Engineering Commons^™

Illicit Trafficking Of Radioactive Sources: Experiences With Fake Materials In Tanzania, Iddi Mkilaha

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

Radioactive materials although are very useful, they are one of the catastrophic sources of mass destruction if misused. These materials have a number of positive uses which makes them very essential in our modern society. Incidences such as the bombings of the US Embassies in East Africa, the September 11, and many others had formed a basis for international responsive actions to control illicit trafficking of Radioactive and Nuclear Materials. The aim of this work is to track the movements and subsequently uses of these materials. Tanzania is one of the countries where International Nuclear Safeguards protocols are fully operational …

Universal Design Of Transportation Systems: A Case Study Of Access And Mobility Of People With Disabilities At Selected Intersections In Dar Es Salaam, Nurdin Mushule

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

The pedestrian facilities at intersections must be usable by pedestrians of all ages and capabilities. Intersections in particular must be designed to safely accommodate pedestrians of all ages and physical and mental abilities. Often, however, intersection designs fail to accommodate people with visual and mobility disabilities. In this regard, for pedestrians with disabilities, intersections can prove to be a challenge. Some of those challenges include provision of insufficient pedestrian clearance time due to use of inappropriate design pedestrian speed. Most importantly, the required facilities to enable People With Disabilities (PWD) to use the intersection without hindrance may be missing. Obstacles …

Analysis Of Factors Affecting Technological Innovativeness In Engineering Enterprises In Tanzania, Emanuel Mjema

Tanzania Journal of Engineering and Technology (TJET)

This paper discusses the technological innovativeness in engineering enterprises in Tanzania and analyses the factors affecting the innovativeness. It starts by analyzing various concepts regarding innovation, then analyzed from documentary review factors affecting innovativeness and then analyzed the innovativeness in Tanzanian enterprises. From the documentary review it was learnt that the following key factors influence technological innovativeness: Existence of innovation management; Existence of market to absorb the products of innovation; Existence of partnership between the universities and the firms; Existence of positive culture and politics towards innovation; The government playing its role to influence innovation; Existence of the right knowledge; …

A Multicriteria Based Quantitative Framework For Assessing Sustainability Of Pile Foundations, Aditi Misra

Master's Theses

ABSTRACT

Civil Engineering is the major instrument of anthropocentric development over centuries through ever expanding infrastructure, cities and facilities.  Civil engineering processes are both resource and fuel intensive.  The building industry alone, during the construction stage, uses about 30-40% of the total resources used in the industrialized countries.  There is a growing consensus that delivering a sustainable built environment starts with incorporating sustainability thoughts at the planning and design stages of a project.  Geotechnical engineering is most resource intensive although this intensive consumption of energy goes unnoticed mainly because of the indirect nature of the energy used in the …

The Application Of E-Technology For Marine Information Service, Lien-Kwei Chien, Tsung-Shen Feng, Chieh-Cheng Yen, Beng-Chun Lee, Heng-Wen Chang

Journal of Marine Science and Technology–Taiwan

The purpose of this study is to establish the multi-function querying system by applying e-technology in marine data. Subjects tendency technology is new concept in system designing process of this study which originate from simulation language that was replace the structural technology. We also investigate the statistical characteristics of ocean waves and surges over Taiwan waters by cluster and return period analysis. Marine drifter track analysis and search area determination system were also analysis and import to GIS querying system. In order to make the locations of the near shore ships and sailing data could be easily convey through wireless …

Irrigation District Turnouts, Charles M. Burt

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

This is meant to be a very quick, roughly written primer on irrigation district turnout selection. It by no means covers all of the details, but it might help out. ITRC offers flow measurement classes, with online registration at www.itrc.org. We have also done testing on quite a few designs over the years, but the work was almost all confidential in nature.

Voltage Prediction Using A Cellular Network, Lisa L. Grant, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Better identification tools are needed for power system voltage profile prediction. the power systems of the future will see an increase in both renewable energy sources and load demand increasing the need for quick estimation of bus voltages and line power flows for system security and contingency analysis. a Cellular Simultaneous Recurrent Neural Network (CSRN) to identify and predict bus voltage dynamics is presented in this paper. the benefit of using a cellular structure over traditional neural network architectures is that the network can represent a direct mapping of any power system allowing for easier scalability to large power systems. …

Gms Considering Uncertainty In Wind Power In A Wind-Hydrothermal Power System, Y. Yare, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An optimal preventive generator maintenance scheduling (GMS) in a smart grid environment comprising wind-hydrothermal energy resources is presented in this paper. GMS problem is solved with the aim of maximizing economic benefits subject to satisfying system constraints. This GMS formulation becomes a challenging problem because of the variability and intermittency of wind speed and the incorporation of uncertainty in wind generation. the objective is to perform preventive GMS in such a manner that the annual generation cost is minimized, the annual cost saving is increased while all operating constraints are satisfied in the presence of uncertainty in wind generation. Discrete …

Optimal Tuning Of System Stabilizer Parameters Using Pbil With Adaptive Learning Rate, K. A. Folly, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper presents an optimal tuning of Power System Stabilizers (PSS) for a multi-machine power system using Population-Based Incremental Learning (PBIL) algorithm with adaptive learning rate. the proposed (APBIL) algorithm can adjust the learning rate automatically according to the degree of evolution of the search. the objective of the design is to achieve adequate stability over a wide range of operating conditions. the proposed controller is compared with traditional PBIL with fixed learning rate (PBIL) and tested under various operating conditions. Simulation results show that the APBIL based PSS provides a more efficient search capability and gives a better damping …

The Green, Blue And Grey Water Footprint Of Farm Animals And Animal Products. Volume 2: Appendices, Mesfin Mekonnen, Arjen Y. Hoekstra

Daugherty Water for Food Global Institute: Faculty Publications

Contents

Appendix I: Feed conversion efficiencies – in kg of feed (dry mass) per kg of output – per animal category and region

Appendix II: Estimated consumption of feed per animal category and world region (10³ ton dry mass/yr)

Appendix III. Estimated consumption of feed per production system and world region (10³ ton dry mass/yr)

Appendix IV. Drinking and service water footprint per animal

Appendix V. Water footprint of animals and animal products (m³/ton). Period 1996-2005

A Practical Approach To Computer Donation Supply Chain For Non-Profit Organizations, John Jacob Burrell, Adam Robert Carpenter

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The United States today has a plethora of unused electronic equipment. This equipment comes from universities, small businesses, corporations, and many other sources. This project looks at the best way to put this equipment back to use for the remainder of its usable life by donating it to non-profit organizations in need. In order to complete this project it was necessary to research the areas of Supply Chain Management, Operations Research, and Engineering Economics. The approach for this specific project first involves analyzing the current donation process at California Polytechnic State University – San Luis Obispo, and its ability to …

Postures Féminines Dans L’Oeuvre De Calixthe Beyala, Carmen Husti-Laboye

Présence Francophone: Revue internationale de langue et de littérature

The aim of this paper is to analyze, through the example of the feminist positions proposed by Calixthe Beyala in the novels she wrote between 1987 and 2007, the change of the novelist’s ideological and artistic perspective. It emphasizes the progressive loss of critical voice to the advantage of a new voice wishing to understand itself as individuality in its world. This study reveals the novelist’s contribution to the construction of a new position of the individual in the context of French social and cultural life.

Creating Tomorrow, Fall 2010, College Of Engineering

College of Engineering Magazines

Annual magazine of the College of Engineering at Utah State University.

College Of Engineering Senior Design Competition Fall 2010, University Of Nevada, Las Vegas

Fred and Harriet Cox Senior Design Competition Projects

Part of every UNLV engineering student’s academic experience, the senior design project stimulates engineering innovation and entrepreneurship. Each student in their senior year chooses, plans, designs, and prototypes a product in this required element of the curriculum. A capstone to the student’s educational career, the senior design project encourages the student to use everything learned in the engineering program to create a practical, real world solution to an engineering challenge.

The senior design competition helps to focus the senior students in increasing the quality and potential for commercial application for their design projects. Judges from local industry evaluate the projects …

Combining Mobile Technologies For Accurate, Open Source, Privacy Sensitive, Zero Cost, Location Determination, Seamus Rooney

Doctoral

Determining the location of an object or individual using a mobile device (e.g. cell phone) is an important aspect of modern information gathering. Various solutions have been proposed which all have their strengths and weaknesses. To date, no solution has been devised for a mobile device that will work effectively in multiple environments and without assistance from network-provider connections1. To address this, it is argued that the current state of the art can be advanced using a hybrid approach that combines a number of sensor technologies to provide a more reliable, and accurate mobile location determination that functions in multiple …

Information Quality On The World Wide Web: A User Perspective, Jaikrit Kandari

Department of Industrial and Management Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Information Quality has emerged as an important measure for the success of Information Systems. At the same time the World Wide Web has established itself as the key infrastructure for information administration, exchange, and publication. Users are getting information from the web at the click of a button however they must filter sub-standard information before they can use quality content. Researchers have aimed to address this problem by suggesting various information quality frameworks. Research till date has seen twenty important Information Quality (IQ) frameworks emerge. These models though varied in their approach and application share a number of characteristics regarding …

Assessment And Analysis Of Emotional Intelligence In Engineering Students, Xiaodan Zhou

All Theses

ABSTRACT
Current research on the importance and relevance of the relationship between emotional intelligence and work outcomes has continuously gained momentum since the publication of Daniel Goleman's best seller Emotional Intelligence: Why It Can Matter More Than IQ (Goleman, 1995). Professional expertise is no longer the only standard by which to evaluate graduates. 'Soft skills', like emotional intelligence are viewed as effective ways, to distinguish potential high-performance workers and those who will be 'no more than' a worker. This paper made an attempt to correlate emotional intelligence with academic performance of civil engineering students. The emotional capability of the students …

Mass And Assembly Time Reduction For Future Generation Automotive Vehicles Based On Existing Vehicle Model, Essam Namouz

All Theses

This research presents method for evaluating the lightweightedness of a vehicle and an approach for vehicle assembly time savings potential developed through a case study. The Lazy Part Identification method for mass reduction specifically addresses those components whose primary purpose is to aid in manufacturing and assembly rather than to provide end-user function. Seven specific laziness indicators are described and illustrated: rigid-to-rigid connection, support for a flexible, non-moving part, positioning feature, duplicate geometry, fastener, bridging system, and material flow restriction. These indicators are used to evaluate individual vehicle components as part of a proposed method for identifying mass reduction potential. …

Petroleum Industry Linkages And Nigeria's Economic Development, Chinyere U. Nwolisa, Chinyelu N. Ugoji

Bullion

Nigeria, Africa's most populous country and potentially its largest economy, has witnessed decades of dictatorship and misrule. Accompanying this misrule are severe economic problems of an unprecedented magnitude. This paper intends to add further clues to the solution for this national developmental puzzle. The remaining part of the paper is arranged thus: Part 2 presents an overview of the Nigerian Petroleum industry while the part 3 looks at the literature of economic development the country appears to be executing. Parl4 discusses the various linkages the Petroleum industry offers visa-vis Nigeria's exploration of their potentials. The penultimate part will offer some …

Water Well Drilling Rig Final Project Report, Alexander (Alex) Wargnier, Thad Jablonski, Coel Schumacher

Mechanical Engineering

In this report, the improvements of a previously produced cable tool drilling rig are described. The purpose of the rig is to drill water wells for use in Africa in order to provide safe drinking water to many in need. An affordable, effective, and controllable rig is the design goal for this project. With the San Luis Obispo Rotary Club sponsoring the project the design team of WHole Engineering have made necessary design choices to manufacture the product. Actions performed include background research of existing drilling technologies, analysis of top concepts for the controlling mechanism, and selection for the final …

Novel Vascular Grafts Based On Polyphenol-Stabilized Acellular Tissue Scaffolds, Ting-Hsien Chuang

All Dissertations

The Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) continue to be the leading cause of morbidity and mortality worldwide. The most common form of CVDs is occlusion of blood flow thus limiting blood supply to specific tissues or organs. Atherosclerosis is a leading cause of coronary heart disease and stroke, which were responsible for more than 25% of deaths in 2004.
The demand for vascular graft is huge. In United States alone, approximately 500,000 coronary artery bypass graft surgeries are performed annually. Synthetic polymers such as Dacron and ePTFE have been successfully applied in large diameter blood vessel prosthesis; however, for small diameter (inner …

Determining The Global Maximum Biofuel Production Potential Without Conflicting With Food And Feed Consumption, Watcharapol Pumkaew

All Theses

This study tries to resolve the competition between food and biofuel by balancing the allocation between food and feed areas and biofuel areas for the entire world. The maximum energy production is calculated by determining the theoretical amount of energy that can be grown, once food and feed consumption is taken into account, based on the assumption that unprotected grass and woody lands and forest lands can be converted into cultivated lands. The total optimum land area for biofuel energy, 4,926.49 Mha, consists of corn, rapeseed, sugar beet, sugar cane, and grasses. When considering energy conversion efficiency, the maximum energy …

Agenda: Shale Plays In The Intermountain West: Legal And Policy Issues, University Of Colorado Boulder. Natural Resources Law Center

Shale Plays in the Intermountain West: Legal and Policy Issues (November 12)

This one-day symposium to be held at the Grand Hyatt hotel in Denver will address the technology, economics, environmental impacts, and regulatory issues associated with shale gas development in the Rocky Mountain region. The purpose of this event is to facilitate productive dialogue among a wide range of stakeholders and interested parties to guide policy decisions.

Lateral Torsional Instability Of Single Channels Restrained By Angle Cleats, G. M. Bukasa, M. Dundu Masce

CCFSS Proceedings of International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel Structures (1971 - 2018)

A series of experiments on the lateral tors ional instability of single channels is presented. The channels are restrained by a purlin – angle cleat connection and subjected to a two point loading system in order to simulate a distributed load. Failure of the channels occurred by local buckling of the compression zone of the flange and web and lateral torsional buckling of the channels between points of lateral support. Tests have shown the purlin–angle cleat connection to be capable of restraining the frames from failing due to lateral-torsional buckling. This eliminates the idea of having fly-bracings, which is normally …

Angle Cleat Base Connections, M. Dundu, S. Maphosa

CCFSS Proceedings of International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel Structures (1971 - 2018)

Tests, performed on base connections fabricated from cold-formed channels and hot-rolled angle cleats, are presented in this paper. This research is part of an on- going research to develop portal frames made out of cold-formed steel. The base connections are subjected to an axial load and moment. Hot-rolled angle cleats are used to prevent premature failing of the base connections. Several loading configurations are considered and these are dependent on the eccentricity of the load. In all the tests the cold-formed channels failed by local buckling. A significant amount of bearing distortion was observed in the heavily loaded flange. The …

20th International Specialty Conference: Recent Research And Developments In Cold-Formed Steel Structures, Wei-Wen Yu Center For Cold-Formed Steel Structures

CCFSS Proceedings of International Specialty Conference on Cold-Formed Steel Structures (1971 - 2018)

No abstract provided.

Bio-Inspired Algorithms For Autonomous Deployment And Localization Of Sensor Nodes, Raghavendra V. Kulkarni, Ganesh K. Venayagamoorthy

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Optimal deployment and accurate localization of sensor nodes have a strong influence on the performance of a wireless sensor network (WSN). This paper considers real-time autonomous deployment of sensor nodes from an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). Such a deployment has importance, particularly in ad hoc WSNs, for emergency applications, such as disaster monitoring and battlefield surveillance. the objective is to deploy the nodes only in the terrains of interest, which are identified by segmentation of the images captured by a camera on board the UAV. Bioinspired algorithms, particle swarm optimization (PSO) and bacterial foraging algorithm (BFA), are presented in this …

Design And Fabrication Of A Membrane Integrated Microfluidic Cell Culture Device Suitable For High-Resolution Imaging, Alla A. Epshteyn

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Malaria remains a serious concern for people living and traveling to warm climates in Africa, Asia, and some parts of America. Understanding the mechanism of the malaria parasite in the liver phase could lead to important discoveries for preventative and treatment therapeutics before the disease develops into the blood stage. While in vitro liver cell culture models have been explored, a device that mimics the liver cell architecture with the capability of high-resolution imaging has never been created. In this research, a cell culture microfluidic device was designed and fabricated with a membrane integrated design to mimic the architecture of …

A Realistic Technology And Engineering Assessment Of Algae Biofuel Production, T. J. Lundquist, I. C. Woertz, N. W. T. Quinn, J. R. Benemann

Civil and Environmental Engineering

This report assesses the economics of microalgae biofuels production through an analysis of five production scenarios. These scenarios, or cases, are based on technologies that currently exist or are expected to become available in the near-term, including raceway ponds for microalgae cultivation, bioflocculation for algae harvesting, and hexane for extraction of algae oil. Process flow diagrams, facility site layouts, and estimates for the capital and operations costs of each case were developed de novo. This report also reviews current and developing microalgae biofuel technologies for both oil and biogas production, provides an initial assessment of the US and California …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 52 Number 2, Fall 2010, Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

16 - JUSTICE, EDUCATION, AND THE CATHOLIC IMAGINATION By Keith Warner, O.F.M. A religious vision of a sustainable future is less about politics than ethics. It means drawing on deep spiritual currents in the Catholic tradition-and environmental concern as if people mattered.

22 - WRITING THE ISLAND An essay in the words and images by John Seibert Farnsworth and Charles Barry. A journey to the Sea of Cortez-to paddle and dive, to hear the island speak, to look carefully, to write, to come home sunburned and transformed.

30 - INTERNET, WE HAVE A PROBLEM. By Sam Scott '96. One fine …