Engineering Commons^™

The Hsp90 Inhibitor, Auy-922, Ameliorates The Development Of Nitrogen Mustard-Induced Pulmonary Fibrosis And Lung Dysfunction In Mice, Pavel Solopov, Ruben M.L. Colunga Biancatelli, Margarita Marinova, Christiana Dimitropoulou, John D. Catravas

Bioelectrics Publications

Increased levels of heat shock protein 90 (HSP90) have been recently implicated in the pathogenesis of pulmonary fibrosis and the use of HSP90 inhibitors constitutes a potential therapeutic approach. Similarly, acute exposure to nitrogen mustard (NM) is related to the development of chronic lung injury driven by TNF-α, TGF-β, ERK and HSP90. Thus, we developed a murine model of NM-induced pulmonary fibrosis by instilling C57BI/6J mice with 0.625 mg/kg mechlorethamine hydrochloride. After 24 h, mice began receiving AUY-922, a second generation HSP90 inhibitor, at 1 mg/kg 2 times per week or 2 mg/kg 3 times per week, for either 10 …

Challenges In Design And Fabrication Of Flexible/Stretchable Carbon- And Textile-Based Wearable Sensors For Health Monitoring: A Critical Review, Jae Seng Heo, Md Faruk Hossain, Insoo Kim

Bioelectrics Publications

To demonstrate the wearable flexible/stretchable health-monitoring sensor, it is necessary to develop advanced functional materials and fabrication technologies. Among the various developed materials and fabrication processes for wearable sensors, carbon-based materials and textile-based configurations are considered as promising approaches due to their outstanding characteristics such as high conductivity, lightweight, high mechanical properties, wearability, and biocompatibility. Despite these advantages, in order to realize practical wearable applications, electrical and mechanical performances such as sensitivity, stability, and long-term use are still not satisfied. Accordingly, in this review, we describe recent advances in process technologies to fabricate advanced carbon-based materials and textile-based sensors, followed …

Effects Of Plasma-Activated Water On Skin Wound Healing In Mice, Dehui Xu, Shuai Wang, Bing Li, Miao Qi, Rui Feng, Qiaosong Li, Hao Zhang, Hailan Chen, Michael G. Kong

Bioelectrics Publications

Cold atmospheric plasma (CAP) has been widely used in biomedicine during the last two decades. While direct plasma treatment has been reported to promote wound healing, its application can be uneven and inconvenient. In this study, we first activated water with a portable dielectric barrier discharge plasma device and evaluated the inactivation effect of plasma-activated water (PAW) on several kinds of bacteria that commonly infect wounds. The results show that PAW can effectively inactivate these bacteria. Then, we activated tap water and examined the efficacy of PAW on wound healing in a mouse model of full-thickness skin wounds. We found …

Electrochemical Detection Of Neurotransmitters, Saikat Banerjee, Stephanie Mccracken, Md Faruk Hossain, Gymama Slaughter

Bioelectrics Publications

Neurotransmitters are important chemical messengers in the nervous system that play a crucial role in physiological and physical health. Abnormal levels of neurotransmitters have been correlated with physical, psychotic, and neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer's, Parkinson's, dementia, addiction, depression, and schizophrenia. Although multiple neurotechnological approaches have been reported in the literature, the detection and monitoring of neurotransmitters in the brain remains a challenge and continues to garner significant attention. Neurotechnology that provides high-throughput, as well as fast and specific quantification of target analytes in the brain, without negatively impacting the implanted region is highly desired for the monitoring of the …

Thermal Analysis Of Infrared Irradiation-Assisted Nanosecond-Pulsed Tumor Ablation, James Hornef, Chelsea M. Edelblute, Karl H. Schoenbach, Richard Heller, Siqi Guo, Chunqi Jiang

Bioelectrics Publications

Nanosecond Pulsed Electric Fields (nsPEF) have the potential to treat a variety of cancer types including melanoma, pancreatic and lung squamous cancers. Recent studies show that nsPEF-based cancer therapy may be improved further with the assistance of moderate heating of the target. A feedbacklooped heating system, utilizing a 980-nm fiber optic laser, was integrated into nsPEF electrodes for tumor ablation. The laser beam profile was determined to be Gaussian using a knife-edge technique. Thermal properties of the biological target were evaluated based on the treatment area, penetration depth and thermal distribution due to laser irradiation with or without nsPEF. Synergistic …

Quadrupoles For Remote Electrostimulation Incorporating Bipolar Cancellation, Shu Xiao, Ryo Yamada, Carol Zhou

Bioelectrics Publications

Introduction: A method that utilizes nanosecond bipolar cancellation (BPC) near a quadrupole electrodes to suppress a biological response but cancels the distal BPC at the quadrupole center, i.e., cancellation of cancellation (CANCAN), may allow for a remote focused stimulation at the quadrupole center.

Objectives: The primary object of this study was to outline the requirement of the CANCAN implementation and select an effective quadrupole configuration.

Results: We have studied three quadrupole electrode configurations, a rod quadrupole, a plate quadrupole (Plate-Q), and a resistor quadrupole. The pulse shapes of electric fields include monophasic pulses, cancellation pulses, and additive pulses. The Plate-Q …

Quantifying Seagrass Distribution In Coastal Water With Deep Learning Models, Daniel Perez, Kazi Islam, Victoria Hill, Richard Zimmerman, Blake Schaeffer, Yuzhong Shen, Jiang Li

OES Faculty Publications

Coastal ecosystems are critically affected by seagrass, both economically and ecologically. However, reliable seagrass distribution information is lacking in nearly all parts of the world because of the excessive costs associated with its assessment. In this paper, we develop two deep learning models for automatic seagrass distribution quantification based on 8-band satellite imagery. Specifically, we implemented a deep capsule network (DCN) and a deep convolutional neural network (CNN) to assess seagrass distribution through regression. The DCN model first determines whether seagrass is presented in the image through classification. Second, if seagrass is presented in the image, it quantifies the seagrass …

Performance Across Worldview-2 And Rapideye For Reproducible Seagrass Mapping, Megan M. Coffer, Blake A. Schaeffer, Richard C. Zimmerman, Victoria Hill, Jiang Li, Kazi A. Islam, Peter J. Whitman

OES Faculty Publications

Satellite remote sensing offers an effective remedy to challenges in ground-based and aerial mapping that have previously impeded quantitative assessments of global seagrass extent. Commercial satellite platforms offer fine spatial resolution, an important consideration in patchy seagrass ecosystems. Currently, no consistent protocol exists for image processing of commercial data, limiting reproducibility and comparison across space and time. Additionally, the radiometric performance of commercial satellite sensors has not been assessed against the dark and variable targets characteristic of coastal waters. This study compared data products derived from two commercial satellites: DigitalGlobe's WorldView-2 and Planet's RapidEye. A single scene from each platform …

Evaluation Of The Mechanical Properties Of Germanium-On-Insulator (Geoi) Films By Raman Spectroscopy And Nanoindentation, Y.S. Mohammed, Kai Zhang, S. Heissler, H. Baumgart, A. A. Elmustafa

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Germanium-on-insulator (GeOI) films fabricated using the Smart Cut™ wafer bonding and film exfoliation technology were investigated for the mechanical properties and induced phase transformations by using nanoindentation and Raman spectroscopy experiments. The hardness and modulus results of the GeOI films are significantly different from the literature published Silicon-on-Insulator and bulk germanium results. The GeOI films are softer and more flexible as compared to bulk Ge hardness and stiffness properties. The Raman spectroscopy of the spherical indents indicates bands of metastable Ge phases @ 220 cm⁻¹, 195 cm⁻¹, and 184 cm⁻¹ wavenumbers. Our results demonstrate that …

A Cfd Study Investigating Drag Reduction For Different Offset And Inline Distance For Two Trucks Platooning, Wael Mokhtar, Kyle Dinger, Shardul Kachare, Mdrazib Hossain, Colin Britcher

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The automotive industry invests huge resources to improve fuel consumption of commercial vehicles by improving their aerodynamic efficiency. Recently, numerous studies investigating the effect of platooning on aerodynamic drag of semi-trucks have been performed by researchers indicating a positive impact. For the present study, a three-dimensional computational study was performed to investigate the effect of varying offset and linear distance during platooning on the total drag of two semi-trucks. The study was conducted on a full-scale model using Reynold’s Averaged Navier-Strokes governing equations for a moving ground simulation using the STAR-CCM+ computational package. Furthermore, for turbulence, the standard k- …

Energy Conservation And Heat Transfer Enhancement For Mixed Convection On The Vertical Galvanizing Furnace, Dan Mei, Yuzheng Zhu, Xuemei Xu, Futang Xing

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The alloying temperature is an important parameter that affects the properties of galvanized products. The objective of this study is to explore the mechanism of conjugate mixed convection in the vertical galvanizing furnace and propose a novel energy conservation method to improve the soaking zone temperature based on the flow pattern and heat transfer characteristics. Herein, the present study applied the k-ε two-equation turbulence model to enclose the Navier-Stokes fluid dynamic and energy conservation equations, and the temperature distributions of the steel plate and air-flow field in the furnace were obtained for six Richardson numbers between 1.91 ⋅ 10^{5 …}

Iot Devices In The Public Health Sector, Cayla Young

Cybersecurity Undergraduate Research Showcase

In this research, proper attention is drawn to privacy and security concerns with the integration of Internet of Things (IoT) devices in the public health sector. Often, not much attention is given to IoT devices and its vulnerabilities concerning the medical industry. Effects of COVID-19 contact tracing applications are explored through research of various source types. Mitigation techniques for these privacy and security issues is given. Focus is brought to topics outlining the risks associated with genetic testing companies and the vulnerabilities of data collection and data storage. Recommendations are provided to help consumers avoid these risks. Lastly, a comprehensive …

Opportunities In Manufacturing Of Advanced Materials For Second Career-Seeking Students, Oleksandr Kravchenko, Konstantin Cigularov, Tancy J. Vandecar-Burdin

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Many non-traditional students face similar challenges including lack of institutional support network, challenges to connecting with other students on campus, which may negatively affect degree persistence rates. The lack of financial support has been acknowledged nationwide as a barrier for STEM students including second-career seeking (SCS) students. The term career is defined as an occupation or course, which relates to a range of aspects of an individual’s life, learning and work and is undertaken for a significant period of a person’s life and with opportunities for progress. We target academically talented SCS students at Old Dominion University (ODU) with demonstrated …

Disaster Damage Categorization Applying Satellite Images And Machine Learning Algorithm, Farinaz Sabz Ali Pour, Adrian Gheorghe

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

Special information has a significant role in disaster management. Land cover mapping can detect short- and long-term changes and monitor the vulnerable habitats. It is an effective evaluation to be included in the disaster management system to protect the conservation areas. The critical visual and statistical information presented to the decision-makers can help in mitigation or adaption before crossing a threshold. This paper aims to contribute in the academic and the practice aspects by offering a potential solution to enhance the disaster data source effectiveness. The key research question that the authors try to answer in this paper is how …

Implementing Stel, Marie Hoepfl, Thomas Loveland, Philip A. Reed

STEMPS Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Historical Trends In Air Temperature, Precipitation, And Runoff Of A Plateau Inland River Watershed In North China, Along Zhang, Ruizhong Gao, Xixi Wang, Tingxi Liu, Lijing Fang

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Understanding historical trends in temperature, precipitation, and runoff is important but incomplete for developing adaptive measures to climate change to sustain fragile ecosystems in cold and arid regions, including the Balagaer River watershed on the Mongolian Plateau of northeast China. The objective of this study was to detect such trends in this watershed from 1959 to 2017. The detection was accomplished using a Mann-Kendall sudden change approach at annual and seasonal time scales. The results indicated that the abrupt changes in temperature preceded that in either runoff or precipitation; these abrupt changes occurred between 1970 and 2004. Significant (α = …

Lateral Bracing Of Beams Provided By Standing Seam Roof System: Concepts And Case Study, Gengrui Wei, Benjamin Schafer, Michael Seek, Matthew Eatherton

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

The standing seam roof (SSR) system is the most commonly used roof system for metal buildings due to its superior durability, water tightness, and energy efficiency. In this type of system, SSR panels attach to Z-shaped or C-shaped purlins with clips, and the purlins are in turn connected to rafters (i.e. roof beams). For the design of metal building rafters against lateral torsional buckling, bottom flange braces provide torsional bracing to the rafter and the SSR system provides some lateral bracing. However, the degree to which the SSR system can restrain the rafter against lateral movement has not previously been …

Computational Fluid Dynamics Study Of The Effects Of Secondary Flows In 90-Degree Pipe Elbow Erosion, O. Ayala, G. Rivera-Hernández, C. Knight

Engineering Technology Faculty Publications

Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) of particle-laden fluid flows through a 90-degree pipe elbow at Reynolds numbers 1,000 and 10,000 were completed; for different dimensionless elbow curvature ratios of 1.0, 1.5, and 2.5; and for particles with different Stokes numbers of 0.01, 0.1, 0.5, 1.0, 5.0, and 10.0. There were two scenarios in the study. For the first, the particles felt drag from the primary (or the axial) flow as well as from the secondary fluid flows in the elbow. For the second, the secondary fluid flow in the 90-degree bend was suppressed from the particle drag, thus the particles only …

The Artificial University: Decision Support For Universities In The Covid-19 Era, Wesley J. Wildman, Saikou Y. Diallo, George Hodulik, Andrew Page, Andreas Tolk, Neha Gondal

VMASC Publications

Operating universities under pandemic conditions is a complex undertaking. The Artificial University (TAU) responds to this need. TAU is a configurable, open-source computer simulation of a university using a contact network based on publicly available information about university classes, residences, and activities. This study evaluates health outcomes for an array of interventions and testing protocols in an artificial university of 6,500 students, faculty, and staff. Findings suggest that physical distancing and centralized contact tracing are most effective at reducing infections, but there is a tipping point for compliance below which physical distancing is less effective. If student compliance is anything …

Post-Supernatural Cultures: There And Back Again, Wesley J. Wildman, F. Leron Shults, Saikou Y. Diallo, Ross Gore, Justin Lane

VMASC Publications

The abandonment of supernatural religious beliefs and rituals seems to occur quite easily in some contexts, but post-supernaturalist cultures require a specific set of conditions that are difficult to produce and sustain on a large scale and thus are historically rare. Despite the worldwide resurgence of supernaturalist religion, some subcultures reliably produce people who deny the existence of supernatural entities. This social phenomenon has evoked competing explanations, many of which enjoy empirical support. We synthesize six of the most influential social-science explanations, demonstrating that they provide complementary perspectives on a complex causal architecture. We incorporate this theoretical synthesis into a …

Lateral-Torsional Buckling Strength Of Two-Span Glass Fiber Reinforced Polymer Beams, Mojtaba B. Sirjani, Zia Razzaq

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper presents the outcome of a study of two-span glass fiber reinforced polymer (GFRP) I-section beams susceptible to lateral-torsional buckling when subjected to gradually increasing concentrated vertical load(s) in the presence of two different types of lateral bracing schemes. It is found that loading one span results in a smaller buckling load as compared with the cases with loading in both spans regardless of the type of bracing scheme used. Also, the study shows that the addition of midspan braces for the GFRP beams results in up to 5.5 times increase in the buckling load capacity.

Seismic Response Mitigation Of Base-Isolated Buildings, Mohammad Hamayoun Stanikzai, Said Elias, Rajesh Rupakhety

Civil & Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Earthquake response mitigation of a base-isolated (BI) building equipped with (i) a single tuned mass damper at the top of the building, (ii) multiple tuned mass dampers (MTMDs) at the top of the building, and (iii) MTMDs distributed on different floors of the building (d-MTMDs) is studied. The shear-type buildings are modeled by considering only one lateral degree of freedom (DOF) at the floor level. Numerical approach of Newmark's integration is adopted for solving the coupled, governing differential equations of motion of 5- and 10-story BI buildings with and without TMD schemes. A set of 40 earthquake ground motions, scaled …

Electrotransfer Of Il-15/Il-15rα Complex For The Treatment Of Established Melanoma, Shawna A. Shirley, Cathryn G. Lundberg, Richard Heller

Bioelectrics Publications

Gene electrotransfer (GET) is a safe, reliable, and effective method of delivering plasmid DNA (pDNA) to solid tumors. GET has been previously used to deliver interleukin-15 (IL-15) to mouse melanoma, resulting in long-term tumor regression and the survival of a percentage of treated animals after challenge. To enhance this effect, we evaluated modulating the expression levels of IL-15 and co-expressing its receptor, IL-15Rα. GET was used to deliver plasmids encoding IL-15 and IL-15Rα to established B16.F10 tumors on days 0, 4, and 7. Two delivery protocols that yielded different expression profiles were utilized. Mice that were tumor-free for 50 days …

Editorial For The Special Issue On Micro/Nano-Chip Electrokinetics, Volume Iii, Shizhi Qian, Xiangchun Xuan

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

No abstract provided.

Stel Benchmark Verb Alignment To Cognitive, Affective, And Psychomotor Domains, T. Shown, Philip A. Reed

STEMPS Faculty Publications

(First paragraph) Curriculum developers and classroom teachers often need to make sure they are teaching and assessing students at the appropriate levels of the cognitive, affective, and psychomotor domains. The STEL benchmarks are written with active verbs to target different levels of these domains. In addition, curriculum developers and classroom teachers want to know whether the benchmarks are at the factual, conceptual, procedural, or metacognitive level of knowledge. The second resource being provided on ITEEA’s interactive STEL website will identify these factors for all 142 STEL benchmarks. This tool was developed to help insure the alignment of the three domains …

Tunable-Focus Liquid Lens Through Charge Injection, Shizhi Qian, Wenxiang Shi, Huai Zheng, Zhaohui Liu

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

Liquid lenses are the simplest and cheapest optical lenses, and various studies have been conducted to develop tunable-focus liquid lenses. In this study, a simple and easily implemented method for achieving tunable-focus liquid lenses was proposed and experimentally validated. In this method, charges induced by a corona discharge in the air were injected into dielectric liquid, resulting in “electropressure” at the interface between the air and the liquid. Through a 3D-printed U-tube structure, a tunable-focus liquid lens was fabricated and tested. Depending on the voltage, the focus of the liquid lens can be adjusted in large ranges (−∞ to −9 …

Toward Adjoint-Based Aeroacoustic Optimization For Propeller And Rotorcraft Applications, Ramiz Ö. Içke, Oktay Baysal, Andy Moy, Leonard V. Lopes, Beckett Zhou, Boris Diskin

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The goal of the present project is to build a multidisciplinary, rapid, robust, and accurate computational tool to optimize wing-mounted propeller designs. The full Farassat’s formulation F1A for aeroacoustic analysis is implemented in the open-source software SU2. This extension enables the prediction of far-field noise generated by moving sources. The formulation is verified, for a stationary and rotating sphere in a wind tunnel and for a tiltrotor in forward flight, by comparing the acoustic predictions of SU2 with the predictions computed by NASA’s aeroacoustics code ANOPP2. The algorithmic differentiation capability of SU2 provides discretely consistent, adjoint-based sensitivity analysis for this …

Parametric Study Of A Turbojet Engine With Auxiliary Bypass Combustion- The Turboaux Engine, Kaleab Fetahi, Sharanabasaweshwara A. Asundi, Arthur C. Taylor, Adem H. Ibrahim, Syed Firasat Ali

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

A parametric study of a novel turbojet engine with an auxiliary combustion chamber, nicknamed the TurboAux engine is presented. The TurboAux engine is conceived as an extension of a turbojet engine with an auxiliary bypass annular combustion chamber around the core stream. The study presented in this article is motivated by the need to facilitate clean secondary burning of fuel at temperatures higher than conventionally realized from air exiting the low-pressure compressor. The parametric study is initiated by performing a simple optimization analysis to identify optimal ‘fan’ pressure ratios for a series of conventional low-bypass turbofan engines with varying bypass …

Assessment And Applications Of The Conversion Of Chemical Energy To Mechanical Energy Using Model Rocket Engines, Hüseyin Sarper, Nebojsa I. Jaksic, Ben J. Stuart, Karina Arcaute

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

To provide the first-year engineering students with a hands-on experience in an engineering application using both chemistry and physics, this team project uses a set of chemical and physical energy concepts and MS Excel based analysis. The main objective of the project is to calculate how much of the potential maximum possible chemical energy is converted into propulsion when using model rocket engines with solid fuel. The secondary objective is to determine the effects of increasing conversion rates on the performance of a model rocket. The solid fuel or propellant used in common model rocket engines is black powder. Compared …

Glue-Infused Rotating Nanofibers Net (Gronnet) For Capturing Space Debris- A Novel Debris Capturing System, Sneha M. Raibagi, Prithvi S.J. Monteiro, Rashmi K. Pallam, Amogh Anantha Murthy, Amit G. Gadag, Sharanabasaweshwara Asundi, Oleksandr Kravchenko

Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

It is evident that space debris is a growing concern, particularly in the low altitude Earth orbits, and if not addressed in time, may have a drastic socio-economic impact on civilization. This paper describes the Glue-infused Rotating Nanofibers Net (GRoNNet), a novel debris capturing system for pico/nano/micro-satellites (PNMSats). GRoNNet is designed as a modular, cost-effective system with the capability to capture target debris in multiple attempts and expedite its re-entry by attaching a debris mitigation system. It may be best described by comparing it with a chameleon’s tongue but several hundreds/thousands of them infused with a thick honey-like viscous adhesive …