model that aims to quantify how people balance structural and temporal constraints in everyday multitasking. We validate t...

Security tools guide so‰ware developers to identify potential vulnerabilities in their codes. However, the use of security tools is not common among developers. Œe goal of this research is to develop a framework for modeling the adoption of security practices in so‰ware development, and explore various sanctioning mechanisms in promoting greater adoption of these practices among developers. We ...

Graph-theoretic methods for analyzing workflows and processes can provide insight into important problems in process design, and can help in the design of effective workflows. In particular, representation of workflows as metagraphs has been shown to provide a useful basis for formal analysis of processes and workflows. In this paper, we show how attributed metagraphs can be used to analyze wor...

The contents of this report reflect the views of the corporate author who is responsiblefor the facts and the accuracy of the data presented herein. The contents do not necessarily reflect the official views or policies of the State of California. This paper has been mechanically scanned. Some errors may have been inadvertently introduced. FOREWORD The Intelligent Vehicle Highway System (IVHS) ...

The L1 data cache is a time-critical module and, at the same time, a major source of energy consumption. To reduce its energy-delay product, we apply two principles of low power design: specialize part of the cache structure and break down the cache into smaller caches. To this end, we propose a L1 cache that combines new designs of a stack cache and a PSA cache. Individually, our stack and PSA...

Information and knowledge management in a knowledge-intensive and time-critical environment presents a challenge to information technology professionals. In law enforcement, multiple data sources are used, each having different user interfaces. COPLINK Connect addresses these problems by providing one easy-to-use interface that integrates different data sources such as incident records, mug sho...

We review the problem of time-critical ac­ tion and discuss a reformulation that shifts knowledge acquisition from the assessment of complex temporal probabilistic dependencies to the direct assessment of time-dependent utilities over key outcomes of interest. We dwell on a class of decision problems char­ acterized by the centrality of diagnosing and reacting in a timely manner to pathological...

A commentary on Chaophilic or chaotolerant fungi: a new category of extremophiles? The known distribution of microbial life on Earth is expanding thanks to improvements in technologies that enable contamination-free sampling of previously inaccessible environments, and the detection and cultivation of microbes from these locations (Lever et al. habitability have to be revised. In many cases the...