Engineering Commons^™

What Are The Long-Term Affects Of Spaceflight On Human Muscle Tissue? | Biological Engineering, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

Sept. 28, 2015 - Biological engineering doctoral candidate Charles Harding wants to know how long-term spaceflight can affect human muscle tissue. It’s an increasingly important topic as scientists and engineers move closer to manned space flights to Mars.

Wiretap Channel Ii With A Noisy Main Channel, Mohamed Nafea, Aylin Yener

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this paper, a wiretap channel where the transmitter and receiver communicate through a discrete memoryless channel, and the eavesdropper (Eve) has perfect access to a fixed fraction of transmitted symbols (of its choosing) is considered. An outer bound for the rate-equivocation region of the channel, for all such fractions, is derived. An achievable scheme, which provides an inner bound for the rate-equivocation region, is proposed. The achievability is established by defining a class of good codebooks for which there exists a good partition that achieves the required level of equivocation no matter what subset of symbols Eve chooses. It …

Molecular Simulations And Lattice Dynamics Determination Of Stillinger-Weber Gan Thermal Conductivity, Zhi Liang, Ankit Jain, Alan J.H. Mcgaughey, Pawel Keblinski

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Bulk Thermal Conductivity of Stillinger-Weber (SW) Wurtzite GaN in the [0001] Direction at a Temperature of 300 K is Calculated using Equilibrium Molecular Dynamics (EMD), Non-Equilibrium MD (NEMD), and Lattice Dynamics (LD) Methods. While the NEMD Method Predicts a Thermal Conductivity of 166 ± 11 W/m·K, Both the EMD and LD Methods Predict Thermal Conductivities that Are an Order of Magnitude Greater. We Attribute the Discrepancy to Significant Contributions to Thermal Conductivity from Long-Mean Free Path Phonons. We Propose that the Grüneisen Parameter for Low-Frequency Phonons is a Good Predictor of the Severity of the Size Effects in NEMD …

Modifying The Adm1 Model To Predict The Operation Of An Anaerobic Digester Co-Digesting Municipal Sludge With Bakery Waste, Morris E. Demitry, Jianming Zhong, Conly Hansen, Michael Mcfarland

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

Anaerobic Digestion Model Number1 (ADM1) was modified in order to predict accurately the impact of co-digesting bakery waste (BW) with municipal sludge (MS). BW is an industrial waste (300,000 gallons per day in USA) that contains a high concentration of organic matter (carbohydrates, low lipids and non-detected proteins). BW is an easily biodegradable substrate for creating a favorable microorganism growth environment, which enhances the biogas production needed for wastewater facilities. The modified ADM1 successfully predicted changes in pH, volatile fatty acids (VFA), propionic acid and methane gas production. The ADM1 outputs were compared to experimental batch reactor results of actual …

Conference Program And Abstracts, Nicolas Abatzoglou, Sascha Kersten, Dietrich Meier

Biorefinery I: Chemicals and Materials From Thermo-Chemical Biomass Conversion and Related Processes

No abstract provided.

A Framework For An Economic Model Of Novel Process For The Fractionation Of Dried Distillers Grain With Solubles, R. Zakrzewski, K. Gounaropoulos, R. Allmendinger, M. Villegas Torres, C. Ibenegbu, R. Roque, S. Farid, J. Ward, G. Lye

Biorefinery I: Chemicals and Materials From Thermo-Chemical Biomass Conversion and Related Processes

No abstract provided.

Dynamic Deployment For Hybrid Sensor Networks Based On Potential Field-Directed Particle Swarm Optimization, Ying Zhang, Yunlong Qiao, Wei Zhao, Wei Chen, Jinde Cao

Computer Science Faculty Research

For a hybrid sensor network, the effective coverage rate can be optimized by adjusting the location of the mobile nodes. For many deployments by APF (artificial potential field), due to the common problem of barrier effect, it is difficult for mobile nodes to diffuse by the weaker attraction when the nodes initially distribute densely in some places. The proposed deployment algorithm PFPSO (Potential Field-Directed Particle Swarm Optimization) can overcome this problem and guide the mobile nodes to the optimal positions. Normally the requirement is different for the effective coverage rate between the hotspot area and the ordinary area. On the …

Causes And Trends In Maintenance-Related Accidents In Faa-Certified Single Engine Piston Aircraft, Douglas Boyd, Alan Stolzer

Journal of Aviation Technology and Engineering

The accident rate for general aviation remains high. While most general aviation accident studies have been pilot-focused, there is little research on the involvement of aircraft maintenance errors. We undertook a study to answer this question.

The Microsoft Access database was queried for accidents occurring between 1989 and 2013 involving single engine piston airplanes operating under 14CFR Part 91. Pearson Chi-Square, Fisher’s Exact Test, and Poisson probability were used in statistical analyses.

The rate of maintenance-related general aviation accidents was 4.3 per million flight hours for the 1989–1993 period and remained unchanged for the most recent period (2009–2013). Maintenance errors …

Electrical & Computer Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

Electrical & Computer Engineering: News & Publications (2014-2023)

• IEEE Student Chapter Hosting Up2Speed Workshops

High Temperature Oxidation Kinetics Of Dysprosium Particles, Brian J. Jaques, Darryl P. Butt

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Rare earth elements have been recognized as critical materials for the advancement of many strategic and green technologies. Recently, the United States Department of Energy has invested many millions of dollars to enhance, protect, and forecast their production and management. The work presented here attempts to clarify the limited and contradictory literature on the oxidation behavior of the rare earth metal, dysprosium. Dysprosium particles were isothermally oxidized from 500 to 1000 °C in N₂–(2%, 20%, and 50%) O₂ and Ar–20% O₂ using simultaneous thermal analysis techniques. Two distinct oxidation regions were identified at each isothermal temperature …

Heterogeneous Oxidation Of Catechol, Elizabeth A. Pillar, Ruixin Zhou, Marcelo I. Guzman

Chemistry Faculty Publications

Natural and anthropogenic emissions of aromatic hydrocarbons from biomass burning, agro-industrial settings, and fossil fuel combustion contribute precursors to secondary aerosol formation (SOA). How these compounds are processed under humid tropospheric conditions is the focus of current attention to understand their environmental fate. This work shows how catechol thin films, a model for oxygenated aromatic hydrocarbons present in biomass burning and combustion aerosols, undergo heterogeneous oxidation at the air–solid interface under variable relative humidity (RH = 0–90%). The maximum reactive uptake coefficient of O₃(g) by catechol γ_O3 = (7.49 ± 0.35) × 10^–6 occurs for …

Upel Students Publish Research Papers On Electric Vehicle Battery Management System At Compel 2015 | Utah State University Power Electronics Lab, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

UPEL students, M. Muneeb Ur Rehman and Hongjie Wang, published three research papers at COMPEL 2015, the annual IEEE conference for Control and Modeling for Power Electronics. The research work is part of the AMPED project for which UPEL is working with a multi-disciplinary team including the University of Colorado at Boulder and Colorado Springs, National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Ford Motor Company. The project is funded in part by the United States Department of Energy’s Advanced Research Projects (ARPA-E).

Improving Operator Situational Awareness With Wide Area Geographic Data View Displays Of The Electric Power Grid, Esa M. Rantanen, Limor Hochberg, Diego Klabjan, Mingyang Di

Articles

To reduce clutter on wide-area geographic data view displays of electric power systems, substations in geographically compact areas should be spread out and line overlaps and intersections minimized. Such pat- terns optimized with respect to given constraints can be modeled as a multicommodity flow problem. Due to the size of the developed model, we developed two clustering-based iterative algorithms to decompose the global network into smaller regions and then iteratively solve the subproblem in each region by readjusting some values. Three solutions were selected for experimental evaluation. The experimental results were somewhat inconclusive, due to naïve participants, simple task, and …

Near Field Transducer For Heat Assisted Magnetic Recording, Xianfan Xu, Edward C. Kinzel

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

An antenna for heat assisted magnetic recording is disclosed. The antenna includes an optically opaque material and an optically transparent material positioned on the optically opaque material, the optically transparent material includes a half bowtie shape which includes a first half-wing substantially shaped in form of a right angle trapezoid, having a height substantially equal to the overall height of the half bowtie, a second half-wing Substantially shaped in form of a mirror image of the first half-wing and formed proximate and coupled to the first half-wing by a Substantially rectangular aperture having an aperture width and an aperture height. …

Electrical & Computer Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

Electrical & Computer Engineering: News & Publications (2014-2023)

• EE Graduate Student Receives prestigious National Science Foundation (NSF) student travel grant

College Of Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

College of Engineering & Computing: News & Publications (2010-2023)

• MSAE / EE Student Wins NSF Student Travel Grant

An Exploration Of Bicyclist Comfort Levels Utilizing Crowdsourced Data, Bryan Philip Blanc

Dissertations and Theses

Bicycle transportation has become a central priority of urban areas invested in improving sustainability, livability, and public health outcomes. Transportation agencies are striving to increase the comfort of their bicycle networks to improve the experience of existing cyclists and to attract new cyclists. The Oregon Department of Transportation sponsored the development of ORcycle, a smartphone application designed to collect cyclist travel, comfort, and safety information throughout Oregon. The sample resulting from the initial deployment of the application between November 2014 and March 2015 is described and analyzed within this thesis. 616 bicycle trips from 148 unique users were geo-matched to …

Initial Validation Of A Novel Method Of Presurgical Language Localization Through Functional Connectivity (Fcmri), Stephanie M. Noble, Dustin Scheinost, Susan Y. Bookheimer, Patricia Walshaw, R Todd Constable, Christopher F. Benjamin

Yale Day of Data

OBJECTIVE: Neurosurgery is potentially curative in chronic epilepsy but can only be offered to patients if the surgical risk to language is known. Clinical functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) is an ideal, noninvasive method for localizing language cortex yet remains to be validated for this purpose. We have recently presented a novel method for localizing language cortex. Here we present a preliminary evaluation of this method’s validity. We hypothesized language regions identified using this novel method would demonstrate stronger functional connectivity than randomly generated set of proximal networks. METHOD: fMRI data were collected from sixteen temporal lobe patients …

Network Analysis Of The Sardex Community Currency, Georgios Iosifidis, Yanick Charette, Giuseppe Littera, Leandros Tassiulas, Nicholas Christakis

Yale Day of Data

We present a transaction dataset and preliminary analysis results about Sardex, a complementary currency (CC) in Sardinia, Italy. Sardex is currently considered one of the most successful CCs in Europe, as it grows continuously in terms of transactions’ volume and membership, and has been already replicated in 8 other regions in Italy. We model Sardex as a transaction network and study its basic properties.

A Machine Learning Approach To Post-Market Surveillance Of Medical Devices, Jonathan Bates, Shu-Xia Li, Craig Parzynski, Ronald Coifman, Harlan Krumholz, Joseph Ross

Yale Day of Data

Post-market surveillance is a collection of processes and activities used by product manufacturers and regulators, such as the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) to monitor the safety and effectiveness of medical devices once they are available for use “on the market”. These activities are designed to generate information to identify poorly performing devices and other safety problems, accurately characterize real-world device performance and clinical outcomes, and facilitate the development of new devices, or new uses for existing devices. Typically, a device is monitored by comparing adverse events in the exposed population to a matched unexposed population. This research considers …

Practitioner Interview, Richard Males

All ECSTATIC Materials

Phone interview with Richard Males from RMM Technical Services, Inc. by Meghna Babbar-Sebens and Marcio Giacomoni. Interview questions asked inquired about (i) practitioner’s professional background, (ii) practitioner’s personal experience with systems analysis techniques and software in their job, (iii) role, benefits, and challenges in using systems analysis concepts in the water resources engineering profession, and (iv) recommendations for improving education of environmental and water resources systems analysis in universities.

Elevated Test Pressure Significantly Reduces Dynamic Accumulation Oxygen Transmission Rate (Astm F3136) Measurement Time For Barrier Packaging Films, Bruce A. Welt

Journal of Applied Packaging Research

Measurement of gas transmission rates of materials is important for successful package design. The dynamic accumulation (DA) method (ASTM F3136) is becoming increasingly popular for measuring oxygen transmission rate (OTR) due to its simplicity and low cost. However, measurement time increases with barrier properties of materials, limiting measurement throughput. A dynamic accumulation measurement prototype capable of operating up to 1,000 psig was developed in order to accelerate gas transfer by boosting concentration gradients via elevated absolute pressures. Results show that measurement results were independent of test pressure while measurement times were substantially reduced. These results also suggest that gas transmission …

College Of Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

College of Engineering & Computing: News & Publications (2010-2023)

• MechE Students Win at Georgia Environmental Conference

Collaborative Partnership To Address Workforce Education In A Rural Region: A Case Study, Linda Stricklin, Raymond A. Dixon Ph.D., Laura Holyoke

Online Journal for Workforce Education and Development

Objective: This study examined factors contributing to the success of a rural workforce development collaborative initiative. Background: In 2011 a three year grant was successfully secured from the National Science Foundation (NSF) Advance Technology Education (ATE) program to address concerns of small and medium size manufacturing companies about the lack of skilled, entry level Computer Aided Drafting and Design (CADD) technician employees from the region. Method: A case study inquiry was used to explore the success of this collaborative partnership from the perspective of individuals playing essential roles and generate a deep understanding of the characteristic of this particular collaborative …

Factors Affecting Dimensional Precision Of Consumer 3d Printing, David D. Hernandez

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

This paper investigates the factors affecting dimensional precision of consumer-grade 3D printing, attempting to isolate and mitigate sources of error. The focus is on creating engineering prototypes of, tooling for, or finalized instances of mechanical devices. A specific fused deposition modeling printer – the Ultimaker 2 – is analyzed in terms of meeting precise physical dimensions, consistent shapes, and predictable surface finish. Extensive trial and error resulted in removal of several sources of bias, with square test articles exhibiting a lower-than-anticipated mean percentage error of -0.387% (SD = 0.559), a value comparable to other modern manufacturing techniques. A full …

High-Frequency Electromagnetic Purification Of Silicon, Lucas Nana Wiredu Damoah, Lifeng Zhang

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The effect of a high-frequency electromagnetic (EM) field on the removal of nonmetallic inclusions from molten silicon was experimentally investigated. Inclusion separation efficiencies of up to 99 pct were reached. The separation efficiency was independent of the particle concentration in the melt and increased significantly with increases in the frequency, separation time, and coil current. Particles were separated from the silicon matrix and relocated to the top, bottom, and side walls of the crucible due to the effect of three mechanisms: induced secondary fluid flow which carried particles from the bulk of the melt; EM body force which worked in …

Introduction To: Special Issue On Cross-Layer System Design, Yiyu Shi, Takashi Sato

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

No abstract provided.

Mechanical Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

Mechanical Engineering: News & Publications (2013-2023)

• Martin Muinos NSF Graduate Research Fellowship

Hybrid Dynamic Optimization Methods For Systems Biology With Efficient Sensitivities, Nicholas Lewis, John Hedengren, Eric Haseltine

Faculty Publications

In recent years, model optimization in the field of computational biology has become a prominent area for development of pharmaceutical drugs. The increased amount of experimental data leads to the increase in complexity of proposed models. With increased complexity comes a necessity for computational algorithms that are able to handle the large datasets that are used to fit model parameters. In this study the ability of simultaneous, hybrid simultaneous, and sequential algorithms are tested on two models representative of computational systems biology. The first case models the cells affected by a virus in a population and serves as a benchmark …

Dr. Regan Zane Interviewed For Uk-Based Industry Journal | Utah State University Power Electronics Lab, Usu College Of Engineering

College of Engineering News

UPEL's Dr. Regan Zane was interviewed for a UK-based industry journal CRI. The journal focuses on electrifying our roadways. The main idea being that in the near future, we will be able to charge electric vehicles by driving down the road. Dr. Zane was interviewed to talk aboutUSU's research and development techniques for dynamic wireless charging.