Engineering Commons^™

Emotion Recognition Using Brainwave Datasets, Bethlehem Seid, Heba Elgazzar

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

The purpose of this research project is to analyze the brainwave data collected from MUSE EEG headband and use machine learning techniques to select a small number of features and accurately predict the emotional state of an individual. The brainwave dataset records the reading of the MUSE EEG headband. Supervised machine learning techniques are designed and implemented on a brainwave dataset to predict positive, negative, and neutral emotional state. The classification algorithms: K-Nearest neighbors (KNN), Random Forest, and Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) are used in this research. Further, the dimensions of this dataset were also reduced without compromising the accuracy …

An Overview Of The Qualified Immunity Doctrine And Its Application In Kentucky Law, Ethan Garvin, Joe Dunman

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Qualified immunity is a legal doctrine that protects law enforcement officers from lawsuits if the courts find their actions fit three criteria: the action must be discretionary rather than ministerial, the action must be in good faith, and the action must be within the scope of the employee’s authority. By conducting a survey of cases in both the Kentucky court system and the federal court system, this presentation analyzes how qualified immunity is applied. This presentation looks at the doctrine and what the courts look for in various tort claims involving police officers, such as negligence, assault, and false imprisonment. …

Testing Turmoil, Laura Von Mann, Christopher Beckham

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Test anxiety affects students throughout all grade levels, higher education, and even into adult life, at various levels of severity. With standardized testing becoming increasingly more present in the American school system, the condition known as test anxiety has also become a more prevalent topic amongst researchers and educators. This research aims to better understand test anxiety, its symptoms, causes, and possible treatments in order to ensure student success.

Continuous Authentication Of Smartphone Users Using Machine Learning, Suhana Ambol, Sherif Rashad

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Oral Presentations

Current smartphone security techniques offer less reliability. As an instance, personal identification numbers can be easily guessed or hacked, fingerprint scan requires hardware to operate, and face recognition can be affected by light, other people in the background, or different poses by the users. In addition, they are beneficial for one-time security, therefore commonly used at the time of login to verify users. However, what if there’s a change of user while accessing the smartphone, and the phone is accessed by an intruder after login. To deal with this issue, continuous authentication is applied which regularly and unnoticeably will address …

Analytical Method Development For The Analysis Of Biomass Degradation Products, Calista Dean, Emma Schmittzehe

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The goal of this project is to study the kinetics of hydrothermal liquefaction of biomass. Biomass contains stored chemical energy that can be converted to renewable liquid and gaseous fuels through various processes, but an in-depth understanding of the kinetics of these processes is important in order for them to be feasible on a large scale. Since biomass degradation products depend on the type of biomass used as well as the reaction conditions, this task can be quite complicated. To minimize complications in our initial studies, we will use D-glucose as the starting material. To better understand the degradation pathway’s …

Parental Sensitivity And Children's Emotion Regulation Development, Griffin Newell, Olivia Kee, Shari Kidwell

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Parental sensitivity is critical in the development of children’s attachment to their caregivers. Sensitivity refers to a parent's ability to understand and react synchronously with their child's emotions. Covert hostility is a form of insensitivity in which parents are subtly dismissing. The current study examines both parenting constructs during a frustration task, in relation to child behavior in an emotion interview. As part of a larger longitudinal study, 35 children (average age 6 years) and their parents waited eight minutes for children to be permitted to open a bag of prizes. Parental reactions to their children's behaviors were coded into …

Data Acquisition For Physics With Arduino, Kyle Litton, James Adkins

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

Arduino is an open-source electronics microcontroller board that allows us to marry technology with our environment. There are countless modules commercially available that can be easily manipulated with programs written in the Arduino Integrated Development Environment (IDE), giving users full control of input and output. Several of these modules naturally relate to physics and data acquisition. Since physics analyses rely on data, the Arduino is a natural choice for a system where the user has full control of data collection methods. This poster will present our development of a data acquisition system that integrates equipment commonly found in physics laboratories. …

Improving Patient Outcomes With High Nurse To Patient Ratios: A Quality Improvement Study, Abigail Ross, Alexis Bradshaw, Brenna Murphy, Carson Jones, Cierra Connelley, Haley Nyderek, Hannah Dorton, Morgan Minton, Mary Suzi White

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

According to the United States Registered Nurse Workforce Report Card and Shortage Forecast: A Revisit published in the May/June 2018 issue of the American Journal of Medical Quality, a shortage of registered nurses is projected to spread across the country between 2016 and 2030. Surveyed nurses see the shortage in the future as a catalyst for increasing stress on nurses (98%), lowering patient care quality (93%) and causing nurses to leave the profession (93%) (American Association of Colleges of Nursing, 2021). A thorough literature review was conducted, and 40 studies were reviewed. Common themes that emerged include: high nurse to …

Analytical Derivation And Numerical Validation Of The Functionally Graded Arches Under Pressure And Thermal Loadings, Seba Gravitt, Zhaochao Li

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

The functionally graded materials (FGM) were developed originally to resist the high temperature of aircraft in the 1980s. With the development and improvement of the manufacturing technology, more and more FGM types have been used and studied in practical engineering applications. The present work focuses on the stability performance of the heated FGM arch subjected to the pressure field. The material properties distribute non-uniformly in the thickness direction of the FGM arch, which may show different buckling mechanisms from the conventional uniform materials. It is found the arch expands when the thermal field is introduced. The uniform pressure is applied …

Preservation Of Morehead State History, Jacob Bush, Alana Scott, Dieter Ullrich

2021 Celebration of Student Scholarship - Poster Presentations

This project is being undertaken in an effort to preserve the buildings and history of Morehead State University. It is the goal of this project to make additions to the historic district of MSU by adding qualifying buildings to the National Register of Historic Places. By adding buildings to the Register, they would be recognized on the federal level as historic sites and receive support for their preservation. The Register seeks to protect sites of importance through many ways including the gifting of funding to ensure preservation. The goals of this project will be achieved using historical texts from our …

Unsupervised Multivariate Time Series Clustering, Md Monibor Rahman, Lasitha Vidyaratne, Alex Glandon, Khan Iftekharuddin

College of Engineering & Technology (Batten) Posters

Clustering is widely used in unsupervised machine learning to partition a given set of data into non-overlapping groups. Many real-world applications require processing more complex multivariate time series data characterized by more than one dependent variables. A few works in literature reported multivariate classification using Shapelet learning. However, the clustering of multivariate time series signals using Shapelet learning has not explored yet. Shapelet learning is a process of discovering those Shapelets which contain the most informative features of the time series signal. Discovering suitable Shapelets from many candidates Shapelet has been broadly studied for classification and clustering of univariate time …

Trials And Tribulations Of Humanizing Mice For Cancer Research, Brittney Ruedlinger, Steven Warsof, Eric Feliberti, Mary Beth Hughes, Ayobami ‘Edwin’ Oshin, Chunqi Jiang, Brittany P. Lassiter, Siqi Guo, Stephen J. Beebe

The Graduate School Posters

Cancers are aggressive, evasive, and ruthless killers, claiming millions of lives every year. Cancers are heterogeneous and there is often no single, clearly defined problem as they harness and manipulate a multitude of fundamental mechanisms at the very essence of life. To investigate these mechanisms and vet potential interventive therapies, humanized mice offer a unique model as a prelude to the use of nanosecond pulse stimulation (NPS), a pulse power technology applying nanosecond duration, high electric field pulses, to ablate human tumors. Immunodeficient mouse strains, NSG and NSG-SGM3, were engrafted with human immune cells and human tumors, which would allow …

Comparison Of Three Commercial Automatic Boom Height Systems For Agricultural Sprayers, Travis A. Burgers, John D. Gaard, Brian J. Hyronimus

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

Automatic boom height systems reduce the variability of agricultural sprayer boom height. Consistent boom height is important for three key reasons: to reduce uneven spray dispersion if the boom is too low, to reduce spray droplet drift if the boom is too high, and to reduce damage to the boom or crop if the boom is too low. No data is available comparing commercial boom height systems. Three leading North American automatic boom height systems were compared: John Deere BoomTrac Pro (System A), Raven AutoBoom® XRT (System B), and Norac UC5TM Passive Roll (System C) on a John Deere R4045 …

An Inside Vs. Outside Classification System For Wi-Fi Iot Devices, Paul Gralla

Dartmouth College Undergraduate Theses

We are entering an era in which Smart Devices are increasingly integrated into our daily lives. Everyday objects are gaining computational power to interact with their environments and communicate with each other and the world via the Internet. While the integration of such devices offers many potential benefits to their users, it also gives rise to a unique set of challenges. One of those challenges is to detect whether a device belongs to one’s own ecosystem, or to a neighbor – or represents an unexpected adversary. An important part of determining whether a device is friend or adversary is to …

Water News, Spring 2021, Department Of Agriculture And Biosystems Engineering

SDWRI Water News

Contents:
North Central Region tackle harmful algal blooms
Algae pull nutrients from swine facility manure, air
Study examines woodchip quality in bioreactors
Nonprofit joins battle to mitigate Lake Mitchell algal blooms

Artificial Lumbar Spinal Disc Implant For Treating Degenerative Disc Disease, Sara Layton, Nikhil Pai, Michael Rueckert

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Degenerative disc disease has been one of the leading causes of debilitating back pain, affecting more than 400 million people yearly worldwide. This disease is so common that top neurosurgeons around the world are performing multiple surgeries every day to help relieve their patients of constant pain. The recovery time after an intense lumbar replacement surgery could vary from patient to patient but something most patients have in common is they do not want to do it again because they need to replace the disc after a few years. This is why our team is led by a top Neurosurgeon, …

Skin Phantom For Biowearable Device Testing, Ruby Karimjee, Brooke Fitzwilson, Jordan Spice

Bioengineering Senior Theses

The biowearable industry currently utilizes animals, humans, and cadavers for testing skin mounted bio-devices. There is a need for a sustainable skin phantom that is capable of simulating the properties of skin. We proposed a skin phantom educational kit that emulates the perspiration and electrical properties (i.e. impedance spectrum) of skin. This kit can mimic the effects of different sweat concentrations and geometrical structures and allows students to visualize how these properties change electrical measurements. We designed a three-layered model composed of silicone rubber sandwiched between agar, which is similar to the skin's elastomeric and porous texture. We used simple …

The Rock 2021, School Of Engineering And Computer Science

The Rock

No abstract provided.

Actuating A Magnetic Shape Memory Element Locally With A Set Of Coils, Andrew Armstrong, Peter Müllner

Materials Science and Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

The local actuation of a magnetic shape memory (MSM) element as used in an MSM micropump is considered. This paper presents the difference between an electromagnetic driver and a driver that uses a rotating permanent magnet. For the magnetic field energy of the permanent magnetic drive, the element takes in a significant stray field. In a particular case, energy reduction was 12.7 mJ. For an electromagnetic drive with an identical size of the MSM element, the total magnetic field energy created by the system was 2.28 mJ. Attempts to experimentally nucleate twins in an MSM element by energizing an electromagnetic …

Santa Clara Magazine, Volume 62 Number 1, Spring 2021 [Print Issue V.61:1], Santa Clara University

Santa Clara Magazine

14 - VALUE PROPOSITION With more people going to college than ever before, how do we calculate the worth of a college degree? Lauren Loftus.

22 - HUMANITY IN THE HUMOR Santa Clara Magazine sat down with Assistance Professor Danielle Morgan to explore how laughter can be lifesaving—and life affirming. Leslie Griffy.

26 - TOMORROWLAND So really, what happens next? We chat with experts about how the pandemic could change our world as we know it. Leslie Griffy and Tracy Seipel.

32 - A BREAK Explore what you see when you step away from it all—and discover some flighty friends …

A Foray Into Laboratory Scale Soil Incubations With Corn Stover And High Lignin Fermentation Byproduct, Michelle Wang

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

As the production of biofuels increases to meet the demands of a growing low carbon economy, questions of sustainability surrounding its feedstock and waste streams have become increasingly relevant. In the biofuel production process, crop residues like corn stover are harvested from the field and converted to biofuels leaving generating a residue called high lignin fermentation byproduct (HLFB). From extensive process modelling in the literature, it is suggested that HLFB should be either combusted to fuel auxiliary conversion processes or returned to the soil in place of the crop residues that were harvested. Currently, there is little literature testing the …

Heat Flux Sensing For Actuation Of Shading In Green Buildings, Jackson Danis

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

Space cooling of buildings consumes an estimated 6% of US energy per year and releases a comparable proportion of the country's greenhouse gases. Operable window shading has the potential to significantly reduce greenhouse gas emissions by limiting solar heat gain through windows, thereby reducing a building’s cooling load. In computational models, shades controlled using environmental parameters, particularly window heat flux, demonstrate greater reductions in heat gain than shades controlled by illumination, time of day, or other methods. However, the performance of shading when controlled by sensors in the field is unknown, and previous studies indicate that sensor noise may negate …

Application Of Cycle-By-Cycle Analysis To Eeg Data From Individuals With Phelan-Mcdermid Syndrome, Naomi Miller

ENGS 88 Honors Thesis (AB Students)

This study aimed to analyze a novel method of processing data from electroencephalography (EEG) recordings, which implements time-domain cycle-by-cycle analysis. This "bycycle" method, developed by the Cole & Voytek laboratory, was implemented on a EEG dataset of children with and without Phelan-McDermid Syndrome in the hopes of uncovering network-level explanations for the genetic disorder. A supplemental Python pipeline was developed to organize and visualize the data. This led to the discovery of group-level differences in measures of cycle symmetry in alpha band waves over the sensorimotor electrodes. Through the same pipeline, the bycycle tool was validated as a sound EEG …

Adaptive Deposition Of Difficult Materials, Abel Daniel, Emily Holden, Gabriela Sanches Carvalhocarval Silva

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

When using a robotic arm, the path that the arm follows is typically unique to the task it completes, but not to the object upon which the task is performed. Additionally, when extruding materials, those materials are typically easy to work with (i.e. smooth and uniform). In this paper, we discuss our three-pronged approach, focusing on the imaging of the cupcake, the robotic arm’s movement about the cupcake, and the extrusion method, to achieve this goal of, simply-speaking, decorating a cupcake. While our results were not optimized or as broad as we’d initially hoped that they would be, we were …

Automated Mixed-Dose Pill Dispenser With Image Verificaton, Nairu Garcia-Acevedo, Rohan Bhatt

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

With the unfathomable number of medications that are available today due to medicinal advancements, there is room for error in the distribution of such medication even within proper pharmaceutical settings. Our primary goal is to reduce the overall contribution of a wide range of human errors in the dispersion of medication which is found to be an extremely large industry in today's age while doing so in a cost effective manner. This is to be executed first using a robotic arm, to automate and create mobility, and second, including image verification, to classify and select pills based on certain characteristics. …

Pooling Data Improves Multimodel Idf Estimates Over Median-Based Idf Estimates: Analysis Over The Susquehanna And Florida, Abhishekh Kumar Srivastava, Richard Grotjahn, Paul Aaron Ullrich, Mojtaba Sadegh

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications and Presentations

Traditional multimodel methods for estimating future changes in precipitation intensity, duration, and frequency (IDF) curves rely on mean or median of models’ IDF estimates. Such multimodel estimates are impaired by large estimation uncertainty, shadowing their efficacy in planning efforts. Here, assuming that each climate model is one representation of the underlying data generating process, i.e., the Earth system, we propose a novel extension of current methods through pooling model data: (i) evaluate performance of climate models in simulating the spatial and temporal variability of the observed annual maximum precipitation (AMP), (ii) bias-correct and pool historical and future AMP data of …

Securing Pint Glasses On Serving Trays With Magnetic Attachments, Jayden Commendatore

Senior Theses

It is extremely common for servers in the restaurant industry to have pint glasses slip off their serving tray, wasting both time and money for the restaurant. I have designed a sleeve attachment that will clip on to the bottom of a pint glass. The metal sleeve attachment will be attracted to a magnet placed into the serving tray. This increases the normal force of the pint glass, resulting in an increase in the friction force between the tray and sleeve attachment, and helping secure the glass to the tray. In order to optimize the design, the value of the …

Relationship Between Thermal Conductivity And Free Electrons In Metal, Yansong Liu

Senior Theses

An experiment was designed and conducted to explore the relationship between thermal conductivity with free electrons in metal. In the experiment, copper, iron, aluminum, and titanium rods with close diameters were used to carry out the experiment. Each rod was heated up by a heat unit at one end while cooled on the other end with a heat sink to maintain a steady state. DC current was applied to rods in the direction along, as well as against, the heat flow. Thermal conductivities were measured in these two situations for each rod. Results showed electrons do dominate thermal flow inside …

Design Of Smart Trashcan, Haoran Song

Senior Theses

A smart trashcan has been designed which can bring convenience to people for throwing their garbage away during the COVID-19 pandemic. A prototype is made from cardboard to demonstrate its function. This trashcan can sense people who are coming and leaving, and it can open and close automatically. The trashcan is powered by solar energy. A solar panel is mounted on top of the trashcan supporter. This design is specifically for use in China.

Frugal Urban Greenhouse, Alexandra Rivera, Emma Rosicky, Connor Pearson

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This project collaborates with Valley Verde, a San Jose nonprofit organization, to build a greenhouse as a prototype for their Super Jardinero urban gardening program. This project also partners with the Frugal Innovation Hub, and has the goal to be affordable, rugged, and simple. The group created a design that ultimately met the desired metrics for weight, cost, and ergonomics. The design style makes hardening-off easier and specializes this greenhouse for seedlings, while structures currently on the market are built for larger plants. It is cheaper than any alternatives on the market and effectively meets Valley Verde’s needs.