Engineering Commons^™

Dynamic Through-Silicon Via Clustering In 3d Ic Floorplanning For Early Performance Optimization, Sucheta Mohapatra

Dissertations and Theses

Through-silicon via (TSV)-based three-dimensional integrated circuits (3D ICs) are expected to be the breakthrough technology for keeping up with the scaling trends of Moore's law, while also offering the unique opportunity for functional diversification through heterogenous integration. TSVs are vertical metal interconnects enabling communication across stacked and thinned dies. The dramatic reduction in global wirelength and chip footprint in 3DICs, directly improves delay, device density, bandwidth and routing congestion. Even with the current maturation of TSV process, the roadmap for industry adoption of 3DICs remains largely uncertain due to lack of standardized 3D tools capable of handling the sheer complexity …

Ronald E. Mcnair Scholars Program Profiles And Abstracts 2020, Mcnair Scholars Program

McNair Symposium

This is the complete event program and provides presentation abstracts and biographies of McNair scholars and their mentors.

Image Object Extraction Based On Semantic Segmentation And Label Loss, Xiaoru Wang, Peirong Xu, Zhihong Yu, Fu Li

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Object extraction refers to the operation of obtaining an object area from an image based on a small amount of mark information given by users, which is a key step in image processing. In order to obtain a complete object profile, current methods usually require a large number of manual annotations, especially for objects with irregular contours. Since traditional algorithms rely on low-level pixel features without semantic information, and are based on obvious mathematical assumptions (ie, strong inductive bias), it is difficult to completely identify objects. At present, in order to improve the integrity of object extraction, semantic segmentation-based methods …

Synthesis And Assessment Of Radiotherapy-Enhancing Nanoparticles, Hayden Winter

Dissertations and Theses

Radiation Therapy (RT) is a common treatment for cancerous lesions that acts by ionizing matter in the affected tissue, causing cell death. The disadvantage of RT is that it is most often delivered via an external beam of radiation which must pass through healthy tissues to reach the target site, ionizing matter within healthy tissues as well. To address this drawback, techniques are being developed for increasing RT-induced cell death in a target tissue while minimizing cell death in surrounding tissues. This effect is known as radiation dose enhancement or RT enhancement.

The approach to RT enhancement studied in this …

A Unified Spectrum Formulation For Ofdm, Fbmc, And F-Ofdm, Xianzhen Yang, Siyuan Yan, Xiao Li, Fu Li

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Although orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) has been standardized for 5G, filter bank multi-carrier (FBMC) and filtered orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (F-OFDM) remain competitive as candidates for future generations of wireless technologies beyond 5G, due to their reduced spectrum leakage and thus enhanced spectrum efficiency. In this article, we developed a unified spectrum expression for OFDM, FBMC, and F-OFDM, which provides comparative insights into those techniques. A representative sideband quantification is included at the end of this article.

Update To Methodology For Setting Speed Limits In Urban Areas: Spr 827, Miguel Figliozzi, Avinash Unnikrishnan, Jaclyn S. Schaefer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many cities in Oregon are requesting a comprehensive review of speed zoning guidelines and existing procedures for streets with high volumes of active travelers. The main goal of this research is to develop recommendations for alternate criteria for setting speed zones on roadways with a high percentage of active travelers. Literature pertaining to factors affecting operating speed, speed and safety, speed management, and current speed zone practices is reviewed. The selection of the site and performance criteria is discussed. Qualities and characteristics of the speed data utilized are given. Distinctions between neighborhood and non-neighborhood greenways are noted. A before and …

Synthesizing Expressive Behaviors For Humanoid Robots, Mathias Irwan Sunardi

Dissertations and Theses

Humanoid robots are expected to be able to communicate with expressive gestures at the same level of proficiency as humans. However, creating expressive gestures for humanoid robots is difficult and time consuming due to the high number of degrees of freedom (DOF) and the iterations needed to get the desired expressiveness.

Current robot motion editing software has varying levels of sophistication of motion editing tools ranging from basic ones that are text-only, to ones that provide graphical user interfaces (GUIs) which incorporate advanced features, such as curve editors and inverse kinematics. These tools enable users to create simple motions; but …

Statistical Modeling Of Historical Daily Water Temperatures In The Lower Columbia River, Malia Hanae Scott

Dissertations and Theses

Water temperature affects numerous aspects of aquatic life, and its stability is critical to cold water fish such as salmonids. With rising anthropogenic influence in natural environments, the future existence of these organisms is becoming less certain. In this study, I examined the evolution of historical water temperatures in the lower Columbia River by creating a statistical model to estimate daily historical water temperatures between the 1850s and 2010s. Daily air temperature and river flow measurements were used as inputs to the model, which estimated daily water temperatures at Bonneville Dam. The model used time lags between air temperature and …

Determinants Of Student Information Technology Adoption, Hans P. Vanderschaaf

Dissertations and Theses

Innovating service delivery in higher education is central to supporting institutional and societal goals of increasing the numbers of college graduates and for transforming higher education institutions to center on the needs of today's students. Within this context, technology plays a critical role. This research seeks to contribute to institutional, academic and educational technology sector efforts to dramatically enhance service quality, in support of improving undergraduate student outcomes (student success), by identifying the determinants of student information technology adoption and removing barriers to accessing higher education.

Using a mixed-methods and empirical approach based on the Unified Theory of Acceptance and …

Dynamic Effects Of Inertial Particles On The Wake Recovery Of A Model Wind Turbine, Sarah E. Smith

Dissertations and Theses

Impacting particles such as rain, dust, and other debris can have devastating structural effects on wind turbines, but little is known about the interaction of such debris within turbine wakes. This study aims to characterize behavior of inertial particles within the turbulent wake of a wind turbine and relative effects on wake recovery. Here a model wind turbine is subjected to varied two-phase inflow conditions, with wind as the carrier fluid (Re_λ = 49 - 88) and polydisperse water droplets (26 to 45µm in diameter) at varied concentrations (Φ_v=0.24 x 10^-5 - 1.3 …

Exploring Policies And Strategies For The Diffusion Of Remote Patient Monitoring (Rpm) For The Care Of Senior Population, Hamad Asri Alanazi

Dissertations and Theses

Telemedicine offers great promise in addressing some of the healthcare challenges such as the increase of healthcare expenditure, a growing population, and a projected physician shortage; telemedicine is increasingly being included in the discussion of medicine's future. Telemedicine offers the capabilities to deliver healthcare across distances at reduced costs while maintaining or even increasing the quality of treatment and services.

The objective of this research is to develop a model to evaluate alternative solutions to increase the adoption of RPM for the senior population. Also, the research provides a systematic approach for a comprehensive assessment of teleconsultation adoption, develop a …

Droplet Ejections During Wet Lab Operations Aboard Spacecraft, Caleb Cushman Turner

Dissertations and Theses

The breakup and rupture of liquid bridges, thin films, bubbles, droplets, rivulets, and jets can produce satellite droplets that are subsequently ejected into their surrounding environment. For example, when any solid object is withdrawn from a liquid bath, the formation of an ever-thinning columnar liquid bridge eventually ruptures along the axis of the bridge. When rupture occurs under typical pipetting conditions the dynamics governing the rupture almost always produce at a minimum a satellite droplet. When these droplets occur they are often too small and too fast to be observed by the human eye. In a terrestrial environment they are …

Memristive Architectures And Algorithms For Approximate Graph-Based Inference, Mohammad M.A. Taha

Dissertations and Theses

The goal of this thesis is to design fast, low-power, robust graph-based inference systems. Our approach to this is by using (1) in-memory computing, (2) approximate computing principles, and (3) memristive devices.

This work is motivated by the fact that conventional von Neumann architectures are not efficient for inference applications, mainly due to the data transfer bottleneck. Adding cache memories and using GPUs is a remedy, however, does not eliminate this bottleneck. In-memory computing is an alternative approach that performs all computations inside the memory, thus eliminating the data transfer bottleneck.

The memristor, which is a passive two-terminal device, is …

Evaluating R&D Projects In Regulated Utilities: The Case Of Power Transmission Utilities, Edwin Garces

Dissertations and Theses

R&D project selection is essential for many organizations; however, it is a complex decision since it is affected by many factors. These factors vary among organizations because of their different objectives and conditions. There are limited budgets for the investments, and the current R&D project selection methods are focused on financial analysis or complex mathematical probabilistic calculations. Therefore, the main motivation of this research is to create a method to help improve the ex-ante selection of R&D projects in regulated organizations. More importantly, the case application is the electric transmission utilities sector, which plays one of the most critical roles …

A Market Diffusion Potential (Mdp) Assessment Model For Residential Energy Efficient (Ee) Technologies In The U.S., Momtaj Khanam

Dissertations and Theses

The Diffusion of Residential Energy Efficient (EE) Technologies has been studied for many years. Finding ways to bridge the energy efficiency gap and increase the diffusion of these technologies have been of much interest to researchers and practitioners alike. However, in most studies, diffusion is equated to adoption of EE technologies by consumers. The present study tries to break this mindset and develops a model to assess the diffusion of residential EE technologies from the market's perspective. The model assesses diffusion of an EE technology based on the market's ability to provide benefits to customers that are identified to be …

The Optimization Of Machining Parameters For Milling Operations By Using The Nelder–Mead Simplex Method, Yubin Lee, Alin Resiga, Sung Yi, Chien Wern

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The purpose of machining operations is to make specific shapes or surface characteristics for a product. Conditions for machining operations were traditionally selected based on geometry and surface finish requirements. However, nowadays, many researchers are optimizing machining parameters since high-quality products can be produced using more expensive and advanced machines and tools. There are a few methods to optimize the machining process, such as minimizing unit production time or cost or maximizing profit. This research focused on maximizing the profit of computer numerical control (CNC) milling operations by optimizing machining parameters. Cutting speeds and feed are considered as the main …

Ultrasonic Coda Wave Comparison For Quality Control Of Manufactured Parts: Proof Of Feasibility, Alexei Marin-Cortes

Civil and Environmental Engineering Master's Project Reports

Manufactured parts are a staple of modern urban life, visible in homes (e.g., kitchen appliances), offices (e.g., printers), the automobile and aerospace industries (e.g., body parts), and more. This M.S. project intended to determine whether ultrasonic testing could be used in a simple and rapid manner to perform quality control of manufactured parts. Ultrasonic testing is employed for this purpose using two surface-coupled transducers, one being a transmitter and the other one a receiver. An ultrasonic pulse, which is generated by the transmitting transducer, propagates through the part, collecting information about material and geometry, as well as potential unwanted features. …

Online Survey Of Driver Comprehension Of The Flashing Yellow Arrow For Right-Turn Signal Indications, Sirisha Kothuri, Christopher Monsere, Hisham Jashami, David Hurwitz

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents the results of an online survey of licensed driver comprehension of the right-turn signal displays with a focus on the flashing yellow arrow (FYA) and also including the circular green and red and red arrow. Recruitment postcards were mailed to a random sample of 9,872 residents in Oregon. The online survey yielded 399 responses. The open-ended responses were coded for comprehension and analyzed. The results suggest that FYA for right turns is well understood by Oregon drivers despite its current novelty (only two locations at the time of the research). Importantly, survey respondents were more likely to …

Fabrication And Characterization Of Flexible Three-Phase Zno-Graphene-Epoxy Electro-Active Thin-Film Nanocomposites: Towards Applications In Wearable Biomedical Devices, Mandeep Singh, Sanjeev Kumar, Shervin Zoghi, Debaki Sarcar, Saquib Ahmed, Shaestagir Chowdhury, Sankha Banerjee

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Perovskite oxides have been used as sensors, actuators, transducers, for sound generation and detection, and also in optical instruments and microscopes. Perovskite halides are currently considered as optoelectronic devices such as solar cells, photodetectors, and radiation detection, but there are major issues with stability, interfacial recombination, and electron/hole mobility. The following work looks into the fabrication of non-toxic ZnO-based lead-free alternatives to perovskite oxides for use as secondary sensors or electron transport layers along with perovskite halides for application in stacked biomedical wearable devices. Three-phase, lead-free, Zinc Oxide-Graphene-Epoxy electroactive nanocomposite thin films were fabricated. The volume fraction of the Graphene …

Ce-Qual-W2 Hydrodynamic And Water Quality Model Of The Cedar River Municipal Watershed, Amory Spencer Cervarich

Dissertations and Theses

The laterally averaged, two-dimensional model CE-QUAL-W2 was used to develop a water quality model of the Cedar River Municipal Watershed as a reservoir management and climate change scenario tool. The 90,638-acre watershed, located 56 kilometers southeast of Seattle, WA, provides drinking water to over 1.4 million people. The watershed relies on two waterbodies for storage, Chester Morse Lake and the Masonry Pool. The Masonry Dam is the main storage structure in the watershed. The Cedar River flows downstream from the Masonry Dam for 57 kilometers to Lake Washington. The reservoir model simulated Chester Morse Lake and the Masonry Pool. The …

Dynamic Response Of Highway Bridge Superstructures Subjected To Wave Action: Experimental Analysis And Numerical Modeling, Alaa Waleed Hameed

Dissertations and Theses

Bridges are critical lifeline components of the infrastructure network, enabling economies to function under normal conditions and disaster response and recovery missions to take place after extreme events. Therefore, ensuring satisfactory performance increases community resilience and minimizes both human and economic losses. Coastal bridges, which are the focus of this PhD dissertation, are vulnerable to coastal storms. High failure rates of these bridges during two major hurricane events in the mid-2000s have spurred research activities to better understand the wave-induced forces of coastal bridges.

This PhD research represents a continuation effort to build, implement, and introduce new fundamental concepts and …

An Assessment Of The Decision-Making Units' Efficiency In Service Systems, Maoloud Yakhlif Dabab

Dissertations and Theses

Most tools and models of performance and quality of service management are generic and do not solve complex technical systems. The critical components of the system need such tools to assess their efficiency to make a better decision about them. One of the primary objectives in the service systems is to improve the ability of efficiency, effectiveness, and sustainability of critical assets. One of the challenges with improving critical assets is the amount of major capital spending needed to upgrade a technology infrastructure with a high obsolescence rate. This along with usage and reliability issues, makes evaluating mobile cells to …

Design Of A 7-Mhz Portable Direct Conversion Transceiver With Digitally Controlled Keying, Abram Morphew

Dissertations and Theses

This thesis outlines the design of a portable direct conversion transceiver system for the 7-MHz (or 40m) band. This band is popular due to its propagation characteristics which allow for world-wide communication with very low power. The transceiver utilizes a crystal-stabilized local oscillator optimized for frequency agility, low power consumption, and an optimal drive level of +7 dBm. A low power 8-bit microcontroller acts as an interface for either a straight key providing manual Morse code operation or digital logic control from a personal computer. It also acts as a side tone oscillator providing audio feedback to the operator during …

Designing Gates And Architectures For Superconducting Quantum Systems, Sahar Daraeizadeh

Dissertations and Theses

Large-scale quantum computers can solve certain problems that are not tractable by currently available classical computational resources. The building blocks of quantum computers are qubits. Among many different physical realizations for qubits, superconducting qubits are one of the promising candidates to realize gate model quantum computers. In this dissertation, we present new multi-qubit gates for nearest-neighbor superconducting quantum systems. In the absence of a physical hardware, we simulate the dynamics of the quantum system and use the simulated environment as a framework for test, design, and optimization of quantum gates and architectures. We explore three different simulation-based gate design methodologies: …

Evidence From Urban Roads Without Bicycle Lanes On The Impact Of Bicycle Traffic On Passenger Car Travel Speeds, Jaclyn S. Schaefer, Miguel A. Figliozzi, Avinash Unnikrishnan

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

A concern raised by some motorists in relation to the presence of bicycles on urban roads without bicycle lanes, discussed in part of the traffic literature, is that cyclists will slow down motorized vehicles and therefore create congestion. This research answers this question: do bicycles reduce passenger car travel speeds on urban roads without bicycle lanes? To answer this question, a detailed comparative analysis of the travel speeds of passenger car (class two vehicles) on lower volume urban roads without bicycle lanes is presented. Speed distributions, the mean, and the 50th and 85th percentile speeds for two scenarios were examined: …

Work-In-Progress: Implementing Sophomore Cornerstone Courses In Electrical And Computer Engineering, Branimir Pejcinovic, Melinda Holtzman, Phillip Wong

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many engineering programs have significant project-based courses in the freshman and senior years. The project component in our freshman year-long sequence evolves from minimally structured projects, like designing and building Rube-Goldberg contraptions, to more complex microcontroller-based projects where formal tools for teamwork and project management are introduced. However, we do not yet enforce strict adherence to procedures and processes in the freshman year. This is unlike the senior capstone, where the expectation is that students will not only be familiar with these methods but will use them effectively throughout their projects. This presents an obvious problem: what happens in the …

User-Rated Comfort And Preference Of Separated Bike Lane Intersection Designs, Christopher Monsere, Nathan Mcneil, Rebecca Sanders

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Improved bicycle infrastructure has become increasingly common in the United States as cities seek to attract new riders, including the demographic who do not feel comfortable riding with motor vehicle traffic. A key tool in designing low-stress networks is the use of separated or protected bicycle lanes, and intersections are the critical links. This paper presents an analysis of the perceived level of comfort of current and potential bicyclists from 277 survey respondents who rated 26 first-person video clips of a bicyclist riding through mixing zones, lateral shifts, bend-in, bend-out, and protected intersection designs. A total of 7,166 ratings were …

Dim: Adaptively Combining User Interests Mined At Different Stages Based On Deformable Interest Model, Xiaoru Wang, Yueli Li, Zhihong Yu, Fu Li, Heng Zhang, Yali Cai, Lixian Li

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

User interest mining is widely used in the fields of personalized search and personalized recommendation. Traditional methods ignore the formation of user interest which is a process that evolves over time. This leads to the inability to accurately describe the distribution of user interest. In this paper, we propose the interest tracking model (ITM). To add the timing, ITM uses Dirichlet distribution and multinomial distribution to describe the evolutional process of interest topics and frequent patterns, which well adapts to the evolution of user interest hidden in short texts between different time slices. In addition, it is well known that …

Facilitating Mixed Self-Timed Circuits, Alexandra R. Hanson

University Honors Theses

Designers constrain the ordering of computation events in self-timed circuits to ensure the correct behavior of the circuits. Different circuit families utilize different constraints that, when families are combined, may be more difficult to guarantee in combination without inserting delay to postpone necessary events. By analyzing established constraints of different circuit families like Click and GasP, we are able to identify the small changes necessary to either 1) avoid constraints entirely; or 2) decrease the likelihood of necessary delay insertion. Because delay insertion can be tricky for novice designers and because the likelihood of its requirement increases when mixing different …

Optimized Xanthene-Based Probes For Pancreatic Cancer Imaging, Ian Ruramai Munhenzva

Dissertations and Theses

Pancreatic Ductal Adenocarcinoma (PDAC) is one of the deadliest human malignancies with an extremely poor 5-year survival rate of below 5%. Surgical resection is the most effective treatment of choice because chemotherapy and radiation therapy do not improve life expectancy. Residual tumor after PDAC surgery is common due to a lack of PDAC targeted intraoperative contrast agents to confirm clear margins.

Fluorescence imaging has the potential to improve surgery outcome and PDAC patients' survival rate via the use of highly PDAC-specific molecular probes to facilitate tumor identification. This thesis describes the application of a focused library of benzoxanthene fluorophores for …