Engineering Commons^™

Challenges For Natural Hydrogels In Tissue Engineering, Esmaiel Jabbari

Faculty Publications

Protein-based biopolymers derived from natural tissues possess a hierarchical structure in their native state. Strongly solvating, reducing and stabilizing agents, as well as heat, pressure, and enzymes are used to isolate protein-based biopolymers from their natural tissue, solubilize them in aqueous solution and convert them into injectable or preformed hydrogels for applications in tissue engineering and regenerative medicine. This review aims to highlight the need to investigate the nano-/micro-structure of hydrogels derived from the extracellular matrix proteins of natural tissues. Future work should focus on identifying the nature of secondary, tertiary, and higher order structure formation in protein-based hydrogels derived …

Hypermongone C Accelerates Wound Healing Through The Modulation Of Inflammatory Factors And Promotion Of Fibroblast Migration, Sara E. Moghadam, Moridi Mahdi Farimani, Sara Soroury, Samad N. Ebrahimi, Ehsan Jabbarzadeh

Faculty Publications

The physiology of wound healing is dependent on the crosstalk between inflammatory mediators and cellular components of skin regeneration including fibroblasts and endothelial cells. Therefore, strategies to promote healing must regulate this crosstalk to achieve maximum efficacy. In light of the remarkable potential of natural compounds to target multiple signaling mechanisms, this study aims to demonstrate the potential of hypermongone C, a polycyclic polyprenylated acylphloroglucinol (PPAP), to accelerate wound closure by concurrently enhancing fibroblast proliferation and migration, promoting angiogenesis, and suppressing pro-inflammatory cytokines. This compound belongs to a family of plants (Hypericum) that traditionally have been used to treat injuries. …

Deep Autoencoder Neural Networks For Short-Term Traffic Congestion Prediction Of Transportation Networks, Sen Zhang, Yong Yao, Jie Hu, Yong Zhao, Shaobo Li, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Traffic congestion prediction is critical for implementing intelligent transportation systems for improving the efficiency and capacity of transportation networks. However, despite its importance, traffic congestion prediction is severely less investigated compared to traffic flow prediction, which is partially due to the severe lack of large-scale high-quality traffic congestion data and advanced algorithms. This paper proposes an accessible and general workflow to acquire large-scale traffic congestion data and to create traffic congestion datasets based on image analysis. With this workflow we create a dataset named Seattle Area Traffic Congestion Status (SATCS) based on traffic congestion map snapshots from a publicly available …

Intrinsic Coating Morphology Modulates Acute Drug Transfer In Drug-Coated Balloon Therapy, Gary H. Chang, Dara A. Azar, Chimera Lyle, Vipul C. Chitalia, Tarek Shazly, Vijaya B. Kolachalama

Faculty Publications

The hallmark of drug-coated balloon (DCB) therapy for the treatment of peripheral vascular disease is that it allows for reopening of the narrowed lumen and local drug delivery without the need for a permanent indwelling metal implant such as a stent. Current DCB designs rely on transferring drugs such as paclitaxel to the arterial vessel using a variety of biocompatible excipients coated on the balloons. Inherent procedural challenges, along with limited understanding of the interactions between the coating and the artery, interactions between the coating and the balloon as well as site-specific differences, have led to DCB designs with poor …

Multimodal Emotion Classification, Anurag Illendula, Amit Sheth

Publications

Most NLP and Computer Vision tasks are limited to scarcity of labelled data. In social media emotion classification and other related tasks, hashtags have been used as indicators to label data. With the rapid increase in emoji usage of social media, emojis are used as an additional feature for major social NLP tasks. However, this is less explored in case of multimedia posts on social media where posts are composed of both image and text. At the same time, w.e have seen a surge in the interest to incorporate domain knowledge to improve machine understanding of text. In this paper, …

Knowledge-Aware Assessment Of Severity Of Suicide Risk For Early Intervention, Manas Gaur, Amanuel Alambo, Joy Prakash Sain, Ugur Kursuncu, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Ramakanth Kavuluru, Amit Sheth, Randon S. Welton, Jyotishman Pathak

Publications

Mental health illness such as depression is a significant risk factor for suicide ideation, behaviors, and attempts. A report by Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) shows that 80% of the patients suffering from Borderline Personality Disorder (BPD) have suicidal behavior, 5-10% of whom commit suicide. While multiple initiatives have been developed and implemented for suicide prevention, a key challenge has been the social stigma associated with mental disorders, which deters patients from seeking help or sharing their experiences directly with others including clinicians. This is particularly true for teenagers and younger adults where suicide is the second …

Lightcpg: A Multi-View Cpg Sites Detection On Single-Cell Whole Genome Sequence Data, Limin Jiang, Chongqing Wang, Jijun Tang, Fei Gu

Faculty Publications

Background DNA methylation plays an important role in multiple biological processes that are closely related to human health. The study of DNA methylation can provide an insight into the mechanism behind human health and can also have a positive effect on the assessment of human health status. However, the available sequencing technology is limited by incomplete CpG coverage. Therefore, it is crucial to discover an efficient and convenient method capable of distinguishing between the states of CpG sites. Previous studies focused on identifying methylation states of the CpG sites in single cell, which only evaluated sequence information or structural information. …

Concrete Crack Detection And Monitoring Using A Capacitive Dense Sensor Array, Jin Yan, Austin Downey, Alessandro Cancelli, Simon Laflamme, An Chen, Jian Li, Filippo Ubertini

Faculty Publications

Cracks in concrete structures can be indicators of important damage and may significantly affect durability. Their timely identification can be used to ensure structural safety and guide on-time maintenance operations. Structural health monitoring solutions, such as strain gauges and fiber optics systems, have been proposed for the automatic monitoring of such cracks. However, these solutions become economically difficult to deploy when the surface under investigation is very large. This paper proposes to leverage a novel sensing skin for monitoring cracks in concrete structures. This sensing skin is constituted of a flexible electronic termed soft elastomeric capacitor, which detects a change …

Vibration-Based In-Situ Detection And Quantification Of Delamination In Composite Plates, Hanfei Mei, Asaad Migot, Mohammad Faisal Haider, Roshan Joseph, Md Yeasin Bhuiyan, Victor Giurgiutiu

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a new methodology for detecting and quantifying delamination in composite plates based on the high-frequency local vibration under the excitation of piezoelectric wafer active sensors. Finite-element-method-based numerical simulations and experimental measurements were performed to quantify the size, shape, and depth of the delaminations. Two composite plates with purpose-built delaminations of different sizes and depths were analyzed. In the experiments, ultrasonic C-scan was applied to visualize the simulated delaminations. In this methodology, piezoelectric wafer active sensors were used for the high-frequency excitation with a linear sine wave chirp from 1 to 500 kHz and a scanning laser Doppler …

Enhanced Carbon Dioxide Electrolysis At Redox Manipulated Interfaces, Wenyuan Wang, Lizhen Gan, John P. Lemmon, Fanglin Chen, John T. S. Irvine, Kui Xie

Faculty Publications

Utilization of carbon dioxide from industrial waste streams offers significant reductions in global carbon dioxide emissions. Solid oxide electrolysis is a highly efficient, high temperature approach that reduces polarization losses and best utilizes process heat; however, the technology is relatively unrefined for currently carbon dioxide electrolysis. In most electrochemical systems, the interface between active components are usually of great importance in determining the performance and lifetime of any energy materials application. Here we report a generic approach of interface engineering to achieve active interfaces at nanoscale by a synergistic control of materials functions and interface architectures. We show that the …

Convolutional Neural Networks For Crystal Material Property Prediction Using Hybrid Orbital-Field Matrix And Magpie Descriptors, Zhuo Cao, Yabo Dan, Zheng Xiong, Chengcheng Niu, Xiang Li, Songrong Qian, Jianjun Hu

Faculty Publications

Computational prediction of crystal materials properties can help to do large-scale in-silicon screening. Recent studies of material informatics have focused on expert design of multi-dimensional interpretable material descriptors/features. However, successes of deep learning such as Convolutional Neural Networks (CNN) in image recognition and speech recognition have demonstrated their automated feature extraction capability to effectively capture the characteristics of the data and achieve superior prediction performance. Here, we propose CNN-OFM-Magpie, a CNN model with OFM (Orbital-field Matrix) and Magpie descriptors to predict the formation energy of 4030 crystal material by exploiting the complementarity of two-dimensional OFM features and Magpie features. Experiments …

An Anatomical Basis Of The Differential Cholinergic Modulation Of Valence-Specific Pyramidal Neurons In The Basolateral Amygdala, Nguyen Vu

Theses and Dissertations

Emotion is a crucial component of the decision-making process. The amygdala, known as the “orchestrator” of the emotion circuit, associates emotional valence with incoming sensory stimuli and thus contributes to decision- making. Within the basolateral nucleus of the amygdala (BLA), spatially segregated and genetically distinct pyramidal neurons (PNs) have been identified based on their correspondence to distinct behavioral stimuli. These PNs project to several brain regions mediating different aspects of the emotional spectrum.

For example, BLA PNs projecting to prelimbic (PL) and infralimbic (IL) cortex are involved in fear acquisition and fear extinction, respectively. However, the mechanism by which these …

Understanding The Strain Localization And Progressive Damage Growth At The Free-Edge Of Composite Laminates Using Digital Image Correlation, Addis Tessema

Theses and Dissertations

Understanding the mechanics of Fiber Reinforced Composites (FRC) that guide the design and optimization of laminate structures, have attracted numerous researchers. For the last five decades, various analytical and numerical models have been developed to understand the damage and failure mechanisms in FRC. For long, Classical laminate plate theory (CLPT) has majorly been used as a theoretical guide in the design of composite structures. The CLPT framework is developed based on the consideration of an infinitesimal wide plate that depicts a planar stress condition. Thus, as it considers only the planar stresses, the out of plane interlaminar stresses are absent …

Heterogeneous Catalysis For The Upgrading Of Biomass Derived Chemicals Via Hydrodeoxygenation, Elizabeth Barrow

Theses and Dissertations

An important step in the upgrading of biomass derived chemicals is the removal of excess oxygen. The works reported here are focused on studying the heterogeneous catalysts that can be utilized for that upgrading through hydrodeoxygenation. This work begins with a discussion of the alkylation of short chain platform chemicals for chain growth and also demonstrates the proof of concept of combining alkylation and hydrodeoxygenation in a single step. Then, because of the promising nature of ReOx- Pd/CeO2 for selective hydrodeoxygenation, a detailed study of ReOx/CeO2 is presented. Finally, a new surface structure interpretation is presented for P/Ni(111) which could …

Three-Dimensional Plasma Cell Survival Microniche In Multiple Myeloma, Katrina A. Harmon

Theses and Dissertations

Multiple myeloma (MM) is an incurable malignancy characterized by the uncontrolled proliferation of long-lived plasma cells (PCs) in the bone marrow (BM), which constitute at least 10% of BM cellularity. Normally, long-lived plasma cells make up less than 1% of BM cells. Plasma cells become neoplastic when a clonal PC population produces a monoclonal immunoglobulin protein. A diagnosis of monoclonal gammopathy of undetermined significance (MGUS) is made when there is an increase in monoclonal PCs within the BM, but less than 10%, and the patient does not present with end-organ damage, which is associated with active MM. Though not considered …

Analysis Of Cellular Interactions Within A Collagen Hydrogel, Austin N. Worden

Theses and Dissertations

Evidence has arisen over the past several years that use of a three- dimensional (3D) culture system provides a distinct advantage over two- dimensional (2D) systems when cellular interactions are examined in a more natural environment. Changes in morphology, speed, and directionality of cells tested in both planar and 3D matrices have all demonstrated that using 3D system is advantageous. The changes to the cellular migration patterns were shown to be dependent on several variables within the surrounding substrate including cellular content, physical environment, and the matrix chemical milieu. We have taken advantage of using collagen hydrogels as a 3D …

Numerical Analysis On Convective Cooling Augmented By Evaporative Heat And Mass Transfer For Thermal Power Plant Application, Sudipta Saha

Theses and Dissertations

This thesis work describes a numerical study on the effect of evaporative cooling on the augmentation of forced convective cooling. In recent years, on-demand phase change boosted cooling has drawn major interest where convective heat transfer is augmented/aided by evaporative heat and mass transport processes. This dual mode (convection and evaporation) cooling method is envisioned to drastically enhance the heat transfer coefficient where conventional convective cooling has already reached its maximum value and furthermore dry cooling is still a desired objective. A multi- dimensional mathematical model has been developed to conduct simulations over a range of operating parameters to obtain …

Role Of P-Glycoprotein In Alzheimer’S Disease For Enhanced Brain Elimination Of Amyloid-Β, Hope Holt

Theses and Dissertations

Alzheimer’s disease (AD), the most common form of neurodegenerative disorder, is characterized by deposition of amyloid-β (Aβ) plaques in the brain. Aβ monomer undergoes nucleation to form oligomers, then soluble aggregates, then fibrils which make up the plaques. Aβ oligomer species are believed to be the most neurotoxic aggregate species. Currently under investigation is a mechanism for Aβ removal from the brain, across the blood-brain barrier (BBB). P-glycoprotein (P-gp) is a membrane-bound efflux protein located on the apical, or blood, side of the BBB, which transports a wide variety of substrates. Further complicating this potential clearance mechanism is the reduction …

Rage Expression And Inflammation In Alzheimer’S Disease: In Vitro Model Development And Investigation Of A Potential Peptoid Inhibitor, Lauren Michell Wolf

Theses and Dissertations

Despite the increasing prevalence of Alzheimer’s disease (AD), efforts to establish a definitive treatment or cure have met with little success. Many previous therapeutic strategies for AD have focused on the aggregation and accumulation of amyloid-b (Ab) in the brain, concentrating on its small intermediate aggregates as the primary targets to ameliorate neurotoxicity and damage. This approach has yielded little progress, and more recent discussions have shifted to strategies geared toward a multifaceted pathology, with chronic neuroinflammation emerging as an important factor in the disease etiology and progression.

The receptor for advanced glycation end-products, or RAGE, is …

Three-Dimensional Collagen Tubes For In Vitro Modeling, Rebecca Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Collagen type I represents a novel material for three-dimensional in vitro models. While two-dimensional models are typically inadequate for recreating the complex processes of the body, collagen provides a three-dimensional basis with a variety of applications, including remodeling of vascular cells under tension and vascular stenosis. Smooth muscle cells reorganize and reconstruct their environment differently under conditions of tensions, such as with sutures, or under conditions without applied external tension. Vascular stenosis, the abnormal narrowing of blood vessels, arises from defective developmental processes or atherosclerosis-related adult pathologies. Stenosis triggers a series of adaptive cellular responses that induces adverse remodeling, which …

Intelligent Machine Learning: Tailor-Making Macromolecules, Yousef Mohammadi, Mohammad Reza Saeb, Alexander Penlidis, Esmaiel Jabbari, Florian J. Stadler, Philippe Zinck, Krzysztof Matyjaszewski

Faculty Publications

Nowadays, polymer reaction engineers seek robust and effective tools to synthesize complex macromolecules with well-defined and desirable microstructural and architectural characteristics. Over the past few decades, several promising approaches, such as controlled living (co)polymerization systems and chain-shuttling reactions have been proposed and widely applied to synthesize rather complex macromolecules with controlled monomer sequences. Despite the unique potential of the newly developed techniques, tailor-making the microstructure of macromolecules by suggesting the most appropriate polymerization recipe still remains a very challenging task. In the current work, two versatile and powerful tools capable of effectively addressing the aforementioned questions have been proposed and …

Hazard And Operability Analysis Of An Ethylene Oxide Production Plant, Samantha Ciricillo

Senior Theses

The purpose of this work was to evaluate potential hazards and failures as part of the design and economic analysis for a chemical plant that would produce 150,000 tons of ethylene oxide per year. The Hazard and Operability (HAZOP) method of analysis was used to accomplish this goal. This method of hazard analysis involves brainstorming potential errors in a system by examining each element of each process unit in full detail. This project was focused on the reactor unit because the reactor has several important parameters that could fail, resulting in safety issues within the system. Input for this analysis …

Cpu Cooling Pulse Device For Enhanced Heat Transfer, Hannah Farabee, Noémie L. Iñiguez, Hugo Nunez, Wendy Zwanka

Senior Theses

Ice Dragon Cooling is a company which researches thermofluids and heat transfer technologies. The company’s present research focuses on HVAC and computer applications, with an emphasis on nanofluid development. To support Ice Dragon’s mission, the company wants a product that enhances heat transfer efficiency in liquid-cooled CPU systems. The product is to be a pulse device which increases the turbulence of a liquid across a computer CPU cooling block, thereby expediting heat transfer away from the CPU.

The needs for Ice Dragon Cooling were determined based on engineering knowledge and industry consultation. After further analysis, it was determined that increasing …

Finite Element Electromagnetic (Em) Analyses Of Induction Heating Of Thermoplastic Composites, Ankit Patel

Theses and Dissertations

Thermoplastic composites are in great demand for current and future manufacturing of aircraft and automotive industries. Induction heating and welding of thermoplastic composite laminates is of great significance. The non-contact method of heating and welding is being adopted in aircraft parts, engine parts, and turbine parts manufacturing among many other things. This thesis performs simulations and analyses of Electromagnetic (EM) induction heating of thermoplastic composites materials.

The induction heating and welding of thermoplastic composites in the presence of a susceptor alloy (called Monel) consisting of 67% nickel and 27% copper is studied using a Finite Element Analysis (FEA) software. A …

Modeling And Loss Analysis Of Sic Power Semiconductor Devices For Switching Converter Applications, Soheila Eskandari

Theses and Dissertations

Since its inception, power electronics has been to a large extent driven by the available power semiconductor devices. Switching power converter topologies, modes of operation, switching frequencies, passive filtering elements are chosen based on the switching and conduction characteristics of power semiconductor devices. In recent times new wide bandgap power semiconductor devices, such as SiC MOSFETs, are emerging with superior performance as compared to conventional silicon devices.

In switching power converter design, power losses of the power semiconductor de- vices play a crucial role in determining the physical characteristics of power converter systems in terms of size, weight, efficiency and, …

Development Of Models For Road-Rail Intermodal Freight Network Under Uncertainty, Md Majbah Uddin

Theses and Dissertations

Freight activities are directly related to a country’s Gross Domestic Product and economic viability. In recent years, the U.S. transportation system supports a growing volume of freight, and it is anticipated that this trend will continue in the coming years. To support the projected increase in freight volume, an efficient, reliable, and low-cost freight logistics system is necessary to keep the U.S. competitive in the global market. In addition, intermodal transport is becoming an increasingly attractive alternative to shippers, and this trend is likely to continue as state and federal agencies are considering policies to induce a freight modal shift …

Fabrication And Characterization Of Thin Films For Heterojunction Solar Cells And Radiation Detectors, Towhid A. Chowdhury

Theses and Dissertations

The dissertation study has undertaken research in two areas: (1) development of Cu2ZnSnS4 (CZTS) thin film photo-absorber using low-cost fabrication technique for roll- to-roll commercial production for photovoltaic application, and (2) development of enriched lithium-doped amorphous selenium alloy film, a new solid-state detector material for neutron detection.

In this study CZTS thin film was developed by employing low-cost, high- throughput spray pyrolysis technique, followed by sulfurization under a 5% H2S flow at 550°C. Characterization of deposited films revealed better structural, compositional, and optical properties for sulfurized film compared to as-deposited film. The ‘sulfurized’ CZTS films deposited at 380°C substrate temperature …

Structural Health Monitoring And Non-Destructive Inspection Of Composite And Metallic Structures, Asaad Qasim Migot

Theses and Dissertations

Structural Health Monitoring (SHM) and Nondestructive Testing (NDT) techniques are being used as effective tools for investigating variety of civil, mechanical, and aerospace applications. In recent years, these techniques become such incredible tools for continuously monitoring of various structures. The aim of the dissertation work is to develop SHM and NDT methodologies for acoustic emission sources localization, damage detection and quantification in metallic and composite structures using a network of sensors, guided wave and developed imaging methods. This work is implemented through preparing metallic and composite specimens, setting up experiments, designing efficient networks of sensors, modeling guided wave interaction with …

Biophysical Analyses Of Left Ventricular Remodeling Secondary To Myocardial Infarction And Left Ventricular Pressure Overload, William Manuel Torres

Theses and Dissertations

Left ventricular (LV) remodeling is nominally an adaptive process that restores biomechanical function following myocardial injury and/or sustained alterations in loading conditions. This remodeling can materialize as changes in myocardial geometry, composition, and mechanical properties. When these changes fail to restore LV biomechanical function, remodeling is termed maladaptive. It is generally accepted that maladaptive LV remodeling underlies the progression to heart failure in various forms of heart disease. The central hypothesis of this study is that we can leverage echocardiographic imaging techniques to non-invasively quantify changes in biomechanical function and mechanical properties in a serial manner throughout the progression towards …

Mechanisms Of Radium Adsorption On Silica And Barite, Hamid Hamid

Theses and Dissertations

The use of experimental studies with computer modeling is vital in the development of cost-effective methods for treating radium containing wastewaters. The goal of this dissertation is to develop a multi-scale model to study radium removal mechanisms onto silica and barite, and the effect of water quality parameters on radium removal. The major tasks to be accomplished in this study are: to develop a multi-component isotherm model for radium removal on different ionized silica surfaces; to re-parameterize sulphate force fields to account for metal-sulfate interactions; and to simulate radium removal on barite under different water quality conditions. We conducted molecular …