Engineering Commons^™

Sugarcane Bagasse Hydrolysis Enhancement Using Bsa, Antonio Carlos Freitas Dos Santos

Open Access Theses

Lignocellulose is composed of polysaccharides linked to lignin and other aromatic compounds, making the sugars not readily available to fermentation. This entails that biomass must go through the unit operations of pretreatment and enzyme hydrolysis. Pretreatment opens the structure to allow the enzymes to act on and hydrolyze cellulose and hemicellulose to glucose and/or xylose which in turn are fermented to ethanol. Concomitantly, the enzymes interact with soluble phenols and insoluble solids derived from lignin that inhibit hydrolysis. This leads to high enzyme loadings and higher production costs. Soluble phenols can be eliminated through washing. Insoluble lignin, however, demands another …

Design And Plan Of A Modified Hydroponic Shipping Container For Research, John A. Houtman

Open Access Theses

As the world’s population continues to increase, food production will need to increase in order to meet the predicted rise in food demand. However, with increased pressure on cropland available from environmental effects and urbanization, new innovative methods of crop production need to be researched in order to increase agricultural production with limited land. This research focuses on the design of a single form of urban agriculture that is considered Zfarming and has the potential to produce quality urban agricultural produce through ground-based measures. This project produced detailed step-by-step analysis of the design process, develop variability within the modified hydroponic …

Mathematical Analysis Of Feedback Targets Of Bmp Signaling In Drosophila Embryonic Development, Yan Luo

Open Access Theses

Bone morphogenetic proteins (BMPs) drive a range of cellular processes especially in the early stages of embryonic development. This family of proteins acts as one of the most important extracellular signals in development pattern formation across the animal kingdom. Cells in embryos differentiate into different cell types in response to the concentration level of BMP. This complex process is regulated by multiple regulators that serve to tune the signal response.

Extensive experimental and computational research has been performed to analyze BMP regulation in Drosophila, a widely studied model organism, and has advanced our understanding of animal development. Because of …

Mapping And Analyzing Energy Use And Efficiency In A Modified Hydroponic Shipping Container, Rachel E. Sparks

Open Access Theses

In urban centers today, vertical farming is becoming a popular alternative to conventional agriculture in an effort to increase local food production and improve urban food security by growing crops using hydroponic methods in controlled environment spaces. More specifically, one vertical method involves growing crops inside refurbished shipping containers, or a “farm-in-a-box” concept, which offers a flexible, mobile, and scalable means of year-round food production in a variety of climates. Despite benefits of producing food locally, some of the concerns associated with these vertical farming systems include high energy consumption from climate control and electric lighting systems as well as …

Enhancing Silymarin Fractionation Via Molecular Modeling Using The Conductor-Like Screening Model For Real Solvents, Emma C. Brace

Open Access Theses

The market for bio-based products from plant sources is on the rise. There is a global challenge to implement environmentally clean practices for the production of fuels and pharmaceuticals from sustainable resources. A significant hurdle for discovery of comparable plant-derived products is the extensive volume of trial-and-error experimentation required. To alleviate the experimental burden, a quantum mechanics based molecular modeling approach known as the COnductor-like Screening Model for Real Solvents (COSMO-RS) was used to predict the best biphasic solvent system to purify silymarins from an aqueous mixture. Silymarins are a class of flavonolignans present in milk thistle ( Silybum marianum …

Investigating U.S. Resident Perceptions Of Corporate Social Responsibility In Food And Agriculture, Carissa Jae Morgan

Open Access Theses

Corporations are prioritizing corporate social responsibility (CSR) activities by investing in and actively promoting their social practices. In the U.S. of the modern food supply chain creates a unique challenge for corporations to address concerns about social issues of consumers and non-consumers alike. This study is motivated by the need to better understand individuals’ perceptions of CSR as it pertains to the food supply chain. In April 2015 an online survey collected information from 1,201 U.S. residents with the objective of investigating individuals’ perceptions of relative importance of eight prominent CSR areas relevant to food and agriculture. Demographic, household consumption, …

Consonant Discrimination In The Inferior Colliculus Of Young And Aged Rats, Christopher S. Soverns

Open Access Theses

Complex acoustic stimuli are thoroughly encoded and processed along the primary auditory pathway to give reliable and relevant information about the environment, and elucidating the neural coding mechanisms is essential to informing clinical attempts to combat auditory dysfuntion. Receiving a uniquely diverse set of ascending and descending inputs, the inferior colliculus (IC) is a site of intricate temporal processing. In this work, natural and modified human speech is used to investigate discrimination of voice onset time (VOT) in the spiking output of IC neurons. A template-matching classification model is proposed in which single stimulus presentation responses are correlated with aggregate …