Evaluation Of Cytocompatability And Safety Of Nerve Retraction Compounds For Local Disc Denervation To Treat Disc-Associated Low Back Pain,
2023
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Evaluation Of Cytocompatability And Safety Of Nerve Retraction Compounds For Local Disc Denervation To Treat Disc-Associated Low Back Pain, Fei San Lee, Uyen N. Nguyen, Rebecca A. Wachs
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Aberrant nerve growth into intervertebral discs is a common pathological feature of disc-associated LBP. Current treatments rely on short-term solutions using opioids or anti-inflammatory prescriptions which can lead to addiction and side effects, respectively. We hypothesize that removal of aberrant nerve fibers in the disc using nerve retraction compounds can alleviate discassociated LBP. We performed screening of nerve retraction compounds using adult rat dorsal root ganglia (DRG) explant culture in hydrogels to mimic disc innervation in vitro. Capsaicin, known to induce nerve retraction, was used as a positive control …
A Methodology To Optimize Site-Specific Field Capacity And
Irrigation Thresholds,
2023
Auburn University,
A Methodology To Optimize Site-Specific Field Capacity And Irrigation Thresholds, Hemendra Kumar, Puneet Srivastava, Jasmeet Lamba, Bruno Lena, Efstathios Diamantopoulos, Brenda Ortiz, Bijoychandra Takhellambam, Guilherme Morata, Luca Bondesan
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
The determination of field capacity (FC), irrigation thresholds, and irrigation amounts is characterized by site-specific soil hydraulic properties (SHPs). This study, conducted in two zones (zone 1 and zone 2) delineated based on soil, topography, and historical crop yield in Alabama (USA), focused on determining zone-specific FC using negligible drainage flux (qfc) criterion. The HYDRUS-1D model was used to optimize zone-specific SHPs using measured soil matric potential (h). The zone-specific FCs were determined using optimized and raw SHPs at 0.01 cm/day as qfc. The results showed that the optimized FC at qfc …
Agricultural Machinery Operator Monitoring System (Ag-Oms): A Machine Learning Approach For Real-Time Operator Safety Assessment,
2023
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Agricultural Machinery Operator Monitoring System (Ag-Oms): A Machine Learning Approach For Real-Time Operator Safety Assessment, Terence Irumva, Herve Mwunguzi, Santosh Pitla, Bethany Lowndes, Aaron Yoder, Ka-Chun Siu
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
The 2015 CS-CASH (Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, 2015) Injury Surveillance Surveys showed that around 19% of injuries to agricultural producers are related to tractors or large agricultural machinery, yet only a limited number of studies are found that address tools and methods for monitoring safety behaviors of agricultural machinery operators in real-time. The current safety behavior monitoring approaches require an in-person presence, which can be both time- and cost-inefficient, and the other available methods lack a feedback element to alert operators in realtime. As a result, the research presented in this study aimed to develop an …
Crop Stress Sensing And Plant Phenotyping Systems: A Review,
2023
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Crop Stress Sensing And Plant Phenotyping Systems: A Review, Geng Bai, Yufeng Ge
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
Enhancing resource use efficiency in agricultural field management and breeding high-performance crop varieties are crucial approaches for securing crop yield and mitigating negative environmental impact of crop production. Crop stress sensing and plant phenotyping systems are integral to variable-rate (VR) field management and high-throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP), with both sharing similarities in hardware and data processing techniques. Crop stress sensing systems for VR field management have been studied for decades, aiming to establish more sustainable management practices. Concurrently, significant advancements in HTPP system development have provided a technological foundation for reducing conventional phenotyping costs. In this paper, we present a …
Goniometer In The Air: Enabling Brdf Measurement Of Crop Canopies Using A Cable-Suspended Plant Phenotyping Platform,
2023
University of Nebraska - Lincoln
Goniometer In The Air: Enabling Brdf Measurement Of Crop Canopies Using A Cable-Suspended Plant Phenotyping Platform, Geng Bai, Yufeng Ge, Bryan Leavitt, John Gamon, David Scoby
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
The Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) quantifies the distribution of the spectral reflectance of a target surface at various viewing and illumination angles. In-field measurement of the BRDF of vegetation canopies improves the characterization of offnadir measurements and informs radiative transfer models of canopy reflectance, where the Lambertian assumption does not hold. However, current field goniometers are unable to measure BRDF efficiently, especially for tall vegetation across the growing season because of the limitations of clearance, field accessibility, and flexibility of the sensor field of view. In this study, we explored the potential of using a large-scale cable-suspended field phenotyping …
Osc-Co2: Coattention And Cosegmentation Framework For Plant State Change With Multiple Features,
2023
University of Nebraska-Lincoln and Southern Illinois University
Osc-Co2: Coattention And Cosegmentation Framework For Plant State Change With Multiple Features, Rubi Quiñones, Ashok Samal, Sruti Das Choudhury, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
Cosegmentation and coattention are extensions of traditional segmentation methods aimed at detecting a common object (or objects) in a group of images. Current cosegmentation and coattention methods are ineffective for objects, such as plants, that change their morphological state while being captured in different modalities and views. The Object State Change using Coattention-Cosegmentation (OSC-CO2) is an end-to-end unsupervised deep-learning framework that enhances traditional segmentation techniques, processing, analyzing, selecting, and combining suitable segmentation results that may contain most of our target object’s pixels, and then displaying a final segmented image. The framework leverages coattention-based convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and …
Clim4omics: A Geospatially Comprehensive Climate And Multi-Omics Database For Maize Phenotype Predictability
In The United States And Canada,
2023
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Clim4omics: A Geospatially Comprehensive Climate And Multi-Omics Database For Maize Phenotype Predictability In The United States And Canada, Parisa Sarzaeim, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola, Diego Jarquin, Hasnat Aslam, Natalia De Leon Gatti
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
The performance of numerical, statistical, and data-driven diagnostic and predictive crop production modeling relies heavily on data quality for input and calibration or validation processes. This study presents a comprehensive database and the analytics used to consolidate it as a homogeneous, consistent, multidimensional genotype, phenotypic, and environmental database for maize phenotype modeling, diagnostics, and prediction. The data used are obtained from the Genomes to Fields (G2F) initiative, which provides multiyear genomic (G), environmental (E), and phenotypic (P) datasets that can be used to train and test crop growth models to understand the genotype by environment (GxE) interaction phenomenon. A particular …
Estimating Battery Size Requirements For Tractor Electrification Of Row-Crop Planting Operations,
2023
University of Nebraska-Lincoln
Estimating Battery Size Requirements For Tractor Electrification Of Row-Crop Planting Operations, Cheetown Liew, Andrew Donesky, Mark Freyhof, Ian Tempelmeyer, Santosh Kumar Pitla
Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications
Power sources such as batteries, used for both on-road and off-road vehicles, are advancing at a rapid pace. Electric batteries are becoming more power dense, thus allowing them to be used as a power source to replace previous diesel or gasoline-powered systems. Efforts are underway to transition off-road agricultural vehicles from Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs); however, the energy requirements of typical agricultural field operations need to be fully understood before such a transition can occur. Theoretical prediction equations available in the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) standards or the use of engine …
The Seasonality And Climate Predictability Of The Frequency Of Extreme Flood Events Across The Contiguous United States,
2023
CUNY City College of New York
The Seasonality And Climate Predictability Of The Frequency Of Extreme Flood Events Across The Contiguous United States, Ololade S. Alonge
Dissertations and Theses
This paper investigates the seasonality of the frequency of extreme flood events across the United States (US) and outlines the impact of large-scale climate on its spatio-temporal variability. The analysis was conducted on 317 stream gages from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Hydro-Climatic Data Network (HDCN) over a period of 68 years (1950-2017), resulting in the estimation of the counts of extreme floods (defined as the number of days in each month when the streamflow is greater than the 95th percentile of daily distribution) and the determination of the Markham’s seasonality index for it. 97% of the stations …
Hdd Dataset: Optimising Retrofitted Insulation For Irish Residential Building Walls,
2023
Technological University Dublin
Hdd Dataset: Optimising Retrofitted Insulation For Irish Residential Building Walls, Rakshit D. Muddu, Aimee Byrne, Anthony James Robinson
Datasets
In this study, a thermal-economic analysis was conducted to determine the optimum insulation thickness of retrofitted insulation walls in different regions in Ireland. This was based on the Heating Degree Day method (HDD). This dataset contains optimum insulation thickness, payback period, cost savings and carbon emission for all 25 counties in the Republic of Ireland
Optimizing Sample Collection And Data Interpretation For Effective Wastewater-Based Epidemiology In Combined Sewer Systems,
2023
West Virginia University
Optimizing Sample Collection And Data Interpretation For Effective Wastewater-Based Epidemiology In Combined Sewer Systems, Christopher Allen Anderson
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
COVID-19 has spurred growth in the science surrounding wastewater-based epidemiology (WBE) pertaining to the detection of severe acute respiratory virus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) in waste streams as an early warning signal for public health. However, the highly variable wastewater environment has made it difficult to standardize an approach for sampling and analysis, especially in locations using combined sewer infrastructure. This study addresses knowledge gaps of WBE via three specific aims: (1) to compare diurnal fluctuations of SARS-CoV-2 and the human fecal indicator, pepper mild mottle virus (PMMoV) in wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) influent samples collected during dry versus wet weather conditions; …
Concentrated Wastewater Treatment Using A Ferric Iron-Dosed Anaerobic Upflow Sludge Blanket Reactor For Recovery Of Phosphorus And Ammonium,
2023
West Virginia University
Concentrated Wastewater Treatment Using A Ferric Iron-Dosed Anaerobic Upflow Sludge Blanket Reactor For Recovery Of Phosphorus And Ammonium, Carley E. Shingleton
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
This study evaluated the performance of a novel, ferric iron-dosed anaerobic bioreactor to recover two separate nutrient products from concentrated wastewaters -- phosphorus as vivianite (Fe3(PO4)2×8H2O) and an ammonium-containing effluent with low organics. A bench-scale upflow anaerobic sludge blanket (UASB) reactor fed with a synthetic wastewater (458.0 mg/L total organic carbon, 282.7 mg/L ammonium, and 84.4 mg/L phosphate) was dosed with a ferric chloride solution at an org. C/Fe3+ molar ratio ~17.5 to facilitate organic carbon oxidation coupled to iron reduction. The reactor design allowed natural settling of vivianite to its …
Spatiotemporal Trends In Particle-Associated Microbial Communities In A Chlorinated Drinking Water Distribution System,
2023
West Virginia University
Spatiotemporal Trends In Particle-Associated Microbial Communities In A Chlorinated Drinking Water Distribution System, Madison Haddix
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
Bacteria can survive treatment and enter drinking water distribution systems (DWDSs), or enter DWDSs through intrusion or maintenance work on the system. DWDSs can also be suitable environments for bacterial regrowth. Many factors can affect the microbial community composition of DWDSs, including various spatiotemporal, hydraulic, and water quality parameters. Although most bacteria within DWDSs are harmless, opportunistic pathogens, such as Legionella pneumophila, Pseudomonas aeruginosa, and Mycobacterium avium, can inhabit DWDSs and premise plumbing and are the leading cause of waterborne disease outbreaks in developed countries. Previous studies have attempted to establish relationships between various parameters and microbial …
Study Of Capillary Channel Fiber Augmented Geobags For Accelerated Dewatering Of High Moisture Content Fine-Grained Acid Mine Drainage Precipitate,
2023
West Virginia University
Study Of Capillary Channel Fiber Augmented Geobags For Accelerated Dewatering Of High Moisture Content Fine-Grained Acid Mine Drainage Precipitate, Luke William Daugherty
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
The objective of this study was to investigate techniques to accelerate filtration and dewatering of Acid Mine Drainage precipitate using geobags augmented with Capillary Chanel Fibers and internal lateral drainage structures. Laboratory and field research investigated increasing the total solids retention of Acid Mine Drainage precipitate in geobag storage systems. Current geobag design and field application of treated AMD precipitate exhibits limited filtration and drainage efficiency due to the high moisture content (2500%) polymer amended AMD flocculated solids. Capillary channel fibers (CCFs) are geosynthetic yarns formed with microgrooves and set into bundled arrangements capable of wicking water, via capillary action, …
Simulating Energy Performance Of Buildings: A Study Using Equest And Energy Star® Portfolio Manager,
2023
West Virginia University
Simulating Energy Performance Of Buildings: A Study Using Equest And Energy Star® Portfolio Manager, Sabin Wagle
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
The urgent need for improving building energy efficiency in response to global warming and environmental sustainability has highlighted the importance of practical techniques to optimize energy performance. The study utilizes the eQUEST simulation engine and Energy Star® Portfolio Manager to evaluate retrofit and design parameters and conduct a sensitivity analysis to explore the impact of different parameters on building energy performance. The study develops building energy models in eQUEST using data from two fully operational Distribution centers. It is calibrated using the Normalized Mean Bias Error (NMBE) and Coefficient of Variation of Root Mean Square Error (CV(RMSE)) method, meeting the …
Development Of Polymeric Sorbents As Reusable Filtration Systems For Remediation Of Pfas Contaminated Water,
2023
University of Kentucky
Development Of Polymeric Sorbents As Reusable Filtration Systems For Remediation Of Pfas Contaminated Water, E. Molly Frazar
Theses and Dissertations--Chemical and Materials Engineering
Decades of use of per- and polyfluoroalkyl substances (PFAS) in a multitude of consumer and industry-based products have led to a devastating amount of soil and water contamination. Although these chemicals and compounds possess advantageous qualities – such as that of PFAS in the role of fire-fighting foams that have no doubt saved countless lives and homes, we must take responsibility for the anthropogenic hazards that threaten our global health. This entails being able to cost-effectively remediate problems created in the past from overuse of toxic substances that could negatively impact our future, and in this case, the future of …
A Sustainable Ultrafiltration Of Sub-20 Nm Nanoparticles In Water And Isopropanol: Experiments, Theory And Machine Learning,
2023
Virginia Commonwealth University
A Sustainable Ultrafiltration Of Sub-20 Nm Nanoparticles In Water And Isopropanol: Experiments, Theory And Machine Learning, Jie Mcatee
Theses and Dissertations
This research focused on ultrafiltration (UF) for particles down to 2 nm against membranes with larger pore size in water and IPA, which has the potential to save up to 90% of energy. This study developed electrospray (ES) - scanning mobility particle sizer (SMPS) method to fast and effective measure retention efficiencies for small particles (ZnS, Au and PSL) on polytetrafluoroethylene (PTFE), polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) and polycarbonate (PCTE) in different liquids. Theoretical models that could quantitatively explain the experimental results for small particles in medium-polarity organic solvents were also developed. Results showed that the highest efficiency was up to ~80% …
Numerical Study Of Sediment Suspension Affected By Rigid Cylinders Under Unidirectional And Combined Wave-Current Flows,
2023
Old Dominion University
Numerical Study Of Sediment Suspension Affected By Rigid Cylinders Under Unidirectional And Combined Wave-Current Flows, Sha Lou, Xiaolan Chen, Shengyu Zhou, Gangfeng Ma, Shuguang Liu, Larisa Dorzhievna Radnaeva, Elena Nikitina, Irina Viktorovna Fedorova
Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications
Sediment transport modeling for flows with cylinders is very challenging owing to the complicated flow–cylinder–sediment interactions, especially under the combined wave-current flows. In this paper, an improved formulation for incipient sediment suspension considering the effect of cylinder density (i.e., solid volume fraction) is employed to simulate the bottom sediment flux in the flow with cylinders. The proposed model is calibrated and validated using laboratory measurements under unidirectional and combined wave-current flows in previous studies. It is proved that the effects of cylinders on sediment suspension can be accounted for through a modified critical Shields number, and the proposed model is …
Development Of A Framework To Support Community-Scale Nutrient Recovery For Local Crop Fertilization And Production,
2023
West Virginia University
Development Of A Framework To Support Community-Scale Nutrient Recovery For Local Crop Fertilization And Production, Scott A. Lopez
Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports (ETD)
Nutrient and resource recovery (NRR) has become increasingly crucial as regions face deteriorating sanitation infrastructures, limited support, and growing environmental challenges. Implementing region-specific NRR technologies and systems could provide effective circular economy insights into addressing these challenges. Because of the multidisciplinary challenges associated with the design and implementation of NRR strategies, various government and local decision-makers need to collaborate effectively in the decision-making process. Structured decision-making (SDM) methodologies are practical when determining the most appropriate NRR strategy for nutrient-rich waste streams. However, applications of computational SDM limited because of the vast amounts of data that are needed to analyze the …
Removal Of Disinfection Byproducts In Drinking Water Using Biological Filtration,
2023
South Dakota State University
Removal Of Disinfection Byproducts In Drinking Water Using Biological Filtration, Peng Dai
Electronic Theses and Dissertations
Drinking water disinfection is essential to protecting public health from waterborne diseases. However, the reaction of disinfectants with natural organic matter (NOM) can form carcinogenic disinfection byproducts (DBPs). Drinking water treatment facilities employ precursor control and alternative disinfectants to minimize regulated DBPs formation to comply with Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) guidelines. Despite their efficacy, some limitations have been observed during the application, such as increased cost of enhanced coagulation, high demand for sludge disposal, inconsistency in precursor removal, and formation of more toxic unregulated and unknown DBPs. Therefore, it is important to develop more efficient and safe strategies for DBPs …
