Digital Commons Network^™

Can Video Comparison Facilitate Children's Stem Learning?, Alexis Rene Colwell

Theses and Dissertations

The goal of the current study was to examine the effectiveness of a video comparison activity in teaching 6- and 7-year-old children that a diagonal brace provides stability in structures, which is an important engineering principle. Children were randomly assigned to one of three groups: Comparison, Single Model, or No Training. The children in the Comparison group saw two metal towers in a training video where the researcher pushed on the towers to demonstrate that one was stable (diagonal brace tower), and one was unstable (horizontal crosspiece tower). Children in the Single Model group saw a video of the one …

Dice: Blessed Or Cursed?, Warren Campbell, Cameron Miller, Xavier Simpson

SEAS Faculty Publications

Every year, hundreds of millions of dice are manufactured and sold. Because of the impossibility of precise dimensional control and nonuniform density, none of these dice are fair. Polyhedral dice manufactured for role-playing games like Dungeons and Dragons typically contain 4-sided, 6-sided, 8-sided, 10-sided, 12-sided, and 20-sided dice (D4, D6, D8, D10, D12, and D20). D20s are especially problematic. In 3000-roll tests of several D20s, only about one-quarter tested fair. In light of the inherent unfairness of most dice, we explored the possibility of using dice mechanics involving multiple dice to obtain fairer results. For D20s, summing three dice gave …

How Did The Landscape Of Student Belonging Shift During Covid-19?, Shruti Misra, Neha Kardam, Jennifer Vanantwerp, Denise Wilson

University Faculty Publications and Creative Works

The goal of this study is to understand if and how emergency remote teaching (ERT) used during the COVID-19 pandemic changed the ways in which instructional support and interactions were linked to belonging among engineering students. Belonging is a fundamental human motivation associated with a wide range of positive psychological, educational, social, and job outcomes. Frequent and predominantly conflict-free interactions within a stable, relational framework of caring are required to facilitate belonging. To better understand potential shifts in belonging that occurred from prepandemic to mid-pandemic, this study used survey data from a cross-sectional dataset at a single, large institution comprised …

“That Means Nothing To Me As A Normal Person Who Doesn't Know About Patents”: Usability Testing Of Google Patents And Patent Public Search With Undergraduate Engineering Students, Graham Sherriff, Molly Rogers

Journal of the Patent and Trademark Resource Center Association

Patent searching is an important research tool for undergraduate engineering students, yet it requires special topic knowledge to conduct successfully. Patent database websites have the ability to alleviate or add to the complexity of patent searching, depending on their usability. Prompted by the launch of the US Patent and Trademark Office’s Patent Public Search (PPS) website in early 2022, the authors investigated the usability of PPS and Google Patents. The study's objective was to gain insights into the ways in which the websites of commonly-used patent databases support undergraduate students’ patent searching activities. The study examined students’ performance of typical …

Integrating Data Science With Reliability Engineering: A Study Of Crucial Knowledge And Skills, Altricia Jordan

Theses and Dissertations

Data science, as a discipline can be used in any area. However, in order to utilize data science techniques, data scientist must be taught domain knowledge, referred to as a partner discipline, in the area with which the techniques are to be utilized. Using a quantitative analysis of publicly available information and survey methodology, this research developed recommendations for training data scientist in the partner discipline of reliability engineering. A text analysis was performed on reliability engineering job requisitions resulting in a set of knowledge and skills topics that organizations desire in reliability engineering hires. Using the results of the …

Designing The Power System Of A Robot, Nolan Hays

Honors College Theses

This thesis outlines the acquired skills and knowledge acquired through the course of four years of Murray State University’s School of Engineering. The capstone for students in the department was to team up and complete an interdisciplinary senior design project using skills from various tracks of engineering. For this thesis, there is a greater emphasis on the electrical engineering track. The objective of the project was to build an autonomous robot to complete the various tasks within the scope of the IEEE SoutheastCon 2023 Hardware Competition. The robot was controlled via a Raspberry Pi 4 Model B. There were three …

Free-Body Diagram Analysis And Movement Design Of A Functional Prosthetic Hand, Hayden Smee

Honors College Theses

The loss of a limb is a devastating event to an individual on both physical and psychological levels. Despite decades of advancements in medicine, occupational health, and general safety in society, most people know someone or have encountered individuals affected by limb loss. This project created a prosthetic hand designed to aid those individuals. The hand is a predominantly 3D-printed prosthetic hand that includes an individually moving index finger and opposable thumb capable of grasping a full soda can weighing 385 grams (0.85 pounds). Numerous design solutions for the actuation of the fingers and thumb were considered and rejected. Cable …

Innovation For The Air: A Brief History Of Worldwide Aviation, Lauren Plumley

Honors Program: Senior Projects (Public)

The purpose of this report is to present a brief but comprehensive overview of the variety of innovations related to aviation, and to discuss their impact on scientific progress over the course of human history. Relevant discoveries from the fields of physics and aerodynamics, and the numerous technologies built based upon these discoveries, are discussed over a period ranging from ancient times to the twenty-first century. The scope of this report is an overview of the development of powered and unpowered aircraft, including lighter-than-air, heavier-than-air, and aerospace technologies. Aviation developments were generally not limited to one specific country or person, …

Unveiling The Acoustical Mysteries Within The Human Voice, Dominique Polanco

Engineering & Physics Student Scholarship

Dominique Polanco ’23
Major: Physics
Minor: Mathematics
Faculty Mentor: Dr. Theresa Moreau, Engineering and Physics

Have you ever wondered how singers are able to sing the way that they do? In this project, vocal sound is analyzed via spectral analysis to visually contrast higher quality vocal sound with lower quality vocal sound. The main goal is to determine the differences in sound produced from that of a trained singer versus that of an untrained singer, and how an untrained voice can be altered to produce quality sound, similar to that of a trained singer. In working in conjunction with faculty …

Balloon Tower Activity, Admin Stem For Success

STEM for Success Showcase

This activity challenges students to build a safe and sound tower using only balloons and tape.

Bridge Building, Admin Stem For Success

STEM for Success Showcase

Students learn about different bridge styles and designs in this activity that challenges them to build their own successful bridge.

Nail Steam Activity, Admin Stem For Success, Natalie Wilson

STEM for Success Showcase

Activity where students use nails to practice concepts relating to center of gravity

Rubber Band Car Activity, Admin Stem For Success, Natalie Wilson

STEM for Success Showcase

Student learn about forces and engineering by designing a car powered by rubber bands

Windmill Building Activity, Admin Stem For Success, Natalie Wilson

STEM for Success Showcase

Students are challenged to build a windmill that can lift weight

Balloon Boat Races, Admin Stem For Success, Natalie Wilson

STEM for Success Showcase

Students build balloon boats to learn buoyancy and practice engineering design skills.

Dash And Dot Robots, Admin Stem For Success, Natalie Wilson

STEM for Success Showcase

Activity plan using robots to teach students engineering and technology

Bubble Wand Activity, Admin Stem For Success

STEM for Success Showcase

Students use this activity to practice their engineering skills by building a bubble wand.

Activity Video Link: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=15&v=wx0-NrAnE6c&feature=emb_logo

Stem Club, Rohan Tatineni, Kevin Prososki

Honors Program: Expanded Learning Clubs

The goal of STEM club is to teach the students various basic scientific principles and relate them to experiments and the real world. In addition, the scientific method will be taught and be a main focus of the club along with the engineering design process.

Advancing The Engineering Workforce By Enhancing Diversity, Equity, And Inclusion In The Engineering Classroom, Phoneia Hughes Myers

Theses and Dissertations

Society’s dependence on engineered products is steadily increasing. This dependence requires the engineering workforce to continually innovate and design new advancements. In pursuit of this, engineering employers are implementing diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives to attract prime candidates and retain employees. For employers to achieve the goals of their initiatives, engineering colleges and universities must produce a diverse pool of graduates. The purpose of this thesis report is to investigate how the diversity, equity, and inclusion concept can be implemented into engineering education to assist with producing diverse graduating classes. A universal methodology is proposed to provide a roadmap on …

Update On Technologies For Producing And Feeding Silage, P. D. Forristal, P. O'Keily

IGC Proceedings (1977-2023)

Key Points

1. Mechanisation and engineering inputs are key factors which contribute to silage costs.
2. Sensing technologies will improve management precision in many areas of ensilage.
3. While current harvesting machines have high output capacity reflecting mature design, there is a need to revisit the area of energy efficiency.
4. Baled silage technology, particularly in the areas of covering film and wrapping technology, needs further research.
5. Feeding systems are well researched but there is a need for systems research to underpin farmers’ decisions concerning housing design and feeding system.

An Alternate Dimensionless Form Of The Linearized Rigid-Body Aircraft Equations Of Motion With Emphasis On Dynamic Parameters, Douglas F. Hunsaker, Benjamin C. Moulton

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Student Publications and Presentations

The equations of motion for an aircraft can be linearized about a reference condition within the assumptions of small disturbances and linear aerodynamics. The resulting system of equations is typically solved to obtain the eigenvalues and eigenvectors that describe the small disturbance motion of the aircraft. Results from such an analysis are often used to predict the rigid-body dynamic modes of the aircraft and associated handling qualities. This process is typically carried out in dimensional form in most text books, or in nondimensional form using dimensionless parameters rooted in aerodynamic theory. Here we apply Buckingham’s Pi theorem to obtain nondimensional …

Wrapper-Based Deep Feature Optimization For Activity Recognition In The Wearable Sensor Networks Of Healthcare Systems, Karam Kumar Sahoo, Raghunath Ghosh, Saurav Mallik, Arup Roy, Pawan Kumar Singh, Zhongming Zhao

Faculty, Staff and Student Publications

The Human Activity Recognition (HAR) problem leverages pattern recognition to classify physical human activities as they are captured by several sensor modalities. Remote monitoring of an individual's activities has gained importance due to the reduction in travel and physical activities during the pandemic. Research on HAR enables one person to either remotely monitor or recognize another person's activity via the ubiquitous mobile device or by using sensor-based Internet of Things (IoT). Our proposed work focuses on the accurate classification of daily human activities from both accelerometer and gyroscope sensor data after converting into spectrogram images. The feature extraction process follows …

A Flexible Pressure Sensor With Highly Customizable Sensitivity And Linearity Via Positive Design Of Microhierarchical Structures With A Hyperelastic Model, Zhenjin Xu, Dezhi Wu, Zhiwen Chen, Zhongbao Wang, Cong Cao, Xiangyu Shao, Gang Zhou, Shaohua Zhang, Lingyun Wang, Daoheng Sun

Publications

The tactile pressure sensor is of great significance in flexible electronics, but sensitivity customization over the required working range with high linearity still remains a critical challenge. Despite numerous efforts to achieve high sensitivity and a wide working range, most sensitive microstructures tend to be obtained only by inverting naturally existing templates without rational design based on fundamental contact principles or models for piezoresistive pressure sensors. Here, a positive design strategy with a hyperelastic model and a Hertzian contact model for comparison was proposed to develop a flexible pressure sensor with highly customizable linear sensitivity and linearity, in which the …

Encryption And Compression Classification Of Internet Of Things Traffic, Mariam Najdat M Saleh

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The Internet of Things (IoT) is used in many fields that generate sensitive data, such as healthcare and surveillance. Increased reliance on IoT raised serious information security concerns. This dissertation presents three systems for analyzing and classifying IoT traffic using Deep Learning (DL) models, and a large dataset is built for systems training and evaluation. The first system studies the effect of combining raw data and engineered features to optimize the classification of encrypted and compressed IoT traffic using Engineered Features Classification (EFC), Raw Data Classification (RDC), and combined Raw Data and Engineered Features Classification (RDEFC) approaches. Our results demonstrate …

Efficient Cloud-Based Ml-Approach For Safe Smart Cities, Niveshitha Niveshitha

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Smart cities have emerged to tackle many critical problems that can thwart the overwhelming urbanization process, such as traffic jams, environmental pollution, expensive health care, and increasing energy demand. This Master thesis proposes efficient and high-quality cloud-based machine-learning solutions for efficient and sustainable smart cities environment. Different supervised machine-learning models for air quality predication (AQP) in efficient and sustainable smart cities environment is developed. For that, ML-based techniques are implemented using cloud-based solutions. For example, regression and classification methods are implemented using distributed cloud computing to forecast air execution time and accuracy of the implemented ML solution. These models are …

Contributors To Pathologic Depolarization In Myotonia Congenita, Jessica Hope Myers

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Myotonia congenita is an inherited skeletal muscle disorder caused by loss-of-function mutation in the CLCN1 gene. This gene encodes the ClC-1 chloride channel, which is almost exclusively expressed in skeletal muscle where it acts to stabilize the resting membrane potential. Loss of this chloride channel leads to skeletal muscle hyperexcitability, resulting in involuntary muscle action potentials (myotonic discharges) seen clinically as muscle stiffness (myotonia). Stiffness affects the limb and facial muscles, though specific muscle involvement can vary between patients. Interestingly, respiratory distress is not part of this disease despite muscles of respiration such as the diaphragm muscle also carrying this …

Integration Of Public Policy Into Civil Engineering Undergraduate Curricula: Review Of Civil Engineering Body Of Knowledge And Course Application, Michelle R. Oswald Beiler

Faculty Conference Papers and Presentations

The field of civil and environmental engineering directly ties with serving the needs of the public through infrastructure development and improvements in sustainable environments. Integrating this reciprocal connection between public policy and civil engineering into undergraduate civil engineering education is critical for the preparation of the next generation of engineers. This project, first, reviews the guidance of public policy in civil engineering programs, such as ASCE’s Civil Engineering Body of Knowledge. Then, a pedagogical application is presented that focuses on the integration of public policy concepts, methods, assessment tools and techniques in a required, upper level course in civil and …

Solidity Compiler Version Identification On Smart Contract Bytecode, Lakshmi Prasanna Katyayani Devasani

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Identifying the version of the Solidity compiler used to create an Ethereum contract is a challenging task, especially when the contract bytecode is obfuscated and lacks explicit metadata. Ethereum bytecode is highly complex, as it is generated by the Solidity compiler, which translates high-level programming constructs into low-level, stack-based code. Additionally, the Solidity compiler undergoes frequent updates and modifications, resulting in continuous evolution of bytecode patterns. To address this challenge, we propose using deep learning models to analyze Ethereum bytecodes and infer the compiler version that produced them. A large number of Ethereum contracts and the corresponding compiler versions is …

The Open Charge Point Protocol (Ocpp) Version 1.6 Cyber Range A Training And Testing Platform, David Elmo Ii

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The widespread expansion of Electric Vehicles (EV) throughout the world creates a requirement for charging stations. While Cybersecurity research is rapidly expanding in the field of Electric Vehicle Infrastructure, efforts are impacted by the availability of testing platforms. This paper presents a solution called the “Open Charge Point Protocol (OCPP) Cyber Range.” Its purpose is to conduct Cybersecurity research against vulnerabilities in the OCPP v1.6 protocol. The OCPP Cyber Range can be used to enable current or future research and to train operators and system managers of Electric Charge Vehicle Supply Equipment (EVSE). This paper demonstrates this solution using three …

A Secure And Efficient Iiot Anomaly Detection Approach Using A Hybrid Deep Learning Technique, Bharath Reedy Konatham

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) refers to a set of smart devices, i.e., actuators, detectors, smart sensors, and autonomous systems connected throughout the Internet to help achieve the purpose of various industrial applications. Unfortunately, IIoT applications are increasingly integrated into insecure physical environments leading to greater exposure to new cyber and physical system attacks. In the current IIoT security realm, effective anomaly detection is crucial for ensuring the integrity and reliability of critical infrastructure. Traditional security solutions may not apply to IIoT due to new dimensions, including extreme energy constraints in IIoT devices. Deep learning (DL) techniques like Convolutional …