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Temperature Controlled Box, Dennis Butts, Gabriel Alford, John Hawes, Holden Soderstrom

Mechatronics Final Projects

The temperature-controlled box is a project developed in the Spring of 2024. Its main goal is to maintain a setpoint temperature by switching both a heating element on for heating and a fan on for cooling.

Rock-Paper-Scissors Robot, Cora Lewis, Zachary Moyer, Aakriti Acharya, Reece Colson

Mechatronics Final Projects

The design incorporates a sophisticated Rock Paper Scissors (RPS) playing interface, amalgamating robotics, audio control, gesture recognition, and display functionalities. At its core, the system employs a robotic hand mechanism featuring pulleys and fishing wire to simulate finger movements. This mechanism is orchestrated by servo motors through a PIC system, which receives commands from the Arduino. The Arduino serves as the central processor and begins a round when the player hits the reset button. It triggers an audio prompt at the onset of each round using an Icstation Recordable Sound Module, prompting the player to make their move. The Arduino …

Remote Controlled Skid-Steer, Levi Schaider, Glory Burgin, Harrison Fentress

Mechatronics Final Projects

Our devices are a bluetooth remote controller and a remote-controlled omnidirectional loader. The vehicle functions are programmed through two PICs on the vehicle and another two PICs inside the controller. It features a double jointed shoveling arm designed to raise and lower to pick up and drop various loads (ex: sand or a flower). It uses “mecanum” wheels to achieve omni-directional driving. These wheels are controlled using a modified skid-steer system that allows for diagonal and left-right movement while the vehicle stays facing in the same direction. The pair of LED headlights can turn on either by a switch on …

Final Project Report - Buoyancy Glider Team, Beck Ratcliff, Gabe Alford, Rees Allison

Engineering Senior Design Reports

This report covers everything the team has accomplished over the Fall and Spring semesters, including math models, prototypes, tests, and test results. This report also includes an overview of the design’s subsystems, a section highlighting issues the team faced, an evaluation of the final design against the constraints, and a listing of recommendations for future work.

RoboNation, one of the project sponsors, provided the team with a SeaGlide model as an initial prototype. The SeaGlide is a water-bottle-sized buoyancy glider that the team used for basic testing and to develop ideas about creating a larger-scale buoyancy glider. The team completed …

Final Project Report For Plastic Wall-E, John Hawes, Spencer Olejniczak, Carmine Villarreal, Mary Whaley

Engineering Senior Design Reports

The “Plastic Wall-E” team has worked diligently to design a processing and construction method that allows plastic waste to be incorporated into a structural wall with a minimal environmental impact. The project sponsors of the Samadhi Yoga retreat recognized a critical issue with the accumulation of plastic waste in remote locations requiring transportation to recycling facilities and in countries with major plastic pollution problems where there is typically a lack of proper recycling facilities. The project aims to address the plastic waste crisis by maximizing the density of plastic waste that can be contained in a masonry wall while minimizing …

Desktop Injection Molding Machine Final Project Report, Glory Burgin, Camille Heidelbaugh, Alex Garcia, Robert Furuya

Engineering Senior Design Reports

This report outlines the process, tests, and research conducted to develop a desktop plastic injection molding machine for use in K-12 classrooms as an educational tool to introduce engineering topics earlier in children's education. The key objectives were to create a functional prototype that is safe for classroom use, is easily integrated into curricula, weighs under 80 lbs for portability, and can produce an 8 inch3 molded piece in a reasonable timeframe.

The final design features a single-screw extruder coupled with a hand-cranked planetary gear system for interactivity. A 2x2x2 inch maximum mold volume was chosen to reduce the pressure …

Final Project Report Pace-It Team (2023-24), Reece Colson, Frank De Luna, Erin Flynn

Engineering Senior Design Reports

The Pace-It team aims to design a prototype that tracks runners along a course to assist our sponsor with timekeeping. Our main objectives for this project include designing a device that satisfies our requirements, constructing and testing the device, correcting and revising, and finally, testing our prototype to fit our objectives. This report will include an overview of our design and its five subsystems and an evaluation of the final design against the team’s requirements and constraints. The main subsystems of our design are the timing software, receiver and RFID coding, storage/user interface (UI), power source or battery, and the …

Final Project Report Autonomous Planetary Rover, Dennis Butts, Zachary Moyer, Levi Schaider

Engineering Senior Design Reports

The Autonomous Rover Team (ART) was tasked with installing an autonomous navigation system onto an inherited rover frame. The navigation system must be able to plan a course between waypoints in a mapped area while avoiding unmapped obstacles. The final deliverables for this project are a rover with limited movement capabilities that can be autonomously or manually controlled and a simulated rover which has complete movement capabilities. Both rovers should be able to complete a 1600 ft2 course by traveling between three waypoints in a mapped area. The camera systems should detect and avoid all obstacles in its path in …

Emergency Water Station 4.0, Garrett Guillet, Dabney Moore, Holden Soderstrom, Omar Shahatit

Engineering Senior Design Reports

The South Texas Human Rights Center (STHRC) has identified a need to implement portable emergency water stations along the Mexico-Texas border in order to provide much-needed water to refugees and migrants who face critical levels of dehydration when crossing the border. These stations must be resistant to harsh weather conditions, capable of sustaining load without structural damage, and able to accurately measure and relay the amount of water remaining back to the STHRC, so refills can be provided as needed.

This year’s project aims to address the problem of station portability through a redesign of the water station. Volunteers who …

Final Project Report Will Power Africa, Year 2, Collin Adams, Maya Leonard, Charlotte Warrick, Adrian Herrera

Engineering Senior Design Reports

This report outlines the process that the Will Power Africa Year 2 team used to design and evaluate a backup power generator for a remote village in Tsholotsho, Zimbabwe. Year 1 of this project focused on the design of an electric fence to repel elephants. The original prototype is designed around the use of solar panels for power; however, due to the inconsistencies of solar power, the Year 2 team was tasked with creating a secondary power system to connect to the previous year’s system. We completed four tests that evaluated the major functionality and safety of our sub-systems. Due …

Final Project Report Team Photoreactor, Jonathan Newman, Meagan Mckee, Emma Ruchhoeft, Kat Hoang

Engineering Senior Design Reports

For this year-long design project, a team of four engineering seniors was tasked with building an improved photoreactor system for the Cooley Lab’s photoinitiated polymerization reactions. The existing reactors suffered from inconsistent lighting conditions and an extreme rise in the test space temperature of 20-45°C above the ambient temperature. Additionally, the four different boxes that the lab used took up significant bench space and varied widely from one another. These adverse conditions limited the Cooley Lab’s ability to generate quality, replicable data for publication, so the team sought to provide an alternative. The final photoreactor design improves the end-user functionality …

Fabrication And Characterization Of Quad-Component Bioinspired Hydrogels To Model Elevated Fibrin Levels In Central Nervous Tissue Scaffolds, Jennifer Steele, Dany J. Munoz-Pinto

Engineering Faculty Research

Multicomponent interpenetrating polymer network (mIPN) hydrogels are promising tissue-engineering scaffolds that could closely resemble key characteristics of native tissues. The mechanical and biochemical properties of mIPNs can be finely controlled to mimic key features of target cellular microenvironments, regulating cell-matrix interactions. In this work, we fabricated hydrogels made of collagen type I (Col I), fibrin, hyaluronic acid (HA), and poly (ethylene glycol) diacrylate (PEGDA) using a network-by-network fabrication approach. With these mIPNs, we aimed to develop a biomaterial platform that supports the in vitro culture of human astrocytes and potentially serves to assess the effects of the abnormal deposition of …

Book 6: Odysseus Meets The Maiden, Erwin F. Cook

Classical Studies Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Regulatory Innovation And (De)Legitimisation: Accountability Challenges In The Healthcare Field, Kazeem Akinyele, Lisa Baudot, Jared Koreff, Steve Sutton

School of Business Faculty Research

Accounting research examines accountability in the healthcare field but little attention is paid to how contemporary regulatory innovations (e.g. AI-driven data algorithms) impact accountability objectives. We address this concern through a study of how regulatory innovations may appropriate accountability by (de)legitimising healthcare actions. This is examined in the case of a regulatory innovation enacted in the US healthcare sector. Specifically, we employ a field study of a healthcare provider subject to oversight to highlight how actors (de)legitimise the provision of healthcare services. Our findings show that regulatory innovation generates debates around illegitimate services as determined by healthcare oversight contractors. These …

Contextualizing The “Spanish Dream”: Using Critical Hrm To Understand Immigrant Homeownership In Spain, 2000–2009, Mario V. Gonzalez Fuentes, Jonathan Ross Gilbert, Robert F. Scherer, Carlos Iglesias-Fernandez

School of Business Faculty Research

Purpose A pronounced rise in postpandemic immigration is creating consumption opportunities and challenges for countries worldwide. Past research has shown that immigrant homeownership indicates advanced consumer acculturation. However, critical factors which differentiate immigrant decisions to purchase a home remain underexplored. This study aims to examine the importance of different identity resources in determining homeownership gaps between immigrant groups in Spain during a dynamic decade.

Design/methodology/approach A mixed methods research design with triangulation was used. First, the critical “historical research method” is used to empirically assess 15,465 household-level microdata files from the National Immigrant Survey of Spain. Second, the analysis is …

A Bioinspired Astrocyte-Derived Coating Promotes The In Vitro Proliferation Of Human Neural Stem Cells While Maintaining Their Stemness, Andrea C. Jimenez-Vergara, Jacob Avina, Travis Jackson Block, Anne Sheldrake, Carson Koch, Anna Gonzalez, Jennifer Steele, Ana M. Díaz-Lasprilla, Dany J. Munoz-Pinto

Engineering Faculty Research

The repair of neuronal tissue is a challenging process due to the limited proliferative capacity of neurons. Neural stem cells (NSCs) can aid in the regeneration process of neural tissue due to their high proliferation potential and capacity to differentiate into neurons. The therapeutic potential of these cells can only be achieved if sufficient cells are obtained without losing their differentiation potential. Toward this end, an astrocyte-derived coating (HAc) was evaluated as a promising substrate to promote the proliferation of NSCs. Mass spectroscopy and scanning electron microscopy were used to characterize the HAc. The proliferation rate and the expression of …

The Strength Of Community: The Role Of Social Support Networks In Sport Officials’ Retention, Jacob K. Tingle, Brittany L. Jacobs, Matthew Katz, Stacy Warner

School of Business Faculty Research

Previous researchers have indicated that a sense of community and social support are vital to referee retention; however, little is known about the connection between specific characteristics of sports officials’ networks and retention. To better understand the sports officiating shortage, researchers explored the social support networks of 116 referees utilizing egocentric network analysis. The authors suggest that retention of sports officials depends on the interpersonal ties and network structures within which the referees are embedded. Specifically, resulting hierarchical models confirmed that retention relationships among officials are a multilevel phenomenon, and that outside communication and community were vital network characteristics that …

Homonuclear Ultracold Elastic S-Wave Collisions Of Alkali-Metal Atoms Via Multichannel Quantum Defect Theory, Alyson T. Laskowski, Nirav P. Mehta

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Research

Multichannel quantum-defect theory (MQDT) provides a powerful toolkit for describing and understanding collisions of cold alkali-metal atoms. Various MQDT approximations differ primarily in how they characterize the so-called short-ranged K matrix K_sr, which encapsulates the short-ranged physics into a handful of low-energy parameters that exhibit simple and smooth dependence on energy and field. Here, we compare three different methods for computing K_sr for homonuclear collisions of alkali-metal atoms, from lithium to cesium. The MQDT calculations are benchmarked against numerically converged coupled-channels calculations that use a log-derivative propagator out to the asymptotic region. We study how well these …

Exploring The Impact Of Technology Dominance On Audit Professionalism Through Data Analytic-Driven Healthcare Audits, Jared Koreff, Lisa Baudot, Steve G. Sutton

School of Business Faculty Research

Artificial intelligence (AI)-enabled tools and analytics hold the potential to radically alter audit processes by disseminating centralized audit expertise. We examine this potential in the context of data analytic-driven audits mandated to reduce fraud, waste, and abuse in a government-sponsored healthcare program. To do so, we draw on semistructured interviews with healthcare providers (i.e., auditees) subject to healthcare audits. Our work shows how use of paraprofessional auditors guided by AI-enabled tools and analytics reflects a very different audit environment. Specifically, auditees’ experiences suggest paraprofessional auditors lack specific expertise and credentials to conduct data-driven audits, apply judgment in deference to technology, …

Supporting Neurodivergent Talent: Adhd, Autism, And Dyslexia In Physics And Space Sciences, Niescja E. Turner, Heather Haynes Smith

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Research

Diversity, equity, inclusion, and belonging efforts must include disability and neurodivergence. While there is a long history of famous scientists being identified or speculatively indicated to be neurodivergent, identification on an individual basis has been limited until fairly recently. Definitions have changed and broadened, and people are being identified or are identifying themselves as neurodivergent and are learning about their paths and their brains in a way that was unavailable to people two decades ago. In the contemporary physics or space science classroom or workplace, we have both a responsibility to include and support our neurodivergent learners and scientists, as …

The Importance Of Recruitment And Retention In Heliophysics: It's Not Just A Pipeline Problem, A. J. Halford, C. M. Bard, A. G. Burrell, R. M. Mcgranaghan, L. B. Wilson Iii, M. Jones Jr, C. Dong, L. Wang, T. I. Pulkkinen, Niescja E. Turner, M. W. Liemohn, J. Klenzing

Physics and Astronomy Faculty Research

A major obstacle in cultivating a robust Heliophysics (and broader scientific) community is the lack of diversity throughout science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) fields. For many years, this has been understood as a “leaky pipeline” analogy, in which predominately minority students initially interested in STEM gradually fall (or are pushed) out of the field on their way to a scientific research position. However, this ignores critical structural and policy issues which drive even later career Ph.D.s out of a career in Heliophysics. We identify here several systemic problems that inhibit many from participating fully in the Heliophysics community, including …

Late Jurassic Paleogeography Of The U.S. Cordillera From Detrital Zircon Age And Hafnium Analysis Of The Galice Formation, Klamath Mountains, Oregon And California, Usa, Kathleen D. Surpless, Ryan Wayne Alford, C. Barnes, A. Yoshinobu, Natalee E. Weis

Geosciences Faculty Research

The Upper Jurassic Galice Formation, a metasedimentary unit in the Western Klamath Mountains, formed within an intra-arc basin prior to and during the Nevadan orogeny. New detrital zircon U-Pb age analyses (N = 11; n = 2792) yield maximum depositional ages (MDA) ranging from ca. 160 Ma to 151 Ma, which span Oxfordian to Kimmeridgian time and overlap Nevadan contractional deformation that began by ca. 157 Ma. Zircon ages indicate a significant North American continental provenance component that is consistent with tectonic models placing the Western Klamath terrane on the continental margin in Late Jurassic time. Hf isotopic analysis of …

Topological Comparison Of Some Dimension Reduction Methods Using Persistent Homology On Eeg Data, Eddy Kwessi

Mathematics Faculty Research

In this paper, we explore how to use topological tools to compare dimension reduction methods. We first make a brief overview of some of the methods often used in dimension reduction such as isometric feature mapping, Laplacian Eigenmaps, fast independent component analysis, kernel ridge regression, and t-distributed stochastic neighbor embedding. We then give a brief overview of some of the topological notions used in topological data analysis, such as barcodes, persistent homology, and Wasserstein distance. Theoretically, when these methods are applied on a data set, they can be interpreted differently. From EEG data embedded into a manifold of high dimension, …

Oxytocin Attenuates Yohimbine-Induced Reinstatement Of Alcohol-Seeking In Female Rats Via The Central Amygdala, Samantha M. Wilfur, Elizabeth C. Mcneely, Aliya A. Lackan, Cassie P. Bowers, Kah-Chung Leong

Psychology Faculty Research

Alcohol use disorder is a significant public health concern, further exacerbated by an increased risk of relapse due to stress. In addition, factors such as biological sex may contribute to the progression of addiction, as females are especially susceptible to stress-induced relapse. While there have been many studies surrounding potential pharmacological interventions for male stress-induced ethanol reinstatement, research regarding females is scarce. Recently, the neuropeptide oxytocin has gained interest as a possible pharmacological intervention for relapse. The present study examines how oxytocin affects yohimbine-induced reinstatement of ethanol-seeking in female rats using a self-administration paradigm. Adult female rats were trained to …

Does This Look Relevant To You? Using Insights From Information Retrieval Studies To Facilitate Student Source Selection, Reading, And Use, Anne Jumonville Graf

Library Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Amy Reed-Sandoval And Luis Rubén Díaz Cepeda, Eds. Latin American Immigration Ethics [Review Of The Book Latin American Immigration Ethics, By A. Reed-Sandoval & L. R. Díaz Cepeda, Eds.], John Francis Burke

Political Science Faculty Research

No abstract provided.

Autonomous Planetary Rover Final Project Report, Nolan Anthony, Gabriella Gonzalez, Clyde Johnson, Aislinn Marcee

Engineering Senior Design Reports

This report documents the 2022-2023 Autonomous Planetary Rover Team’s work. The main focus and goal of our team was to improve the locomotion of the rover through mechanical improvements to the suspension and steering systems. The final expectation for the rover given by our sponsor, Dr. Kevin Nickels, was for the rover to complete an obstacle course where it drives over obstacles the height of the radius of its wheel, traverses uneven terrain, and completes turns with a 12-inch turn radius. The main inspirations for our design of the suspension and steering systems come from previous planetary rovers that have …

Electrospinsters Final Project Report, Gerson Amaya, Andrea Cruz, Anna Gonzalez, Lucas Riley

Engineering Senior Design Reports

An electrospinning machine (EM) produces fibers and particles by means of applying a voltage process (electrohydrodynamic phenomena) to a polymer solution by incorporating the use of a receptacle, a pump, a high voltage power supply (HVPS) and a collector.

EMs are typically very expensive, however, there has been work conducted by various researchers to construct in-house machines at a much lower cost. The growing applications for electrospinning continue to be a source of interest for many researchers as it is still a relatively new process. Much of the effort has been dedicated to producing nanofibers with unique properties with a …

Formula Sae Final Project Report, Tomas Colazo, Mac Douglas, Winton Huang, Andres Lima Loria, Enzo Sechi, Kevin Trinh, Evan Witt

Engineering Senior Design Reports

The Formula SAE team at Trinity University has been working on a race car project since 2015 and has made significant progress in constructing a nearly complete car. This year, the team focused on continuing that progress by working towards implementing a new design, an airfoil, and redesigning suspension components, while also ensuring compliance with various regulations and standards.

This year’s team has faced several constraints along the way, including time and budget limitations, complying with safety, technical, and environmental regulations, and following specific design constraints for the airfoil. To achieve set goals and eventually participate in FSAE competitions, the …

Book And Tablet Team (B.A.T.T.) Final Project Report, Andrew Deering, Jacob Avina, Estefania Hinojosa, Tyler Pettit

Engineering Senior Design Reports

The Book and Tablet Team (B.A.T.T.) looks to design a device that simplifies reading from a tablet to assist those with dexterity issues in their hands and arms. The team’s main objectives for this project are to design a device that may be used in a functional and useful fashion, construct said device, and finally test the device. This report will consist of an overview of our device and its five subsystems and an evaluation of the final design with respect to the project requirements. The five main subsystems are as follows: the mount, the stand, the tablet holder, the …