Release published in "Silicon
Mesa ... technology in Los Alamos" Release published in "Silicon
Mesa ... technology in Los Alamos"Released to and published by the Los Alamos Monitor, March 31, 2000.
RELEASED BY:
Adaptive Network Solutions Research, Inc.
10 Bonito Place
Los Alamos, NM 87544-2662
DBA:
ANSR, Inc.
FOUNDED:
January 3, 1995
CONTACT PERSON AND PHONE NUMBER:
William C. Mead, President
(505) 662-9475
WEB SITE: http://www.ansr.biz
DESCRIPTION OF YOUR BUSINESS:
ANSR, Inc. performs research and consulting in Neural Network applications and Applied Physics. Expertise includes computer simulation, modeling, prediction, measurement, monitoring, and control. Applications to business, education, energy, the environment, and transportation.
DESCRIPTION OF PRODUCTS, SERVICES, OR PATENTS:
Adaptive or Neural Networks are based loosely on nature's way of providing intelligent, responsive behavior. Perhaps the greatest collection of neural networks is that making up the human central nervous system and brain. Artificial neural networks are collections of simple processors connected together in a network with inputs and outputs. The network "learns" from a set of data (examples) that relates the inputs to outputs in a desirable way.
Once the data is "studied," the neural network can reproduce general features of the behaviors represented in the dataset. For example, artificial neural networks have learned by example to drive cars (under simplified conditions, in computer simulations), back-up tractor- trailer trucks, and operate complicated industrial machines and processes.
Most Los Alamosan's probably know the areas that make up applied physics research. Physics is the discipline by which we can understand and predict the behavior of the physical universe. Through physics, we learn the raw ingredients that form the basis of engineering, and, in turn, give us our abilities to control and shape the world we live in.
BRIEF HISTORY OF YOUR BUSINESS:
ANSR's business has been about evenly divided between projects in adaptive network applications and applied physics. In 1995-6, Dr. Mead was the Principle Investigator for a U. S. Department of Education SBIR project that devised adaptive-network techniques for training students in the rapid recall of basic arithmetic facts. An international panel of educators linked by the Internet helped to establish priorities for the project. The software developed could adapt the content and presentation pace to optimize a student's efforts and ensure high-quality results, for a wide range of personal learning abilities and styles.
From 1995 through 1999, ANSR, Inc. worked with Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory to test 3-dimensional hydrodynamics codes being developed for use in the Inertial Confinement Fusion program. Large calculations were performed using super-computers at LLNL in California, controlled using ANSR's PC workstation via an Internet connection. Results of the calculations were downloaded via satellite and analyzed locally.
In 1996-9, ANSR, Inc. worked with Whistlesoft, Inc., on a Department of Energy SBIR project to develop multimedia tutorials on the physics of particle accelerators. Topics, which were the modern analog of book chapters, included "Vectors," "Forces," and "Motion." The tutorials were developed using Macromedia's "Authorware" and other multimedia tools. "On-Screen Laboratories" (TM of Whistlesoft, Inc.) allowed the students to perform experiments and see demonstrations of physical effects being studied. Among many contributions, Dr. Mead developed a simulation of the Magnetron, the vacuum tube that enables you to heat muffins in your microwave oven, and of the cyclotron, one of the early particle accelerators used to study the splitting of the atom.
Under the auspices of CASA, Inc., ANSR helped to develop an agent-based simulation engine for a "crisis simulator" being developed for a Washington, D.C. consulting company. The first application of the simulator was to explore the conditions that might or might not lead to a "Y2K crisis." We haven't heard whether the simulations predicted a crisis or were responsible for averting one (!), but we suspect that future potential societal crises will be studied farther in advance and in more detail as a result of our work.
Currently, ANSR, Inc. is working with Impulse Devices, Inc., of Grass Valley, CA, to help determine the feasibility of (and techniques for) using the processes responsible for Sonoluminescence to drive fusion reactions. Sonoluminescence, which first received wide attention in 1994, uses a spherical sound wave to cause bubbles to collapse vigorously, leading to heating of a gas and emission of light. The processes are being studied by Dr. Mead and a group of physicist/consultants based in Los Alamos.
DOES THE LANL INDUSTRIAL PARTNERSHIP OFFICE ASSIST YOUR BUSINESS WITH ANY OF
ITS PROGRAMS? IF SO, WHICH ONES AND WHEN?
ANSR worked on a project in 1999 to develop computer-based learning tools for college-level mathematics, under the lead of Whistlesoft, Inc.
WHAT ARE YOUR BUSINESS GOALS FOR THE FUTURE?
Continue to participate in cutting-edge, challenging research leading to beneficial
future applications of neural networks and physics.
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