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Surgical Cutting And Ablation By Energy Based Devices: Principles And Applications, Garrett Mcguinness, Joseph A. Mcgeough, Graham Gavin, Brendan O'Daly

Conference Papers

Advances in ultrasound, radiofrequency, and water jet systems are facilitating their increased use in new medical ablation or cutting applications in fields as diverse as cardiology, orthopaedics, ophthalmology, dermatology, oncology and neurosurgery. These methods involve controlled alteration or destruction of tissues via the application of thermal, electrical or kinetic energy. This market segment is characterised by advanced devices capable of heating or cooling tissue from -200°C to 400°C, or inducing vibrations of up to 60 kHz to cause tissue damage. The medical conditions targeted primarily pertain to chronic and age-related diseases, but elective and cosmetic procedures are also addressed. Medical …

Enterprise Requirements And Acquisition Model, David A. Leach, Chad T. Searle

Theses and Dissertations

In support of senior leadership emphasis on improving early systems engineering and analysis, the Enterprise Requirements and Acquisition Model (ERAM) is a quantitative discrete-event process simulation model that accounts for activities from the identification of a desired space capability early in the JCIDS process through Milestone C of the acquisition system resulting in a probabilistic schedule distribution for a given concept. This model of the DoD's space capability development process will provide valuable decision making information for Concept Characterization and Technical Descriptions referenced during Analysis of Alternatives. The research focused on identifying activities, assigning historical triangular distributions and probabilities at …

Solar Warning Architecture For Manned Missions To Mars, James S. Bohren, John K. Howard

Theses and Dissertations

Solar radiation storms represent a dire threat to manned interplanetary space travel. Earth's current solar forecasting architecture is Earth-focused and insufficient to provide timely warnings to a manned mission to Mars, therefore a "best value" solar warning architecture must be identified. A total of 14 solar warning architectures were developed by varying 5 solar sensor locations, 2 processing locations, and 2 communications strategies. Using Satellite Tool Kit, performance of the candidate architectures in terms of Warning Time and Solar Coverage was quantified during a Mars mission scenario based on NASA's Design Reference Architecture 5.0. Cost of each candidate architecture was …

Risks Associated With Federal Construction Projects, Krishna R. Surajbally

Theses and Dissertations

The rise in terrorism, corporate espionage, cyber attacks, and federal fiscal constraints play an important role in the federal construction process. The risks associated with these occurrences are studied to aid in the risk management of the military construction process. This paper presents the status of research into these areas to identify how methods, policies, applications, and information obtained from case studies can be used by stakeholders to manage risk in the United States Air Force construction process. The author reviewed research on risk associated with four essential components of the military construction process – Critical Infrastructure, Information Technology, Contracts, …

Design And Characterization Of A Space Based Chromotomographic Hyperspectral Imaging Experiment, Jason D. Niederhauser

Theses and Dissertations

This research focuses upon the design, analysis and characterization of several systems related to a spacebased chromotomographic experiment (CTEx), a hyperspectral imager, currently in development at the Air Force Institute of Technology. Three interrelated subject-areas were developed. The initial focal point was a generic, system-level mechanical layout and integration analysis of the space-based instrument. The scope of this work was intended to baseline the space-based system design in order to allow for further trade-space refinement and requirements development. Second, development of an iteration upon the ground-based version of CTEx was accomplished in an effort to support higher-fidelity field data-collection. This …

Fabrication And Characterization Of A Hydrogel Containing Electrospun Fibers, C. J. Rivet, R. J. Gilbert

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Electro spun an fibers hydrogels are two focal points of research within the biomaterial's community. The electrospinning process allows for fabrication of nanoscale, aligned topography and has been shown to direct cellular migration and outgrowth. Hydrogels exhibit benefits over traditional, rigid scaffolds in that they are injectable and can be tailored to mimic the mechanical properties of the surrounding tissue. Although both electro spun fibers and hydrogels display favorable characteristics for biomedical applications in vitro, there in vivo benefits are limited due to inherent deficiencies Therefore, to advance the field of biomaterials research, a composite material containing electro spun fibers …

Fabrication And Analysis Of Variable Density Poly-(L)-Lactic Acid Fiber Scaffolds, N. W. Zaccor, C. J. Rivet, R. J. Gilbert

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) is an extensively studied synthetic polymer that has demonstrated utility as a scaffolding material. A common technique for the fabrication of PLLA scaffolds is electrospinning. The purpose of the present material study was to assess whether an electrospinning process could produce consistent and uniform PLLA scaffold densities. An 8% PLLA solution was made using a 1:1 chloroform: dichloromethane solution and was then run through an electrospinning apparatus. Samples were spun onto 4% PLLA films for 2- or 20-min. Scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used for imaging the scaffolds. A nine-measurement data set was used for the assessment …

Aligned, Electrospun Topography For Use With External Stimulus Systems, S. G. Quallich, C. J. Rivet, R. J. Gilbert

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Variations in fiber density, diameter, and orientation can be used to direct cell migration and guide neurite growth. The characterization of electro spun fibers is essential prior to conducting further research that utilizes electro spun scaffolds to control the magnitude and direction of cell migration and neurite growth. The goal of this study is to create highly aligned, electro spun fibers on poly-L-lactic acid (PLLA) films in parallel and perpendicular orientations to the long axis of rectangular cover slips. Fibers were electro spun into scaffolds and scanning electron microscopy (SEM) was used to characterize fiber density and orientation. The construction …

Using Cerebrospinal Fluid For In Situ Fabrication Of Injectable Alginate Hydrogels For Spinal Cord Repair, C. A. Mckay, R. J. Gilbert

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Severe mechanical trauma of the spinal cord induces a secondary injury response that contributes to post injury cell death and the formation of barriers inhibitory to neuronal regeneration. It is believed that engineered scaffolds produce favorable results when they mimic the properties of the t issue that they are aiming to replicate. Alginate hydrogels have been shown to be beneficial in a number of biomaterial applications and this study shows that alginate hydrogels formed in the presence of an artificial cerebrospinal fluid are able to form hydrogels with mechanical properties similar to those exhibited by neural tissue in the CNS. …

Decreasing The Gelation Time Of Fibrin Hydrogels, C. D. Johnson, J. Zudiema, R. J. Gilbert

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Spinal cord injury (SCI) is a debilitating problem that often results in paraplegia or quadriplegia. Fibrin hydrogels can be injected into the injured cavity and fill the irregular space. Current techniques require 60 minutes to form a hydrogel. The purpose of this study was to design a fibrin biomaterial that would solidify at a faster rate. By augmenting the existing fabrication procedure, a novel biomaterial was created that formed in 5-7 minutes but lost much of its mechanical stability. Further studies will be performed to improve the mechanical properties while maintaining the faster rate of formation observed here. © 2011 …

Use Of Remote Sensing To Support Forest And Wetlands Policies In The Usa, Audrey L. Mayer, Ricardo D. Lopez

College of Forest Resources and Environmental Science Publications

The use of remote sensing for environmental policy development is now quite common and well-documented, as images from remote sensing platforms are often used to focus attention on emerging environmental issues and spur debate on potential policy solutions. However, its use in policy implementation and evaluation has not been examined in much detail. Here we examine the use of remote sensing to support the implementation and enforcement of policies regarding the conservation of forests and wetlands in the USA. Specifically, we focus on the “Roadless Rule” and “Travel Management Rules” as enforced by the US Department of Agriculture Forest Service …

Failing Drop Co2 Deposition (Desublimation) Heat Exchanger For The Cryogenic Carbon Capture Process, David William James

Theses and Dissertations

Cryogenic carbon capture removes CO2 and other pollutants from flue and waste stream gases produced from the combustion of fossil fuels such as coal, natural gas, and oil and the production of cement. A transient, 1-dimensional numerical model was developed to study the temperature profile within a counter-current surface CO2 desublimation-falling liquid or solid heat exchanger. Effects of desublimation heat and mass transfer as well as convective and conductive heat transfer relationships were taken into account. Experiments show that CO2 can be captured on a falling spherical particle when appropriate column operating conditions are met.

Ceas E-News 06.09.2011, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

College of Engineering and Applied Sciences News

Wireless Sensor With Unique Features, CCE Offers New Grade I Certification

A Comparison Of Two Headless Compression Screws For Operative Treatment Of Scaphoid Fractures, Ruby Grewal, Joseph Assini, David Sauder, Louis Ferreira, Jim Johnson, Kenneth Faber

Surgery Publications

PURPOSE: The purpose of this study was to compare the interfragmentary compression force across a simulated scaphoid fracture by two commonly used compression screw systems; the Acutrak 2 Standard and the 3.0 mm Synthes headless compression screw.

METHODS: Sixteen (8 pairs; 6 female, 2 male) cadaver scaphoids were randomly assigned to receive either the Acutrak 2 or Synthes screw with the contralateral scaphoid designated to receive the opposite. Guide wires were inserted under fluoroscopic control. Following transverse osteotomy, the distal and proximal fragments were placed on either side of a custom load cell, to measure interfragmentary compression. Screws were placed …

Thermal Analysis Of The Cubesat Cp3 Satellite, Jonas Friedel, Sean Mckibbon

Aerospace Engineering

Due to inconsistencies found in the on-orbit thermal data from the CubeSat CP3 satellite between 2007 and 2011, further analysis is performed on a larger number of data from August 2010 through April 2011, aiming to find an explanation for the overall increasing measured temperatures and shortening peak periods. Therefore, the satellite power data as well as orbital anomalies are analyzed leading to the conclusion that the satellite was temporarily (January – March 2011) orbiting with significantly increased sun exposure causing the higher temperatures. The shortened temperature peak periods are explained by alternating albedo values as the main influence in …

Temperature Control Device With A Flexible Temperature Control Surface, Phil D. Belgrader, Christopher G. Cooney, Robert D. Doebler, Anna D. Hickerson, Bruce D. Irvine, Ali D. Nadim, James D. Sterling, Reza Miraghale

Business and Information Technology Faculty Research & Creative Works

A device for controlling temperature in a reaction chamber is disclosed. The device comprises: a bladder assembly comprising a housing dimensioned to hold a reaction chamber disposed within an interior Volume of the housing; and a first temperature-control bladder disposed within the housing, the first temperature-control bladder is configured to receive a temperature-control fluid and comprises a flexible, heat conductive Surface that comes in contact with at least a portion of an exterior surface of the reaction chamber after receiving the temperature-control fluid. Also disclosed are a bladder thermal cycler, a temperature-control bladder assembly and methods for producing a thermal …

Neural Network Based Edge Detection For Automated Medical Diagnosis, Dingran Lu, Xiao-Hua Yu, Xiaomin Jin, Bin Li, Quan Chen, Jianhua Zhu

Electrical Engineering

Edge detection is an important but rather difficult task in image processing and analysis. In this research, artificial neural networks are employed for edge detection based on its adaptive learning and nonlinear mapping properties. Fuzzy sets are introduced during the training phase to improve the generalization ability of neural networks. The application of the proposed neural network approach to the edge detection of medical images for automated bladder cancer diagnosis is also investigated. Successful computer simulation results are obtained.

Chemical Sensor Resolution Requirements For Near-Surface Measurements Of Turbulent Fluxes, M. D. Rowe, C. W. Fairall, J. A. Perlinger, J. A. Perlinger

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Businger and Delany (1990) presented an approach to estimate the sensor resolution required to limit the contribution of the uncertainty in the chemical concentration measurement to uncertainty in the flux measurement to 10 % for eddy covariance, gradient, and relaxed eddy accumulation flux measurement methods. We describe an improvement to their approach to estimate required sensor resolution for the covariance method, and include disjunct eddy covariance. In addition, we provide data to support selection of a form for the dimensionless scalar standard deviation similarity function based on observations of the variance of water vapor fluctuations from recent field experiments. We …

Use Of Imaging Biomarkers To Assess Perfusion And Glucose Metabolism In The Skeletal Muscle Of Dystrophic Mice, Nabeel Ahmad, Ian Welch, Robert Grange, Jennifer Hadway, Savita Dhanvantari, David Hill, Ting-Yim Lee, Lisa M Hoffman

Robarts Imaging Publications

BACKGROUND: Duchenne muscular dystrophy (DMD) is a severe neuromuscular disease that affects 1 in 3500 boys. The disease is characterized by progressive muscle degeneration that results from mutations in or loss of the cytoskeletal protein, dystrophin, from the glycoprotein membrane complex, thus increasing the susceptibility of contractile muscle to injury. To date, disease progression is typically assessed using invasive techniques such as muscle biopsies, and while there are recent reports of the use of magnetic resonance, ultrasound and optical imaging technologies to address the issue of disease progression and monitoring therapeutic intervention in dystrophic mice, our study aims to validate …

Why Fuzzy Transform Is Efficient In Large-Scale Prediction Problems: A Theoretical Explanation, Irina Perfilieva, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Setup Reduction Time At A Batch Manufacturing Plant, Mario A. Aguilar

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This project documents the efforts to reduce setup times at a batch manufacturing culture media production plant. The company is one of the leading producers in medical and laboratory supplies, including culture media. In the production of culture media, the production line requires to switch between solutions once or twice a day depending on the production schedule.

The report provides the production plant with a concrete analysis of their current changeover method, which tends to be lengthy and complicated, and suggest alternatives in short and long term periods of time to reduce setup time.

After analyzing the time studies of …

Processing Interval Sensor Data In The Presence Of Outliers, With Potential Applications To Localizing Underwater Robots, Jan Sliwka, Luc Jaulin, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

Measurements are never absolutely accurate, the measurement result X is, in general, different from the actual (unknown) values x of the corresponding quantity. In many practical problems, we only know upper bounds D on the measurement errors d = X - x. In such situations, once we know the measurement result, the only conclusion that we can make about the actual value x is that this value belongs to the interval [X - D, X + D]. There exist many efficient algorithms for processing such interval data. However, these algorithms usually assume that all the measurement results are valid. In …

Towards A "Generic" Notion Of Genericity: From "Typical" And "Random" To Meager, Shy, Etc., Ali Jalal-Kamali, Ondrej Nebesky, Michael H. Durcholz, Vladik Kreinovich, Luc Longpre

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In many application areas, it is important to study "generic" properties, i.e., properties which hold for ``typical'' examples. For example, if we know the probabilities of different events, we can consider a "random" object -- i.e., an object that, crudely speaking, does not belong to any class of "unusual" events (i.e., to any class with a small probability). In other cases, "typical" may mean not belonging to an "unusual" subset which is small in some other sense -- e.g., a subset of a smaller dimension. The corresponding notion of "typicalness" has been formalized for several cases, including the case of …

Is It Possible To Have A Feasible Enclosure-Computing Method Which Is Independent Of The Equivalent Form?, Marcin Michalak, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

The problem of computing the range [y] of a given function f(x1, ..., xn) over given intervals [xi] -- often called the main problem of interval computations -- is, in general, NP-hard. This means that unless P = NP, it is not possible to have a feasible (= polynomial time) algorithm that always computes the desired range. Instead, interval computations algorithms compute an enclosure [Y] for the desired range. For all known feasible enclosure-computing methods -- starting with straightforward interval computations -- there exist two expressions f(x1, ..., xn) and g(x1, ..., xn) for computing the same function that lead …

Development Of Wearable Sensors For Body Joint Angle Measurement, Saba Bakhshi Khayani

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

This thesis presents the development of three different methods for body joint angle measurement using wearable sensors. Continuous monitoring of patients' movements and activities has recently become one of the active research areas in the field of body sensor network and telehealth monitoring. For many medical and rehabilitation applications, a continuous monitor of the patients' daily activities at home without visiting the hospital is desirable. This type of monitoring is beneficial for the therapists and physicians as it does not require patients' physical presence. Traditionally, measuring the range of motion (ROM) is performed in hospitals by utilizing standard tools such …

Design, Fabrication, And Testing Of An Electromagnetic Rail Gun For The Repeated Testing And Simulation Of Orbital Debris Impacts, Jeff Maniglia, Jordan Smiroldo, Alex Westfall, Guy Zohar

Aerospace Engineering

An Electromagnetic Railgun (EMRG) was designed, built, and tested, capable of firing a projectile a 1 gram projectile at 650 m/s muzzle velocity. The EMRG utilizes an injector, a high voltage power supply, a capacitor bank, inductors and rails. The injector fires 2300 psig Nitrogen gas into the system to provide an initial velocity. The high voltage power supply charges the capacitor bank. The capacitor bank discharges the electric potential built up through the projectile while inside the rails in order to create the EMRG’s force. The inductors are used to pulse form the capacitor bank in order to get …

The Effects Of Cure Schedule On Properties Of Glass-Fiber Reinforced Epoxy Matrix Composites, Trevor J. Lee

Materials Engineering

Two different two-component resin systems were cured, via Differential Scanning Calorimetry, for the times recommended by their respective manufacturers. The resin cure schedules were designed to simulate typical and attainable processing conditions; they were cured at 120°F, 140°F, and 160°F, and in-mold post-cured at 200°F, 230°F, and 260°F. The resulting scans were then compared to a baseline cure for each resin system, consisting of two heating-cooling cycles at a constant rate of temperature change. These baseline cures were then used to determine the percent cure of each sample and the shift in glass transition temperature between the baseline cure and …

Ergonomic Improvement On The Farm/Garden Hoe, Yuan Chao Jiang

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The hoes are widely used in the farms and home gardens in the United States. Many existing hoes are not ergonomically designed because they require a lot of back bending and wrist bending during use. Back bending often causes lower back injuries, and wrist bending often causes carpal tunnel syndrome. It can be very expensive to cure these injuries. The objective of this project is to reduce back bending and wrist bending by redesigning the hoe in an ergonomic perspective. In order to achieve the objective, ergonomics and human factors concepts are applied in the design. Two additional side handles …

The Ergo Knife Manufacturability Project: A Prosthetic Device, Caleb Sarris

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Millions of Americans’ upper extremities have been rendered useless or amputated due to injury or illness. Without strength and dexterity in the hand or wrist, these people are in need of tools to help them in everyday activities. The Ergo Knife offers these individuals a way to cope with this way of life as a device that can assist them, primarily in food consumption and can also be expanded to many other applications. The purpose of this project is to further develop the Ergo Knife so that it can better assist these individuals and improve the necessary processes used to …

Parker Aerospace Fluid Systems Division Product Support Facility Redesign, Sean Walker

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

With growing popularity for commercial air travel and aerial military operations comes an increase in demand for innovative, technological solutions of aircraft system components. As OEM sales of these components rise, this creates a burden on the aftermarket side of the business when these parts and systems require service in order to continue functioning properly. Parker Aerospace, Fluid Systems Division, and its Product Support Team are experiencing this growth burden and want to reconfigure necessary means within the layout to succeed in accommodating new program areas on the aftermarket side. During this process, cost reduction opportunities will be explored and …