Digital Commons Network^™

Heteroaggregation Of Lignin-Zein Nanoparticles: Effects Of Relative Size And Concentration, Yada Chulakham

LSU Master's Theses

Nanotechnology has become an advanced tool for manufacturing materials of the future. As the size of a material is reduced to a nanoscale, its surface area to volume ratio increases drastically, and its surface property becomes size dependent. This allows scientists to make use of unique properties that nanomaterials have to offer to create novel materials that otherwise could not have been achieved in meter-scale materials. As more industrial companies have planned to incorporate different types of nanomaterials into their products, it is undeniable that some of these nanomaterials will be released to the environment. Such possibility has led to …

Designing And Implementing A Novel Graduate Program To Develop Transdisciplinary Leaders In Urban Sustainability, Megan M. Wallen, Ingrid Guerra-Lopez, Louay Meroueh, Rayman Mohamed, Andrea Sankar, Pradeep Sopory, Ryan Watkins, Donna R. Kashian

Biological Sciences Faculty Research Publications

Urban settings, where >50% of the world's population resides, are increasingly faced with environmental challenges that threaten their sustainability. Aging infrastructure, water and air pollution, and increasing recognition of environmental injustices highlight the need for professionals to employ complex scientific reasoning across disciplines where they can effectively address the multifaceted issues of urban sustainability. Here we present an innovative model for preparing the next generation of public, private, and academic leaders to address complex problems in urban sustainability. Specifically, we outline the design and implementation of an integrated, adaptable graduate training program, with the goals of science leadership, curriculum relevancy, …

A Comprehensive Evaluation Of Wastewater Grit Characteristics And Its Application In The Design Of A Facility-Specific Grit Removal Solution, Tetiana Kolsovska

Theses and Dissertations

Tailored solutions for wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs) are becoming more prevalent for optimization of treatment process, based on the unique quality of the influent received by each facility. In-depth evaluation of the influent properties is necessary for design of the most appropriate treatment system. In this study, wastewater grit was evaluated in terms of its quantity, particle size distribution, total organic carbon (TOC) content, including fats, oils, and grease (FOG), and settling velocity of the particles, over the course of one year at the headworks, collection network, and through the treatment stages of the Atlantic County Utilities Authority (ACUA) WWTP, …

Kinetic Study Of The Anaerobic Digestion Of Recycled Paper Mill Effluent (Rpme) By Using A Novel Modified Anaerobic Hybrid Baffled (Mahb) Reactor, Siti Roshayu Hassan, Yung-Tse Hung, Irvan Dahlan, Hamidi Abdul Aziz

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The process kinetics of an anaerobic digestion process for treating recycled paper mill effluent (RPME) was investigated. A laboratory-scale modified anaerobic hybrid baffled reactor (MAHB) was operated at hydraulic retention times of 1, 3, 5, and 7 days, and the results were analyzed for the kinetic models. A kinetic study was conducted by examining the phase kinetics of the anaerobic digestion process, which were divided into three main stages: hydrolysis kinetics, acetogenesis kinetics, and methane production kinetics. The study demonstrated that hydrolysis was the rate-limiting step. The applied Monod and Contois kinetic models showed satisfactory prediction with µmax values of …

Identification Of A Novel Glucuronyltransferase From Streptomyces Chromofuscus Atcc 49982 For Patural Product Glucuronidation, Jie Ren, Caleb Don Barton, Kathryn Eternity Sorenson, Jixun Zhan

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Glycosylation is an effective way to increase the polarity of natural products. UDP-glucuronyltransferases (UGTs) are commonly observed and extensively studied in phase II drug metabolism. However, UGTs in microorganisms are not well studied, which hampered the utilization of this type of enzyme in microbial glucuronidation of natural products. Screening of five actinomycete strains showed that Streptomyces chromofuscus ATCC 49982 can convert diverse plant polyphenols into more polar products, which were characterized as various glucuronides based on their spectral data. Analysis of the genome of this strain revealed a putative glucuronidation gene cluster that contains a UGT gene (gcaC) …

Multisector Dynamics: Scientific Challenges And A Research Vision For 2030, A Community Of Practice Supported By The United States Department Of Energy's Office Of Science, Patrick M. Reed, Antonia Hadjimichael, Richard H. Moss, Erwan Monier, Sequoia Alba, Christa Brelsford, Ana Dyreson, Et. Al.

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

No abstract provided.

Examining The Effect Of A Chitosan Biopolymer On Alkali-Activated Inorganic Material For Aqueous Pb(Ii) And Zn(Ii) Sorption, Sukanta K. Mondal, Chenglin Wu, Felix C. Nwadire, Ali A. Rownaghi, Aditya Kumar, Yusuf Adewuyi, Monday Uchenna Okoronkwo

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Biopolymers and alkali-activated materials have attracted a great deal of attention as adsorbents for the removal of heavy metal contaminants from aqueous solutions. Both materials are sustainable and feature unique properties, but biopolymers are relatively more expensive or difficult to prepare and exhibit low mechanical and surface properties, a narrow pH range, and thermal stability. In this study, hybrid adsorbents were prepared from both types of material, by alkali activation of low-cost fly ash precursors accompanied by incorporation of 0-2%mass chitosan biopolymer. Two types of alkaline activating solutions, NaOH and Na2SiO3, were employed to generate two sets of hybrid adsorbents …

Transformers In Medical Imaging: A Survey, Fahad Shamshad, Salman Khan, Syed Waqas Zamir, Muhammad Haris Khan, Munawar Hayat, Fahad Shahbaz Khan, Huazhu Fu

Computer Vision Faculty Publications

Following unprecedented success on the natural language tasks, Transformers have been successfully applied to several computer vision problems, achieving state-of-the-art results and prompting researchers to reconsider the supremacy of convolutional neural networks (CNNs) as de facto operators. Capitalizing on these advances in computer vision, the medical imaging field has also witnessed growing interest for Transformers that can capture global context compared to CNNs with local receptive fields. Inspired from this transition, in this survey, we attempt to provide a comprehensive review of the applications of Transformers in medical imaging covering various aspects, ranging from recently proposed architectural designs to unsolved …

Optimization Of A Smart Sensor Wearable Knee Sleeve For Measuring Skin Strain To Determine Joint Biomechanics, David Steven Wood

Theses and Dissertations

This work addresses three objectives related to the design and modeling of an instrumented knee sleeve and its high deflection strain gauges for at-home knee rehabilitation. First, a multi-objective Bayesian approach was developed to economically optimize a high deflection strain gauge's mechanical and electrical behavior. Four objective functions were simultaneously optimized with two design variables in seven iterations; 90% faster than a grid search approach. The presented algorithm adjusts variables in the manufacturing process of high deflection strain gauges and produces a sensor with optimized properties for a predetermined purpose. Second, an algorithm was created to accurately approximate the dynamic …

Stabilizing The Interface Of All-Solid-State Electrolytes Against Cathode Electrodes By Atomic Layer Deposition, Ye Jin, Han Yu, Xiaoqing He, Xinhua Liang

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In recent years, with the severe safety problems of organic electrolytes, all-solid-state electrolytes (ASSEs) have been considered as an appealing choice to replace organic electrolytes due to their high reliability and safety. However, the uncontrolled interfacial chemical reactions between electrodes and ASSEs would lead to high interfacial resistance, which is detrimental for the battery performance. In this work, LiFePO₄ (LFP) particles were coated with ultra-thin ZrO₂ films by atomic layer deposition (ALD) and the effects of thin film coating on the electrochemical performance of lithium-ion batteries using the NASICON-type Li_1.5Al_0.5Ge_1.5(PO₄) …

Resolving The Three-Dimensional Rotational And Translational Dynamics Of Single Molecules Using Radially And Azimuthally Polarized Fluorescence, Oumeng Zhang, Weiyan Zhou, Jin Lu, Tingting Wu, Matthew D. Lew

Electrical & Systems Engineering Publications and Presentations

We report a radially and azimuthally polarized (raPol) microscope for high detection and estimation performance in single-molecule orientation-localization microscopy (SMOLM). With 5000 photons detected from Nile red (NR) transiently bound within supported lipid bilayers (SLBs), raPol SMOLM achieves 2.9 nm localization precision, 1.5° orientation precision, and 0.17 sr precision in estimating rotational wobble. Within DPPC SLBs, SMOLM imaging reveals the existence of randomly oriented binding pockets that prevent NR from freely exploring all orientations. Treating the SLBs with cholesterol-loaded methyl-β-cyclodextrin (MβCD-chol) causes NR’s orientational diffusion to be dramatically reduced, but curiously NR’s median lateral displacements drastically increase from 20.8 to …

Conceptual Framework To Integrate Economic Drivers Of Decision Making For Technology Adoption In Agriculture, Thiago L. Romanelli, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola, Andre F. Colaço

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

This study evaluates how much technology adoption could cost in a variety of crop-production scenarios. Cost-reduction simulations consider scenarios of higher input use efficiency such as reducing the usage of diesel, labor, irrigation, fertilizer, herbicide, and seed, among others. The scenarios aim to increase yields by integrating the effect of each input-reduction on the total operating costs. Agricultural production estimates for Nebraska in the US indicates that a technology that saves 1% of diesel is cost-effective, costing between USD 0.15/ha and USD 0.32/ha (for corn). Improvements on input use efficiency should be prioritized to incentivize technology development and adoption. This …

Strengthening A Linear Reformulation Of The 0-1 Cubic Knapsack Problem Via Variable Reordering, Richard Forrester, Lucas Waddell

Faculty Journal Articles

The 0-1 cubic knapsack problem (CKP), a generalization of the classical 0-1 quadratic knapsack problem, is an extremely challenging NP-hard combinatorial optimization problem. An effective exact solution strategy for the CKP is to reformulate the nonlinear problem into an equivalent linear form that can then be solved using a standard mixed-integer programming solver. We consider a classical linearization method and propose a variant of a more recent technique for linearizing 0-1 cubic programs applied to the CKP. Using a variable reordering strategy, we show how to improve the strength of the linear programming relaxation of our proposed reformulation, which ultimately …

Surface Acoustic Wave (Saw) Sensors: Physics, Materials, And Applications, Debdyuti Mandal, Sourav Banerjee

Faculty Publications

Surface acoustic waves (SAWs) are the guided waves that propagate along the top surface of a material with wave vectors orthogonal to the normal direction to the surface. Based on these waves, SAW sensors are conceptualized by employing piezoelectric crystals where the guided elastodynamic waves are generated through an electromechanical coupling. Electromechanical coupling in both active and passive modes is achieved by integrating interdigitated electrode transducers (IDT) with the piezoelectric crystals. Innovative meta-designs of the periodic IDTs define the functionality and application of SAW sensors. This review article presents the physics of guided surface acoustic waves and the piezoelectric materials …

Advanced Materials For Skin Regeneration, Ingrid Safina

Theses and Dissertations

Massive skin loss, over 20% of the total body surface area, is challenging to heal (Rowan et al. 2015). Ideally, autologous skin grafts have the ability to support complete skin reconstruction. However, skin grafting faces major limitations, such as shortage of donor sites and secondary injury. Alternatively, advanced materials can be used to produce skin constructs that could potentially serve as skin substitutes (Stanton and Billmire 2002). Herein, we used two polymeric materials: graphene and polyurethane (PU) to produce films that support skin cells in their growth and maturation. The surface properties of these materials were modified to enhance their …

Analyzing Modeled Torque Profiles To Understand Scale-Dependent Active Muscle Responses In The Hip Joint, Fletcher Young, Hillel J. Chiel, Matthew Tresch, Charles Heckman, Alexander J. Hunt, Roger Quinn

Mechanical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Animal locomotion is influenced by a combination of constituent joint torques (e.g., due to limb inertia and passive viscoelasticity), which determine the necessary muscular response to move the limb. Across animal size-scales, the relative contributions of these constituent joint torques affect the muscular response in different ways. We used a multi-muscle biomechanical model to analyze how passive torque components change due to an animal’s size-scale during locomotion. By changing the size-scale of the model, we characterized emergent muscular responses at the hip as a result of the changing constituent torque profile. Specifically, we found that activation phases between extensor and …

Collaborative Environmental Approach For Development Of The Lower Laguna Madre Estuary Program Strategic Plan In South Texas, Javier Guerrero, Ahmed Mahmoud, Taufiqul Alam, Augusto Sanchez, Kim D. Jones, Andrew Ernest

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

The National Estuary Program (NEP) is a promising eco-system based approach to improve the water quality and ecological integrity of estuaries of national importance in the United States. Due to population growth and concomitant development pressure in South Texas, the future of the Lower Laguna Madre (LLM) without an estuary program is problematic. The development of a management plan for the LLM will enable the region to develop local solutions to local problems. The fundamental purpose of this research was to develop a strategic plan for the foundation of the Laguna Madre Estuary Program of the Gulf Coast of Texas. …

Design And Fabrication Of A Low-Cost, Portable, Battery-Operated Surface Enhanced Raman Scattering (Sers) Optical Device, Blessing Adewumi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Raman Spectroscopy is a time-honored, non-invasive method for analyzing and identifying the molecular composition of materials. However, unenhanced Raman Spectroscopy has extremely low sensitivity which limits its sensing capability. SERS brings rough nano-metallic surfaces in contact with the material molecules to enormously enhance the Raman signals.

The sensitivity of SERS can be exploited in probe applications where the spectrometer needs to be brought near the specimen. For example, a long optical fiber coupled to a SERS device can be used to characterize and identify easy-to-reach cancerous tissues in organisms. Unfortunately, background signals in a long fiber can easily mask any …

Behavioral Responses Of Blue-Winged Teal And Northern Shoveler To Unmanned Aerial Vehicle Surveys, Mason D. Ryckman, Kaylan Kemink, Christopher J. Felege, Brian J. Darby, Gregory S. Vandeberg, Susan N. Ellis-Felege

Biology Faculty Publications

Unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) have become a popular wildlife survey tool. Most research has focused on detecting wildlife using UAVs with less known about behavioral responses. We compared the behavioral responses of breeding blue-winged teal (Spatula discors) (n = 151) and northern shovelers (Spatula clypeata) (n = 46) on wetlands flown over with a rotary DJI Matrice 200 quadcopter and control wetlands without flights. Using a GoPro camera affixed to a spotting scope, we conducted focal individual surveys and recorded duck behaviors for 30 minutes before, during, and 30 minutes after UAV flights to determine if …

Uranium 233: The Nuclear Superfuel No One Is Using, Maris Hanson

Seattle Journal of Technology, Environmental, & Innovation Law

Nuclear power offers more energy in less physical space than solar and wind and yields more energy per pound than fossil fuels. However different nuclear fuels yield different waste profiles and create different beneficial products. Uranium 233 (U233) resists use in nuclear weapons, yields beneficial daughter products, and produces dramatically less of the most problematic waste products than Uranium 235 (U235). U233 results from reactions with Thorium, a plentiful, ubiquitous element currently considered waste from rare earth mines. Additionally, U233 functions well in a liquid fuel reactor resulting in safer, more efficient reactors than current solid fuel U235 or Plutonium …

Materials And Methodologies For Spectroscopic And Optical Analytical Applications In Cultural Heritage Conservation Science, Lyndsay Nichole Kissell

Dissertations and Theses

The field of conservation science falls in the intersection of science and art. The work of conservation scientists may include any single subdiscipline of chemistry, though it is most commonly a highly interdisciplinary field taking skills from analytical, organic, and inorganic chemistry, as well as surface and materials science. The aims of conservation scientists are to answer questions about the production and aging of material cultural heritage. Knowing the materials used by an artist can lead to insight about the intentions of the object and knowing how those materials degrade will enable the use of preventative measures to ensure the …

Mosquito Edge: An Edge-Intelligent Real-Time Mosquito Threat Prediction Using An Iot-Enabled Hardware System, Shyam Polineni, Om Shastri, Avi Bagchi, Govind Gnanakumar, Sujay Rasamsetti, Prabha Sundaravadivel

Electrical Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Species distribution models (SDMs) that use climate variables to make binary predictions are effective tools for niche prediction in current and future climate scenarios. In this study, a Hutchinson hypervolume is defined with temperature, humidity, air pressure, precipitation, and cloud cover climate vectors collected from the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) that were matched to mosquito presence and absence points extracted from NASA's citizen science platform called GLOBE Observer and the National Ecological Observatory Network. An 86% accurate Random Forest model that operates on binary classification was created to predict mosquito threat. Given a location and date input, the …

Challenges In Covid-19 Chest X-Ray Classification: Problematic Data Or Ineffective Approaches?, Muhammad Ridzuan, Ameera Ali Bawazir, Ivo Gollini Navarrete, Ibrahim Almakky, Mohammad Yaqub

Computer Vision Faculty Publications

The value of quick, accurate, and confident diagnoses cannot be undermined to mitigate the effects of COVID-19 infection, particularly for severe cases. Enormous effort has been put towards developing deep learning methods to classify and detect COVID-19 infections from chest radiography images. However, recently some questions have been raised surrounding the clinical viability and effectiveness of such methods. In this work, we carry out extensive experiments on a large COVID-19 chest X-ray dataset to investigate the challenges faced with creating reliable solutions from both the data and machine learning perspectives. Accordingly, we offer an in-depth discussion into the challenges faced …

Chromium-Resistant Staphylococcus Aureus Alleviates Chromium Toxicity By Developing Synergistic Relationships With Zinc Oxide Nanoparticles In Wheat, Shoaib Ahmad, Manar Fawzi Bani Mfarrej, Mohamed A. El-Esawi, Muhammad Waseem, Aishah Alatawi, Muhammad Nafees, Muhammad Hamzah Saleem, Muhammad Rizwan, Tahira Yasmeen, Alia Anayat, Shafaqat Ali

All Works

Chromium (Cr) is a toxic heavy metal that contaminates soil and water resources after its discharge from different industries. It can act as carcinogen and mutagen for biological systems. Microbe-assisted phytoremediation is one of the most emergent and environment friendly technique used for detoxification of Cr from Cr-contaminated soils. In this study, wheat as a test crop was grown under varying stress levels (0, 50, 100 and 200 mg/kg) of Cr in a pot experiment under a complete randomized design. Alleviative role of Staphylococcus aureus strain K1 was assessed by applying as a treatment in different combinations of zinc oxide …

Maize Response To Coupled Irrigation And Nitrogen Fertilization Under Center Pivot, Subsurface Drip And Surface (Furrow) Irrigation: Growth, Development And Productivity, Suat Irmak, Ali T. Mohammed, Meetpal S. Kukal

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Water availability and water quality problems negatively impact agricultural productivity due to improper nitrogen (N) and irrigation management, which can also negatively affect environmental services. Coupled irrigation and N management practices must be developed and practiced for alleviating these challenges. Investigating crop growth and development and yield response to coupled irrigation and N management under different irrigation methods can aid in developing optimum agronomic management practices to enhance crop production efficiency. Field experiments were conducted in 2016 and 2017 growing seasons to measure and compare maize (Zea mays L.) grain yield, leaf area index (LAI), plant height (and their …

Machine Learning Approach To Simulate Soil Co2 Fluxes Under Cropping Systems, Toby A. Adjuik, Sarah C. Davis

Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering Graduate Research

With the growing number of datasets to describe greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions, there is an opportunity to develop novel predictive models that require neither the expense nor time required to make direct field measurements. This study evaluates the potential for machine learning (ML) approaches to predict soil GHG emissions without the biogeochemical expertise that is required to use many current models for simulating soil GHGs. There are ample data from field measurements now publicly available to test new modeling approaches. The objective of this paper was to develop and evaluate machine learning (ML) models using field data (soil temperature, soil …

Review On Applications Of Lignin In Pavement Engineering: A Recent Survey, Hui Yao, Yiran Wang, Junfu Liu, Mei Xu, Pengrui Ma, Jie Ji, Zhanping You

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Lignin is the second-largest plant polymer on Earth after cellulose. About 98% of lignin produced in the papermaking and pulping industry is used for combustion heating or power generation. Less than 2% of lignin is used in more valuable fields, mainly in the formulation of dispersants, adhesives, and surfactants. Asphalt is one of the most important materials in pavement engineering. It is a dark brown complex mixture composed of hydrocarbons with different molecular weights and their non-metallic derivatives. Because the chemical structure of lignin is similar to that of asphalt, it is a carbon-based hydrocarbon material. More researchers studied the …

Characterization Of Effective Diffusion Within Viscoelastic Fluids With Elastic Instabilities, Valerie Hietsch, Phillip Ligrani, Mengying Su

PRC-Affiliated Research

We considered effective diffusion, characterized by magnitudes of effective diffusion coefficients, in order to quantify mass transport due to the onset and development of elastic instabilities. Effective diffusion coefficient magnitudes were determined using different analytic approaches, as they were applied to tracked visualizations of fluorescein dye front variations, as circumferential advection was imposed upon a flow environment produced using a rotating Couette flow arrangement. Effective diffusion coefficient results were provided for a range of flow shear rates, which were produced using different Couette flow rotation speeds and two different flow environment fluid depths. To visualize the flow behavior within the …

Assessing Leachable Cytotoxicity Of 3d-Printed Polymers And Facile Detoxification Methods, Venkatakrishnan Rengarajan, Angela Clyde, Jefferson Pontsler, Jonathan Valiente, Adreann Peel, Yu Huang

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Additive manufacturing of polymers is gaining momentum in health care industries by providing rapid 3D printing of customizable designs. Yet, little is explored about the cytotoxicity of leachable toxins that the 3D printing process introduced into the final product. We studied three printable materials, which have various mechanical properties and are widely used in stereolithography 3D printing. We evaluated the cytotoxicity of these materials through exposing two fibroblast cell lines (human and mouse derived) to the 3D-printed parts, using overlay indirect contact assays. All the 3D-printed parts were measured toxic to the cells in a leachable manner, with flexible materials …

Q&Ai: Provost Margaret Mcfadden Discusses The New Davis Institute For Artificial Intelligence And How The Liberal Arts Can Shape The Future Of Ai, Laura Meader

Colby Magazine

Following the announcement in January of a $30-million gift from the Davis family and trustee of its charitable foundation Andrew Davis ’85, LL.D. ’15 to establish the Davis Institute for Artificial Intelligence, the first of its kind at a liberal arts college, Provost and Dean of Faculty Margaret McFadden sat down with Colby Magazine’s Laura Meader to better explain the institute and its developing academic program.