Engineering Commons^™

Fabrication And Characterization Of Electrospun Poly(Acrylonitrile-Co-Methyl Acrylate)/Lignin Nanofibers: Effects Of Lignin Type And Total Polymer Concentration, Suchitha Devadas, Saja M. Nabat Al-Ajrash, Donald A. Klosterman, Kenya A. Crosson, Garry S. Crosson, Erick S. Vasquez

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Lignin macromolecules are potential precursor materials for producing electrospun nanofibers for composite applications. However, little is known about the effect of lignin type and blend ratios with synthetic polymers. This study analyzed blends of poly(acrylonitrile-co-methyl acrylate) (PAN-MA) with two types of commercially available lignin, low sulfonate (LSL) and alkali, kraft lignin (AL), in DMF solvent. The electrospinning and polymer blend solution conditions were optimized to produce thermally stable, smooth lignin-based nanofibers with total polymer content of up to 20 wt % in solution and a 50/50 blend weight ratio. Microscopy studies revealed that AL blends possess good solubility, miscibility, and …

Evaluation Of Compatibility Between Asphalt Binders And Mineral Aggregates, Tandra Bagchi

Student Theses and Dissertations

One of the major problems of asphalt concrete pavements faced by most state Departments of Transportations (DOTs) and other highway agencies is moisture damage. Poor compatibility between asphalt binders and aggregates is the main reason behind such kind of distresses. This study aims to conduct compatibility analyses of selected asphalt binders and aggregates used in Arkansas. Asphalt binders used in this study include two Performance Grade (PG) binders (PG 64-22) from two different sources along with their modified counterparts. Additionally, four different types of aggregates are being evaluated in the laboratory. The Sessile Drop method has been followed to determine …

Teaching Engineering Virtually: A Rapid Response To Address The Academic Challenges Generated By Covid-19, Eleazar Marquez, Samuel Garcia

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

In this study, an alternative pedagogical model was established to address the academic challenges posed when undergraduate engineering students in a private university in Texas were mandated to seek off-campus housing due to the outbreak of COVI-19. As a result of the rapid transition to remote instruction, traditional and effective pedagogical methods implemented for in-person instruction had to be modified to overcome challenges such as the lack of academic resources, established campus practices that promote effective learning (e.g., study groups), and time-zone differences. Additionally, the instructional format had to be adjusted to ensure that the academic development of the students …

Information Technology News, Georgia Southern University

Information Technology: News & Publications (2012-2023)

• IT Faculty Win New Grant

Application Of The Cluster Classification Data Mining Method To Child Illiteracy In Indonesia, Muhammad Arifin, Gita Widi Bhawika, M.A. Muazar Habibi, Winci Firdaus, Danu Eko Agustinova, Robbi Rahim

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

The objective of this study is to cluster and classify data using a combination of the k-means and C4.5 methods. The process involves clustering and subsequent classification. The classification process uses k-folds = 10 and samples = stratified sampling. In this study, analphabets in Indonesia of a minimum age of 15 years (15+) were evaluated. The data are the percentage of analogs between 2017 and 2019. The dataset was obtained from https://www.bps.go.id and is accessible at https://osf.io/crwug. In this study, the Davies Bouldin index (DBI) was used to determine the number of clusters with an optimal DBI value of k …

Human-Robot Collaboration For Effective Bridge Inspection In The Artificial Intelligence Era, Ruwen Qin

INSPIRE Archived Webinars

Advancements in sensor, Artificial Intelligence (AI), and robotic technologies have formed a foundation to enable a transformation from traditional engineering systems to complex adaptive systems. This paradigm shift will bring exciting changes to civil infrastructure systems and their builders, operators and managers. Funded by the INSPIRE University Transportation Center (UTC), Dr. Qin’s group investigated the holism of an AI-robot-inspector system for bridge inspection. Dr. Qin will discuss the need for close collaboration among the constituent components of the AI-robot-inspector system. In the workplace of bridge inspection using drones, the mobile robotic inspection platform rapidly collected big inspection video data that …

Emulsion Templating Application For Synthesis Of A Porous Zein Biocompatible Oil Adsorbent, Nathan Holley

LSU Master's Theses

The recovery of spilled oil from water sources using hydrophobic porous absorbent has gained significant interest due to the ease of implementation, large-scale adaptability, and robust nature of the technique. However, the lack of biodegradability of these synthetic adsorbents has caused concern of further contaminating the environment from the generation of microplastic waste that is known to persist and accumulate in the marine food chain and other ecosystems. To mitigate this potential hazard, a new biocompatible alternative is needed to replace the non-degradable synthetic materials currently used. This thesis presents ZEin-based Low Density porous Absorbent (ZELDA), synthesized using a particle …

Field Evaluation Of Non-Contact Flow Measurement Devices - Gcid, Jack Evans, Stuart Styles

BioResource and Agricultural Engineering

The Irrigation Training and Research Center (ITRC) has analyzed the data from several non-contact volumetric flow meter models under various conditions. This testing was done with support from technical services contracts with the California Department of Water Resources (DWR) and the United States Bureau of Reclamation (USBR).

Virtual Network Function Embedding Under Nodal Outage Using Deep Q-Learning, Swarna Bindu Chetty, Hamed Ahmadi, Sachin Sharma, Avishek Nag

Articles

With the emergence of various types of applications such as delay-sensitive applications, future communication networks are expected to be increasingly complex and dynamic. Network Function Virtualization (NFV) provides the necessary support towards efficient management of such complex networks, by virtualizing network functions and placing them on shared commodity servers. However, one of the critical issues in NFV is the resource allocation for the highly complex services; moreover, this problem is classified as an NP-Hard problem. To solve this problem, our work investigates the potential of Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) as a swift yet accurate approach (as compared to integer linear …

Real-Time Identification Of Oxygen Vacancy Centers In Linbo₃ And Srtio₃ During Irradiation With High Energy Particles, Miguel L. Crespillo, Joseph T. Graham, Fernando Agulló-López, Yanwen Zhang, William J. Weber

Nuclear Engineering and Radiation Science Faculty Research & Creative Works

Oxygen vacancies are known to play a central role in the optoelectronic properties of oxide perovskites. A detailed description of the exact mechanisms by which oxygen vacancies govern such properties, however, is still quite incomplete. The unambiguous identification of oxygen vacancies has been a subject of intense discussion. Interest in oxygen vacancies is not purely academic. Precise control of oxygen vacancies has potential technological benefits in optoelectronic devices. In this review paper, we focus our attention on the generation of oxygen vacancies by irradiation with high energy particles. Irradiation constitutes an efficient and reliable strategy to introduce, monitor, and characterize …

A Cascaded Power Dividing Decoupling Network For Antennas With Distinct Frequency Bands, Min Li, Lijun Jiang, Kwan Lawrence Yeung

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper proposes a novel decoupling method for two antennas operating in adjacent/contiguous frequency bands using a cascaded power dividing decoupling network (C- PDDN). An n-order C-PDDN can be designed to increase antenna isolation at n desired frequency points. Each PDDN is composed of two power dividers, two transmission lines, and one reactive component. Explicit design formulas are founded for determining design parameters. For illustration, a two-order C- PDDN is applied to a testing array. Results show that it could increase isolation by over 20 dB, verifying the effectiveness.

Temperature Gradient Effects On Behavior And Design Of Prestressed Concrete Girder Bridges, Ahmed Saad Elsayed Mohamed Elshoura

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Temperature variation is an inevitable environmental loading type that affects bridges. Considering temperature effects during structural design is deemed essential for short, medium, and long span bridges. Temperature loading can be categorized into three components; uniform temperature, vertical temperature gradient, and transverse temperature gradient. Temperature variation causes additional movements, stresses, and internal forces that should be considered in the design of bridges. In this study, the temperature effects of vertical and transverse temperature gradients are investigated for continuous prestressed concrete bridges.

Thermal restraint moments induced by vertical temperature gradients on prestrssed concrete bridges are investigated by performing three-dimensional (3D) finite …

Mechanical Engineering News, Georgia Southern University

Mechanical Engineering: News & Publications (2013-2023)

• Graduate Student to Present at Posters on the Hill

Generation Of Giant Electric Energy Density By Adiabatically Compressed Pin-Pmn-Pt Ferroelectric Single Crystals, Sergey I. Shkuratov, Jason Baird, Vladimir G. Antipov, Jay B. Chase

Mining Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The results are reported herein of experimental investigations of the mechanism of electric breakdown and the generation of high voltage and energy by shock-compressed rhombohedral (1-y-x)Pb(In1/2Nb1/2)O3-yPb(Mg1/3Nb2/3)O3-xPbTiO3 (PIN-PMN-PT) ferroelectric single crystals cut and poled along the [111]c crystallographic direction. PIN-PMN-PT crystals were shock-compressed in a direction perpendicular to the polarization, in either the [11-0]c or [112-]c or crystallographic directions. Our experiments demonstrated that shocked crystals with thicknesses ranging from 1 to 5 mm are capable of producing high voltage amplitudes of 9-37 kV, with the amplitudes being directly proportional to the crystal thickness. The experimental results indicate that the shock loading …

Bibliometric Survey For Stock Market Prediction Using Sentimental Analysis And Lstm, Pooja Bagane, Nimit Mehta Mr, Parth Kakde Mr, Nisarg Bramhbhatt Mr, Ishansh Sahni Mr, Sirbi Kotrappa Dr

Library Philosophy and Practice (e-journal)

Creating an overview of the flow fundamentals of the global market trading and sublimation of equities into a superimposed system of economic agendas. Furthermore this leads to dynamic overlapping with the current technological advancements to create a platform for information exchange and inculcations. This created a new field of access points where we could enhance and analyse the data available and create an interface to predict the rise and fall trends involved with the stock market. These help create a sense of control and format over the public personification over the economic impacts and use social media and involve discrete …

Feasibility Of Using A High-Power Electromagnetic Energy Harvester To Power Structural Health Monitoring Sensors And Systems In Transportation Infrastructures, Mohsen Amjadian, Anil K. Agrawal, Hani Nassif

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

This paper investigates the feasibility of an electromagnetism energy harvester (EMEH) for scavenging electric energy from transportation infrastructures and powering of conventional sensors used for their structural health monitoring. The proposed EMEH consists of two stationary layers of three cuboidal permanent magnets (PMs), a rectangular thick aircore copper coil (COIL) attached to the free end of a flexible cantilever beam whose fixed end is firmly attached to the highway bridge oscillating in the vertical motion due to passing traffic. The proposed EMEH utilizes the concept of creating an alternating array of permanent magnets to achieve strong and focused magnetic field …

Polymeric Nanovectors Incorporated With Ganciclovir And Hsv-Tk Encoding Plasmid For Gene-Directed Enzyme Prodrug Therapy, Alicia J. Sawdon, Jun Zhang, Sarah Peng, Esmael M. Alyami, Ching An Peng

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

In the area of gene-directed enzyme prodrug therapy (GDEPT), using herpes simplex virus thymidine kinase (HSV-tk) paired with prodrug ganciclovir (GCV) for cancer treatment has been extensively studied. It is a process involved with two steps whereby the gene (HSV-tk) is first delivered to malignant cells. Afterward, non-toxic GCV is administered to that site and activated to cytotoxic ganciclovir triphosphate by HSV-tk enzyme expressed exogenously. In this study, we presented a one-step approach that both gene and prodrug were delivered at the same time by incorporating them with polymeric micellar nanovectors. GCV was employed as an initiator in the ring-opening …

Magnetically Induced Demulsification Of Water And Castor Oil Dispersions Stabilized By Fe3o4-Coated Cellulose Nanocrystals, Mohammad J. Hasan, Frankie A. Petrie, Ashley E. Johnson, Joshua Peltan, Meredith Gannon, Robert T. Busch, Serhiy O. Leontsev, Erick S. Vasquez, Esteban E. Ureña-Benavides

Chemical and Materials Engineering Faculty Publications

Superparamagnetic iron oxide (Fe3O4) nanoparticle (NP) coated cellulose nanocrystals (CNCs) were synthesized and used to prepare emulsions with magnetically controlled stability. Magnetite NPs were deposited onto the surface of wood pulp CNCs (WCNCs) and bacterial CNCs (BCNCs) by a one-step coprecipitation method. The effect of the CNC to Fe3O4 mass ratio (1:1, 1:2, and 1:4) was varied to optimize the colloidal, magnetic and emulsifying properties of the hybrid NPs. TEM images showed that the 1:4 ratios lead to greater coverage of Fe3O4 than lower Fe3O4 loadings (1:1, and 1:2). The CNCs and Fe3O4 appeared to interact via hydrogen bonding between …

Foot Contact Dynamics And Fall Risk Among Children Diagnosed With Idiopathic Toe Walking, Rahul Soangra, Michael Shiraishi, Richard Beuttler, Michelle Gwerder, Lou Anne Boyd, Venkatesan Muthukumar, Mohamed Trabia, Afshin Aminian, Marybeth Grant-Beuttler

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Research

Children that are diagnosed with Idiopathic Toe walking (cITW) are characterized by persistent toe-to-toe contacts. The objective of this study was to explore whether typical foot contact dynamics during walking predisposes cITW to a higher risk of falling. Twenty cITW and age-matched controls performed typical and toe walking trials. The gait parameters related to foot contact dynamics, vertical force impulses during stance, slip, and trip risk were compared for both groups. We found that cITW manifest less stable gait and produced significantly higher force impulses during push-off. Additionally, we found that cITW had a higher slip-initiation risk that was associated …

The Role Of Institutional Repositories In Advancing Open Scholarship: A Case Study From The United Arab Emirates University, Amina Itani, Linda Östlundh Mrs.

The Journal of Electronic Theses and Dissertations

The digitization of theses and dissertations at the United Arab Emirates University (UAEU) began five years ago with the Digital Commons institutional repository (IR) platform, Scholarworks, employed for the purpose. The project, initiated by the University Library, exemplifies how academic libraries can take the lead in advocating for digital preservation and open access publishing of institutional research materials. This case study describes how the library’s Electronic Theses and Dissertations (ETD) initiative has provided an excellent model to the UAEU for it to start disseminating its research output and how the library’s copyright and open access policies have been crucial for …

Women’S Perceptions Of The Aviation Workplace: An Exploratory Study, Lindsay Stevenson, Haydee Cuevas, Katya K. Rivera, Katie Kirkpatrick, Marisa Aguiar, Jorge L. D. Albelo

Publications

The purpose of this exploratory study was to garner a better understanding of the following research question: What factors may contribute to women’s retention in aviation occupations in the United States? The Aviation Occupation Survey was developed drawing from the published literature in organizational retention and diversity in aviation to explore this research question. The survey consisted of 50 Likert-scale items on nine subjects related to career retention. A total of 188 participants (women = 70, men = 118) completed the survey. Results revealed similarities between women and men on perceptions about numerous aspects of their workplace, particularly job satisfaction, …

Leveraging Natural Language Processing To Mine Issues On Twitter During The Covid-19 Pandemic, Ankita Agarwal, Preetham Salehundam, Swati Padhee, William Romine, Tanvi Wright State University - Main Campus

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

The recent global outbreak of the coronavirus disease (COVID-19) has spread to all corners of the globe. The international travel ban, panic buying, and the need for self-quarantine are among the many other social challenges brought about in this new era. Twitter platforms have been used in various public health studies to identify public opinion about an event at the local and global scale. To understand the public concerns and responses to the pandemic, a system that can leverage machine learning techniques to filter out irrelevant tweets and identify the important topics of discussion on social media platforms like Twitter …

Alternative View Of Oxygen Reduction On Porous Carbon Electrocatalysts: The Substance Of Complex Oxygen-Surface Interactions, Giacomo De Falco, Marc Florent, Jacek Jagiello, Yongqiang Cheng, Luke L. Daemen, Anibal J. Ramirez-Cuesta, Teresa J. Bandosz

Publications and Research

Electrochemical oxygen reduction reaction (ORR) is an important energy-related process requiring alternative catalysts to expensive platinum-based ones. Although recently some advancements in carbon catalysts have been reported, there is still a lack of understanding which surface features might enhance their efficiency for ORR. Through a detailed study of oxygen adsorption on carbon molecular sieves and using inelastic neutron scattering, we demonstrated here that the extent of oxygen adsorption/interactions with surface is an important parameter affecting ORR. It was found that both the strength of O2 physical adsorption in small pores and its specific interactions with surface ether functionalities in the …

Effects Of Flight Altitude On The Lift Generation Of Monarch Butterflies: From Sea Level To Overwintering Mountain, Madhu K. Sridhar, Chang-Kwon Kang, Brian D. Landrum, Hikaru Aono, Shannon L. Mathis, Taeyoung Lee

PRC-Affiliated Research

Aerodynamic efficiency behind the annual migration of monarch butterflies, the longest among insects, is an unsolved mystery. Monarchs migrate 4000 km at high-altitudes to their overwintering mountains in Central Mexico. The air is thinner at higher altitudes, yielding reduced aerodynamic drag and enhanced range. However, the lift is also expected to reduce in lower density conditions. To investigate the ability of monarchs to produce sufficient lift to fly in thinner air, we measured the climbing motion of freely flying monarchs in high-altitude conditions. An optical method was used to track the flapping wing and body motions inside a large pressure …

Topic-Centric Unsupervised Multi-Document Summarization Of Scientific And News Articles, Amanuel Alambo, Cori Lohstroh, Erik Madaus, Swati Padhee, Brandy Foster, Tanvi Banerjee, Krishnaprasad Thirunarayan, Michael Raymer

Computer Science and Engineering Faculty Publications

Recent advances in natural language processing have enabled automation of a wide range of tasks, including machine translation, named entity recognition, and sentiment analysis. Automated summarization of documents, or groups of documents, however, has remained elusive, with many efforts limited to extraction of keywords, key phrases, or key sentences. Accurate abstractive summarization has yet to be achieved due to the inherent difficulty of the problem, and limited availability of training data. In this paper, we propose a topic-centric unsupervised multi-document summarization framework to generate extractive and abstractive summaries for groups of scientific articles across 20 Fields of Study (FoS) in …

Resource And Energy Recovery From Wastewater Using Advanced Bioelectrochemical Systems, Sidan Lu

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Water pollution and energy depletion are two critical issues in the world that limit the sustainable development of human society. In this study, several advanced (photo) bioelectrochemical systems (BESs) were proposed for effective energy (electricity and H₂) and nutrients (N and P) recovery from wastewater, solar energy, seawater, and river water. The first study demonstrated high effectiveness of a novel resource-recovery microbial fuel cell (RRMFC) for wastewater treatment and nutrient recovery from synthetic urine-containing wastewater. Over one cycle (∼3 days), 99% of urea, 97% of COD, 99% of histidine, 91% of creatinine, 99% of sodium acetate, 98% of …

Investigating The Novel Role Of Dextromethorphan In Mitigating Oxidative Stress Induced Changes In Retinal Pigment Epithelial Cells (Rpe), Zeinab A. Mohamed

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Oxidative stress contributes to the degeneration of retinal pigment epithelial (RPE) cells and photoreceptors that lead to the dry form of age-related macular degeneration. Activation of N-Methyl-D-aspartate (NMDA) receptors contributes to the increase of free radicals that induce oxidative stress-induced changes. Our study investigates if Dextromethorphan, an NMDA receptor antagonist, reverses oxidative stress-induced changes in RPE. We used Paraquat and H2O2 as oxidative stress-inducing agents to induce oxidative damage in human ARPE-19 cells. To illustrate the change in cell viability and measure the apoptosis of ARPE-19 cells from oxidative damage, we performed MTT assay and Annexin V-DAPI flow cytometry analysis. …

Efficient Hardware Constructions For Error Detection Of Post-Quantum Cryptographic Schemes, Alvaro Cintas Canto

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Quantum computers are presumed to be able to break nearly all public-key encryption algorithms used today. The National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) started the process of soliciting and standardizing one or more quantum computer resistant public-key cryptographic algorithms in late 2017. It is estimated that the current and last phase of the standardization process will last till 2022-2024. Among those candidates, code-based and multivariate-based cryptography are a promising solution for thwarting attacks based on quantum computers. Nevertheless, although code-based and multivariate-based cryptography, e.g., McEliece, Niederreiter, and Luov cryptosystems, have good error correction capabilities, research has shown their hardware …

Effect Of Se Composition In Cdse1-XTEx/Cdte Solar Cells, Sheikh Tawsif Elahi

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Cadmium Telluride solar cell is a leading thin film photovoltaic in the market today. Constant enhancement of efficiency in the last decade has made its position firmer in research interest as well. The record cell efficiency for CdTe solar cells is 22.1%. The theoretical limit suggests that there is still room for efficiency improvements. Reducing the band gap of CdTe solar cells can improve the short circuit current and overall cell performance.

This work focuses on bandgap engineering of the CdTe layer by incorporating Selenium (Se) in to form the compound CdS_exTe_1-x (CST) which can have a …

Development Of Brain Atlases For Early-To-Middle Adolescent Collision-Sport Athletes, Yukai Zou, Wenbin Zhu, Ho-Ching Yang, Ikbeom Jang, Nicole L. Vike, Diana O. Svaldi, Trey E. Shenk, Victoria N. Poole, Evan L. Breedlove, Gregory G. Tamer Jr, Larry J. Leverenz, Ulrike Dydak, Eric A. Nauman, Yunjie Tong, Thomas M. Talavage, Joseph V. Rispoli

Purdue University Libraries Open Access Publishing Fund

Human brains develop across the life span and largely vary in morphology. Adolescent collision-sport athletes undergo repetitive head impacts over years of practices and competitions, and therefore may exhibit a neuroanatomical trajectory different from healthy adolescents in general. However, an unbiased brain atlas targeting these individuals does not exist. Although standardized brain atlases facilitate spatial normalization and voxel-wise analysis at the group level, when the underlying neuroanatomy does not represent the study population, greater biases and errors can be introduced during spatial normalization, confounding subsequent voxel-wise analysis and statistical findings. In this work, targeting early-to-middle adolescent (EMA, ages 13–19) collision-sport …