Engineering Commons^™

Acuta Enews April 2011 Vol. 40, No. 4

ACUTA Newsletters

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Remembering Jeri Semer

From the President: 2010-2011 in Review............... Matt Arthur, Washington University in St. Louis

ResNet Tips............ Charles Brody, Apogee

lT's Funny!

The Daily Grind: What's on Your Desk Today?......... Riny Ledgerwood, SDSU

Board Report......... George Denbow, Univ. Texas, Austin

When Did We Last Try This?... ..............Gary Audin, Delphi Inc.

View 8 Sessions from the Annual Conference at Your Desktop

ACUTA 2011 Event Calendar

lnfo Links ....... Rondy Hayes, Univ. of Northern lowa

Welcome New Members

Check lt Out: Press Releases...Job Postings...RFls/RFPs...Special Deals!...Corporate Webinars

De Novo Gene Synthesis By Rapid Polymerase Chain Assembly Coupled With Immunoaffinity Purification: A Novel Process And Workstation, Joel R. Termaat

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The de novo synthesis of genes is emerging as a powerful tool in biotechnology. The ability to synthesize genes of any desired sequence opens the door to seemingly unlimited research possibilities. Major advances have been made recently in de novo gene synthesis, with Polymerase Chain Assembly (PCA) routinely used to construct functional sequences from short single-stranded oligonucleotides. However, current PCA techniques are lacking in speed and fidelity. Additionally, substantial undesired reactants/products are present in the final reaction. A novel process and accompanying workstation has been developed that incorporates rapid PCA synthesis coupled with subsequent affinity purification of the synthesis mixture. …

Cottonwood Riparian Site Selection On The Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation, Julie A. Thorstenson, Diane Rickerl, Janet H. Gritzner

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

The construction of the Oahe Dam on the Missouri River eliminated thousands of acres ofriparian and floodplain lands on the Cheyenne River Sioux Reservation in South Dakota. Restoration is needed to replace wildlife habitat. This study focused on site selection for native cottonwood (Populus deltoides Bartr. Ex Marsh. ssp. Monilifers (Ait.) Eckenwalde) restoration to help mitigate this loss. Geographic information systems technologies were used to develop a suitability model for cottonwood restoration. Tribal lands were extracted from a digital dataset oflandownership. Those touched by or included in a 46 m border of the Moreau River were candidate sites. Of …

Review Of A Dry Oasis: Institutional Adaptation To Climate On The Canadian Plains. Edited By Gregory P. Marchildon., Siân Mooney

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

A Dry Oasis examines past and potential future climate challenges on the Canadian Plains. The book provides extensive discussion, data, and analysis of challenges related to water supply and management within the South Saskatchewan River Basin (SSRB). Past challenges, experiences, and institutional responses are described and used to frame possible future adaptation pathways under expected future climate change. The book provides an excellent grounding in the historical settlement and development of the SSRB, paying particular attention to the ways that the economy, society, and institutions have adapted in response to climatic variability.

Review Of Gasoline, Diesel, And Ethanol Biofuels From Grasses And Plants. By Ram B. Gupta And Ayhan Demirbas., Adam Liska

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

A new book on the production of biofuels by Gupta and Demirbas provides technical insight into the conversion processes that could provide a range of domestic fuels from plant materials to substitute for foreign oil. It focuses primarily on conversion processes for production of cellulosic ethanol, Fischer-Tropsch diesel, pyrolysis bio-oil, and hydrothermal biocrude from biomass resources, as well as "first-generation" grain ethanol and biodiesel from vegetable oil. In addition to a detailed summary of these chemical processes, the book provides a briefer treatment of related matters such as biofuel policy, economics, and environmental issues. The book does discuss the limitations …

Estimation Of Land Surface Evapotranspiration With A Satellite Remote Sensing Procedure, Ayse Kilic, Ian Ratcliffe, Pariskhit Ranade, Kenneth Hubbard, Ramesh K. Singh, Babuarao Kamble, Jeppe Kjaersgaard

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

There are various methods available for estimating magnitude and trends of evapotranspiration. Bowen ratio energy balance system and eddy correlation techniques offer powerful alternatives for measuring land surface evapotranspiration. In spite of the elegance, high accuracy, and theoretical attractions of these techniques for measuring evapotranspiration, their practical use over large areas can be limited due to the number of sites needed and the related expense. Application of evapotranspiration mapping from satellite measurements can overcome the limitations. The objective of this study was to utilize the METRIC^TM (Mapping Evapotranspiration at High Resolution using Internalized Calibration) model in Great Plains environmental …

Do Invasive Riparian Woody Plants Affect Hydrology And Ecosystem Processes?, Julie Huddle, Tala Awada, Derrel Martin, Xinhua Zhou, Sue Ellen Pegg, Scott Josiah

Great Plains Research: A Journal of Natural and Social Sciences (through 2013)

© 2011 Copyright by the Center for Greot Plains Studies, University of Nebraska-Lincoln

Polygonal Spatial Clustering, Deepti Joshi

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Clustering, the process of grouping together similar objects, is a fundamental task in data mining to help perform knowledge discovery in large datasets.  With the growing number of sensor networks, geospatial satellites, global positioning devices, and human networks tremendous amounts of spatio-temporal data that measure the state of the planet Earth are being collected every day.  This large amount of spatio-temporal data has increased the need for efficient spatial data mining techniques.  Furthermore, most of the anthropogenic objects in space are represented using polygons, for example – counties, census tracts, and watersheds.  Therefore, it is important to develop data mining …

Ultrasonic And Stereo-Optical Characterization Techniques For Applications In Mechanical Testing, Jonathan M. Hein

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

This thesis considers methods developed based on ultrasonic reflections from interfaces and stereo-optical surface strain measurements to study the mechanical characterization of materials and bodies. The ultrasonic method is used to characterize wave speed and attenuation for highly attenuating samples. The stereo-optical strain measurements are used to characterize the effects of genes on mechanical properties of bone, and the dynamic characterization of blast waves in the UNL Shock Wave Trauma Mechanics facility.

A method is described and developed for characterizing the wave speed and attenuation spectrums from reflected waves from the contact surface with an unknown material. The method is …

Electromagnetic And Heat Transfer Modeling Of Microwave Heating In Domestic Ovens, Krishnamoorthy Pitchai

Department of Food Science and Technology: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Microwave (MW) ovens are used extensively for heating a variety of not-ready-to-eat food products. It is vital to achieve target temperature uniformly throughout the food to inactivate foodborne pathogens to assure safety. Non-uniform heating of foods in microwave ovens is the major concern in assuring microbiological safety of such products. The non-uniform heating of foods in domestic microwave ovens is due to complex interactions of microwaves with foods. A comprehensive coupled electromagnetic and heat transfer model was developed using finite-difference time-domain based numerical method to understand the complex interaction of microwaves with foods. Simulation parameters such as cell size, heating …

Intraseasonal Management Strategies For Deficit Irrigation, Isaac I. N. Mortensen

Department of Agricultural Economics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Reduced availability of irrigation water to producers has led to the need for intraseasonal management strategies that efficiently use the limited supply of irrigation water.  Historical weather data was used to develop a range of conditions experienced at the location.  Sound weather data improves the dependability of management strategies.  Data from weather stations on the Automated Weather Data Network and the Colorado AgMet network were evaluated based upon net radiation and dew point temperature observations expected in an irrigated agricultural setting.  This weather data was used to create a relationship between the Penman-Montieth evapotranspiration (ET) and Hargreaves ET and …

Comparison Of Aquifer Sustainability Under Groundwater Administrations In Oklahoma And Texas, Aaron R. Mittelstet, Michael D. Smolen, Garey A. Fox, Damian C. Adams

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

We compared two approaches to administration of groundwater law on a hydrologic model of the North Canadian River, an alluvial aquifer in northwestern Oklahoma. Oklahoma limits pumping rates to retain 50% aquifer saturated thickness after 20 years of groundwater use. The Texas Panhandle Groundwater Conservation District’s (GCD) rules limit pumping to a rate that consumes no more than 50% of saturated thickness in 50 years, with reevaluation and readjustment of permits every 5 years. Using a hydrologic model (MODFLOW), we simulated river-groundwater interaction and aquifer dynamics under increasing levels of ‘‘development’’ (i.e., increasing groundwater withdrawals). Oklahoma’s approach initially would limit …

Computational Genomic Signatures And Metagenomics, Ozkan U. Nalbantoglu

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Mathematical characterizations of biological sequences form one of the main elements of bioinformatics. In this work, a class of DNA sequence characterization, namely computational genomics signatures, which capture global features of these sequences is used to address emerging computational biology challenges. Because of the species specificity and pervasiveness of genome signatures, it is possible to use these signatures to characterize and identify a genome or a taxonomic unit using a short genome fragment from that source. However, the identification accuracy is generally poor when the sequence model and the sequence distance measure are not selected carefully. We show that the …

Propeller: A Scalable Metadata Organization For A Versatile Searchable File System, Lei Xu, Hong Jiang, Xue Liu, Lei Tian, Yu Hua, Jian Hu

School of Computing: Technical Reports

The exponentially increasing amount of data in file systems has made it increasingly important for users, administrators and applications to be able to fast retrieve files using file-search services, instead of replying on the standard file system API to traverse the hierarchical namespaces.  The quality of the file-search services  is significantly affected by the file-indexing overhead, the file-search performance and the accuracy of search results.  Unfortunately, the existing file-search solutions either are so poorly scalable that their performance degrades unacceptably when the systems scale up, or incur so much crawling delays that they produce acceptably inaccurate results.  We believe that …

Life Cycle Assessment Of Greenhouse Gas Emissions From Ethanol And Biopolymers, Adam J. Liska, Xiao Xue Fang

Adam Liska Papers

Conclusions

• Regulatory LCA is not likely to be used for non‐fuel chemicals alone in the near future

• Significant GHG emission credits for corn‐ethanol can be obtained by using only roughly 6‐9% of initial starch for production of biopolymers based on previous LCA theory

• Pay close attention to values in calculating credits per kg—these have to stand up in litigation to ensure the credit

• Credits are proportional to the mass of polymer produced

• Many theoretical issues are uncertain and credits will only be determined in conjunction with EPA

• Indirect emissions are uncertain and are a …

Newsletter 44 Issue 1 - Spring 2011 - Nuts And Bolts

Friends of the Larsen Tractor Museum

No abstract provided.

Acuta Enews March 2011 Vol. 40, No. 3

ACUTA Newsletters

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Meet the Board for 2011-12

Tech Talk: Take Two Tablets and Catt Me in the Morning.......... Kevin Tanzillo, Dux PR

Free Webinars Coming Soon to ACUTA

Learn More about UC, Voice Trends, the Cloud, and More from Your Desktop

From ACUTA Headquarters: Member Years of Service ,Jeri A. Semer, CAE, Executive Dir

Board Report......... George Denbow, univ. of Texas, Austin

New to ICT or Not, ACUTA Members Are All Busy!........... Young Professionals Subcommittee

lT's Funny!

lnfo Links ........... .. Randy Hayes, Univ' of Northern lowa

ACUTA 2011 Event Calendar

Welcome New Members

Check lt Out: Press Releases...Job …

Department Of Biological Systems Engineering Newsletter, Volume 7, Number 1, March 2011

BSE Department Magazine

No abstract provided.

Quantifying Performance In Fading Channels Using The Sampling Property Of A Delta Function, Won Mee Jang

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

We apply the sampling property of a delta function to obtain the probability of error in fading channels. Our approach reduces the integration to a sampling. The sampling point is obtained in terms of fading parameters and the average signal-to-noise ratio (SNR) to provide the closed form solution of the performance.

Support Vector Machine-Based Short-Term Wind Power Forecasting, Jianwu Zeng, Wei Qiao

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

This paper proposes a support vector machine (SVM)-based statistical model for wind power forecasting (WPF). Instead of predicting wind power directly, the proposed model first predicts the wind speed, which is then used to predict the wind power by using the power-wind speed characteristics of the wind turbine generators. Simulation studies are carried out to validate the proposed model for very short-term and short-term WPF by using the data obtained from the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL). Results show that the proposed model is accurate for very short-term and short-term WPF and outperforms the persistence model as well as the …

A Peridynamic Formulation For Transient Heat Conduction In Bodies With Evolving Discontinuities, Monchai Duangpanya

Department of Engineering Mechanics: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Modeling heat flow in bodies with discontinuities, such as cracks, or with inclusions that have different thermal properties has been a very challenging problem. Classical models lead to infinite heat fluxes at the tip of a crack and convergence of numerical methods that approximate solutions to such models have convergence and mesh dependency issues. To remove the difficulties faced by the classical models a novel nonlocal theory is formulated.
The new theory starts from the conservation of energy principle and uses the idea of nonlocal heat-transfer between material points. This idea leads to a transient heat transfer model that does …

High Power Current Sensorless Bidirectional 16-Phase Interleaved Dc-Dc Converter For Hybrid Vehicle Application, Liqin Ni, Dean J. Patterson, Jerry L. Hudgins

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

A new 16-phase interleaved bidirectional dc/dc converter is developed featuring smaller input/output filters, faster dynamic response and lower device stress than conventional designs, for hybrid vehicle applications. The converter is connected between the ultracapacitor (UC) pack and the battery pack in a multisource energy storage system of a hybrid vehicle. Typically, multiphase interleaved converters require a current control loop in each phase to avoid imbalanced current between phases. This increases system cost and control complexity. In this paper, in order to minimize imbalance currents and remove the current control loop in each phase, the converter is designed to operate in …

Iterative Construction Of Regular Ldpc Codes From Independent Tree-Based Minimum Distance Bounds, Eric T. Psota, Lance C. Perez

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

An independent tree-based method for lower bounding the minimum distance of low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is presented. This lower-bound is then used as the decision criterion during the iterative construction of regular LDPC codes. The new construction algorithm results in LDPC codes with greater girth and improved minimum-distance bounds when compared to regular LDPC codes constructed using the progressive edge-growth (PEG) construction and the approximate cycle extrinsic message degree (ACE)-constrained PEG construction. Simulation results of codes constructed with the new method show improved performance on the additive white Gaussian noise channel at moderate signal-to-noise ratios.

Runoff, Erosion, And Size Distribution Of Sediment From Beef Cattle Feedlots, John E. Gilley, Jason R. Vogel, Roger Eigenberg, David B. Marx, Brian L. Woodbury

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

The size distribution of sediment in runoff from feedlot surfaces influences erosion rates and settling velocity. The objectives of this study were to: (1) measure runoff, erosion, and size distribution of sediment in runoff from feedlot surfaces containing varying amounts of unconsolidated surface material (USM), and (2) determine the effects of varying runoff rate on erosion and sediment size distribution. Simulated rainfall was applied to 0.75 m wide by 2 m long plots located within feedlot pens. Sieve and pipette analyses were used to measure the diameters of the eroded materials. No significant differences in runoff and erosion were found …

Identifying Horizontal Gene Transfer Using Anomalies In Protein Structures And Sequences, Venkat Ram B. Santosh

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Genetics has traditionally focused on vertical gene transfer, which is the passing of the genetic material of an organism to its offspring. However, recent studies in genetics increased the awareness that horizontal gene transfer, which is the passing of the genetic material of an organism to another organism that is not its offspring, is also a significant phenomenon. Horizontal gene transfer is thought to play a major role in the natural evolution of bacteria, such as, when several different types of bacteria all suddenly develop the same drug resistance genes. Artificial horizontal gene transfer occurs in genetic engineering.

This thesis …

Design And Analysis Of Blast Induced Traumatic Brain Injury Mechanism Using A Surrogate Headform: Instrumentation And Outcomes, Eyitejumade A. Sogbesan

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Brain injury cases in military personnel exposed to improvised explosive devices (IED) in combat have been on the rise. In Iraq and Afghanistan improved helmets and body armor are not enough protection against blast wave threats. The United States military are sponsoring researchers and scientists around the globe to find the associations between pressure waves and traumatic brain injury (TBI).

Lack of accurate data and blast wave exposure information in returning soldiers has slowed the innovation needed to effectively diagnose TBI and other related brain injury as a result of pressure waves. More detailed data will be required to gain …

Acuta Enews February 2011 Vol. 40, No. 2

ACUTA Newsletters

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From the President........Matt Arthur, Washington Univ. in St. Louis, ACUTA President

Security Snapshot: Texas A&M

Tech Talk: Maybe They Should Call it Copper Peak................... Kevin Tanzillo, Dux PR

Important lssues on Campus Today

Handling Air Travel Frustrations

lT's Funny.............Cartoon Resource

Lightning Round: New at the Conference

Webinar: The Future of the PBX in a University Environment

Learn More about UC, Voice Trends, the Cloud, and More from Your Desktop

Board Report....... George Denbow, Univ. of Texas, Austin

Thanks to Journal Advertisers for 2010

Thanks to Exhibitors and Sponsors at Winter Seminar

lnfo Links ............ Randy Hayes, Univ. …

A Virtual Supply Airflow Rate Meter In Rooftop Air Conditioning Units, Daihong Yu

Durham School of Architectural Engineering and Construction: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Virtual sensing technology aims to estimate difficult to measure, expensive, or new quantities by using multifarious mathematical models along with non-invasive and low-cost measurements. Such embedded intelligence is a key to improving the performance of building systems in terms of functionality, safety, energy efficiency, environmental impacts, and costs. Considering the progress that has been achieved over many various fields (e.g., process controls, automobiles, avionics, autonomous robots, telemedicine) within the last two decades, numerous intelligent features have been incorporated and enabled that would otherwise not be possible or economical.

To identify the potential opportunities and research/development needs of virtual sensing technology …

Constant Power Control Of Dfig Wind Turbines With Supercapacitor Energy Storage, Liyan Qu, Wei Qiao

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

With the increasing penetration of wind power into electric power grids, energy storage devices will be required to dynamically match the intermittency of wind energy. This paper proposes a novel two-layer constant power control scheme for a wind farm equipped with doubly fed induction generator (DFIG) wind turbines. Each DFIG wind turbine is equipped with a super-capacitor energy storage system (ESS) and is controlled by the low-layer wind turbine generator (WTG) controllers and coordinated by a high-layer wind farm supervisory controller (WFSC). The WFSC generates the active power references for the low-layer WTG controllers according to the active power demand …

A Simple Upper Bound Of The Gaussian �-Function With Closed-Form Error Bound, Won Mee Jang

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications (to 2015)

We present a simple upper bound of the Gaussian Q-function with its closed-form error bound. The proposed approximation can be applied to the evaluation of the average error probability of digital modulations with its error bound. Our bit error rate (BER) bound can be easily applied to fading channels.