Engineering Commons^™

Plasma Protein Signatures Of Adult Asthma, Gordon J. Smilnak, Yura Lee, Abhijnan Chattopadhyay, Annah B. Wyss, Julie D. White, Sinjini Sikdar, Jianping Jin, Andrew J. Grant, Alison A. Motsinger-Reif, Jian-Liang Li, Mikyeong Lee, Bing Yu, Stephanie J. London

Mathematics & Statistics Faculty Publications

Background: Adult asthma is complex and incompletely understood. Plasma proteomics is an evolving technique that can both generate biomarkers and provide insights into disease mechanisms. We aimed to identify plasma proteomic signatures of adult asthma.

Methods: Protein abundance in plasma was measured in individuals from the Agricultural Lung Health Study (ALHS) (761 asthma, 1095 non-case) and the Atherosclerosis Risk in Communities study (470 asthma, 10,669 non-case) using the SOMAScan 5K array. Associations with asthma were estimated using covariate adjusted logistic regression and meta-analyzed using inverse-variance weighting. Additionally, in ALHS, we examined phenotypes based on both asthma and seroatopy (asthma with …

Assessing The Relationship Between Contralateral Limb Synergy And Rock Climbing Efficiency, Jeromy Miramontes

Theses, Dissertations and Capstones

Rock climbing is a total body sport testing the mental and physical capabilities of athletes. Efficiency of movement can improve the ability of climbers to perform at a higher capacity and reduce the risk of injury. Data on the relationship between the continuous relative phase (CRP) of contralateral joint rotations and time to completion of a bouldering move are ways to assess rock climbing. This study aimed to assess this relationship, as well as the geometric entropy (GE) of the center of mass displacement when completing the bouldering move, and the metabolic efficiency over 4 min of bouldering. The study …

Integrated Modeling And Monitoring For A Healthy And Sustainable Building Environment, Yifang Xu

Doctoral Dissertations

The transmission of airborne diseases indoors is a significant challenge to public health. Buildings are hotspots for viral transmission, which can result in adverse effects on human health and quality of life, especially considering that individuals spend approximately 87% of their time indoors. The emergence of the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of considering health aspects during the development of sustainable built environments. Consequently, maintaining a healthy, sustainable, and comfortable built environment represents a major challenge for facilities management teams. However, research on the infection risks associated with emerging pandemics is still in its infancy, and the effectiveness of …

Digital Health Design For Improving Treatment Decisions, Akanksha Singh

Theses and Dissertations

In the age of artificial intelligence and large datasets, information retrieval by querying large databases is an impossible task for the common user due to the information overload. Recommender Systems (RS) for commercial applications like YouTube, Amazon and Netflix were designed to support users by finding items of interest based on their user profiles and various filtering techniques. Health Recommender Systems (HRS) is a category of RSs that provides immense opportunities for application across several healthcare domains and contexts including treatment decision support. Unlike RS applications that focus on analyzing consumer choices, a key differentiator for HRS applications is the …

التأثيرات السلبية الناتجة عن استخدام الأجهزة اللوحية الذكية على الصحة الجسمية والنفسية لأطفال من عمر(13-16) سنة من وجهة نظرهم, Nuha Iter

Palestine Technical University Research Journal

The study aimed to explore the negative effects of using smart devices on the physical and psychological health of children aged (13-16) years from their perspective. The study was applied to a random sample of children aged (13-16), consisting of (102) male and female students. The descriptive method was used to answer the study questions, and a questionnaire was developed to collect data, which contains (3) sections, first section asked about the most used and preferred devices by children aged (13-16) years, and the number of hours the child used the smart device, the second one asked about the negative …

Os-Walk-Eu: An Open-Source Tool To Assess Health-Promoting Residential Walkability Of European City Structures, Stefan Fina, Christian Gerten, Brian Pondi, Lorraine D'Arcy, Niamh O' Reilly, David Sousa Vale, Mauro Pereira, Samuele Zilio

Articles

Introduction This paper introduces OS-WALK-EU, a new open-source walkability assessment tool developed specifically for urban neighbourhoods and using open-source spatial data. A free and open-source tool, OS-WALK-EU is accessible to the general public. It uses open data available worldwide and free online services to compute accessibility, while at the same time allowing users to integrate local datasets if available. Based on a review of existing measurement concepts, the paper adopts dimensions of walkability that were tested in European city environments and explains their conceptualization for software development. We invite the research community to collaboratively test, adopt and use the tool …

Proknow: Process Knowledge For Safety Constrained And Explainable Question Generation For Mental Health Diagnostic Assistance, Kaushik Roy, Manas Gaur, Misagh Soltani, Vipula Rawte, Ashwin Allen, Amit Sheth

Publications

Virtual Mental Health Assistants (VMHAs) are utilized in health care to provide patient services such as counseling and suggestive care. They are not used for patient diagnostic assistance because they cannot adhere to safety constraints and specialized clinical process knowledge (ProKnow) used to obtain clinical diagnoses. In this work, we define ProKnow as an ordered set of information that maps to evidence-based guidelines or categories of conceptual understanding to experts in a domain. We also introduce a new dataset of diagnostic conversations guided by safety constraints and ProKnow that healthcare professionals use (ProKnow-data). We develop a method for natural language …

Assessing The Effectiveness And Efficacy Of Wireless Onboard Condition Monitoring Modules In Identifying Defects In Railroad Rolling Stock, Lee R. Cantu

Theses and Dissertations

Many industries have begun shifting into the Internet of Things (IoT) in the 21st century. To help ease this transition for the rail industry, The University Transportation Center for Railway Safety (UTCRS) has partnered with Hum Industrial Technology, Inc. (HUM) to help complete the development of a Wireless Onboard Condition Monitoring system named the ‘Boomerang™’. This product allows customers to schedule proactive maintenance on their railcars to replace defective wheels and/or bearings, saving them time, money and potentially preventing costly catastrophic derailments. The UTCRS research team has established thresholds to determine defective bearings utilizing thermal and mechanical sensors.

The effectiveness …

Assessing The Impact Of Health Benefits And Carbon Footprint In Student Parking Decisions At A University Campus, Emiliano Ruiz

Open Access Theses & Dissertations

In the student parking location problem, traditionally, the parking permit cost, the last-mile travel time, and the ease of finding an available parking stall are the only decision criteria driving permit purchases. However, a studentâ??s choice of parking location has associated walking health benefits and sustainability impacts. These impacts are related to the walking distance from the parked vehicle to the final destination on campus, in addition to the location effect on the carbon footprint of a vehicle-trip taken to campus. As such, this Thesis examined a multi-criteria decision approach to a university studentâ??s choice of parking location. This approach …

Analysis Of Covid-19 Concerns Raised By The Construction Workforce And Development Of Mitigation Practices, Makram Bou Hatoum, Ali Faisal, Hala Nassereddine, Hadi Sarvari

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

The coronavirus outbreak has created a global health crisis that has disrupted all industries, including the construction industry. Following the onset of the pandemic, construction workers faced and continue to face unprecedented safety and health challenges. Therefore, construction employers established new safety precautions to protect the health and safety of the workforce and minimize the spread of the virus. The new precautions followed the advice and guidelines offered by different health and safety agencies like the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA), Centers of Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), and the Associated General Contractors of America (AGC). With construction projects …

Ten Questions Concerning Well-Being In The Built Environment, Sergio Altomonte, Joseph Allen, Philomena M. Bluyssen, Gail Brager, Lisa Heschong, Angela Loder, Stefano Schiavon, Jennifer A. Veitch, Lily M. Wang, Pawel Wargocki

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Faculty Publications

Well-being in the built environment is a topic that features frequently in building standards and certification schemes, in scholarly articles and in the general press. However, despite this surge in attention, there are still many questions on how to effectively design, measure, and nurture well-being in the built environment. Bringing together experts from academia and the building industry, this paper aims to demonstrate that the promotion of well-being requires a departure from conventional agendas. The ten questions and answers have been arranged to offer a range of perspectives on the principles and strategies that can better sustain the consideration of …

The Geographic Disparities In Transportation-Related Physical Activity In The United States: An Analysis Of The 2017 Nhts Data, Hongwei Dong

Mineta Transportation Institute Publications

Research on the relationship between urbanicity and physical activity yielded mixed results despite many studies consistently showing that residents tended to undertake more transportation-related physical activity in a more urban environment. This study analyzed the 2017 NHTS data to examine the geographic disparities in physical activity, particularly transportation-related physical activity in the United States. Our analysis suggests the relationship between urbanicity and physical activity demonstrates a flat U-shape in graphed data. Residents are more physically active when they live in the areas from the two ends of the urbanization spectrum: inner cities and inner suburbs of large metropolitan areas and …

Increasing Health And Safety Through The Utilization Of 4d Modeling, Rogan J. Wells

Construction Management

Health and safety is one of the most important aspects of the construction industry. Every year there are thousands of work-related injuries in the construction industry. Avoiding these injuries is of the utmost importance on a jobsite. This paper will analyze how building information modeling, specifically the use of 4D building information modeling, can be utilized to increase the overall health and safety of construction jobsite. An exploratory survey was conducted amongst architecture, engineering, and construction industry professionals who hold a wide range of experience. The aim of this survey was to analyze their knowledge and experiences using building information …

Virtual Reality May Be The Next Frontier In Remote Mental Health Care, Shiva Pedram

SMART Infrastructure Facility - Papers

In recent years, experts have focused on finding better ways to improve remotely delivered mental health care. Now, virtual reality (VR) may pave the way for myriad new opportunities.

Impact Of Organizational Culture And Perceived Process Safety In The Uae Oil And Gas Industry, Mohamed Ali Al Mazrouei Mr., Khalizani Khalid Dr., Ross Davidson Dr., Salam Abdallah Dr.

The Qualitative Report

In the last few decades, there had been a lot of accidents in the oil and gas industry throughout the world. This article reports a qualitative study of 30 employees employed in the United Arab Emirates (UAE) oil and gas industry. Health, Safety, and Environment (HSE) culture is a concept which was studied in many researches. However, this research is set to examine how certain behaviors affect the safety performance in UAE’s oil and gas industry. Four core themes that were drawn from the interviewee discussions of how safety culture, leadership safety behaviors, supervisory safety behaviors, and employee training on …

Los Efectos De La Minería En La Salud: El Movimiento Social Aymara En Torno Al Cerro Márquez, Maya Hajny Fernandez

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

With the political and social state of Chile’s history, mining has been present for hundreds of years, affecting the land and the indigenous populations in the country. This study asked how mining in the town of Ticnamar would affect the community, what positive and negative results mining activity has, what the most important elements of the social movement against mining are and how all of these elements influence health. The study sought to learn and study the impact of and the motivations that mining could have in the community of Ticnamar, and how it is perceived by the community. More …

Map My Murder: A Digital Forensic Study Of Mobile Health And Fitness Applications, Courtney Hassenfeldt, Shabana Baig, Ibrahim Baggili, Xiaolu Zhang

Electrical & Computer Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

The ongoing popularity of health and fitness applications catalyzes

the need for exploring forensic artifacts produced by them. Sensitive

Personal Identifiable Information (PII) is requested by the applications

during account creation. Augmenting that with ongoing

user activities, such as the user’s walking paths, could potentially

create exculpatory or inculpatory digital evidence. We conducted

extensive manual analysis and explored forensic artifacts produced

by (n = 13) popular Android mobile health and fitness applications.

We also developed and implemented a tool that aided in the timely

acquisition and identification of artifacts from the examined applications.

Additionally, our work explored the type of …

16th Annual Symposium Of The School Of Science, Engineering And Health, Messiah College

School of Science, Engineering & Health (SEH) Symposium

In this 16th Annual Symposium of the School of Science, Engineering, and Health, our faculty, staff and students continue the strong tradition of showcasing student and faculty innovation, creativity, and productivity in our academic departments. Basic and applied research in science and health fields stem from curiosity, acquired skill, and a desire to test and improve processes from foundational principles. The outcomes of scientific research expand intellectual understanding and have tremendous impact on quality of life, environmental health, and human flourishing.

Angela C. Hare, Ph.D.

Dean of the School of Science, Engineering and Health

Insight To An Asbestos Laborer, Eduardo Delgadillo

Construction Management

Asbestos laborers are often overlooked and not cared for much in construction projects. While they are often forgotten in the construction industry, they play a big role in most remodels or demolition projects. Abatement workers are exposed to the dangers of asbestos on a daily basis. Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) and the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) are the federal agencies that regulate asbestos. The EPA regulates the use, transportation and disposal of asbestos, while OSHA sets the standards for work involving asbestos minerals. OSHA has regulations that demolition and/or abatement contractors must comply with since asbestos is considered …

Daylight: What Makes A Difference, M. Knoop, O. Stefani, B. Bueno, B. Matusiak, R. Hobday, A. Wirz-Justice, K. Martiny, T. Kantermann, M. Aarts, N. Zemmouri, S. Appelt, Brian Norton

Articles

Light is necessary for vision; it enables us to sense and perceive our surroundings and in many direct and indirect ways, via eye and skin, affects our physiological and psychological health. The use of light in built environments has comfort, behavioural, economic and environmental consequences. Daylight has many particular benefits including excellent visual performance, permitting good eyesight, effective entrainment of the circadian system as well as a number of acute non-image forming effects and the important role of vitamin D production. Some human responses to daylight seem to be well defined whilst others require more research to be adequately understood. …

Emerging Insights Of Health Informatics Research: A Literature Analysis For Outlining New Themes, Shah Miah, Jun Shen, John W. Lamp, Don Kerr, John Gammack

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

This paper presents a contemporary literature review to provide insights into the current health informatics literature. The objective of this study is to identify emerging directions of current health informatics research from the latest and existing studies in the health informatics domain. We analyse existing health informatics studies using a thematic analysis, so that justified sets of research agenda can be outlined on the basis of these findings. We selected articles that are published in the Science Direct online database. The selected 73 sample articles (published from 2014 to 2018 in premier health informatics journals) are considered as representative samples …

Cadmium Sulfide-Buffered Pv Systems: Assessing The Environmental, Health, And Economic Impacts, Maqsood Ali Mughal, Rajesh Sharma

Journal of the Arkansas Academy of Science

As the world’s population continues to grow, global energy crises are expected to rise in the future, thus accelerating the demand for renewable energy technology, particularly solar photovoltaics. The energy sector will face an increasingly complex array of interlocking challenges - technological, environmental, health, economic, and regulatory. In this paper, we study CdS, a widely used buffer material in thin film photovoltaics, to assess and monetize environmental, health, and socio-economic externalities associated with the use of the material. Currently, CdS has a significant advantage over other alternate buffer materials in terms of efficiency and low-cost production of large-area processing of …

Design Of A Distributed Real-Time E-Health Cyber Ecosystem With Collective Actions: Diagnosis, Dynamic Queueing, And Decision Making, Yanlin Zhou

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In this thesis, we develop a framework for E-health Cyber Ecosystems, and look into different involved actors. The three interested parties in the ecosystem including patients, doctors, and healthcare providers are discussed in 3 different phases. In Phase 1, machine-learning based modeling and simulation analysis is performed to remotely predict a patient's risk level of having heart diseases in real time. In Phase 2, an online dynamic queueing model is devised to pair doctors with patients having high risk levels (diagnosed in Phase 1) to confirm the risk, and provide help. In Phase 3, a decision making paradigm is proposed …

Students Perception Of Health And Safety Training Practices In The Construction Industry, Adam Will

Construction Management

Since its inception in 1970, the Occupational Safety and Health Act has steadily decreased the rate in which construction injuries, illnesses, and deaths occur in the industry. The Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) helps enforce these new standards yet some research suggests that safety performance appears to be a response to safety initiatives beyond compliance. Identifying workers’ perceptions of the training they receive is critical to the design and development of effective workplace safety programs. Utilizing a quantitative survey, data was collected from the Cal Poly Construction Management student body to find out how they were taught jobsite safety …

Optimized Health Monitoring Plans For A Steel, Double-Track Railway Bridge, Ahmed Rageh

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Railway bridges are an essential component of any modern society and play a significant transportation role. During the 19^th and early 20^th centuries steel truss and plate girder bridges were commonly used railway designs, with most of the trusses constructed using pin and eyebar systems and most other load carrying members being riveted, built-up sections.

Many of these bridges are still in use and are subjected to increased railway traffic intensity, loads and speeds. The current practice for evaluating the integrity of bridges in the United States, irrespective of use, is primarily via visual inspection, with those inspections …

Virtual Stethoscope/Otoscope Duo, Camila P. Monchini, Paige R. Mazur, Christian Navarro

Biomedical Engineering

The virtual stethoscope/otoscope duo is a medical device intended to allow patients to be seen by their medical provider via internet consultations from the comfort of their own home. This device allows patients to substitute in-person doctor visits by checking a patient’s cardiovascular, respiratory, and auditory health. This document is the statement of work for the virtual stethoscope/otoscope duo and contains information on similar products, patents, and relevant literatures containing virtual technologies that assist in patient diagnosis. Product specifications and other details for the device such as performance evaluation review techniques can also be found within this document outlining the …

Developing A Theoretical Model And Questionnaire Survey Instrument To Measure The Success Of Electronic Health Records In Residential Aged Care, Ping Yu, Siyu Qian

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Electronic health records (EHR) are introduced into healthcare organizations worldwide to improve patient safety, healthcare quality and efficiency. A rigorous evaluation of this technology is important to reduce potential negative effects on patient and staff, to provide decision makers with accurate information for system improvement and to ensure return on investment. Therefore, this study develops a theoretical model and questionnaire survey instrument to assess the success of organizational EHR in routine use from the viewpoint of nursing staff in residential aged care homes. The proposed research model incorporates six variables in the reformulated DeLone and McLean information systems success model: …

Exploring The Potential Of Big Data On The Health Care Delivery Value Chain (Cdvc): A Preliminary Literature And Research Agenda, William J. Tibben, Samuel Fosso Wamba

Faculty of Engineering and Information Sciences - Papers: Part B

Big data analytics (BDA) is emerging as a game changer in healthcare. While the practitioner literature has been speculating on the high potential of BDA in transforming the healthcare sector, few rigorous empirical studies have been conducted by scholars to assess the real potential of BDA. Drawing on the health care delivery value chain (CDVC) and an extensive literature review, this exploratory study aims to discuss current peer-reviewed articles dealing with BDA across the CDVC and discuss future research directions.

Improving Workers' Safety And Health In The Zimbabwean Mining And Quarrying Industry, Bernard Mabika

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Lack of effective occupational safety and health (OSH) strategies is a reason that

workplace accidents in the mining and quarrying industry remain high, making the

industry one of the riskiest operations worldwide. The purpose of this multiple case study

was to explore successful strategies mining and quarrying leaders in Zimbabwe used to

improve OSH. The key research question addressed successful strategies leaders in the

mining and quarrying industry use to improve employee occupational safety and health in

Zimbabwe. Six successful business leaders from 3 mining and quarrying mines in

Zimbabwe demonstrated an exception to unsafe practices, particularly through their

exceptional …

A Review Focujsed On The Psychological Effectiveness Of Tai Chi On Different Populations, Long Zhang, Thomas Lowder, Jian Liu

Jian Liu

No abstract provided.