Engineering Commons^™

The Message Design Of Raiders Of The Lost Ark On The Atari 2600 & A Fan’S Map, Quick Start, And Strategy Guide, Miguel Ramlatchan, William I. Ramlatchan

Distance Learning Faculty & Staff Books

The message design and human performance technology in video games, especially early video games have always been fascinating to me. From an instructional design perspective, the capabilities of the technology of the classic game consoles required a careful balance of achievable objectives, cognitive task analysis, guided problem solving, and message design. Raiders on the Atari is an excellent example of this balance. It is an epic adventure game, spanning 13+ distinct areas, with an inventory of items, where those hard to find items had to be used by the player to solve problems during their quest (and who would have …

Anthropogenic Stressors Compound Climate Impacts On Inland Lake Dynamics: The Case Of Hamun Lakes, Arash Modaresi Rad, Jason Kreitler, John T. Abatzoglou, Kendra Fallon, Kevin R. Roche, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Inland lakes face unprecedented pressures from climatic and anthropogenic stresses, causing their recession and desiccation globally. Climate change is increasingly blamed for such environmental degradation, but in many regions, direct anthropogenic pressures compound, and sometimes supersede, climatic factors. This study examined a human-environmental system – the terminal Hamun Lakes on the Iran-Afghanistan border – that embodies amplified challenges of inland waters. Satellite and climatic data from 1984 to 2019 were fused, which documented that the Hamun Lakes lost 89% of their surface area between 1999 and 2001 (3809 km² versus 410 km²), coincident with a basin-wide, multi-year …

Performance Modeling And Analysis Of A Thermoelectric Building Envelope For Space Heating, Xiaoli Liu, Ming Qu, Kazuaki Yazawa, Jorge Kohanoff, Piotr Chudzinski, Lorenzo Stella, Brian Norton, Niall Holmes Dr., Ruchita Jani, Hongxi Yin

Conference papers

To provide energy-efficient space heating and cooling, a thermoelectric building envelope (TBE) embeds thermoelectric devices in building walls. The thermoelectric device in the building envelope can provide active heating and cooling without requiring refrigerant use and energy transport among subsystems. Thus, the TBE system is energy and environmentally friendly. A few studies experimentally investigated the TBE under limited operating conditions, and only simplified models for the commercial thermoelectric module (TEM) were developed to quantify its performance. A holistic approach to optimum system performance is needed for the optimal system design and operation. The study developed a holistic TBE-building system model …

Mdam-Drnet: Dual Channel Residual Network With Multi-Directional Attention Mechanism In Strawberry Leaf Diseases Detection, Tingjing Liao, Ruoli Yang, Peirui Zhao, Wenhua Zhou, Mingfang He, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The growth of strawberry plants is affected by a variety of strawberry leaf diseases. Yet, due to the complexity of these diseases' spots in terms of color and texture, their manual identification requires much time and energy. Developing a more efficient identification method could be imperative for improving the yield and quality of strawberry crops. To that end, here we proposed a detection framework for strawberry leaf diseases based on a dual-channel residual network with a multi-directional attention mechanism (MDAM-DRNet). (1) In order to fully extract the color features from images of diseased strawberry leaves, this paper constructed a color …

Integrated Socio-Environmental Vulnerability Assessment Of Coastal Hazards Using Data-Driven And Multi-Criteria Analysis Approaches, Ahad Hasan Tanim, Erfan Goharian, Hamid Moradkhani

Faculty Publications

Coastal hazard vulnerability assessment has been centered around the multi-variate analysis of geo-physical and hydroclimate data. The representation of coupled socio-environmental factors has often been ignored in vulnerability assessment. This study develops an integrated socio-environmental Coastal Vulnerability Index (CVI), which simultaneously combines information from five vulnerability groups: biophysical, hydroclimate, socio-economic, ecological, and shoreline. Using the Multi-Criteria Decision Making (MCDM) approach, two CVI (CVI-50 and CVI-90) have been developed based on average and extreme conditions of the factors. Each CVI is then compared to a data-driven CVI, which is formed based on Probabilistic Principal Component Analysis (PPCA). Both MCDM and PPCA …

Reactions In The Microannulus Of A Wellbore System With Produced Water From The Permian Basin, Ernesto J. Perea

Civil Engineering ETDs

The objective of this study is to determine the effect of the products from steel corrosion and cement dissolution after reaction with produced water (PW) on the permeability of a wellbore microannulus. The wellbore microannulus is the interface between wellbore cement and steel casing and is often identified as a leakage pathway in wellbore systems. The need to better understand the impact of PW on well integrity aids in the assessment of environmental impacts of energy production. Static batch reactors were used to expose a cement – steel microannulus to two PW solutions, a simulated PW, and a field sampled …

Rapid Response Protocol (Rrp) For Monitoring Water Quality Parameters For Wildfire Disturbance, Paige G. Tunby

Civil Engineering ETDs

The increase in wildfire frequency and intensity has been driven by the sensitivity of fire regimes to climate changes and fire suppression. Wildfires impact hydrological and environmental processes and ecosystem service due to the mobilization of wildfire debris by precipitation. Data on post-fire water quality dynamics have been measured in a few study cases from burned watersheds where sensors were deployed to monitor non-fire-related water quality issues. This has led to a dearth of data for understanding the effects of wildfire disturbances on fluvial networks. To close the gap in available water quality data, we have created a rapid response …

Mdam-Drnet: Dual Channel Residual Network With Multi-Directional Attention Mechanism In Strawberry Leaf Diseases Detection, Tingjing Liao, Ruoli Yang, Peirui Zhao, Wenhua Zhou, Mingfang He, Liujun Li

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The growth of strawberry plants is affected by a variety of strawberry leaf diseases. Yet, due to the complexity of these diseases' spots in terms of color and texture, their manual identification requires much time and energy. Developing a more efficient identification method could be imperative for improving the yield and quality of strawberry crops. To that end, here we proposed a detection framework for strawberry leaf diseases based on a dual-channel residual network with a multi-directional attention mechanism (MDAM-DRNet). (1) In order to fully extract the color features from images of diseased strawberry leaves, this paper constructed a color …

Neural Networks For Interference Mitigation In Satellite Communication Systems, Martha E. Cash

LSU Master's Theses

The objective of this thesis is to utilize the power of machine learning to develop a neural network-aided receiver in a DVBS-2X satellite communication system to improve the downlink transmission quality in the presence of interference. An emphasis is placed on mitigating the effects caused by non-linear distortions, carrier frequency offset, and additive white Gaussian noise. This thesis proposes a feed-forward neural network with two hidden layers to compensate for the distortions in the received signal. The proposed system model uses 16-APSK modulation scheme. The neural network is tested under varying degrees of non-linear distortion, frequency offsets, and varying levels …

Characterization Of Electrophoretic Deposited Zinc Oxide Nanopartices For The Fabrication Of Next-Generation Nanoscale Electronic Applications, Fawwaz Abduh A. Hazzazi

LSU Doctoral Dissertations

Several reports state that it is crucial to analyze nanoscale semiconductor materials and devices with potential benefits to meet the need for next-generation nanoelectronics, bio, and nanosensors. The progress in the electronics field is as significant now, with modern technology constantly evolving and a greater focus on more efficient robust optoelectronic applications. This dissertation focuses on the study and examination of the practicality of Electrophoretic Deposition (EPD) of zinc oxide (ZnO) nanoparticles (NPs) for use in semiconductor applications.

The feasibility of several synthesized electrolytes, with and without surfactants and APTES surface functionalization, is discussed. The primary objective of this study …

Tunable Passive Shock And Vibration Isolators For Rotational Isolation, Chase B. Lemaire

LSU Master's Theses

Shock and vibration isolation are a critical need in helmets, which are widely used to protect athletes, workers, soldiers, and astronauts. Passive vibration isolation systems are a good option when mass and volume should be minimized and when the experienced loadings can be predicted. However, it is frequently challenging to find materials and structures which exhibit the optimal vibration and impact isolation properties for an application. As a case study illustrating a novel design paradigm for rotational shock absorption, a family of optimal solutions for the physical properties of American football helmets is presented. Lumped parameter Simulink models simulate a …

Analysis Of Sequential Adsorption-Oxidation Of Vocs On Atomic Layer-Deposited Ptni/Zro2-Sio2dual-Function Materials, Busuyi O. Adebayo, Han Yu, Ali A. Rownaghi, Xinhua Liang, Fateme Rezaei

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

To develop efficient dual-function materials (DFMs) for capture and destruction of volatile organic compounds (VOCs), we prepared a series of composite materials comprising PtNi nanoparticles supported on ZrO₂-promoted SiO₂(PtNi/ZrO₂-SiO₂) via atomic layer deposition (ALD) method and investigated them for sequential adsorption and desorption/catalytic oxidation of benzene, as a model VOC compound. ZrO₂was first deposited on a unimodal SiO₂support, followed by deposition of Pt and Ni nanoparticles with varried amount. Dynamic adsorption experiments were conducted using a 500 ppmv-laden feed at 25 °C and 1 atm, followed by in …

Microfluidic Device For Localized Electroporation, Justin Brooks, Arian Jaberi, Ruiguo Yang

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

Electroporation is a common method of transfection due to its relatively low risk and high transfection efficiency. The most common method of electroporation is bulk electroporation which is easily performed on large quantities of cells yet results in variable levels of viability and transfection efficiency across the population. Localized electroporation is an alternative that can be administered on a similar scale but results in much more consistent with higher quality transfection and higher cell viability. This paper discusses the creation and use of a simple and cost-effective device using porous membrane for performing localized electroporation.

Scale Up Of A Novel Method To Maximize Malonyl-Coa In Escherichia Coli, Clifford Harris Leblanc Iv

LSU Master's Theses

The instability of oil’s price along with its limited availability and impact on the environment motivate the search for an alternative feedstock that can sustain the profitability of chemical companies. Industrial biotechnology can promote renewable sources of energy and products by using microorganisms to produce a wide range of chemical compounds. The three-carbon metabolite, malonyl-CoA, can serve as a precursor to a variety of industrial chemicals. The major hurdle with using malonyl-CoA in industry is that its intracellular concentration in Escherichia Coli is very low. Previous attempts to increase the intracellular level of malonyl-CoA have ranged from genetic engineering of …

Implementation Of Lean And Six Sigma Methodologies To Improve The Operations And Efficiencies Of An Inpatient Pharmacy, Brian Ricks

Medical Engineering Theses

Reducing overhead costs and eliminating process waste are important aspects of any successful organization. Hospital processes are frequently interconnected, with many exchanges of both materials and information between departments. The Inpatient Pharmacy, a key component of any hospital, has hundreds of interactions between departments on any given day, and many processes see the pharmacy acting as producers, consumers, and transporters of goods throughout the hospital. Such a varied role provides broad opportunities for process improvement. Within the broader manufacturing world, the philosophies of Lean and Six Sigma have helped many companies increase their process efficiencies, reduce costs, and increase quality. …

Phase Space Analysis Of Nonlinear Wave Propagation In A Bistable Mechanical Metamaterial With A Defect, Mohammed A. Mohammed, Piyush Grover

Department of Mechanical and Materials Engineering: Faculty Publications

We study the dynamics of solitary waves traveling in a one-dimensional chain of bistable elements in the presence of a local inhomogeneity (`defect'). Numerical simulations reveal that depending upon its initial speed, an incoming solitary wave can get transmitted, captured or reflected upon interaction with the defect. The dynamics are dominated by energy exchange between the wave and a breather mode localized at the defect. We derive a reduced-order two degree of freedom Hamiltonian model for wave-breather interaction, and analyze it using dynamical systems techniques. Lobe dynamics analysis reveals the fine structure of phase space that leads to the complicated …

Structural Health Monitoring Of Fatigue Cracks For Steel Bridges With Wireless Large-Area Strain Sensors, Sdiq Anwar Taher, Jian Li, Jong-Hyun Jeong, Simon Laflamme, Hongki Jo, Caroline Bennett, William N. Collins, Austin Downey

Faculty Publications

This paper presents a field implementation of the structural health monitoring (SHM) of fatigue cracks for steel bridge structures. Steel bridges experience fatigue cracks under repetitive traffic loading, which pose great threats to their structural integrity and can lead to catastrophic failures. Currently, accurate and reliable fatigue crack monitoring for the safety assessment of bridges is still a difficult task. On the other hand, wireless smart sensors have achieved great success in global SHM by enabling long-term modal identifications of civil structures. However, long-term field monitoring of localized damage such as fatigue cracks has been limited due to the lack …

Micro Heat Exchanger To Cool Cerebrospinal Fluid For Brain Injury Treatment, Sachin Dahiya

LSU Master's Theses

Hypothermia is accepted as a method to preserve cells and tissue. Clinical evidence shows that administration of hypothermia could lead to neuroprotection after cardiac arrest. Non-invasive methods such as surface cooling devices, drugs and cold liquid ventilation are available to induce hypothermia. These approaches for achieving hypothermia have not been optimized yet. The surface cooling methods are generally slow and may lead to additional thermal shock to the body. Here, we propose a rapid, selective cooling method for the brain using a micro heat exchanger to cool the cerebrospinal fluids (CSF). We designed and 3D printed a U-type heat exchanger …

Consemblex: A Consensus-Based Transcriptome Assembly Approach That Extends Consemble And Improves Transcriptome Assembly, Richard Mwaba

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

An accurate transcriptome is essential to understanding biological systems enabling omics analyses such as gene expression, gene discovery, and gene-regulatory network construction. However, assembling an accurate transcriptome is challenging, especially for organisms without adequate reference genomes or transcriptomes. While several methods for transcriptome assembly with different approaches exist, it is still difficult to establish the most accurate methods. This thesis explores the different transcriptome assembly methods and compares their performances using simulated benchmark transcriptomes with varying complexity. We also introduce ConSemblEX to improve a consensus-based ensemble transcriptome assembler, ConSemble, in three main areas: we provide the ability to use any …

Addressing The "Leaky Pipeline": A Review And Categorisation Of Actions To Recruit And Retain Women In Computing Education, Alina Berry, Susan Mckeever, Brenda Murphy, Sarah Jane Delany

Conference papers

Gender imbalance in computing education is a well-known issue around the world. For example, in the UK and Ireland, less than 20% of the student population in computer science, ICT and related disciplines are women. Similar figures are seen in the labour force in the field across the EU. The term "leaky pipeline"; is often used to describe the lack of retention of women before they progress to senior roles. Numerous initiatives have targeted the problem of the leaky pipeline in recent decades. This paper provides a comprehensive review of initiatives related to techniques used to boost recruitment and improve …

Removal And Recovery Of Ammonia From Simulated Wastewater Using Ti3C2TX Mxene In Flow Electrode Capacitive Deionization, Naqsh E. Mansoor, Luis A. Diaz, Christopher E. Shuck, Yury Gogotsi, Tedd E. Lister, David Estrada

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Flowing electrode capacitive deionization systems (FE-CDI) have recently garnered attention because of their ability to prevent cross contamination and operate in uninterrupted cycles ad infinitum. Typically, FE-CDI electrodes suffer from low conductivity, reducing deionization performance. Utilization of higher mass loadings to combat this leads to poor rheological properties. Herein, Ti₃C₂T_x MXene was introduced as 1 mg mL⁻¹ slurry electrodes in an FE-CDI system for the removal and recovery of ammonia from simulated agricultural wastewater. The electrode performance was evaluated by operating the FE-CDI system with a feed solution of 500 mg L⁻¹ NH …

Circadiomics: Circadian Omic Web Portal, Muntaha Samad, Forest Agostinelli, Tomoki Sato, Kohei Shimaji, Pierre Baldi

Faculty Publications

Circadian rhythms are a foundational aspect of biology. These rhythms are found at the molecular level in every cell of every living organism and they play a fundamental role in homeostasis and a variety of physiological processes. As a result, biomedical research of circadian rhythms continues to expand at a rapid pace. To support this research, CircadiOmics (http://circadiomics.igb.uci.edu/) is the largest annotated repository and analytic web server for high-throughput omic (e.g. transcriptomic, metabolomic, proteomic) circadian time series experimental data. CircadiOmics contains over 290 experiments and over 100 million individual measurements, across >20 unique tissues/organs, and 11 different species. Users are …

The Effects Of Recycled Waste On Concrete Mixture Properties, Noral Hadbawi

Master of Science in Civil Engineering Theses

Recent years have seen an exponential increase in plastic product consumption worldwide. Manufacturing, and individuals rely on plastics in almost every aspect, as a result, a negative impact on the environment is detected due to the large quantities and low biodegradability of plastic waste. The massive amount of plastic waste and end-of-life tires produced annually required a vast area of landfills, which became a major concern far and wide. To address these issues, an eco-friendly approach consisting of incorporating plastic and rubber waste into engineering applications, such as plastic concrete, and rubberized concrete was proposed. A primary objective of this …

Research Advances Into Mine Safety Science And Engineering, Hani Mitri, Rudrajit Mitra, Ting Ren

Journal of Sustainable Mining

No abstract provided.

Machine Learning Boosts Performance Of Optical Fiber Sensors: A Case Study For Vector Bending Sensing, Chen Zhu, Jie Huang

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The Spectral Response Produced When a High-Sensitivity Optical Fiber Sensor (OFS) is Subject to an External Perturbation Has Recently Been Shown to Contain Rich Information that Can Be Potentially Exploited for Multi-Dimensional Sensing. in This Article, We Propose the Use of Machine Learning to Directly and Statistically Learn the Relation between the Complex Spectral Response from an OFS and a Measurand of Interest, Without Knowing If There Are Distinct and Tractable Features in the Spectrum. as a Proof-Of-Concept Demonstration, It is Shown that a Simple Heterostructure-Based Device with a Capillary Tube Sandwiched between Two Single-Mode Fibers Without Any Fiber Modification …

Efficiently Searching Extreme Mechanical Properties Via Boundless Objective-Free Exploration And Minimal First-Principles Calculations, Joshua Ojih, Mohammed Al-Fahdi, Alejandro David Rodriguez, Kamal Choudhary, Ming Hu

Faculty Publications

Despite the machine learning (ML) methods have been largely used recently, the predicted materials properties usually cannot exceed the range of original training data. We deployed a boundless objective-free exploration approach to combine traditional ML and density functional theory (DFT) in searching extreme material properties. This combination not only improves the efficiency for screening large-scale materials with minimal DFT inquiry, but also yields properties beyond original training range. We use Stein novelty to recommend outliers and then verify using DFT. Validated data are then added into the training dataset for next round iteration. We test the loop of training-recommendation-validation in …

A Broadband Circularly Polarised Slot Antenna For Ambient Rf Energy Harvesting Applications, Khatereh Nadali, Patrick Mcevoy, Max Ammann

Conference papers

Energy harvesting is a potential source of power for integrating compact low-power and self-sustainable wireless devices in ambient backscatter communication systems and IoT networks. In this paper, an electrically small circularly polarised (CP) slot antenna for harvesting is proposed. The measured CP bandwidth for axial ratio values less than 3 dB is 990 MHz (1.7 GHz to 2.69 GHz), while the measured impedance bandwidth is 1,930 MHz (1.45 GHz to 3.38 GHz). The proposed structure can harvest energy from common radio frequency signal emitters operating in GSM 1800/1900, 3G/LTE 2100, 3G/LTE 2300, 4G/LTE 2500, and 2.4GHz Wi-Fi bands, which makes …

Lubrication Performance Of Sunflower Oil Reinforced With Halloysite Clay Nanotubes (Hnt) As Lubricant Additives, Md Abu Sayeed Biswas, Md Mashfiqur Rahman, Javier A. Ortega, Laura Peña-Parás, Demófilo Maldonado-Cortés, José A. González, Ricardo Cantú, Adrián Campos, Eugenio Flores

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

This study evaluates the tribological performance of nanolubricants of a vegetable oil (sunflower oil) reinforced with different concentrations of environmentally-friendly nanoparticles of halloysite clay nanotubes (HNTs). Tribological characterization was performed under different conditions to determine its effect on the nanolubricants’ performance and optimal HNT concentration. The tribological performances under low and high contact pressures were analyzed with a block-on-ring tribometer following the ASTM G-077-05 standard procedure. The extreme pressure (EP) properties of the nanolubricants were determined with a T-02 four-ball tribotester according to the ITeE-PIB Polish method for testing lubricants under scuffing conditions. In addition, the lubrication performance of the …

Credit Card Fraud Detection Using Machine Learning Techniques, Nermin Samy Elhusseny, Shimaa Mohamed Ouf, Amira M. Idrees Ami

Future Computing and Informatics Journal

This is a systematic literature review to reflect the previous studies that dealt with credit card fraud detection and highlight the different machine learning techniques to deal with this problem. Credit cards are now widely utilized daily. The globe has just begun to shift toward financial inclusion, with marginalized people being introduced to the financial sector. As a result of the high volume of e-commerce, there has been a significant increase in credit card fraud. One of the most important parts of today's banking sector is fraud detection. Fraud is one of the most serious concerns in terms of monetary …

Evaluation Of Various Data Acquisition Scenarios For The Retrieval Of Seismic Body Waves From Ambient Noise Seismic Interferometry Technique Via Numerical Modeling, Haitao Cao, Erdi Apatay, Garvie Crane, Boming Wu, Ke Gao, Roohollah Askari

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Seismic interferometry is often proposed as a cost-efficient technique for reservoir monitoring including CO2 sequestration due to its low cost and environmental advantages over active source imaging. Although many studies have demonstrated the ability of seismic interferometry to retrieve surface waves, body wave imaging remains challenging due to their generally lower amplitudes of body waves in seismic interferometry data. An optimum data acquisition strategy can help retrieve low amplitude body waves better, however, rare attempts have been made to evaluate various data acquisition strategies. In this study, we use numerical modeling to examine three different acquisition schemes to evaluate the …