Engineering Commons^™

The Orisome: Structure And Function, Julia E. Grimwade, Alan C. Leonard

Biomedical Engineering and Sciences Faculty Publications

During the cell division cycle of all bacteria, DNA-protein complexes termed orisomes trigger the onset of chromosome duplication. Orisome assembly is both staged and stringently regulated to ensure that DNA synthesis begins at a precise time and only once at each origin per cycle. Orisomes comprise multiple copies of the initiator protein DnaA, which oligomerizes after interacting with specifically positioned recognition sites in the unique chromosomal replication origin, oriC. Since DnaA is highly conserved, it is logical to expect that all bacterial orisomes will share fundamental attributes. Indeed, although mechanistic details remain to be determined, all bacterial orisomes are capable …

Astrocyte Response To Nanoscale Topography On Anodized Alumina Surfaces, D. Ganguly, C. D.L. Johnson, D. A. Borca-Tasciuc, R. J. Gilbert

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Astrocytes are one of the most important and abundant resident glial cells of the central nervous system (CNS). They play a critical role in the foreign body response, by participating in the formation of the glial scar sunouncling implants. As part of the effort to minimize the foreign body response, biomaterials strategies einployiug engineered surfaces topographies are being explored. In this context, we have investigated the response of astrocytes to surface topography of alumiua, a material used in CNS applications. Specifically, astrocytes were seeded oil alumina surfaces with nanopores 20 nm and 100 nm in diameter, respectively. Pore-free alumina …

Engineering Professional Development: Elementary Teachers' Self-Efficacy And Sources Of Self-Efficacy, Donna Louise Webb

Dissertations and Theses

Currently, STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) is a popular buzz word in P -12 education as it represents a means to advance American competitiveness in the global economy. Proponents of the engineering component of STEM advocate additional benefits in teaching engineering, such as its capacity to engage students in collaboration, and to apply critical thinking, systems thinking, negotiation, and communication skills to solve real-life contextual problems. Establishing a strong foundation of engineering knowledge at a young age will provide students with internal motivation as it taps into their curiosity toward how things work, and it also prepares them for …

Conversion Casting From A36 Steel To Grey Iron, Chris Nichols

Mechanical Engineering and Technology Senior Projects

Conversion castings are used in manufacturing to reduce time and costs of the production of machined parts. This project incorporated a machined production component from a local manufacturer and designed and produced an equivalent component using the casting process. The casting material chosen needed to be able to withstand all tension and compression forces when the component is used in service along with locations and dimensions of holes needed to be in accordance with all specified tolerances. The casting design process had to account for draft issues, shrinkage during material solidification, porosity and internal cavities formed during solidification, and overall …

Roborodentia Robot, Jordan Dykstra, Anibal Hernandez, Robert Prosser

Computer Engineering

This report provides details on the design and implementation of a robot for the Spring 2015 Roborodentia competition. The system is described from a software perspective, a hardware perspective, and a mechanical design perspective.

Madmath: Word Problem Generator, Mitchell Reed Vierhus

Computer Engineering

No abstract provided.

Increasing The Independence Of Children With Spina Bifida Through The Designing And Building Of A Mechanical Aide, Andrew Duffek, Robert Brent, Michael Hamada, Melissa Rodriguez

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

In order to assist Silas Hopper, a child with spina bifida, with getting into his wheelchair independently when being on the ground, the senior project team set out to construct a device that would fulfill that purpose. They did this through coming up with a strict definition of the problem to be solved, designing a number of potential solutions for the problem, prototyping to determine the feasibility of the solutions, making design modifications after testing the prototype, and building the final device.

The end product was a device that was able to operate mechanically, with a design that considered safety …

Understanding The Relationships Of User-Selected Music In Video Games, Memphis Wong

Liberal Arts and Engineering Studies

Music has been an integral part of video games in its contribution to users' gameplay experiences. Varying from simple sound effects to elaborate scores, music helps shape the reactive environment of each video game. In particular, video games that generate unique levels and scenarios based on music has become more popular as its own genre. Games such as Audiosurf take this further, with having the game revolve entirely around levels generated to custom tracks. The aim of this study is to analyze the impact of such games, when it allows a user to select his or her own music.

Characterization Of Pressure-Driven And Electro-Kinetically Driven Flow In A Micro-Fluidic Chip Using Particle Imaging Velocimetry, Alexis Weckel

Master's Theses

The flow profiles of pressure-driven and electro-kinetic driven flows were compared for a microfluidic chip. It was found that the pressure-driven flow had a parabolic profile while the electro-kinetic flow had a plug shaped flow profile. The measured velocities were similar to those determined by the Poiseuille flow model and the Helmholtz-Smoltchowski equation. Flow uniformity is very important for control in microfluidic mixers. Parabolic flow profiles lead to inconsistent reactions while the more uniform plug shape flow allow for a more steady reaction across the channel. Previous work had been performed to measure the flow of a solution of fluorescent …

Code Girl, Tracey Acosta, Amanda Holl, Paige Rogalski

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Despite the growing importance of technology and computing, fewer than 1% of women in college today choose to major in computer science.[1] Educational programs and games created to interest girls in computing, such as Girls Who Code and Made With Code, have been successful in engaging girls with interactive and creative learning environments, but they are too advanced for young girls to bene t from. To address the lack of educational, computer science games designed speci cally for young girls, we developed a web-based application called Code Girl for girls age ve to eight to customize their own avatar using …

Gpu-Accelerated Lip-Tracking Library, Alex Deboui, Jesse Harder

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

A major part of having correct pronunciation when learning a new language is moving your lips in the correct way. This is a difficult thing to learn and to teach. One solution to this is software which tracks a student's lip movements and provides feedback. This paper describes how we have created a C++ library to accurately track lips in provided images. Further, this library attempts to use a CUDA-enabled GPU implementation to improve the algorithm's performance. It will fall back on a CPU implementation if such a GPU is not found. As a result, the lip tracking library runs …

What Is The Right Context For An Engineering Problem: Finding Such A Context Is Np-Hard, Martine Ceberio, Vladik Kreinovich, Hung T. Nguyen, Songsak Sriboonchitta, Rujira Ouncharoen

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

In the general case, most computational engineering problems are NP-hard. So, to make the problem feasible, it is important to restrict this problem. Ideally, we should use the most general context in which the problem is still feasible. In this paper, we prove that finding such most general context is itself an NP-hard problem. Since it is not possible to find the appropriate context by utilizing some algorithm, it is therefore necessary to be creative -- i.e., to use some computational intelligence techniques. On three examples, we show how such techniques can help us come up with the appropriate context. …

The Palantíri Stones In J.R.R. Tolkien’S The Lord Of The Rings As Sauron’S Social Media: How To Avoid Getting Poked By The Dark Lord, Phillip Fitzsimmons

Faculty Books & Book Chapters

No abstract provided.

Big Data: Big Value And Big Concerns, Singapore Management University

Perspectives@SMU

Digital information can serve lots of purposes, but timeliness, relevance and privacy issues abound

Victair Mistifier Gearbox: Metal Casted Housing, Gabe Bruno, Casey Mcfarlen, Ricky Skinner

Mechanical Engineering and Technology Senior Projects

The current global population is 7.2 billion. It is projected to increase by 1 billion over the next 12 years. There is only 5% of usable farming land left on earth. Food is a resource that humans must consume daily. These facts undeniably lead to a shortage of food in the future. It is essential to mankind survival that farming becomes more efficient and sustainable. This provided the motivation to design a more efficient transmission for the Victair Mistifier (orchard and vineyard sprayer). Victair Mistifiers are designed, engineered, and manufactured by H.F. Hauff Company in Yakima, WA. The Hauff Company’s …

Exploring Bridge-Engine Control Room Collaborative Team Communication, Aditi Kataria, Eric Holder, Gesa Praetorius, Michael Baldauf, Jens-Uwe Schröder-Hinrichs

Journal Publications

The EC funded CyClaDes research project is designed to promote the increased impact of the human element in shipping across the design and operational lifecycle of ships. It addresses the design and operation of ships and ship systems. One of the CyClaDes’ tasks is to create a crew‐centered design case‐study examination of the information that is shared between the Bridge and Engine Control Room (ECR) that helps the crew coordinate to ensure understanding and complete interconnected tasks. This information can be provided in various ways, including communication devices or obtained from a common database, display, or even the ship environment …

Small Scale Erp Engine Design, Colyn Muir Dickson, Matthew Wade Haymond

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This project set out to create a 1) low-cost, 2) dynamic, and 3) user-friendly small scale ERP software tool. These three key attributes position this product against complex and expensive systems such as SAP or Oracle. While the product still retains the dynamic and financial capabilities any good ERP system should have, the biggest value proposition is its simple and user-friendly interface. The software has a dual product-market fit: for small businesses as a low-cost planning tool, and for universities as a teaching tool. In the design phase, the team kept a primary focus on ergonomic software development while maintaining …

Tesla Motors Quality Engineering Application And Implementation, Nick Kwan

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Tesla Motors, in Winter 2013 during the author’s coop,had a variety of potential improvement areas regarding their quality engineering team. There were too many overall defects on the vehicles. Those defects were recognized as the cars were passing through inspection, coming off the line, as well as brought by customers to after-purchase service. One of the defects was the Charge-port Door Malfunction, in which the door of the Model S would not open on command. An additional defect was the Windshield Wiper Malfunction, in which the fluid was not hitting the car at the desired angle. Both of these defects …

Database Design For The Collection And Visualization Of Sustainabilty Data, Henry A. Kozlowski, Nikhila Perugupalli

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

The goal of the project was to create a database that would be a repository for the high volume of sustainability data Illumina would like to collect. To couple with the database the project team’s goal was to design a system for visualizing the data graphically. Illumina required a database system that would be user-friendly, easy to add, delete, and edit data inputs, as well as a program that would allow the user to easily sort and graph data. The intent of the graphical representation of the data is to publish the graphs in a monthly report that would be …

Industrial Engineering Consulting, Blake J. Ahrold, Torrey M. Plana

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This paper documents the senior project of Blake Ahrold and Torrey Plana. This project was created to provide a solution to the problem of small to medium Sized enterprises (SMEs) being under represented by lean consulting companies. The project was at first intended to be a lean consulting startup and then pivoted to The Systems Optimization Club. A project charter, Gantt chart, and business model canvas were created for the startup and used as guidelines in the creation of the Systems Optimization club. The club is to be run like a lean consulting company. The club will provide teams of …

Strasbaugh Nonconforming Report Optimization, Eden Andersen, Angela Asgekar, Rebecca Gregg

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

This paper strives to convey the problems and proposed solutions for Strasbaugh’s Nonconforming Report (NCR) Optimization. Strasbaugh is a world leader in silicon wafer polisher and grinder technologies. After a significant down size to the company parts they used to manufacture now have to be purchased, and many of these incoming parts do not conform to Strasbaugh’s high standards. This has led to an increase in NCRs that need to be processed, which takes up time, resources and money.

The objective therefore became to update the multi-sheet carbon copy paper system to better optimize the use of these reports and …

Designing A Supply Chain For Wine Imports, Italy To California, Neil Magnuson, Sam Bucher

Industrial and Manufacturing Engineering

Executive Summary

In this report a framework for a hypothetical business will be covered. Bucher & Magnuson Wine Import Inc. has provided a business plan as well as a detailed supply chain design for operations. In addition, a model for scaling and a redesign of a possible storage facility will be found. This comprehensive document outlines end to end the supply chain model of the hypothetical business and moreover a framework for starting a wine import business in San Luis Obispo.

The conclusions of the results from this model are the following:

• Unconcerned with time, the cheapest route for 1 …

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An Investigation Of Incipient Melting During Solution Heat Treatment Of 7050 Aluminum Forgings And Its Effect On Corrosion Properties, Thomas Kilkenny

Materials Engineering

7050 alloy (6.2Zn-2.3Mg-2.3Cu-0.12Zr) is a structural aluminum alloy commonly used in the aerospace industry. Its rich chemistry makes it susceptible to incipient melting. Incipient melting is a phenomenon where areas with high local alloy content melt before the rest of the material. This can cause a degradation of mechanical and corrosion properties. A six by four factor solution heat treatment trial was conducted. Six solution heat treatment temperatures, 890- 940°F in 10°F increments, and four times, 1, 2, 4, and 6 hours, were used. Incipient melting was observed in the 910°F, 6 hour solution heat treatment and all 920-940°F solution …

Investigation Of The Effectiveness And Failure Rates Of Whole-House Mechanical Ventilation Systems In Florida, Florida Solar Energy Center, Jeffrey Sonne

FSEC Energy Research Center®

This report presents the results of a field investigation of the effectiveness and failure rates of whole-house mechanical ventilation systems installed in Florida homes over the last 15 years. The report includes homeowner survey and ventilation system testing results and code modification recommendations based on study findings.

A Transfer Function Based Frequency Model For Propagation Of A Chaos Wave Through Modified Von Karman Turbulence Under Various Chaos And Turbulence Conditions, Monish Ranjan Chatterjee, Fathi H.A. Mohamed

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Complex phasor fields for electromagnetic wave propagation through von Karman turbulence and acousto-optic RF chaos are derived en route to the effective transfer function between chaos and narrow turbulence. Results are tested for several turbulence and chaos conditions.

Intrusion Detection In Aerial Imagery For Protecting Pipeline Infrastructure, Paheding Sidike, Almabrok Essa, Vijayan K. Asari

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present an automated mechanism that can detect and issue warnings of machinery threat such as the presence of construction vehicles on pipeline right-of-way. The proposed scheme models the human visual perception concepts to extract fine details of objects by utilizing the corners and gradient histogram information in pyramid levels. Two real-world aerial image datasets are used for testing and evaluation.

Automatic Building Change Detection In Wide Area Surveillance, Paheding Sidike, Almabrok Essa, Fatema Albalooshi, Vijayan K. Asari, Varun Santhaseelan

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

We present an automated mechanism that can detect and characterize the building changes by analyzing airborne or satellite imagery.

The proposed framework can be categorized into three stages: building detection, boundary extraction and change identification. To detect the buildings, we utilize local phase and local amplitude from monogenic signal to extract building features for addressing issues of varying illumination. Then a support vector machine with Radial basis kernel is used for classification. In the boundary extraction stage, a level-set function with self-organizing map based segmentation method is used to find the building boundary and compute physical area of the building …

Fuzzy Xor Classes From Quantum Computing, Anderson Ávila, Murilo Schmalfuss, Renata Reiser, Vladik Kreinovich

Departmental Technical Reports (CS)

By making use of quantum parallelism, quantum processes provide parallel modelling for fuzzy connectives and the corresponding computations of quantum states can be simultaneously performed, based on the superposition of membership degrees of an element with respect to the different fuzzy sets. Such description and modelling is mainly focussed on representable fuzzy Xor connectives and their dual constructions. So, via quantum computing not only the interpretation based on traditional quantum circuit is considered, but also the notion of quantum process in the qGM model is applied, proving an evaluation of a corresponding simulation by considering graphical interfaces of the VPE-qGM …

On The Viability Of Quantitative Assessment Methods In Software Engineering And Software Services, Joseph D. Lucente

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

IT help desk operations are expensive. Costs associated with IT operations present challenges to profit goals. Help desk managers need a way to plan staffing levels so that labor costs are minimized while problems are resolved efficiently. An incident prediction method is needed for planning staffing levels. The potential value of a solution to this problem is important to an IT service provider since software failures are inevitable and their timing is difficult to predict. In this research, a cost model for help desk operations is developed. The cost model relates predicted incidents to labor costs using real help desk …

Improving Student Learning Experience In An Engineering Graphics Classroom Through A Rapid Feedback And Re-Submission Cycle., Vimal Viswanathan, Maria Charlton

Faculty Publications, Mechanical Engineering

Improving Student Learning Experience in an Engineering Graphics Classroom through the Mastery Approach Pictorial representation of three-dimensional objects has been one of the oldest forms of communication. Engineering graphics courses deal with the art of documenting three dimensional objects in two-dimensional format. Prior literature shows that graphics communication is a key skill for an engineer to possess. However, students in engineering graphics classrooms struggle to understand the concepts being taught due to a variety of reasons including poor visualization skills, limited class time, huge class sizes and unavailability of simple demonstrations. Most of the schools offer this course in the …