Digital Commons Network^™

Thermodynamic Modeling Of Ph Impacts On Subsurface Microbial Consortia, Jackfin K C

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

Underground hydrogen storage is affected by microbial consumption, and the different minerals present in the subsurface. However, most studies consider either biotic or abiotic factors in isolation and hence, the conditions that drive a self-sustaining storage remain poorly understood. This thesis uses a genome-informed thermodynamic model developed by Kharel et al. (2026) in which pH is the central variable coupling hydrogenotrophic microbial metabolism, inter-species competition, and carbonate mineral buffering. The model includes four hydrogen-consuming species: methanogen (Methanobacterium), acetogen (Acetoanaerobium), aerobic acetate oxidizer (Pseudomonas stutzeri), and sulfate reducer (Nitratidesulfovibrio) by conditioning each organism's …

Investigation Of Warfarin–Human Serum Albumin Binding By Ultrafast Affinity Extraction Using Single- And Dual-Column Affinity Microcolumn Systems, Samiul Alim

Department of Chemistry: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This dissertation examined the interaction of warfarin with human serum albumin (HSA) by using affinity chromatography, with particular emphasis on ultrafast affinity extraction (UAE) and affinity microcolumns. HSA affinity supports were prepared by immobilizing HSA onto diol-bonded silica via Schiff base chemistry and used to prepare affinity microcolumns for chromatographic studies under physiological-like conditions at pH 7.4 and 37.0 °C. UAE studies were performed to investigate the effects of residence time, flow rate, and column configuration on the measured apparent free fraction of warfarin and on the calculated apparent binding parameters. The results showed that the measured apparent free fraction …

Graduates Of The College Of The Holy Cross Naval Rotc Unit 1944-2026, Brendan J. O'Donnell

Naval Science Department

In 2016, the O’Callahan Society, in support of the Naval ROTC Unit at the College of the Holy Cross, published a history of the Unit which included statistics on the Navy and Marine Corps officers commissioned through the Unit since 1944. These statistics were largely based on a 2004 annual report submitted by the Unit (on file in the Navy Archives in Washington D. C.) and that report, in turn, built on a previous report that was prepared in 1990. These reports were combined with information from other Unit annual reports in the Navy Archives and from binders prepared by …

Grapho 2026, Simon Niemtschk

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

Grapho’s theme this year, “One Body in Christ”, encourages us to meditate on the ways our faith unites. By our Lord’s sacrifice, all believers are bound together with the resurrected body of Christ. Inspired by the great love God shared with the church as seen in Paul’s letters (Romans 12:4-5; 1 Corinthians 12:12-13), we are freed from sin, death and the power of the devil, and empowered to a life together. Our theme this year invites Christians to consider how our unity is found scripturally, sacramentally, and liturgically.

The Broken Body, Benjamin Wagner

Grapho : Concordia Seminary Student Journal

I remember sitting on the dugout bench wishing that I could play the same way the other kids did. They did not need to labor with such great exertion that their lungs might collapse—but I did. I was born with several chronic conditions that made all physical activities exceedingly challenging. For me, sports, exercise, or even playing with other kids always came with complications. I knew, deep down, that something was wrong with me. My body was not as it was meant to be.

The Intersection Of Gender And Ecohorror In Poe’S Short Fiction, Ellie Dana

Criterion: A Journal of Literary Criticism

This article argues that Poe uses female characters to express ecohorrific anxieties and imagine posthumanist ways of being. In "The Fall of the House of Usher," Poe associates Madeline with nature's terrors by describing Madeline's disease as distinctly physical and coordinating her exit from her tomb with a raging storm. In "Berenice," Poe uses the violations of the titular character's body to enter into conversations about the rapid extraction of natural resources and the possibility of sentience beyond material existence. An ecohorrific reading of Poe’s texts reveals how Poe dismisses women as merely corporeal beings; however, ecohorror also reveals how …

Iowa Waste Reduction Center News, June 2026, University Of Northern Iowa. Iowa Waste Reduction Center.

Iowa Waste Reduction Center Newsletter

Contents:

--- Thank you, Leslie
--- Zane joins the IWRC
--- DNR Air Fee changes
--- What does MSEI assistance look like?
--- P2 Green Brewery Certification webinars
--- Energy Efficiency resources
--- Industry News

Project Strata, Hobbs Hegedus, Antony Chen, Adrian Scancich, Peter Constantine Psefteas, Ryan Kreis Roth, Jack Douglas Mitchell

Mechanical Engineering

Project STRATA is a lunar sample acquisition and storage system developed in support of NASA’s Artemis mission objectives and the 2026 NASA RASC-AL competition. The overall mission concept utilizes a dual-rover architecture consisting of HARVEST, a sample collection rover, and SILO, a storage rover designed to preserve and organize lunar ice-regolith core samples collected from permanently shadowed regions (PSRs) near the lunar south pole. These regions contain scientifically valuable volatile-rich materials but present significant challenges due to extreme cryogenic temperatures, abrasive lunar regolith, and the absence of solar energy.

This report is a collection of all major work from the …

Custom Animatronic Puppet, Jake Schuman, Fredy Herrarte, Madison Reedy, Jackson Reynolds

Mechanical Engineering

This project involved the design, fabrication, and implementation of a custom audio-animatronic puppet modeled after Dr. Brian Davis for the California Polytechnic State University Mechanical Engineering Department. The objective was to create an expressive, lifelike character capable of synchronized speech, head movement, arm gestures, and seated-to-standing motion while demonstrating the integration of mechanical design, controls, manufacturing, and artistic fabrication.

The final system consists of an 18-degree-of-freedom animatronic platform utilizing servo-driven facial and upper-body actuation combined with a pneumatic standing mechanism. A modular aluminum and 3D-printed structural framework was developed using SolidWorks and validated through engineering analysis. Character shells were digitally …

Compressor Rotor Joints And Interference Fit Study, Isabela Jimenez, Aubrey Perez, Isaiah Guerrero, Jireh Velasquez

Mechanical Engineering

Solar Turbines need a comprehensive study on the effects axial and radial inference fits have on turbine compressor rotor stiffness. The aft weldment of the compressor has press-fit dowel pins and pilot joints to connect one weldment section to another. These fits need to be assessed through a finite element modal analysis, as well as practically tested through modal impacts to investigate how the fits affect the stiffness of the turbine’s connected weldments. The experimental data will be used to validate the finite element analysis (FEA) model.

Forged Carbon Fiber Adventure Project, Timothy Villafana, Victor Javadoff, Nathan Pittiglio, Cooper Starr

Mechanical Engineering

Forged carbon fiber compression molding remains a relatively under-researched manufacturing process. While there are documented processes online, the options are few and far between. Our sponsor and case-study user, Dr. Mello, tasked us with the goal of researching and developing a process for forged carbon fiber compression molding through means of modifying his prototype of a bike pack handlebar cradle (figure 3). This prototype will allow us to create tooling which will be used to manufacture a handlebar cradle that can withstand larger loads and more extreme environments using our developed process. A handlebar cradle is a structural support for …

Raytheon Rtx Autonomous Vehicle Competition (Avc) - Unmanned Ground Vehicle (Ugv), Bryant Jonathan Martinez-Bautista, Geovanni Lara, Jared Herrera, Jose Barrera

Mechanical Engineering

Raytheon RTX has four universities participating in a competition to successfully complete various challenges with a UAV and UGV including navigation and landing. The students must work collaboratively to integrate and manufacture a working UGV that is compatible with the UAV.

Our sponsor is Raytheon, more specifically Mr. Luis Esparza. Important stakeholders also include Cal Poly and the entire team of ME & CPE working on the project. Raytheon and Luis are looking for innovative solutions that can be applied for real world scenarios where UAV’s and UGV’s are applied. Cal Poly is gaining recognition, and the team is gaining …

Peltier-Based Hydration Accumulation Terminal (P.H.A.T.), Jenner Mucher, Ethan Pace, Renee Robolledo, Sabrina Luo, Taehoon Lee, Tarsem Pal

Mechanical Engineering

The objective of this project is to design an innovative potable water dispenser capable of safely delivering hot, ambient, and chilled water on demand for human lander missions. The system will support astronauts’ hydration and food rehydration needs while minimizing mass, power, maintenance, and contamination risks in microgravity and partial-gravity environments. Current spacecraft dispensers, such as the International Space Station (ISS) system, provide only heated water and have limited temperature control, cleaning accessibility, and microbial resilience. Building on NASA heritage designs and lessons learned from the ISS Potable Water Dispenser, this project advances a lighter, simpler, and more energy-efficient concept …

Mass - Modular Acoustic Suppression System, Julia Megargle, Michael A. Milner, Lucas Kaemmererer, Jonathan Corvera, Gabriel Choi, Emmi Cayer

Mechanical Engineering

The Modular Acoustic Suppression System (MASS) is a mass tuned damper that reverberates a membrane atop a cavity to absorb select acoustic frequencies produced by the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) within NASA's Artemis Human Lander. The height of the reverberation chamber is adjusted to mitigate a range of varying tonal frequencies within the human lander.

Mechanical Jump Rope, Mary Harrington, Naail Lalani, Lucas Nathan, Guy Kalach

Mechanical Engineering

This Mechanical Jump Rope Senior Project was performed by four Mechanical Engineering students. This project was for the Cal Poly Kinesiology and Public Health Department, to be used by Cal Poly Friday Club, a collaboration between the San Luis Obispo Special Olympics and Kinesiology students. The purpose of the project was to allow those with different mental and physical abilities to learn and practice the timing of a jump rope at slow and adjustable speeds.

Electronic Bike Chopper, Caleb S. Bermack, Joey Lederer, Ethan Dea, Evan Herrera, Fred Agregado

Mechanical Engineering

Our sponsor, David Royce, built an initial e-bike chopper prototype and desired an improved, next generation version. Our team designed and manufactured an electric bicycle to achieve the rugged visual style of a classic chopper motorcycle while improving stability and usability. The team built a functional E-Chopper prototype using a 4130 steel frame, custom dropouts, a long front fork, wide rear tire, ape-hanger handlebars, and prebuilt electric components such as the battery, hub motor, controller, throttle, and display. The design focused on reducing excess weight, improving frame rigidity, and meeting California e-bike regulations.

Me3328 Buckling Lab, Willem Bitterolf, Samantha Flores, Jacy Gonsalves, Brooke Thompson

Mechanical Engineering

The objective of this senior design project is to design and develop an instructional buckling apparatus (hereafter referred to as a “buckling tester”) to enhance student comprehension of column buckling behavior through direct experimental investigation. The apparatus is specifically intended to bridge the gap between theoretical predictions and observed physical response of structural column members subjected to axial compressive loading. In particular, the system will allow students to examine how column behavior transitions between Euler’s elastic buckling theory, which governs long, slender columns, and the Johnson parabolic formula, which more accurately describes intermediate and shorter columns influenced by material yielding. …

Guitar Pickup Testing Fixture, Koen Graue, Ethan Rezentes, Max Schecter, Timothy Webb

Mechanical Engineering

Small guitar pickup manufacturers and hobbyists have an interest in developing guitar pickups with unique tonal characteristics and responses, but currently lack a reliable way to test these pickups and characterize their sound. I.M. Bohannon Mechanical Design approached the team to develop a solution to this problem. In response, the team researched current technologies, customer needs, and existing products on the market to define the scope and requirements for a guitar pickup testing fixture. This report documents the work completed during the project scope and definition phase of Cal Poly's senior project process. It discusses researched topics and existing solutions, …

Xylem: A Comparative Analysis Of Gpu Dispatch Pipelines For Large-Scale, Procedural Environments, Srinivas Sundararaman

Master's Theses

The real-time rendering of large-scale, procedural scenes presents a significant performance challenge for traditional CPU-bound rendering pipelines. The high volume of draw calls and the need for complex culling and level-of-detail management create bottlenecks that limit scene complexity and visual fidelity. This thesis investigates the evolution of GPU-driven rendering paradigms via the Xylem renderer within NVIDIA’s Donut rendering framework as a solution to these challenges.

A comprehensive benchmarking framework is developed to implement and quantitatively analyze three distinct rendering strategies for a procedurally generated, parameterizable, large-scale forest scene. The evaluated pipelines include: (1) traditional instanced rendering, (2) compute-driven indirect rendering …

Pet Mobility Project, John Shelby, Lily-Rose Jolie Bacon, Andrea Yasmine Reyes

Biomedical Engineering

The Pet Mobility Project, sponsored by Terri Smith and Jasper Jackson, is an initiative aimed at providing a custom mobility aid to a pet in the San Luis Obispo community. Amber Rappozo’s young German Shepherd, LeDoux, was selected as the project’s recipient. LeDoux suffers from hindleg weakness and, as a result, has limited mobility. This document provides a comprehensive overview of the Pet Mobility Project, detailing the motivation, background, and design approach behind the development of a LeDoux’s custom mobility aid.

Cardiac Twitch Force Measurement System, Tara Hoffman, Sebastian Carrascal Gómez, Julian Macdonald

Biomedical Engineering

The goal of this project is to develop a low-cost and accurate force measurement system and method of measurement to be used in the testing of grown cardiac tissue samples. The primary stakeholder in this project is Dr. Luke Perreault, a biomedical engineering professor at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo who is studying grown cardiac tissue rings, and any of his student lab personnel. Other stakeholders include other researchers in the tissue engineering field who require a similar form of testing to the methods developed in this project.

This document will introduce the identified problem and background as …

Design And Implementation Of An Intelligent Wearable Health Monitoring System Using The Shimmer Platform, Christopher Tu, Rafael Martinez

Computer Engineering

This report goes over the wearable health monitoring system that we built that uses an activity classification system to tell what you are doing real time. We used a Shimmer3 sensor to collect accelerometer data and streamed it via Bluetooth to our laptops where we processed the data and ran a machine learning classifier to detect if someone is resting, walking or running. We collected our own data to train the Random Forest classifier that we used from scratch and ended with 98% accuracy. The system has a live dashboard implemented into it that shows sensor data and the current …

Autonomous Vision-Based Litter Collection Rover, Dante Michael Benedetti, Benjamin Scott Tavares, Nathan Heil

Electrical Engineering

This report documents the design, implementation, and testing of an autonomous litter-collection rover developed as a Senior Project Design Lab (EE 460/463/464) at California Polytechnic State University. The rover integrates autonomy, computer vision, embedded real-time control, mecanum-wheel omnidirectional mobility, and a two-degree-of-freedom robotic arm to detect, approach, and collect small ground-level litter such as bottles, wrappers, and paper fragments.

The system uses a two-layer compute architecture: an NVIDIA Jetson Orin Nano running ROS 2 for perception, SLAM, and path planning, paired with an STM32L4A6ZG microcontroller for real-time motor control and odometry. The robot is built on a multi-level aluminum frame …

Elevate Grill, Brady Alexander

Electrical Engineering

The Elevate Grill Senior Project is a Santa Maria style grill with an electrical lifting/lowering mechanism and temperature sensor feedback. The grill allows for a dynamically controlled cooking surface, able to be automatically set or manually set by the user. The grill’s user interface informs the user about the temperature in different zones on the grill and alerts the user when the target temperature is hit. Additionally, the user can program preset temperature ranges and apply them to the grill’s control system. The system incorporates safe failure modes in the event of a power outage and also allows the user …

Solving Linearly Constrained Quadratic Programs Using Field Programmable Analog Arrays, Tyler Wynn, Alonzo Arroyo

Electrical Engineering

This paper presents a field-programmable analog array (FPAA) implementation for solving linearly constrained quadratic programs (LCQPs) directly in the analog domain. The solver is based on a continuous-time primal-dual control architecture with integral action, anti-windup compensation, and a piecewise-linear nonlinearity for enforcing affine inequality constraints. A switched-capacitor implementation using three AN231E04 FPAAs is developed, and coefficient scaling methods are introduced to keep internal and output signals within the voltage limits of the hardware. A global scaling factor is used to reduce internal signal excursions, while solution-space scaling is shown to modify the implemented optimization coefficients and alter the local closed-loop …

Autonomous Rover Solar And Battery Management System: Team B, Karla Jazmin Lira Gonzalez, Paige Ambriz, Kunj Shah, Elhom Delasa Sheykhi

Electrical Engineering

This project focused on the software and printed circuit board (PCB) integration for Poly1Rover’s battery management system (BMS). Poly1Rover is a student organization dedicated to building a low-cost autonomous rover designed to operate on Mars. Since solar availability, temperature, and other conditions on Mars vary, the rover requires a reliable battery management system that accurately monitors battery health and status. This team’s work included the communication and control side of the BMS. The subsystem was designed around the Renesas ISL94202 battery monitor and the MSP430 controller. Battery information was read from the ISL94202 registers through I2C communication, converted from raw …

Estimation And Control For Physical-Ai Aerial Robots, Joshua S. Crain

Electrical Engineering

This project investigates the modeling, control, and state estimation of a Crazyflie 2.0 quadrotor using both a custom nonlinear simulation and the NVIDIA Isaac Lab robotics simulation framework. A twelve-state rigid-body dynamic model was developed to represent the translational and rotational motion of the vehicle, and classical cascaded PID control was implemented for position and attitude stabilization. To improve state awareness in the presence of sensor noise, Kalman Filter (KF) and Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithms were integrated for state estimation. Initial controller development and verification were performed using a custom MATLAB/Python simulation environment based on numerical integration of the …

Attachment Style, The Working Alliance, And Client Self-Disclosure In Individual Psychotherapy, Jennifer S. Baar

Dissertations

Client self-disclosure is a core component of the psychotherapy process and increased levels of client self-disclosure have been shown to predict more positive therapeutic outcomes (Pattee & Farber, 2008; Sloan & Kahn, 2005). Similarly, the working alliance and attachment are constructs that have been studied in psychotherapy research and are consistently associated with therapeutic outcomes. Specifically, stronger working alliance ratings and higher levels of secure attachment have been found to predict more positive therapy outcomes (e.g., Flückiger et al., 2018; Mallinckrodt et al., 2005; Sauer et al., 2010). As these three constructs have been found to influence psychotherapy outcomes, the …

Reduced Product Type Monoid-Module Extensions, Darryl Jent

Dissertations

In 1955, I. M. James introduced the James Construction, a free topological monoid that models the loops on the suspension of a given space. In 1969, S. Y. Husseini generalized this idea to RPT monoids: topological monoids with a free-like monoid structure that can be used to model a broader class of loop spaces. In order to prove that these topological monoids are models of loop spaces, both I. M. James and S. Y. Husseini constructed contractible spaces on which these topological monoids act. We define a topological module as a space equipped with an action by a topological monoid. …

From Total Domination To Graph Coloring, Sawyer Isaac Osborn

Dissertations

A question involving a chess piece called a prince on the 8×8 chessboard leads to a concept in graph theory involving total domination. We say a vertex u in a graph G totally dominates a vertex v if u is adjacent to v. A subset S of the vertex set of a graph G is a total dominating set for G if every vertex in G is totally dominated by at least one vertex of S. If S is a total dominating set of G, then σ_S(v) denotes the number of …