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Characterization Of Electrophoretic Deposited Zinc Oxide Nanopartices For The Fabrication Of Next-Generation Nanoscale Electronic Applications, Fawwaz Abduh A. Hazzazi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Several reports state that it is crucial to analyze nanoscale semiconductor materials and devices with potential benefits to meet the need for next-generation nanoelectronics, bio, and nanosensors. The progress in the electronics field is as significant now, with modern technology constantly evolving and a greater focus on more efficient robust optoelectronic applications. This dissertation focuses on the study and examination of the practicality of Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) for use in semiconductor applications.

The feasibility of several synthesized electrolytes, with and without surfactants and APTES surface functionalization, is discussed. The primary objective of this study …

Scale Up Of A Novel Method To Maximize Malonyl-Coa In Escherichia Coli, Clifford Harris Leblanc Iv

LSU Master's Theses

The instability of oil’s price along with its limited availability and impact on the environment motivate the search for an alternative feedstock that can sustain the profitability of chemical companies. Industrial biotechnology can promote renewable sources of energy and products by using microorganisms to produce a wide range of chemical compounds. The three-carbon metabolite, malonyl-CoA, can serve as a precursor to a variety of industrial chemicals. The major hurdle with using malonyl-CoA in industry is that its intracellular concentration in Escherichia Coli is very low. Previous attempts to increase the intracellular level of malonyl-CoA have ranged from genetic engineering of …

Micro Heat Exchanger To Cool Cerebrospinal Fluid For Brain Injury Treatment, Sachin Dahiya

LSU Master's Theses

Hypothermia is accepted as a method to preserve cells and tissue. Clinical evidence shows that administration of hypothermia could lead to neuroprotection after cardiac arrest. Non-invasive methods such as surface cooling devices, drugs and cold liquid ventilation are available to induce hypothermia. These approaches for achieving hypothermia have not been optimized yet. The surface cooling methods are generally slow and may lead to additional thermal shock to the body. Here, we propose a rapid, selective cooling method for the brain using a micro heat exchanger to cool the cerebrospinal fluids (CSF). We designed and 3D printed a U-type heat exchanger …

Consemblex: A Consensus-Based Transcriptome Assembly Approach That Extends Consemble And Improves Transcriptome Assembly, Richard Mwaba

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An accurate transcriptome is essential to understanding biological systems enabling omics analyses such as gene expression, gene discovery, and gene-regulatory network construction. However, assembling an accurate transcriptome is challenging, especially for organisms without adequate reference genomes or transcriptomes. While several methods for transcriptome assembly with different approaches exist, it is still difficult to establish the most accurate methods. This thesis explores the different transcriptome assembly methods and compares their performances using simulated benchmark transcriptomes with varying complexity. We also introduce ConSemblEX to improve a consensus-based ensemble transcriptome assembler, ConSemble, in three main areas: we provide the ability to use any …

Addressing The "Leaky Pipeline": A Review And Categorisation Of Actions To Recruit And Retain Women In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Susan Mckeever, Brenda Murphy, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Gender imbalance in computing education is a well-known issue around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, less than 20% of the student population in computer science, ICT and related disciplines are women. Similar figures are seen in the labour force in the field across the EU. The term "leaky pipeline"; is often used to describe the lack of retention of women before they progress to senior roles. Numerous initiatives have targeted the problem of the leaky pipeline in recent decades. This paper provides a comprehensive review of initiatives related to techniques used to boost recruitment and improve …

Removal And Recovery Of Ammonia From Simulated Wastewater Using Ti3C2TX Mxene In Flow Electrode Capacitive Deionization, Naqsh E. Mansoor, Luis A. Diaz, Christopher E. Shuck, Yury Gogotsi, Tedd E. Lister, David Estrada

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Flowing electrode capacitive deionization systems (FE-CDI) have recently garnered attention because of their ability to prevent cross contamination and operate in uninterrupted cycles ad infinitum. Typically, FE-CDI electrodes suffer from low conductivity, reducing deionization performance. Utilization of higher mass loadings to combat this leads to poor rheological properties. Herein, Ti₃C₂T_x MXene was introduced as 1 mg mL⁻¹ slurry electrodes in an FE-CDI system for the removal and recovery of ammonia from simulated agricultural wastewater. The electrode performance was evaluated by operating the FE-CDI system with a feed solution of 500 mg L⁻¹ NH …

Circadiomics: Circadian Omic Web Portal, Muntaha Samad, Forest Agostinelli, Tomoki Sato, Kohei Shimaji, Pierre Baldi

Faculty Publications

Circadian rhythms are a foundational aspect of biology. These rhythms are found at the molecular level in every cell of every living organism and they play a fundamental role in homeostasis and a variety of physiological processes. As a result, biomedical research of circadian rhythms continues to expand at a rapid pace. To support this research, CircadiOmics (http://circadiomics.igb.uci.edu/) is the largest annotated repository and analytic web server for high-throughput omic (e.g. transcriptomic, metabolomic, proteomic) circadian time series experimental data. CircadiOmics contains over 290 experiments and over 100 million individual measurements, across >20 unique tissues/organs, and 11 different species. Users are …

Machine Learning Boosts Performance Of Optical Fiber Sensors: A Case Study For Vector Bending Sensing, Chen Zhu, Jie Huang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Spectral Response Produced When a High-Sensitivity Optical Fiber Sensor (OFS) is Subject to an External Perturbation Has Recently Been Shown to Contain Rich Information that Can Be Potentially Exploited for Multi-Dimensional Sensing. in This Article, We Propose the Use of Machine Learning to Directly and Statistically Learn the Relation between the Complex Spectral Response from an OFS and a Measurand of Interest, Without Knowing If There Are Distinct and Tractable Features in the Spectrum. as a Proof-Of-Concept Demonstration, It is Shown that a Simple Heterostructure-Based Device with a Capillary Tube Sandwiched between Two Single-Mode Fibers Without Any Fiber Modification …

Review Of Emerging Approaches Utilizing Alternative Physiological Human Body Fluids In Non- Or Minimally Invasive Glucose Monitoring, Sunghoon Jang, Yu Wang, Andre Jang

Publications and Research

Diabetes can cause various acute as well as long-term complications in patients, with blood sugar levels of over 600 mg/dL, such as blindness, kidney disease, nervous & circulatory system disease, limb amputations, stroke, and cardiovascular disease (CVD). Frequent and regular blood glucose monitoring by diabetics and physicians is an essential step in the management of diabetes. Over the last five decades, there have been numerous attempts to develop viable painless non- or minimally invasive blood glucose monitoring techniques to replace all existing invasive methods, such as home blood glucose monitoring, which usually require drawing a blood sample by piercing the …

Incorporation Of Torsion Springs In A Knee Exoskeleton For Stance Phase Correction Of Crouch Gait, Katy Baker Bumbard, Harold Herrington, Chung-Hyun Goh, Alwathiqbellah Ibrahim

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Crouch gait is a motor complication that is commonly associated with cerebral palsy, spastic diplegia, stroke, and motor-neurological pathologies, broadly defined as knee flexion in excess of 20° in the gait cycle. Uncorrected crouch gait results in fatigue, joint degradation, and loss of ambulation. Torsion springs have been used in cycling to store energy in the knee flexion to reduce fatigue in the quadriceps during knee extension. SolidWorks was used to design a passive exoskeleton for the knee, incorporating torsion springs of stiffnesses 20,000 N/mm and 30,000 N/mm at the knee joint, to correct four different crouch gaits. OpenSim was …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 63 Number 1, Summer 2022, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

16 - SHARED DREAMS Meet incoming University President Julie Sullivan, the first layperson and woman selected to lead SCU. Leslie Griffy

20 - BD KNOWS BEST Discovering who you really are, being grateful, and dinosaurs with BD Wong. Lauren Loftus.

22 - SWEPT AWAY Being homeless in Silicon Valley is particularly deadly. One professor explores why so many die in a land of such excess. Leslie Griffy .

28 - ON THE OUTSIDE A first-person account of being wrongly convicted, as told by Arturo Jimenez.

30 - BOOKED AND BUSY The secret behind the Hollywood success of so many Bronco …

Spiking Neural Networks And Their Applications: A Review, Kashu Yamazaki, Viet-Khao Vo-Ho, Darshan Bulsara, Ngan Le

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The past decade has witnessed the great success of deep neural networks in various domains. However, deep neural networks are very resource-intensive in terms of energy consumption, data requirements, and high computational costs. With the recent increasing need for the autonomy of machines in the real world, e.g., self-driving vehicles, drones, and collaborative robots, exploitation of deep neural networks in those applications has been actively investigated. In those applications, energy and computational efficiencies are especially important because of the need for real-time responses and the limited energy supply. A promising solution to these previously infeasible applications has recently been given …

Effects Of Surface Topography On Macrophages And Bacterial Cells, Joseph Carnicelli

Theses - ALL

An association has been found between the texture of breast implants and anaplastic large cell lymphoma, which led to some textured implants to be withdrawn from the market in 2019. There is evidence that these cancers are associated with the harboring of bacteria on the surfaces of the textured implants. It is possible that specific topographic features hinder the removal of attached bacteria by inhibiting macrophage phagocytosis or promoting biofilm formation. Here we examine how bacteria and macrophages interact with recessive surface topographies as analogs to the surfaces seen on textured breast implants. Changes in bacteria morphology were observed among …

Deep Learning And Feature Engineering For Human Activity Recognition: Exploiting Novel Rich Learning Representations And Sub-Transfer Learning To Boost Practical Performance, Ria Kanjilal

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

A significant gap exists in our knowledge of how domain-specific feature extraction compares to unsupervised feature learning in the latent space of a deep neural network for a range of temporal applications including human activity recognition. This dissertation aims to address this gap specifically for human activity recognition using acceleration data. To ensure reproducibility, we use two publicly available datasets, UniMiB-SHAR and ExtraSensory, with a well-established history in the human activity recognition literature. We methodically analyze the performance of 64 different combinations of i) learning representations (in the form of raw temporal data or extracted features), ii) traditional and modern …

Breast Cancer-Caps: A Breast Cancer Screening System Based On Capsule Network Utilizing The Multiview Breast Thermal Infrared Images, Devanshu Tiwari, Manish Dixit, Kamlesh Gupta

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper proposed an accurate and fully automated breast cancer early screening system called the "Breast Cancer-Caps". The capsule network is used in this approach for the cancer detection in breast utilizing the thermal infrared images for the first time. This capsule network is trained with the help of Dynamic as well as Static breast thermal images dataset consisting of left, right, frontal views along with a new multiview thermal images. These multiview breast thermal images are fabricated by concatenating the conventional left, frontal and right view breast thermal images. The other current and popular deep transfer learning models such …

Automatic Keyword Assignment System For Medical Research Articles Using Nearest-Neighbor Searches, Fati̇h Di̇lmaç, Adi̇l Alpkoçak

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Assigning accurate keywords to research articles is increasingly important concern. Keywords should be selected meticulously to describe the article well since keywords play an important role in matching readers with research articles in order to reach a bigger audience. So, improper selection of keywords may result in less attraction to readers which results in degradation in its audience. Hence, we designed and developed an automatic keyword assignment system (AKAS) for research articles based on k-nearest neighbor (k-NN) and threshold-nearest neighbor (t-NN) accompanied with information retrieval systems (IRS), which is a corpus-based method by utilizing IRS using the Medline dataset in …

A New Automatic Bearing Fault Size Diagnosis Using Time-Frequency Images Of Cwt And Deep Transfer Learning Methods, Yilmaz Kaya, Fatma Kuncan, Hüseyi̇n Meti̇n Ertunç

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Bearings are generally used as bearings or turning elements. Bearings are subjected to high loads and rapid speeds. Furthermore, metal-to-metal contact within the bearing makes it sensitive. In today?s machines, bearing failures disrupt the operation of the system or completely stop the system. Bearing failures that can occur can cause enormous damage to the entire system. Therefore, it is necessary to anticipate bearing failures and to carry out a regular diagnostic examination. Various systems have been developed for fault diagnosis. In recent years, deep transfer learning (DTL) methods are often preferred in current bearing diagnosis models, as they provide time …

Analysis Of Tissue Electrical Properties On Bio-Impedance Variation Of Upper Limps, Enver Salkim

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Upper limb loss has a significant impact on individual socioeconomic life. Human-machine interface (HMI) using surface electromyography (sEMG) establishes a link between the user and a hand prosthesis to recognize hand gestures and motions which allows the control of robotic machines and prostheses to perform dexterous tasks. Numerous methods aimed to enhance hand gesture and motion recognition toward an HMI. Bio-impedance analysis (BIA) is a noninvasive way of assessing body compositions and has been recently used for hand motion interpretation using `brute force? pattern recognition. The impedance variation in the body mostly depends on the precise stimulation using appropriate electrical …

Biofeedback Technologies As Extended Cognition: A Philosophical Analysis, Haesoo Park

Student Publications

Every year technologies become more sophisticated and more accessible. Some have become a seamless extension of mind, so much so that they are better understood no longer as tools, but as integral parts of how our mind works. Biofeedback devices are examples of such technologies that are increasingly used in institutional contexts and for personal use. They offer a presumed scientific and objective basis for life decisions and behavioral health interventions, as well as a promise of new forms of self-knowledge. Yet in the very design of biofeedback technologies are cultural and institutional values that are rarely critically appraised. This …

Advanced In Vitro Models For Studying Bone Physiology, Kairui Zhang

Dissertations - ALL

Bone is a highly calcified organic-inorganic composite tissue with complicated hierarchical structure. The presence of complex multi-cellular organization within opaque mineralized matrix makes it challenging to use conventional methods to study in vivo bone physiology even using model animals. To address this challenge, numerous in vitro models have been developed to study bone physiology under well-defined and repeatable experimental conditions although proving their physiological relevance remains a key challenge. This work aims to design and develop new in vitro models that better represent in vivo bone physiology with defined control over chemical and physical microenvironments, at low costs and high …

Non-Gaussian Analysis Of Herbarium Specimen Damageto Optimize Specimen Collection Management, Aris Yaman, Yulia Aris Kartika, Ariani Indrawati, Zaenal Akbar, Lindung P. Manik, Wita Wardani, Tutie Djarwaningsih, Taufik Mahendra, Dadan R. Saleh

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Damage to specimen collections occurs in practically every herbarium across the world. Hence, some precautions must be taken, such as investigating the factors that cause specimen damage in their collections and evaluating their herbarium collection handling and usage policy. However, manual investigation of the causes of herbarium collection damage requires a lot of effort and time. Only a few studies have attempted to investigate the causes of herbarium collection damage. So far, the non-gaussian approach to detecting the causes of damage to herbarium specimens has not been studied before. This study attempted to explore the effect of species type, time, …

Experimental Characterization Of Additively Manufactured Multi-Feather Wingtip Devices, Patricio Garzon

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Soaring birds have evolved to fly for long periods of time without flapping their wings. Inspired by the flight of these birds, the proposed thesis presents an experimental investigation focused on wingtip devices designed based on biomimicry. The overarching engineering objective was to reduce the induced drag as a means to improve the fuel efficiency via these experimental wingtips. An associated secondary objective was to establish a method for manufacturing complex structures suitable for wing tunnel testing. A manufacturing technique that involved using composite weaves to reinforce additively manufactured structures was developed. This technique has the potential to reduce manufacturing …

Molecular Theoretical Model For Lipid Bilayers: Adsorption Of Lipidated Proteins On Lipid Bilayers As A Function Of Bilayer Composition And Curvature, Shauna Celeste Kennard

Theses and Dissertations

Protein localization on biological membranes is motivated by either highly selective recognition of specific target membrane components or nonspecific attraction to general physical properties of the membrane, such as charge, lipid heterogeneity, and curvature. Here we discuss the interaction between lipidated proteins and lipid bilayer membranes from a comprehensive examination of how features of the membrane and its lipid constituents, including lipid composition, headgroup size, degree of tail saturation, tail length (bilayer thickness), and membrane geometry, affect the adsorption ability of the proteins. Of key importance is the strong interconnection among these compositional and morphological elements of the membrane in …

Meta-Analysis Of The Prevalence Of Dissolved Organic Nitrogen (Don) In Water And Wastewater And Review Of Don Removal And Recovery Strategies, Synthia P. Mallick, Zayed Mallick, Brooke K. Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Most wastewater removal and recovery processes primarily target dissolved inorganic nitrogen (DIN) species, leaving the untreated non-reactive dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) in the effluent. This DON fraction can account for a substantial part of the total nitrogen (N) load. We analyzed large datasets of N species and concentrations (with a focus on quantifying the fraction of DON) in surface water, ground water, and wastewater effluent across the United States. We then reviewed strategies to remove and recover DON based on results of a range of treatment technologies reported in the literature, including laboratory-scale up to full-scale operation in wastewater treatment …

Lab-Scale Data And Microbial Community Structure Suggest Shortcut Nitrogen Removal As The Predominant Nitrogen Removal Mechanism In Post-Aerobic Digestion (Pad), Fabrizio Sabba, Patrick J. Mcnamara, Eric Redmond, Mike Young, Leon Downing

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Implementing an aerobic digestion step after anaerobic digestion, referred to as “post aerobic digestion” (PAD), can remove ammonia without the need for an external carbon source and destroy volatile solids. While this process has been documented at the lab-scale and full-scale, the mechanism for N removal and the corresponding microbial community that carries out this process have not been established. This research gap is important to fill because the nitrogen removal pathway has implications on aeration requirements and carbon demand, that is, short-cut N-removal requires less oxygen and carbon than simultaneous nitrification–denitrification. The aims of this research were to (i) …

Seasonal And Spatial Patterns Differ Between Intracellular And Extracellular Antibiotic Resistance Genes In Urban Stormwater Runoff, Kassidy N. O'Malley, Patrick J. Mcnamara, Walter M. Mcdonald

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Antibiotic resistance is a public health threat that is exacerbated by the dispersion of antibiotic resistance genes (ARGs) into aquatic environments. Urban stormwater runoff has been recognized as a source of and a mechanism by which intracellular ARGs (iARGs) can be transported into receiving environments. The prevalence and behavior of extracellular ARGs (eARGs) in stormwater, however, has yet to be considered. This study quantified four iARGs and eARGs under baseflow and stormflow conditions. Urban stormwater runoff was found to be a source of all the ARGs examined, with the absolute concentration of all iARGs and two eARGs (ermF …

Optimization Of A Novel Barnes Maze Protocol For Assessing Antioxidant Treatment Of Traumatic Brain Injury, Connor C. Gee

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Current preclinical research into traumatic brain injury focuses heavily upon cellular and molecular testing to determine the effects of injury and potential benefits of neuroprotective treatments. While this may be a useful method, some argue that an increased focus on behavioral testing could lead to better clinical translation as these assays assess the longer term, downstream effects from a brain injury. The most characterized behavioral tests used in traumatic brain injury research are the spatial learning and memory paradigms, Morris Water Maze and Barnes Maze. The Morris Water Maze is the most used of theses paradigms and relies on spatial …

Effect Of Injury Mechanism And Severity On The Molecular Pathophysiology Of Traumatic Brain Injury, Brandon Mcdonald

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Traumatic brain injury (TBI) mechanism and severity are heterogenous clinically, resulting in a multitude of physical, cognitive, and behavioral deficits. However, approximately 80% suffer from milder injuries. Thus, examining pathophysiological changes associated with mild TBI is imperative for improving clinical translation and evaluating the efficacy of potential therapeutic strategies. Through this work, we developed models of TBI, ranging in both injury mechanism and severity, using an electromagnetic controlled cortical impact (CCI) device. First, we characterized and optimized a closed head, mild TBI model (DTBI) to determine the clinical translatability and practicality of producing repeated mild injuries. Interestingly, we determined that …

Improved Management Of Recalcitrant Nutrient Species: Transformation And Adsorption, Synthia Parveen Mallick

Dissertations (1934 -)

Soluble non-reactive nutrient species, i.e., dissolved organic nitrogen (DON) and soluble non-reactive phosphorus (sNRP), are not effectively removed and recovered. Unfortunately, the non-reactive species can cause eutrophication in receiving waterbodies. Thus, removal and recovery of soluble non-reactive nutrients is critical for reducing nutrient discharge and advancing the national goal of enhanced nutrient recovery. Transformation of non-reactive nutrients to more readily removable/recoverable species using ozonation and UV/H2O2 for enhanced nutrient recovery has been reported in literature. Electrooxidation (EO) may outperform these processes in transforming nutrients as EO can utilize multiple oxidation pathways, e.g., in-situ generated oxidants or direct electron transfer (DET). …

Immobilized Phosphate-Binding Protein Systems To Remove And Recover Phosphate, Faten Bakri Hussein

Dissertations (1934 -)

Inorganic phosphorus (Pi) is a critical element for all life and a major component of DNA’s backbone. Global agriculture requires Pi to support the rapid growth of plants and high crop productivity. Yet, the mineable Pi supply needed for global agriculture is in short supply in nature and Pi reserves are unevenly distributed around the world. In contrast, surplus Pi in water poses a serious pollution problem as it can cause eutrophication. Scarcity of non-renewable Pi resources combined with pollution in the form of overabundant Pi presents a phosphorus paradox. Tackling this issue is necessary and using innovative approaches targeting …