Engineering Commons^™

Producer Long-Term Marketing Opportunities With Ethanol Plants, Austin Harthoorn, Logan Lloyd, Cory Walters, Kate Brooks

Cornhusker Economics

Commodity marketing operates in a complex decision environment with constant information flow, which can conceal long-run financially profitable marketing opportunities for producers. In the corn marketing space, the competitive role of ethanol plants throughout the state may provide producers with long-run financial gains by strategically approaching marketing decisions. In this article, we characterize whether producers can gain financially from strategically marketing corn to ethanol plants. For example, do ethanol plants provide a better long-run return from pre-harvest hedging, spring sale, or harvest sale?

We investigate three important contracting times--forward contract for harvest delivery (called pre-harvest hereafter), harvest delivery, and spring …

Dense & Attention Convolutional Neural Networks For Toe Walking Recognition, Junde Chen, Rahul Soangra, Marybeth Grant-Beuttler, Y. A. Nanehkaran, Yuxin Wen

Physical Therapy Faculty Articles and Research

Idiopathic toe walking (ITW) is a gait disorder where children’s initial contacts show limited or no heel touch during the gait cycle. Toe walking can lead to poor balance, increased risk of falling or tripping, leg pain, and stunted growth in children. Early detection and identification can facilitate targeted interventions for children diagnosed with ITW. This study proposes a new one-dimensional (1D) Dense & Attention convolutional network architecture, which is termed as the DANet, to detect idiopathic toe walking. The dense block is integrated into the network to maximize information transfer and avoid missed features. Further, the attention modules are …

Utilization Of Cellulose Symbiotic Culture Of Bacteria And Yeast (Scoby) With Sweet Tea Media As Methylene Blue And Brilliant Green Biosorbent Material, Leonard Mateus Sigiro, Ahmad Maksum, Donanta Dhaneswara

Journal of Materials Exploration and Findings

The cellulose from Symbiotic Culture of Bacteria and Yeast (SCOBY) can be used as a biosorbent for dye adsorption, such as Methylene Blue and Brilliant Green. This study used sweet tea with a 6% of sugar concentration and 14 days of fermentation time to synthesize biosorbent material from SCOBY. The results from this synthesis are then characterized using FTIR, SEM, and BET. From the result of characterization, it was found that SCOBY has pores formed from cellulose. The results of the average pore size are 1.5976nm with a pore volume of 0.229cc/g, while the specific surface area is 143.244m2/g. The …

Enhancing Compatibility And Mechanical Properties Of Natural Rubber Composites, Krisma Yessi Sianturi, Adam Febriyanto Nugraha, Belle Kristaura, Mochamad Chalid

Journal of Materials Exploration and Findings

Pure natural rubber (NR) exhibits low mechanical properties, necessitating the incorporation of additives like vulcanizing agents and fillers. Carbon black and silica, conventional fillers, are relatively expensive and not environmentally friendly. This study explores using Oil Palm Empty Fruit Bunch (OPEFB) fiber as an affordable, abundant, and biodegradable alternative filler for NR. However, compatibility issues arise between the nonpolar NR and the polar OPEFB fiber. A latex-starch hybrid coupling agent (CA (NR-St)) was added to the composite formulation to address this. NR, OPEFB fiber, and the coupling agent were mixed using an open roll mill with a 10 phr OPEFB …

What Senior U.S. Leaders Say We Should Know About Cyber, Dr. Joseph H. Schafer

Military Cyber Affairs

On April 6, 2023, the Atlantic Council’s Cyber Statecraft Initiative hosted a panel discussion on the new National Cybersecurity Strategy. The panel featured four senior officials from the Office of the National Cyber Director (ONCD), the Department of State (DoS), the Department of Justice (DoJ), and the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). The author attended and asked each official to identify the most important elements that policymakers and strategists must understand about cyber. This article highlights historical and recent struggles to express cyber policy, the responses from these officials, and the author’s ongoing research to improve national security cyber policy.

Fabrication Of Black Phosphorus Terahertz Photoconductive Antennas, Nathan Tanner Sawyers

Physics Undergraduate Honors Theses

Terahertz (THz) photoconductive antennas (PCAs) using 40nm thin-film flakes of black phosphorus (BP) and hexagonal boron nitride (hBN) have been shown computationally to be capable of THz emission comparable to those based on GaAs [2]. In this paper, I briefly describe the scientific and practical interest in THz emissions and explain what warrants research into black phosphorus as a photoconductive semiconductor in THz devices. Furthermore, I outline the basic principle of how these antennas work and mention alternative designs produced by other researchers in the past. Finally, I summarize the fabrication process of these antennas, as well as the measurements …

Effects Of Factors On The Market Price Of The Shares Using Design Of Experiment, Amir Ahmad Dar, Mohammad Shahfaraz Khan, Imran Azad, Tanveer Ahmad Tarray, N. Anuradha, Qaiser Farroq Dar

Applied Mathematics & Information Sciences

When the cost of capital, dividends and the price of the share at the beginning is known, Modigliani and Miller’s model can be used to estimate the price of the share at the end of the period. A design of experiment (Taguchi’s orthogonal array) is used in order to investigate the impact of three parameters on the price of the share at the end of the period. The main aim of this research article is to find which parameter is more significant on the price of the share at the end of the period. Taguchi’s methodology of design of the …

Reverse Engineering Post-Quantum Cryptography Schemes To Find Rowhammer Exploits, Sam Lefforge

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Post-quantum cryptography is a necessary countermeasure to protect against attacks from quantum computer. However, the post-quantum cryptography schemes are potentially vulnerable to side channel attacks. One such method of attacking involves creating bit-flips in victim memory through a process called Rowhammer. These attacks can vary in nature, but can involve rowhammering bits to raise the encryption scheme's decryption failure rate, or modifying the scheme's random seed. With a high enough decryption failure rate, it becomes feasible to generate sufficient information about the secret key to perform a key recovery attack. This thesis proposed two attacks on proposed post-quantum cryptography algorithms, …

Critical Infrastructure Workforce Development Pods For Teaching Cybersecurity Using Netlab+, Gideon Sutterfield

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

As digital automation for Industrial Control Systems has grown, so has its vulnerability to cyberattacks. The world of industry has responded effectively to this, but the world of academia is still lagging as its emphasis is still almost entirely on information technology. Considering this, we created a workforce development pod that serves as a hands-on learning module for teaching students key cybersecurity ideas surrounding operational technology using the NETLAB+ platform. A pod serves as the virtual environment where the learning exercise takes place. This project’s implementation involved the creation of a segmented network within the pod where a student starts …

Physics-Based Human-In-The-Loop Machine Learning Combined With Genetic Algorithm Search For Multi-Criteria Optimization: Electrochemical Co2 Reduction Reaction, Naohiro Fujinuma, Samuel Lofland

College of Science & Mathematics Departmental Research

Machine learning (ML) can be a powerful tool to expedite materials research, but the deployment for experimental research is often hindered by data scarcity and model uncertainty. An human-in-the-loop procedure to tailor the implementation of ML for multicriteria optimization is described. The effectiveness of this procedure in the development of a nafion-based membrane electrode assembly for electrochemical CO2 reduction reaction (CO2RR) into CO for two targets is demonstrated: energy efficiency (EE) and partial current density for CO2RR (). Model-agnostic nonlinear correlation analyses identify the 11 features relevant to those targets. The three studied decision tree-based ML models yield similar cross-validation …

Culture In Computing: The Importance Of Developing Gender-Inclusive Software, Creighton France

Computer Science and Computer Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

The field of computing as we know it today exists because of the contributions of numerous female mathematicians, computer scientists, and programmers. While working with hardware was viewed as “a man’s job” during the mid-20th century, computing and programming was viewed as a noble and high-paying field for women to occupy. However, as time has progressed, the U.S. has seen a decrease in the number of women pursuing computer science. The idea that computing is a masculine discipline is common in the U.S. today for reasons such as male-centered marketing of electronics and gadgets, an inaccurate representation of what it …

Source Code Plagiarism Detection Using Jplag & Stack Overflow Data, Sudheer Yetthapu

Masters Theses & Specialist Projects

Advancements in computer technology and internet services have led to the availability of vast amounts of information like videos, articles, research papers, and code samples. Free online information will increase the possibility of plagiarism and collusion among students. People can commit plagiarism in both text and code [1], as tools used to detect plagiarism between texts and between codes are distinct. Traditionally plagiarism in code is detected using manual inspection, which is a tedious process and misses to compare code from previous submissions and external sources. To overcome this issue, systems that can automatically detect plagiarism in code were developed …

Super P-Sulfur Cathodes For Quasi-Solid-State Lithium-Sulfur-Batteries., Milinda Bharatha Kalutara Koralalage

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Lithium-Sulfur (Li-S) batteries have become a promising candidate to meet the current energy storage demand, with its natural abundance of materials, high theoretical capacity of 1672 mAhg-1, high energy density of 2600 Whkg-1, low cost and lower environmental impact. Sulfide based solid state electrolytes (SSEs) have received greater attention due to their higher ionic conductivity, compatible interface with sulfur-based cathodes, and lower grain boundary resistance. However, the interface between SSEs and cathodes has become a challenge in all solid-state Li-S batteries due to the rigidity of the participating surfaces. A hybrid electrolyte containing SSE coupled with a small amount of …

Modeling, Simulation And Control Of Microrobots For The Microfactory., Zhong Yang

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Future assembly technologies will involve higher levels of automation in order to satisfy increased microscale or nanoscale precision requirements. Traditionally, assembly using a top-down robotic approach has been well-studied and applied to the microelectronics and MEMS industries, but less so in nanotechnology. With the boom of nanotechnology since the 1990s, newly designed products with new materials, coatings, and nanoparticles are gradually entering everyone’s lives, while the industry has grown into a billion-dollar volume worldwide. Traditionally, nanotechnology products are assembled using bottom-up methods, such as self-assembly, rather than top-down robotic assembly. This is due to considerations of volume handling of large …

Connecting The Dots For Contextual Information Retrieval, Pei-Chi Lo

Dissertations and Theses Collection (Open Access)

There are many information retrieval tasks that depend on knowledge graphs to return contextually relevant result of the query. We call them Knowledgeenriched Contextual Information Retrieval (KCIR) tasks and these tasks come in many different forms including query-based document retrieval, query answering and others. These KCIR tasks often require the input query to contextualized by additional facts from a knowledge graph, and using the context representation to perform document or knowledge graph retrieval and prediction. In this dissertation, we present a meta-framework that identifies Contextual Representation Learning (CRL) and Contextual Information Retrieval (CIR) to be the two key components in …

Uibee: An Improved Deep Instance Segmentation And Classification Of Ui Elements In Wireframes, Cahi̇t Berkay Kazangi̇rler, Caner Özcan, Buse Yaren Teki̇n

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

User Interface (UI) is a basic concept in which individuals interact with any computer program or technological device to create a graphical design. In the initial stages of app development, UI prototype is a must. An automatic analysis system for the basic execution of UI designs will considerably speed up the development of designs according to old-fashioned methods. In this approach, it is aimed at saving cost and time by automating the process. For the aforesaid objective, we present a new approach rather than the traditional methods. For this reason, a high amount of elements in wireframes are detected and …

Using Immersive Technology To Improve Mechanical Design: Use Cases, A Review Of Current Technology, And An Experiment In Requirement Elicitation In Virtual Reality, William Hawthorne

All Theses

There has been a growing trend in the use of immersive technologies within engineering design. This research is focused on understanding how Virtual Reality (VR) technologies support design reviews. Modern tools including virtual reality hardware and software were tested for current capabilities and challenges. In a review of literature, two key gaps are identified: the rapid advancements of VR and AR technology and limited formal studies to determine the costs and benefits of immersive technology within engineering design reviews. This research has resulted in three key outcomes. First, use cases of immersive reality technologies are identified, through the lens of …

Assessment Of Bridge Pier Response To Fire, Vehicle Impact, And Air Blast, Chen Fang, Qusai Alomari, Daniel G. Linzell

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Highway bridges exposed to intentional or unintentional fire followed by combined vehicle impact and air blast are at risk of significant damage and, possibly, collapse. Limited studies examining the complex effects of these extreme demands on bridge support elements and parametrizing their response and damage are found in the open literature. Research that is presented is part of an ongoing numerical investigation examining round, multi-column, reinforced concrete (RC), bridge pier behavior subject to multi-hazard scenarios involving fire, vehicle impact, and air blast. Detailed nonlinear finite element analysis models of single columns and multi-column piers supported by a pile foundation system …

Trace Dna Detection Using Diamond Dye: A Recovery Technique To Yield More Dna, Leah Davis

Master's Theses

This study aspires to find a new screening approach to trace DNA recovery techniques to yield a higher quantity of trace DNA from larger items of evidence. It takes the path of visualizing trace DNA on items of evidence with potential DNA so analysts can swab a more localized area rather than attempting to recover trace DNA through the general swabbing technique currently used for trace DNA recovery. The first and second parts consisted of observing trace DNA interaction with Diamond Dye on porous and non-porous surfaces.

The third part involved applying the Diamond Dye solution by spraying it onto …

Program And Proceedings: Nebraska Academy Of Sciences 1880–2023, 143rd Anniversary Year, One Hundred-Thirty-Third Annual Meeting, April 21, 2023

Nebraska Academy of Sciences: Programs and Proceedings

Program

Aeronautics and Space Science

Humans Past and Present

Applied Science and Technology Section

Biology

Biomedical Sciences

Chemistry

Earth Sciences

Environmental Science

Physics

Science Education

2023 Maiben Lecture: Jason Bartz

2023 Friend of Science Award: Ray Ward and Jim Lewis

Task Offloading And Resource Allocation Based On Dl-Ga In Mobile Edge Computing, Hang Gu, Minjuan Zhang, Wenzao Li, Yuwen Pan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

With the rapid development of 5G and the Internet of Things (IoT), the traditional cloud computing architecture struggle to support the booming computation-intensive and latency-sensitive applications. Mobile edge computing (MEC) has emerged as a solution which enables abundant IoT tasks to be offloaded to edge services. However, task offloading and resource allocation remain challenges in MEC framework. In this paper, we add the total number of offloaded tasks to the optimization objective and apply algorithm called Deep Learning Trained by Genetic Algorithm (DL-GA) to maximize the value function, which is defined as a weighted sum of energy consumption, latency, and …

Breath Analysis For Detection Of Lung Cancer With Hybrid Sensor-Based Electronic Nose, Ümi̇t Özsandikcioğlu, Ayten Atasoy

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Lung cancer has the highest death rates among all types of cancer worldwide. Detection of lung cancer in its early stages significantly increases the survival rate. In this study, the aim is to improve the lung cancer detection performance of electronic noses (e-noses) with breath analysis by using two different types of gas sensor-based e-nose. The developed e-nose system consists of 14 quartz crystal microbalance (QCM) sensors and 8 metal oxide semiconductor (MOS) sensors. Breath samples were collected from a total of 100 volunteers, including 60 patients with lung cancer, 20 healthy nonsmokers, and 20 healthy smokers, and were classified …

Integration Of Neural Network And Distance Relay To Improve The Fault Localization On Transmission Lines, Linh Tran

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Power transmission lines are integral and very important components of power systems. Because of the length of these lines and the complexity of the power grids, the lines may encounter various incidents such as lightning strike, shortage, and breakage. When an incident or a fault occurs, a fast process of identification, localization, and isolation of the fault is desired. An accurate fault localization would have a great impact in reducing the restoration time of the system. One of the most popular solutions for fault detection and localization is the distance relays using the impedance-based algorithms. However, these relays are still …

Quadratic Programming Based Partitioning For Block Cimmino With Correct Value Representation, Zuhal Taş, Fahreddi̇n Şükrü Torun

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The block Cimmino method is successfully used for the parallel solution of large linear systems of equations due to its amenability to parallel processing. Since the convergence rate of block Cimmino depends on the orthogonality between the row blocks, advanced partitioning methods are used for faster convergence. In this work, we propose a new partitioning method that is superior to the state-of-the-art partitioning method, GRIP, in several ways. Firstly, our proposed method exploits the Mongoose partitioning library which can outperform the state-of-the-art methods by combining the advantages of classical combinatoric methods and continuous quadratic programming formulations. Secondly, the proposed method …

Unbiased Federated Learning In Energy Harvesting Error-Prone Channels, Zeynep Çakir, Eli̇f Tuğçe Ceran Arslan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Federated learning (FL) is a communication-efficient and privacy-preserving learning technique for collaborative training of machine learning models on vast amounts of data produced and stored locally on the distributed users. This paper investigates unbiased FL methods that achieve a similar convergence as state-of-the-art methods in scenarios with various constraints like an error-prone channel or intermittent energy availability. For this purpose, we propose FL algorithms that jointly design unbiased user scheduling and gradient weighting according to each user's distinct energy and channel profile. In addition, we exploit a prevalent metric called the age of information (AoI), which quantifies the staleness of …

Efficient Modelling Of Random Access Memory Cell: An Approach Using Qca Nanocomputing, Ali Newaz Bahar, Angshuman Khan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA) is innovative and potentially fruitful nanotechnology that provides a solution for transistor-based circuits with enhanced switching frequency, large-scale integration, and low power consumption. The random-access memory (RAM) cell is a fundamental component that is designed to operate quickly and effectively since memory is a core part of the semiconductor industry, thus the QCA family. The RAM cell design in this work is based on a multiplexer structure and is implemented without using coplanar crossovers of QCA technology. QCADesigner-2.0.3, a standard QCA layout design and verification tool, is used in the simulation and validation processes for the …

An Analytical Solution Of Fractional Order Pi Controller Design For Stable/Unstable/Integrating Processes With Time Delay, Erdal Çökmez, İbrahi̇m Kaya

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

This paper aims to put forward an analytical solution for tuning parameters of a fractional order PI (FOPI) controller for stable, unstable, and integrating processes with time delay. Following this purpose, the analytical weighted geometrical center (AWGC) method has been extended to the design of fractional order PI controllers. To apply AWGC, the stability equations of the closed-loop system are written in terms of process and fractional order PI controller parameters. With the proposed method, the centroid can be calculated analytically, and the controller parameters can be easily calculated without the need of repetitive drawings of the stability boundary regions. …

More Wifi For Everyone: Increasing Spectral Efficiency In Wifi6 Networks Using A Distributed Obss/Pd Mechanism, Ali̇ Karakoç, Hüseyi̇n Bi̇rkan Yilmaz, Mehmet Şükrü Kuran

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, we propose a distributed algorithm that determines effective Overlapping Basic Service Set/Preamble Detection (OBSS/PD) threshold levels in each WiFi6 device to maximize the total throughput by increasing the spectral efficiency. Within WiFi6 standard, OBSS/PD mechanism is introduced to increase the overall efficiency of WiFi networks by tuning the receiver sensitivity as well as the transmission power. In a nutshell, the proposed algorithm, RACEBOT, tunes the hearing (i.e. reception) and speaking (i.e. transmission) parameters of each WiFi device individually for the betterment of the WiFi experience of all WiFi networks in a neighborhood. WiFi experience is not only …

Assessing Key Factors Influencing Fire-Induced Spalling Of Concrete Using Explainable Artificial Intelligence (Xai), Mohammad Khaled Gazi Albashiti

All Theses

This thesis adopts eXplainable Artificial Intelligence (XAI) to identify the key factors influencing the fire-induced spalling of concrete and to extract new insights into the fire-induced spalling phenomenon. In this pursuit, an XAI model was developed, validated, and then augmented with two explainability measures, namely, Shapley Additive exPlanations (SHAP) and Local Interpretable Model-Agnostic Explanations (LIME). The proposed XAI model not only can predict the fire-induced spalling with high accuracy (i.e., >92 %) but can also articulate the reasoning behind its predictions (as in, the proposed model can specify the rationale for each prediction instance); thus, providing us with valuable insights …

Dpd Guided Insight On The Formation Process Of Polyethersulfone Membranes By Nonsolvent Induced Phase Separation And The Effects Of Additives, Eric Ledieu

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Dissipative particle dynamics (DPD), a coarse grain simulation method, was applied to the membrane formation process of non-solvent induced phase separation (NIPS) to gain further insight on the mechanism of certain variables and how they affect the final morphology. NIPS involves two solutions, an organic polymer dissolved in an organic solvent colloquially called the dope and an aqueous coagulation bath, brought into contact with one another. The solvents then mix, causing the polymer to fall out of solution as an asymmetric membrane with a dense surface layer and a more open subsurface layer in response to the decreasing solubility. Polyethersulfone …