Engineering Commons^™

Direct Quantitative Analysis Of Biomarkers Using Mass Spectrometry, Morgan N. Mcluckey, Zheng Ouyang

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Point-of-care (POC) diagnostics describes a step in the medical treatment process where drugs can be monitored in a patient’s body on-site and in a timely fashion. Mass spectrometry (MS) can provide a quick, efficient, and highly accurate method of analysis of patient biofluids and tissues. Developing methods to bring this diagnostic mechanism to hospitals and clinics has the potential to improve patient care through, for example, personalized medicine. Our goal was to develop a way to effectively introduce internal standard (IS), a necessary chemical for the analytical process, to low-volume biofluid samples. Additionally, the effective direct quantitation of biomarkers with …

Environmental Monitoring In Preparation For The Installation Of A Green Roof, Andrew N. Martin, Ming Qu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Green roofs are becoming an increasingly popular way to improve the environmental, economic, and aesthetic performance of both new and existing buildings. Along with the green roofs themselves, it is also common to install sensors to measure various environmental parameters that are affected by or important to the operation of the roof such as precipitation, temperature, and runoff. However, for most of these systems, the sensors are installed at the same time or even after the green roof. Therefore, no before-and-after comparisons can be made for those roofs. To account for this missing data, monitoring equipment was installed on a …

Iron-Magnesium Alloy Bioabsorbable Blood Stent, Kaitlyn Jarry, L Stanciu

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Bioabsorbable materials are fairly new and proper alloys for implantation in the body have not yet been established. There are a few polymers that have showed promise, but they do not provide the proper mechanical support that metal does. These materials would be used to create devices such as blood stents and orthopedic screws. Investigation into the properties of different alloys can help to establish a material that can be used for implanted devices that are only needed for a limited amount of time. In order to investigate these alloys many different experiments will to be run to test the …

Python-Based Simulation Tool For Kinetic Monte Carlo, Zaiwei Zhang, R. Edwin García

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Simulation tools are highly needed for testing or designing nanotechnology in university research projects.The problem in the current simulation tool used in our research, which is conducted by Prof.Garcia in MSE department at Purdue, is that users cannot observe the changing numbers of diffusivities during Vacancy Diffusion simulations between different materials. Also, there is no Graphic User Interface for the simulation tools.To solve the problem, the Virtual Kinetics of Materials Laboratory program is used to create the Graphic User Interface. Also, GTK+ toolkit has been used to create a pop-up window displaying updated diffusivities during the simulation. For user purpose, …

Mechanical Design Of Real-Time Substrate Transport Control For Stable And Efficient Thin-Film-Based Roll-To-Roll (R2r) Micro-Nanomanufacturing, Guoao Sun, Liang Pan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The commercialization of electronic devices requires the high efficiency and stable mirco-nanomanufacturing processes that allow frequent design upgrades. R2R Nano is a gateway to science and engineering research that aims to impact the widespread adoption of R2R technologies for low-cost, high-volume production of high technology products on flexible substrates. However, there are lots of the mechanical and chemical factors influencing the system performance when fabricating nano-scale structures. Thus, feedback control system is increasingly playing a great role in improving the R2R performance.

The aim of my work of the project is more related to design mechanical section of the whole …

Recursive Multi-Time-Step Coupling Of Multiple Subdomains, Yukun An, Payton Lindsay, Xiaowo Wang, Arun Prakash

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The need for efficient computation methods for modeling of large-scale structures has become critically important over the past few years. Efficient means of analysis often involve coupling in space through domain decomposition and multi scale methods in time. The multi-time-step coupling method is a coupling method in time which allows for efficient analysis of large-scale problems for structural dynamics where a large structural model is decomposed into smaller subdomains that are solved independently and then coupled back together to obtain the global solution. For coupling of more than two subdomains that are solved at different timesteps, we employ recursive methods. …

Estimation Of Two-Stage Ditch Excavation Volume Using Lidar Data Full Paper, Kirsten E. Paff, Jane Frankenberger, Naime Celik

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Drainage ditches are a major pathway for sediment, nutrients, and pesticides to enter stream systems, which threaten environmental and human health. Unlike trapezoidal ditches, two-stage ditches have a vegetated bench that acts as a floodplain, which helps to prevent erosion and to increase the processing of nutrients to improve water quality. Converting a trapezoidal ditch to a two-stage ditch is expensive, due to the large volumes of soil that need to be excavated. Since ditch geometries vary significantly and surveying each potential site by hand would be time consuming and expensive, a tool based upon online Light Detection and Ranging …

Electrochemical Sensing With Metal Oxides, Isabella Ramirez, Lia Stanciu, Alexandra Snyder

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

The effective sensing of hydrogen peroxide is important for a variety of reasons. It can be utilized as a diagnostic tool for diseases like asthma; also, the sensing can be utilized in pharmaceutical and food production for quality control. The use of silver oxide nanoparticles with varying morphologies has not been investigated as a sensing agent for hydrogen peroxide in the past. The particles’ properties and ability to oxidize and reduce hydrogen peroxide suggest that they will be effective to create a sensitive sensor. The silver oxide particles were prepared through chemical reduction using varying molar ratios of reactants. The …

Characterization Of The Saturation Level Of Nucleosome Arrays And Plasmids By Mnase Digestion, Wenjie Liu, Nathan Nurse, Chongli Yuan

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Studying processes involving DNA such as DNA replication and transcription is best done in the context of chromatin because the structure of DNA influences the efficiency of such processes. Chromatin structure is derived from DNA wrapping around histone octamers with the histone octamer density termed saturation level. For in vitro studies on DNA replication and transcription, it is important to maintain a constant saturation level so that saturation level can be removed as a variable. Our goal is to characterize the saturation level of plasmids using the rate of MNase digestion. MNase digestions were first performed on reconstituted nucleosome arrays …

Use Of Oscillatory Shear To Study The Effect Of Limestone Filler On The Rheology Of Early-Age Portland Cement, Christopher W. Barney, Kendra Erk

The Summer Undergraduate Research Fellowship (SURF) Symposium

Cement is a material that has been in use since the ancient times and is the most widely manufactured material in industry today. During the production of cement, limestone undergoes a process called calcination which releases CO₂. In order to reduce the environmental impact and cost of cement production it has become standard practice to replace a portion of the cement mixture with ground limestone, but this causes a change in the rheological profile of the mixture. This change in rheology affects both the short and long term workability of the material. In this study, small amplitude oscillatory …

Ceas E-News 10.18.2013, College Of Engineering And Applied Sciences

College of Engineering and Applied Sciences News

$1.4 Million DOT Grant, Engineering Expo, Armstrong Scholarship, New Viewbook

Analysis Of Closed-Loop Acoustic Feedback Cancellation Systems, Meng Guo, Soren Holdt Jensen, Jesper Jensen, Steven L. Grant

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In a previous study, the performance of an acoustic feedback/echo cancellation system was analyzed using a power transfer function method. Whereas the analysis result provides very accurate performance predictions in open-loop acoustic echo cancellation systems, it is less accurate in closed-loop acoustic feedback cancellation systems if there is a strong correlation between the loudspeaker signal and the signals entering the microphones. This work extends the performance analysis to include the effects of the nonzero correlation on the adaptive filters. Simulation results verify that this extension provides much more accurate performance predictions in closed-loop acoustic feedback cancellation systems. © 2013 IEEE.

Nonlinear Acoustic Echo Cancellation Using Feedback, Pratik Shah, Ian Lewis, Steven Grant, Sylvain Angrignon

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Acoustic echo cancellation (AEC) is a well-studied problem. One of the main assumptions in existing AEC techniques is that the echo path is linear. In today's equipment, this assumption does always hold. The increasing focus on the look and feel of commercial devices and consequently the decreasing size of their loudspeakers are the major contributors to making the echo path nonlinear. This emphasizes the need for a nonlinear echo canceler to maintain the required echo return loss enhancement (ERLE). Many algorithms have been proposed to solve this problem, but they are prohibitive because of their high computational complexity. This paper …

Signal Processing Of Electroencephalogram For The Detection Of Attentiveness Towards Short Training Videos, Paul Nussbaum

Theses and Dissertations

This research has developed a novel method which uses an easy to deploy single dry electrode wireless electroencephalogram (EEG) collection device as an input to an automated system that measures indicators of a participant’s attentiveness while they are watching a short training video. The results are promising, including 85% or better accuracy in identifying whether a participant is watching a segment of video from a boring scene or lecture, versus a segment of video from an attentiveness inducing active lesson or memory quiz. In addition, the final system produces an ensemble average of attentiveness across many participants, pinpointing areas in …

The Santa Clara, 2013-10-17, Santa Clara University

The Santa Clara

No abstract provided.

A New Solid Oxide Molybdenum–Air Redox Battery, Xuan Zhao, Yunhui Gong, Xue Li, Nansheng Xu, Kevin Huang

Faculty Publications

A new type of rechargeable molybdenum–air battery based on the technologies of reversible solid oxide fuel cells and chemical looping is reported in this study. The reversible solid oxide fuel cell serves as the electrical unit to realize the charging and discharging cycles while a pair of Mo/MoO2 redox couple integrated with the reversible solid oxide fuel cell stores electrical energy via an H2–H2O oxygen shuttle. The specific charge of the new battery reaches 1117 A h per kg-Mo at 550°C, which is 45% higher than the non-rechargeable Mo–air battery. The corresponding discharge specific energy is 974 W h per …

In Situ Study Of The Role Of Substrate Temperature During Atomic Layer Deposition Of Hfo2 On Inp, H. Dong, Santosh Kc, X. Qin, B. Brennan, S. Mcdonnell, D. Zhernokletov, C. Hinkle, J. Kim, K. Cho, R. Wallace

Faculty Publications

The dependence of the “self cleaning” effect of the substrate oxides on substrate temperature during atomic layer deposition (ALD) of HfO2 on various chemically treated and native oxide InP (100) substrates is investigated using in situ X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy. The removal of In-oxide is found to be more efficient at higher ALD temperatures. The P oxidation states on native oxide and acid etched samples are seen to change, with the total P-oxide concentration remaining constant, after 10 cycles of ALD HfO2 at different temperatures. An (NH4)2 S treatment is seen to effectively remove native oxides and passivate the InP surfaces …

Team-Based Learning & Immediate Feedback Forms, Byron G. Garry

ASEE Best Practice Series Presentations

No abstract provided.

Space Systems Engineering Sse 120 - Fall 2013 Space Lecture, Robert J. Twiggs

Robert "Bob" Twiggs STEM Education Collection

Space Systems Engineering SSE 120 - Fall 2013, Space Lecture presented by Professor Bob Twiggs on October 15, 2013.

Design And Preparation Of A Ni Steam Reforming Catalyst, Phillip R. Smith, Dr. Calvin H. Bartholomew

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Steam reforming catalysts play an essential role in the production of hydrogen, which is an essential fuel, feedstock, and reactant in the worldwide chemical industry. These steam reforming catalysts use a finely dispersed metal, supported on a porous ceramic material, to produce hydrogen from hydrocarbon sources. This is shown in reaction 1, where HC denotes hydrocarbon, H2O denotes water, H2 denotes dihydrogen, CO denotes carbon monoxide, CO2 denotes carbon dioxide, and CH4 denotes methane.

Low-Power Reference String Design For Cmos Flash Analog-To- Digital Converters, Daniel W. Pulsipher, Dr. Criag Petrie

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) play a prominent role in modern electrical systems. The environment in which we live consists primarily of analog signals, information-carrying waveforms continuous in time and value. Because of this continuous characteristic, analog signals are difficult to store and manipulate. Digital signals are sampled in time and quantized (rounded) in value. Processing of a digital signal can be done more efficiently and flexibly than processing of an analog signal. ADCs are universally needed to construct high-performance digital electronic systems such as cellular phones, satellite equipment, medical instruments, and electronic sensors.

Multi-Agent Communication Framework, Ryan R. Falke, Dr. James Archibald

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Multi-agent systems consisting of large numbers of autonomous robots are ideal candidates for tasks that could threaten human lives. However, the complexity and quantity of work required for precise coordination within such systems can be considerable. Our team developed a powerful but lightweight communication framework that significantly reduces the laborious efforts of coordination control. This program offers the ability to pass messages between robotic agents, and maintain knowledge of all robotic interactions. In addition, all the processes and communication nodes are location-independent – a complex task can be distributed amongst various agents. This paper briefly describes the framework designed and …

Determining Biomass Particle Properties Via Digital Imaging, Justin Scott, Dr. Larry Baxter

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Understanding the devolatilization and combustion of biomass (sawdust, agricultural waste, etc.) will lead to better use of this renewable fuel source. The overall goal of the project is to write a computer model that can accurately predict what will occur during biomass combustion. The research conducted over the past year has focused on developing an apparatus capable of determining the needed data for model development. The apparatus, once completed, will consist of an entrained flow reactor, an optical measurement system, and a computer algorithm to process the needed data from the images.

Polymers Functioning As Artificial Muscles, Nicholas Stanonis, William Pitt

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Current research in the field of polymers has led to the development of synthetic muscles that function similar to biological muscles. Scientists have engineered polymers to contract up to one thousand times their original volume when exposed to changes in light, temperature, voltage, or pH. The ability to contract and relax makes these polymers ideal artificial muscles. Currently, artificial muscles are being applied in the field of robotics. NASA is in the process of developing a dust wiper for their planetary rovers that operates with an artificial muscle. A common goal that many scientists are working towards is the implementation …

Alignment Of Metal Electrodes With Optical Fibers, Benjamin Ipson, Dr. Stephen Schultz

Journal of Undergraduate Research

The field of fiber optics is becoming an increasingly important field to the world of communications. With increased use of optical fibers for communication comes the need for devices to use with the fibers. I have been working on the creation of an in-fiber electro-optic modulator. Earlier I worked on a process of creating a waveguide in the fiber that will allow for modulation. This process involves removing a section of the core of a D-shaped fiber and replacing it with a non-linear polymer. I used a chemical etch to remove the core and then used a method of spinning …

Characterization Of Silicon Oxide And Silicon Nitride Deposition Using Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (Pecvd), Stephen Markham, Dr. Aaron Hawkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Abstract: Waveguides will become more important as optical networks replace traditional wire networks for data transfer. This research explores one method of creating multimode waveguide that uses Plasma Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition to grow oxide and nitride layers on Silicon.

A Configurable Electro-Anesthesia Device, Preston Manwaring, Dr. Mark Manwaring

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Electro-anesthesia devices offer the ability to alleviate pain and maintain drug-induced anesthesia without re-administering drugs by passing a specially designed electrical current through the brain to sustain naturally or chemically produced endorphins. This potential extends the clinicians armementarium for pain management, drug-addiction rehabilitation, and general anesthesia. This research focuses on the development of one such device which can be configured to use various waveforms for future electro-anesthesia studies.

Reproducible, Low-Temperature Growth Of Nanocrystals In An Amorphous Silicon Film, Spencer Kellis, Dr. Aaron Hawkins

Journal of Undergraduate Research

During Plasma-Enhanced Chemical Vapor Deposition (PECVD) crystal growth, an electric field between two charged plates dissociates a gas into a cloud of positive and negative ions called a plasma. The silicon ions descend to the silicon wafer and bond to the surface. Temperature is controlled and usually in the range of several hundred degrees celsius. Dispersed throughout the amorphous thin film are patches of crystalline structure that are nanometers in diameter. The goal of this project was to vary temperature, gas flow, gas mixture, gas pressure, and power settings on the PECVD system at BYU so as to consistently produce …

Co-Validation Of Jason-1 And Quikscat Wind Speeds Within The Context Of Trmm Rain Data, Ryan Halterman, Dr. David Long

Journal of Undergraduate Research

SeaWinds on QuikSCAT is a satellite-based scatterometer designed to measure near-surface winds over the earth’s oceans. Ocean surface wind speed is an important parameter in many short-term and long-term climate and weather analyses. QuikSCAT is a rapidly developed replacement for the successful, although prematurely terminated, NSCAT mission of similar objectives. Spaceborne scatterometers find raison d’etre in their facilitation of near-global daily coverage. Planetary scale wind vector measurement has proven impractical using only in situ methods.

Electromagnetic Properties Of Water In The Presence Of A Protein, Kelly Jeppesen, Travis Oliphant

Journal of Undergraduate Research

Light scattering is a means of detecting certain chemical properties of a sample of material. As a photon (light packet) encounters any material, there is some probability that the photon will be absorbed. The energy from an absorbed photon will either work to heat the sample or be reemitted. When re-emitted, a photon will not necessarily travel in the same direction or with the same phase in which it encountered the material. Also, the amount of energy re-emitted via scattering is dependent on the incident light wavelength and properties of the material, which, for example, is why the sky looks …