Digital Commons Network^™

Fatigue Behaviour Of Load-Bearing Polymeric Bone Scaffolds: A Review, Hamed Bakhtiari, Alireza Nouri, Mehrdad Khakbiz, Majid Tolouei-Rad

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Bone scaffolds play a crucial role in bone tissue engineering by providing mechanical support for the growth of new tissue while enduring static and fatigue loads. Although polymers possess favourable characteristics such as adjustable degradation rate, tissue-compatible stiffness, ease of fabrication, and low toxicity, their relatively low mechanical strength has limited their use in load-bearing applications. While numerous studies have focused on assessing the static strength of polymeric scaffolds, little research has been conducted on their fatigue properties. The current review presents a comprehensive study on the fatigue behaviour of polymeric bone scaffolds. The fatigue failure in polymeric scaffolds is …

Global Dataset Of Soil Organic Carbon In Tidal Marshes, Tania L. Maxwell, André S. Rovai, Maria F. Adame, Janine B. Adams, José Álvarez-Rogel, William E. N. Austin, Kim Beasy, Francesco Boscutti, Michael E. Böttcher, Tjeerd J. Bouma, Richard H. Bulmer, Annette Burden, Shannon A. Burke, Saritta Camacho, Doongar R. Chaudhary, Gail L. Chmura, Margareth Copertino, Grace M. Cott, Christopher Craft, John Day, Carmen B. De Los Santos, Lionel Denis, Weixin Ding, Joanna C. Ellison, Carolyn J. E. Lewis, Luise Giani, Maria Gispert, Swanne Gontharet, José A. González-Pérez, M. Nazaret González-Alcaraz, Connor Gorham, Anna E. L. Graversen, Anthony Grey, Roberta Guerra, Qiang He, James R. Holmquist, Alice R. Jones, José A. Juanes, Brian P. Kelleher, Karen E. Kohfeld, Dorte Krause-Jensen, Anna Lafratta, Paul S. Lavery, Edward A. Laws, Carmen Leiva-Dueñas, Pei S. Loh, Catherine E. Lovelock, Carolyn J. Lundquist, Peter I. Macreadie, Inés Mazarrasa, J. Patrick Megonigal, Joao M. Neto, Juliana Nogueira, Michael J. Osland, Jordi F. Pagès, Nipuni Perera, Eva-Maria Pfeiffer, Thomas Pollmann, Jacqueline L. Raw, María Recio, Ana C. Ruiz-Fernández, Sophie K. Russell, John M. Rybczyk, Marek Sammul, Christian Sanders, Rui Santos, Oscar Serrano, Matthias Siewert, Craig Smeaton, Zhaoliang Song, Carmen Trasar-Cepeda, Robert R. Twilley, Marijn Van De Broek, Stefano Vitti, Livia V. Antisari, Baptiste Voltz, Christy N. Wails, Raymond D. Ward, Melissa Ward, Jaxine Wolfe, Renmin Yang, Sebastian Zubrzycki, Emily Landis, Lindsey Smart, Mark Spalding, Thomas A. Worthington

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Tidal marshes store large amounts of organic carbon in their soils. Field data quantifying soil organic carbon (SOC) stocks provide an important resource for researchers, natural resource managers, and policy-makers working towards the protection, restoration, and valuation of these ecosystems. We collated a global dataset of tidal marsh soil organic carbon (MarSOC) from 99 studies that includes location, soil depth, site name, dry bulk density, SOC, and/or soil organic matter (SOM). The MarSOC dataset includes 17,454 data points from 2,329 unique locations, and 29 countries. We generated a general transfer function for the conversion of SOM to SOC. Using this …

A New Approach To Predicting Vertical Permeability For Carbonate Rocks In The Southern Mesopotamian Basin, Emad A. Al-Khdheeawi, Raed H. Allawi, Wisam I. Al-Rubaye, Stefan Iglauer

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Reservoir performance depends on many factors, and the most important one is permeability anisotropy. In addition, with high heterogeneity, it is essential to find unique relationships to predict permeability. Therefore, this study aims to predict vertical permeability based on horizontal permeability and porosity and to find new equations for carbonate reservoirs. This work relied on the 398 measured points of cores data collected from several wells in carbonate reservoirs. A new correlation for predicting vertical permeability for the whole data (369 samples) as a function of horizontal permeability and porosity has been developed. The results indicate that this new correlation …

Organisational Drivers And Sustainability Implementation In The Mining Industry: A Holistic Theoretical Framework, Prince Amoah, Gabriel Eweje

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

While few studies have examined the role of institutional pressures on sustainable business practices, there is a dearth of empirical research regarding the influence of internal organisational characteristics on sustainability implementation in developing countries. This paper examines internal organisational features and how they influence multinational companies (MNCs) operating in a resource-rich developing country to embrace and embed sustainability into corporate policies and practices. The findings show that the history of past sustainable practices, the level of internationalisation and managerial cognition internally drive MNCs to implement sustainability in their host countries. We discuss that managerial cognition drives MNCs to embrace sustainability …

Innovative Multi-Criteria Decision-Making Approach For Supplier Evaluation: Combining Tlf, Fuzzy Bwm, And Vikor, Ikhwan Arief, Dicky Fatrias, Ferry Jie, Armijal Armijal

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Addressing the performance issues of underperforming suppliers necessitates a thorough evaluation, serving as a catalyst for initiating supplier development efforts. However, the inherent inaccuracies in information introduce complexity, especially when human judgment is involved in the supplier evaluation process. Associated with such problem, this study presents a novel methodology for supplier performance evaluation in the crumb rubber industry, integrating the Taguchi Loss Function (TLF), fuzzy Best-Worst Method (BWM), and VIKOR technique in group decision-making environment. Aimed at addressing the challenges in industries with variable supplier quality and performance, such as the crumb rubber industry in Indonesia, the methodology was empirically …

Gut Microbial Communities Of Hybridising Pygmy Angelfishes Reflect Species Boundaries, Megan J. Huggett, Jean-Paul A. Hobbs, Federico Vitelli, Michael Stat, Tane H. Sinclair-Taylor, Michael Bunce, Joseph D. Dibattista

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Hybridisation and introgression of eukaryotic genomes can generate new species or subsume existing ones, with direct and indirect consequences for biodiversity. An understudied component of these evolutionary forces is their potentially rapid effect on host gut microbiomes, and whether these pliable microcosms may serve as early biological indicators of speciation. We address this hypothesis in a field study of angelfishes (genus Centropyge), which have one of the highest prevalence of hybridisation within coral reef fish. In our study region of the Eastern Indian Ocean, the parent fish species and their hybrids cohabit and display no differences in their diet, behaviour, …

Multi-Scale Mapping Of Australia’S Terrestrial And Blue Carbon Stocks And Their Continental And Bioregional Drivers, Lewis Walden, Oscar Serrano, Mingxi Zhang, Zefang Shen, James Z. Sippo, Lauren T. Bennett, Damien T. Maher, Catherine E. Lovelock, Peter I. Macreadie, Connor Gorham, Anna Lafratta, Paul S. Lavery, Luke Mosley, Gloria M. S. Reithmaier, Jeffrey J. Kelleway, Sabine Dittmann, Fernanda Adame, Carlos M. Duarte, John B. Gallagher, Pawel Waryszak, Paul Carnell, Sabine Kasel, Nina Hinko-Najera, Rakib Hassan, Madeline Goddard, Alice R. Jones, Raphael A. Viscarra Rossel

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

The soil in terrestrial and coastal blue carbon ecosystems is an important carbon sink. National carbon inventories require accurate assessments of soil carbon in these ecosystems to aid conservation, preservation, and nature-based climate change mitigation strategies. Here we harmonise measurements from Australia’s terrestrial and blue carbon ecosystems and apply multi-scale machine learning to derive spatially explicit estimates of soil carbon stocks and the environmental drivers of variation. We find that climate and vegetation are the primary drivers of variation at the continental scale, while ecosystem type, terrain, clay content, mineralogy and nutrients drive subregional variations. We estimate that in the …

On The Effect Of Emotion Identification From Limited Translated Text Samples Using Computational Intelligence, Madiha Tahir, Zahid Halim, Muhmmad Waqas, Shanshan Tu

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Emotion identification from text data has recently gained focus of the research community. This has multiple utilities in an assortment of domains. Many times, the original text is written in a different language and the end-user translates it to her native language using online utilities. Therefore, this paper presents a framework to detect emotions on translated text data in four different languages. The source language is English, whereas the four target languages include Chinese, French, German, and Spanish. Computational intelligence (CI) techniques are applied to extract features, dimensionality reduction, and classification of data into five basic classes of emotions. Results …

An Improved Genetic Algorithm Based Fractional Open Circuit Voltage Mppt For Solar Pv Systems, Aakash Hassan, Octavian Bass, Mohammad A. S. Masoum

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

To extract the maximum power from solar PV, maximum power point tracking (MPPT) controllers are needed to operate the PV arrays at their maximum power point under varying environmental conditions. Fractional Open Circuit Voltage (FOCV) is a simple, cost-effective, and easy to implement MPPT technique. However, it suffers from the discontinuous power supply and low tracking efficiency. To overcome these drawbacks, a new hybrid MPPT technique based on the Genetic Algorithm (GA) and FOCV is proposed. The proposed technique is based on a single decision variable, reducing the complexity and convergence time of the algorithm. MATLAB/Simulink is used to test …

Key Communication Technologies, Applications, Protocols And Future Guides For Iot-Assisted Smart Grid Systems: A Review, Md Ohirul Qays, Iftekhar Ahmad, Ahmed Abu-Siada, Md Liton Hossain, Farhana Yasmin

Research outputs 2022 to 2026

Towards addressing the concerns of conventional power systems including reliability and security, establishing modern Smart Grids (SGs) has been given much attention by the global electric utility applications during the last few years. One of the key advantageous of SGs is its ability for two-way communication and bi-directional power flow that facilitates the inclusion of distributed energy resources, real time monitoring and self-healing systems. As such, the SG employs a large number of digital devices that are installed at various locations to enrich the observability and controllability of the system. This calls for the necessity of employing Internet of Things …

Correlating Deep Learning-Based Automated Reference Kidney Histomorphometry With Patient Demographics And Creatinine, Nicholas Lucarelli, Brandon Ginley, Jarcy Zee, Sayat Mimar, Anindya S. Paul, Sanjay Jain, Seung Seok Han, Luis Rodrigues, Tezcan Ozrazgat-Baslanti, Michelle L. Wong, Girish Nadkarni, William L. Clapp, Kuang-Yu Jen, Pinaki Sarder

2020-Current year OA Pubs

KEY POINTS: The authors leverage the unique benefits of panoptic segmentation to perform the largest ever quantitation of reference kidney morphometry. Kidney features vary with age and sex; and glomeruli size may intricately link to creatinine, defying prior notions.

BACKGROUND: Reference histomorphometric data of healthy human kidneys are largely lacking because of laborious quantitation requirements. Correlating histomorphometric features with clinical parameters through machine learning approaches can provide valuable information about natural population variance. To this end, we leveraged deep learning (DL), computational image analysis, and feature analysis to associate the relationship of histomorphometry with patient age, sex, serum creatinine (SCr), …

Carbon Sequestration: A Pipedream Or The Solution To Global Warming?, Caroline Mccullars

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Robot Job Destroyers, Henry H. Perritt Jr.

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Constructing Clearer Policy: Reconsidering Louisiana’S Anti-Indemnity Regime For Additional Insured Agreements In Public Construction Contracts, Andrew Hughes

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Don’T Blame Me, I Have Been Exculpated!! “Exculpatory Clauses” In Joint Operating Agreements, Patrick S. Ottinger

Louisiana Law Review

No abstract provided.

Waterbody Size Influences Chemical And Community Characteristics Of North Dakota Prairie Wetlands And Lakes, Julia Renee Hampton

Theses and Dissertations

The Prairie Pothole Region (PPR) of North America is home to dynamic glacier-formed lakes and wetlands that range in size from small intermittent wetlands to large permanently filled basins. Predicting water-related shifts in environmental conditions and biological community responses within these systems has been challenging due to non-linear, scale-specific changes. Furthermore, landscape-level changes in the quantity and distribution of surface water are becoming more frequent. This thesis contributes to our understanding of how waterbody size, and potential size fluctuations, influence chemical and community dynamics of complex PPR glacial lakes and wetlands. We paired remote sensing and discontinuity methods with US …

School Nurses And The Sexual Health And Education Of Public-School Students In Tennessee, Amy Wake

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Tennesseans have been experiencing increasing rates of sexually transmitted diseases since the year 2000. Those rates are highest among those 15- to 24-year-olds. At the same time, Tennessee policy requires the teaching of abstinence as the primary form of sexual health education and emphasized the use of abstinence-only curriculum. The school nurse represents an available resource in the Tennessee public schools. The purpose of the qualitative study was to explore, describe, and interpret the perceptions and experiences of public-school nurses from rural, suburban, and urban areas of Tennessee related to the sexual health and sexual health education of students. School …

Stereochemical Engineering Yields A Multifunctional Peptide Macrocycle Inhibitor Of Akt2 By Fine-Tuning Macrocycle-Cell Membrane Interactions, Arundhati Nag, Amirhossein Mafi, Samir Das, Mary Beth Yu, Belen Alvarez-Villalonga, Soo-Kyung Kim, Yapeng Su, William A. Goddard, James R. Heath

Chemistry

Macrocycle peptides are promising constructs for imaging and inhibiting extracellular, and cell membrane proteins, but their use for targeting intracellular proteins is typically limited by poor cell penetration. We report the development of a cell-penetrant high-affinity peptide ligand targeted to the phosphorylated Ser474 epitope of the (active) Akt2 kinase. This peptide can function as an allosteric inhibitor, an immunoprecipitation reagent, and a live cell immunohistochemical staining reagent. Two cell penetrant stereoisomers were prepared and shown to exhibit similar target binding affinities and hydrophobic character but 2-3-fold different rates of cell penetration. Experimental and computational studies resolved that the ligands’ difference …

Advanced Caching And Streaming For Large Scale Point Cloud Data Visualization On The Web, Pravin Poudel

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Point clouds are widely used in various applications such as 3D modeling, geospatial analysis, robotics, and more. One of the key advantages of 3D point cloud data is that, unlike other data formats like texture, it is independent of viewing angle, surface type, and parameterization. Since each point in the point cloud is independent of the other, it makes it the most suitable source of data for tasks like object recognition, scene segmentation, and reconstruction. Point clouds are complex and verbose due to the numerous attributes they contain, many of which may not be always necessary for rendering, making retrieving …

Analyzing The Impacts Of Beaver Dam And Beaver Dam Analog Complexes To Stream Ecology Within The Intermountain West, J. Marshall Wolf

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Streams, rivers, and their floodplains throughout the world are impaired due to human modifications. Recent research has demonstrated that restoration projects prioritizing the proper functioning of ecosystems have better restoration outcomes than projects which focus on restoring form alone. Throughout North America, beaver-mediated restoration is becoming a leading method for improving the functioning of stream ecosystems that are in a degraded state. In areas where beaver are absent or the habitat is too degraded to currently permit their dam building, man-made beaver dam analogs (BDAs) are being used to restore stream habitat with an eye to future beaver recolonization. However, …

An Ensemble Approach For Mapping Snow Water Equivalent In Utah, Logan Schneider

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Mountain snowpack is an important resource for water management planning in Utah. Snow water equivalent (SWE) is the amount of water contained in a snowpack. A few organizations predict SWE throughout the United States but struggle making accurate predictions in mountainous regions. Weather stations provide accurate measurements of SWE but have limited spatial coverage that hinders the ability to make accurate estimates statewide. This thesis examines the accuracy of current models and proposes using local weather measurements to improve upon national level predictions. An R statistical software package named rsnodas implements this process while allowing the public access to a …

Multi-Objective Water Management In Idaho's Henrys Fork Watershed: Leveraging Reservoir Operation And Groundwater Pathways To Benefit Aquatic Habitat, Christina N. Morrisett

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Multi-user water management is a challenging arena further complicated by climate change. This research is based in the Henrys Fork, Snake River, Idaho—an agricultural watershed that exemplifies those throughout the semi-arid American West. This dissertation uses an integrated approach that considers groundwater-river relationships, farm-scale decisions and basin-scale outcomes, upstream reservoir operation for downstream aquatic habitat, water rights, and collaborative stakeholder management to identify drought adaptation strategies accordingly.

Chapter 2 uses an interdisciplinary approach to quantify how improvements to irrigation efficiency at the farm-scale (i.e., converting from flood to sprinkler irrigation) can add up to affect hydrology at the landscape-scale and …

Understanding Support For Student Veterans And Servicemembers In Public Undergraduate Engineering Programs, Hannah Wilkinson

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Current efforts to increase research in diversity, equity, and inclusion in engineering education have included research with military students pursuing undergraduate degrees in engineering at civilian, public academic institutions. In this thesis research, military students are defined as undergraduate students who a) have completed their service in the U.S. Armed Forces and are considered military veterans, and/or b) are current enlisted service members, such as in the U.S. Reserves or National Guard. An emerging topic of interest within the military student literature in engineering education has sought to explore the influence of “institutional agents” within military students’ experiences. The …

An Overview Of Sustainability Content In Higher Education: Applications For University Landscape Architecture Programs, Hye Yeon Park

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

Higher education institutions worldwide have recognized the importance of integrating sustainability into their programs, with over 600 universities offering courses focused on sustainable development. This trend has led to the emergence of Education for Sustainable Development (ESD). This multidimensional approach aims to empower individuals to create a sustainable future by integrating environmental, social, and economic systems. In particular, ESD has been implemented in various aspects of higher education, such as course content, teaching methodologies, curriculum design, and faculty roles.

Design and planning education are critical components of shaping future decision-makers who will positively and negatively impact society and the environment. …

Gps-Denied Navigation Using Synthetic Aperture Radar, Tucker Hathaway

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

In most modern navigation systems, GPS is used to determine the precise location of the vehicle; however, GPS signals can easily be blocked, jammed, or spoofed. These signals can be blocked by canyons or tall buildings. Additionally, adversaries can transmit signals that either make GPS signals difficult to interpret or that imitate real GPS signals and cause a navigation system to think it is somewhere other than its true location. GPS-denied (GPS-D) navigation is the process of navigating in the absence of GPS.

Many methods of performing GPS-D navigation have been proposed and explored. One such method is to use …

Collaborative Task Completion For Simulated Hexapod Robots Using Reinforcement Learning, Tayler Don Baker

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

There is growing interest in developing autonomous systems capable of exhibiting collaborative behaviors. Using methods such as reinforcement learning is another way to train multiple robots for collaborative task completion. This study was able to successfully in simulation train multiple hexapod robots to push a target to a designated goal collaboratively. This required each robot to learn how find the target and push that target to a goal. This work suggests that using reinforcement learning for collaborative task completion for hexapod robots may simplify the complexity of the software and improve the decisions that they make.

Development, Implementation, And Optimization Of A Modern, Subsonic/Supersonic Panel Method, Cory D. Goates

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Fall 2023 to Present

In the early stages of aircraft design, engineers consider many different design concepts, examining the trade-offs between different component arrangements and sizes, thrust and power requirements, etc. Because so many different designs are considered, it is best in the early stages of design to use simulation tools that are fast; accuracy is secondary. A common simulation tool for early design and analysis is the panel method. Panel methods were first developed in the 1950s and 1960s with the advent of modern computers. Despite being reasonably accurate and very fast, their development was abandoned in the late 1980s in favor of …

Detection Of Dental Restorations Using No-Code Artificial Intelligence, Manal Hamdan, Zaid Badr, Jennifer Bjork, Reagan Saxe, Francesca Malensek, Caroline Miller, Rakhi Shah, Shengtong Han, Hossein Mohammad-Rahimi

School of Dentistry Faculty Research and Publications

Objectives

The purpose of this study was to utilize a no-code computer vision platform to develop, train, and evaluate a model specifically designed for segmenting dental restorations on panoramic radiographs.

Methods

One hundred anonymized panoramic radiographs were selected for this study. Accurate labeling of dental restorations was performed by calibrated dental faculty and students, with subsequent final review by an oral radiologist. The radiographs were automatically split within the platform into training (70 %), development (20 %), and testing (10 %) subgroups. The model was trained for 40 epochs using a medium model size. Data augmentation techniques available within the …

Apoe Genotype And Alzheimer Disease Risk Across Age, Sex, And Population Ancestry, Michael E Belloy, Shea J Andrews, Yann Le Guen, Michael Cuccaro, Lindsay A Farrer, Valerio Napolioni, Michael D Greicius

2020-Current year OA Pubs

IMPORTANCE: Apolipoprotein E (APOE)*2 and APOE*4 are, respectively, the strongest protective and risk-increasing, common genetic variants for late-onset Alzheimer disease (AD), making APOE status highly relevant toward clinical trial design and AD research broadly. The associations of APOE genotypes with AD are modulated by age, sex, race and ethnicity, and ancestry, but these associations remain unclear, particularly among racial and ethnic groups understudied in the AD and genetics research fields.

OBJECTIVE: To assess the stratified associations of APOE genotypes with AD risk across sex, age, race and ethnicity, and global population ancestry.

DESIGN, SETTING, PARTICIPANTS: This genetic association study included …

Trpv4 Differentially Controls Inflammatory Cytokine Networks During Static And Dynamic Compression Of The Intervertebral Disc, Garrett W D Easson, Alireza Savadipour, Christian Gonzalez, Farshid Guilak, Simon Y Tang

2020-Current year OA Pubs

BACKGROUND: The ion channel transient receptor potential vanilloid 4 (TRPV4) critically transduces mechanical forces in the IVD, and its inhibition can prevent IVD degeneration due to static overloading. However, it remains unknown whether different modes of loading signals through TRPV4 to regulate the expression of inflammatory cytokines. We hypothesized that TRPV4 signaling is essential during static and dynamic loading to mediate homeostasis and mechanotransduction.

METHODS: Mouse functional spine units were isolated and either cyclically compressed for 5 days (1 Hz, 1 h, 10% strain) or statically compressed (24 h, 0.2 MPa). Conditioned media were monitored at 6 h, 24 h, …