Digital Commons Network^™

Seaspine Force Limiting Handle With Replaceable Components, Natalie Adamson, Anna Burke, Megan Phillips

Biomedical Engineering

This document outlines details of the Cal Poly-SeaSpine senior project collaboration for the force limiting handle with replaceable components. This document will cover a brief introduction of the project itself, background information about the problem, customer requirements and engineering specifications, ideation and concept selection, detailed design, description of testing and manufacturing plans, design verification and validation results, conclusions, and future work.

The design process included background research and scope identification, ideation, concept selection based on quality functions and customer requirements, detailed design, manufacturing, testing and iteration, and design verification and validation. Key specifications for the device included a force to …

Release, Retraction, And Protection Instrumentation: Designed For Spinal Interbody Fusion Surgeries (P/Tlif, Tfar), Rayana Gutierrez, Pearse Lipscomb, Troy Cristobal

Biomedical Engineering

No abstract provided.

Ivd Delivery System, Brandon Low, Jonathan Li, Margaux Faure, Quentin Yamasaki

Mechanical Engineering

Cepheid is a molecular diagnostics company that has assigned our senior project team to design a system that automates the current manual transportation of samples between two laboratory rooms. With the focus of retaining the sanitary integrity of both the samples as well as the initial cleanroom, also referred to as the packaging laboratory, our team has designed an extension of the current passthrough that will contain all other subsystems. In order to automate the transportation of the samples, the design employs a track and trolley system to be purchased and mounted within the passthrough. A verification prototype was built …

Heat Flux Dynamics And Seasonal Variability In Morro Bay, California, Mikaela Romanini

Master's Theses

There is a growing need to better understand the dynamics of small and medium Mediterranean low-inflow estuaries (LIEs), which is addressed here by characterizing a heat budget and associated heat transfer processes. A one-dimensional deterministic model was developed from the advection-diffusion equation and applied to Morro Bay, CA using 15-minute water property (temperature, salinity, pressure) and meteorological (wind speed and direction, air temperature, relative humidity, air pressure, irradiance) data collected over a two-year period (2020 – 2021). Seasonal variability is observed in meteorological components, water temperature, and salinity. There is strong seasonal variability in head-mouth temperature and salinity differences. Temperature …

Aged 539 Graduate Internship Report - Pacheco High School, Spencer C. Bronken

Agricultural Education: Graduate Internship Reports

This internship and project report includes validation documents required in meeting the quality criteria for secondary-level programs of instruction in agriculture. The supporting material includes information to receive state and local funding, outline the goals and objectives of the program, along with an overview of Pacheco High School, the agriculture program, and the community.

Hypoxic Incubator Control System, Marina Zellers, Jennifer Rojas, Derek Tran

Biomedical Engineering

This paper describes the functionality of the current Hypoxic Incubator, a project started by BMED graduate students Simone Helfrich and Makenzie Jones, with the objective being to redesign the device to address potential areas of improvement. The hypoxic incubator has been designed to allow for the control of the O₂, CO₂, and N₂ levels such that researchers can grow and study cell culture in hypoxic conditions; however, its efficacy and efficiency are limited by the fact that it often overshoots the desired setpoints for O₂ and CO₂ in addition to being difficult to …

Gait Analysis Device For Elderly Fall Prediction, Ryan Hahn, Claudia Miller, Evan Yakligian

Biomedical Engineering

This document serves to outline the design process and final design for our project to address elderly independent living in collaboration with Apple. Included in this document is necessary academic literature of current fall risk assessments and descriptions of the current market of wearable gait analysis devices. Based on this research and data, we then outline a plan for design, manufacturing, prototyping, and testing a device to fulfill the original prompt given by our sponsors: create a device that will increase the ability of an aging loved one to live at home safely. This device is a wearable that collects …

Building Artificial Reefs From Recycled Construction Materials: A Feasibility Study, Nicholas H. Lew

Construction Management

Naturally occurring reefs are some of the world’s most biologically diverse ecosystems formed by jagged rocks tucked slightly below sea level. In recent years global warming began to pose a major threat to many reef habitats. Most relevant is the increase in surface seawater temperatures that cause coral to bleach, taking away major food sources for larger marine species. Researchers have combated this by deploying artificial reefs in substitution for naturally formed limestone rock formations in order to promote the expansion of coastal habitats. This project specifically aims to utilize construction waste towards the production of artificial reefs, effectively upcycling …

The Chumash War: Contested Memories Of Forced Labor, Rebellion, And Counter-Revolution In The California Missions, Joseph V. Payne

History

The Chumash War remains an under-explored flashpoint in California history and the history of the Mission system of Alta California for myriad reasons, which include a lack of contemporary documentation relating the motivations of the Chumash as well as a broader silencing of indigenous voices in state and colonial Spanish and U.S. history. For the hegemonic centers of power present at the time, the Catholic Missionaries and the Mexican Government, the impetus to ignore the grievances of Chumash and enact a counter-revolution couldn’t be clearer—both institutions depended directly on the forced labor and production of the Chumash at Missions Santa …

Psf Sampling In Fluorescence Image Deconvolution, Eric A. Inman

Master's Theses

All microscope imaging is largely affected by inherent resolution limitations because of out-of-focus light and diffraction effects. The traditional approach to restoring the image resolution is to use a deconvolution algorithm to “invert” the effect of convolving the volume with the point spread function. However, these algorithms fall short in several areas such as noise amplification and stopping criterion. In this paper, we try to reconstruct an explicit volumetric representation of the fluorescence density in the sample and fit a neural network to the target z-stack to properly minimize a reconstruction cost function for an optimal result. Additionally, we do …

The Vertic Clay Flora Of The San Joaquin Desert: Niche, Competition & Floral Mosaics On A Novel Substrate, Emma R. Fryer

Master's Theses

Plant communities that occur on edaphically heterogeneous landscapes are ideal systems for exploring questions of niche and community assembly. Species with affinity for harsh substrates often have well-defined edaphic niches and are ideal models for testing ecological and evolutionary theory. While plants on substrates such as serpentine and gypsum have received much attention, those on other harsh substrates, including on vertic clay soils, have gone unstudied. Vertic clay soils are both chemically and physically challenging to plant establishment and productivity. Plant communities associated with vertic clay soils of the San Joaquin Desert appear to have a distinctive mosaic pattern of …

‘Reading The Cultural Landscape’ In The ‘Birthplace’ Of Modern Race/Racism: Using Hooks To Invite Students In As Critical Knowledge Producers & Co-Conspirators, Danielle Docka-Filipek

Feminist Pedagogy

No abstract provided.

Recurring Errors In Studies Of Gender Differences In Variability, Theodore P. Hill

Research Scholars in Residence

The past quarter century has seen a resurgence of research on the controversial topic of gender differences in variability, in part because of its potential implications for the issue of under- and over-representation of various subpopulations of our society, with respect to different traits. Unfortunately, several basic statistical, inferential, and logical errors are being propagated in studies on this highly publicized topic. These errors include conflicting interpretations of the numerical significance of actual variance ratio values; a mistaken claim about variance ratios in mixtures of distributions; incorrect inferences from variance ratio values regarding the relative roles of sociocultural and biological …

A Happy Lie, Nina Collin

Between the Species

I recently went to a zoo. Wild animals living in confinement with one single purpose: to entertain. When contemplating the concept of a zoo it will become surreal, I promise.

Kantian Ethics And Our Duties To Nonhuman Animals, Samuel Kahn

Between the Species

Many take Kantian ethics to founder when it comes to our duties to animals. In this paper, I advocate a novel approach to this problem. The paper is divided into three sections. In the first, I canvass various passages from Kant in order to set up the problem. In the second, I introduce a novel approach to this problem. In the third, I defend my approach from various objections. By way of preview: I advocate rejecting the premise that nonhuman animals are nonrational.

Analysis Of Gene Expression Investigating Biology Underlying High Regenerative Ability Of Marine Invertebrate Botrylloides Violaceus, Cassidy Andrasz

Baker/Koob Endowments Awarded Projects

The marine invertebrate Botrylloides violaceus is a species of tunicate found in Morro Bay, CA with the extraordinary ability to regenerate its whole body. Furthermore, tunicates are the closest known relatives to vertebrates. Due to this organism's regenerative ability and relationship to vertebrates, it is of great interest to investigate the underlying mechanisms of regeneration and review its potential applications to related vertebrate organisms, including humans. The genome of B. violaceus was sequenced and assembled at Cal Poly, SLO which allowed for the proposed experiments to analyze gene expression, a field called transcriptomics. Transcriptomics tells us how the organism is …

A Look Back At The Past: 20 Years Of Kennedy Library Exhibits, Robert E. Kennedy Library

Creative Works

Explore past exhibits featured at Robert E. Kennedy Library over the past 20 years.

Review Of Marcus Byrne And Helen Lunn's Dance Of The Dung Beetles: Their Role In Our Changing World, Jennifer Schell

Between the Species

This review examines Marcus Byrne and Helen Lunn’s Dance of the Dung Beetles: Their Role in Our Changing World, tracing the interdisciplinary connections between human history, ecological science, and cultural symbolism surrounding dung beetles.

Two Distinctions About Eating Animals, A.G. Holdier

Between the Species

In this paper I describe two distinctions about what “eating animals” entails which are often confused in conversations or arguments aimed against meat-based diets and try to show how both distinctions, on their own lights, ultimately support a concern for all fellow creatures, regardless of species or other biological categories. The distinctions in question are: the distinction between moral and nonmoral actions, presumptions about which serve to define whether or not particular topics (like meat consumption) deserve moral consideration whatsoever, and the distinction between moral and immoral actions, about which suppositions bear on both reflexive and considered moral …

2021/2022 Robert E. Kennedy Library Annual Report, Robert E. Kennedy Library

Library Publications and Administrative Reports

This year’s stories highlight successes and transformations, which will remain woven into the fabric of our organization. Instituting contactless pick-up for library materials is an example of learning how to quickly bring together people to solve immediate problems. We also became more effective at engaging with our constituencies. We reached more users through virtual consultations and online reference assistance and helped them get access to the expertise and materials they needed. We opened access to special collections through on-demand digitization. We broke barriers in the adoption of digital resources for teaching. And we began the challenging work of developing a …

Identifying And Minimizing Underspecification In Breast Cancer Subtyping, Jonathan Cheuk-Kiu Tang

Master's Theses

In the realm of biomedical technology, both accuracy and consistency are crucial to the development and deployment of these tools. While accuracy is easy to measure, consistency metrics are not so simple to measure, especially in the scope of biomedicine where prediction consistency can be difficult to achieve. Typically, biomedical datasets contain a significantly larger amount of features compared to the amount of samples, which goes against ordinary data mining practices. As a result, predictive models may fail to find valid pathways for prediction during training on such datasets. This concept is known as underspecification.

Underspecification has been more accepted …

A Design Of A Digital Lockout Tagout System With Machine Learning, Brandon H. Chen

Master's Theses

Lockout Tagout (LOTO) is a safety procedure instated by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA) when doing maintenance on dangerous machinery and hazardous power sources. In this procedure, authorized workers shut off the machinery and use physical locks and tags to prevent operation during maintenance. LOTO has been the industry standard for 32 years since it was instantiated, being used in many different industries such as industrial work, mining, and agriculture. However, LOTO is not without its issues. The LOTO procedure requires employees to be trained and is prone to human error. As well, there is a clash between …

A Study On The Effects Of Cementless Total Knee Arthroscopy Implants' Surface Morphology With Finite Element Analysis, Peter Hunt

Master's Theses

Total knee arthroscopy is one of the most performed and most successful orthopedic surgeries, with nearly a million procedures performed in 2020 in the United States alone. Due to changing patient demographics, the use of cementless fixation for implant stability is becoming more prevalent amongst recipients. Cementless implants rely on the surface morphology of a porous coating to bond implant to bone; the quality of this bond is dependent on an interference fit and the roughness, or coefficient of friction, between implant and bone. Stress shielding is a comparison of the properties in implanted bone to natural bone; it is …

Biodegradation Of Methyl Tert-Butyl Ether And Tert-Butyl Alcohol Using Bioaugmentation With Biowish® Aqua, Elizabeth Villanueva

Master's Theses

Aqua, a commercial product manufactured by BiOWiSH® Technologies, was utilized in this research to study its effectiveness to biodegrade methyl tert-butyl ether (MTBE) and tert-butyl alcohol (TBA). Microcosms containing varying concentrations of MTBE and TBA as well as a growth media and mineral salt solution were examined. Analytical instrumentation used in this study included the use of a gas chromatograph-mass spectrometer (GC/MS) to determine concentrations of MTBE and TBA and a spectrophotometer to extrapolate approximate active biomass concentrations in each experiment. Four different environmental conditions were tested for both MTBE and TBA. The environmental conditions tested for each contaminant included: …

Building Structures From Mycelium, Noah M. Brown

Physics

The purpose of this project was to develop a method for creating bricks from mycelium and agricultural waste. The bulk of the research happened in two parts, the first part being a period in which different substrates, strains, and methods were used build the bricks. This research took place in San Luis Obispo and was aided by a group of students in PSC392 under Dr. Pete Schwartz in early 2022. After developing a method for constructing these bricks, the research was moved to St. Thomas, Jamaica, in collaboration with an ecovillage called The Source Farm from July to September. The …

Ectotherm Thermoregulation At Fine Scales: Novel Methods Reveal A Link Between The Spatial Distribution Of Temperature And Habitat Quality, Ian Axsom

Master's Theses

Investigating ecological questions at the scale of individual organisms is necessary to understand and predict the biological consequences of environmental conditions. For small organisms this can be challenging because we need tools with the appropriate accuracy and resolution to record and quantify their ecological interactions. Unfortunately, many of our existing tools are only appropriate for medium to large organisms or those that are wide ranging, inhibiting our ability to investigate the ecology of small organisms at fine scales.

In Chapter 1, I tested a novel workflow for recording animal movements at very fine spatial and temporal scales. The workflow combined …

An Exploration Into The Design Of A Portable Music Player For People With Alzheimer’S And Dementia, Jaxon V. Silva

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

An exploration into the design of a portable music player for people with Alzheimer's and dementia.

Novelty Ice Cream Assembly Prototype, Mason Sylvester, Logan Williamson, Alvaro Martinez, Adin Gilman-Cohen

Mechanical Engineering

Cool Beans USA is a novelty ice cream startup company founded by Keith Zachow. In the winter of 2022, our team began working with Mr. Zachow to develop a machine to automate parts of the production process for his product. This product consists of two hemispherical ice-cream cone shell halves filled with soft serve ice cream and pressed together. The assembled pods are around the size and shape of a small walnut and are intended to be sold in stores as a frozen finger food. At the time of project inception, this product was in its early stages and was …

Metabolic Changes Associated With Gestational Diabetes And Weight Loss, Marykate Smith

Master's Theses

Introduction: Gestational Diabetes Mellitus (GDM) is diabetes diagnosed for the first time during pregnancy and negatively affects the mother and her child. Research suggests a multidisciplinary lifestyle intervention may aid in the reduction of GDM and its complications. Further, the use of metabolomics is needed to understand the alterations that happen prior to GDM diagnosis to reduce its recurrence.

Objective: Metabolomics analysis was conducted at baseline and 16-weeks post-intervention for women enrolled in a pre-pregnancy lifestyle intervention study to observe metabolic changes associated with GDM occurrence and weight loss.

Methodology: Sixteen samples from the parent Gestational Diabetes Prevention trial were …

Diy Cell Incubator, Hayden James Jeanor

Electrical Engineering

The purpose of creating a cell Incubator is for the development of cell and tissue production in laboratory settings. Large scale research projects and the medical community grow cells for various reasons, including experiments and creating tissue for patients. However, they cannot simply depend on growing cells in a petri dish that sit on a rack at room temperature. To grow heathy cells in the fastest way possible, they use cell incubators. Cell incubators create an atmosphere within the incubation bay that is designed to promote cell growth. The three main components that need to be constantly regulated, using a …