Southern New Jersey Professional Societies
Meeting Archive 2011 - 2012
Wednesday, 17 October 2012
Patterns in Systems Architecture
One only has to look around to find patterns in our everyday life. They are found in nature, and in manmade creations. The notion of modern day patterns in engineering was introduced by Alexander. He applied his pattern concept to civil engineering. Alexander states that “each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem in such a way that you could use this solution a million times over without doing it the same way twice.” Put another way, a pattern should be thought of as facsimiles of reality, in which a pattern writer has abstracted out detail which was deemed unnecessary to capture the essence of the reality. This talk will explore the notion of patterns in systems architecture, and how one might begin to document and reuse patterns in their day-to-day approach to work.
Wednesday, 19 September 2012
Giants at the End of the World: Recent Dinosaur Discoveries from Southernmost Patagonia, Argentina
Dr. Lacovara, Paleontologist (local Linwood native) will present his work on the study of the largest land animals ever to walk the Earth. Sauropod dinosaurs were a diverse and cosmopolitan clade of long-necked, quadrupedal herbivorous dinosaurs that included the largest terrestrial animals ever. They appeared during the Late Triassic, ~215 Ma (million years ago), and remained abundant on most landmasses until the end of the Cretaceous (65 Ma). Although sauropods attained large body size early in their evolutionary history, exceptionally gigantic forms are reported only from the Middle Jurassic through the early stages of the Late Cretaceous (~170 - 86 Ma). Until recently, latest Cretaceous sauropods were thought to be relatively diminutive compared with their predecessors.
Our discoveries in southern-most Patagonia, however, demonstrate the persistence of extremely massive sauropods into the latest stage of the Cretaceous Period. We recently excavated two specimens representing a new genus and species of titanosaurian sauropod. The first is represented by an isolated femur over 2 meters in length. The second consists of a largely complete, partially articulated skeleton. Previously discovered super-massive dinosaurs, such as Amphicoelias, Seismosaurus, Supersaurus, Sauroposeidon, Argentinosaurus, Paralititan, and Puertasaurus, are described only from fragmentary remains. Our new skeleton represents the most complete specimen yet of a dinosaur in the largest mass class. The record of large titanosaurian dinosaurs is especially fragmentary and this specimen provides an unprecedented opportunity to study the osteology and biomechanics of an enigmatic group of giants.
Additionally, the new titanosaurian dinosaur has possible polar affinities. Recent geophysical data indicates that Antarctica remained connected with South America until as late as 35 Ma. Cretaceous Antarctica is particularly mysterious in that it was ice-free and covered by boreal forest, yet still experienced six-months of darkness. Our new dinosaur may have been a denizen of this dark forest for which there is no modern analog. We are attempting to test this hypothesis with paleobiogeographic data from South America and Australia.
Tuesday, 14 August 2012
August is for Aerospace
The AIAA “August is for Aerospace” program is a great way to showcase the aerospace profession and show members of Congress the value and impact that aerospace has both locally and nationally. As a member of the Southern New Jersey Professional Societies, your input to this event is essential in providing a voice for the importance of our professions in New Jersey. Members are strongly encouraged to attend this COMPLIMENTARY event and tell Mr. Runyan why aerospace is important to them, to thank him for his work during the current session, and to talk about the overall value the aerospace sector provides America.
Wednesday, May 16, 2012
Aerodynamics and Wakes: Moving Toward Higher Fidelity in Flight Simulation
Speaker: Dr. Jeffrey KellerDr. Keller is an Associate with Continuum Dynamics, Inc. (CDI), an R&D boutique providing high quality, cost effective engineering services and state-of-the-art technical solutions for government and industry. Dr. Keller has been active in the research and development of aircraft and helicopter flight dynamics since the 1990s, including leading research into low-order inflow models for helicopters that capture fundamental cross-coupling behavior, in particular the coupled roll-pitch response characteristics in low speed flight. While at CDI, Dr. Keller has led and supported several flight dynamics and simulation software development projects, including projects in aircraft flight controls, V-22 icing detection and simulation demonstration, and ship airwake modeling for helicopter-ship dynamic interface (DI) simulation. His most recent work has been in unmanned air vehicle (UAV) flight dynamics modeling, detection, and recovery from aerodynamic disturbances (upsets), as well as in real-time aeroelastic and aeroservoelastic models for fixed wing aircraft.
Wednesday, April 18, 2012
Naval Air Station Atlantic City
Speaker: Richard Porcelli, Author & Aviation HistorianRichard Porcelli has authored articles on aviation topics and has now published a book on aviation history. His first book, to be published by Arcadia Publishing on March 19, 2012 is entitled, “Naval Air Station Atlantic City”. It provides a history not only of the Navy’s activities at this historic air station, but also Atlantic City’s rich aviation history dating back to just a few years after the Wright Brothers’ first flight and the important role of FAA’s Technical Center in improving the safety of commercial air travel. Activities aimed at our national security by the resident New Jersey Air National Guard, United States Coast Guard as well as the Department of Homeland Security are also described. He also published an article in Air Power magazine in 2004 recounting the story of an accident involving a nuclear-armed Bomarc missile near McGuire Air Force Base and the courageous actions of the first responders to avert a true disaster. Please join us and learn how much you didn’t know about the long rich history of Naval aviation in Atlantic City.
Wednesday, March 21, 2012
Real World Design Challenge
Speaker: Capt. Peter B. Hart, Aerospace Engineer, Engineering Teacher Cape May County Technical High School and Student TeamThe NJ Department of Education announced that the state’s first place winners of the 2012 Real World Design Challenge (RWDC) are from Cape May Technical High School. The RWDC is an annual high school competition run by a public-private partnership with the goal of sustainably increasing our Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) workforce. The RWDC provides high school students the opportunity to work on real world engineering challenges in a collaborative, team-based environment applying the lessons of the classroom to the technical problems of the workplace. The challenge is designed by professionals from industry, academia, and government. Teams of 3-7 secondary school students design a plane looking at the forces of flight, lift, weight, thrust & drag with the goal of enhancing performance and fuel efficiency. Each state's winning team competes at the national challenge event in Washington, D.C. at which they present their solutions to a panel of judges whereby a national winner is chosen." Please join us and see how New Jersey’s statewide winners met the Challenge!
Wednesday, February 15, 2012
Cataclysmic Variable Stars
Speaker: Dr. Edward Sion, Villanova UniversityDr. Sion’s research specialization is the formation, structure and evolution of white dwarf stars and cataclysmic variable stars, and the physics of mass accretion onto white dwarfs in close interacting binary stars. He has authored/ co-authored 210 peer-reviewed scientific publications in the top five highest impact journals in astrophysics and 515 publications in total. Among his research contributions are the first evolutionary model sequences of massive white dwarfs undergoing accretion and hydrogen thermonuclear shell flashes, the cool white dwarf luminosity function, demonstrating a real deficit of cool white dwarfs and hence a young age for the galactic disk, the basic spectroscopic classification system of white dwarf stars which is used worldwide and the spectral evolution of cool white dwarfs. He showed empirically that the DA (hydrogen-rich) white dwarfs and non-DA (helium-rich) white dwarfs undergo spectral evolution when deepening helium convection, as a white dwarf cools, it mixes hydrogen downward. His research with the Hubble Space Telescope, encompasses extensive studies of the physical properties of exposed white dwarf stars in cataclysmic variables and the pioneering evolutionary calculations of compressional heating of white dwarfs undergoing time variable accretion and showed that long term compressional heating due to accretion explained the observed distribution of white dwarf temperatures in cataclysmic variables
Wednesday, 18 January 2012
FlightGUI
Speakers: Andrew Crowell and Andrew Fabian, FAA Concepts Analysis BranchAndrew Crowell MS Electrical & Computer Engineering and Andrew Fabian, MS Computer Science are Computer Scientists for the Federal Aviation Administration’s Concept Analysis Branch. They will be presenting a software tool called FlightGUI that the Concept Analysis Branch developed for analysis of air traffic concepts. FlightGUI is an interactive 3D visualization tool. It allows the user to see air traffic concepts in 3-dimensional space and analyze those concepts using an ever-expanding toolset. It is designed to be flexible and extensible, allowing it to be adapted to analyze almost anything related to air traffic. They are both products of the FAA’s co-op program.
Wednesday, 19 October 2011
An Analytical Model for Evaluating UAS Safety Risk and Mitigation Effects
Speaker: James T. Luxhøj, PhD Rutgers UniversityAviation is a complex domain characterized by low probability, high consequence events with scarce data; hence, safety risk modeling is particularly challenging. There continues to be a persistent need to develop the analytics to capture both the explicit and implicit risks inherent in such domains. In this presentation, a probabilistic safety risk model is discussed that integrates a Bayesian Network (BN) with Multi-Attribute Value Theory. The enhanced methodology with a structured hazard taxonomy provides a framework for the systematic inclusion of both the explicit risk inherent from the BN and the non-apparent implicit risk in the BN that exists in large complex systems. Preliminary modeling results suggest that model offers promise for advanced risk assessment, particularly for Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) where civilian data are especially sparse. In this paper, the analytic constructs of the model are demonstrated with an application of safety risk modeling to aid in the prioritization of a portfolio of mitigations for a futuristic UAS scenario.
Thursday, 15 September 2011
The Similarities and Differences between Fourier Analysis and Wavelet Analysis and their Use in Data Analysis in Atmospheric Physics
Speaker: Joseph Trout, PhD, Richard Stockton CollegeDetails In this talk, Dr. Trout will introduce Fourier and Wavelet Analysis and their similarities and differences will be discussed. Fourier Analysis, the more familiar of the two methods, looks to sine and cosine waves to decompose data into a power spectrum to analyze any signals which may be contained in the data. Wavelet Analysis uses compact functions that can help analyze data by looking at transitions that are localized in space (or time). Experimental data and observational data will be analyzed using these two techniques. While at Drexel University, Dr. Trout worked on a research grade numerical model called the “Limited Area Mesoscale Prediction System (LAMPS90)”. His research used data collected during the “Experiment on Rapidly Intensifying Cyclones Over the Atlantic (ERICA)” to initialize the model and also used the data collected to verify the output of the model. Dr. Joseph J. Trout, Ph.D. is an Assistant Professor of Physics at Richard Stockton College of New Jersey in Pomona, New Jersey and is a Navy veteran (USS Forrestal CV-59). He is continuing his research in computational atmospheric physics and his interest in data analysis using Fourier Analysis and Wavelet Analysis.
Wednesday, 17 August 2011
August is for Aerospace
An Evening with
Congressman Frank A. LoBiondo
New Jersey’s 2nd District
The AIAA “August is for Aerospace” program is a great way to showcase the aerospace profession and show members of Congress the value and impact that aerospace has both locally and nationally. As a member of the Southern New Jersey Professional Societies, your input to this event is essential in providing a voice for the importance of our profession in New Jersey. Members are encouraged to attend this COMPLIMENTARY event and tell Mr. LoBiondo why aerospace is important to them; to thank him for his work during the current session; and to talk about the overall value the aerospace sector provides America.
Congressman LoBiondo is a member of the House Transportation & Infrastructure Committee. He takes great pride in serving as the Chairman of the Subcommittee on Coast Guard & Maritime Transportation, given its critical importance to South Jersey. He is also pleased to sit on the Subcommittee on Highways and Transit and the Subcommittee on Aviation - both of which have jurisdiction over critical issues that affect New Jersey’s growing and ever-changing transportation needs. Congressman LoBiondo has been a key proponent of our local aerospace industry for many years. A staunch advocate for strengthening our nation’s security, Congressman LoBiondo also serves on the House Armed Services Committee and is a champion for New Jersey’s bases and service personnel, especially on issues of military pay and benefits. And, appointed in the 112th Congress, Frank serves on the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence.
Wednesday, May 18, 2011
If Everything in Research is Connected to Everything Else, How Do You Measure its Impact
Speaker: Dr. Guru Madhavan, National Academy of SciencesSince the passage of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, interests in measuring the impacts of—and the returns on—federal investments in research has especially peaked. Budget constraints coupled with the anxiety concerning funding uncertainties in the future have renewed the policy discussions on federal support for research. This talk will present an overview of economic and non-market impacts of research in such areas as health, career development, national security, consumer behavior, and decision-making. It will also lead up to methodological challenges and complexity underlying impact assessment, and share what the engineering community can do to help advance the discussions on this subject.
Dr. Madhavan is a program officer at the National Academy of Sciences, National Academy of Engineering, Institute of Medicine, and National Research Council—collectively known as the National Academies. He has worked on such National Academies’ publications as Rising Above the Gathering Storm, Revisited: Now Approaching Category 5, The Reference Manual on Scientific Evidence (Third Edition), Managing University Intellectual Property in the Public Interest, and Direct-to-Consumer Genetic Testing.
Wednesday, April 20, 2011
Engineers without Borders – El Salvador and The Gambia
Speaker: Rowan University Chapter: Jessica Tryner, Brighid Burgin, Kelly BarbThe Rowan University Chapter of Engineers without Borders is currently working on two projects: one in El Salvador and one in The Gambia. In El Salvador, the chapter is working to provide the community of La Ceiba with access to clean drinking water through the use of household biosand filters. The chapter embarked on a pilot implementation in January 2011 during which the first 10 filters were installed. The next step in the project will be to monitor the pilot filters and continue building more filters.
After the Kuntaur-Kundang road that the chapter was working to repair in The Gambia was constructed this past summer, the chapter began looking at other issues that the eight villages situated along the road are facing. The chapter has just been approved to begin a project that will improve villagers' access to drinking water. The project will focus mainly on repairing broken pumps and installing new pumps. The chapter will also monitor the newly constructed road to ensure that the villages are able to maintain it.
Wednesday, March 16, 2011
HFE
Speaker: Dr. Brian Hilburn, TASCHuman Factors Engineering (HFE) involves fitting human skills and limitations to the tools and procedures of our modern world. HFE is a broad and interdisciplinary field that draws its methods from other disciplines such as psychology, computer science, operations research, physiology and biomechanics, and industrial engineering. This talk will focus on HFE as it has been applied to Air Traffic Management (ATM) and, in particular, examples and lessons that can be drawn from ATM HFE. The speaker has spent 16 years in European ATM, and a leitmotif of this talk will be a comparison of ATM operations and research across the two sides of the pond. Dr. Hilburn has been active in transport human factors for over 25 years. He earned his PhD in Applied Experimental Psychology from the Catholic University of America. His areas of interest are automation and psychophysiology. He recently repatriated after 16 years in Europe. While there he was Head of the HF department for the Netherlands Aerospace Lab (NLR), and later formed a small human factors consulting firm (CHPR BV) that works with sponsors and collaborators from Europe, Asia and the US.
Wednesday, February 16, 2011
Energy Management – A Developing Concern!
Speaker: Tasos Malapetsas, BSEE, MBA Energy Consultant
Traditionally the United States has enjoyed ample, cheap energy that for the most part is available through an extensive distribution grid in most parts of the country. This has contributed to rapid economic growth and stable, predictable business models. The system has served our country well over the last century but as the Chinese proverb says “the only constant is that everything changes” this industry is about to undergo a significant transformation that will impact every aspect of what we do!
In this presentation we will discuss developing trends and consider potential strategies for dealing with rising energy prices. In a world where the government will no longer guarantee utility rates, how can we prepare ourselves to control the effect of rising or worse floating – an effect of market driven supply/demand driven - rates? What systems do we have in place to address this quickly changing terrain and protect our operating business models? Join us as we contemplate this current and developing topic with our colleague from the Philadelphia Section, Tasos Malapetsas.
Tasos Malapetsas has been an active member of the Philadelphia section of IEEE since 1994 when he moved to the area from Boston. Initially his involvement was with the Consultant’s Network (CONET), later he became an officer of the section and held the section chair position in 2001. Currently he serves as the PACE Chair and the Women in Engineering Chair. He is also a member of the IEEE-USA Energy Policy Committee. In his professional life, Tasos Malapetsas has been a consultant for the last 15 years working on various energy projects – renewable PV Solar, demand-side energy efficiency/conservation and management projects. His focus on energy has evolved from many years of experience in data acquisition and instrumentation as it relates to industrial automation and control. He has extensive knowledge of the field, evolving technology and market trends.
Wednesday,
January 19, 2011
Developing Plastics for a Fireproof Aircraft Cabin
Speaker: Richard E Lyon, Ph.D. Manager, Fire Research Program (AJP-6320) FAA Technical Center
The FAA has a long range goal of developing a fireproof aircraft cabin, but the cost of scaling up potentially fire resistant plastics to obtain kilogram samples for conventional fire tests is prohibitive. In order to accelerate the discovery of ultra fire resistant plastics for aircraft cabin interiors, a microscale combustion calorimeter was developed and patented by the FAA to screen research (milligram) samples for fire resistance. The microscale combustion calorimeter became an ASTM standard in 2007 and is used worldwide for research, development, product surveillance and quality control of fire retardant plastics.