Volume 87 Issue 03: Spring/Summer 2009

Modeling Vehicle Dynamics by Kelvin Than

In order to create successful control systems in vehicles to improve their fuel efficiency and cruise control capabilities, an effective vehicle model must be developed. This paper discusses a vehicle model that uses feedback control in conjunction with a longitudinal energy balance to calculate a velocity profile for input into the adaptive cruise control (ACC) system. Ultimately, with future road information and proper engine control, gasoline consumption can be reduced.

Evaluating Indoor Air Quality by Benjamin Chu

With data centers becoming bigger and bigger, their energy demands are becoming more and more severe. A large component of this is cooling. Economizers work by turning off the power consuming chillers and bringing in large amounts of cool outside air. This cutback of chiller operating hours results in energy savings. But, industry is hesitant to install economizers because indoor contamination can negate any energy savings. This paper explores whether the indoor air quality inside economizer- based data centers is clean enough for large-scale rollout.

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles by Hernan Acevedo, Kevin Krut, Quang Vu
Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) are pilot-less aircraft that can potentially revolutionize our traffic in the sky. Currently, UAVs are mainly used in military aircraft, but also have some general applications. Intricate technology in computers, sensors, and guidance systems are on-board the aircraft. Advancement of UAV technology only enhances their importance in everyday life.

Interview with Prof. Leon O. Chua by Stephen Gu, Max Zheng
Editor's Corner by Calvin Ardi
Living Impactful Lives by Willis Lin
Out into the Wide, Wide Unknown by Elaine Tu
Memoirs of a Graduating Senior by Thanos Rossopoulos

Volume 87 Issue 02: Winter 2008

Electronic Stability Control by Evan Gorski

Electronic stability control is one of the primary accident prevention techniques in vehicular technology, and has been established as a requirement for all new cars in 2012. In this article, Evan Gorski describes the constituent elements of ESC and explores the various studies that analyze its effectiveness.

Solar Thermal Collectors by Jiri Dlab

Using a Stirling engine for power production, a solar dish collector is capable of reaching 1500°C and ultimately producing up to 25 kW of electricity per unit. These collectors can produce utility grade power with a desirable production to land area ratio. Collector systems are currently being developed that are sufficient for high energy production. These low emission and highly renewable systems will soon influence the future of energy generation in a world of rising fuel costs in need of sustainable energy.

Editor's Corner by Calvin Ardi

The Big Humanities Theory by Jonathan Kotker

The mainstream media and it's representation of those in the technical field. How does this expand and relate to how engineers and non-engineers portray each other?

Wireside Chat by Willis Lin and Thanos Rossopoulos

A casual and highly informal look at some of the non-academic topics engineers face in college from the perspective of two graduating engineers.

Volume 87 Issue 01: Fall 2008

Beyond Lip Reading by Adam Kauk

Often, technological achievements are defined by the benefit they have for human society. Augmentative and alternative communications have made significant improvements on the livelihood of disabled individuals. Such aids boost the patients' abilities to communicate, giving them the confidence to participate in the lives of the people around them.

Synesthesia by Nutha Chinn, Joshua Icuss, and Karmi Robison

Some people see colors. Some people feel textures. Some people smell sounds. Wait, what? That's right! For a very select cateogry of people, the senses become tied together in a smorgasboard named synesthesia.

Internet Security Threats by Manish Sinha

The ubiquity of the Internet has brought with it a multitude of potential security vulnerabilities. This paper details the development of both active and passive attack and recent developments in coping with such threats.

Editor's Corner by Calvin Ardi

Policy and Technology by Max Zheng

A new president in the White House and a promise of new policy, especially with respects to science and technology development. What does this mean for us engineering students?

Volume 86 Issue 04: Summer 2008

Shooting for the Sun: A Comparison of Performance Among Photovoltaic Technologies by Katherine Saad

Photovoltaic technology has demonstrated remarkable industrial growth in recent years, but solar panels remain expensive and ony moderately efficient relative to conventional sources of electricity. This project compares the influences of ambient temperature and the incoming solar specrum on the degradation a dn efficiency of four tyupes of solar panels: crystalline, a-Si, Copper indium di-Selenide (CIS) and cadmium telluride (CdTe).

Neuromorphic Engineering: Quest for a Silicon Brian by Cynthia Hsu

For fifty years, the quest for faster computers meant building smaller transistors. But as hardware approached its physical limitations, engineers drew inspiration from the oldest computation device known - the neural network. What followed was the neuromorphic analogue very large scale integration (aVLSI) circuit, inantely fuzzy hardware designed to interpret a world that is never simply 1's and 0's.

One Half of Four Pennies Super Summer Special Edition by Ketrina Yim

Follow the adventures of Helmut, Dennis, Pterrance, Earl, and Squiggy one last time as they discover the answer to the epic equstion: what to do with their summer vacation?

Editor's Corner by Calvin Ardi

Notes from the Production Desk by Cynthia Hsu

Reflections about California Engineer from a graduating senior, and questions for current and future students.

Volume 86 Issue 03: Spring 2008

Multi-Core Realtime Raytracing Acceleration by Apollo Ellis

Due to today's multi-core architecutres and the parallel chips of the future, the power and simplicity of ray tracing is coming into the grasp of the real-time graphics application writer. This paper serves as a literature review of acceleration techniques aimed at allowing for real-time ray tracing.

Self-timed FPU vs. Synchronus FPU by Shah Bawany, Tim Edgar, Sameer Iyengar, and Aaron Staley

Asynchronus logic offers significant performance advantages over conventional logic. Fewer timing assumptions and higher robustness are demonstrated in a FPU design. However, the lack of CAD tools and standard techniques make production costs too high.

Mapping Kinase Active Sites by Clique Detection by Cynthia Hsu, Gregory E. Sims, and Sung-Hou Kim

While all kinases utilize ATP as a substrate, their diversity of active sites make selective drug therapy difficult. By using a clique detection algorithm to identify similar atoms across multiple kinases, similar active sites can be mapped into clusters in order to assist in the qualitative evaluation of chemical properties.

Editor's Corner by Calvin Ardi

What's the deal with multi-core, distributed, and cloud computing? Is single CPU computing dead?

How Do We Know? by Pavan Yedavalli

An engineer's perspective and thoughts on epistemology.

One Half of Four Pennies by Ketrina Yim

Volume 86 Issue 02: Winter 2007

The Feasibility of Hydrogen Onboard Storage for Automobiles by Shuxian Wang

Scientists and engineers have invested much effort in making hydrogen the vehicular fuel of the future. However, problems associated with the storage of hydrogen gas within automobiles, such as flammability and low energy density, have prevented hydrogen-fueld autos from becoming mainstream. Three types of hydrogen storage tanks are assessed according to safety and marketability criteria, but none are found viable.

Fiber-reinforced Polymer Composites: Structural Engineering Applications by Derek Brian Beckman

Composite materials have come a long way since the days of using mud and straw to make bricks. Up to the 1980s, the use of composite materials was widely dominated by the marine, aerospace, and transportation industries. Today, fiber-reinforced polymer (FRP) composite materials are becoming increasingly feasible and important for structural engineering applications.

Future Combat Systems: One Team - The Army/Defense Industry by Alok Vasishta

Future Combat Systems, an integrated- multi-dimensional program, aims to redefine military operations. Incorporating an approach that addresses the soldier first, FCS utilized technologies that range from Unmanned Aerial Vehicles to "intelligent body armour". Vasishta charts the development of FCS and examines its technological base.

Editor's Corner by Calvin Ardi

Engineering with efficiency on all levels.

Atoms are not Balls by Jonathan Kotker

In early education, details are presented to us in an over-simplified manner. Is this really necessary?

Undecided by Kaushik Iyer

A freshman engineer's thoughts on choosing a path of study.

One Half of Four Pennies by Ketrina Yim

Volume 86 Issue 01: Fall 2007

Gamescrafters by Max Zheng

What began as a desire to bring student-teacher interaction to the Berkeley environment and a dream to create the perfect opponent has evolved into the largest research and development team on the Berkeley campus. Today, the students of the Gamescrafters group apply both knowledge and enthusiasm in search of a genuine challeng: creating an artifically intelligent player worthy of defeating them in the games they love.

Pearl River Tower by Michelle Wong

Electrochromic window technology can potentially save much of the cost of energy consumption for conditioining in large windows. Becuase they can be tuned across their range of optical states in mere minutes, interior lighting levels can provide dynamic control of solar heat gain and radiative energy losses from conditioned space.

Cochlear Implants by Sandy Cea

Cochlear implants have been used to treat sensorineural hearing loss (SNHL), which accounts for about 90% of all hearing loss. A major problem with these products is that they extend no more than 1.5 turns into the cochlea, making it impossible to detect low-frequency sounds. Cea proposes a novel way of precisely shaping the implant to penetrate deeper into the cochlea for higher sensitivity.

Microfluidics by Andrew Brown, Sanda Cea, Henry Herman, Cody Walton

Microfluidics, the study of microminiaturized devices used for the precise control and flow of liquids, is becoming an important part of R&D efforts worldwide. This emerging technology will have significant impacts on many fields such as biological and chemical analysis, medicine, and biotechnology.

Editor's Corner by Calvin Ardi

Is our current model of a 4-year undergraduate education enough to diversify our engineering students?

The Active Engineer by Hassan Khan

Engineering is no longer about numbers, problem sets, and late-night Friday studying. What does it entail, today?

Leap of Faith by Jonathan Kotker

Intuition and imagination is key in engineering, more so than rote memorization or mere reading of the text.

One Half of Four Pennies by Ketrina Yim

Volume 85 Issue 04: Summer 2007

Wireless Sensor Networks by Ethan Culler-Mayeno

As the world enters the new technological era, devices are growing increasingly more minuscule. To fuel this growth, Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) are introduced as a means of furthering this trend. Motes, the basic elements of the network, have limited computational capabilities but in their network they have the potential to process information at incredible speeds and, with the evolution of MEMs, reducing the networks size to the microscale.

Relational Databases by Michael McThrow

File systems are becoming increasingly more complicated as they are required to accommodate various file formats. A novel approach for handling extended metadata is suggested that would replace the traditional data structures while making it easier to search for files.

Unreinforced Masonry by Santina L. Watts

Many structures built in seismically active regions have reinforced concrete building frames with unreinforced masonry infill walls. Modeling techniques are required to better understand the behavior of these structures. A three dimensional finite element model, while comprehensive, is impractical and computationally expensive. A simpler model is compared with the three dimensional model to test its reliability.

Editor's Corner by Brian Yangyuen
Visions of Magic in Toy Dust by Cynthia Hsu
One Half of Four Pennies by Ketrina Yim

Volume 85 Issue 03: Spring 2007

Nanotechnology and Cancer by Susan Chen

Nanotechnology is used in medicine to find improved methods of diagnosis and therapy for various diseases, especially cancer. Quantum dots have tunable frequencies that make them good imaging agents and have potential use as photosensitizers in photodynamic therapy. Nanoshells are good contrast agents and are useful in photothermal ablation.

Future of Lithography: Adhesion-Promoting Photo-Acid Generators by Igor Tregub

The information and modern era is predicated on faster and smaller devices. However, semiconductors might have reached the limit to their size decrease. Adhesion-Promoting Photo-Acid Generators (APPAG) may prove to be a means for designers to circumvent the limitations and advance into the new age of nanotechnology

Multi-Genome Sno-Scan: snoRNA by Christoph Rau

Optoelectronics by Henry Wang

The recently developed field of optoelectronics offers an alterna tive to conventional mechanical sound recovery in cases where older recording media might prove too fragile to handle. The non-contact method of recovering valuable recordings, such as on phonographic records, uses a high resolution optical sensor that can extract the sound from the record and transfer the information to a computer.

Editor's Corner by Brian Yangyuen
In Lazyman's Terms: On Endings, Climaxes, and All That by Vivek Rao
Fluid Matters by Cynthia Hsu
One Half of Four Pennies by Ketrina Yim

Volume 85 Issue 02: Winter 2006

Electronic Eyes by Aaron Abajain, Ivan Baylon, Jerika Kawamoto, and Kumal Naik

The recent developments in neuromorphic chips suggest a possible means of granting artificial sight to those who would have otherwise been blind. Though risks are still paramount, a single microchip produced by researchers at Optobionics Corporation and Harvard and MIT may be able to recreate the phenomenon of vision, by translating the biological operations of the retina into electronic signals in silicon.

Satellite Imagery and Land Use by Katherine Saad

The Landsat satellite series, the oldest source of polar orbiting satellite data that mapping the earth's surface and resources, gives us a view of the environmental impact we have on our world and the value of the Earth we call home.

Open Source Software by Larijohn Adorable, Toviah Hirschberg, Manish Sinba, and Raymond Yu

Fifteen years ago, the Internet didn't exist. Ten years ago, it was a source of interest only for "tech junkies". Today, the Internet is a household terms, and the former "tech junkies" have revolutionized the development and distribution of software to challenge the large coporations of the Information Age.

MEMS: Micro-Electrical Mechanical Systems by Nesibe Coban, James Joy, Cyrus Manuel, and Henry Wong

Much of engineering today revolves around things the tiny: the prevalent applications of micro-electrial mechanical systems is a testament to the fact. These tiny sensors may soon prove to be cheaper and more effective than their larger, bulkier counterparts that they will most likely replace.

Editor's Corner by Brian Yangyuen
In Lazyman's Terms: Remembering Dean Newton by Vivek Rao
Not So Big by Jonathan Kotker
The Specialty Library by Pavan Yedavalli
One Half of Four Pennies by Ketrina Yim

Volume 85 Issue 01: Fall 2006

Computer Assisted Surgery by Arnold Agustin, Joseph Herbias, Margo Klar, and Roman Vaisman

Surgical procedures have been revolutionized by the power of modern day computer software to convert any form of two-dimensional image, from MRI and CAT scans to photographs, into a three-dimensional representation. These techniques have enabled surgeons to use their powerful new prediction capabilities to explore possible options in surgery and design more accurate prosthetic implants.

Modeling Nanoscale Devices in SUGAR by Penn Tasinga

Once designed for microscale systems, SUGAR has now opened its frontiers to the nanoscale. It is not without its issues though as SUGAR faces challenges about its limitations and accuracy in this new field.

Communication on Waves of Light by Ryan Cheng

Today's globally communication-dependent society places an increasing demand on the efficiency of its hardware. The development of the silicon laser has enabled the possibility of using silicon, instead of copper wire, as an economical means of using photons of light as a new means of relaying data.

Editor's Corner by Brian Yangyuen
In Lazyman's Terms: The Social Engineer by Vivek Rao

Volume 84 Issue 04: Summer 2006

Neural-Electrical Activity in Response to Visual Stimuli by Andrew Chekerylla

In MEG measurements, the small magnetic field of a single neuron is easily corrupted. Time-frequency analyses are used to devise an algorithm to reduce noise. This tool could be used to track brain waves at different frequencies in order to improve our understanding of brain region connectivity.

Electrochromic Tunable Windows by B. Millstein and J. Slack

Electrochromic window technology can potentially save much of the cost of energy consumption for conditioining in large windows. Becuase they can be tuned across their range of optical states in mere minutes, interior lighting levels can provide dynamic control of solar heat gain and radiative energy losses from conditioned space.

On Road Measurement of Diesel and Gasoline Vehicle Emission Factors by Zachary S. Apte, Thomas Kirchstetter, and Daniel Hooper

Gas and particle phase vehicle emissions were measured in the Caldecott tunnel in San Francisco during summer 2004. These measurements enable assessment of the effects of decreasing the MTBE content of fuel, the relative contributions of light and heavy-duty vehicles, and measurement methods of particulate.

Editor's Corner by Lori Chen
In Lazyman's Terms: Eye of the Tiger by Vivek Rao
The Gift that Keeps on Giving by Zhou Zhou

Volume 84 Issue 03: Spring 2006

Multiuser Diversity and Opportunistic Beamforming in Wireless Networks by Farzad Eskafi

Plastics Recycling by Gal Mariansky

Magnetic Levitation Trains: A Trip to the Future by Vanessa Matsumoto, Jessamyn Sarcol, Jonatahn Haystead, and Phillip Ng

Hemodynamics of a Cerebral Aneurysm by Yick Lee

Editor's Corner by Lori Chen
In Lazyman's Terms: Home Sweet ... Wheeler Hall? by Vivek Rao
Invisibility: Searching for a Disappearing Future by Cynthia Hsu
The Middle Generation by Ananth Krishna
One Half of Four Pennies by Ketrina Yim

Volume 84 Issue 02: Winter 2005

Discovering Human Route: Planning Knowledge from Everyday Location Trace by John Suarez

Today's route planning systems generate often inaccurate directions based on singular variables. To improve these systems, computer algorithms are being designed to model route planning decisions after human minds.

Visual Target Segmentation and Identification by Lana Haru Carnel

A video camera can capture a moving image as a whole, but current research is analyzing the abilities of a computer to select and analyze a specific object moving through a noisy scene.

Zeno Behavior in a Hybrid System Model of Communication Networks by Shams Karimkhan

Communication networks can be accurately modeled as hybrid systems consisting of discrete events evolving over continuous times. However, this risks having discrete events take place during an infinite amount of time, creating a system failure that must be prevented.

Editor's Corner by Lori Chen
Opinion Editorial: Gettin' Really Exhausting by Chris McCoy
In Lazyman's Terms: Living in the Projects by Vivek Rao
Opinion Editorial: Engineers Pedalling Uphill by Ananth Krishna

Volume 85 Issue 03: Spring 2007