Digital Commons Network^™

The Smithvent Experience And A Framework For Collaborative Distributed Design And Fabrication, Susannah Howe, Eleanor C. Ory, Devin Carroll, Sarah Chu, Kalifa Clarke, Beatrix Dalton, Claire Dudek, Adrienne Horne, Nicholas Howe, Sangye Kazi, Astrid Landeau, Dan Lin, Phoebe Degroot, Emily Dixon, Farida Sabry, Alex Widstrand

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper addresses the collaborative journey of the SmithVent team, a 30-person distributed group of volunteers, who designed, fabricated, and tested a simplified and cost-efficient ventilator over a three-month period, and won the CoVent19 Challenge in July 2020. The paper first presents the SmithVent experience through a co-constructed narrative that describes the team’s approaches to collaborative distributed design and fabrication. The paper next reviews frameworks from five theoretical lenses and then details the process of extracting, synthesizing, and organizing relevant factors to create a new and emergent framework reflective of the SmithVent experience. Lastly, the paper discusses educational implications of …

Surgical Tool Segmentation With Pose-Informed Morphological Polar Transform Of Endoscopic Images, Kevin Huang, Digesh Chitrakar, Wenfan Jiang, Isabella Yung, Yun Hsuan Su

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper presents a tool-pose-informed variable center morphological polar transform to enhance segmentation of endoscopic images. The representation, while not loss-less, transforms rigid tool shapes into morphologies consistently more rectangular that may be more amenable to image segmentation networks. The proposed method was evaluated using the U-Net convolutional neural network, and the input images from endoscopy were represented in one of the four different coordinate formats (1) the original rectangular image representation, (2) the morphological polar coordinate transform, (3) the proposed variable center transform about the tool-tip pixel and (4) the proposed variable center transform about the tool vanishing point …

Water Chemistry, Exposure Routes, And Metal Forms Determine The Bioaccumulation Dynamics Of Silver (Ionic And Nanoparticulate) In Daphnia Magna, Emma Lesser, Fatima Noor Sheikh, Mithun Sikder, Marie Noële Croteau, Natasha Franklin, Mohammed Baalousha, Niveen S. Ismail

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Treatment wetlands utilize various physical and biological processes to reduce levels of organic contaminants, metals, bacteria, and suspended solids. Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) are one type of contaminant that can enter treatment wetlands and impact the overall treatment efficacy. Grazing by filter-feeding zooplankton, such as Daphnia magna, is critical to treatment wetland functioning; but the effects of AgNPs on zooplankton are not fully understood, especially at environmentally relevant concentrations. We characterized the bioaccumulation kinetics of dissolved and nanoparticulate (citrate-coated) 109Ag in D. magna exposed to environmentally relevant 109Ag concentrations (i.e., 0.2–23 nmol L−1 Ag) using a stable isotope as a tracer …

Continuous Operator Authentication For Teleoperated Systems Using Hidden Markov Models, Junjie Yan, Kevin Huang, Kyle Lindgren, Tamara Bonaci, Howard J. Chizeck

Engineering: Faculty Publications

In this article, we present a novel approach for continuous operator authentication in teleoperated robotic processes based on Hidden Markov Models (HMM). While HMMs were originally developed and widely used in speech recognition, they have shown great performance in human motion and activity modeling. We make an analogy between human language and teleoperated robotic processes (i.e., words are analogous to a teleoperator's gestures, sentences are analogous to the entire teleoperated task or process) and implement HMMs to model the teleoperated task. To test the continuous authentication performance of the proposed method, we conducted two sets of analyses. We built a …

Local Style Preservation In Improved Gan-Driven Synthetic Image Generation For Endoscopic Tool Segmentation, Yun Hsuan Su, Wenfan Jiang, Digesh Chitrakar, Kevin Huang, Haonan Peng, Blake Hannaford

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Accurate semantic image segmentation from medical imaging can enable intelligent vision-based assistance in robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery. The human body and surgical procedures are highly dynamic. While machine-vision presents a promising approach, sufficiently large training image sets for robust performance are either costly or unavailable. This work examines three novel generative adversarial network (GAN) methods of providing usable synthetic tool images using only surgical background images and a few real tool images. The best of these three novel approaches generates realistic tool textures while preserving local background content by incorporating both a style preservation and a content loss component into …

It’S A Context Gap, Not A Competency Gap: Understanding The Transition From Capstone Design To Industry, Marie C. Paretti, Julie Dyke Ford, Susannah Howe, Daria A. Kotys-Schwartz, Robin Ott

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper describes the completion of a multi-year, multi-institution study to explore students’ transitions from capstone design courses into engineering workplaces. Numerous studies and industry reports point to gaps between school and work with respect to engineering practice. Such misalignment poses a serious challenge to the professional formation of engineers within the academy. Industry-oriented capstone courses are key opportunities to bridge these gaps. These courses provide a direct connect to industry, and faculty view them as vehicles to help students synthesize prior coursework and engage in real-world projects. Yet few if any studies have examined the effectiveness of capstone courses …

Developing A Measure To Capture Middle School Students’ Interpretive Understanding Of Engineering Design, Jeremiah Pina, Glenn W. Ellis, Al Rudnitsky, Rebecca Mazur, Beth Mcginnis-Cavanaugh, Isabel Huff

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This research paper describes the development of an assessment instrument for use with middle school students that provides insight into students’ interpretive understanding by looking at early indicators of developing expertise in students’ responses to solution generation, reflection, and concept demonstration tasks.

We begin by detailing a synthetic assessment model that served as the theoretical basis for assessing specific thinking skills. We then describe our process of developing test items by working with a Teacher Design Team (TDT) of instructors in our partner school system to set guidelines that would better orient the assessment in that context and working within …

Emerging Investigator Series: Interacting Effects Of Environmental Factors On: Daphnia Magna Removal Of Escherichia Coli From Wastewater, Seyyed M.H. Abtahi, Ojaswi Aryal, Niveen S. Ismail

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Treatment wetlands can remove a wide range of pollutants from wastewater and stormwater runoff, including microbial pollutants such as Escherichia coli. Filter feeding zooplankton play an important role in improving water quality in treatment wetlands through grazing and subsequent inactivation of E. coli. Understanding how climate change will impact the various processes governing microbial inactivation in treatment wetlands is essential to ensure adequately treated water. We investigated the impact of interacting environmental factors on the E. coli clearance rate of a keystone zooplankton species, Daphnia magna. We utilized a full factorial experimental design to test the impacts of food abundance, …

Multicamera 3d Viewpoint Adjustment For Robotic Surgery Via Deep Reinforcement Learning, Yun Hsuan Su, Kevin Huang, Blake Hannaford

Engineering: Faculty Publications

While robot-assisted minimally invasive surgery (RMIS) procedures afford a variety of benefits over open surgery and manual laparoscopic operations (including increased tool dexterity, reduced patient pain, incision size, trauma and recovery time, and lower infection rates [1], lack of spatial awareness remains an issue. Typical laparoscopic imaging can lack sufficient depth cues and haptic feedback, if provided, rarely reflects realistic tissue-tool interactions. This work is part of a larger ongoing research effort to reconstruct 3D surfaces using multiple viewpoints in RMIS to increase visual perception. The manual placement and adjustment of multicamera systems in RMIS are nonideal and prone to …

Telelocomotion—Remotely Operated Legged Robots, Kevin Huang, Divas Subedi, Rahul Mitra, Isabella Yung, Kirkland Boyd, Edwin Aldrich, Digesh Chitrakar

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Teleoperated systems enable human control of robotic proxies and are particularly amenable to inaccessible environments unsuitable for autonomy. Examples include emergency response, underwater manipulation, and robot assisted minimally invasive surgery. However, teleoperation architectures have been predominantly employed in manipulation tasks, and are thus only useful when the robot is within reach of the task. This work introduces the idea of extending teleoperation to enable online human remote control of legged robots, or telelocomotion, to traverse challenging terrain. Traversing unpredictable terrain remains a challenge for autonomous legged locomotion, as demonstrated by robots commonly falling in high-profile robotics contests. Telelocomotion can reduce …

Requirements Engineering Education Slr Data Set 1988-2020, Marian Daun, Alicia M. Grubb, Bastian Tenbergen

Data

Requirements Engineering (RE) has established itself as a core software engineering discipline. It is well acknowledged that good RE leads to higher quality software and considerably reduces the risk of failure or exceeding budgets of software development projects. Therefore, it is of vital importance to train future software engineers in RE and educate future requirements engineers to adequately manage requirements in various projects. However, to date there exists no central dataset for RE Education articles. To lay the foundation for this important mission, we conducted a systematic literature review. In this dataset, we present 152 articles from the Requirements Engineering …

Measurements Of Ear-Canal Cross-Sectional Areas From Live Human Ears With Implications For Wideband Acoustic Immittance Measurements, Susan E. Voss, Nicholas J. Horton, Katherine E. Fairbank, Lu Xia, Lauren R. K. Tinglin, Kathryn D. Girardin

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Wideband acoustic immittance (WAI) measures are noninvasive diagnostic measurements that require an estimate of the ear canal’s area at the measurement location. Yet, physical measurements of the area at WAI probe locations are lacking. Methods to measure ear-canal areas from silicone molds were developed and applied to 169 subjects, ages 18–75 years. The average areas at the canal’s first bend and at 12mm insertion depth, which are likely WAI probe locations, were 63:4613:5 and 61:6613:5mm2, respectively. These areas are substantially larger than those assumed by current FDA-approved WAI measurement devices as well as areas estimated with acoustical methods or measured …

Peak Grain Forecasts For The Us High Plains Amid Withering Waters, Assaad Mrad, Gabriel G. Katul, Delphis F. Levia, Andrew J. Guswa, Elizabeth W. Boyer, Michael Bruen, Darryl E. Carlyle-Moses, Rachel Coyte, Irena F. Creed, Nick Van De Giesen, Domenico Grasso, David M. Hannah, Janice E. Hudson, Vincent Humphrey, Shin'ichi Iida, Robert B. Jackson, Tomo'omi Kumagai, Pilar Llorens, Beate Michalzik, Kazuki Nanko, Catherine A. Peters, John S. Selker, Doerthe Tetzlaff, Maciej Zalewski, Bridget R. Scanlon

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Irrigated agriculture contributes 40% of total global food production. In the US High Plains, which produces more than 50 million tons per year of grain, as much as 90% of irrigation originates from groundwater resources, including the Ogallala aquifer. In parts of the High Plains, groundwater resources are being depleted so rapidly that they are considered nonrenewable, compromising food security. When groundwater becomes scarce, groundwater withdrawals peak, causing a subsequent peak in crop production. Previous descriptions of finite natural resource depletion have utilized the Hubbert curve. By coupling the dynamics of groundwater pumping, recharge, and crop production, Hubbert-like curves emerge, …

Viral Transfer And Inactivation Through Zooplankton Trophic Interactions, Niveen S. Ismail, Margot Olive, Xavier Fernandez-Cassi, Virginie Bachmann, Tamar Kohn

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Waterborne viruses are responsible for numerous diseases and are abundant in aquatic systems. Understanding the fate of viruses in natural systems has important implications for human health. This research quantifies the uptake of the bacteriophage T4 and the enteric virus echovirus 11 when exposed to the filter feeders Tetrahymena pyriformis and Daphnia magna, and also examines the potential of viral transfer due to trophic interactions. Experiments co-incubating each species with the viruses over 72-96 h showed up to a 4 log virus removal for T. pyriformis, while direct viral uptake by D. magna was not observed. However, viral uptake by …

Co-Designed Land-Use Scenarios And Their Implications For Storm Runoff And Streamflow In New England, Andrew John Guswa, Brian Hall, Chingwen Cheng, Jonathan R. Thompson

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Landscape and climate changes have the potential to create or exacerbate problems with stormwater management, high flows, and flooding. In New England, four plausible land-use scenarios were co-developed with stakeholders to give insight to the effects on ecosystem services of different trajectories of socio-economic connectedness and natural resource innovation. With respect to water, the service of greatest interest to New England stakeholders is the reduction of stormwater and flooding. To assess the effects of these land-use scenarios, we applied the Soil and Water Assessment Tool to two watersheds under two climates. Differences in land use had minimal effects on the …

Mechatronics And Robotics Education: Standardizing Foundational Key Concepts, Kevin Stanley Mcfall, Kevin Huang, Hunter B. Gilbert, Musa K. Jouaneh, He Bai, David M. Auslander

Engineering: Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Developing Transmedia Engineering Curricula Using Cognitive Tools To Impact Learning And The Development Of Stem Identity (Rtp), Glenn Ellis, Jeremiah Pina, Rebecca Mazur, Al Rudnitsky, Beth Mcginnis-Cavanaugh, Isabel Huff, Sonia Ellis, Crystal M. Ford, Kate Lytton, Kaia Claire Cormier

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper examines the use of Imaginative Education (IE) to create an NGSS-aligned middle school engineering curriculum that supports transfer and the development of STEM identity. In IE, cognitive tools—such as developmentally appropriate narratives, mysteries and fantasies— are used to design learning environments that both engage learners and help them organize knowledge productively. We have combined IE with transmedia storytelling to develop two multi-week engineering units and six shorter engineering lessons. An overview of the curriculum developed to date and a more detailed description of the engineering design unit is presented in this paper.

The curriculum is currently being implemented …

Advancing Ecohydrology In The 21st Century: A Convergence Of Opportunities, Andrew J. Guswa, Doerthe Tetzlaff, John S. Selker, Darryl E. Carlyle-Moses, Elizabeth W. Boyer, Michael Bruen, Carles Cayuela, Irena F. Creed, Nick Van De Giesen, Domenico Grasso, David M. Hannah, Janice E. Hudson, Sean A. Hudson, Shin'ichi Iida, Robert B. Jackson, Gabriel G. Katul, Tomo'omi Kumagai, Pilar Llorens, Flavio Lopes Ribeiro, Beate Michalzik, Kazuki Nanko, Christopher Oster, Diane E. Pataki, Catherine A. Peters, Andrea Rinaldo, Daniel Sanchez Carretero, Branimir Trifunovic, Maciej Zalewski, Marja Haagsma, Delphis F. Levia

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Nature-based solutions for water-resource challenges require advances in the science of ecohydrology. Current understanding is limited by a shortage of observations and theories that can further our capability to synthesize complex processes across scales ranging from submillimetres to tens of kilometres. Recent developments in environmental sensing, data, and modelling have the potential to drive rapid improvements in ecohydrological understanding. After briefly reviewing advances in sensor technologies, this paper highlights how improved measurements and modelling can be applied to enhance understanding of the following ecohydrological examples: interception and canopy processes, root uptake and critical zone processes, and up-scaled effects of land …

Engineered Fn3 Protein Has Targeted Therapeutic Effect On Mesothelin-Expressing Cancer Cells And Increases Tumor Cell Sensitivity To Chemotherapy, Allison R. Sirois, Daniela A. Deny, Yanxuan Li, Yacine D. Fall, Sarah J. Moore

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Mesothelin is a protein expressed at high levels on the cell surface in a variety of cancers, with limited expression in healthy tissues. The presence of mesothelin on tumor tissue correlates with increased invasion and metastasis, and resistance to traditional chemotherapies, through mechanisms that remain poorly understood. Molecules that specifically recognize mesothelin and interrupt its contribution to tumor progression have significant potential for targeted therapy and targeted drug delivery applications. A number of mesothelin-targeting therapies are in preclinical and clinical development, although none are currently approved for routine clinical use. In this work, we report the development of a mesothelin-targeting …

Impact Of Metazooplankton Filter Feeding On Escherichia Coli Under Variable Environmental Conditions, Niveen S. Ismail, Brittney M. Blokker, Tyler R. Feeney, Ruby H. Kohn, Jingyi Liu, Vivian E. Nelson, Mariah C. Ollive, Sarah B. L. Price, Emma J. Underdaha

Engineering: Faculty Publications

The fecal indicator bacterial species Escherichia coli is an important measure of water quality and a leading cause of impaired surface waters. We investigated the impact of the filter-feeding metazooplankton Daphnia magna on the inactivation of E. coli. The E. coli clearance rates of these daphnids were calculated from a series of batch experiments conducted under variable environmental conditions. Batch system experiments of 24 to 48 h in duration were completed to test the impacts of bacterial concentration, organism density, temperature, and water type. The maximum clearance rate for adult D. magna organisms was 2 ml h1 organism1. Less than …

An Online Wideband Acoustic Immittance (Wai) Database Andcorresponding Website: Resource Review, Susan E. Voss

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Wideband acoustic immittance (WAI) measures, which include absorbance, power reflectance, impedance, and other related quantities, offer an objective, noninvasive diagnostic tool for some middle-ear pathologies. An online database for normative adult WAI measures has been designed and implemented in MySQL, with the goal of enabling researchers to share and analyze data across studies.

Access database through ScholarWorks here: https://scholarworks.smith.edu/dds_data/6

Or directly here: http://www.science.smith.edu/wai-database/

Evaluation Of Haptic Guidance Virtual Fixtures And 3d Visualization Methods In Telemanipulation—A User Study, Kevin Huang, Digesh Chitrakar, Fredrik Rydén, Howard Jay Chizeck

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This work presents a user-study evaluation of various visual and haptic feedback modes on a real telemanipulation platform. Of particular interest is the potential for haptic guidance virtual fixtures and 3D-mapping techniques to enhance efficiency and awareness in a simple teleoperated valve turn task. An RGB-Depth camera is used to gather real-time color and geometric data of the remote scene, and the operator is presented with either a monocular color video stream, a 3D-mapping voxel representation of the remote scene, or the ability to place a haptic guidance virtual fixture to help complete the telemanipulation task. The efficacy of the …

Women's Experiences In The Transition From Capstone Design Courses To Engineering Workplaces, Susannah Howe, Robin Ott, Marie C. Paretti, Cristian Hernandez, Jessica Deters, Chris Gewirtz, Francesca Giardine, Anne Kary

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Substantial research over the past few decades has documented the challenges women experience both as students in engineering programs and as professionals in engineering workplaces. Few studies, however, have followed women from one context to the other to explore the ways in which school experiences, and particularly capstone experiences designed to facilitate this transition, do and do not prepare women for their work as practicing engineers. To address this gap, we draw on data from a larger multi-institution study to address the question, “How do women experience the transition from engineering school to engineering work?” Participants for this study are …

Protein-Polymer Conjugates Synthesized Using Water-Soluble Azlactone-Functionalized Polymers Enable Receptor-Specific Cellular Uptake Toward Targeted Drug Delivery, Julia S. Kim, Allison R. Sirois, Analia J. Vazquez Cegla, Eugenie Jumai'an, Naomi Murata, Maren E. Buck, Sarah J. Moore

Chemistry: Faculty Publications

Conjugation of proteins to drug-loaded polymeric structures is an attractive strategy for facilitating target-specific drug delivery for a variety of clinical needs. Polymers currently available for conjugation to proteins generally have limited chemical versatility for subsequent drug loading. Many polymers that do have chemical functionality useful for drug loading are often insoluble in water, making it difficult to synthesize functional protein–polymer conjugates for targeted drug delivery. In this work, we demonstrate that reactive, azlactone-functionalized polymers can be grafted to proteins, conjugated to a small-molecule fluorophore, and subsequently internalized into cells in a receptor-specific manner. Poly(2-vinyl-4,4-dimethylazlactone), synthesized using reversible addition–fragmentation chain …

Engaging Children In Design Thinking Through Transmedia Narrative (Rtp), Glenn W. Ellis, Isabel Huff, Al Rudnitsky, Beth Mcginnis-Cavanaugh, Sonia K. Ellis

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper presents the implementation of Imaginative Education (IE) pedagogy for creating a transmedia learning environment that engages children in learning about engineering design. IE uses narrative to engage learners' imaginations; helps them master the cognitive tools necessary for progressing to higher levels of understanding; and helps them structure what they learn in meaningful ways. Included in the paper is an introduction to IE pedagogy and the use of transmedia in education; an overview of the online learning environment called Through My Window (TMW) that we have developed for middle school children; and a detailed look at a learning adventure …

Fn3 Proteins Engineered To Recognize Tumor Biomarker Mesothelin Internalize Upon Binding, Allison R. Sirois, Daniela A. Deny, Samantha R. Baierl, Katia S. George, Sarah J. Moore

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Mesothelin is a cell surface protein that is overexpressed in numerous cancers, including breast, ovarian, lung, liver, and pancreatic tumors. Aberrant expression of mesothelin has been shown to promote tumor progression and metastasis through interaction with established tumor biomarker CA125. Therefore, molecules that specifically bind to mesothelin have potential therapeutic and diagnostic applications. However, no mesothelin-targeting molecules are currently approved for routine clinical use. While antibodies that target mesothelin are in development, some clinical applications may require a targeting molecule with an alternative protein fold. For example, non-antibody proteins are more suitable for molecular imaging and may facilitate diverse chemical …

Curve Number Approach To Estimate Monthly And Annual Direct Runoff, Andrew John Guswa, Perrine Hamel, Kate Meyer

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper establishes a novel approach to estimate monthly and annual direct runoff by combining the curve number method of the Natural Resources Conservation Service with an exponential distribution of rainfall depths. The approach was tested against observed rainfall and runoff for 544 watersheds throughout the contiguous United States. For more than half of the watersheds, the performance of the new approach is indistinguishable from the application of the method to daily rainfall when curve numbers are determined via calibration. For all watersheds, the uncertainty introduced by the approximation of the distribution of rainfall depths is far less than the …

Cultivating The Capstone Ecosystem To Educate The Engineer Of 2020, Susannah Howe

Engineering: Faculty Publications

Capstone design courses often provide authentic learning opportunities and real-world responsibility at the conclusion of students’ undergraduate engineering education, helping prepare them for their career and life trajectories after graduation. Cultivating the broader capstone design ecosystem can further enrich students’ learning, expand student connections, and facilitate acquisition of the Engineer of 2020 attributes. This paper presents a framework and associated strategies for a capstone design ecosystem that extends across the capstone design course, across the engineering department, across the institution, and across the alumni community. The paper discusses implementation of the proposed ecosystem approach as a case study supplemented by …

Preliminary Results From A Study Investigating The Transition From Capstone Design To Industry, Susannah Howe, Laura Mae Rosenbauer, Julie Dyke Ford, Nicholas Emory Alvarez, Marie C. Paretti, Chris Gewirtz, Daria A. Kotys-Schwartz, Daniel Knight, Cristian Hernandez

Engineering: Faculty Publications

This study investigates engineering students’ transitions from academic to professional environments by examining the role capstone design courses play in preparing graduates for the workplace. To better understand how capstone design experiences contribute to graduates’ professional preparation, we are collecting data from participants from four different institutions with project-based capstone courses as they begin post-graduation positions in a variety of engineering workplaces. Through quantitative and qualitative methods, our study is designed to collect insights from participants in their first 12 months on the job. Currently we are collecting and analyzing data from the first of two planned cohorts of participants. …

New Engineers’ First Three Months: A Study Of The Transition From Capstone Design Courses To Workplaces, Chris Gewirtz, Daria A. Kotys-Schwartz, Daniel Knight, Marie C. Paretti, Sidharth Arunkumar, Julie Dyke Ford, Susannah Howe, Laura Mae Rosenbauer, Nicholas Emory Alvarez, Jessica Deters, Cristian Hernandez

Engineering: Faculty Publications

In preparing engineering students for the workplace, capstone classes provide unique opportunities for students to develop their professional identities and learn critical skills such as engineering design, teamwork, and self-directed learning (Lutz & Paretti). While existing research explores what and how students learn within these courses, we know much less about how capstone courses affect students’ transitions into the workplace.

To address this gap, we are following 62 new graduates from four institutions during the participants’ first 12 weeks of work. Participants were drawn from three mechanical engineering programs and one engineering science program. Women were intentionally oversampled in the …