Engineering Commons^™

Engineering Enzymatic Pathways In The Gut Microbiome To Control Dietary Isoflavone Metabolism, Lenaiya Allisen Kydd

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

ABSTRACT: Observing how plasmids persist within the gut can help us understand how newly introduced genes are transmitted within the gut microbiome. I sought to determine the persistence of genetic constructs introduced to the murine gut and then develop our own genetic system to be delivered to the gut to engineer the microbiome in its ability to convert certain dietary isoflavones. In my initial experiments, mice were given bacteria containing a genetically engineered plasmid and were examined for the persistence of the plasmid in the gut. I found long-term persistence of the plasmid in the gut for up to 2 …

Novel Nanocomposites For The Treatment Of Lung Infections, Uday Kumar Chintapula

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Lung infections, especially lower respiratory tract infections and their associated pneumonias, are one of the leading causes of death, accounting for more than 4 million fatalities every year worldwide. Bacterial pathogens are involved in many lower respiratory tract infections including emerging antibiotic resistant respiratory pathogens such as methicillin-resistant staphylococcus aureus (MRSA). Current interventions for MRSA lung infections include systemic antibiotic treatments for an extended period leading to various side effects such as acute kidney injury, nephrotoxicity, and so on. To overcome these limitations, the goal of this dissertation research is to develop a drug delivery system, which includes pathogen-specific drug-loaded …

Development Of Algorithms To Analyze Electrogastrography (Egg) For Neonatal Gastrointestinal Development And Electroencephalography (Eeg) For Effects Of Led-Based Pre-Frontal Light Stimulation, Akhil Mahendra M Chaudhari

Bioengineering Dissertations - Archive

Algorithm development, and biological signal processing are the key components for new applications of successful medical diagnosis that can provide physiological and functional information to better understand human condition for either patients with certain diseases or healthy human beings. Neuroimaging tools, such as functional near infrared spectroscopy (fNIRS), and electrogastrography (EGG) have been used to investigate the gut maturity in diseased and healthy state; and electroencephalogram (EEG) have been used to investigate brain functions in response to neuromodulated or task-based interventions. Accordingly, my dissertation focused on algorithm development and signal processing for two major topics: (1) to outline EGG response …

Hydrodynamic Forces On Stream-Crossing Bridges – Consideration Of Flow Parameters, Bridge Geometry, And Debris, Shah Md Imran Kabir

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

ABSTRACT: This thesis examines the interaction of flood flow with bridge superstructures by considering the effects of the flow parameters, bridge geometry, debris, and bridge substructures. The hydrodynamic forces are expressed by using force and moment coefficient charts to portray the effect of bridge submersion, bridge position with respect to the channel bed, flood velocity, and bridge geometry. Of the 580,000 bridges in the United States, 83% span streams and rivers that may subject them to floods and debris loads. Although bridges are designed to withstand hydrodynamic forces, the most frequent causes of failure are attributed to hydraulic events, including …

Experimental Validation Of A Reflective Long Period Grating Design Methodology, Sohel Rana, Nirmala Kandadai, Harish Subbaraman

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

In this work, we present an experimental demonstration of our previously published modeling work on reflective long period grating (LPG). To provide the practical realization of the modeling work, we coat a long segment of fiber both in the tail length and the end facet beyond the gratings with silver to invert the transmission mode LPG to reflection mode LPG. We then measure the LPG characteristics in both the transmission and reflection mode and validate our findings from modeling work. We further build temperature and refractive index (RI) sensors and demonstrate temperature sensing from 21 °C to 191 °C with …

A Spatiotemporal Analysis Of Food Pantry Accessibility In Washington County, Arkansas, Coleman Warren

Industrial Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Food pantries are an essential resource for impoverished and food insecure communities. Washington County, Arkansas has a food insecurity rate of 14.3% as compared to the national average of 10.9% (Feeding America, 2019). The Northwest Arkansas Food Bank has a robust pantry network in Washington County to support families and individuals who struggle with food insecurity.

We conducted a spatiotemporal analysis of food pantry accessibility in Washington County, Arkansas to evaluate the effectiveness of the food pantry network in Washington County at supporting communities with the most need. This analysis was conducted using the Two-Step Floating Catchment Area (2SFCA) method …

A Study On Effect Of Manufacturing Parameters On Morphology Of A356 Aluminum Foam, Nikhil Nanabhau Mahajan

All Theses

Metal foams have shown an excellent promise for usage as multifunctional material concerning research & development in the last 20 years. They provide remarkable mechanical as well as physical properties being lightweight. Open-cell metal foams have already been used in sound and noise absorption. Open-cell metal foams are outstanding for use in heat exchangers, filters, and many more applications, while closed-cell foams show excellent characteristics in impact energy absorptions. Closed-cell metal foams have higher energy absorption than their solid parent metal as they convert most of the impact energy into deformation energy. Metal foams have been used as prominent safeguard …

Improving Intelligent Transportation Safety And Reliability Through Lowering Costs, Integrating Machine Learning, And Studying Model Sensitivity, Cavender Holt

All Theses

As intelligent transportation becomes increasingly prevalent in the domain of transportation, it is essential to understand the safety, reliability, and performance of these systems. We investigate two primary areas in the problem domain. The first area concerns increasing the feasibility and reducing the cost of deploying pedestrian detection systems to intersections in order to increase safety. By allowing pedestrian detection to be placed in intersections, the data can be better utilized to create systems to prevent accidents from occurring. By employing a dynamic compression scheme for pedestrian detection, we show the reduction of network bandwidth improved by 2.12× over the …

Autonomous Aerial Vehicles Distributed Control And Interactive Games, Yusuf Kartal

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Dissertations - Archive

As the number of quadrotors and other Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) increases in industrial and urban areas, the development of reliable engineering methods to control their behavior as they interact with each other becomes of central interest in control research. With the increase in demand for UAVs to work together, several real-life challenges need to be addressed that include the implementation, test, and validation of the control algorithms in flight test experiments. On the one hand, the interests of UAVs may be in harmony to perform certain tasks such as transportation, surveillance and reconnaissance. On the other hand, the interests …

Asset Management Of Wastewater Interceptors Adjacent To Bodies Of Water, Mohammad Bani Fawwaz

Civil Engineering Dissertations - Archive

This dissertation presents the viability of managing a pipeline network adjacent to bodies of water to maximize asset life by evaluating the significant factors that affect the condition levels of pipeline assets. Pipeline asset management derives from pipelines’ physical conditions, condition rating, and serviceability through testing, monitoring, and analyzing rupture history. The remaining asset life and structural condition of the pipeline network running near and under bodies of water are often hard to predict. In case of pipeline failure, exuberant damages will occur to the surrounding environment, adding up to disruption in service and repairing costs. This research develops Multinomial …

Photonic Crystal Surface Emitting Lasers, Akhil Raj Kumar Kalapala

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

ABSTRACT: Since the initial proposal in 1999 by Noda et al., photonic crystal surface emitting lasers (PCSELs) have proven to achieve large area, coherent lasing with a narrow, single mode beam. Owing to their unique orthogonal electrical/optical cavity scheme, PCSELs have emerged as one of the most promising platforms for high power diode lasers. The evanescent coupling of the optical mode in the active region with the photonic crystal layer enables large area two dimensional in-plane lasing mode in the photonic crystal cavity due to bandedge effect. Bragg’s multi-order diffraction provides the necessary feedback for the lasing and enhances surface …

Evaluation And Modeling Of Power System Components, Zachary Ryan Bailey

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Future power system architectures will rely on a combination of rotating machines, power electronic devices, and energy storage. While it is possible to procure each component separately and conduct studies incorporating these devices into a system, increases in computing power and advanced computer modeling software have expanded the opportunity for research to be conducted on power system architectures without the need for actual hardware. This provides flexibility by allowing the user to design models of individual components that can then be integrated together or effortlessly interchanged depending on the function or testbed design that is being studied. The UTA IDEAL …

Optimizing The Performance Of Analytical Chemistry Instrumentation, Srividya Sekar

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

Surrogate Optimization and Global Optimization approaches to optimize underlying functions have been studied and used extensively in the field of Operations Research. However, there are very few instances where these approaches have been applied and tested in applications with uncertainty. Additionally, extensive focus and effort have been put into developing highly complex metamodels rather than globally optimizing these metamodels. In this study, we propose a Mixed Integer Quadratically Constrained Program (MIQCP) based approach that globally optimizes a Quintic Multivariate Adaptive Regression Splines (QMARS) metamodel. The QMARS-MIQCP based optimization is applied to a global optimization framework called QMARS-MIQCP-OPT to optimize several …

Exploring Deep Learning In Finance, Abhijit Anand Anand Deshpande

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Theses - Archive

Financial market analysis is process of analyzing market closely and predict the next move of market whether it will go up or down using historical data. Financial market is stochastic and has rapid changes over time, therefore it is very difficult to predict. The main goal of this work is to understand novel approaches of machine learning in finance, data parsing techniques, labelling the financial data. Furthermore, understand state of art Transformer model and implement and compare results with other traditional machine learning algorithms. Experiment carried out in python along with pytorch.

Poly Camtracker, Nickolas W. Ogilvie, Shawn W. Thai

Electrical Engineering

With the onset of the post-pandemic virtual classroom world, more and more classes are attempting hybrid-style instruction. To accomplish that, recordings of lectures are widely used, with presentation-sharing & audio recording capability. However, video recordings of lectures, with the ability to see the board, lab equipment, and the professor, are the optimal way to give the virtual students the best experience. Right now, technology is readily available for static camera recordings of lecture halls, but this may not suffice when it comes to larger lecture halls and lab demonstrations, where directed shots of equipment or the whiteboard are needed in …

Wave Interactions And Energy Cascade, Bailey Downing

Civil Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Structural engineers design buildings and their components to withstand code-specified wind loads. The ASCE 7-16 manual sets the standards for calculating wind loads in the U.S. Depending on the velocity of wind, deflections may occur as wind passes through the building. The pressure reported from ASCE are based on wind tunnel measurements. The peak pressure from ASCE 7 is much less than what is measured from the field for a low-rise building. As an alternative economic tool, Computer modeling has been developed to help with this dilemma. Methods based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) are used to calculate velocities and …

Affordable Autonomous Vehicles For Deployment After Disastrous Events, Shannon Abolmaali

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

In disastrous events such as hurricanes and tornadoes, it has been observed that people get stranded and helpless without a feasible way to escape during those emergency situations. This became very evident during hurricanes, such as Katrina and Ida affecting millions of people seeking immediate rescue efforts. With the use of artificial intelligence and machine learning, we envision an autonomous vehicle, AV, which is able to find the most optimal and safest way to help those who are stranded to get them to a safe location. Electric vehicles, EV, and Autonomous Vehicles, AV, is becoming the future; minimizing the carbon …

Speaker Diarization And Identification From Single-Channel Classroom Audio Recording Using Virtual Microphones, Antonio Gomez

Electrical and Computer Engineering ETDs

Speaker identification in noisy audio recordings, specifically those from collaborative learning environments, can be extremely challenging. There is a need to identify individual students talking in small groups from other students talking at the same time. To solve the problem, we assume the use of a single microphone per student group without any access to previous large datasets for training.

This dissertation proposes a method of speaker identification using cross-correlation patterns associated to an array of virtual microphones, centered around the physical microphone. The virtual microphones are simulated by using approximate speaker geometry observed from a video recording. The patterns …

Interdiction Models To Disrupt The Operations Of Sex Trafficking And Other Forced Illicit Labor Networks, Michael T. Clark

All Theses

Sex traffickers often force their victims to work in both commercial sex markets and perform other illicit activities (e.g., drug dealing, theft, and fraud). Current literature has failed to address interdiction models that aim to disrupt all components of a sex traffickers’ operation, including these other illicit activities. In this thesis, we present a interdiction problem, and its single-level linear optimization reformulation, to reduce the profit of a human trafficking network concurrently operating in the commercial sex market and other illicit activity markets. Our novel formulation aims to investigate the practical implications of interdiction decisions made to disrupt a human …

A Multi-Perspective Architecture Framework For Managing Multi-Fidelity Simulations Using Feature-Based Product Line Engineering, Ryan Colletti

All Dissertations

This dissertation aims to facilitate the process for generating system-level simulations using new and existing product line engineering practices within a SysML reference architecture of the simulation domain. The modern passenger vehicle is becoming increasingly complex with the addition of more software-oriented features, especially Advanced Driver Assistance Systems (ADAS), leading to higher numbers of recalls. To mitigate this, the result of this research is the novel Vehicle Simulation Architecture Framework (VSAF). This dissertation presents the VSAF, its innovations, and a characterization of its scalability, applicability, and initial investment vs. incremental cost tradeoffs as compared to those of current simulation practices. …

Modeling Energy Efficiency Of Solar Thermal Powered Batch Reverse Osmosis, Lahiri Chitturi

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

Batch reverse osmosis is the most energy efficient water desalination method and when powered by renewable energy, suggests promise for a cost-effective, low-carbon solution. One abundant energy source on Earth is solar energy which can be implemented using solar panels which have an established maximum efficiency of 25%, or solar thermal engines which can outperform solar photovoltaic systems by achieving higher efficiencies between 20% and 40% according to market research. Here, an approach to model and quantify the energy efficiency of a direct-drive solar thermal powered batch reverse osmosis system is presented to indicate the feasibility of pursuing this technology. …

Managing Humidity In Electronics Using Water Vapor-Selective Membranes, Songhao Wu, Andrew J. Fix, Allison Mou, David M. Warsinger, James Braun

Discovery Undergraduate Interdisciplinary Research Internship

Abstract: As outdoor electronics have become prevalent in every aspect of daily life, handling humidity in them is an emerging issue for reliable devices. As water vapor enters the electronics enclosure, there is a risk of condensation, which could prevent the electronics from functioning and further damage the device. Traditionally, the humidity removal for electronics is usually done by heating the air within the enclosure, which can be energy-intensive and less efficient. Vapor selective membrane systems are promising alternatives for air heating dehumidification as they do not require heating energy for water vapor removal. It allows water vapor transport through …

Evaluating And Addressing The Transportation Challenges Of Small-Scale Farmers And Ranchers In Regional Food Systems, Narjes Sadeghiamirshahidi

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

During the last 20 years, there has been a significant increase in US consumers’ interest in local food. At the same time, there is substantial potential demand for crops produced by local small and mid-size farmers and ranchers whose market channels are short distance distributions Although there is a variety of definitions for local food, it often refers to direct-to-customer market channels for farmers and ranchers, including farmers’ markets and Community Supported Agriculture (CSA), as well as distribution through local businesses like restaurants, grocery stores, as well as local institutions such as hospitals and schools. However, small and mid-size farmers …

Leveraging Ai And Supply Chain Technologies With Thermal Imaging And Telemedicine For Early Detection And Prevention Of Covid-19 And Respiratory Infections In Urm Communities, Gohar Azeem

Industrial, Manufacturing, and Systems Engineering Dissertations - Archive

The underserved population could be at risk during the times of crisis, unless there is strong involvement from government agencies such as local and state Health departments and federal Center for Disease Control (CDC). The COVID-19 pandemic was a crisis of different proportion, creating a different type of burden on government agencies. Vulnerable communities including the elderly populations and communities of color have been especially hard hit by this pandemic. This forced these agencies to change their strategies and supply chains to support all populations receiving therapeutics. The National Science Foundation (NSF Award # 2028612) funded this research to help …

Microfluidic Flow Focusing Platforms For Optofluidic Droplet Laser Development, Chen Zhang

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

ABSTRACT: Optofluidic droplet lasers have been developed for different applications in biomedical sciences, such as biosensing, cell tracking, tissue imaging, on-chip spectroscopy, and flow cytometry. Utilizing different generation methods, droplet lasers can be categorized as either static droplet lasers or droplet lasers on the flow. Static droplet lasers, which are supported by a surface or levitated by an external force, can be optically probed for an extended period of time, and thus enabling continuous monitoring of the lasing emission. However, static droplet lasers suffer from low-throughput generation, large size distribution, and poor reproducibility. In contrast, droplet lasers on the flow …

Power Allocation And Massive Mimo Channel Modeling For 5g Wireless Communications, Zhangliang Chen

Electrical Engineering Dissertations - Archive

To meet the demand for wireless communication transmission rate to reach a thousand times of the existing system in 2021, the fifth-generation (5G) mobile communication system was developed. Compared with Long-Term Evolution (LTE), the 5G mobile communication needs to be transmitted in wireless breakthrough innovation in technology to achieve the goal of ten times increase in spectrum efficiency and power efficiency. As a time series analysis tool based on vector autoregression, Granger causal analysis originated in the field of econometrics, and its staged generalized transfer entropy (TE) based on conditional co-information in information theory has been widely used in recent …

Surface Flashover Under Various Surface Conditions, Bradley A. Hannum

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Electrical insulators are critical components used in every high voltage application whether it is operated continuously or in a pulsed mode. Bulk dielectric breakdown and surface flashover must be prevented in all use cases, especially those that occur in polluted environments. Though electrical standards have been written as a guide to prevent insulator surface flashover, such as Underwriters Laboratories (UL) 840, they are not directly applicable to applications where size and weight are critical. UL 840 experimental design is vague, does not consider all environments, and is written primarily with the electric power utilities in mind. The research presented here …

Evolution Prediction Of Hysteresis Behavior Of Sand Under Cyclic Loading, Pingxin Xia, Longtan Shao, Wen Deng, Chao Zeng

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Soil cyclic degradation is a serious issue that should be considered in engineering design and maintenance. The hysteretic response causes strength degradation and excessive settlement of soil structure in engineered and natural geosystems. Hysteresis is essentially the coupling deformation of elastic and plastic components during reloading and unloading processes. Conventional hysteretic models for sand in the elastoplastic framework rely highly on yield surface or potential surface evolution and fall short on complexity and inaccuracy. This study proposes a decoupling method to describe the hysteretic response of sand. In contrast to the conventional elastoplastic approach, this decoupling method can directly decouple …

Implementation Of The Linear Amplitude Sweep Test To Evaluate Fatigue Resistance Of Highly Polymerized Asphalt Binders, Jun Liu, Yizhuang David Wang, Jenny Liu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Highly polymerized asphalt binders (HPABs) such as PG 64-40 have been increasingly used in cold regions such as Alaska in recent years. However, there are currently considerable data gaps when it comes to the characterizations of the HPABs, especially their fatigue behaviors. The objective of this study is to apply the linear amplitude sweep (LAS) test with the viscoelastic continuum damage (VECD) model to assess the fatigue resistance of HPABs. Three HPABs (PG 52-40, PG 64-40, and PG 52-46) and one unmodified binder (PG 52-28) were used in the study. The fatigue failure during LAS tests on HPABs was defined, …

Comprehensive Evaluation Of Self-Healing Polyampholyte Gel Particles For The Severe Leakoff Control Of Drilling Fluids, Lili Yang, Chunlin Xie, Tian Ao, Kaixiao Cui, Guancheng Jiang, Baojun Bai, Yongwei Zhang, Jun Yang, Xingxing Wang, Weiguo Tian

Geosciences and Geological and Petroleum Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Lost circulation has been a serious problem to be solved in many drilling practices during oil, gas and geothermal well drillings. Many materials have been developed and evaluated for the purpose. However, their performance to plug severe leakoff is very limited. Herein, an injectable self-healing hydrogel based on polyampholyte with sulfonated and quaternary ammonium functionalities (P(MPTC-co-NaSS)) was developed and comprehensively evaluated to prevent the severe loss of fluids to formation. By incorporating cation-π (π is for aromatic residues) interaction, the hydrogel shown self-healing property and robustness in severe environment (temperature, salt) by comparison with other hydrogels merely consisting of cation-anion …