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Articles 31 - 60 of 144
Full-Text Articles in Engineering
Enabling Declarative And Scalable Prescriptive Analytics In Relational Data, Matteo Brucato
Enabling Declarative And Scalable Prescriptive Analytics In Relational Data, Matteo Brucato
Doctoral Dissertations
Constrained optimization problems are at the heart of significant applications in a broad range of domains, including finance, transportation, manufacturing, and healthcare. They are often found at the final step of business analytics, namely prescriptive analytics, to allow businesses to transform a rich understanding of data, typically provided by advanced predictive models, into actionable decisions. Modeling and solving these problems has relied on application-specific solutions, which are often complex, error-prone, and do not generalize. Our goal is to create a domain-independent, declarative approach, supported and powered by the system where the data relevant to these problems typically resides: the database. …
Designing Stimuli-Responsive Nanocomposites To Investigate Interface Dynamics, Huyen Vu
Designing Stimuli-Responsive Nanocomposites To Investigate Interface Dynamics, Huyen Vu
Doctoral Dissertations
Inspired by nature, this research focuses on designing multifunctional renewable nanocomposites with high toughness and stimuli-responsiveness. In recent years, cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) have been explored due to their abundance, renewable resource, and unique mechanical strength and structural coloration. CNCs naturally self-assemble into the helicoidal (Bouligand) structure that effectively endure high impacts but is brittle without an attendant soft phase. A thermoresponsive polymer, poly(diethylene glycol methyl ether methacrylate) (PMEO2MA), was incorporated into CNCs via evaporation-induced self-assembly to improve toughness of the resulting nanocomposites and to study responses in polymer dynamics under varying temperature and humidity conditions. To study microscopic …
Thermoelectric Transport In Disordered Organic And Inorganic Semiconductors, Meenakshi Upadhyaya
Thermoelectric Transport In Disordered Organic And Inorganic Semiconductors, Meenakshi Upadhyaya
Doctoral Dissertations
The need for alternative energy sources has led to extensive research on optimizing the conversion efficiency of thermoelectric (TE) materials. TE efficiency is governed by figure-of-merit (ZT) and it has been an enormously challenging task to increase ZT > 1 despite decades of research due to the interdependence of material properties. Most doped inorganic semiconductors have a high electrical conductivity and moderate Seebeck coefficient, but ZT is still limited by their high lattice thermal conductivity. One approach to address this problem is to decrease thermal conductivity by means of alloying and nanostructuring, another is to consider materials with an inherently low …
Enhancing The Intracellular Availability Of Protein Cargoes In Polymer-Mediated Delivery, Christopher R. Hango
Enhancing The Intracellular Availability Of Protein Cargoes In Polymer-Mediated Delivery, Christopher R. Hango
Doctoral Dissertations
Protein drugs, including antibodies, are rapidly emerging as the top-selling pharmaceuticals worldwide owing to their unparalleled specificity and biocompatibility. However, none of the currently-approved protein therapeutics act intracellularly, despite the vast majority of potential drug targets residing within the cell. This is due mainly to the paramount challenge of transporting hydrophilic macromolecular cargoes across the plasma membrane. As such, effective protein carriers are essential for the advancement of modern medicine. Despite significant advances, many challenges still plague protein delivery. Following membrane transduction, delivery vectors must preserve the structure and activity of their cargoes while transporting them to the correct subcellular …
Electrospinning Fibers Via Complex Coacervation, Xiangxi Meng
Electrospinning Fibers Via Complex Coacervation, Xiangxi Meng
Doctoral Dissertations
Electrospun fibers are high-surface-area materials widely used in applications ranging from batteries to wound dressings. Typically, an electrospinning precursor solution is prepared by dissolving a high-molecular-weight polymer in an organic solvent to form a sufficiently entangled solution. Our approach bypasses the requirement for entanglements and completely avoids toxic chemicals by focusing on using an aqueous complex coacervates solution. Coacervates are a dense, polymer-rich liquid phase resulting from the associative electrostatic complexation of oppositely charged macroions. We were the first to demonstrate that liquid complex coacervates could be successfully electrospun into polyelectrolyte complex (PEC) fibers. A canonical coacervate system was formed …
Metric Learning Via Linear Embeddings For Human Motion Recognition, Byoungdoo Kong
Metric Learning Via Linear Embeddings For Human Motion Recognition, Byoungdoo Kong
Masters Theses
We consider the application of Few-Shot Learning (FSL) and dimensionality reduction to the problem of human motion recognition (HMR). The structure of human motion has unique characteristics such as its dynamic and high-dimensional nature. Recent research on human motion recognition uses deep neural networks with multiple layers. Most importantly, large datasets will need to be collected to use such networks to analyze human motion. This process is both time-consuming and expensive since a large motion capture database must be collected and labeled. Despite significant progress having been made in human motion recognition, state-of-the-art algorithms still misclassify actions because of characteristics …
Engineering Stimuli-Responsive Polymeric Nanoassemblies: Rational Designs For Intracellular Delivery Of Biologics, Kingshuk Dutta
Engineering Stimuli-Responsive Polymeric Nanoassemblies: Rational Designs For Intracellular Delivery Of Biologics, Kingshuk Dutta
Doctoral Dissertations
Biologic drugs have gained enormous research attention in recent years as reflected by the development of multiple candidates to the clinical pipelines and an increased percentage of FDA approval. This is reasoned by the fact that biologics have been proven to deliver more predictive and promising benefits for many hard-to-cure diseases by ‘drugging the undruggable’ targets. However, the challenges associated with biologic drug development are multi-fold, viz, poor encapsulation efficacy, systemic instability, low cellular internalization and endosomal escape capability. Thus, it is essential to develop new molecular strategies that can not only address the associated drug delivery challenges, but also …
Experimental Study Of Viscoelastic Fluid-Structure Interactions, Anita Anup Dey
Experimental Study Of Viscoelastic Fluid-Structure Interactions, Anita Anup Dey
Doctoral Dissertations
It is well known that when a flexible or flexibly-mounted structure is placed perpendicular to a Newtonian fluid flow, it can oscillate due to the shedding of vortices at high Reynolds numbers. Unlike Newtonian fluids, viscoelastic fluid flow can become unstable even at infinitesimal Reynolds numbers due to a purely elastic flow instability occurring at large Weissenberg numbers. This thesis focuses on exploring the mechanisms of viscoelastic fluid-structure interactions (VFSI) through experimental investigations on several different combinations of flexible and flexibly-mounted circular cylinders, micro and macro-scale cantilevered beams and viscoelastic fluids such as wormlike micelle solutions and polymer solutions. VFSI …
Theory And Improved Methods For Probing The Cavitation To Fracture Transition, Christopher Barney
Theory And Improved Methods For Probing The Cavitation To Fracture Transition, Christopher Barney
Doctoral Dissertations
A material is considered soft when its bulk modulus is significantly greater than its shear modulus. Rubbery polymers are a class of soft materials where resistance to extension is mainly entropic in nature. Polymeric soft solids differ from liquids due to the presence of a percolated network of strong bonds that resist deformation and flow on a given time scale. The incompressible nature, entropically driven elasticity, and molecular scale network structure of soft polymeric solids combine to impart unique mechanical behavior that often results in complex material responses to simple loading situations. An important example of this is cavitation in …
Controlled Membrane Remodeling By Nanospheres And Nanorods: Experiments Targeting The Design Principles For Membrane-Based Materials, Sarah Zuraw-Weston
Controlled Membrane Remodeling By Nanospheres And Nanorods: Experiments Targeting The Design Principles For Membrane-Based Materials, Sarah Zuraw-Weston
Doctoral Dissertations
In this thesis we explore two experimental systems probing the interactions of nanoparticles with lipid bilayer membranes. Inspired by the ability of cell membranes to alter their shape in response to bound particles, we report two experimental studies: one of nanospheres the other of long, slender nano-rods binding to lipid bilayer vesicles and altering the membrane shape. Our work illuminates the role of particle geometry, particle concentration, adhesion strength and membrane tension in how membrane morphology is determined. We combine giant unilamellar vesicles with oppositely charged nanoparticles, carefully tuning adhesion strength, membrane tension and particle concentration. In the case of …
Nano- And Micro-Structured Temperature-Sensitive Hydrogels For Rapidly Responsive Devices, Qi Lu
Nano- And Micro-Structured Temperature-Sensitive Hydrogels For Rapidly Responsive Devices, Qi Lu
Doctoral Dissertations
This thesis aims to extend the understanding and explore the application of temperature-responsive hydrogel systems by integrating microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). Stimuli-responsive hydrogel systems are immensely investigated and applied in numerous fields, and interfacing with micro- and nano-fabrication techniques will open up more possibilities. In Chapter 2, the first biologically relevant, in vitro cell stretching device based on hydrogel surface instability was developed. This dynamic platform is constructed by embedding micro-heater devices under temperature-responsive surface-attached hydrogels. The fast and regional temperature change actuates the stretching and relaxation of the seeded human artery smooth muscle cell (HASMC) via controllable surface creasing instability. …
Design And Implementation Of Path Finding And Verification In The Internet, Hao Cai
Design And Implementation Of Path Finding And Verification In The Internet, Hao Cai
Doctoral Dissertations
In the Internet, network traffic between endpoints typically follows one path that is determined by the control plane. Endpoints have little control over the choice of which path their network traffic takes and little ability to verify if the traffic indeed follows a specific path. With the emergence of software-defined networking (SDN), more control over connections can be exercised, and thus the opportunity for novel solutions exists. However, there remain concerns about the attack surface exposed by fine-grained control, which may allow attackers to inject and redirect traffic. To address these opportunities and concerns, we consider two specific challenges: (1) …
Kinetics Of The Crystal-Melt Phase Transformation In Semicrystalline Polymers, Kiran Subramaniam Iyer
Kinetics Of The Crystal-Melt Phase Transformation In Semicrystalline Polymers, Kiran Subramaniam Iyer
Doctoral Dissertations
The assembly of long-chain polymers into an ordered state is a process that has puzzled polymer scientists for several decades. A process that is largely controlled by the strength of intermolecular attractions in small molecular systems, this crystallization in the case of polymers is controlled by a competition between the aforementioned force of attraction between monomers and the formidable conformational entropy of polymer chains. Any factor that affects this conformational entropy, whether that is an equilibrium thermodynamic factor or a kinetic factor, has the ability to control polymer crystallization. In this thesis, we focus on understanding the underlying kinetic processes …
Compound Effects Of Clock And Voltage Based Power Side-Channel Countermeasures, Jacqueline Lagasse
Compound Effects Of Clock And Voltage Based Power Side-Channel Countermeasures, Jacqueline Lagasse
Masters Theses
The power side-channel attack, which allows an attacker to derive secret information from power traces, continues to be a major vulnerability in many critical systems. Numerous countermeasures have been proposed since its discovery as a serious vulnerability, including both hardware and software implementations. Each countermeasure has its own drawback, with some of the highly effective countermeasures incurring large overhead in area and power. In addition, many countermeasures are quite invasive to the design process, requiring modification of the design and therefore additional validation and testing to ensure its accuracy. Less invasive countermeasures that do not require directly modifying the system …
Metabolic Modeling Of Multispecies Microbial Biofilms, Poonam Phalak
Metabolic Modeling Of Multispecies Microbial Biofilms, Poonam Phalak
Doctoral Dissertations
Biofilms are ubiquitous in medical, environmental, and engineered microbial systems. The majority of naturally occurring microbes grow as mixed species biofilms. These complicated biofilm consortia are comprised of many cell phenotypes with complex interactions and self-organized into three-dimensional structures. Approximately 2% of the US population suffers from non-healing chronic wounds infected by a combination of commensal and pathogenic bacteria whereas about 500,000 cases of Clostridium difficile infections (CDI) are reported annually. These polymicrobial infections are often resilient to antibiotic treatment due to the nutrient-rich environments and species interactions that promote community stability and robustness. This thesis focusses on developing metabolic …
Nanoindentation Characterization Of Elastic Properties Of Shales And Swelling Clay Minerals, Shengmin Luo
Nanoindentation Characterization Of Elastic Properties Of Shales And Swelling Clay Minerals, Shengmin Luo
Doctoral Dissertations
Oil and gas shales are a class of multiscale, multiphase, hybrid inorganic-organic sedimentary rocks that consist of a generally uniform, preferentially oriented clay matrix with randomly embedded silt and sand particles as solid inclusions. A thorough understanding of the mechanical properties of shales is crucial for the exploration and production of oil and gas in the unconventional shale reservoirs, but it can be a challenging task due to their nature of compositional heterogeneity and microstructural anisotropy. In efforts to better characterize the mechanical properties of shales across different length scales and to fundamentally understand the laws of upscaling from individual …
Molecular Design Of Organic Semiconductors For Interfacial And Emissive Material Applications, Marcus David Cole
Molecular Design Of Organic Semiconductors For Interfacial And Emissive Material Applications, Marcus David Cole
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation describes the synthesis and characterization of functional optoelectronically active materials. Synthetic techniques were used to prepare polymers containing perylene diimide (PDI) or tetraphenylethylene (TPE) moieties in the polymer backbone. PDI-based structures were prepared with embedded cationic or zwitterionic moieties intended to tailor organic/inorganic interfaces in thin film photovoltaic devices. The aggregation-induced emission (AIE)-active TPE polymers were synthesized to study how AIE properties evolve in π-conjugated polymers. The syntheses discussed here focused on modulation of molecular architecture to give rise to materials with tailored optoelectronic properties. Chapter 1 provides a brief overview of the field of organic electronics and …
A Parallel Direct Method For Finite Element Electromagnetic Computations Based On Domain Decomposition, Javad Moshfegh
A Parallel Direct Method For Finite Element Electromagnetic Computations Based On Domain Decomposition, Javad Moshfegh
Doctoral Dissertations
High performance parallel computing and direct (factorization-based) solution methods have been the two main trends in electromagnetic computations in recent years. When time-harmonic (frequency-domain) Maxwell's equation are directly discretized with the Finite Element Method (FEM) or other Partial Differential Equation (PDE) methods, the resulting linear system of equations is sparse and indefinite, thus harder to efficiently factorize serially or in parallel than alternative methods e.g. integral equation solutions, that result in dense linear systems. State-of-the-art sparse matrix direct solvers such as MUMPS and PARDISO don't scale favorably, have low parallel efficiency and high memory footprint. This work introduces a new …
Extreme Dynamics Of Nanomaterials Under High-Rate Mechanical Stimuli, Wanting Xie
Extreme Dynamics Of Nanomaterials Under High-Rate Mechanical Stimuli, Wanting Xie
Doctoral Dissertations
Nanomaterials demonstrate novel mechanical properties attributed to the extremely large interfacial area. At quasi-static rates, the interfacial interactions are crucial in mechanical behaviors, however, materials under extreme mechanical stimuli are rarely studied at nanoscale. With an advanced laser-induced projectile impact test, we perform supersonic impact of micro-projectiles on polymer films, multilayer graphene, carbon- based nanocomposites membranes as well as individual micro-fibers, to study the interface interactions in the high-rate regime, and develop a simplified model to characterize the ballistic performance of materials.
Residual Stress Models For Large Eddy Simulation Of Stratified Turbulent Flows, Felipe Augusto Ventura De Bragança Alves
Residual Stress Models For Large Eddy Simulation Of Stratified Turbulent Flows, Felipe Augusto Ventura De Bragança Alves
Doctoral Dissertations
The residual stresses and scalar fluxes are required to close the momentum and scalar transport equations in simulations of turbulence that are not fully resolved in space. In stratified turbulence, the stress and fluxes are statistically anisotropic unless the smallest resolved length scale is smaller than the Ozmidov scale and the buoyancy Reynolds number is sufficiently high for there to exist a range of scales that is statistically isotropic. In this work, a tensorial basis set is derived analytically that potentially contains sufficient information about the anisotropic interaction between resolved and residual scales. The residual stress tensor is evaluated by …
Top-Down And Bottom-Up Fabrication Of Key Components In Miniature Energy Storage Devices, Wenhao Li
Top-Down And Bottom-Up Fabrication Of Key Components In Miniature Energy Storage Devices, Wenhao Li
Doctoral Dissertations
The advent of miniature electronic devices demands power sources of commensurate form factors. This spurs the research of micro energy storage devices, e.g., 3D microbatteries. A 3D microbattery contains nonplanar microelectrodes with high aspect ratio and high surface area, separated by a nanoscale electrolyte. The device takes up a total volume as small as 10 mm3, allowing it to serve on a chip and to provide power in-situ. The marriage of nanotechnology and electrochemical energy storage makes microbattery research a fascinating field with both scientific excitement and application prospect. However, successful fabrication of well-functioned key components …
Software-Defined Infrastructure For Iot-Based Energy Systems, Stephen Lee
Software-Defined Infrastructure For Iot-Based Energy Systems, Stephen Lee
Doctoral Dissertations
Internet of Things (IoT) devices are becoming an essential part of our everyday lives. These physical devices are connected to the internet and can measure or control the environment around us. Further, IoT devices are increasingly being used to monitor buildings, farms, health, and transportation. As these connected devices become more pervasive, these devices will generate vast amounts of data that can be used to gain insights and build intelligence into the system. At the same time, large-scale deployment of these devices will raise new challenges in efficiently managing and controlling them. In this thesis, I argue that the IoT …
Modeling And Simulation Of Driven Nanopatterning Of Bulk-Material And Thin-Film Surfaces, Ashish Kumar
Modeling And Simulation Of Driven Nanopatterning Of Bulk-Material And Thin-Film Surfaces, Ashish Kumar
Doctoral Dissertations
Material nanostructures such as nanowires, quantum dots, and nanorings have a wide variety of applications in electronic and photonic devices among numerous others. Assembling uniformly arranged and consistently sized nanostructure patterns on solid material surfaces is a major challenge for nanotechnology. This dissertation focuses on developing predictive models capable of simulation and analysis of such nanopattern formation on bulk material and strained thin film surfaces. Single-layer atomic clusters (islands) of sizes larger than a critical size on crystalline conducting substrates undergo morphological instabilities when driven by an externally applied electric field or thermal gradient. We have conducted a systematic and …
Amorphous-Crystalline Brush Block Copolymers: Phase Behavior, Rheology And Composite Design, Gayathri Kopanati
Amorphous-Crystalline Brush Block Copolymers: Phase Behavior, Rheology And Composite Design, Gayathri Kopanati
Doctoral Dissertations
Bottlebrush block copolymers are polymers with chemically distinct polymer side chains grafted onto a common backbone. The unique architecture induced properties make these materials attractive for applications such as photonic materials, stimuli responsive actuators and drug delivery vehicles to name a few. This dissertation primarily investigates the phase transitions and rheological behavior of amorphous-crystalline bottlebrush brush block copolymers and their composites. The temperature induced phase behavior is investigated using time resolved synchrotron X-ray source. Irrespective of volume fraction and backbone length, the samples display strong segregation even at high temperatures (200 °C) and there is no accessible order-disorder transition in …
Function And Dissipation In Finite State Automata - From Computing To Intelligence And Back, Natesh Ganesh
Function And Dissipation In Finite State Automata - From Computing To Intelligence And Back, Natesh Ganesh
Doctoral Dissertations
Society has benefited from the technological revolution and the tremendous growth in computing powered by Moore's law. However, we are fast approaching the ultimate physical limits in terms of both device sizes and the associated energy dissipation. It is important to characterize these limits in a physically grounded and implementation-agnostic manner, in order to capture the fundamental energy dissipation costs associated with performing computing operations with classical information in nano-scale quantum systems. It is also necessary to identify and understand the effect of quantum in-distinguishability, noise, and device variability on these dissipation limits. Identifying these parameters is crucial to designing …
Polymeric Impulsive Actuation Mechanisms: Development, Characterization, And Modeling, Yongjin Kim
Polymeric Impulsive Actuation Mechanisms: Development, Characterization, And Modeling, Yongjin Kim
Doctoral Dissertations
Recent advances in the field of biomedical and life-sciences are increasingly demanding more life-like actuation with higher degrees of freedom in motion at small scales. Many researchers have developed various solutions to satisfy these emerging requirements. In many cases, new solutions are made possible with the development of novel polymeric actuators. Advances in polymeric actuation not only addressed problems concerning low degree of freedom in motion, large system size, and bio-incompatibility associated with conventional actuators, but also led to the discovery of novel applications, which were previously unattainable with conventional engineered systems. This dissertation focuses on developing novel actuation mechanisms …
Designing Ion-Containing Polymers With Controlled Structure And Dynamics, Joshua Enokida
Designing Ion-Containing Polymers With Controlled Structure And Dynamics, Joshua Enokida
Doctoral Dissertations
Ion-containing polymers are a unique class of materials for which strong electrostatic interactions dictate physical properties. By altering molecular parameters, such as the backbone chemical structure, the ion content, and the ion-pair identity, the structure and dynamics of these polymers can be altered. Further investigation of the molecular parameters that govern their structure-property relationships is critical for the future development of these polymeric materials. Particularly, the incorporation of ammonium-based counterions into these polymers offers a facile method to tune their electrostatic interactions and hydrophobicity. Applying this concept, a bulky dimethyloctylammonium (DMOA) counterion was used to modify the organic solubility of …
Double-Network Materials Via Frontal Polymerization & Supercritical Co2 Processing, Matthew Joseph Lampe
Double-Network Materials Via Frontal Polymerization & Supercritical Co2 Processing, Matthew Joseph Lampe
Doctoral Dissertations
This dissertation presents work focused on producing materials in non-equilibrium states by taking advantage of novel processing techniques. First, epoxy-based resins which can undergo radically promoted, cationic, thermal, frontal polymerization are investigated for their potential use as adhesives. These resins are found to be capable of sustaining propagating polymerization fronts between several different substrate materials, resulting in high levels of adhesion in some cases. In addition, a similar frontal resin was developed that can undergo sequential gelation and frontal polymerization. The gels are formed by radically crosslinking acrylate monomers within the epoxy resin. These gels can then be manipulated, and …
Flow-Induced Oscillations In Floating Offshore Wind Turbines, Daniel Carlson
Flow-Induced Oscillations In Floating Offshore Wind Turbines, Daniel Carlson
Doctoral Dissertations
The goal of this thesis is to experimentally study the structural dynamics, wake interaction, and fluid forces on the multiple-degree of freedom systems typical of floating wind turbines. Vortex--surface alignment about flexibly-mounted prisms is studied to investigate the response of barges and semi-submersible hulls, and new results pertaining to the galloping response kink for a prism with dual inline--crossflow resonance is presented. Flow--induced oscillations of a spar model free to rotate in 3D space is replicated and observed as 2D figure--eight orbits about the center of the spar. Methods to suppress the flow from exciting the spar are proposed. The …
Northeastern Species In Hybrid Cross Laminated Timber, Hamid Kaboli
Northeastern Species In Hybrid Cross Laminated Timber, Hamid Kaboli
Doctoral Dissertations
Known in the building industry throughout the world, Cross Laminated Timber (CLT) is a massive timber building material with outstanding structural, fire, and seismic properties. CLT is a cost-competitive, sustainable construction material is a good candidate as a substitute material for concrete, masonry, and steel, in mid-rise and high-rise buildings. CLT is perpendicular layers of dimensional lumbers usually laminated together and forming a massive structural panel. This dissertation explores the viability of utilizing Massachusetts grown Eastern Hemlock and Eastern White Pine in CLT panels as pure or in conjunction with other high-value wood products. 59% of Massachusetts’ lands are covered …