Engineering Commons^™

Utah Code 73-3-30, Utah State Legislature

All In-stream Flows Material

73-3-30 Change application for an instream flow.

The Internet Of Energy: Architectures, Cyber Security, And Applications, Kun Wang, Yan Zhang, Song Guo, Mianxiong Dong, Rose Qingyang Hu, Lei He

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The energy crisis and carbon emissions have become two critical concerns globally. As a very promising solution, the concept of Internet of Energy has appeared to tackle these challenges. The Internet of Energy is a new power generation paradigm developing a revolutionary vision of smart grids into the Internet. The communication infrastructure is an essential component for implementing the Internet of Energy. A scalable and robust communication infrastructure is crucial in both operating and maintaining smart energy systems. The wide-scale implementation and development of Internet of Energy into industrial applications should take into account the following challenges:

Spatial And Temporal Analysis Of Precipitation And Effective Rainfall Using Gauge Observations, Satellite, And Gridded Climate Data For Agricultural Water Management In The Upper Colorado River Basin, Mahyar Aboutalebi, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, L. Niel Allen

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Accurate spatial and temporal precipitation estimates are important for hydrological studies of irrigation depletion, net irrigation requirement, natural recharge, and hydrological water balances in defined areas. This analysis supports the verification of water savings (reduced depletion)from deficit irrigation of pastures in the Upper Colorado River Basin. The study area has diverse topography with scattered fields and few precipitation gauges that are not representative of the basin.Gridded precipitation products from TRMM-3B42, PRISM, Daymet, and gauge observations were evaluated on two case studies located in Colorado and Wyoming during the 2014–2016 irrigation seasons. First, the resolution at the farm level is discussed. …

Validating The Satisfaction With Travel Scale As A Measure Of Hedonic Subjective Well-Being For Commuting In A U.S. City, Patrick A. Singleton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The relationships between transportation and well-being are of increasing interest to researchers, practitioners, and policymakers. Stakeholders seeking to improve quality of life and traffic safety require valid and reliable ways of gauging the emotional states of travelers. Psychological scales exist for measuring subjective well-being (SWB), but these instruments have rarely been applied to the travel domain. The Satisfaction with Travel Scale (STS) is a nine-item measure of travel-related hedonic SWB, capturing core affect (emotions) and cognitive evaluations of overall satisfaction associated with personal transportation. Although the STS has been used in an increasing number of studies, questions remain regarding its …

Priming Of Grasping Muscles When Viewing A Safety Handle Is Diminished With Age, David A.E. Bolton, Sarah E. Schwartz, Manhoud Mansour, Garrett Rydalch, Douglas W. Mcdannald

Kinesiology and Health Science Faculty Publications

Merely viewing objects within reachable space can activate motor cortical networks and potentiate movement. This holds potential value for smooth interaction with objects in our surroundings, and could offer an advantage for quickly generating targeted hand movements (e.g. grasping a support rail to maintain stability). The present study investigated if viewing a wall-mounted safety handle resulted in automatic activation of motor cortical networks, and if this effect changes with age. Twenty-five young adults (18–30 years) and seventeen older adults (65+ years) were included in this study. Single-pulse, transcranial magnetic stimulation was applied over the motor cortical hand representation of young …

Assessment Of Different Methods For Shadow Detection In High-Resolution Optical Imagery And Evaluation Of Shadow Impact On Calculation Of Ndvi And Evapotranspiration, Mahyar Aboutalebi, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, William P. Kustas, Héctor Nieto, Calvin Coopmans, Mac Mckee

AggieAir Publications

Significant efforts have been made recently in the application of high-resolution remote sensing imagery (i.e., sub-meter) captured by unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) for precision agricultural applications for high-value crops such as wine grapes. However, at such high resolution, shadows will appear in the optical imagery effectively reducing the reflectance and emission signal received by imaging sensors. To date, research that evaluates procedures to identify the occurrence of shadows in imagery produced by UAVs is limited. In this study, the performance of four different shadow detection methods used in satellite imagery was evaluated for high-resolution UAV imagery collected over a California …

A New Computational Intelligence Approach To Predicting The Machined Surface Roughness In Metal Machining, Ning Fang, P. Srinivasa Pai

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

Machined surface roughness is an important parameter used in the evaluation of the surface integrity of machined parts and components. This paper proposes a new computational intelligence approach to predicting the machined surface roughness in metal machining. In this approach, wavelet packet transform (WPT) is incorporated into artificial neural networks (ANN) to develop two ANN models for predicting average roughness Ra and root-mean-square roughness Rq, respectively. Each model has eight inputs, including the cutting speed, the feed rate, energy of wavelet packets for three cutting force components, and energy of wavelet packets for three cutting vibration components. Forty-five machining experiments …

Ncer Assistance Agreement Annual Progress Report For Grant #83582401 - Assessment Of Stormwater Harvesting Via Manage Aquifer Recharge (Mar) To Develop New Water Supplies In The Arid West: The Salt Lake Valley Example, Ryan Dupont, Joan E. Mclean, Richard C. Peralta, Sarah E. Null, Douglas B. Jackson-Smith

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

The goals of the original proposed project remain the same, that is, to test the hypothesis that Managed Aquifer Recharge (MAR) for stormwater harvesting is a technically feasible, socially and environmentally acceptable, economically viable, and legally feasible option for developing new water supplies for arid Western urban ecosystems experiencing increasing population, and climate change pressures on existing water resources. The project is being carried out via three distinct but integrated components that include: 1) Monitoring of existing distributed MAR harvesting schemes involving a growing number of demonstration Green Infrastructure (GI) test sites; 2) Integrated stormwater/vadose zone/groundwater/ ecosystem services modeling; and …

Estimating Actual Evapotranspiration From Stony-Soils In Montane Ecosystems, Kshitij Parajuli, Scott B. Jones, David G. Tarboton, Gerald N. Flerchinger, Lawrence E. Hipps, L. Niel Allen, Mark S. Seyfried

Plants, Soils, and Climate Faculty Publications

Quantification of evapotranspiration (ET) is crucial for understanding the water balance and for efficient water resources planning. Agricultural settings have received most attention regarding ET measurements while less knowledge is available for actual ET (ET_A) in natural ecosystems, many of which have soils containing significant amounts of stones. This study is focused on modelling ET_A from stony soil, particularly in montane ecosystems where we estimate the contribution of stone content on water retention properties in soil. We employed a numerical model (HYDRUS-1D) to simulate ET_A in natural settings in northern Utah and southern Idaho during the …

Incorporating Drones In My Classroom: Survey Data From High School Teachers 2018, Tyson Sorensen, Kelsey Hall, Olivia Horning, Joshua Dallin, David Francis

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Survey data collected from 69 high school and middle school teachers. Survey gauges intentions of integrating drone curriculum concepts into the classroom.

Dataset includes summary data, raw data and survey instrument.

Effect Of Meter Orientation Downstream Of A Short Radius Elbow On Electromagnetic Flow Meters, Jared C. Justensen, Steven L. Barfuss, Michael C. Johnson, Thomas E. Meacham

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Electromagnetic flow meters (known as magnetic flow meters) are a widely used type of flow meter. This study examines the performance of magnetic flow meters when the electrodes in the meter are positioned at two different orientations: electrodes parallel with the plane of an upstream 90° short radius elbow and electrodes perpendicular to the plane of an upstream 90° short radius elbow. Four different meters from four different manufacturers were included in the study in which a baseline straight pipe test was first performed using more than 50 diameters of straight pipe upstream of each meter. The four meters were …

Genetic Engineering In Agriculture Curricula For Grades 9-12, Tyson Sorensen, Olivia Horning, Kelsey Hall, David Francis, Joshua Dallin

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This is a curriculum package that was developed for teachers to be able to integrate genetic engineering and biotechnology concepts, skills, and career applications into their classrooms. This package was developed as part of the LEARN workshop entitled "Genetic Engineering: Workshop for Teachers." This curriculum package includes five full units of instructions with lesson plans, presentation resources, and other resources for teachers. This package is intended for students in grades 9-12.

Each unit is complete with the corresponding slides found in the main Genetic Engineering PowerPoint. Teachers have the liberty to cover the material on an as-needed bases based on …

Geoflood: Large-Scale Flood Inundation Mapping Based On High-Resolution Terrain Analysis, Xing Zheng, David R. Maidment, David G. Tarboton, Yan Y. Liu, Paola Passalacqua

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Recent floods from intense storms in the southern United States and the unusually active 2017 Atlantic hurricane season have highlighted the need for real‐time flood inundation mapping using high‐resolution topography. High‐resolution topographic data derived from lidar technology reveal unprecedented topographic details and are increasingly available, providing extremely valuable information for improving inundation mapping accuracy. The enrichment of terrain details from these data sets, however, also brings challenges to the application of many classic approaches designed for lower‐resolution data. Advanced methods need to be developed to better use lidar‐derived terrain data for inundation mapping. We present a new workflow, GeoFlood, for …

Hidden Curriculum Awareness: A Comparison Of Engineering Faculty, Graduate Students, And Undergraduates, Idalis Villanueva, Marialuisa Di Stefano, Laura Gelles, Katherine Youmans

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

In order for an engineering academic body (e.g., facultyand students) to navigate their surroundings, they must first become aware of the hidden curriculum around them. Hidden curriculum represents how particular assumptions, values, attitudes, and beliefs about schooling manifests in practice. When understood, these types of lessons or messages allow students, faculty, and staff to more easily navigate the academic and socio-political customs needed for success.

As part of a larger study, a total of 224 participants across 57 engineering programs in the United States and Latin America were asked to comment on a survey that asked respondents about the expectations …

Assessing The Limitations Of Effective Number Of Samples For Finding The Uncertainty Of The Mean Of Correlated Data, Barton L. Smith, Douglas R. Neal, Mark Feero, Geordie Richards

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

The efficacy of recent and classical theories on the uncertainty of the mean of correlated data have been investigated. A variety of very large data sets make it possible to show that, under circumstances that are often too expensive to achieve, the integral time scale can be used to determine the effective number of independent samples, and therefore the uncertainty of the mean. To do so, the data set must be sufficiently large that it may be divided into many records, each of which is many integral time scales long. In this circumstance, all lags of the autocorrelation should be …

Sdnet2018: An Annotated Image Dataset For Non-Contact Concrete Crack Detection Using Deep Convolutional Neural Networks, Sattar Dorafshan, Robert J. Thomas, Marc Maguire

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

SDNET2018 is an annotated image dataset for training, validation, and benchmarking of artificial intelligence based crack detection algorithms for concrete. SDNET2018 contains over 56,000 images of cracked and non-cracked concrete bridge decks, walls, and pavements. The dataset includes cracks as narrow as 0.06 mm and as wide as 25 mm. The dataset also includes images with a variety of obstructions, including shadows, surface roughness, scaling, edges, holes, and background debris. SDNET2018 will be useful for the continued development of concrete crack detection algorithms based on deep convolutional neural networks (DCNNs), which are a subject of continued research in the field …

Trident: Comprehensive Choke Error Mitigation In Ntc Systems, Aatreyi Bal, Sanghamitra Roy, Koushik Chakraborty

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Near threshold computing (NTC) systems have been inherently plagued with heightened process variation (PV) sensitivity. Choke points are an intriguing manifestation of this PV sensitivity. In this paper, we explore the probability of minimum timing violations, caused by choke points, in an NTC system, and their nontrivial impacts on the system reliability. We show that conventional timing error mitigation techniques are inefficient in tackling choke point-induced minimum timing violations. Consequently, we propose a comprehensive error mitigation technique, Trident, to tackle choke points at NTC. Trident offers a 1.37 × performance improvement and a 1.11 × energy-efficiency gain over Razor at …

Environmental Water Transactions In The Colorado River Basin: A Closer Look, Leon Szeptycki, David Pilz, Rachel O'Connor, Beatrice Gordon

All In-stream Flows Material

Over the last 30 years, the voluntary transfer of water and water rights for environmental uses has become a recognized strategy for restoring streamflow in the Western United States.¹ Historically, taking water out of a stream was a legally required element of an appropriative water right. Water rights holders who left all or a portion of their right instream to enhance fish populations, riparian habitat or recreation, risked forfeiture or diminishment of their water right. Beginning in the 1980’s, state laws began to recognize both the appropriation of new water rights for instream use and to allow the transfer …

Identification And Heterologous Reconstitution Of A 5-Alk(En)Ylresorcinol Synthase From Endophytic Fungus Shiraia Sp. Slf14, Huiwen Yan, Lei Sun, Jinge Huang, Yixing Qiu, Fuchao Xu, Riming Yan, Du Zhu, Wei Wang, Jixun Zhan

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

A new type III polyketide synthase gene (Ssars) was discovered from the genome of Shiraia sp. Slf14, an endophytic fungal strain from Huperzia serrata. The intron-free gene was cloned from the cDNA and ligated to two expression vectors pET28a and YEpADH2p-URA3 for expression in Escherichia coli BL21(DE3) and Saccharomyces cerevisiae BJ5464, respectively. SsARS was efficiently expressed in E. coli BL21(DE3), leading to the synthesis of a series of polyketide products. Six major products were isolated from the engineered E. coli and characterized as 1,3-dihydroxyphenyl-5-undecane, 1,3-dihydroxyphenyl-5-cis-6'-tridecene,1,3-dihydroxyphenyl-5-tridecane, 1,3-dihydroxyphenyl-5-cis-8'-pentadecene, 1,3-dihydroxyphenyl-5-pentadecane and 1,3-dihydroxyphenyl-5-cis-10'-heptadecene, respectively, …

Design Of An Automatic Defect Identification Method Based Ecpt For Pneumatic Pressure Equipment, Bo Zhang, Yuhua Cheng, Chun Yin, Xuegang Huang, Sara Dadras, Hadi Malek

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

In this paper, in order to achieve automatic defect identification for pneumatic pressure equipment, an improved feature extraction algorithm eddy current pulsed thermography (ECPT) is presented. The presented feature extraction algorithm contains four elements: data block selection; variable step search; relation value classification; and between-class distance decision function. The data block selection and variable step search are integrated to decrease the redundant computations in the automatic defect identification. The goal of the classification and between-class distance calculation is to select the typical features of thermographic sequence. The main image information can be extracted by the method precisely and efficiently. Experimental …

Hydrologic Observation, Model, And Theory Congruence On Evapotranspiration Variance: Diagnosis Of Multiple Observations And Land Surface Models, Ruijie Zeng, Ximing Cai

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper reconciles the state-of-the-art observations and simulations of evapotranspiration (ET) temporal variability through a diagnostic framework composed of an observation-model-theory triplet. Specifically, a confirmed theoretical tool, Evapotranspiration Temporal VARiance Decomposition (EVARD), is used as a benchmark to estimate ET monthly variance (σ²_ET) across the contiguous United States (CONUS) with inputs including hydroclimatic observations, Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment-based terrestrial water storage, four observation-based products (ET_RSUW by the University of Washington, ET_RSMOD16 from MOD16 Global Terrestrial ET Data Set, ET_FLUXNET upscaled from of fluxtower observations, and ET_GLEAM from Global Land Evaporation Amsterdam Model), …

Fluted Films, Nathan B. Spiers, Mohammad M. Mansoor, Jesse Belden, Randy Craig Hurd, Zhao Pan, Tadd T. Truscott

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper is associated with a poster winner of a 2017 APS/DFD Milton van Dyke Award for work presented at the DFD Gallery of Fluid Motion. The original poster is available from the Gallery of Fluid Motion, https://doi.org/10.1103/APS.DFD.2017.GFM.P0030

Urban Agriculture And Small Farm Water Use: Case Studies And Trends From Cache Valley, Utah, Tyler Pratt, L. Niel Allen, David E. Rosenberg, Andrew A. Keller, Kelly Kopp

Publications

The landscape of water in Utah is changing due to population growth, conversion of agricultural land to urban development, and increasing awareness of water scarcity. At the same time, Utah is experiencing a growing number of urban and small farms, but knowledge of water use in this sector is limited. Better understanding of what occurs at the field level on urban and small farms can aid state water use estimates and conservation efforts, and assist farmers in moving towards wiser water management. For the 2015 growing season, we performed irrigation evaluations for 24 urban and small farms in Cache Valley, …

The Grape Remote Sensing Atmospheric Profile And Evapotranspiration Experiment, William P. Kustas, Martha C. Anderson, Joseph G. Alfieri, Kyle Knipper, Alfonso F. Torres-Rua, Christopher K. Parry, Hector Nieto, Nurit Agam, William A. White, Feng Gao, Lynn Mckee, John H. Prueger, Lawrence E. Hipps, Sebastian A. Los, Maria Mar Alsina, Luis Sanchez, Brent Sams, Nick Dokoozlian, Mac Mckee, Scott B. Jones, Yun Yang, Tiffany G. Wilson, Fangni Lei, Andrew Mcelrone, Josh L. Heitman, Adam M. Howard, Kirk Post, Forrest Melton, Christopher Hain

AggieAir Publications

Particularly in light of California’s recent multiyear drought, there is a critical need for accurate and timely evapotranspiration (ET) and crop stress information to ensure long-term sustainability of high-value crops. Providing this information requires the development of tools applicable across the continuum from subfield scales to improve water management within individual fields up to watershed and regional scales to assess water resources at county and state levels. High-value perennial crops (vineyards and orchards) are major water users, and growers will need better tools to improve water-use efficiency to remain economically viable and sustainable during periods of prolonged drought. To develop …

Novel Devices For Studying Acute And Chronic Mechanical Stress In Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells, Farhad Farjood, Elizabeth Vargis

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

Choroidal neovascularization (CNV) is a major cause of blindness in patients with age-related macular degeneration (AMD). Overexpression of vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), a potent angiogenic protein, by retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells is a key stimulator of CNV. Mechanical stress occurs during different stages of AMD and is a possible inducer of VEGF expression in RPE cells. However, robust and realistic approaches to studying acute and chronic mechanical stress under various AMD stages do not exist.The majority of previous work has studied cyclic stretching of RPE cells grown on flexible substrates, but an ideal model must be able to …

Uncovering The Hidden Factors That Could Compromise Equitable And Effective Engineering Education, Idalis Villanueva, Janice Mejia, Renata A. Revelo

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

Literacies are central to the social and cultural practices that are intertwined with identities, who gets to participate in engineering, and the knowledge that is valued in the discipline. However, identifying these literacies is not a straightforward process for engineering faculty. The purpose of this workshop is to help engineering faculty identify equity- oriented literacies that challenge hidden curriculum frameworks in engineering and influence engineering identity formation.

Map Based Discovery Of Hydrologic Data In The Hydroshare Collaboration Environment, Zhaokun Xue, Alva Couch, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Data discovery refers to the process of locating pre-existing data for use in new research. In the HydroShare collaboration environment for water science, there are more than twenty kinds of data that can be discovered, including data from specific sites on the globe, data corresponding to regions on the globe, and data with no geospatial meaning, such as laboratory experiment results. This paper discusses lessons learned in building a data discovery system for HydroShare. This was a surprisingly difficult problem; default behaviors of software components were unacceptable, use cases suggested conflicting approaches, and crafting a geographic view of a large …

Critical Theoretical Frameworks In Engineering Education: An Anti-Deficit And Liberative Approach, Joel A. Mejia, Renata A. Revelo, Idalis Villanueva, Janice Mejia

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The field of engineering education has adapted different theoretical frameworks from a wide range of disciplines to explore issues of education, diversity, and inclusion among others. The number of theoretical frameworks that explore these issues using a critical perspective has been increasing in the past few years. In this review of the literature, we present an analysis that draws from Freire’s principles of critical andragogy and pedagogy. Using a set of inclusion criteria, we selected 33 research articles that used critical theoretical frameworks as part of our systematic review of the literature. We argue that critical theoretical frameworks are necessary …

“There Is Never A Break”: The Hidden Curriculum Of Professionalization For Engineering Faculty, Idalis Villanueva, Taya Carothers, Marialuisa Di Stefano, Md. Tarique Hasan Kahan

Engineering Education Faculty Publications

The purpose of this exploratory special issue study was to understand the hidden curriculum (HC), or the unwritten, unofficial, or unintended lessons, around the professionalization of engineering faculty across institutions of higher education. Additionally, how engineering faculty connected the role of HC awareness, emotions, self-efficacy, and self-advocacy concepts was studied. A mixed-method survey was disseminated to 55 engineering faculties across 54 institutions of higher education in the United States. Quantitative questions, which centered around the influences that gender, race, faculty rank, and institutional type played in participants’ responses was analyzed using a combination of decision tree analysis with chi-square and …

Cubesat Active Thermal Management In Support Of Cooled Electro-Optical Instrumentation For Advanced Atmospheric Observing Missions, Lucas Anderson, Charles Swenson, Ryan Davidson, Arthur J. Mastropietro, Elham Maghsoudi, S. Luong, Stefano Cappucci, I. Mckinley

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The need for advanced cooled electro-optical instrumentation in remote observations of the atmosphere is well known and demonstrated by SABER on the TIMED mission. The relatively new use of small satellites in remote earth observing missions as, well as the challenges, are epitomized by the upcoming NOAA EON-IR 12U CubeSat missions. These advanced CubeSat missions, which hope to accomplish scientific objectives on the same scale as larger more traditional satellites, require advanced miniaturized cryocoolers and active methods for thermal management and power control. The active CryoCubeSat project (ACCS) is a demonstration of such a technology. Utilizing Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing (UAM) …