Biomedical Engineering and Bioengineering Commons^™

Existing Empirical Kinetic Models In Biochemical Methane Potential (Bmp) Testing, Their Selection And Numerical Solution, Yehor Pererva, Charles D. Miller, Ronald C. Sims

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Biochemical Methane Potential (BMP) tests are a crucial part of feasibility studies to estimate energy recovery opportunities from organic wastes and wastewater. Despite the large number of publications dedicated to BMP testing and numerous attempts to standardize procedures, there is no “one size fits all” mathematical model to describe biomethane formation kinetic precisely. Importantly, the kinetics models are utilized for treatability estimation and modeling processes for the purpose of scale-up. A numerical computation approach is a widely used method to determine model coefficients, as a replacement for the previously used linearization approach. However, it requires more information for each model …

Revolutionizing The Mechanical Engineering Undergraduate Curriculum, Shelby Ann Mcneilly, Krishna Pakala, Donald Plumlee

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

As the age of technological advancement and occupational opportunity continues to progress, companies must be constantly adjusting and transforming in order to accommodate industry demands. With these quickly developing requirements comes an expectation of employee experience and skill sets. For individuals seeking a career in mechanical engineering, moving forward with the tools necessary for success in this continuously evolving world begins with higher education. This paper is the first of a three-part series to report on the progress of Boise State University’s Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Department’s mission to implement a revolutionized curriculum in their academic program. This paper will …

Small Molecule Drug Release Form In Situ Forming Degradable Scaffolds Incorporating Hydrogels And Bioceramic Microparticles, David A. Puleo, Todd A. Milbrandt, J. Zach Hilt, Paul Fisher, Vishwas Talwalkar

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Patents

The present invention relates to an injectable system combining a hydrogel, a bioceramic and a degradable matrix that provides for sustained drug delivery and structural support to recovering tissue, such as bone and the periodontium.

Study And Characterization Of Conductive Elastomers For Biomedical Applications, Hadis Gharacheh

Theses and Dissertations

Health issues have always been one of humankind's biggest challenges. Over the last century, there has been significant and monumental progress in health and biomedical science, with the end goal of alleviating and eliminating illnesses and ailments. For developing biomedical devices, polymers and elastomers group among other types of biomaterials have been highlighted to be used due to high flexibility, stability, biocompatibility, and mechanical and rheological characteristics. In this work, the characterization of acrylated poly glycerol_sebacate (PGSA) polymer conjugated with bio ionic liquid (BIL) was investigated. Results showed high biocompatibility, high printability with tunable mechanical, adhesive, and conductivity properties. For …

Optimal Reactor Configuration Of A Microbial Fuel Cell Containing Bacteria Genetically Engineered To Degrade Urea, Ann Mcmonigal, Sarah Khoilian, David Bengford

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The original specific aim of this project was to use a microbial fuel cell (MFC) fueled by the catabolism of E. coli DH5α (pKAU17) bacteria in order generate current as a result of urea degradation. The initial design plan was to test the bacteria outside of the MFC, obtain power measurements,, and finally, construct an electrochemical model that would be compared to an existing theoretical model developed at SCU. Using a 0.25 L anode chamber, graphite electrodes and a sulfonated tetrafluoroethylene based fluoropolymercopolymer proton exchange membrane the galvanic cell was constructed. In response to constraints, the design plan was modified …

A Convolutional Neural Network For Fast Fluence Estimation In Complex Tissues, Nicholas Blasey, Geoffrey P. Luke

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

Photoacoustic (PA) imaging is a non-invasive diagnostic imaging technique that gives images of photoabsorbers based on their absorption of optical energy. These optical absorption properties can then be linked to important tissue properties. For the method to be quantitative, however, it is necessary to have an accurate estimation of the light fluence in the tissue. The current gold standard in addressing the fluence estimation problem, a Monte Carlo Simulation, is costly in time and computation. In this work, we developed a deep neural network to quickly and accurately estimate light fluence in arbitrary tissue types and geometries. The network was …

Bio Circuits For Evolutionary Biotech, Camilo Toruno

ENGS 86 Independent Projects (AB Students)

The field of bioengineering has much promise for renewable chemical production, bioremediation, and of course medical applications. Developing new useful microorganisms is extremely time and capital intensive, typically taking 50 million USD and eight years. This is due in large part to the low throughput techniques that are characteristic of the field of metabolic engineering. Here we describe the modification of an existing synthetic biosensor to measure the pharmaceutical dopamine, and the use of a circuit simulator Cadence to predict improvements to the biosensor. This biosensor paired with directed evolution techniques could reach throughputs of 5 million cells per day …

Toward Precision Medicine With Nanopore Technology, Trang Andrea Vu

Theses and Dissertations

Currently, when patients are diagnosed with cancer, they often receive a treatment based on the type and stage of the tumor. However, different patients may respond to the same treatment differently, due to the variation in their genomic alteration profile. Thus, it is essential to understand the effect of genomic alterations on cancer drug efficiency and engineer devices to monitor these changes for therapeutic response prediction. Nanopore-based detection technology features devices containing a nanometer-scale pore embedded in a thin membrane that can be utilized for DNA sequencing, biosensing, and detection of biological or chemical modifications on single molecules. Overall, this …

Cancer Biomarker Detection In Human Plasma By Integrating Surface Acoustic Wave And Metal-Enhanced Fluorescence, Yuqi Huang

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This thesis includes data and discussion about the technique of metal-enhanced fluorescence (MEF) to lower the detection limit of carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA). The detection limit goes down to 100pg/mL level when using MEF substrate made by rapid thermally annealed silver film covered by silica, which has great promise in diagnosing certain types of cancer that uses CEA as detection biomarker, such as pancreatic cancer and colon cancer. To further address the issue of background noises from non-specifically bound proteins (NSB) in complex media, such as plasma, serum, urine and blood, MEF is integrated with surface acoustic wave (SAW) streaming in …

Utilizing Neural Networks And Wearables To Quantify Hip Joint Angles And Moments During Walking And Stair Ascent, Megan V. Mccabe

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

Wearable sensors were leveraged to develop two methods for computing hip joint angles and moments during walking and stair ascent that are more portable than the gold standard. The Insole-Standard (I-S) approach replaced force plates with force-measuring insoles and achieved results that match the curvature of results from similar studies. Peaks in I-S kinetic results are high due to error induced by applying the ground reaction force to the talus. The Wearable-ANN (W-A) approach combines wearables with artificial neural networks to compute the same results. Compared against the I-S, the W-A approach performs well (average rRMSE = 18%, R^{2 …}

Faculty Perspectives On The Impact Of Virtual Office Hours In Engineering Courses, Brooke-Lynn Caprice Andrade, Krishna Pakala, Diana Bairaktarova, Douglas Hagemeier, Harish Subbaraman

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Instructor-student interaction is an important element of a course design, but office hours can be challenging to attend based on students’ commitments. They have time and space limitations that prevent students from getting the help they need and often garner poor attendance. Virtual office hours can address issues related to low attendance and provide a low stakes environment where unhindered learning can happen. Virtual office hours are flexible, yield productive interactions, and all enrolled students can participate. This study reports on three engineering instructors’ perspectives on the efficacy of virtual office hours compared to the traditional face-to-face interactions with the …

Simulation Of Cu Precipitation In Fe-Cu Dilute Alloys With Cluster Mobility, Senlin Cui, Mahmood Mamivand, Dane Morgan

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Cu-rich precipitates formation is associated with the precipitation hardening of Fe-Cu based steels and the embrittlement of reactor pressure vessel steels under neutron irradiation. The accurate modeling of the time evolution of Cu-rich precipitates is therefore of fundamental importance for the design of Fe-Cu based steels and the prediction of the irradiation induced shift of the ductile to brittle transition temperature of reactor pressure vessels. This work applies cluster dynamics with mobile Cu monomers and clusters to model Cu precipitation in dilute Fe-Cu alloys at several temperatures. Optimized model parameters can be used to simulate the mean radius, number density, …

Heating Performance Analysis For Short-Term Energy Monitoring And Prediction Using Multi-Family Residential Energy Consumption Data, Sukjoon Oh, Chul Kim, Joonghyeok Heo, Sung Lok Do, Kee Han Kim

Mechanical and Biomedical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Many smart apartments and renovated residential buildings have installed Smart Meters (SMs), which collect interval data to accelerate more efficient energy management in multi-family residential buildings. SMs are widely used for electricity, but many utility companies have been working on systems for natural gas and water monitoring to be included in SMs. In this study, we analyze heating energy use data obtained from SMs for short-term monitoring and annual predictions using change-point models for the coefficient checking method. It was found that 9-month periods were required to search the best short-term heating energy monitoring periods when non-weather-related and weather-related heating …

Novel Cancer Treatment Using Engineered Exosomes To Disrupt Cancer’S Immune Escape, Abena Boateng, Carley Fowler, Maritza Soria

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Cancer is one of the leading causes of death in the United States¹. This disease has impacted billions worldwide and has led to an ever-increasing burden on the healthcare system. Over the last couple of years, researchers have improved upon conventional cancer therapy that includes chemotherapy, radiation, and surgery. One novel approach is immunotherapy, which shows great potential because it has the ability to directly target cancerous cells². This is a viable treatment because most cancers develop the ability to block immune pathways and evade the killer immune cells in what is known as cancer immune …

Cervis: Cervical Cancer Early Response Visual Identification System, Kira Palazzo, Lauren Serfas, Juliana Trujillo

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The goal of CERVIS is to increase screening for cervical cancer through the development of a low-cost, minimally invasive screening procedure for women in low-resource settings that requires minimal healthcare expertise. There currently exist two primary screening procedures: the Pap smear, primarily used in developed countries, and visual inspection with acetic acid (VIA), primarily used in low and middle-income countries (LMICs). Both of these procedures require a high degree of healthcare training in order to administer and interpret, and are highly invasive, requiring direct interaction with the cervix. Our alternative procedure utilizes a particular bacteria, Fusobacterium nucleatum , within the …

Milkguard: A Low-Cost Hydrogel Sensor For The Detection Of Escherichia Coli In Donated Human Breast Milk, Emily Brogan, Ariana Haddad, Bridget Woody

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Breast milk is considered the gold standard of infant nutrition. However , many women around the world lack the ability to breastfeed their children due to disease, malnutrition, time constraints, or cultural considerations. Human breast milk banks exist to collect and distribute breast milk , allowing the greatest number of infants to have access to safe breast milk for optimal nutrition. To ensure the safety of the breast milk that is donated and distributed, milk banks must pasteurize and test donated breast milk for biological hazards such as bacteria. While pasteurization methods in the United States and other highly developed …

Smartphone-Tape Method For Calculating Body Segment Inertial Parameters For Analysis Of Pitching Arm Kinetics, Jay Sterner

Master's Theses

The objectives of this study were to (1) develop a non-invasive method (referred to as Smart Photo-Tape) to calculate participant-specific upper arm, forearm, and hand segment inertial properties (SIPs) (e.g. mass, center of mass, and radii of gyration) and (2) use those Smart Photo-Tape properties in inverse dynamics (ID) analyses to calculate injury-related pitching arm kinetics. Five 20- to 23- year-old baseball pitchers were photographed holding a baseball and analyzed using the Smart Photo-Tape method to obtain 3-D inertial properties for their upper arm, forearm, and hand. The upper arm and forearm segments were modelled as stacked elliptic cylinders and …

Investigation Of Experimental Variation Of Bovine Sphingomyelin As A Novel Ingredient For Ultraviolet Protection, Esther Chen

Master's Theses

Skin cancer is a prevalent disease that globally affects 2-3 million people per year [1]. This number is expected to grow tenfold as depletion of the ozone layer contributes to harsher rays reaching Earth’s surface [2]. A common way to protect against those ultraviolet waves is to apply sunscreen, however, recent reports call into question the safety of some active ingredients as they can enter through the skin into the bloodstream [3]. This thesis aims to investigate an alternative solution that uses bovine sphingomyelin (BSM) as photoprotective solution against UV irradiation.

In order to evaluate the effectiveness of BSM against …

Prosthetic Foot Shell, Ql+, Kathryn Victoria Versteeg, Jackson A. Tucker, Ethan William Frey

Mechanical Engineering

This final design review includes an overview of our project and the steps we have taken to create our final product. We discuss the background research conducted, including various products like the foot shell we are trying to design and its related patents, along with similar past senior projects. As our product is considered a medical device, there are also certain standards that we must comply with. After determining our problem statement, we established what we believe to be the wants and needs of our user. These wants and needs were converted into specifications for our design, with durability as …

Alternative Epinephrine Auto-Injector, Joshua Wong, Uriel Nieves-Cruz, Tara Howard

Biomedical Engineering

Project: Alternative Epinephrine Injector started as a solution for Bianca Aleman’s little brother however the scope has evolved to include the many millions of individuals across the world who struggle with a life-threatening allergen. The stakeholders of this project are Cal Poly and Dr. Michael D. Whitt. Our goals are the following:

● Develop a foolproof method of injection that consistently delivers a dosage of epinephrine

● Be equal or less than the current size of an EpiPen (6 in)

● Be easy to transport or store when not-in-use

● Create an isolated environment where the epinephrine will not be …