Engineering Commons^™

Highly Effective Geni Alloy Contact Diffusion Barrier For Bisbte Long-Term Thermal Exposure, Erdong Song, Brian S. Swartzentruber, Chowdary R. Koripella, Julio A. Martinez

Publications and Research

A GeNi alloy diffusion barrier for contacts on bismuth antimony telluride is proposed. Multiple gold contact diffusion barriers were tested at different thermal aging conditions in air and reducing atmospheres. Among all diffusion barriers, the GeNi alloy barrier shows the best performance for bulk samples with no substantial degradation of the contact resistance, no contact color change, and no change of thermoelectric properties. We observed DAu−GeNi = (9.8 ± 2.7) × 10−20 m2/s within the GeNi alloy barrier, which is 4 times smaller than DAu−BiSbTe. The presence of the initial Ge layer also proves to be effective in reducing nickel …

Composite Biomaterial Repair Strategy To Restore Biomechanical Function And Reduce Herniation Risk In An Ex Vivo Large Animal Model Of Intervertebral Disc Herniation With Varying Injury Severity, Warren W. Hom, Melanie Tschopp, Huizi A. Lin, Philip Nasser, Damien M. Laudier, Andrew C. Hecht, Steven B. Nicoll, James C. Iatridis

Publications and Research

Back pain commonly arises from intervertebral disc (IVD) damage including annulus fibrosus (AF) defects and nucleus pulposus (NP) loss. Poor IVD healing motivates developing tissue engineering repair strategies. This study evaluated a composite injectable IVD biomaterial repair strategy using carboxymethylcellulose-methylcellulose (CMC-MC) and genipincrosslinked fibrin (FibGen) that mimic NP and AF properties, respectively. Bovine ex vivo caudal IVDs were evaluated in cyclic compression-tension, torsion, and compression-to-failure tests to determine IVD biomechanical properties, height loss, and herniation risk following experimentally-induced severe herniation injury and discectomy (4 mm biopsy defect with 20% NP removed). FibGen with and without CMC-MC had failure strength similar …

Development Of Digital Bathymetry Maps For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo Using Sonar And Remote Sensing Techniques, Michael Piasecki, Mahrokh Moknatian, Fred Moshary, Jorge Gonzalez

Publications and Research

This article presents an improved algorithm for optimization and development of a digital bathymetric model (DBM) for Lake Azuei (LA) (Haiti) and Lake Enriquillo (LE) (Dominican Republic) using the ANUDEM method. Both sonar data and contour lines of the lakes’ layout extracted using Landsat imagery were compiled for bathymetry development. We show that the performance of the ANUDEM method was strongly dependent on the density and irregularity of the spatial distribution of the data. Changing the resolution of the output grids and deriving auxiliary topographically corrected contours improved the ANUDEM performance and minimized the systematic errors of the method. Statistical …

The Effect Of Heterobifunctional Crosslinkers On Hema Hydrogel Modulus And Toughness, Elizabeth M. Boazak, Vaughn K. Greene Jr., Debra T. Auguste

Publications and Research

The use of hydrogels in load bearing applications is often limited by insufficient toughness. 2-Hydroxyethyl methacrylate (HEMA) based hydrogels are appealing for translational work, as they are affordable and the use of HEMA is FDA approved. Furthermore, HEMA is photopolymerizable, providing spatiotemporal control over mechanical properties. We evaluated the ability of vinyl methacrylate (VM), allyl methacrylate (AM), and 3-(Acryloyloxy)-2-hydroxypropyl methacrylate (AHPM) to tune hydrogel toughness and Young’s modulus. The crosslinkers were selected due to their heterobifunctionality (vinyl and methacrylate) and similar size and structure to EGDMA, which was shown previously to increase toughness as compared to longer crosslinkers. Vinyl methacrylate …

Enhanced Security System With Image Feature Identification, Musharrat Chowdhury

Publications and Research

Open source hardware and software will be used to acquire camera images and recognize and identify objects of interest in the image that would be used in new or existing personal security system. The mechanism of this system rotates either automatically or manually to track a face when a human is within view of the camera. The biometric security recognition system is a real world applications with complex effects of illumination and imaging conditions on live images.

3d Printed Smart Mobile, Bingfang Chen

Publications and Research

The goal of this research project is to design and build a prototype of a smart mobile robot to participate and compete in IEEE Micro-mouse and similar competitions. The robot has to find its way out of a maze as quickly as possible, by exploring and learning the paths in the maze. 3D printing technology will be used to build a lightweight robot frame so that it can move at a fast speed.

Ligand Selectivity In The Recognition Of Protoberberine Alkaloids By Hybrid-2 Human Telomeric G-Quadruplex: Binding Free Energy Calculation, Fluorescence Binding, And Nmr Experiments, Nanjie Deng, Junchao Xia, Lauren Wickstrom, Clement Lin, Kaibo Wang, Peng He, Yunting Yin, Danzhou Yang

Publications and Research

The human telomeric G-quadruplex (G4) is an attractive target for developing anticancer drugs. Natural products protoberberine alkaloids are known to bind human telomeric G4 and inhibit telomerase. Among several structurally similar protoberberine alkaloids, epiberberine (EPI) shows the greatest specificity in recognizing the human telomeric G4 over duplex DNA and other G4s. Recently, NMR study revealed that EPI recognizes specifically the hybrid-2 form human telomeric G4 by inducing large rearrangements in the 50-flanking segment and loop regions to form a highly extensive four-layered binding pocket. Using the NMR structure of the EPI-human telomeric G4 complex, here we perform molecular dynamics free …

The Modeling, Design, Fabrication, And Application Of Biosensor Based On Electric Cell-Substrate Impedance Sensing (Ecis) Technique In Environmental Monitoring, Xudong Zhang, William Wang, Sunghoon Jang

Publications and Research

In this research, the modeling, design, fabrication, and application of ECIS sensors in environmental monitoringare studied. The ECIS sensors are able to qualify the water toxicity through measuring the cell impedance. A novel mathematical model is proposed to analyze the distribution of electric potential and current of ECIS. This mathematical model is validated by experimental data and can be used to optimize the dimension of ECIS electrodes in order to satisfy environmental monitors. The detection sensitivity of ECIS sensors is analyzed by the mathematical model and experimental data. The simulated and experimental results show that ECIS sensors with smaller radius …

All-Optical Control Of Lead Halide Perovskite Microlasers, Nan Zhang, Yubin Fan, Kaiyang Wang, Zhiyuan Gu, Yuhan Wang, Li Ge, Shumin Xiao, Qinghai Song

Publications and Research

Lead halide perovskites based microlasers have recently shown their potential in nanophotonics. However, up to now, all of the perovskite microlasers are static and cannot be dynamically tuned in use. Herein, we demonstrate a robust mechanism to realize the alloptical control of perovskite microlasers. In lead halide perovskite microrods, deterministic mode switching takes place as the external excitation is increased: the onset of a new lasing mode switches off the initial one via a negative power slope, while the main laser characteristics are well kept. This mode switching is reversible with the excitation and has been explained via cross-gain saturation. …

Restore-L Satellite Servicing Internship Final Report, Giovanni Campos

Publications and Research

This paper reviews the Restore-L mission purpose and the necessary research and simulations to meet mission specification for the Propellant Transfer Subsystem (PTS). It is essential the PTS undergoes functionality testing, environmental testing, and calculations to understand the capabilities of the system. For the testing of components from PTS, a proper test setup is required. It is vital for test hardware, such as hoses and valves, to stay in place while the test is being performed. For the test hardware to operate correctly, positioning, orientation, and alignment are critical as well. In addition to the testing, calculations for pressure drop …

On Using Ai Bots For Voice Controlled Augmented Reality Applications, Juan Estrella

Publications and Research

Artificial Intelligence (AI) has the potential to benefit society in the realms of medicine, security, manufacturing, entertainment, marketing, and many others. One of the advances of AI is in the field of Natural Language Processing and Speech Recognition; making computers understand what humans say and mean. On the other hand, the term Augmented Reality (AR) refers to the technologies that superimpose digital content generated by computers over the user’s view of the real world. AR technologies enhance the version of the physical environment with computergenerated sensory input such as sound, video, or graphics overlaid on top of the real-world view. …

Proceedings Of The Cuny Games Conference 5.0, Robert O. Duncan, Joe Bisz, Julie Cassidy, Kathleen Offenholley, Carolyn Stallard, Deborah Sturm, Anders A. Wallace

Publications and Research

The CUNY Games Network is an organization dedicated to encouraging research, scholarship and teaching in the developing field of games-based learning. We connect educators from every campus and discipline at CUNY and beyond who are interested in digital and non-digital games, simulations, and other forms of interactive teaching and inquiry-based learning. The CUNY Games Conference distills its best cutting-edge interactive presentations into a two-day event to promote and discuss game-based pedagogies in higher education, focusing particularly on non-digital learning activities that faculty can use in the classroom every day. The conference will include workshops lead by CUNY Games Organizers on …

Å-Indentation For Non-Destructive Elastic Moduli Measurements Of Supported Ultra-Hard Ultra-Thin Films And Nanostructures, Filippo Cellini, Yang Gao, Elisa Riedo

Publications and Research

During conventional nanoindentation measurements, the indentation depths are usually larger than 1–10 nm, which hinders the ability to study ultra-thin films (<10 >nm) and supported atomically thin two-dimensional (2D) materials. Here, we discuss the development of modulated Å-indentation to achieve sub-Å indentations depths during force-indentation measurements while also imaging materials with nanoscale resolution. Modulated nanoindentation (MoNI) was originally invented to measure the radial elasticity of multi-walled nanotubes. w, by using extremely small amplitude oscillations (<<1 Å) at high frequency, and stiff cantilevers, we show how modulated nano/Å-indentation (MoNI/ÅI) enables non-destructive measurements of the contact stiffness and indentation modulus of ultra-thin ultra-stiff films, including CVD diamond films (~1000 GPa stiffness), as well as the transverse modulus of 2D materials. Our analysis demonstrates that in presence of a standard laboratory noise floor, the signal to noise ratio of MoNI/ÅI implemented with a commercial atomic force microscope (AFM) is such that a dynamic range of 80 dB –– achievable with commercial Lock-in amplifiers –– is sufficient to observe superior indentation curves, having indentation depths as small as 0.3 Å, resolution in indentation <0.05 Å, and in normal load <0.5 nN. Being implemented on a standard AFM, this method has the potential for a broad applicability.

Electrochromic Semiconductors As Colorimetric Sers Substrates With High Reproducibility And Renewability, Shan Cong, Zhen Wang, Wenbin Gong, Zhigang Chen, Weibang Lu, John R. Lombardi, Zhigang Zhao

Publications and Research

Electrochromic technology has been actively researched for displays, adjustable mirrors, smart windows, and other cutting-edge applications. However, it has never been proposed to overcome the critical problems in the field of surface-enhanced Raman scattering (SERS). Herein, we demonstrate a generic electrochromic strategy for ensuring the reproducibility and renewability of SERS substrates, which are both scientifically and technically important due to the great need for quantitative analysis, standardized production and low cost in SERS. This color-changing strategy is based on a unique quantitative relationship between the SERS signal amplification and the coloration degree within a certain range, in which the SERS …

A Pulse Sensor Interface Design For Fpga Based Multisensor Health Monitoring Platform, Yu Wang, Sunghoon Jang

Publications and Research

The FPGA-based platform is critical for producing an inexpensive early validation platform design. In past years, sensor nodes based on the FPGA platform have been proposed to be IoT low-end devices. In this study, we present the FPGA based IoT low-end reconfigurable pulse sensor interface design that can be integrated with a multi-sensor healthcare platform to monitor a human pulse vital sign and be able to distinguish between user normal, Bradycardia, or Tachycardia heart rate. The pulse sensor interface is implemented by VHDL programming and FPGA technology. The designed pulse sensor peripheral interface is reliable and reconfigurable. It can collect …

Observational Time Series For Lakes Azuei And Enriquillo: Surface Area, Volume, And Elevation, Mahrokh Moknatian, Michael Piasecki

Publications and Research

In this report, we present historical time series of surface area, volume, and elevation for lakes Azuei (Haiti) and Enriquillo (Dominican Republic). The intention is to present a history of the lakes’ levels for both bodies of water as derived from Landsat imagery that is augmented by reports and narratives that reach further back in time. We also summarize lake level time series data collected and developed through various other efforts and compare these data sets to our time series. The time series contains 45 years’ worth of data ranging from 1972 to 2017 which we developed from Landsat imagery …

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 …

Shaping The Future Of Trusted Digital Identity: The Idef Registry With Health Information Use Cases, Noreen Y. Whysel

Publications and Research

No abstract provided.