Engineering Commons^™

The Effects Of A Collaborative Problem-Based Learning Experience On Students’ Motivation In Engineering Capstone Courses, Brett D. Jones, Cory M. Epler, Parastou Mokri, Lauren H. Bryant, Marie C. Paretti

Interdisciplinary Journal of Problem-based Learning

We identified and examined how the instructional elements of problem-based learning capstone engineering courses affected students’ motivation to engage in the courses. We employed a two-phase, sequential, explanatory, mixed methods research design. For the quantitative phase, 47 undergraduate students at a large public university completed a questionnaire that measured the components of the MUSIC Model of Academic Motivation (Jones, 2009): empowerment, usefulness, success, situational interest, individual interest, academic caring, and personal caring. For the qualitative phase that followed, 10 students answered questions related to the MUSIC components. We identified several instructional elements that led to motivating opportunities that affected students ...

Design, Fabrication And Assembly Of Multiple Biomarker In-Vivo Biosensor, Asanterabi Malima

Electrical Engineering Dissertations

High sensitivity and high specificity detection of disease biomarkers is crucial for early diagnostics and monitoring of diseases. Current cancer diagnostics tools are invasive and uncomfortable. Blood tests that are currently being used also lack sufficient sensitivity and specificity for early detection of diseases. In this thesis, a design for highly sensitive micron scale in-vivo sensor platform device for simultaneous detection of multiple disease biomarkers is presented. The biosensor microchip is 0.25mm in diameter, based on SU-8 polymeric platform fabricated incorporating four active isolated areas as small as 70µm x 70µm. Conventional micro and nanofabrication processes were used for ...

Nuts & Bolts, Volume 1, Issue 2

Friends of the Larsen Tractor Museum

New Exhibit Opens
Bill Splinter Memorial
Museum Needs
Fun Facts ... and other non-sense
From Lou's Desk by lou leviticus
Flipping A Fordson
What I've Learned notes from the manager
Museum Updates
Nuts & Bolts Staff:
Museum Guidance Committee:

Micro-Aeration Of Sulfide Removal From Biogas, Shihwu Sung, Samir Kumar Khanal, Thanapong Duangmanee

Iowa State University Patents

No abstract provided.

Elastometric Device For Tunable Imaging, Jaeyoun Kim

Iowa State University Patents

An optical micro-electro-mechanical systems (MEMS) structure is provided. The structure includes an elastomer membrane, a plurality of polymer fibers attached to the elastomer membrane, an array of detectors operatively connected to the plurality of polymer fibers at a first end of the plurality of polymer fibers, and a microlens array operatively connected to the plurality of polymer fibers at a second end of the plurality of polymer fibers. A method of manufacturing an optical MEMS structure is provided. The method includes forming a hollow PDMS chamber in which PDMS fibers extend from top to bottom using a lost wax molding ...

Friends Of The Lester F. Larsen Tractor Test & Power Museum Newsletter, Spring 2013

Friends of the Larsen Tractor Museum

Membership renewal

Annual Meeting, May 17, 2013

Honoring William E. Splinter

Towards Rare-Earth-Free Permanent Magnets: Exchange Bias In Binary Mn-Based Alloys, Joshua Marion

Chemical Engineering Master's Theses

Quantum–mechanical exchange interactions between phases in ferromagnetic/antiferromagnetic (FM/AF) magnetic nanocomposite systems can result in useful effects such as exchange bias (H_ex) and remanence enhancement. These effects are more pronounced in nanostructured systems than in their coarse–grained counterparts due to improved interphase contact and can be developed to create good permanent magnetic behavior, but are currently poorly understood in bulk three–dimensional systems. To achieve this goal, factors such as the magnetic and structural phase identity, chemistry, size, shape, and character are investigated. To this end, synthesis, characterization and analysis of the magnetic and structural properties ...

Itc-Euromaster Course Pool For Aec Engineers, Alan Hore

Conference papers

The paper describes the ITC-Euromaster Course Pool. It is a concept that powers e-learning environment for conducting an international Master’s level programme in information technologies for Architecture, Engineering and Construction (AEC). The e-learning environment integrates resources (units of study, learning management system, virtual classroom, teachers and students) from five European universities. In the paper following aspects of the system are presented: concept and methodology of the Course Pool, technology for e-learning and evaluation results.

Automatic Performance Level Assessment In Minimally Invasive Surgery Using Coordinated Sensors And Composite Metrics, Sami Taha Abu Snaineh

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Skills assessment in Minimally Invasive Surgery (MIS) has been a challenge for training centers for a long time. The emerging maturity of camera-based systems has the potential to transform problems into solutions in many different areas, including MIS. The current evaluation techniques for assessing the performance of surgeons and trainees are direct observation, global assessments, and checklists. These techniques are mostly subjective and can, therefore, involve a margin of bias.

The current automated approaches are all implemented using mechanical or electromagnetic sensors, which suffer limitations and influence the surgeon’s motion. Thus, evaluating the skills of the MIS surgeons and ...

Development Of An Eeg Brain-Machine Interface To Aid In Recovery Of Motor Function After Neurological Injury, Elizabeth Salmon

Theses and Dissertations--Biomedical Engineering

Impaired motor function following neurological injury may be overcome through therapies that induce neuroplastic changes in the brain. Therapeutic methods include repetitive exercises that promote use-dependent plasticity (UDP), the benefit of which may be increased by first administering peripheral nerve stimulation (PNS) to activate afferent fibers, resulting in increased cortical excitability. We speculate that PNS delivered only in response to attempted movement would induce timing-dependent plasticity (TDP), a mechanism essential to normal motor learning. Here we develop a brain-machine interface (BMI) to detect movement intent and effort in healthy volunteers (n=5) from their electroencephalogram (EEG). This could be used ...

Ad-Hoc Regional Coverage Constellations Of Cubesats Using Secondary Launches, Guy G. Zohar

Master's Theses and Project Reports

As development of CubeSat based architectures increase, methods of deploying constellations of CubeSats are required to increase functionality of future systems. Given their low cost and quickly increasing launch opportunities, large numbers of CubeSats can easily be developed and deployed in orbit. However, as secondary payloads, CubeSats are severely limited in their options for deployment into appropriate constellation geometries.

This thesis examines the current methods for deploying cubes and proposes new and efficient geometries using secondary launch opportunities. Due to the current deployment hardware architecture, only the use of different launch opportunities, deployment direction, and deployment timing for individual cubes ...

Altmetrics And Institutional Repositories: A Health Sciences Library Experiment, Lisa A. Palmer

Library Publications and Presentations

A brief overview of UMass Medical School's recent application of altmetrics in one collection in the medical school's institutional repository, eScholarship@UMMS.

Maine’S Three Ring Binder, Fletcher Kittredge

Maine Policy Review

Although Maine is a rural state, it has had success in keeping pace with technological changes since the rise of the Internet 20 years ago. In this section, authors describe some of these successes and the challenges faced by both consumers and libraries in the new digital environment. Fletcher Kittredge presents the history and promise of Maine’s “Three Ring Binder,” a new and important fiber optic network that will bring high-speed broadband connectivity to rural parts of the state. The Three Ring Binder is expected both to improve economic opportunities for businesses and to increase high-speed Internet access for ...

A Comprehensive Hdl Model Of A Line Associative Register Based Architecture, Matthew A. Sparks

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

Modern processor architectures suffer from an ever increasing gap between processor and memory performance. The current memory-register model attempts to hide this gap by a system of cache memory. Line Associative Registers(LARs) are proposed as a new system to avoid the memory gap by pre-fetching and associative updating of both instructions and data. This thesis presents a fully LAR-based architecture, targeting a previously developed instruction set architecture. This architecture features an execution pipeline supporting SWAR operations, and a memory system supporting the associative behavior of LARs and lazy writeback to memory.

Research On Development And Application Of Simulated Night Vision Enhancement Systems, Linzhen Nie

Mechanical Engineering Dissertations

Poor visibility due to darkness is believed to be one of the main causes for the high rate of night driving accidents.

Night vision enhancement systems (NVESs) have been developed to improve visibility at night through supplementing drivers' direct vision with additional information shown on a display, rather than replacing drivers' direct vision. Existing studies have shown that NVESs may increase recognition distance, but may also increase drivers' mental and visual distraction (eyes-off-road). Each scan of the display of the night vision enhancement system involves some visual and mental cost to the driver. Automatic pedestrian warnings (APWs) have been integrated ...

Power-Efficient And Low-Latency Memory Access For Cmp Systems With Heterogeneous Scratchpad On-Chip Memory, Zhi Chen

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The gradually widening speed disparity of between CPU and memory has become an overwhelming bottleneck for the development of Chip Multiprocessor (CMP) systems. In addition, increasing penalties caused by frequent on-chip memory accesses have raised critical challenges in delivering high memory access performance with tight power and latency budgets. To overcome the daunting memory wall and energy wall issues, this thesis focuses on proposing a new heterogeneous scratchpad memory architecture which is configured from SRAM, MRAM, and Z-RAM. Based on this architecture, we propose two algorithms, a dynamic programming and a genetic algorithm, to perform data allocation to different memory ...

Monitoring Dairy Cow Feed Intake Using Machine Vision, Anthony N. Shelley

Theses and Dissertations--Electrical and Computer Engineering

The health and productive output of dairy cows can be closely correlated to individual cow feed intake. Being able to monitor feed intake on a daily basis is beneficial dairy farm management. Each cow can be addressed individually with minimal time required from those working with the animals. This is essential as time management is closely tied to resource management in a dairy operation. Anything that can save time and resources and increase profitability and herd health is a paramount advantage in dairy farming. This study examined the use of machine vision structured light illumination three-dimensional scanning of cow feed ...

Exploiting Temporal And Spatial Correlation In Wireless Sensor Networks, Daniel Parker

Electrical and Computer Engineering Master's Theses

Collecting data continuously from Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) with limited power and bandwidth is a challenging problem. Such networks have potential utility in a wide range of disciplines such as medical, industrial, environmental, and military applications. For long-term monitoring and surveillance applications, the objective is often times to cover as large an area as possible while still acquiring high-resolution information about the sensed environment. The main challenges involve energy-efficiency and scalability of the techniques used to acquire the substantial amount of data from the sensor network. Addressing these challenges, we propose a method that effectively exploits both spatial and temporal ...

Systems Engineering Of The Double-Probe Insrumentation For Measuring Electric-Fields Cubesatellite, Seven M. Grover

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

This report presents the general mission overview of the Double-probe Instrumentation for Measuring Electric-fields (E-fields) (DIME) program. The Lessons learned from a previous program are summarized, and the subsequent changes to the main science instrument and overall satellite bus design are presented. The trade-studies, design, and systems engineering of the Double-probe Electric Field (E-field) science instrument is described. This report also outlines the overall mechanical design of a 1.5U CubeSatellite and its deployable mechanisms for use on the DIME program.

Transient Effects On Dynamic Torque For Butterfly Valves, Trevor N. Price

All Graduate Plan B and other Reports

Butterfly valves are versatile components widely used in hydraulic systems as shutoff and throttling valves. Butterfly valve components must be able to withstand the forces and torques that are generated with use. Dynamic torque data are usually obtained in a test lab for a variety of steady state flow conditions; however the dynamic torque under transient (unsteady flow) conditions may be significantly different than that found in the laboratory. If a valve is closed too fast, especially in long systems, large transient pressures are generated and travel as waves through the pipeline. These transient waves increase the pressure difference across ...