Digital Commons Network^™

Climate Change Adaptation Chapter: Marshfield, Massachusetts, Joshua H. Chase, Jonathan G. Cooper, Rory Elizabeth Fitzgerald, Filipe Antunes Lima, Sally R. Miller, Toni Marie Pignatelli

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Climate change, understood as a statistically significant variation in the mean state of the climate or its variability, is the greatest environmental challenge of this generation (Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, 2001). Marshfield is already being affected by changes in the climate that will have a profound effect on the town’s economy, public health, coastal resources, natural features, water systems, and public and private infrastructure. Adaptation strategies have been widely recognized as playing an important role in improving a community’s ability to respond to climate stressors by resisting damage and recovering quickly.

Based on review of climate projections for the …

Nanomanufacturing Of Biomaterials, Yoni Engel, Jessica D. Schiffman, Julie M. Goddard, Vincent M. Rotello

Jessica D. Schiffman

In this review, we present a few of the many important objectives in the area of biomedical engineering that could open new pathways for nextgeneration biomaterials. We also provide examples of how materials for these goals can be created in an economically viable means through recent advances in high throughput production. These strategies highlight the potential for nanomanufacturing in a variety of areas of importance for human health and safety.

Prelude To A Master Plan: Ware, Massachusetts, Belen Alfaro, Bruno Carneiro, Margaret Engesser, Kathryn E. Fox, Evadne R. Friedman, Timothy Inacio, Anita Lockesmith, Christina Mills, Stephanie Molden, Meagen Mulherin, Russell Pandres, Vinicius Pereira, Brian Reid, Pedro Soto, Jennifer Stromsten

Landscape Architecture & Regional Planning Studio and Student Research and Creative Activity

Prelude to a Master Plan offers ideas, recommendations, and a toolkit to help the town chart its own path towards that future. While the teams and individual students worked to ‘drill down’ into specific topic areas, the Studio defined three basic areas in order to think about how the various assets, challenges and ideas undermine or reinforce one another. The report is loosely organized in those terms: addressing the outlying rural areas and issues specific to these places, considering one of the key growth areas that has extended from town and the conflicts that arise from the many uses occurring …

Genome-Based Modeling And Design Of Metabolic Interactions In Microbial Communities, Radhakrishnan Mahadevan, Michael A. Henson

Michael A Henson

Biotechnology research is traditionally focused on individual microbial strains that are perceived to have the necessary metabolic functions, or the capability to have these functions introduced, to achieve a particular task. For many important applications, the development of such omnipotent microbes is an extremely challenging if not impossible task. By contrast, nature employs a radically different strategy based on synergistic combinations of different microbial species that collectively achieve the desired task. These natural communities have evolved to exploit the native metabolic capabilities of each species and are highly adaptive to changes in their environments. However, microbial communities have proven difficult …

Crystallization And Polymerization, Otto Vogl, Frank T. Traceski, Eric G. Vogl

Otto Vogl

No abstract provided.

Large Excitonic Effects In Monolayers Of Molybdenum And Tungsten Dichalcogenides, Ashwin Ramasubramaniam

Mechanical and Industrial Engineering Faculty Publication Series

Quasiparticle band structures and optical properties of MoS2, MoSe2, MoTe2, WS2, and WSe2 monolayers are studied using the GW approximation in conjunction with the Bethe-Salpeter equation (BSE). The inclusion of two-particle excitations in the BSE approach reveals the presence of two strongly bound excitons (A and B) below the quasiparticle absorption onset arising from vertical transitions between a spin-orbit-split valence band and the conduction band at the K point of the Brillouin zone. The transition energies for monolayer MoS2, in particular, are shown to be in excellent agreement with available absorption and photoluminescence measurements. Excitation energies for the remaining monolayers …

Investigating Pilot Scale Performance Of An Activated Sludge Wastewater Treatment System With A High Rate Anaerobic Side Stream Reactor, Aaron Brennan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The anaerobic side stream reactor (ASSR) process was continuously operated and tested as a pilot scale system, treating 500 gallons of raw wastewater per day. Addition of an ASSR to a conventional activated sludge (CAS) system has been shown to reduce overall waste sludge generation in previous bench scale experiments. This study aimed to specifically test the feasibility of the ASSR process at the pilot scale while comparing it to a full scale CAS plant. The ASSR process differs from the similar Cannibal® process in that it utilizes an SRT in the side stream reactor of only 2 days rather …

Evaluation Of Second-Stage Contactor Media For Manganese Removal, Jonathan Chihoski

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

The focus of this research was to determine the performance of different types of media for a post-filter second-stage contactor for the removal of manganese from a drinking water source. The Aquarion Water Company’s Lantern Hill (LH) water treatment facility in Stonington, CT served as the motivation for this study. The groundwater at this site contains significant concentrations of manganese, averaging 0.2 mg/L, as well as iron, 2.3 mg/L, and total organic carbon (TOC), 3.5 mg/L. Currently, the Lantern Hill facility is using a combination of pH adjustment, potassium permanganate, chlorine, and cationic polymer addition prior to down flow through …

Hydrologic Forecasts And Adaptation To Climate Change In The Northeast Water Sector, Sarah Whateley

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Innovative approaches are needed for improving water resources management and decisionmaking under hydroclimatic uncertainty. Presently, water resource management and infrastructure design relies on an assumption of stationarity, the notion that ‘natural systems fluctuate within an unchanging envelope of variability’ (Milly et al., 2008). However, the need to reexamine this paradigm has proliferated in recent literature due to alterations in the hydrologic landscape (Pahl-Wostl, 2007; Peel and Bloschl, 2011). Sustainable management of water resource systems is becoming increasingly difficult as a result of intensification of anthropogenic disturbances, channel modifications, land-cover changes, and future uncertainty in climate change and variability. As we …

Macroscopic Patterning Via Dynamic Self-Assembly And Wrinkling Instability, Hyun Suk Kim

Open Access Dissertations

My PhD work focuses on developing new methods to create the macroscopic patterns in a simple, robust, and versatile way. For macroscopic pattern formation, we first use flow coating as an assembly technique, uniquely balancing two driving forces: (i) evaporative deposition of nonvolatile solutes at a three-phase contact line and (ii) precision movement of a confined meniscus layer. This balance leads to the formation of line-based patterns that range in height and width from nanometers to microns, with lengths greater than centimeters. Moreover, we couple this deposition methodology with functional ligand chemistry on the nanoparticle surface, which allows us to …

Porous Metal Oxide Materials Through Novel Fabrication Procedures, Nicholas Hendricks

Open Access Dissertations

Porous metal oxide materials, particularly those comprised of silica or titania, find use in many applications such as low-k dielectric materials for microelectronics as well as chemical sensors, micro/nanofluidic devices, and catalyst substrates. For this dissertation, the focus will be on the processing of porous metal oxide materials covering two subjects: hierarchical porosity exhibited over two discrete length scales and incorporation of functional nanomaterials. To generate the porous silica materials, the technique of supercritical carbon dioxide infusion (scCO2) processing was heavily relied upon. Briefly, the scCO2 infusion processing utilizes phase selective chemistries within a pre-organized amphiphilic block copolymer template using …

Modeling Material Transformations In Biorefinement, Vishal Agarwal

Open Access Dissertations

Lignocellulosic biomass is a significant pool of energy resource, which can be harnessed to supplement or replace the dwindling fossil fuel reserves. This requires development of economically viable means to efficiently convert biomass to biofuels. A major requirement in biofuel industry is to develop highly active, selective and stable catalysts. Zeolites are an important class of micro-porous crystalline solids, and have proven to be effective and stable acid catalysts for a variety of petrochemical and fine-chemical processes. Nitrided zeolites -- i.e., those with Si-O-Si and Si-OH-Al groups substituted by Si-NH-Si and Si-NH₂-Al -- have shown promise as shape-selective …

Interactions And Morphology Of Triblock Copolymer - Ionic Liquid Mixtures And Applications For Gel Polymer Electrolytes, Daniel F. Miranda

Open Access Dissertations

Room temperature ionic liquids (ILs) are a unique class of solvents which are characterized by non-volatility, non-flammability, electrochemical stability and high ionic conductivity. These properties are highly desirable for ion-conducting electrolytes, and much work has focused on realizing their application in practical devices. In addition, hydrophilic and ionophilic polymers are generally miscible with ILs. The miscibility of ILs with ion-coordinating polymers makes ILs effective plasticizers for gel polymer electrolytes. Due to their unique properties, ILs present a means to realize the next generation of energy storage technology. In this dissertation, the fundamental interactions between poly(ethylene oxide) (PEO) and a variety …

Risk Quantification Of Maple Trees Subjected To Wind Loading, Cihan Ciftci

Open Access Dissertations

Because of property damage and people injuries in, almost, every year in different locations of the earth, unfortunately the topic of understanding trees and their risk assessments under wind forces has not lost its importance since approximately a half of the last century. In contrast to loss its importance, the number of researchers or studies increases with time thanks to inter-disciplinary studies on that topic. In this Thesis, tree dynamics and their risk assessments subjected to wind forces were addressed by two different disciplines (civil engineering and environmental conservation).

To mention includes of this inter-disciplinary study, first, a finite element …

Modeling The Relaxation Dynamics Of Fluids In Nanoporous Materials, John R. Edison

Open Access Dissertations

Mesoporous materials are being widely used in the chemical industry in various environmentally friendly separation processes and as catalysts. Our research can be broadly described as an effort to understand the behavior of fluids confined in such materials. More specifically we try to understand the influence of state variables like temperature and pore variables like size, shape, connectivity and structural heterogeneity on both the dynamic and equilibrium behavior of confined fluids. The dynamic processes associated with the approach to equilibrium are largely unexplored. It is important to look into the dynamic behavior for two reasons. First, confined fluids experience enhanced …

Robust And Scalable Domain Decomposition Methods For Electromagnetic Computations, Georgios Paraschos

Open Access Dissertations

The Finite Element Tearing and Interconnecting (FETI) and its variants are probably the most celebrated domain decomposition algorithms for partial differential equation (PDE) scientific computations. In electromagnetics, such methods have advanced research frontiers by enabling the full-wave analysis and design of finite phased array antennas, metamaterials, and other multiscale structures. Recently, closer scrutiny of these methods have revealed robustness and numerical scalability problems that prevent the most memory and time efficient variants of FETI from gaining widespread acceptance. This work introduces a new class of FETI methods and preconditioners that lead to exponential iterative convergence for a wide class of …

Security Issues In Network Virtualization For The Future Internet, Sriram Natarajan

Open Access Dissertations

Network virtualization promises to play a dominant role in shaping the future Internet by overcoming the Internet ossification problem. Since a single protocol stack cannot accommodate the requirements of diverse application scenarios and network paradigms, it is evident that multiple networks should co-exist on the same network infrastructure. Network virtualization supports this feature by hosting multiple, diverse protocol suites on a shared network infrastructure. Each hosted virtual network instance can dynamically instantiate custom set of protocols and functionalities on the allocated resources (e.g., link bandwidth, CPU, memory) from the network substrate. As this technology matures, it is important to consider …

Modeling The Self-Assembly Of Ordered Nanoporous Materials, Lin Jin

Open Access Dissertations

Porous materials have long been a research interest due to their practical importance in traditional chemical industries such as catalysis and separation processes. The successful synthesis of porous materials requires further understanding of the fundamental physics that govern the formation of these materials. In this thesis, we apply molecular modeling methods and develop novel models to study the formation mechanism of ordered porous materials. The improved understanding provides an opportunity to rational control pore size, pore shape, surface reactivity and may lead to new design of tailor-made materials. To attain detailed structural evolution of silicate materials, an atomistic model with …

Dynamics And Kinetics Of Model Biological Systems, Stephen William Mirigian

Open Access Dissertations

In this work we study three systems of biological interest: the translocation of a heterogeneously charged polymer through an infinitely thin pore, the wrapped of a rigid particle by a soft vesicle and the modification of the dynamical properties of a gel due to the presence of rigid inclusions.

We study the kinetics of translocation for a heterogeneously charged polyelectrolyte through an infinitely narrow pore using the Fokker-Planck formalism to compute mean first passage times, the probability of successful translocation, and the mean successful translocation time for a diblock copolymer. We find, in contrast to the homopolymer result, that details …

Chemistry At Silicone - Inorganic Oxide Interfaces, Joseph W. Krumpfer

Open Access Dissertations

This dissertation describes research performed using siloxane polymers. This includes the reactions of siloxane polymers with inorganic oxide surfaces to form covalently attached monolayers, and the electrical properties of crosslinked silicone composite films fabricated by compounding with nickel particles. In addition to these topics, the use of contact line pinning as a practical and controllable method for the deposition of materials on superhydrophobic and chemically patterned surfaces is also described The first chapter provides a general review of siloxane polymer chemistry, focusing in particular on the relationship between molecular structure and physical properties. The use and fabrication of silicone composite …

Catalytic Fast Pyrolysis Of Furan Over Zsm-5 Catalysts: A Model Biomass Conversion Reaction, Yu-Ting Cheng

Open Access Dissertations

Due to its low cost and availability, lignocellulosic biomass is receiving significant attention worldwide as a feedstock for renewable liquid bio-fuels. We have recently shown that zeolites can be added to a pyrolysis reactor to directly make aromatics from solid biomass in one single step in a process called catalytic fast pyrolysis (CFP). The advantage of this approach is that valuable petrochemicals can be made directly from solid biomass in a single catalytic step using zeolite catalysts. However, little is known about the conversion chemistry that occurs within the zeolites during CFP. The objective of this thesis is to identify …

Pictures From My Life With Polymer Science: Album 12, Otto Vogl

Otto Vogl

No abstract provided.

Developing A Watershed-Level Protocol For Choosing Indicator Compounds For Edcs/Ppcps Using Analytical Methods And Chemometrics, Varun N. Srinivasan

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

Numerous studies have reported the presence of several endocrine disrupting compounds (EDC) and pharmaceuticals and personal care products (PPCP) in wastewater effluents and consequently in natural water sources which serve as source water for drinking water utilities. However it is still unclear as to which of these compounds are important and need to be monitored. This paper proposes a new approach to identify indicators or surrogates to monitor these compounds in a watershed based on intensive sampling, analytical methods and statistical analysis. The watershed-level protocol involves identifying common patterns of occurrence in these trace chemicals and proposes indicators based on …

Cyber-Physical Integration To Connect Vehicles For Transformed Transportation Safety And Efficiency, Daiheng Ni, Hong Liu Liu, Wei Ding, Yuanchang Xie, Honggang Wang, Hossein Pishro-Nik, Qian Yu

Daiheng Ni

In this paper, we explore a distributed cyber-physical solution using connected vehicle technology (CVtech) to substantially mitigate transportation systems' safety and efficiency problems. Future vehicles, by communicating with other vehicles (V-V), roadside infrastructures (V-R), and personal com-munication devices (V-P), will adapt to the external regional environment and consequently avoid collisions and congestion. We proposes to seamlessly int e-grate networked and embedded sensing, computational intelligence, and real - time communication (cyber) into transportation infrastructure including veh i- cles and roadsides (physical) to facilitate self - organization and system coordin a- tion. Specifically, this research addresses two specific t hemes: Foundations by …

Solid State Chemical Reactions And Polymerizations: The Initial Synthesis Of Dna?, Otto Vogl, Frank T. Traceski

Otto Vogl

A Proposal for Covering individual Macromolecules with Macromolecules including a Realistic Chiral Synthesis of Nucleic Acids.

Assessment Of Iron And Manganese Sequestration, Danielle Volpe

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

For drinking water with low to moderate levels of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) (at or somewhat above the SMCL), sequestration is a less expensive treatment alternative compared to metal oxidation and removal. Sequestration complexes Fe and Mn to prevent precipitation and subsequent water quality problems (turbidity, color, staining, etc.). Despite the widespread use of sequestering agents, research has not resulted in a successful method to directly assess the complexation of Mn and Fe. This study was conducted to develop a method for assessing sequestering agent effectiveness and to assess the effectiveness of several phosphate based sequestering agents for several …

Assessment Of Iron And Manganese Sequestration, Danielle Volpe

Environmental & Water Resources Engineering Masters Projects

For drinking water with low to moderate levels of iron (Fe) and manganese (Mn) (at or somewhat above the SMCL), sequestration is a less expensive treatment alternative compared to metal oxidation and removal. Sequestration complexes Fe and Mn to prevent precipitation and subsequent water quality problems (turbidity, color, staining, etc.). Despite the widespread use of sequestering agents, research has not resulted in a successful method to directly assess the complexation of Mn and Fe. This study was conducted to develop a method for assessing sequestering agent effectiveness and to assess the effectiveness of several phosphate based sequestering agents for several …

On The Effect Of Elasticity On Drag Reduction Due To Polymer Additives Using A Hybrid D.N.S. And Langevin Dynamics Approach, Arnout Boelens

Open Access Dissertations

In this work the effect of elasticity on turbulent drag reduction due to polymers is investigated using a hybrid Direct Numerical Simulation (D.N.S) and Langevin dynamics approach. Simulations are run at a friction Reynolds number of Re_&tau = 560 for 960.000 dumbbells with Deborah numbers of De = 0, De = 1, and De = 10. The conclusions are that it is possible to simulate a drag reduced flow using hybrid D.N.S. with Langevin dynamics, that polymers, like other occurrences of drag reduction, reduce drag through streak stabilization, and that the essential property of polymers and fibers in having a …

A Study On Small Scale Intermittency Using Direct Numerical Simulation Of Turbulence, Saba Almalkie

Open Access Dissertations

Theory of turbulence at small scales plays a fundamental role in modeling turbulence and in retrieving information from physical measurements of turbulent flows. A systematic methodology based on direct numerical simulations of turbulent flows is developed to investigate universality of small scale turbulence. Understanding characteristics of the small scale intermittency in turbulent flows and the accuracy of the models, measurements, and theories in predicting it are the main objectives. The research is designed to address two central questions; 1) possible effects of large scale anisotropies on the small scale turbulence and 2) potential biases in characterizing small scale turbulence due …

Security Issues In Networked Embedded Devices, Danai Chasaki Sr

Open Access Dissertations

Embedded devices are ubiquitous; they are present in various sectors of everyday life: smart homes, automobiles, health care, telephony, industrial automation, networking etc. Embedded systems are well known for their dependability, and that is one of the reasons that they are preferred over general purpose machines in various applications. Traditional embedded computing is changing nowadays mainly due to the increasing number of heterogeneous embedded devices that are, more often than not, interconnected. Security in the field of networked embedded systems is becoming particularly important, because:

1) Connected embedded devices can be attacked remotely.

2) They are resource constrained.

This means, …