Engineering Commons^™

Electric Roller Blades, Nathan Burk, Joshua Hatch

Electrical and Computer Engineering

Electric Roller Blades are designed to allow for fast and convenient transportation!

• The hope for the electric roller blades is to give college students and others walking through their city a way to quickly get from point A to B. Electric Skateboards and One Wheels are heavy and bulky. The Electric Roller Blades are meant to be a less cumbersome electric vehicle. As the majority of the time users will not be commuting, the electric roller blades are more convenient then One Wheels as they can be attached to a backpack.
• People traveling from one destination to another frequently, as …

Parents' Experiences Of A Language-Focused Home Visiting Scheme In Ireland, Aisling Ni Dhiorbhain Dr, Maire Mhic Mhathuna, Padraig Ó Duibhir Dr

Articles

This article reports parents’ experiences of the Tús Maith (Good Start) home visiting scheme in South-West Ireland. The goal of Tús Maith is to support parents who wish to speak Irish to their children at home in the Kerry Gaeltacht, an Irish-speaking heartland area. Home visitors spend an hour a week, over a period of six weeks, interacting with children and parents with varying levels of competency in Irish. Home visitors who are native speakers of Irish, offer individualised guidance on how to promote the use of Irish as a home language, while encouraging families to engage in activities …

Improving Patient-Specific Assessments Of Regional Aortic Mechanics Via Quantitative Magnetic Resonance Imaging With Early Applications In Patients At Elevated Risk For Thoracic Aortopathy, Patrick A. Jones

Theses and Dissertations

Unstable aortic aneurysms and dissections are serious cardiovascular conditions associated with high mortality. The current gold standards for assessment of stability, however, rely on simple geometric measurements, like cross-sectional area or increased diameter between follow-up scans, and fail to incorporate information about underlying aortic mechanics. Displacement encoding with stimulated echoes (DENSE) magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) has been used previously to determine heterogeneous circumferential strain patterns in the aortas of healthy volunteers. Here, I introduce technical improvements to DENSE aortic analysis and early pilot application in patients at higher risk for the development of aortopathies. Modifications to the DENSE aortic postprocessing …

Equations Of State For Warm Dense Carbon From Quantum Espresso, Derek J. Schauss

Theses and Dissertations

Warm dense plasma is the matter that exists, roughly, in the range of 10,000 to 10,000,000 Kelvin and has solid-like densities, typically between 0.1 and 10 grams per centimeter. Warm dense fluids like hydrogen, helium, and carbon are believed to make up the interiors of many planets, white dwarfs, and other stars in our universe. The existence of warm dense matter (WDM) on Earth, however, is very rare, as it can only be created with high-energy sources like a nuclear explosion. In such an event, theoretical and computational models that accurately predict the response of certain materials are thus very …

Using Deep Learning-Based Framework For Child Speech Emotion Recognition, Gerald N. Onwujekwe

Theses and Dissertations

Biological languages of the body through which human emotion can be detected abound including heart rate, facial expressions, movement of the eyelids and dilation of the eyes, body postures, skin conductance, and even the speech we make. Speech emotion recognition research started some three decades ago, and the popular Interspeech Emotion Challenge has helped to propagate this research area. However, most speech recognition research is focused on adults and there is very little research on child speech. This dissertation is a description of the development and evaluation of a child speech emotion recognition framework. The higher-level components of the framework …

Impact Dynamics Of Surfactant-Laden Droplets On Non-Wettable Coatings, Amir Esmaeili

Theses and Dissertations

Owing to their excellent water repellency, non-wettable (superhydrophobic) coatings have gained tremendous attention in the past couple of decades. Alkyl ketene dimer (AKD), an inexpensive polymer frequently used in paper industry as a sizing agent, has shown potentials to become superhydrophobic. The formation of a porous structure after curing the solidified AKD for an extra-long time (4–6 days) results in superhydrophobicity, i.e., a static contact angle with water of >150° and a roll-off angle of <10°. In this work, a facile and low-cost method was used to turn the surface of AKD superhydrophobic in a very short period of time by briefly treating the coatings, obtained from isothermally heated molten AKD at 40 °C for 3 min, with ethanol. The resulting superhydrophobicity is due to the formation of porous, entangled irregular micro/nano textures that create air cushions on the surface leading to droplet state transition from Wenzel to Cassie. As a proof of concept, the same material was applied to the co-sputtered nickel-tungsten thin films, commonly used in micro/nano-electro-mechanical systems, to improve their hydrophobicity. According to the results, at least 20% increase was observed in the dynamic contact angles of the treated substrates.

In addition, this work presents a detailed high-speed imaging analysis of the influence of the molecular weight, concentration and ionic nature of surfactants on droplet …

Rheological Analysis Of The Mechanical Properties Of Murine Lungs Over The Lifespan, Olajumoke Olufunke Harrison

Theses and Dissertations

To study the effects of aging in murine lungs, we characterized C57Bl6j mice from neonatal to 24-month-old mice. Samples were divided into two groups: Young Mice (YM) and Middle Age/Old Age Mice (MOM). The YM group included the neonatal and 6-10week. The MOM group included 7- and 22–24-month-old mice. Rheological testing was performed using a TA Instruments DHR-2 Rheometer to collect the mechanics of each mice sample. Utilizing a 20-mm parallel plate fixture, a gap of 0.8-1.0-mm, and a temperature setting of 25C, we conducted a frequency sweep. Samples were the decellularized over a four-day process then lyophilized for mass …

Continuous Manufacturing Of Pharmaceuticals Using Novel Platforms, Sarah S. Aboelela

Theses and Dissertations

Pharmaceuticals have been synonymously manufactured in a centralized, batch mode with less attention to process and formulation understanding. However, due to rising drug costs, shortages, and robustness issues, in addition to the alarming lack of flexibility and agility, regulatory agencies have pushed towards switching to continuous processes. They believed in continuous manufacturing, providing cleaner, flexible, and more efficient processes. Hence, it was foreseen to reduce development and manufacturing costs, time, and environmental impact and ensured drug product quality. Over the last two decades, continuous manufacturing quality, environmental, and economic advantages have been evident through many case studies and approved products …

Continuous Preparation And Application Of Novel Heterogeneous Catalysis, Michael B. Burkholder

Theses and Dissertations

Transition metal heterogeneous catalysts are widely used across many chemical industries to reduce waste and emissions and reduce production time while increasing rate. The prevalence of these materials results from the complex relationship between metal nanoparticles and supports affecting final catalytic performance. Rational catalyst synthesis describes the ability to precisely engineer structures through controlled preparation. Novel materials and continuous processing represent a promising approach for rational catalyst synthesis.

The application of these catalysts in continuous, multiphase processes, such as cross-coupling reactions, oxidation chemistry, and nitroreduction processes, are paramount to developing new commercial routes for high-value products. Pd/G catalysts synthesized by …

Therapeutic Modalities For Preventing Osteoarthritis Following Trauma To The Knee, Kayla M. Scott

Theses and Dissertations

Over 32.5 million adults in the United States and 300 million worldwide have osteoarthritis (OA). To date, there are no disease-modifying therapeutics, only strategies to slow OA progression through pain management, regenerative medicine approaches, and ultimately joint replacement.

On a microscale, a phenotypic shift of the normally quiescent articular chondrocytes leads to aberrant expression of pro-inflammatory and catabolic pathways, which are hypothesized to contribute to OA progression. Of note, interleukin-1β (IL-1β), tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), and WNT/β-catenin signaling are key players disrupting cartilage homeostasis and driving inflammatory pathway activation. These pathways become dysregulated and form a positive feedback loop, increasing …

Surface Characterization Of Accident Tolerant Fuel Claddings Candidates After Prolonged Exposure To Steam Oxidation, Connor F. Donlan

Theses and Dissertations

Accident Tolerant Fuel Claddings are designed to improve fuel performance and safety in abnormal reactor conditions. The development of these cladding materials has become a top priority for the nuclear community, with incidents such as the Three Mile Island accident and the Fukashima Dai-chi accident. The development of these claddings has resulted in 2 subsections: coating current claddings or replacing cladding materials with new materials. The claddings studied in this thesis are a Zircaloy-4 cladding coated with chromium through physical vapor deposition, Zircaloy-4, and a FeCrAl alloy, C26M. This thesis assessed the surface chemistry, roughness, and wettability after extended exposure …

Evaluating Neuromuscular Function Of The Biceps Brachii After Spinal Cord Injury: Assessment Of Voluntary Activation And Motor Evoked Potential Input-Output Curves Using Transcranial Magnetic Stimulation, Thibault Roumengous

Theses and Dissertations

Activation of upper limb muscles is important for independent living after cervical spinal cord injury (SCI) that results in tetraplegia. An emerging, non-invasive approach to address post-SCI muscle weakness is modulation of the nervous system. A long-term goal is to develop neuromodulation techniques to reinnervate (i.e. resupply nerve to) muscle fiber and thereby increase muscle function in individuals with tetraplegia. Towards this goal, developing monitoring techniques to quantify neuromuscular function is needed to better direct neurorehabilitation. Assessment of voluntary activation (VA) is a promising approach because the location of the stimulus can be applied cortically using transcranial magnetic stimulation (TMS) …

A General Framework For Characterizing And Evaluating Attacker Models For Cps Security Assessment, Christopher S. Deloglos, Christopher Deloglos

Theses and Dissertations

Characterizing the attacker’s perspective is essential to assessing the security posture and resilience of cyber-physical systems. The attacker’s perspective is most often achieved by cyber-security experts (e.g., red teams) who critically challenge and analyze the system from an adversarial stance. Unfortunately, the knowledge and experience of cyber-security experts can be inconsistent leading to situations where there are gaps in the security assessment of a given system. Structured security review processes (such as TAM, Mission Aware, STPA-SEC, and STPA-SafeSec) attempt to standardize the review processes to impart consistency across an organization or application domain. However, with most security review processes, the …

Nebulizer-Based Systems To Improve Pharmaceutical Aerosol Delivery To The Lungs, Benjamin M. Spence

Theses and Dissertations

Combining vibrating mesh nebulizers with additional new technologies leads to substantial improvements in pharmaceutical aerosol delivery to the lungs across therapeutic administration methods. In this dissertation, streamlined components, aerosol administration synchronization, and/or Excipient Enhanced Growth (EEG) technologies were utilized to develop and test several novel devices and aerosol delivery systems. The first focus of this work was to improve the poor delivery efficiency, e.g., 3.6% of nominal dose (Dugernier et al. 2017), of aerosolized medication administration to adult human subjects concurrent with high flow nasal cannula (HFNC) therapy, a form of continuous-flow non-invasive ventilation (NIV). The developed Low-Volume Mixer-Heater (LVMH) …

Deep Learning Assisted Intelligent Visual And Vehicle Tracking Systems, Liang Xu

Theses and Dissertations

Sensor fusion and tracking is the ability to bring together measurements from multiple sensors of the current and past time to estimate the current state of a system. The resulting state estimate is more accurate compared with the direct sensor measurement because it balances between the state prediction based on the assumed motion model and the noisy sensor measurement. Systems can then use the information provided by the sensor fusion and tracking process to support more-intelligent actions and achieve autonomy in a system like an autonomous vehicle. In the past, widely used sensor data are structured, which can be directly …

Evaluation Of Regional Extrathoracic Deposition Of Low- And High-Momentum Aerosol Using Anatomically-Correct In Vitro Airway Models, Sana Hosseini

Theses and Dissertations

The popularity of pulmonary aerosol delivery is increasing due to numerous advantages including non-invasiveness, fast onset of action, avoidance of the first-pass metabolism, and relatively good patient compliance. However, aerosol delivery to the site of action within the extrathoracic regions is challenging to quantify from a regulatory perspective due to the combined effects of the device and formulation characteristics, complex morphology of the airways resulting in extreme anatomical variabilities, and user dependent administration methods. Besides the therapeutic aerosol delivery, electronic nicotine delivery systems (ENDS) are a user-driven aerosol technology used to deliver nicotine as one of the electronic liquid (e-liquid) …

Numerical Investigations Of Transient Wind Shear From Passing Vehicles Near A Road Structure (Part I: Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes Simulations), Hamid Rahai, Assma Begum

Mineta Transportation Institute

In this research, the authors performed unsteady numerical simulations of a moving Ahmed body under a freeway overpass at different distances from the bridge columns in order to evaluate transient wind shear and the wind load on these columns. Results have shown that when the vehicle is at 0.75W distance from the bridge columns, an unsteady wind speed of up to 24 m/s is observed at the columns with a pressure coefficient difference of 0.9. Here W is the width of the vehicle. These results indicate with an appropriate system for harnessing these wind energy potentials, significant renewable electric power …

Developing Guidelines For Assessing The Effectiveness Of Intelligent Compaction Technology, Mehran Mazari, Siavash F. Aval, Siddharth M. Satani, David Corona, Joshua Garrido

Mineta Transportation Institute

Many factors affect pavement compaction quality, which can vary. Such variability may result in an additional number of passes required, extended working hours, higher energy consumption, and negative environmental impacts. The use of Intelligent Compaction (IC) technology during construction can improve the quality and longevity of pavement structures while reducing risk for contractors and project owners alike. This study develops guidelines for the implementation of IC in the compaction of pavement layers as well as performing a preliminary life-cycle cost analysis (LCCA) of IC technology compared to the conventional compaction approach. The environmental impacts of the improved construction process were …

Risk-Averse Optimal Bidding Strategy For A Wind Energy Portfolio Managerincluding Ev Parking Lots For Imbalance Mitigation, Alper Çi̇çek, Ozan Erdi̇nç

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this study, an optimal bidding strategy for a wind energy portfolio manager (WEPM) including electricvehicle parking lots (EVPLs) that aims to maximize profits by trading in the day-ahead (DA) market and balancingmarket (BM) and through bilateral contracts, taking into account line capacities and risk management is proposed. Thementioned structure is modeled in mixed integer linear programming (MILP) framework, and the uncertainties regardingelectric vehicle (EV) behavior, electricity market data, wind power generation are captured via a stochastic approach. Todemonstrate the effectiveness of the model, several case studies are carried out considering Sweden and Turkey electricitymarket prices with different risk aversion …

A New Hybrid Genetic Algorithm For Protein Structure Prediction On The 2dtriangular Lattice, Bouroubi Sadek, Nabil Boumedine

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The flawless functioning of the protein is essentially related to its three-dimensional structure. Therefore,predicting protein structure from its amino acid sequence is a fundamental problem that draws researchers' attentionin many areas. The protein structure prediction problem (PSP) can be formulated as a combinatorial optimization problem based on simplified lattice models such as the hydrophobic-polar model. In this paper, we propose a new hybridalgorithm that combines three different known heuristic algorithms: the genetic algorithm, the tabu search strategy,and the local search algorithm to solve the PSP problem. Regarding the evaluation of the proposed approach, wepresent an experimental study, where we consider …

Development Of Majority Vote Ensemble Feature Selection Algorithm Augmentedwith Rank Allocation To Enhance Turkish Text Categorization, Emi̇n Borandağ, Akin Özçi̇ft, Yeşi̇m Kaygusuz

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The increase in the number of texts as digital documents from numerous sources such as customer reviews,news, and social media has made text categorization crucial in order to be able to manage the enormous amount ofdata. The high dimensional nature of these texts requires a preliminary feature selection task to reduce the featurespace with a potential increase in the prediction accuracy. In this study, we developed an ensemble feature selectionmethod, namely majority vote rank allocation, was developed for Turkish text categorization purposes. The methoduses a majority voting ensemble strategy in combination with a rank allocation approach to combine weak filters …

Efficient Hybrid Passive Method For The Detection And Localization Of Copy-Moveand Spliced Images, Navneet Kaur, Neeru Jindal, Kulbir Singh

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Digital passive image forgery methods are extensively used to verify the authenticity and integrity of images.Splicing and copy-move are the most common types of passive digital image forgeries. Several approaches have beenproposed to detect these forgeries separately, but very few approaches are available that can detect them simultaneously.However, a more e?icient method is still in demand to meet the day-to-day challenges to detect these forgeries at thesame time. So, a passive hybrid approach based on discrete fractional cosine transform (DFrCT) and local binarypattern (LBP) is proposed to detect copy-move and splicing forgeries simultaneously. The extra parameter i.e. fractionalparameter of DFrCT …

Neuro-Adaptive Backstepping Integral Sliding Mode Control Design For Nonlinearwind Energy Conversion System, Imran Ullah Khan, Laiq Khan, Qudrat Khan, Shafaat Ullah, Uzair Khan, Saghir Ahmad

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The electrical power extracted from a wind energy conversion system (WECS) tends to be inconsistentdue to the intermittent nature of the wind. This issue is addressed by formulating a maximum power point tracking(MPPT) control strategy that optimizes the power extraction from the WECS under a wide range of wind speed profiles.This research article focuses on the formulation of a nonlinear neuro-adaptive backstepping integral sliding mode control(NABISMC) based MPPT strategy for a standalone, variable speed, fixed-pitch WECS equipped with a permanentmagnet synchronous generator (PMSG). The proposed paradigm is a hybrid of the conventional backstepping andthe integral sliding mode control (ISMC) based …

Impact Of Image Segmentation Techniques On Celiac Disease Classification Usingscale Invariant Texture Descriptors For Standard Flexible Endoscopic Systems, Manarbek Saken, Munkhtsetseg Banzragch Yağci, Nejat Yumuşak

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Celiac disease (CD) is quite common and is a proximal small bowel disease that develops as a permanentintolerance to gluten and other cereal proteins in cereals. It is considered as one of the most di?icult diseases to diagnose.Histopathological evidence of small bowel biopsies taken during endoscopy remains the gold standard for diagnosis.Therefore, computer-aided detection (CAD) systems in endoscopy are a newly emerging technology to enhance thediagnostic accuracy of the disease and to save time and manpower. For this reason, a hybrid machine learning methodshave been applied for the CAD of celiac disease. Firstly, a context-based optimal multilevel thresholding technique wasemployed …

Ensemble Learning Of Multiview Cnn Models For Survival Time Prediction Of Braintumor Patients Using Multimodal Mri Scans, Abdela Ahmed Mossa, Ulus Çevi̇k

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Brain tumors have been one of the most common life-threatening diseases for all mankind. There have beenhuge efforts dedicated to the development of medical imaging techniques and radiomics to diagnose tumor patients quicklyand e?iciently. One of the main aims is to ensure that preoperative overall survival time (OS) prediction is accurate.Recently, deep learning (DL) algorithms, and particularly convolutional neural networks (CNNs) achieved promisingperformances in almost all computer vision fields. CNNs demand large training datasets and high computational costs.However, curating large annotated medical datasets are difficult and resource-intensive. The performances of singlelearners are also unsatisfactory for small datasets. Thus, this study …

Automated Classification Of Bi-Rads In Textual Mammography Reports, Mostafa Boroumandzadeh, Elham Parvinnia

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

The main purpose of this paper is to process key information in medical text records and also classifypatients, per different levels of breast imaging-reporting and data system (BI-RADS). The BI-RADS is a scheme for thestandardization of breast imaging reports. Therefore, medical text mining is employed to classify mammography reportssupported BI-RADS. In this research, a new method is proposed for automated BI-RADS classifications extraction fromtextual reports and improves the therapeutic procedures. At first, a mammography lexicon is employed for choosingkeywords from medical text reports. Word2vec and term frequency inverse document frequency (TFIDF) techniques areused for extracting features, finally, they are combined …

Robust Image Hashing Based On Structural And Perceptual Features Forauthentication Of Color Images, Muhammad Farhan Khan, Syed Muhammad Monir, Imran Naseem

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Image hashing is one of the most celebrated techniques regarding the discipline of image forensics, imageretrieval, image indexing, content verification, and zero watermarking. For such sensitive and complex problems,generation of a unique and robust image hash is an utmost prerequisite for an image identifier driven from the perceptualcontents of an image. As a design perspective, it is essential for an image hash to have robustness and optimizeddiscriminative capability. We propose a robust image hashing technique by acquiring perceptual features based on anovel distance magnitude profile utilizing color pixel incongruity among the contiguous pixels, as well as producing astructural image for …

Low Communication Parallel Distributed Adaptive Signal Processing (Lc-Pdasp)Architecture For Processing-Inefficient Platforms, Hasan Raza, Ghalib Hussain, Noor Khan

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

In this paper, a low communication parallel distributed adaptive signal processing (LC-PDASP) architecturefor a group of computationally incapable and inexpensive small platforms is introduced. The proposed architectureis capable of running computationally high adaptive filtering algorithms parallely with minimally low communicationoverhead. A recursive least square (RLS) adaptive algorithm based on the application of multiple-input multiple-output(MIMO) channel estimation is implemented on the proposed LC-PDASP architecture. Complexity and Communicationburden of proposed LC-PDASP architecture are compared with that of conventional PDASP architecture. The compar-ative analysis shows that the proposed LC-PDASP architecture exhibits low computational complexity and provides animprovement more than of85%reduced communication burden than …

Long Term Stability Of 1.3 Ghz High Power Rf Amplifier, Özlem Karsli, İ.Evri̇m Çolak

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Turkish accelerator and radiation laboratory (TARLA) is an accelerator based oscillator mode free electronlaser (FEL) facility under construction. The acceleration beamline includes a fundamental buncher (FB) in order to confine the electron beam into a compressed bunch. In this study, we demonstrate the commissioning tests of 500 W RF amplifier powering FB and present the phase stability dependence on the pressure and temperature of the water cooling line under long time run conditions.As the disturbing effects break down the synchronization between the particle and RF power during acceleration, the reasons disquieting the stability of the RF amplifier are investigated. One …

Improvements Of Torque Ripple Reduction In Dtc Im Drive Witharbitrary Number Of Voltage Intensities And Automatic Algorithm Modification, Marko Rosic, Sanja Antic, Milan Bebic

Turkish Journal of Electrical Engineering and Computer Sciences

Techniques of direct torque control (DTC) are very common in high-performance electric motor drives.Retaining the good features of the conventional DTC and reducing torque ripple have been the subject of many years ofresearch work on improving these algorithms. This paper presents the DTC algorithm with discretized voltage vectorsbased on the use of conventional switching table (ST-DTC). This algorithm enables a significant torque ripple reductionby defining the corresponding number of the given voltage intensity while retaining calculation simplicity and fast torqueresponse typical of the ST-DTC algorithms. The proposed algorithm has the ability for its automatic modificationdepending on the defined number of …