Digital Commons Network^™

An Underground Radio Wave Propagation Prediction Model For Digital Agriculture, Abdul Salam

Computer Information Technology Faculty Publications

Underground sensing and propagation of Signals in the Soil (SitS) medium is an electromagnetic issue. The path loss prediction with higher accuracy is an open research subject in digital agriculture monitoring applications for sensing and communications. The statistical data are predominantly derived from site-specific empirical measurements, which is considered an impediment to universal application. Nevertheless, in the existing literature, statistical approaches have been applied to the SitS channel modeling, where impulse response analysis and the Friis open space transmission formula are employed as the channel modeling tool in different soil types under varying soil moisture conditions at diverse communication distances …

The Role Of Faculty Mentoring In Improving Retention And Completion Rates For Historically Underrepresented Stem Students, Kelli L. Chelberg, Lisa Bosman

Technology Leadership and Innovation Faculty Publications

There is a growing recognition of the need for science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) workers who provide diverse perspectives enabling companies to keep up with the demands of the 21st -century workforce. Creating a diverse workforce requires improving access to STEM education for historically underrepresented students, including low-income students and first-generation students. However, significant challenges and barriers exist. The purpose of this paper is to showcase an innovative approach to mentoring historically underrepresented STEM students which integrates photovoice and photo-elicitation. This new approach in mentoring takes student participation one step further by asking students to document and share their …

The Ict4scale Initiative: Harnessing Ict To Scale Up Agricultural Solutions, Bernard Pelletier, Berhane Gebru, Catherine Mlozabanda, Stanley Khaila, George Vilili, Mark Leclair, Rex Chapota

Scale Up Conference

No abstract provided.

Scale Up Sourcebook, Larry Cooley, Julie Howard

Scale Up Conference

The Scale Up Sourcebook is informed and inspired by the September 2018 conference, Innovations in Agriculture: Scaling Up to Reach Millions, organized by Purdue University, in partnership with the African Development Bank. The Sourcebook consolidates, extends, and disseminates some of the scaling insights presented at the Purdue conference. It is intended as an easy-to-use guidebook targeted to a broad and diverse audience of stakeholders associated with scaling agricultural technologies and innovations to meet the needs of the world’s poor. The Sourcebook has nine chapters: designing with scale in mind; assessing scalability; using commercial markets to drive scaling; financing the …

Underground Environment Aware Mimo Design Using Transmit And Receive Beamforming In Internet Of Underground Things, Abdul Salam

Computer Information Technology Faculty Publications

In underground (UG) multiple-input and multiple-output (MIMO), the transmit beamforming is used to focus energy in the desired direction. There are three different paths in the underground soil medium through which the waves propagates to reach at the receiver. When the UG receiver receives a desired data stream only from the desired path, then the UG MIMO channel becomes three path (lateral, direct, and reflected) interference channel. Accordingly, the capacity region of the UG MIMO three path interference channel and degrees of freedom (multiplexing gain of this MIMO channel requires careful modeling). Therefore, expressions are required derived the degrees of …

(Poster) Design Of An Extruder Cooling Line, Timothy Jenkins, Logan Dorgelo

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

Extruder Cooling Line

Authors

Affiliations

Trine University’s School of Engineering and Technology offers a plastics minor with an assortment of machines and tools for the students to gain experience using in a lab environment. One machine is a plastic extruder that mixes polymer pellets and any filler the students wish to add and extrudes the hot material through a die forming a 2D profile part. The current setup has no cooling unit at the die end, so when the hot plastic is extruded it falls straight down into a five gallon plastic bucket where the material coils and sticks together …

Geoannotator: A Collaborative Semi-Automatic Platform For Constructing Geo-Annotated Text Corpora, Morteza Karimzadeh, Alan M. Maceachren

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Ground-truth datasets are essential for the training and evaluation of any automated algorithm. As such, gold-standard annotated corpora underlie most advances in natural language processing (NLP). However, only a few relatively small (geo-)annotated datasets are available for geoparsing, i.e., the automatic recognition and geolocation of place references in unstructured text. The creation of geoparsing corpora that include both the recognition of place names in text and matching of those names to toponyms in a geographic gazetteer (a process we call geo-annotation), is a laborious, time-consuming and expensive task. The field lacks efficient geo-annotation tools to support corpus building and lacks …

Refining An Instrument And Studying Elementary Teachers’ Understanding Of The Scope Of Engineering, Jacob Pleasants, Joanne K. Olson

Journal of Pre-College Engineering Education Research (J-PEER)

To effectively incorporate engineering into their instruction, K–12 teachers need sufficient knowledge of the engineering discipline. An important component of teachers’ engineering knowledge is their understanding of the nature of engineering: what engineers do, the epistemological underpinnings of engineering, and the relationships between engineering and other fields of study. In this study, we present a quantitative tool that was developed to assess teachers’ knowledge of a particular nature of engineering dimension: the scope of engineering, which describes the demarcation between engineering and non-engineering. This tool was used to assess the knowledge of teachers and engineering graduate students, before and after …

Reviewing The Current State Of Library Support For Open Educational Resources, Jason B. Reed, Benjamin Jahre

Libraries Faculty and Staff Scholarship and Research

Academic institutions around the United States are facing pressure to reduce tuition and fees in order to keep higher education accessible. Open Education Resources (OER) is one attempt by academic institutions to provide high quality education resources at a lower cost to students, by replacing traditional textbooks with freely available or low cost materials. Libraries as information experts play an active role in the implementation of OER. This article looks at the current state of OER and what potential impacts OER will have on libraries.

Child Maltreatment Disclosure To A Text Messaging-Based Crisis Service: Content Analysis, Laura Schwab-Reese, Nitya Kanuri, Scottye Cash

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Background: Disclosure is a difficult but important process for victims of child maltreatment. There is limited research on child maltreatment disclosure. Young people have been reluctant to disclose victimization to adults, but short message service (SMS) crisis services may represent one novel method of engaging young people around sensitive topics.

Objective: The purpose of this study was to determine characteristics of child maltreatment disclosure to an SMS-based crisis service.

Methods: We conducted a content analysis of all conversations (N=244) that resulted in a mandatory report by an SMS-based crisis service between October 2015 and July 2017. We coded characteristics of …

A Model For Incorporating Undergraduate Research Into An Engineering Curriculum, Douglas Stamps

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

A model is described for incorporating undergraduate research into an engineering curriculum through a vertically integrated design sequence. The sequence is composed of five courses: one each during the spring semester of the freshmen through junior years and two courses during the senior year. Each course offers skills that provide scaffolding for students to contribute to a team performing an engineering design project or research project. Teams are composed of freshmen through seniors (i.e., vertically integrated) and led by seniors. A strength of the model for undergraduate research is that upper level students can mentor lower level students, which allows …

International Aviation Collaboration In A Study Abroad Program, Brian Kozak, Peng Hao Wang

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

Aviation is a global industry. As we continue to push the boundaries of technical advancements and operational efficiency in the aviation industry, the reliance on the global workforce will continue to increase. In the United States of America, the majority of educational establishments focus mainly in the education and training of students for the US aviation industry. The narrow focus significantly limits the amount of exposure and opportunities available to the students of these educational establishments. In order to improve global exposure and provide students with opportunities outside of the US aviation industry, the authors of the paper successfully established …

Writing Children’S Stories To Improve Engineering Student’S Communication With Non-Engineering Audiences, Benjamin D. Mcpheron, Katelyn J. Butler

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

One of the biggest challenges for students in science and engineering is communicating technical information to a non-technical audience. Students may struggle because they are not adept writers, because they cannot divorce the ideas from the jargon, or because they simply don't understand the material well enough to explain it to someone else. To attempt to address this issue, this study proposes the use of children’s stories to help students practice writing for a target, non-technical audience. To measure the efficacy of this method, junior level engineering students in an electronics course in Fall 2018 were asked to write children’s …

Autopilot Programming And Operations Within An Unmanned Aerial Systems Course, Brian Kozak

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

Students majoring in unmanned aerial systems (UAS), commonly known as drones, are expected to have a diverse background of hands-on and theoretical skills. Since the UAS industry is rapidly growing at approximately 30% per year, quality graduates are in high demand. A junior level course on autonomous aerial vehicles has been created to provide this blend of these essential skills required by the UAS industry. Concepts related to navigation, control, regulations, guidance, airspace, and autopilot programming are introduced during the twice weekly, one-hour lecture. These topics are reinforced during a once weekly, two-hour laboratory where students in groups of two …

Innovative Remote Smart Home For Immersive Engagement, Kevin B. Martin, Abul Azad, Mohammed Adnan Shareef, Mrinal Roy

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

An openly accessible, remotely operated smart home will be demonstrated as a tool for students to learn about residential energy usage and environmental impacts. Specifically, the demonstration unit provides classrooms an engaging experience that teaches students about energy efficiency technologies and how their behavior will have an impact on energy usage and the environment. It is expected that as students become aware of and understand how various energy efficiency technologies work barriers to their adoption will be lowered. The use of a web accessible, remote laboratory dramatically reduces lab setup time and equipment cost/space requirements for educators. Special attention is …

Development Of A Set Of Pre-Class Videos For Electromagnetic Theory, Benjamin Mcpheron, Josiah D. Kunz

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

One important aspect of experiential learning is allowing students time to reflect on new concepts before the application of the material. Most commonly, this is attempted by assigning readings from a textbook, but research suggests that few students complete these readings. This discouraging fact has prompted the use of other resources, such as videos, to supplement pre-class readings in order to introduce new material. Previous work has been completed by this author to produce pre-class videos for use in an introductory circuits course. This paper extends that work to the development of pre-class videos for a senior level electrical engineering …

Providing A Meaningful Lab Experience For A Manufacturing Processes Course, Kevin Molyet

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

No abstract provided.

A Critical Look At Mechanical Engineering Curriculum: Assessing The Need, Yeow Siow, Jamison Szwalek, Jonathan Komperda, Houshang Darabi, Farzad Mashayek

ASEE IL-IN Section Conference

Since the Morrill Land-Grant Colleges Act in 1862, the U.S. higher education system has been serving the industrial world, and engineering study is the epitome of this ideal: Serve those who will practice it in the immediate future. The mechanical engineering curricula have long been evolving to meet the demand of the changing economy, and it may soon be due for a major update. This paper aims to present an initial effort to explore the need for a systematic redesign, or reform, of the mechanical engineering curriculum at [Institution X], where curricular changes during the past five decades have been …

Identifying And Using Driver Nodes In Temporal Networks, Babak Ravandi, Fatma Mili, John Springer

Computer Information Technology Faculty Publications

In many approaches developed for defining complex networks, the main assumption is that the network is in a relatively stable state that can be approximated with a fixed topology. However, in several applications, this approximation is not adequate because a) the system modeled is dynamic by nature, and b) the changes are an essential characteristic that cannot be approximated. Temporal networks capture changes in the topology of networks by including the temporal information associated with their structural connections, i.e., links or edges. We focus here on controllability of temporal networks, that is, the study of steering the state of a …

Bridge Inspection: Discussion Of Critical Findings, Andrew Fitzgerald, Bill Dittrich, Jose Ortiz

Purdue Road School

In this session we discuss critical findings definitions and expectations based on NBIS, FHWA, and INDOT standards. Examples of critical findings and the procedures to follow when a critical finding is discovered will be presented. The session is led by the bridge inspection program manager with the assistance of an FHWA Indiana division representative.

The Future Of Transportation Design With Av/Cv Technology, Chris Pauly

Purdue Road School

Autonomous and connected vehicles (AV / CV) are poised to change the way transportation operates around the world. Whether AVs are deployed as a first / last mile solution on private campuses and universities or used within cities as a major transportation option, the adoption of AV / CV technology will change the way planners look at future transportation needs. The outlook for AV / CVs, their impact on city planning, and current technological capabilities will all be discussed in this session.

Indot/Local Partnerships, Dave Hayward, Greg Prince, Nick Batta

Purdue Road School

This session presents opportunities for INDOT/local government partnership on capital programs projects. Examples of best practices, success stories, and lessons learned will be shared. One highlight is the SR 46/SR 11 interchange project in Columbus, Indiana, where the locals and private business contributed 50% of the project funding ($15 million) to make the project a reality.

The Surveyor's Toolbox: What's Available For You, Dan Kovert, Rod Kelly, Ryan Swingley

Purdue Road School

With the rapid advancement of technology in professional surveying and mapping, the surveyor now has many more tools available to complete projects. In this session we discuss the pros and cons of conventional surveying, static scanning, mobile LiDAR, unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), and other methods of collecting and processing data valuable to the project designer.

Best Practices For Airport Obstruction Management, Susan Zellers

Purdue Road School

This presentation highlights the results and resources from ACRP Best Practices for Airport Obstruction Management. Key topics include understanding objects, obstructions, obstacles, and hazards as defined by key regulations and standards; identifying the critical surface for airspace protection and special considerations; sources and uses of airport obstruction data, obstruction management tools available to airports; composite map development; airport sponsor responsibilities in obstruction management; and community outreach and conflict resolution tools.

Consultant Contract Negotiations, Lora Phillippe

Purdue Road School

Join us to learn tools and tips on negotiating contracts to guarantee you are receiving and/or providing the proper amount of technical support and utilizing the taxpayer dollars to the best of your ability throughout the project development process.

Gis Data / Asset Management, Craig Hardy

Purdue Road School

This session discusses the use of GIS mapping to identify enhanced maintenance operations. ArcGIS online and ESRI application tools are used for data collection, then Excel and Access tabular data are integrated to create layers of data for analysis. Maps and tools for use in budgeting, workload, and capital planning efforts will be presented.

Working In Transportation, Mayela Sosa

Purdue Road School

The transportation industry is actively pursuing programs that attract and develop the workforce of tomorrow. This session will discuss FHWA’s efforts to market opportunities for careers in transportation sectors.

Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District, Marty Joyce

Purdue Road School

Northern Indiana Commuter Transportation District (NICTD) is embarking on historical growth of the South Shore Line commuter rail serving downtown Chicago, addressing existing running time and capacity needs and providing an extension of service. The history of the planning approach, the Federal Transit Administration (FTA) process, and engineering/environmental examples will be discussed. Highlights of this presentation include funding, transit-oriented development (TOD), use of National Park Service parkland, and restoration of historical properties.

Utility Coordination Best Practices, Michael Jett, Sam Anderson, Tim Lawson, William Plant, Cindy Rowland, Travis Foerg, Adam Lamb

Purdue Road School

This session introduces INDOT’s Central Office Utility Division coordination efforts. We will provide examples and lessons learned along with utility coordination best practices from the perspective of both INDOT and a utility company

Transportation Funding: “Chasing The Money”, Michael Hancock

Purdue Road School

When there isn’t enough money to sustain our transportation systems, state and local governments must pursue funding from all available sources. This presentation explains why today’s funding needs are so much more pronounced, addresses the types and pitfalls of funding typically being pursued, and encourages all transportation entities to get involved in the national, state, and local transportation funding dialogue.