Engineering Commons^™

How Degrees Of Freedom Affects Sense Of Agency, Akima Connelly, Jungsu Pak, Tian Lan, Uri Maoz

Student Scholar Symposium Abstracts and Posters

Can the rubber-hand illusion be extended to a moving robotic arm in different degrees of freedom (DOF), inducing sense of ownership & agency over the arm? We hypothesize that DOF closer to what humans possess will result in a stronger sense of ownership and agency.

Fibrinogen, Factor Xiii And Fibronectin: A Biophysical And Kinetic Characterization Of Their Interactions, Frank Fabian

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Theses and Student Research

The development of recombinant-based liquid fibrin tissue sealants having enhanced hemostatic and wound healing properties will involve understanding as yet not well characterized interactions between fibrinogen, fibrin (Fbn) factor XIII, thrombin and fibronectin. We study these phenomena in the context of comparing plasma derived fibrinogen to recombinant fibrinogen (rFI) produced in the milk of transgenic cows. An abundance of purified γγ and γγ’ FI subspecies enables detailed study of γγ or γγ’ biomonomer and their respective Fbn biopolymer formation as having different substrate behaviors of activated plasma derived factor XIII (pFXIIIa₂b₂). High pressure size exclusion (HPSEC) …

Identification And Analysis Of Behavioral Phenotypes In Autism Spectrum Disorder Via Unsupervised Machine Learning, Elizabeth Stevens, Dennis R. Dixon, Marlena N. Novack, Doreen Granpeesheh, Tristram Smith, Erik Linstead

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Background and objective: Autism spectrum disorder (ASD) is a heterogeneous disorder. Research has explored potential ASD subgroups with preliminary evidence supporting the existence of behaviorally and genetically distinct subgroups; however, research has yet to leverage machine learning to identify phenotypes on a scale large enough to robustly examine treatment response across such subgroups. The purpose of the present study was to apply Gaussian Mixture Models and Hierarchical Clustering to identify behavioral phenotypes of ASD and examine treatment response across the learned phenotypes.

Materials and methods: The present study included a sample of children with ASD (N = 2400), …

Development Of A Sonically Powered Biodegradable Nanogenerator For Bone Regeneration, Avi S. Patel

University Scholar Projects

Background: Reconstruction of bone fractures and defects remains a big challenge in orthopedic surgery. While regenerative engineering has advanced the field greatly using a combination of biomaterial scaffolds and stem cells, one matter of difficulty is inducing osteogenesis in these cells. Recent works have shown electricity’s ability to promote osteogenesis in stem cell lines when seeded in bone scaffolds; however, typical electrical stimulators are either (a) externally housed and require overcomplex percutaneous wires be connected to the implanted scaffold or (b) implanted non-degradable devices which contain toxic batteries and require invasive removal surgeries.

Objective: Here, we establish a biodegradable, piezoelectric …

Development Of A Sonically Powered Biodegradable Nanogenerator For Bone Regeneration, Avi Patel

Honors Scholar Theses

Background: Reconstruction of bone fractures and defects remains a big challenge in orthopedic surgery. While regenerative engineering has advanced the field greatly using a combination of biomaterial scaffolds and stem cells, one matter of difficulty is inducing osteogenesis in these cells. Recent works have shown electricity’s ability to promote osteogenesis in stem cell lines when seeded in bone scaffolds; however, typical electrical stimulators are either (a) externally housed and require overcomplex percutaneous wires be connected to the implanted scaffold or (b) implanted non-degradable devices which contain toxic batteries and require invasive removal surgeries.

Objective: Here, we establish a biodegradable, piezoelectric …

Seeing Eye To Eye: A Machine Learning Approach To Automated Saccade Analysis, Maigh Attre

Honors Scholar Theses

Abnormal ocular motility is a common manifestation of many underlying pathologies particularly those that are neurological. Dynamics of saccades, when the eye rapidly changes its point of fixation, have been characterized for many neurological disorders including concussions, traumatic brain injuries (TBI), and Parkinson’s disease. However, widespread saccade analysis for diagnostic and research purposes requires the recognition of certain eye movement parameters. Key information such as velocity and duration must be determined from data based on a wide set of patients’ characteristics that may range in eye shapes and iris, hair and skin pigmentation [36]. Previous work on saccade analysis has …

Deswelling Induced Morphological Changes In Dual Ph And Temperature Responsive Ultra-Low Crosslinked Poly (N-Isopropyl Acrylamide)-Co-Acrylic Acid Microgels, Molla R. Islam, Maddie Tumbarello, L. Andrew Lyon

Engineering Faculty Articles and Research

Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) microgels prepared without exogenous cross-linker are extremely “soft” as a result of their very low cross-linking density, with network connectivity arising only from the self-crosslinking of pNIPAm chains. As a result of this extreme softness, our group and others have taken interest in using these materials in a variety of bioengineering applications, while also pursuing studies of their fundamental properties. Here, we report deswelling triggered structural changes in poly(N-isopropylacrylamide-co-acrylic acid) (ULC10AAc) microgels prepared by precipitation polymerization. Dynamic light scattering suggests that the deswelling of these particles not only depends on the collapse of …

Msg-Fast: Metagenomic Shotgun Data Fast Annotation Using Microbial Gene Catalogs, Stuart M. Brown, Hao Chen, Yuhan Hao, Bobby P. Laungani, Thahmina A. Ali, Changsu Dong, Carlos Lijeron, Baekdoo Kim, Claudia Wultsch, Zhiheng Pei, Konstantinos Krampis

Publications and Research

Background: Current methods used for annotating metagenomics shotgun sequencing (MGS) data rely on a computationally intensive and low-stringency approach of mapping each read to a generic database of proteins or reference microbial genomes.

Results: We developed MGS-Fast, an analysis approach for shotgun whole-genome metagenomic data utilizing Bowtie2 DNA-DNA alignment of reads that is an alternative to using the integrated catalog of reference genes database of well-annotated genes compiled from human microbiome data. This method is rapid and provides high-stringency matches (>90% DNA sequence identity) of the metagenomics reads to genes with annotated functions. We demonstrate the use of this …

Special Issue On Low Temperature Plasma Jets, Mounir Laroussi

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

[Introduction] Low temperature plasma jets are unique plasma sources capable of delivering plasma outside of the confinement of electrodes and away from gas enclosures/chambers. With these jets plasma can be easily delivered to a target located at some distance from the plasma generation region [1].