Engineering Commons^™

Human Reliability Analysis In The Performance Of Advanced Cardiac Life Support Tasks, Lucia Veronica Rosas

Theses and Dissertations - UTB/UTPA

Error reduction in the performance of medical emergency situations is an area of great concern in today's society. This is specially the case when the situation involves a cardiac arrhythmia. These situations are generally categorized as Advanced Cardiac Life Support (ACLS) events. The American Heart Association provides the proper procedures that practitioners of ACLS should follow to provide care to patients presenting heart arrhythmia problems. These situations occur inside and outside the hospital, outside the hospital being the most critical ones considering the limitation of equipment and availability of qualified care. Errors made by the practitioners of ACLS in this …

Controlling Lead Exposure During The Process Of Cleaning Aviation Spark Plugs, Curtis E. Beers

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This study examines the process of removing lead bromide from aircraft spark plugs and the health hazards associated with the present method of cleaning the lead bromide accumulation from aviation spark plugs. Aviation maintenance technicians can be inadvertently exposed to lead while cleaning the lead bromide accumulation from the spark plug electrode during scheduled engine maintenance.

This study explores controlling the lead bromide particulate matter after it is removed from the spark plug electrode. Various control methods and/or procedural changes that may be employed to control the spread of lead bromide dust throughout the shop environment and the prevention of …

Cellular Automata Realization Of Regular Logic, Andrzej Buller, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper presents a cellular-automatic model of a reversible regular structure called Davio lattice. Regular circuits are investigated because of the requirement of future (nano-) technologies where long wires should be avoided. Reversibility is a valuable feature because it means much lower energy dissipation. A circuit is reversible if the number of its inputs equals the number of its outputs and there is a one-to-one mapping between spaces of input vectors and output vectors. It is believed that one day regular reversible structures will be implemented as nanoscale 3-dimensional chips. This paper introduces the notion of the Toffoli gate and …

Function-Driven Linearly Independent Expansions Of Boolean Functions And Their Application To Synthesis Of Reversible Circuits, Pawel Kerntopf, Marek Perkowski

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The paper presents a family of new expansions of Boolean functions called Function-driven Linearly Independent (fLI) expansions. On the basis of this expansion a new kind of a canonical representation of Boolean functions is constructed: Function-driven Linearly Independent Binary Decision Diagrams (fLIBDDs). They generalize both Function-driven Shannon Binary Decision Diagrams (fShBDDs) and Linearly Independent Binary Decision Diagram (LIBDDs). The diagrams introduced in the paper, can provide significantly smaller representations of Boolean functions than standard Ordered Binary Decision Diagrams (OBDDs), Ordered Functional Decision Diagrams (OFDDs) and Ordered (Pseudo-) Kronecker Functional Decision Diagrams (OKFDDs) and can be applied to synthesis of reversible …

Evolution Of The Band Structure Of Β-In2 S3−3x O3x Buffer Layer With Its Oxygen Content, N. Barreau, S. Marsillac, J. C. Bernède, L. Assmann

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

The evolution of the band structure of β-In2 S3−3x O3x (BISO) thin films grown by physical vapor deposition, with composition x, is investigated using x-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. It is shown that the energy difference between the valence-band level and the Fermi level remains nearly constant as the optical band gap of the films increases. As a consequence, the difference between the conduction band level and the Fermi level increases as much as the optical band gap of the films. The calculation of the electronic affinity [ ] of the BISO thin films shows that it decreases linearly from 4.65 …

Reactive Oxygen Species Modulate Coronary Wall Shear Stress And Endothelial Function During Hyperglycemia, Eric R. Gross, John F. Ladisa, Dorothee Weihrauch, Lars E. Olson, Tobias T. Kress, Douglas Anthony Hettrick, Paul S. Pagel, David C. Warltier, Judy R. Kersten

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Hyperglycemia is associated with generation of reactive oxygen species (ROS), and this action may contribute to accelerated atherogenesis. We tested the hypothesis that hyperglycemia produces alterations in left anterior descending coronary artery (LAD) wall shear stress concomitant with endothelial dysfunction and ROS production in dogs (n = 12) instrumented for measurement of LAD blood flow, velocity, and diameter. Dogs were randomly assigned to receive vehicle (0.9% saline) or the superoxide dismutase mimetic 4- hydroxy-2,2,6,6-tetramethylpiperidine-1-oxyl (tempol) and were administered intravenous infusions of d-glucose to achieve target blood glucose concentrations of 350 and 600 mg/dl (moderate and severe hyperglycemia, respectively). Endothelial …

Short-Term Water Use Dynamics In Drainage Lysimeters, Musa V. Dlamini

All Graduate Theses and Dissertations, Spring 1920 to Summer 2023

Turfgrass water use (seasonal turfET) and crop coefficients were determined and a mathematical soil-water balance model for non-weighing drainage lysimetcrs, which simulates the occurrence (timing and amount) of drainage, was developed. Pairs of non-weighing drainage lysimeters were used to determine crop coefficients for turfgrass in four locations in the state of Utah: Logan Golf and Country Club, Murray Golf Course, Brigham Young University (Spanish Fork) Experiment Farm, and Sunbrook Golf Course (St. George).

Daily weather data including air temperature, relative humidity, average wind travel, total solar radiation, precipitation, and average soil temperature were collected with an electronic weather station at …

Recent Advances In Soil Liquefaction Engineering: A Unified And Consistent Framework, Raymond B. Seed, K. Onder Cetin, Robb E.S. Moss, Annie M. Kammerer, Jiaer Wu, Juan M. Pestana, Michael F. Riemer, Rodolfo B. Sancio, Jonathan D. Bray, Robert E. Kayen, Allison Faris

Civil and Environmental Engineering

Over the past decade, major advances have occurred in both understanding and practice with regard to assessment and mitigation of hazard associated with seismically induced soil liquefaction. Soil liquefaction engineering has evolved into a sub-field in its own right, and engineering assessment and mitigation of seismic soil liquefaction hazard is increasingly well addressed in both research and practice. This rapid evolution in the treatment of liquefaction has been pushed largely by a confluence of lessons and data provided by a series of major earthquakes over the past dozen years, as well as by the research and professional/political will engendered by …

Modeling Of The Fischer-Tropsch Synthesis In Slurry Bubble Column Reactors, Novica Rados, Muthanna H. Al-Dahhan, Milorad P. Dudukovic

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A Multicomponent One-Dimensional Dynamic Mathematical Model for the Reacting Slurry Systems with a Change in Gas Flow Rate Due to the Chemical Reaction is Developed. a Change in Gas Flow Rate Caused by the Chemical Reaction is Modeled using the overall Gas Mass Balance. Thus, All Relevant Chemical Species Are Included in the Model. Linear First-Order Reaction Kinetics is Considered. the Gas Phase is Modeled using the Two-Bubble Class Hydrodynamic Model. the Interaction between Small and Large Bubbles is Included as the Cross-Flow. Suspension of Liquid and Solids is Assumed to Form a Pseudo Slurry Phase. Back-Mixing in All of …

A Performance-Driven Framework For Customizing Csp Middleware Support, Guoliang Xing

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

A Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem (DCSP) aims to find consistent assignments of values to a set of variables distributed on multiple nodes. Despite its simple definition, DCSPs can model a broad variety of traditional artificial intelligence problems. Furthermore, many problems found in emerging sensor-actuator networks can be formalized to DCSPs. However, due to the platform limitations of networked embedded systems such as sensor-actuators networks, building real-world applications for solving DCSPs not only requires the improved DCSP algorithms but also novel system approaches. This thesis first develops a performance-driven middleware framework for solving DCSP problems. Then the prototype system built with …

Developing A Sensing System For The Measurement Of Oxygen Concentration In Liquid Pb-Bi Eutectic: Quarterly Progress Report (Feb. 01 – Apr. 30, 2003), Yingtao Jiang, Bingmei Fu, Woosoon Yim

Transmutation Sciences Materials (TRP)

We received most of the components, everything except the customized and outsourced stirrer, for the new apparatus for oxygen measurement/calibration. Thus far, most of the machining work has been completed. The LaveView module used for the data collection and the control of the apparatus has been tested. 2-D simulation work has been performed using FEMLAB.

Narcissat: A 1kg Picosatellite, Kyle Doerksen, Michael Colonno

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

A PowerPoint Presentation created by Kyle Doerksen and Michael Colonno titled "NarcisSat: A 1kg Picosatellite" from April 29, 2003.

Use Of Combinatorial Genetic Libraries To Humanize N-Linked Glycosylation In The Yeast Pichia Pastoris, Byung-Kwon Choi, Piotr Bobrowicz, Robert C. Davidson, Stephen R. Hamilton, David Kung, Huijuan Li, Robert Miele, Juergen Nett, Stefan Wildt, Tillman Gerngross

Dartmouth Scholarship

The secretory pathway of Pichia pastoris was genetically re-engineered to perform sequential glycosylation reactions that mimic early processing of N-glycans in humans and other higher mammals. After eliminating nonhuman glycosylation by deleting the initiating alpha-1,6-mannosyltransferase gene from P. pastoris, several combinatorial genetic libraries were constructed to localize active alpha-1,2-mannosidase and human beta-1,2-N-acetylglucosaminyltransferase I (GnTI) in the secretory pathway. First, >32 N-terminal leader sequences of fungal type II membrane proteins were cloned to generate a leader library. Two additional libraries encoding catalytic domains of alpha-1,2-mannosidases and GnTI from mammals, insects, amphibians, worms, and fungi were cloned to generate catalytic domain libraries. …

Specialized Hardware Support For Dynamic Storage Allocation, Steven M. Donahue

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

With the advent of operating systems and programming languages that can evaluate and guarantee real-time specifications, applications with real-time requirements can be authored in higher-level languages. For example, a version of Java suitable for real-time (RTSJ) has recently reached the status of a reference implementation, and it is likely that other implementations will follow. Analysis to show the feasibility of a given set of tasks must take into account their worst-case execution time, including any storage allocation or deallocation associated with those tasks. In this thesis, we present a hardware-based solution to the problem of storage allocation and (explicit) deallocation …

Using Contaminated Garbage Collection And Reference Counting Garbage Collection To Provide Automatic Storage Reclamation For Real-Time Systems, Matthew P. Hampton

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Language support of dynamic storage management simplifies the application programming task immensely. As a result, dynamic storage allocation and garbage collection have become common in general purpose computing. Garbage collection research has led to the development of algorithms for locating program memory that is no longer in use and returning the unused memory to the run-time system for late use by the program. While many programming languages have adopted automatic memory reclamation features, this has not been the trend in Real-Time systems. Many garbage collection methods involve some form of marking the objects in memory. This marking requires time proportional …

Hashtables For Real-Time And Embedded Systems, Anand Krishnan

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Real-time are beginning to appear in advanced, high-level programming languages such as Java. When complemented by a real-time operating system, the Real-Time Specification for Java (RTSJ) offers strong execution constraints for applications developed in Java. While the RTSJ make the basic services of Java such as storage and thread management ready for many real-time applications, the collection objects, and the rest of the application run-time library, cannot be used by RTSJ applications until their run-time properties are examined and modified as necessary to make them suitable for use by real-time applications. In this work, we examine the Hashtable collection facility …

Dynamic Assignment Of Scoped Memory Regions In The Translation Of Java To Real-Time Java, Morgan G. Deters

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Advances in middleware, operating systems, and popular, general-purpose languages have brought the ideal of reasonably-bound execution time closer to developers who need such assurances for real-time and embedded systems applications. Extensions to the Java libraries and virtual machine have been proposed in a real-time Java standard, which provides for specification of release times, execution costs, and deadlines for a restricted class of threads. To use such features, the programmer is required to use unwieldy code constructs to create region-like areas of storage, associate them with execution scopes, and allocate objects from them. Further, the developer must ensure that they do …

A Sediment Transport Model For Incising Gullies On Steep Topography, Erkan Istanbulluoglu, David G. Tarboton, Robert T. Pack, Charles H. Luce

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

We have conducted surveys of gullies that developed in a small, steep watershed in the Idaho Batholith after a severe wildfire followed by intense precipitation. We measured gully length and cross sections to estimate the volumes of sediment loss due to gully formation. These volume estimates are assumed to provide an estimate of sediment transport capacity at each survey cross section from the single gully-forming thunderstorm. Sediment transport models commonly relate transport capacity to overland flow shear stress, which is related to runoff rate, slope, and drainage area. We have estimated the runoff rate and duration associated with the gully-forming …

Integrated Coverage And Connectivity Configuration In Wireless Sensor Networks, Xiaorui Wang, Guoliang Xing, Yuanfang Zhang, Chenyang Lu, Robert Pless, Christopher Gill

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

An effective approach for energy conservation in wireless sensor networks is scheduling sleep intervals for extraneous nodes, while the remaining nodes stay active to provide continuous service. For the sensor network to operate successfully, the active nodes must maintain both sensing coverage and network connectivity. Furthermore, the network must be able to configure itself to any feasible degrees of coverage and connectivity in order to support different applications and environments with diverse requirements. This paper presents the design and analysis of novel protocols that can dynamically configure a network to achieve guaranteed degrees of coverage and connectivity. This work differs …

Multiflow Tcp, Udp, Ip, And Atm Traffic Generation Module, Eliot I. Sinclair, John W. Lockwood

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

Networking devices must be capable of processing traffic flows from multiple sources. In order to verify that such devices operates properly, a network testbench can be used to inject traffic into the device. The specification of the traffic flows can be difficult. At the low level, there are header fields, data checksums, and packet length fields that all must be formatted correctly. Further, there can be multiple flows of traffic that will arrive simultaneously. It is desirable to specify traffic at a high level of abstraction. A software program can then be written to parse the specification and generate the …

Micro Goniometer For Scanning Probe Microscopy, Ravi F. Saraf

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Patents

A goniometer for performing scanning probe microscopy on a substrate surface is disclosed. The goniometer has a cantilever, having a cantilevered end and a supported end and a tip disposed at the cantilevered end of the cantilever. The goniometer also has a block disposed at the supported end of the cantilever. The block has at least one pair of piezoelectric layers, a pair of electrodes disposed about each individual piezoelectric layer such that varying a potential difference applied between the individual electrodes of a pair of electrodes causes the corresponding piezoelectric layer to deform, and a first insulating material disposed …

System-On-Chip Packet Processor For An Experimental Network Services Platform, David Taylor, Alex Chandra, Yuhua Chen, Sarang Dharmapurikar, John Lockwood, Wenjing Tang, Jonathan Turner

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

As the focus of networking research shifts from raw performance to the delivery of advanced network services, there is a growing need for open-platform systems for extensible networking research. The Applied Research Laboratory at Washington University in Saint Louis has developed a flexible Network Services Platform (NSP) to meet this need. The NSP provides an extensible platform for prototyping next-generation network services and applications. This paper describes the design of a system-on-chip Packet Processor for the NSP which performs all core packet processing functions including segmentation and reassembly, packet classification, route lookup, and queue management. Targeted to a commercial configurable …

2003 - The Eighth Annual Symposium Of Student Scholars

Symposium of Student Scholars Program Books

The full program book from the Eighth Annual Symposium of Student Scholars, held on April 18, 2003. Includes abstracts from the presentations and posters.

Trends. Aviation Security: Thinking About Capps, Capps Ii, And Beyond, Ibpp Editor

International Bulletin of Political Psychology

This Trends article discusses computer assisted passenger prescreening systems (CAPPS) and aviation security.

A Thesis On A 3d Input Device For Sketching Characters, Mark A. Schroering

All Computer Science and Engineering Research

The goal of this project is to develop a 3D input device using a stiff piece of paper and a camera. The camera tracks the piece of paper in 3D space. The user orients the paper in 3D space and then draws on the paper using a pen-like device. The camera tracks the movement of the pen on the piece of paper. The location of the pen in 3D space can then be calculated from the orientation of the paper. A drawing application that uses this 3D input device was also developed. The application allows a user to make characters …

Solvent And Method For Extraction Of Triglyceride Rich Oil, Shubhender Kapila, Paul Ki-Souk Nam, V. J. Flanigan

Chemistry Faculty Research & Creative Works

The present invention relates to a solvent for use in extracting oil from an oil bearing material, such as soybeans, with the solvent resulting in the selective extraction of a triglyceride rich oil, which contains 95% or greater triglycerides and non-polar constituents, with the solvent comprised of a hydrocarbon, preferably hexane, and a fluorocarbon, so that the solvent has a viscosity less than 2.6 centipoise and a polarity of less than 0.1. The present invention also relates to a method of using the solvent to extract the triglyceride rich oil, with the method including preferably extracting the oil at a …

The Pseudo-Rigid-Body Model For Dynamic Predictions Of Macro And Micro Compliant Mechanisms, Scott Marvin Lyon

Theses and Dissertations

This work discusses the dynamic predictions of compliant mechanisms using the Pseudo-Rigid-Body model (PRBM). In order to improve the number of mechanisms that can be modeled, this research develops and identifies several key concepts in the behavior of beam segments where both ends are fixed to a rigid body (fixed-fixed flexible segments). A model is presented, and several examples are discussed. The dynamic behavior of several compliant segments is predicted using the PRBM and the results are compared to finite element analysis and experimental results. Details are presented as to the transient behavior of a typical uniform rectangular cross section …

Ferroelectric Storage Read-Write Memory, Ravi F. Saraf

Department of Chemical and Biomolecular Engineering: Patents

A memory device including at least one pair of spaced apart conductors and a ferroelectric material between the pair of conductors. The pair of conductors is spaced apart a distance sufficient to permit a tunneling current there between.

A Local Search Optimization Algorithm Based On Natural Principles Of Gravitation, Barry Webster, Philip J. Bernhard

Electrical Engineering and Computer Science Faculty Publications

This paper discusses the concept of an algorithm designed to locate the optimal solution to a problem in a (presumably) very large solution space. The algorithm attempts to locate the optimal solution to the problem by beginning a search at an arbitrary point in the solution space and then searching in the "local" area around the start point to find better solutions. The algorithm completes either when it locates what it thinks is the optimal solution or when predefined halt conditions have been met. The algorithm is repair-based, that is, it begins with a given solution and attempts to "repair" …

Classification Of Radar Targets Using Invariant Features, Gregory J. Meyer

Theses and Dissertations

Automatic target recognition ATR using radar commonly relies on modeling a target as a collection of point scattering centers, Features extracted from these scattering centers for input to a target classifier may be constructed that are invariant to translation and rotation, i.e., they are independent of the position and aspect angle of the target in the radar scene. Here an iterative approach for building effective scattering center models is developed, and the shape space of these models is investigated. Experimental results are obtained for three-dimensional scattering centers compressed to nineteen-dimensional feature sets, each consisting of the singular values of the …