Engineering Commons^™

Drug Releasing Hydrogels For Opioid Use Disorder, Kaytlyn M. Crowe

Theses

Ease of access to prescription opioids and the strength of synthetic opioids have contributed to the rise in over use disorders, overdose, and death rates during the opioid epidemic. The current overdose standard of care, rescue NLX (NLX), is a competitive antagonist to the μ-opioid receptor but has a relatively short period of action compared to opioid agonists, especially synthetic agonists. Rises in the abuse of these synthetic and semi-synthetic agents in recent years have shown the weaknesses of rescue NLX, as it can leave overdose patients vulnerable to renarcotization and precipitated withdrawal. To prevent both from occurring, we developed …

Alcohol As A Catalyst For Hiv-Associated Neuroinflammation And Tbi-Induced Iron Toxicity, Agnieszka Agas

Dissertations

Alcohol has long been considered an exacerbator of diseases, disorders, and injuries as well as many of the accompanying symptoms. As an alternative approach, this dissertation explores alcohol as a catalyst for two different human disease conditions, human immunodeficiency virus (HIV)-associated neuroinflammation and traumatic brain injury (TBI)-induced iron toxicity. In HIV-1 infection, this dissertation presents a novel anti-viral drug, called Drug-S, for a possible inhibition and treatment of HIV-1 disease progression.

The first aim explores the influence of alcohol with HIV-associated neuroinflammation on macrophage migration across an in vitro model of the blood brain barrier. There is a gap in …

Optical Engineering Of Iii-Nitride Nanowire Light-Emitting Diodes And Applications, Ha Quoc Thang Bui

Dissertations

Applications of III-nitride nanowires are intensively explored in different emerging technologies including light-emitting diodes (LEDs), laser diodes, photodiodes, biosensors, and solar cells. The synthesis of the III-nitride nanowires by molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) is investigated with significant achievements. III-nitride nanowires can be grown on dissimilar substrates i.e., silicon with nearly dislocation free due to the effective strain relaxation. III-nitride nanowires, therefore, are perfectly suited for high performance light emitters for cost-effective fabrication of the advanced photonic-electronic integrated platforms. This dissertation addresses the design, fabrication, and characterization of III-nitride nanowire full-color micro-LED (µLED) on silicon substrates for µLED display technologies, high-efficient …

Selective Neural Stimulation By Leveraging Electrophysiological Diversity And Using Alternative Stimulus Waveforms, Bemin Ghobreal

Dissertations

Efforts on finding the principle mechanism for selective neural stimulation have concentrated on segregating the neurons based on their size and other geometric factors. However, neuronal subtypes found in different parts of the nervous system also differ in their electrophysiological properties. The primary objective of this study is to investigate the feasibility of selective activation of neurons by leveraging the diversity seen in passive and active membrane properties.

Using both a local membrane model and an axon model based on the CRRSS, the diversity of electrophysiological properties is simulated by varying four model parameters (membrane leakage-Gleak and capacitance-Cm, temperature coefficient-Ktemp, …

Intermittent Dynamics Of Dense Particulate Matter, Chao Cheng

Dissertations

Granular particle systems are scattered around the universe, and they can behave like solids when there exist strong force-bearing networks, so that the granular system can resist certain stress without deformation. When such a network is not present, particles yield to small stress and behave like a fluid. A wide range of systems exhibit intermittent dynamics as they are slowly loaded, with different dynamical regimes governing many industrial and natural phenomena. While a significant amount of research on exploring intermittent dynamics of granular systems has been carried out, not much is known about the connection between particle-scale response and the …

Development Of Deep Learning Neural Network For Ecological And Medical Images, Shaobo Liu

Dissertations

Deep learning in computer vision and image processing has attracted attentions from various fields including ecology and medical image. Ecologists are interested in finding an effective model structure to classify different species. Tradition deep learning model use a convolutional neural network, such as LeNet, AlexNet, VGG models, residual neural network, and inception models, are first used on classifying bee wing and butterfly datasets. However, insufficient data sample and unbalanced samples in each class have caused a poor accuracy. To make improvement the test accuracy, data augmentation and transfer learning are applied. Recently developed deep learning framework based on mathematical morphology …

Safe Yield Comparisons For The 1960’S And 2000’S Drought In The Passaic River Basin, Stephanie R. Santos

Dissertations

The Passaic River Basin is a complex system of rivers, tributaries, reservoirs, and some of the largest water purveyors in the State of New Jersey. Located in the northeastern part of the State, it drains approximately 800 square miles of water that is used for distribution to the five major purveyors: North Jersey District Water Supply Commission, Passaic Valley Water Commission, Jersey City, Newark, and New Jersey American Water. These purveyors operate under a safe yield, which is defined by the New Jersey Department of Environmental Protection (NJDEP) as the amount of water that should be continuously available should the …

First-Principles Density Functional Theory Studies On Perovskite Materials, Aneer Lamichhane

Dissertations

Perovskites are a family of materials with a diverse combination of different elements. As a consequence, they exhibit numerous functionalities such as pyroelectric, piezoelectric, ferroelectric, and ferromagnetic with applications in photovoltaic cells, LEDs, superconductivity, colossal magneto-resistance, and topological insulators. After 2009, perovskites have gained notoriety as suitable materials for solar cells and alternative candidates to silicon-based conventional solar cells. Generally, oxide perovskites exhibit good dielectric properties, halide perovskites display good photonic qualities, and chalcogenide perovskites are used in applications in solid-state lighting, sensing, and energy harvesting. In this dissertation, various types of perovskites ranging from oxide to halide are investigated …

Optimizing Work Zone Schedules Considering Traffic Diversion With Artificial Bee Colony Algorithm, Celina Semaan

Dissertations

Highway maintenance activities often decrease roadway capacity and intrude traffic movements. The need to finish the project on time and under a specific budget while minimizing the traffic congestion and complying with the emission standards requires an appropriate work zone schedule optimization. The objective of this research is to improve the efficiency of work zone activities and minimize the total project cost including maintenance, user, and emission cost.

While previous studies investigated the work zone optimization problem, they did not consider the implementation of emission standards nor applied a green diversion strategy. This dissertation analyzes the optimization of work zone …

Intelligent And Secure Fog-Aided Internet Of Drones, Jingjing Yao

Dissertations

Internet of drones (IoD), which utilize drones as Internet of Things (IoT) devices, deploys several drones in the air to collect ground information and send them to the IoD gateway for further processing. Computing tasks are usually offloaded to the cloud data center for intensive processing. However, many IoD applications require real-time processing and event response (e.g., disaster response and virtual reality applications). Hence, data processing by the remote cloud may not satisfy the strict latency requirement. Fog computing attaches fog nodes, which are equipped with computing, storage and networking resources, to IoD gateways to assume a substantial amount of …

Deep Learning On Image Forensics And Anti-Forensics, Zhangyi Shen

Dissertations

Image forensics protect the authenticity and integrity of digital images. On the contrary, as the countermeasures of digital forensics, anti-forensics is applied to expose the vulnerability of forensics tools. Consequently, forensics researchers could develop forensics tools against possible new attacks. This dissertation investigation demonstrates two image forensics methods based on convolutional neural network (CNN) and two image anti-forensics methods based on generative adversarial network (GAN).

Detecting unsharp masking (USM) sharpened image is the first study in this dissertation. A CNN architecture comprises four convolutional layers and a classification module is proposed to discriminate sharpened images and unsharpened images. The results …

Electric Field Induced Self-Assembly Of Mesoscale Structured Materials And Smart Fluids, Suchandra Das

Dissertations

This dissertation aims to study the forces that drive self-assembly in binary mixtures of particles suspended in liquids and on fluid-liquid interfaces when they are subjected to a uniform electric or magnetic field. Three fluid-particle systems are investigated experimentally and theoretically : (i) Suspensions of dielectric particles in dielectric liquids; (ii) Suspensions of ferromagnetic and diamagnetic particles in ferrofluids; and (iii) Dielectric particles on dielectric fluid-liquid interfaces. The results of these studies are then used to estimate the parameter values needed to assemble materials with desired mesoscale microstructures.

The first fluid-particle system studied is an electrorheological (ER) fluid formed using …

Fluorine-Based Inorganic Oxidizers For Use In Metal-Based Reactive Materials, Siva Kumar Valluri

Dissertations

This work explores inorganic fluorides as oxidizers for fuel-rich reactive materials. A preliminary assessment of metal fluorides accounting for their enthalpy of formation points to bismuth (III) fluoride, BiF3 and cobalt (II) fluoride, CoF2 as oxidizers of interest. Initially, composite powders of aluminum with chosen fluorides at 50-50 wt. % are prepared by arrested reactive milling. Despite an increase in reactivity and lowtemperature ignition, the prepared composite powders are insensitive to initiation by electro-static discharge (ESD), making them attractive alternative to analogous thermites having very high ESD sensitivity. In air, the composite powder particles burn faster than reference aluminum particles …

Service Quality Assessment And Improvement Methods And Tools, Kevin M. Moriarty

Dissertations

The nucleus of this research concept and system is being applied to turret lathe and milling machine Computer Numerical Control (CNC) tool systems. The research has a generic application to the service of broad array of sophisticated computer controlled / integrated machines, devices / equipment such as industrial robotics, medical equipment, surgical robots, and similar types of engineered system. Quality design review for quality service systems is a unique concept. Standard product service systems are qualitative and subjective in nature. The quantitative system identifies Key Predictive Attributes (KPAs) and applies quantitative methods to these attributes to develop a systematic process …

Private Sound Environments In Public Space: Use Of Headphones In Public Parks And Public Transit, Chathurthi S. De Silva

Dissertations

The use of headphones is now so commonplace that it is almost second nature for many people to use them. Not only do these people use headphones all the time, but they use them nearly everywhere, including in urban public spaces. In using headphones, people create their own “private sound environments” in public space. This phenomenon merits attention from researchers since the creation of private sound environments may well alter people’s experiences of public space.

This study answers five research questions about the use of headphones in parks and on transit: why people use them, when they begin using headphones …

Investigation Of Topological Phonons In Discrete Mechanical Metamaterials, Kai Qian

Dissertations

The study of topological mechanical metamaterials is a new emerging field that focuses on the topological properties of artificial mechanical structures. Inspired by topological insulators, topological mechanism has attracted intensive attention in condensed matter physics and successfully connected the quantum mechanical descriptions of electrons with the classical descriptions of phonons. It has led to experiments of mechanical metamaterials possessing topological characteristics, such as topologically protected conducting edges or surfaces without back-scattering. This dissertation presents a new experimental approach for mechanically engineering topological metamaterials based on patterning magnetically coupled spinners in order to localize the propagation of vibrations and evaluate different …

Towards Improving The Security Of The Software Supply Chain, Hammad Afzali

Dissertations

A software supply chain comprises a series of steps performed to develop and distribute a software product. History has shown that each of these steps is vulnerable to attacks that can have serious repercussions and can affect many users at once. To address the attacks against the software supply chain, end users must be provided with verifiable guarantees about the individual steps of the chain and with assurances that the steps are securely chained together.

In this dissertation, the security of several individual steps in the software supply chain is enhanced. The first step of the chain, managing the source …

Plant-Derived Extracellular Matrix Mimetic Scaffolds For Bone Repair Applications, Jessica Cardenas Turner

Dissertations

Autologous and allogeneic bone grafts are currently used to treat large bone defects or fractures that will not heal. However, for patients with osteoporosis or other conditions that impair the natural bone healing process, such as diabetes, smoking, bed rest, aging, autologous bone graft, which is the patient's own bone, is limited in quantity and its healing potential may be compromised. Allograft bone, or donated bone, lacks the necessary biological activity and has poor integration into defect. There is an urgent need for constructs/grafts capable of promoting bone cell function in fracture healing and large bone defects where the endogenous …

Improving Multi-Threaded Qos In Clouds, Weiwei Jia

Dissertations

Multi-threading and resource sharing are pervasive and critical in clouds and data-centers. In order to ease management, save energy and improve resource utilization, multi-threaded applications from different tenants are often encapsulated in virtual machines (VMs) and consolidated on to the same servers. Unfortunately, despite much effort, it is still extremely challenging to maintain high quality of service (QoS) for multi-threaded applications of different tenants in clouds, and these applications often suffer severe performance degradation, poor scalability, unfair resource allocation, and so on.

The dissertation identifies the causes of the QoS problems and improves the QoS of multi-threaded execution with three …

Controlled Reduction Of Graphene Oxide And Graphene Oxide-Carbon Nanotube Hybrids And Their Applications, Samar Azizighannad

Dissertations

Graphene and graphene derivatives are widely used in diverse research and industrial applications. Graphene production on a large scale is carried out by exfoliating graphite oxide and producing graphene oxide (GO), which comprises of graphene sheets with different oxygen-containing functional groups such as hydroxyl, carboxyl, and carbonyl. GO is reduced to reduced graphene oxide (rGO), which has properties that are closer to graphene. Properties of GO and rGO depend upon the oxygen content, and the effect of reducing oxygen content on the aqueous behavior of rGOs is not well understood.

In an effort to understand how properties of rGO change …

Using Fnirs As An Objective Measure Of Susceptibility To Informational Masking, Min Zhang

Dissertations

Resolving complicated auditory scenes is crucial for daily communication where background sound is often present. However, most hearing aid (HA) and cochlear implant (CI) users have difficulties understanding speech when competing sound sources are present, resulting in reduced job opportunities and increased risk for social isolation. Perceptual interference from background sound is called auditory masking. At least two distinct masking phenomena exist, called energetic and informational masking (EM and IM).

In the first masking phenomenon, EM, target and masker energies coincide at the same time and frequency. Computational and physiological models of cochlear auditory processing can reliably predict listeners' performances …

Modeling And Analysis Of Intracellular Signaling Networks And Cellular Decisions, Mustafa Ozen

Dissertations

Developing molecular network analysis methods is important due to their applications on complex biological systems such as target discovery, development of drugs, discovering drug effects, and finding treatments for many complex diseases, e.g., cancer, autoimmune, and mental disorders. An example of analysis techniques is the fault diagnosis analysis, in which the purpose is to quantify how much vulnerable the entire network is to dysfunction of one or multiple molecules. Such analysis can be done after proper network models are implemented, trained, and tested against the experimental data. In this dissertation, a Boolean modeling framework is implemented and methods to train …

Real Time Analysis Of Eye Movements Using Computer Aided Software, Farhan Ahmad

Theses

Eye movement analysis is a slow and tasking job that require a trained vision analyst to sift through hundreds of eye movements. The difficulty of the task increases when a subject has undiagnosed eye related disorders. One such disorder is Convergence insufficiency (CI) which affects nearly 12 million people in the US. Convergence insufficiency occurs when the eyes are unable to coordinate simultaneous inward movement for near focal tracking. Individuals with CI are unable to coordinate eye movements this can result in many symptoms such as double vision, blurred vision, headaches, vision strain, and fatigue. A diagnosis for CI relies …

Iii-Nitride Ultraviolet Light-Emitting Diodes: Approaches For The Enhanced Efficiency, Moulik Patel

Theses

III-nitride ultraviolet (UV) light-emitting diodes (LEDs) offer marvelous potential for a wide range of applications, including air/water purification, surface disinfection, biochemical sensing, cancer cell elimination, and many more. III-nitride semiconductor alloys, especially AlGaN and AlInN, have drawn significant attention due to their significant advantages that include environmental-friendly material composition, compact in size, longer lifetime, low power consumption, and tunable optical emission. However, the performance of III-nitride UV LEDs in terms of efficiency and output power is still deficient. The presence of high defects and dislocations due to lattice-mismatched epilayers, polarization induced quantum-confined Stark effect, electron overflow with low hole injection …

The Effects Of Design Parameters On The Neural Recordings With Micro-Ecog Arrays, Manan Amish Sethia

Theses

In the field of neural prosthetics, electro-cortico-graph (ECoG) arrays are commonly used to record neural activity of the brain cortex both in animal and human subjects. A finite element model (FEM) was developed to simulate the electric field generated by a single neuron in the rat brain cortex and a micro ECoG array (µECoG) placed on the pia surface for recording the neural signal. The neuron was simulated as a dipole current source with a magnitude of 1µA and placed at three different depths in the motor cortex corresponding to different layers under the µECoG array. The array design was …

Ce 200a-002: Surveying Lab, Allison Lapatka

Civil and Environmental Engineering Syllabi

No abstract provided.

Coordination, Adaptation, And Complexity In Decision Fusion, Weiqiang Dong

Dissertations

A parallel decentralized binary decision fusion architecture employs a bank of local detectors (LDs) that access a commonly-observed phenomenon. The system makes a binary decision about the phenomenon, accepting one of two hypotheses (H0 (“absent”) or H1 (“present”)). The k 1 LD uses a local decision rule to compress its local observations yk into a binary local decision uk; uk = 0 if the k 1 LD accepts H0 and uk = 1 if it accepts H1. The k 1 LD sends its decision uk over a noiseless dedicated channel to a Data Fusion Center (DFC). The DFC combines the …

Development Of Novel Inks And Approaches For Printing Tissues And Organs, Shen Ji

Dissertations

Tissue engineering is a multidisciplinary field that investigates and develops new methods to repair, regenerate and replace damaged tissues and organs, or to develop biomaterial platforms as in vitro models. Tissue engineering approaches require the fabrication of scaffolds using biomaterials or fabrication of living tissues using cells. As the demands of customized, implantable tissue/organs are increasing and becoming more urgent, conventional scaffold fabrication approaches are difficult to meet the requirements, especially for complex large-scale tissue fabrication. In this regard, three-dimensional (3D) printing attracted more interest over the past decades due to its unrivaled ability to fabricate highly customized tissues or …

Drone-Assisted Emergency Communications, Di Wu

Dissertations

Drone-mounted base stations (DBSs) have been proposed to extend coverage and improve communications between mobile users (MUs) and their corresponding macro base stations (MBSs). Different from the base stations on the ground, DBSs can flexibly fly over and close to MUs to establish a better vantage for communications. Thus, the pathloss between a DBS and an MU can be much smaller than that between the MU and MBS. In addition, by hovering in the air, the DBS can likely establish a Line-of-Sight link to the MBS. DBSs can be leveraged to recover communications in a large natural disaster struck area …

A Deep Machine Learning Approach For Predicting Freeway Work Zone Delay Using Big Data, Abdullah Shabarek

Dissertations

The introduction of deep learning and big data analytics may significantly elevate the performance of traffic speed prediction. Work zones become one of the most critical factors causing congestion impact, which reduces the mobility as well as traffic safety. A comprehensive literature review on existing work zone delay prediction models (i.e., parametric, simulation and non-parametric models) is conducted in this research. The research shows the limitations of each model. Moreover, most previous modeling approaches did not consider user delay for connected freeways when predicting traffic speed under work zone conditions. This research proposes Deep Artificial Neural Network (Deep ANN) and …