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On August 14, 2003, a cascading outage of transmission and generation facilities in the North American Eastern Interconnection resulted in a blackout of most of New York state as well as parts of Pennsylvania, Ohio, Michigan, and Ontario, Canada. On September 23, 2003, nearly four million customers lost power in eastern Denmark and southern Sweden following a cascading outage that struck Scandinavia. Days later, a cascading outage between Italy and the rest of central Europe left most of Italy in darkness on September 28. These major blackouts are among the worst power system failures in the last few decades. The Power System Stability and Power System Stability Controls Subcommittees of the IEEE PES Power System Dynamic Performance Committee sponsored an all day panel session with experts from around the world. The experts described their recent work on the investigation of grid blackouts. The session offered a unique forum for discussion of possible root causes and necessary steps to reduce the risk of blackouts. This white paper presents the major conclusions drawn from the presentations and ensuing discussions during the all day session, focusing on the root causes of grid blackouts. This paper presents general conclusions drawn by this Committee together with recommendations based on lessons learned. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The value of a studio course in undergraduate soft- ware engineering programs is well documented. What is not as well understood is how to provide a relevant studio experience to working, seasoned professional software engineers as part of a Master's of Software Engineering (MSE) degree program. The challenge is that students' experiential diversity complicates the selection of projects that address different students' needs. Further, when the studio experience is compressed into 14 weeks, significant challenges are presented in controlling the process environment while providing a realistic and meaningful learning experience for part-time students. In this paper, a novel software studio course developed specifically for working, experienced professionals in an MSE program is described. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper discusses the full-power testing of a 36.5 MW High Temperature Superconductor (HTS) propulsion motor at the Navy's Land Based Test Site (LBTS) located in Philadelphia, PA. This motor was developed under funding from the Office of Naval Research and passed no-load factory testing at Philadelphia in March 2007. The Naval Surface Warfare Center (Carderock Division - Philadelphia site) designed and installed a test facility at LBTS to support full-power/full-torque testing of the HTS motor delivered to the Navy in 2007. The facility, test plan and full-power and full-torque test results of the HTS propulsion motor are presented. These test results provide the final substantiation that this technology is ready for integration in to a Navy electric drive combatant. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The CADAPPLETS Project provides Web-based animations (implemented as applets) of very large scale integration (VLSI) computer-aided design (CAD) algorithms as a learning resource for electrical and computer engineering students, designers, and CAD tool developers. Concepts from software algorithm animation are adapted to illustrate the problem formulation and the operation of physical design algorithms for placement and routing. This paper surveys these animations and describes how they have been used in the classroom at Lafayette College, Easton, PA, by users over the Internet, and in courses at other universities world- wide. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents a method for cave surveying in total darkness using an autonomous aerial vehicle equipped with a depth camera for mapping, downward-facing camera for state estimation, and forward and downward lights. Traditional methods of cave surveying are labor-intensive and dangerous due to the risk of injury when operating in darkness, and the potential structural instability of the subterranean environment. Although these dangers can be mitigated by deploying robots to map dangerous passages and voids, real-time feedback is often needed to operate robots safely and efficiently. Few state-of-the-art, high-resolution perceptual modeling techniques attempt to reduce their high bandwidth requirements to work well with low bandwidth communication channels. To bridge this gap in the state-of- the-art, this work compactly represents sensor observations as Gaussian mixture models and maintains a local occupancy grid map for a motion planner that greedily maximizes an information-theoretic objective function. The approach accommodates both limited field of view (FoV) depth cameras and larger FoV LiDAR sensors and is extensively evaluated in long duration simulations on an embedded PC. An aerial system is leveraged to demonstrate the repeatability of the approach in a flight arena as well as the effects of communication dropouts. Finally, the system is deployed in Laurel Caverns, a commercially owned and operated cave in southwestern Pennsylvania, USA, and a wild cave in West Virginia, USA. Videos of the simulation and hardware results are available at https://youtu.be/iwi3p7IENjE and https://youtu.be/H8MdtJ5VhyU. [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.

Results are presented from an experimental investigation to characterize path loss in urban terrain within the military ultrahigh frequency band (225 to 450 MHz) between ground-based communicators. Testing was conducted over a two-day period in downtown Philadelphia. Profiles of received power versus distance were generated along a variety of straight and L-shaped paths for different radio frequencies and antenna heights. The results were analyzed to determine the dependency of the received power on street width, frequency, antenna height, and corner distance (the distance between the transmitter and the corner on an L-shaped path). The results showed well-defined dependencies on all of the parameters except antenna height, which did not appear to affect the results over the range of values considered in this study. An empirical model for predicting received power was developed by fitting regression curves to the data. The model was found to be accurate to within approximately ±10 dB when compared against the data collected in this investigation. This study addresses an important but heretofore largely overlooked propagation environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the development of the Philadelphia Area Urban Wireless Network Testbed (PA-UWNT) which is a mobile network comprising mobile computers and web service-based applications. Such systems offer a solution for communications and situation management in infrastructure-free environment where power, network and other computing-related infrastructure are likely nonexistent or inoperable. The construction of such systems require research developments in computer networking, agent and service-based computing and security that integrate each of these disciplines at several fundamental levels.

Describes a set of experiments in optoelectronics for first-year engineering students. Design of hands-on laboratory experience; Equipment list for freshmen optoelectronics laboratory; Implementation at Bucknell University in Pennsylvania and University of San Diego in California; Assessment of effectiveness of laboratory.

Describes an innovative teaching technique consisting of pedagogy and motivation as instruments to gradually enhance the interest of Mechanical Engineering students for minoring in Electrical Engineering at Temple University in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Performance of 87 students in four classes majoring in Mechanical Engineering; Gradual increase in electrical engineering content.

Presents information on a study which implemented an Intelligent Data-Acquisition and Control (IDAC) system for the energy conversion laboratory at Penn State University. Advantages of the system; Features of the IDAC system; Conclusions.

The article focuses on developments in the design of machines that imitate human robustness, multitasking capabilities, intelligence or autonomy. Several research projects based on human systems include the development of a silicon retina, tactile robot skin and the ability to self-replicate. At the University of Pennsylvania, Kwabena Boahen directs research that explores how a human eye processes visual stimuli and uses that information to build neuromorphic microchips. The chips emulate the efficiency of the human retina's neuronal synapses as they send processed visual information to the brain. Another student, Brian Taba evolved the design philosophy from the circuit level to the developmental level by morphing developmental processes into silicon using softwiring.

The article describes the research work of Louis Von Ahn, assistant professor at the computer science department of Carnegie Mellon University in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Von Ahn's research focuses on human computation, a computer science area which combines the computational power of human and computers to solve problems together, using compelling methods like games to attract people to participate in large-scale open collective computational problems. Along with other collaborators, Von Ahn developed the ESP Game where players label images on the Web as a side effect of playing.

Reports on the modifications made on the Society on Social Implications of Technology's (SSIT) constitution. Highlights of the December 2001 SSIT Board of Governors' meeting in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania; Web site address containing information on the SSIT constitution; List of other documents available on the site.