Engineering Commons^™

Experimental Modal Analysis And Seismic Mitigation Of Statue-Pedestal Systems, Christine E. Wittich, Tara C. Hutchinson

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Faculty Publications

The seismic protection of cultural heritage, particularly statues, is a critical issue due to its high cultural significance, difficulty to repair or replace artifacts, and observed poor behavior during past earthquakes. Recent research has explored analysis techniques and methodologies for predicting the seismic response of statues; however, these studies typically assume the statue to be either freestanding or rigidly attached. The seismic response of statues with these different boundary conditions varies widely and therefore accurate characterization is critical. While modern mounting techniques aim to rigidly attach a statue to the floor or to a pedestal, the degree of rigidity of …

Fabrication, Characterization And Skin Permeation Of Antoxidant-Loaded Lipid Vesicles For Transdermal Drug Delivery., Emily Martin

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Excess production of Reactive Oxygen Species (ROS), which can be caused by radiation, cigarette smoke, and pollutants, can cause many damaging cellular effects, such as DNA damage and unregulated cell apoptosis. If left unmitigated, chronic overproduction of ROS has been linked to the formation of cancer, diabetes, atherosclerosis, rheumatoid arthritis, chronic inflammation, Parkinson’s disease, Alzheimer’s disease, multiple sclerosis, and amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. ROS is typically eliminated with antioxidants, which scavenge and inhibit the formation of ROS by becoming oxidized by the ROS and by binding to its precursors.

Curcumin is an effective lipid-soluble antioxidant agent. However, its poor bioavailability, rapid …

Development And Evaluation Of Custom Prosthetic Devices For A Companion Animal Utilizing Additive Manufacturing., Benjamin Joseph Cahill

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

BACKGROUND AND SIGINIFICANCE: Few options exist for companion animals in need of prosthetic devices. With the rise of rapid prototyping technology, the availability and customization of prosthetic devices for individual companion animals is now a viable and cost effective alternative to the current options of a peg leg prosthetic, or wheel-assisted prosthetic device. The goals of this study were to describe the (1) specific needs and (2) biomechanics of a feline with bilateral thoracic limb amputation, (3) develop custom prosthetic devices utilizing rapid prototyping technology, and (4) describe the biomechanics of a feline with bilateral thoracic limb amputation using the …

"It's Such A Battle": A Phenomenological Account Of Raising A Child On The Autistic Spectrum - A Battle With Bureaucracy And Behaviour, Tara Vassallo

The Plymouth Student Scientist

A sharp rise in the prevalence of Autism Spectrum Disorder (ASD), has led to it becoming one of the most widely researched neurodevelopmental conditions. Although the predominant focus in autism research is child centred, research on parent outcomes has highlighted considerable impact, in terms of parent’s mental health and wellbeing. Previous studies have shown that parents of children with autism suffer extremes of distress, in excess of that of parents of children with other disabilities. However, why this is so is less understood. Interpretative phenomenological analysis was used to analyse data, gathered from semi-structured interviews of seven parents raising children …

Bs News July/August

Building Services Engineering

No abstract provided.

Automated Code Extraction From Packed Android Applications., Abhishek Vasisht Bhaskar

Dissertations - ALL

Software packing is a method employed by malicious applications to hide their original intent. Extracting the original intent of an application from its application bundle, whether to perform a security analysis on it, to search for security flaws(or bugs) or simply for educational purposes is a key requirement for the security community. With the fluidity provided by the Android app store coupled with a complete application-framework based environment for a malicious user to employ as an attack space, it is of great importance to examine Android applications and extract their intent.

For basic applications, simple reverse engineering tools can be …

Engineering Xylose Utilization In Yarrowia Lipolytica By Understanding Its Cryptic Xylose Pathway, Gabriel M. Rodriguez, Murtaza Shabbir Hussain, Lauren Gambill, Difeng Gao, Allison Yaguchi, Mark Blenner

Publications

Background

The oleaginous yeast, Yarrowia lipolytica, has been utilized as an industrial host for about 60 years for various applications. Recently, the metabolic engineering of this host has become increasingly popular due to its ability to accumulate lipids as well as improvements made toward developing new genetic tools. Y. lipolytica can robustly metabolize glucose, glycerol, and even different lipid classes. However, little is known about its xylose metabolizing capability. Given the desirability of having a robust xylose utilizing strain of Y. lipolytica, we performed a comprehensive investigation and elucidation of the existing components of its xylose metabolic pathway. …

High-Throughput Screening Of Clinically Approved Drugs That Prime Polyethylenimine Transfection Reveals Modulation Of Mitochondria Dysfunction Response Improves Gene Transfer Efficiencies, Albert Nguyen, Jared P. Beyersdorf, Jean-Jack Riethoven, Angela K. Pannier

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Nonviral gene delivery methods are advantageous over viral vectors in terms of safety, cost, and flexibility in design and application, but suffer from lower gene transfer efficiency. In addition to modifications to nucleic acid design and nonviral carriers, new tools are sought to enhance transfection. Priming is the pharmacological modulation of transfection efficiency and transgene expression, and has demonstrated transfection increase in several compounds, for example, chloroquine and glucocorticoids. To develop a library of transfection priming compounds, a highthroughput screen was performed of the NIH Clinical Collection (NCC) to identify clinical compounds that prime polyethylenimine (PEI) transfection. HEK293T cells were …

Crowdsourcing Management Education Assessment, Owen P. Hall Jr, Charla Griffy-Brown

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Assessment is now at the center of the new business education zeitgeist. This focus is the direct result of feedback from the business community regarding the growing gap between their needs and graduates from many business schools. Recently this divide has fallen under even closer scrutiny because of increasing student debt and the growing controversy over return-on- investment. Today business leaders are looking for web-savvy, problem-solving graduates. To this end, AACSB and regional accrediting bodies are calling for the adoption of comprehensive collaborative learning strategies to better align graduates’ skill sets with the real needs of business. Crowdsourcing, which is …

Towards A Taxonomy Of Challenges In An Integrated It Governance Framework Implementation, Mathew Nicho, Suadad Muamaar

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

The rapid adoption of IT governance (ITG) frameworks in organizations worldwide, along with the subsequent need to select and integrate overlapping ITG frameworks has presented practitioners with challenges in choice and integration of frameworks. In this respect, the purpose of this study was to explore the ITG frameworks integration (ITGFI) challenges faced by organizations worldwide; develop and test a theory-based integrated ITG challenges (IIC) taxonomy model created from extant literature; and validate and compare these with those empirically extracted from three case studies in the United Arab Emirates (UAE). The results present the audience with a taxonomy of a prioritized …

Comparative Empirical Analysis On Computer Software Piracy Behaviors Between China And The United States: An Exploratory Study, Xiang Fang, Sooun Lee

Journal of International Technology and Information Management

Using the data collected from several universities in China and the United States, which have drastically different piracy rates, economic development stages, income levels, and national cultures, this study aims to identify which demographic factors affect software piracy significantly. Totally, the dataset includes 600 valid responses. Multivariate data analysis, supported by Multivariate Analysis of Variance and Turkey’s test, reveals that among various factors, country difference and gender most significantly influence software piracy. In addition, this study offers recommendations on how to curb software piracy effectively.

Verifying The Implementation Of An Anisotropic Grain Boundary Energy Model In Idaho National Lab’S Marmot, John-Michael H. Bradley, Evan D. Hansen, Jarin C. French, Yongfeng Zhang (Mentor)

Idaho Conference on Undergraduate Research

This work aims to verify the correct implementation of an anisotropic grain boundary (GB) energy model for face-centered cubic (FCC) and fluorite materials in Idaho National Laboratory’s phase field fuel performance code MARMOT. The model was recently implemented in MARMOT with the purpose of enabling higher fidelity simulations of UO₂ nuclear fuels. As part of verification, tests were performed to measure the energy dependence on misorientation of high symmetry GBs in an FCC metal (Cu). The energies of the [100], [110], and [111] twist boundaries result as predicted, as do the energies of the [111] symmetric tilt boundaries. However, …

Thin Film Alsb Carrier Transport Properties And Room Temperature Radiation Response, Erin Vaughan

Nuclear Engineering ETDs

Theoretical predictions for AlSb material properties have not been realized using bulk growth methods. This research was motivated by advances in molecular beam epitaxial (MBE) growth technology to produce high-quality thin-film AlSb for the purpose of evaluating transport properties and suitability for radiation detection. Simulations using MCNP5 were performed to benchmark an existing silicon surface barrier detector and to predict ideal AlSb detector behavior, with the finding that AlSb should have improved detection efficiency due to the larger atomic number of Sb compared with Si. GaSb diodes were fabricated by both homoepitaxial MBE and ion implantation methods in order to …

Stpp: Spatial-Temporal Phase Profiling Based Method For Relative Rfid Tag Localization, Longfei Shangguan, Zheng Yang, Alex X. Liu, Zimu Zhou, Yunhao Liu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Many object localization applications need the relative locations of a set of objects as oppose to their absolute locations. Although many schemes for object localization using radio frequency identification (RFID) tags have been proposed, they mostly focus on absolute object localization and are not suitable for relative object localization because of large error margins and the special hardware that they require. In this paper, we propose an approach called spatial-temporal phase profiling (STPP) to RFID-based relative object localization. The basic idea of STPP is that by moving a reader over a set of tags during which the reader continuously interrogating …

Passively Testing Routing Protocols In Wireless Sensor Networks, Xiaoping Che, Stephane Maag, Hwee-Xian Tan, Hwee-Pink Tan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Smart systems are today increasingly developed with the number of wireless sensor devices that drastically increases. They are implemented within several contexts through our environment. Thus, sensed data transported in ubiquitous systems are important and the way to carry them must be efficient and reliable. For that purpose, several routing protocols have been proposed to wireless sensor networks (WSN). However, one stage that is often neglected before their deployment, is the conformance testing process, a crucial and challenging step. Active testing techniques commonly used in wired networks are not suitable to WSN and passive approaches are needed. While some works …

Practitioners' Expectations On Automated Fault Localization, Pavneet Singh Kochhar, Xin Xia, David Lo, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Software engineering practitioners often spend significant amount of time and effort to debug. To help practitioners perform this crucial task, hundreds of papers have proposed various fault localization techniques. Fault localization helps practitioners to find the location of a defect given its symptoms (e.g., program failures). These localization techniques have pinpointed the locations of bugs of various systems of diverse sizes, with varying degrees of success, and for various usage scenarios. Unfortunately, it is unclear whether practitioners appreciate this line of research. To fill this gap, we performed an empirical study by surveying 386 practitioners from more than 30 countries …

Linear Encryption With Keyword Search, Shiwei Zhang, Guomin Yang, Yi Mu

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Nowadays an increasing amount of data stored in the public cloud need to be searched remotely for fast accessing. For the sake of privacy, the remote files are usually encrypted, which makes them difficult to be searched by remote servers. It is also harder to efficiently share encrypted data in the cloud than those in plaintext. In this paper, we develop a searchable encryption framework called Linear Encryption with Keyword Search (LEKS) that can semi-generically convert some existing encryption schemes meeting our Linear Encryption Template (LET) to be searchable without re-encrypting all the data. For allowing easy data sharing, we …

An Adaptability-Driven Model And Tool For Analysis Of Service Profitability, Eng Lieh Ouh, Jarzabek Stan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Profitability of adopting Software-as-a-Service (SaaS) solutions forexisting applications is currently analyzed mostly in informal way. Informalanalysis is unreliable because of the many conflicting factors that affect costs andbenefits of offering applications on the cloud. We propose a quantitative economicmodel for evaluating profitability of migrating to SaaS that enables potentialservice providers to evaluate costs and benefits of various migration strategiesand choices of target service architectures. In previous work, we presented arudimentary conceptual SaaS economic model enumerating factors that have todo with service profitability, and defining qualitative relations among them. Aquantitative economic model presented in this paper extends the conceptualmodel with equations …

Numerical Modeling Of Soy Biodiesel To Maximize Engine Power And Efficiency While Minimizing Pollutant Emissions, Ehsan Tootoonchi

Theses and Dissertations

Biodiesel is a renewable fuel that can help to reduce dependence on foreign petroleum and to help control the negative environmental effects of combustion engines. This work develops a numerical model for soy biodiesel combustion in diesel engine applications. A comprehensive breakup model for diesel and biodiesel combustion calculations using the KIVA- 3V is presented. The primary breakup model calculates the outcome of the initial breakup stage using flow conditions, nozzle geometry, and liquid fuel characteristics, and assigns the Sauter Mean Radius (SMR) values to injecting droplets. The Kelvin-Helmholtz/Rayleigh-Taylor(KH-RT) model acts as the secondary model to break up injected particles. …

The Controlled Human Gyroscope, Randy Claude Arjunsingh

Theses and Dissertations

The objective of this thesis was to design an adaptive rotational motion simulator capable of replicating the attitudes of spacecrafts and aircrafts, while avoiding gimbal lock. Flight motion simulators are currently used for flight training and research, but there are many limitations to these existing systems. This thesis presents a low-cost design for a rotational motion platform titled, ‘The Controlled Human Gyroscope’. It uses a 4-axis system instead of the conventional 3-axis system to avoid gimbal lock and prevent the unnecessary motion of the user. The Human Gyroscope features unlimited rotation about the roll, pitch and yaw axes regardless of …

The Eco-Friendly Intermodal Delivery Network, Sergio Mourelo

Senior Honors Theses

The design of the distribution process is a strategic issue for almost every company. As the use of advanced technology and automation increases in manufacturing and logistics, the implementation of autonomous and electrical transportation, such as driverless vehicles and electric trucks, has become an interesting topic of study within the last few years, with the main objective of minimizing distribution costs and delivery times. The purpose of this research is to prove that intermodal delivery networks, which may combine a train and several electric vehicles, are more efficient and environmentally friendly than unimodal networks for high volume and long haul …

On The Importance Of Displacement History In Soft-Body Contact Models, Jonathan A. Fleischmann, Radu Serban, Dan Negrut, Paramsothy Jayakumar

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Two approaches are commonly used for handling frictional contact within the framework of the discrete element method (DEM). One relies on the complementarity method (CM) to enforce a nonpenetration condition and the Coulomb dry-friction model at the interface between two bodies in mutual contact. The second approach, called the penalty method (PM), invokes an elasticity argument to produce a frictional contact force that factors in the local deformation and relative motion of the bodies in contact. We give a brief presentation of a DEM-PM contact model that includes multi-time-step tangential contact displacement history. We show that its implementation in an …

Open Source Laser Polymer Welding System: Design And Characterization Of Linear Low-Density Polyethylene Multilayer Welds, John Laureto, Serguei V. Dessiatoun, Michael M. Ohadi, Joshua M. Pearce

Department of Materials Science and Engineering Publications

The use of lasers to weld polymer sheets provides a means of highly-adaptive and custom additive manufacturing for a wide array of industrial, medical, and end user/consumer applications. This paper provides an open source design for a laser polymer welding system, which can be fabricated with low-cost fused filament fabrication and off-the-shelf mechanical and electrical parts. The system is controlled with free and open source software and firmware. The operation of the machine is validated and the performance of the system is quantified for the mechanical properties (peak load) and weld width of linear low density polyethylene (LLDPE) lap welds …

A Tool For Downscaling Weather Data From Large-Grid Reanalysis Products To Finer Spatial Scales For Distributed Hydrological Applications, Avirup Sen Gupta, David G. Tarboton

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

A downscaling tool was developed to provide sub-daily high spatial resolution surfaces of weather variables for distributed hydrologic modeling from NASA Modern Era Retrospective-Analysis for Research and Applications reanalysis products. The tool uses spatial interpolation and physically based relationships between the weather variables and elevation to provide inputs at the scale of a gridded hydrologic model, typically smaller (∼100 m) than the scale of weather reanalysis data (∼20–200 km). Nash-Sutcliffe efficiency (NSE) measures greater than 0.70 were obtained for direct tests of downscaled daily temperature and monthly precipitation at 173 SNOTEL sites. In an integrated test driving the Utah Energy …

Deposition Of Carbon Nanotube Films On Polyamide And Polypropylene Substrates: A Computer Simulation Approach, Alejandro Heredia, Maria Colin-Garcia, Maria Del Pilar Carreon-Castro, Debarati Mukherjee, Bruno Abreu, David William Britt, Joana Catarina Mendes

Biological Engineering Faculty Publications

In this work we study hydroxylated carbon nanotube (CNT) assembly on polyamide (PA) and polypropylene (PP) polymers activated by UV radiation from a theoretical and experimental perspective. Molecular computer simulation was done to understand the stable conformations and bulk properties (molecular dynamics) of the polymers before and after exposure to UV radiation at the molecular level. Our experiments suggest that PA presents more -OH active groups, producing a more hydrophilic surface, whereas PP exhibits less potential UV activation. These results suggest that it is possible a facile covalent functionalization method to tune organic polymer surface properties through SWCNT anchoring for …

Use Of Cycling Paths Along The Morogoro Brt Line, Ford Sanger

Independent Study Project (ISP) Collection

As the urban population continues to increase rapidly in Dar es Salaam it will become increasingly important to find sustainable means of urban transportation. With planned infrastructure improvements in the city to help alleviate traffic congestion, bicycles, which represent a largely underutilized form of urban transportation, have the potential to play a large role in the future of the city. Through background research, direct observations, community surveys, and interviews, both formal and informal, this study sought to understand the impact of the recent addition of bike lanes along the first phase of the Dar Bus Rapid Transit line. It was …

Advanced Technologies For Sustainable Systems, Hesham Safwat

Mechanical Engineering

No abstract provided.

The Effects Of Is-Bao Implementation And Leadership Performance On Safety Culture In Business Aviation Flight Operations, Christopher Mark Broyhill

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The International Standard, Business Aircraft Operations (IS-BAO), with a Safety Management System (SMS) as its core element, has been widely accepted by both the International Civil Aviation Organization (ICAO) and the business aviation industry as the mechanism to create a healthy safety culture among the business aviation operators who have implemented the standard. Scholarly literature, however, has presented leadership as the most important factor in the creation and management of a healthy safety culture in organizations in general and aviation organizations in particular. This study examined and compared the effects of IS-BAO progression and leadership performance on the perceptions of …

The Effect Of Generation On Retention Of Women Engineers In Aerospace And Industry, Kristine Maria Kiernan

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The purpose of this dissertation was to determine the nature and extent of differences between generational cohorts regarding the effect of family factors on retention of women in engineering, with an emphasis on women in the aerospace industry. While 6% of the aerospace workforce is made up of aeronautical engineers, an additional 11.2% of the aerospace workforce is drawn from other engineering disciplines. Therefore, the analysis included all engineering sub-disciplines. In order to include women who had left the workforce, women in all industries were used as a proxy for women in aerospace.

Exits to other fields were modeled separately …

The Effects Of Safety Culture And Ethical Leadership On Safety Performance, Kevin O’Leary

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

This dissertation investigated the effects of safety culture and ethical leadership on safety performance in Fractional jet pilots in the United States. The primary objective was to develop a well-fitted model linking these constructs. A composite survey instrument was developed from instruments previously validated in the literature.

There were 305 complete and valid responses from Fractional pilots. The hypothesized factor structure consisted of seven factors. The exogenous factor of safety culture was made up of four sub-factors. The endogenous factors included ethical leadership, pilot commitment, and safety performance. Safety performance was a second order factor consisting of errors and attitudes …