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The article offers updates concerning the publication "IEEE Transactions on Systems, Man, and CyberneticsߞPart B: Cynbernetics" in the U.S. It is stated that the publication processed 1,093 papers and project over 1,300 research in 2008. The development resulted in a larger pool of high-quality research under consideration of the publication policy. The Technical Correspondences, special class of papers in the publication, are not simply short papers but still represent significant contributions on par with regular papers. The authors are encouraged to use the National Library of Medicine vocabulary in order to help better disseminate their work in the publication.

This paper discusses an all-encompassing approach to increase the number of students in engineering through innovative outreach, recruiting, and retention programs. Prior to adopting these programs, the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering (ECE) at the University of Oklahoma (OU), Norman, experienced a reduction in engineering enrollment similar to the trend that has occurred across the U.S. over the last few years. As a result, the school investigated the key factors that influence selection of engineering as a career path and initiated a corrective program to reverse this trend. The program involves focusing on the present through retention, on the immediate future through recruiting, and on the distant future through outreach. The focus of all of these programs is to mobilize the OU-ECE faculty and student body to present advanced engineering technologies, innovative demonstrations, and hands-on activities at a level that the individual student can understand and appreciate. Student surveys and interviews are used to assess the program qualitatively, and OU-ECE enrollment numbers are used as a quantitative assessment. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The globalization of complex engineering services has resulted in physically dispersed teams that can no longer rely on the traditional and familiar oral transmission of engineering expertise nor can they assume knowledge of their team members’ culture. Yet, such teams need to be able coordinate effectively the dispersed knowledge of team members. We know little about how cultural differences among engineering team members impact the coordination of dispersed knowledge, so called transactive memory systems (TMSs)—or “who knows what” and “who knows who knows what.” In this paper, we present a longitudinal case study of a dispersed, cross-cultural team involving U.S. and Romanian engineers. The cultural differences in values, practices, and institutions had a major impact on TMS indicators of specialization, coordination, and credibility. The paper demonstrates how the cultural differences impeded TMS development. The results provide insight into TMS as an implicit coordination mechanism in a global team. We provide advice in terms of interventions that can promote the development of TMS in a culturally diverse team. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Tests of up to three simultaneously firing 40-cm NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thrusters took place at NASA Glenn Research Center. In addition to numerous engineering tests, the experiment was instrumented to measure plasma properties in the interacting plumes, charge exchange return current to the active and dormant thrusters, and current and plasma properties at various locations. This paper describes the use of Nascap-2k to calculate plume potentials and charge exchange ion return currents to active and dormant ion optics and to diagnostic probes. Calculations were performed varying the numbers of active thrusters, thruster power levels, and gimbaling. The results were extrapolated to space conditions. Despite several simplifying assumptions, we obtained good agreement with experimental results. No major problems associated with multiple thruster operation were found. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper generalizes Benders decomposition to maximize a nonconcave objective function and uses that decomposition to solve an "electric power grid interdiction problem." Under one empirically verified assumption, the solution to this bilevel optimization problem identifies a set of components, limited by cardinality or "interdiction resource," whose destruction maximizes economic losses to customers (and can thereby guide defensive measures). The decomposition subproblem typically incorporates a set of dc optimal power-flow models that cover various states of repair after an attack, along with a load-duration curve. Test problems describe a regional power grid in the United States with approximately 5000 buses, 6000 lines, and 500 generators. Solution time on a 2-GHz personal computer is approximately one hour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Referring received signal strength (RSS) to a signal propagation model to find user location is one of the most promising strategies in wireless communications. This paper develops a simple method based on relative signal-strength measurements, that is, the differences in stationary signal strength measured at the user location from multiple base transceiver stations (BTSs). The stationary signal strength is the averaged RSS and also is a stationary Gaussian process. In using this method, it is vitally important to confirm that some uncertain propagation parameters can be canceled out while a signal propagation model is merged into our method for locating users. In this way, the differences in stationary signal strength lead to two solutions: One is the distance difference between pairs of BTSs, and the other is the distances from the user location to the multiple BTSs. Consequently, the hyperbolic positioning algorithm due to the distance-difference solution and the circular positioning algorithm due to the distances solution can be presented, respectively. Afterward, some experimental results were drawn from a field trial in a real propagation environment. Results show that the hyperbolic and circular positioning algorithms can locate the user to within about 350 and 300 m in 67 percentile, respectively. Compared with the numerical result reported in the literature on existing methods based on RSS only, our method is superior. Despite the result not meeting Federal Communications Commission (FCC) requirements, this method proved to be sufficiently simple and efficient in terms of the computation at burden and network signaling load. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Focuses on an experiment at Brown University in Providence, Rhode Island which enhanced the quality of undergraduate engineering education within the faculty reward structure. Educational approach that fostered creativity and design; Requirements of engineering design in the university's computer engineering program; Initial placements of experiment participants after graduation.

Describes the experience of New York City's Polytechnic University with the development and management of a data warehouse through the support of the National Science Foundation Gateway Coalition. System of organizing institutional data that can support the engineering educational assessment process; Monitoring of students' performance in their undergraduate career and after.

Contribution: This study contributes to efforts to diversify the field of engineering by studying the influence of co-curricular activities on African American students’ development of key nontechnical professional skills. Background: The 21st Century workforce requires significant collaboration and communication. For engineering graduates to meet workforce challenges, they must graduate with nontechnical skills. This study operationalized these skills using traits identified in the National Academy of Engineering’s (NAE) “Engineer of 2020” report. The NAE also points to the urgent need for the United States to diversify its workforce; broadening the participation of African American engineers is key to doing so. Co-curricular activities help students develop nontechnical professional skills and are particularly important to African Americans at predominantly White institutions (PWIs). Research Question: How do African American engineering students attending PWIs in the United States develop nontechnical professional skills through participation in ethnic-specific co-curricular activities? Methodology: This qualitative study explored the lived experiences of 16 participants from one of six engineering disciplines. Each participant was a member of at least one of the following organizations: a Black fraternity or sorority (termed Black Greek Letter organizations), their campus student chapter of the National Society of Black Engineers, or an institution-sponsored program for racially underrepresented students such as a minority engineering program. Findings: Data analysis revealed significant evidence that involvement in one or more of the studied ethnic-specific co-curricular activities enhanced African American engineering students’ educational experiences by providing resources and opportunities to help them develop professional skills. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Traces the evolution of the course evaluation process in Drexel University's College of Engineering in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Adaptation to the Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology 2000 accreditation requirements; Development of course format used; Evaluation procedures; Support from the Gateway Engineering Education Coalition.

The article focuses on the several sponsored conferences by the Communications Society (ComSoc), the second largest Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) society in the U.S. It describes what does the IEEE society does in supporting those conferences of interests to its members. Moreover, it notes that the events were organized by engineers Fred Bauer, Merrily Hartmann and Raouf Boutaba.

Following the success of summer-camp-based programs, a new program has been developed for in-school sessions focused around LEGO robotics to foster interest in STEM topics at a young age. The program has been implemented in a very diverse school, and preliminary results on the efficacy of the program are presented. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Work is described on a National Science Foundation grant that supports the development, assessment, and dissemination of "micro-insertion" problems designed to integrate ethics into the graduate engineering curriculum. In contrast to traditional modular approaches to ethics pedagogy, micro-insertions introduce ethical issues by means of a "low-dose" approach. Following a description of the micro-insertion approach, we outline the workshop structure being used to teach engineering faculty and graduate students how to write micro-insertions for graduate engineering courses, with particular attention to how the grant develops engineering students' (and faculty members') ability to communicate across disciplinary boundaries. We also describe previous and planned methods for assessing the effectiveness of micro-insertions. Finally, we explain the role that technical communication faculty and graduate students are playing as part of the grant team, specifically in developing an Ethics In-Basket that will disseminate micro-insertions developed during the grant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In response to a call from the National Science Foundation (NSF) for curriculum reform and elimination of legacy materials in engineering curricula, the faculty at the Colorado School of Mines, Golden, has developed and offered a combined set of course modules in fluids and circuits. These modules consist of a two-credit interdisciplinary course in fundamentals, followed by two one-credit modules focusing on applications in fluids and in circuits, respectively. The course set reduces the overall number of credits from six (three in each of the standard fluids and circuits classes) to four through the 2 + 1 + 1 format. The fundamentals course, consisting of two credits, is based on conservation and accounting principles for the concepts of mass, momentum, energy, and charge. Two applications modules, each of one credit, develop these ideas in the respective disciplines. During the study, four challenges to implementation were uncovered: faculty and administrative buy-in, textbook selection, logistics, and stakeholders' acceptance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This report is based on a survey of power engineering education resources in the U.S. and Canada similar to 12 earlier such efforts. This survey is conducted to determine the electric power engineering education resources available in Accreditation Board of Engineering and Technology (ABET) accredited engineering programs in the U.S. and Canada for the 2001-02 academic year. The report is limited to colleges and universities that replied to a questionnaire on a voluntary basis. For the 115 colleges and universities (107 U.S., S Canadian) that submitted data on their power programs, the report contains a list of faculty active during the 2001-02 academic year with academic participation and professional experience, each school's research area and funding levels, Ph.D. and MS student enrollment by type of support and by domestic versus international, and each school's power course offerings with enrollments and other data. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Discusses the factors that have shaped the programs of the United States government for the education and training of women in engineering. Impact of the launching of the Sputnik on the United States; Demonstration on how the government has defined women as statistical categories based on its understanding of `appropriate' national needs;

Provides information on the development of intervention programs at various levels in education to represent women in the fields of science and engineering in the United States. Information on a program offered at the George Washington University (GW); Who the program is funded by; Additional funds provided by the National science Foundation to conduct a follow up study of teachers and students after the project ended; Purpose of the follow up study.

This article focuses on challenges faced by Undergraduate Engineering Education in the U.S. Higher education has, through most of this period, been exempted from these sweeping currents of change. A reason for this situation could be the traditional role of higher education as a society's supreme guarantor of educational quality. Through the ages, engineering institutes have received numerous students from the secondary school system. Based on their quality level, as expressed by knowledge reproduction type of exams, universities could set standards, evaluate, and propose adjustments for precollege levels. Such signals from higher education were usually considered normative and accepted.