Digital Commons Network^™

Shape Memory Alloy Capsule Micropump For Drug Delivery Applications, Youssef Mohamed Kotb

Theses and Dissertations

Implantable drug delivery devices have many benefits over traditional drug administration techniques and have attracted a lot of attention in recent years. By delivering the medication directly to the tissue, they enable the use of larger localized concentrations, enhancing the efficacy of the treatment. Passive-release drug delivery systems, one of the various ways to provide medication, are great inventions. However, they cannot dispense the medication on demand since they are nonprogrammable. Therefore, active actuators are more advantageous in delivery applications. Smart material actuators, however, have greatly increased in popularity for manufacturing wearable and implantable micropumps due to their high energy …

Amazon Fba Vs Fbm; A Strategic Approach To Determine Which Method Can Effectively Utilize Project Management Principles To Enhance Your Success As A New Amazon Seller., Tiffany Renee White

Theses and Dissertations

Navigating the complexities of a platform such as Amazon demands a strategic approach guided by project management principles. A comparative analysis of Fulfillment by Amazon (FBA) and Fulfillment by Merchant (FBM) methods were completed by focusing on how project management principles optimize product acquisition, supply chain management, and shipping methods for Amazon sellers. The objectives of this study included the identification of top product acquisition tools, the evaluation of inventory management software, assessing shipping methods, and determining the most effective fulfillment process for Amazon seller success. A mixed-methods approach was applied, involving an Amazon seller survey, literature review, data analysis, …

Ai-Powered Information Retrieval In Meeting Records And Transcripts Enhancing Efficiency And User Experience, Srushti Nitin Ghadge

Theses and Dissertations

This study compares the traditional search methods, which is to search from video recordings of the meetings by moving the slider back and forth or by keyword search in transcripts versus integrated AI video plus transcript search. Based on the previous test results, we introduced some human-centric design features to the AI and built a new enhanced AI search tool for information retrieval. For search technique efficiency testing, the method had two set of experiments. The first results of the experiment showed that AI-based search algorithms were more accurate and faster than conventional search approaches. Participants were also happier with …

Mri Image Regression Cnn For Bone Marrow Lesion Volume Prediction, Kevin Yanagisawa

Theses and Dissertations

Bone marrow lesions (BMLs), occurs from fluid build up in the soft tissues inside your bone. This can be seen on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) scans and is characterized by excess water signals in the bone marrow space. This disease is commonly caused by osteoarthritis (OA), a degenerative join disease where tissues within the joint breakdown over time [1]. These BMLs are an emerging target for OA, as they are commonly related to pain and worsening of the diseased area until surgical intervention is required [2]–[4]. In order to assess the BMLs, MRIs were utilized as input into a regression …

Developing Machine Learning And Time-Series Analysis Methods With Applications In Diverse Fields, Muhammed Aljifri

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation introduces methodologies that combine machine learning models with time-series analysis to tackle data analysis challenges in varied fields. The first study enhances the traditional cumulative sum control charts with machine learning models to leverage their predictive power for better detection of process shifts, applying this advanced control chart to monitor hospital readmission rates. The second project develops multi-layer models for predicting chemical concentrations from ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy data, specifically addressing the challenge of analyzing chemicals with a wide range of concentrations. The third study presents a new method for detecting multiple changepoints in autocorrelated ordinal time series, using the …

Dynamic Segmental Kinematics Of The Lumbar Spine During Diagnostic Movements, Paul Mcmullin

Theses and Dissertations

While lumbar kinematics can be measured in vivo, most measurements are invasive (such as percutaneous bone pins), provide high doses of radiation (such as biplane fluoroscopy), or are taken with the patient in a static position (such as MRIs). Recent work suggests that lumbar kinematics can be determined by dynamic measurements of epidermal strain in the lower back. This work aims to develop and examine a method of examining lumbar kinematics via optoelectronic motion capture utilizing skin-mounted markers in the lumbar region. Two studies were performed. One study examined lumbar epidermal strain in 28 asymptomatic subjects during diagnostic movements, while …

Transportation Needs Of Older Adults In Suburban And Rural Areas, Dahai Han

Theses and Dissertations

The fact that the average age of the world's population is increasing, which is more pronounced in developed countries, necessitates the understanding of the challenges faced by older adults in accessing transportation services. With advancing age, individuals may experience age-related changes that can notably affect their driving capabilities, emphasizing the importance of alternative transportation alternatives. This challenge is more evident in suburban and rural settings, where transportation choices are limited, and older adults often find themselves without access to suitable transportation alternatives. Given that mobility plays an essential role in maintaining social connections, accessing healthcare services, and fulfilling daily needs, …

Using Statistical Clustering Of Trajectory Data To Support Analysis Of Subject Movement In A Virtual Environment, Martín Alejandro Galicia Avila

Theses and Dissertations

The rising use of virtual reality software requires new methods of spatiotemporal analysis to enhance the user experience. This investigation is focused on forming clusters from spatiotemporal trajectories within a virtual environment and analyzing them in search of human immersion and behavior insights. The cluster centroids are plotted and analyzed to identify associations with the trajectories and user demographics.

The Private Pilot Check Ride: Applying The Spacing Effect Theory To Predict Time To Proficiency For The Practical Test, Michael Scott Harwin

Theses and Dissertations

This study examined the relationship between a set of targeted factors and the total flight time students needed to become ready to take the private pilot check ride. The study was grounded in Ebbinghaus’s (1885/1913/2013) forgetting curve theory and spacing effect, and Ausubel’s (1963) theory of meaningful learning. The research factors included (a) training time to proficiency, which represented the number of training days needed to become check-ride ready; (b) flight training program (Part 61 vs. Part 141); (c) organization offering the training program (2- or 4-year college/university vs. FBO); (d) scheduling policy (mandated vs. student-driven); and demographical variables, which …

Characterization Of Human Mobility From Cellular Data, Zaid Matloub

Theses and Dissertations

This dissertation investigates human mobility patterns using crowd-sourced cellular network data from different Metropolitan Statistical Areas (MSAs) in the United States, spanning the Houston, New York-Newark, NJ City, and 13 other significant MSAs. By focusing on prominent spatial mobility parameters highlighted in existing literature, the study unveils consistent findings regarding the predictability of human mobility across diverse time scales and geographic regions. The research underscores the significance of selecting appropriate sampling thresholds based on the mobility parameters being examined, the size of the dataset, and available computational resources. Through a meticulous analysis, it emerges that while values such as mean …

Investigation Of Discrepancies In South Carolina Traffic Collision Forms, Jackson Wegmet

Theses and Dissertations

The aim of this thesis is to improve the accuracy of information recorded in the South Carolina traffic collision forms. To accomplish this, it examines 200 forms containing information about fatal crashes in work zones between 2014 and 2020 to determine how many discrepancies exist between the written narrative and other fields. In addition to obtaining these statistics, this thesis seeks to identify factors that influence discrepancies. To test the hypothesis that crash complexity and weather influence the investigating officer’s level of processing (a theory developed by Craik and Lockhart in 1972), and consequentially his/her ability to complete the traffic …

Better Models For High-Stakes Tasks, Jacob Ryan Epifano

Theses and Dissertations

The intersection of machine learning and healthcare has the potential to transform medical diagnosis, treatment, and research. Machine learning models can analyze vast amounts of medical data and identify patterns that may be too complex for human analysis. However, one of the major challenges in this field is building trust between users and the model. Due to things like high false alarm rate and the black box nature of machine learning models, patients and medical professionals need to understand how the model arrives at its recommendations. In this work, we present several methods that aim to improve machine learning models …

Effects Of High School Engineering Course Availability And Participation On Engineering School Recruitment, Discipline Selection, Persistence Attitudes, And Self-Efficacy, Kristin S. Sandberg

Theses and Dissertations

The need for engineers in the workforce continues to grow. Filling this need requires recruiting future engineers to colleges and universities and retaining them through to degree completion. However, this is easier said than done. Universities are tasked with attempting to keep up with the demand for new engineers and companies are searching for new engineers to recruit. One avenue that has been established in the attempt to reach students for engineering is offering engineering or STEM classes in K-12 schools.

This dissertation looked at engineering classes offered at the high school level. These courses were analyzed for relationships with …

Assessing And Predicting The Students’ Systems Thinking Preference: Multi-Criteria Decision Making And Machine Learning, Siham Tazzit

Theses and Dissertations

The 21st century is marked by a technological revolution that features digital implementation and high interconnectivity between systems across different domains, such as transportation, agriculture, education, and health. Although these technological changes resulted in modern systems capable of easing individuals’ lives, these systems are increasingly complex, and that increased complexity is only expected to continue. The increased system complexity is due to the rapid exchange of information between subsystems, which creates high interconnectivity and interdependence between the subsystems and their elements. Workforce skill sets, as a result, must be modified appropriately to ensure the systems’ success. Systems Thinking is an …

Detecting Lumbar Muscle Fatigue Using Nanocomposite Strain Gauges, Darci Ann Billmire

Theses and Dissertations

Introduction: Muscle fatigue can contribute to acute flare-ups of lower back pain with associated consequences such as pain, disability, lost work time, increased healthcare utilization, and increased opioid use and potential abuse. The SPINE Sense system is a wearable device with 16 high deflection nanocomposite strain gauge sensors on kinesiology tape which is adhered to the skin of the lower back. This device is used to correlate lumbar skin strains with the motion of the lumbar vertebrae and to phenotype lumbar spine motion. In this work it was hypothesized that the SPINE Sense device can be used to detect differences …

User Profiling Through Zero-Permission Sensors And Machine Learning, Ahmed Elhussiny

Theses and Dissertations

With the rise of mobile and pervasive computing, users are often ingesting content on the go. Services are constantly competing for attention in a very crowded field. It is only logical that users would allot their attention to the services that are most likely to adapt to their needs and interests. This matter becomes trivial when users create accounts and explicitly inform the services of their demographics and interests. Unfortunately, due to privacy and security concerns, and due to the fast nature of computing today, users see the registration process as an unnecessary hurdle to bypass, effectively refusing to provide …

Predictive Modeling The Impact Of Engineered Products In Dynamic Sociotechnical Systems: An Agent-Based Approach, Christopher S. Mabey

Theses and Dissertations

The impact of engineered products is a topic of increasing concern in society. The impact of a product can fall into the categories of economic, environmental, or social impact; the last category is defined as the effect of a product on the daily lives of people. Design teams lack sufficient tools to help improve the impact of products and understand the impact of products at scale in society. This dissertation aims to provide insight and methods for improving the social, environmental, and economic impact of engineered products. The majority of the research focuses on the prediction of product impacts on …

Exploring Senior Chemical Engineering Students’ Approach To Process Safety Decision Making, Jeffrey Saunders Stransky

Theses and Dissertations

Despite investments in chemical process safety education, evidence suggests that engineers’ decision making may contribute to process safety incidents. Currently, limited educational endeavors in process safety decision making exist, raising the need for a better understanding of how to prepare chemical engineering students for industry decisions. This dissertation fortifies current process safety education through three studies involving senior chemical engineering students. Study One developed the Engineering Process Safety Research Instrument (EPSRI) through exploratory and confirmatory factor analyses. Educators may use the EPSRI to evaluate their students’ moral development. Study Two evaluated a digital process safety game, Contents Under Pressure, on …

A Generalizable Method And Case Application For Development And Use Of The Aviation Systems – Trust Survey (As-Ts)., Jamison Hicks

Theses and Dissertations

Automated systems are integral in the development of modern aircraft, especially for complex military aircraft. Pilot Trust in Automation (TIA) in these systems is vital for optimizing the pilot-vehicle interface and ensuring pilots use the systems appropriately to complete required tasks.

The objective of this research was to develop and validate a TIA scale and survey methodology to identify and mitigate trust deficiencies with automated systems for use in Army Aviation testing. There is currently no standard TIA assessment methodology for U.S. Army aviation pilots that identifies trust deficiencies and potential mitigations.

A comprehensive literature review was conducted to identify …

An Investigation Into Perceptions, Expectations, And Development Of Professional Skills In Engineering Students, Morgan Kathryn Green

Theses and Dissertations

Upon graduation from an undergraduate institution, engineering graduates are expected to have a baselevel skill in technical skills related to their discipline. Teaching technical skills comes naturally to engineering programs as the conceptual understanding of the material form the foundation of engineering ability. However, engineering graduates also are expected to have a baselevel of professional skills, which are more subjective in nature and do not have a standardized approach for teaching or assessing them at the undergraduate level. An investigation into current perceptions of professional skills by relevant parties is an initial step in providing more structure to professional skills …

Where Did They Come From? Why Did They Go? How Engineering Students’ Perceptions Cultivate Experiences And Influence Behaviors, Sara Campbell Vick

Theses and Dissertations

Engineering undergraduate students have opinions and perceptions of engineering disciplines and engineering undergraduate students do not always matriculate and graduate in precisely the same discipline. Understanding how these two characteristics of engineering undergraduate students interact to inform behaviors is important for engineering educators and administrators to increase and improve recruitment and retention among their students.

This dissertation approached each characteristic of engineering students, first separately and then together. A nationwide survey of undergraduate engineering students found significant differences in how students perceive various engineering disciplines along several paired-term anchored scales. These differences were equally significant when scores were considered in …

Preferences Toward Augmented Reality Technologies For Pedestrian Navigation, Victoria Alejandra Diaz Mejia

Theses and Dissertations

This research investigates the demand for pedestrian navigation supported by augmented reality (AR) via headset and mobile technologies by evaluating factors specific to each technology and the decision makers. Recent advances in digital engineering systems, e.g., digital twins and smart cities, are enabling new services like AR-supported wayfinding for pedestrians. Still, it is unknown whether American pedestrians would use AR, the type devices and feature that add value to their navigation, the demographic profiles more inclined to AR wayfinding, and the sensitivity of such demand to software and hardware cost. As the first investigation addressing the demand for AR pedestrian …

Cfis’ Safety Behaviors At Flight Training Schools: Understanding The Effects Of Personality Traits, Self-Efficacy, Risk Perception, And Safety Climate, Vivek Sharma

Theses and Dissertations

The purpose of the current study was to investigate the relationship between personality traits, affective domain variables, safety climate, and safety behaviors of certified flight instructors (CFIs). Personality traits consisted of the five dimensions of the Big Five personality model, including Extraversion, Neuroticism, Agreeableness, Openness, and Conscientiousness. Affective domain variables included self-efficacy and risk perception. The study used an explanatory correlational design to determine the relationship between the targeted factors and safety behaviors. The dependent variable was CFIs’ safety behaviors. The sample consisted of 134 CFIs who completed all of the study’s protocols. Participants were obtained from a professional flight …

The Examination Of Factors That Influence Trust In A Multi-Agent Team Context, Cherrise Ficke

Theses and Dissertations

Current dyadic teams in the human-agent teams literature demonstrates that Propensity to Trust in Technology (PTT), previous experience with an agent, levels of autonomy (LOA), workload, and mission performance affect trust and mission performance to some capacity. However, the purpose of this study was to expand this line of research by examining how these factors influence trust and mission performance in a multi unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) context. To investigate the relationship between these factors and trust, an archival study was conducted using data from a previously-conducted, multi-UAV study. The previous study utilized a within-subjects repeated measures design in which …

Evaluation Of Human Mobility From Crowd-Sourced Cellular Data, Sasa Knezevic

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding patterns of human mobility plays a vital role in urban planning, traffic management, disease control, environmental impact evaluation, provisioning of services by both public and private enterprise and other areas of human activity. In this thesis, the human mobility patterns are studied using crowd sourced cellular data. The study characterizes human mobility through a meaningful set of mobility parameters. Each parameter is clearly defined, extracted from the available data, and described using statistical modeling tools. The parameters are evaluated at different time scales. It has been determined that despite its apparent randomness on the individual level, human mobility on …

A Reduced Order Model For Estimation Of Fractional Flow Reserve (Ffr) In Coronary Artery Disease: Assessing The Impact Of Side Branches, Arber Vila

Theses and Dissertations

Coronary Artery Disease (CAD) affects millions of people worldwide and remains a leading cause of morbidity and mortality. To effectively plan treatment and risk stratification, assessing CAD severity is of paramount importance. Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is a critical clinical parameter used to evaluate CAD severity, measured by the ratio of mean distal coronary pressure to mean aortic pressure during hyperemic conditions. Although non-invasive FFR estimation methods have gained popularity, computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is impractical for routine clinical use due to the time and resources required. To address this issue, a reduced order model is proposed that accurately captures …

Factors That Influence The Recruitment And Retention Of Civil Engineers, Gina Young Souriac

Theses and Dissertations

With a growing demand for civil engineers in the United States, understanding factors that influence students to choose civil engineering (CE) as a major in college, pursue an M.S. degree in CE, and persist in the CE industry can lead to valuable insights for recruitment and retention of future and current civil engineers. Additionally, understanding factors that prominently influence male and female civil engineers to persist in and depart from CE, separately, can lead to valuable insight towards improving focused recruitment and retention of both genders. This thesis includes three research studies that identify, analyze, and discuss these important factors. …

Exploring The Impact Of Hour Of Code On Students' Cs Interest And Perceptions, Jessica Marie Yauney

Theses and Dissertations

As the focus on computer science in K-12 classrooms grows, the 'Hour of Code' program has also grown. As Hour of Code is one of the largest educational campaigns, it is worth evaluation to ensure effects are well understood so that implementation can be made most effective. This research sought to better understand the impact of Hour of Code. This thesis presents findings from a systematic review and from a quasi-experimental study. A large number of research articles have been published on Hour of Code. Systematic review identified 64 papers including reports from experiments testing the efficacy of Hour of …

Real-Time Facial Expression Recognition Using Edge Ai Accelerators, Mark Heath Smith

Theses and Dissertations

Facial expression recognition is a popular and challenging area of research in machine learning applications. Facial expressions are critical to human communication and allow us to convey complex thoughts and emotions beyond spoken language. The complexity of facial expressions creates a difficult problem for computer vision systems, especially edge computing systems. Current Deep Learning (DL) methods rely on large-scale Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) which require millions of floating point operations (FLOPS) to accomplish similar image classification tasks. However, on edge and IoT devices, large-scale convolutional models can cause problems due to memory and power limitations. The intent of this work …

Advancing The Engineering Workforce By Enhancing Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In The Engineering Classroom, Phoneia Hughes Myers

Theses and Dissertations

Society’s dependence on engineered products is steadily increasing. This dependence requires the engineering workforce to continually innovate and design new advancements. In pursuit of this, engineering employers are implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to attract prime candidates and retain employees. For employers to achieve the goals of their initiatives, engineering colleges and universities must produce a diverse pool of graduates. The purpose of this thesis report is to investigate how the diversity, equity, and inclusion concept can be implemented into engineering education to assist with producing diverse graduating classes. A universal methodology is proposed to provide a roadmap on …