Engineering Commons^™

The Role Of Gene Transcription And Inflammatory Cytokines In Bone Fracture Repair, Brandon Alan Coates

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In most instances, the skeleton has a remarkable capacity for repair following injury. However, in 5 to 10% of patients, fractures fail to properly heal resulting in non-union. A need exists for a more comprehensive understanding of the complex biology of fracture repair, which involves the coordinated work of many cell types including osteoblasts, osteoclasts, and immune cells. Depending on the extent of injury, fractures will heal through either intramembranous bone formation, involving the direct formation of bone callus, or endochondral bone formation, featuring a cartilage intermediary prior to bone callus formation. Both processes begin with inflammation, which sets the …

Quantitative Fluorescence Imaging For Investigation And Treatment Of Disease, Lemoyne Michael Habimana-Griffin

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Molecular imaging is a powerful tool that enables interrogation of basic molecular mechanisms, diagnosis of disease, guidance of therapeutic modalities and monitoring of treatment response. Among the various imaging modalities, optical imaging is particularly suited for preclinical molecular imaging owing to its high sensitivity, lack of exposure to ionizing radiation, low cost, portability and scalability of imaging from the microscopic to macroscopic scale. In particular, fluorescence molecular tomography (FMT) provides quantitative 3D reconstructions of fluorescence distributions down to picomole quantities allowing for whole animal molecular imaging. In this work, FMT is applied to detect disease-specific molecular probes, to monitor and …

Scalable Synthesis Of Nanostructured Metal Oxide Films Using Aerosol Chemical Vapor Deposition For Energy Storage Applications, Clayton Kacica

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

As global energy consumption continues to rapidly increase, the need for new technologies to meet this demand in a sustainable way. Renewable sources such as solar and wind power are being increasingly utilized for electricity generation. However, the intermittent nature of these sources requires large-scale energy storage to reliably provide consistent power. Current grid-scale energy storage usually involves pumped hydroelectric systems, which are limited by location, or flywheel systems, which have limited use in high-power low-energy applications. Electrochemical storage solutions, such as lithium-ion batteries, provide robust energy storage that is not limited by location with a range of power and …

Application Of Photoacoustic Imaging In Understanding Tissue Remodeling, Yuan Qu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Photoacoustic Imaging (PAI) as an imaging method in biomedical research can provide high spatial resolution, various contrasts, great detection sensitivity, and deep penetration. These advantages are attributed to the combination of optical excitation and acoustic detection, which releases PAI from the ballistic limit faced by other optical imaging technique with high spatial resolution. In this dissertation, we aim to apply this technique to understand the connective tissue remodeling that is a ubiquitous physiological change in various medical complications.Chapter 1 elaborates the mechanism of PAI as well as the motivation of my dissertation.In Chapter 2, I introduce a new contrast mechanism …

Nucleation Dynamics For Water Condensation On Hydrophobic Surfaces In The Presence Of Non-Condensable Gases, Xinyu Jiang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The density and rate of nucleation (here-in called nucleation density rate) significantly influences the heat transfer performance during dropwise condensation, as more than 70% of the total heat transfer happen for droplets smaller than 10 μm. Based on the classical nucleation theory, supersaturation strongly influences nucleation dynamics. However, the presence of non-condensable gas can strongly reduce the nucleation density rate by forming a vapor-depleted gas diffusion layer. Therefore, this work studied the relationship between nucleation density rate and supersaturation ratio during dropwise condensation on subcooled smooth hydrophobic surfaces with the presence of non-condensable gases in a custom-built condensation chamber. High-speed …

Hollow-Core Photonic Crystal Fiber Mach–Zehnder Interferometer For Gas Sensing, Kaveh Nazeri, Farid Ahmed, Vahid Ahsani, Hang-Eun Joe, Colin Bradley, Ehsan Toyserkani, Martin B. G. Jun

Manufacturing & Industrial Engineering Faculty Publications

A novel and compact interferometric refractive index (RI) point sensor is developed using hollow-core photonic crystal fiber (HC-PCF) and experimentally demonstrated for high sensitivity detection and measurement of pure gases. To construct the device, the sensing element fiber (HC-PCF) was placed between two single-mode fibers with airgaps at each side. Great measurement repeatability was shown in the cyclic test for the detection of various gases. The RI sensitivity of 4629 nm/RIU was demonstrated in the RI range of 1.0000347–1.000436 for the sensor with an HC-PCF length of 3.3 mm. The sensitivity of the proposed Mach–Zehnder interferometer (MZI) sensor increases when …

Tissue Engineering Of Induced Pluripotent Stem Cells For The Development Of Novel Treatment Strategies For Osteoarthritis, Alison Ross

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Osteoarthritis (OA) is a debilitating joint disease that is primarily characterized by the degeneration of articular cartilage, the soft connective tissue that covers articulating bone surfaces in diarthrodial joints. While there are a number of risk factors for developing OA, the progression of this disease is mediated in part by pro-inflammatory cytokines from both the synovium and chondrocytes, the resident cells of articular cartilage. These cytokines, specifically interleukin 1 (IL-1) and tumor necrosis factor alpha (TNF-α), induce aberrant expression of catabolic and degradative enzymes and inflammatory cytokines in OA, which promotes degradation of engineered tissues as well as native articular …

Ultrasound Guided Diffuse Optical Tomography For Breast Cancer Diagnosis: Algorithm Development, K M Shihab Uddin

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

According to National Breast Cancer Society, one in every eight women in United States is diagnosed with breast cancer in her lifetime. American Cancer Society recommends a semi-annual breast-cancer screening for every woman which can be heavily facilitated by the availability of low-cost, non-invasive diagnostic method with good sensitivity and penetration depth. Ultrasound (US) guided Diffuse Optical Tomography (US-guided DOT) has been explored as a breast-cancer diagnostic and screening tool over the past two decades. It has demonstrated a great potential for breast-cancer diagnosis, treatment monitoring and chemotherapy-response prediction. In this imaging method, optical measurements of four different wavelengths are …

Chemistry Of Nanoscale Solids And Organic Matter In Sustainable Water Management Systems, Xuanhao Wu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

To alleviate global water scarcity and improve public health, engineered water treatment and management systems have been developed for purifying contaminated water and desalinating brackish or ocean water. These engineered systems provide substantial amounts of potable water and lessen environmental concerns about the release of contaminated water. Wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs), water desalination plants (WDPs), and managed aquifer recharge systems (MARs) are three representative sustainable water management (SWM) systems. But the operation of all three poses two fundamental questions: (1) What is the fate of nanoscale solids (e.g., engineered nanomaterials, naturally occurring nanoparticles) in SWM systems and how will their …

Exploring Attacks And Defenses In Additive Manufacturing Processes: Implications In Cyber-Physical Security, Nicholas Deily

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Many industries are rapidly adopting additive manufacturing (AM) because of the added versatility this technology offers over traditional manufacturing techniques. But with AM, there comes a unique set of security challenges that must be addressed. In particular, the issue of part verification is critically important given the growing reliance of safety-critical systems on 3D printed parts. In this thesis, the current state of part verification technologies will be examined in the con- text of AM-specific geometric-modification attacks, and an automated tool for 3D printed part verification will be presented. This work will cover: 1) the impacts of malicious attacks on …

Structure, Thermophysical Properties Of Liquids, And Their Connection With Glass Formability, Rongrong Dai

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Metallic glasses have drawn significant attention due to their unique properties, such as high strength, excellent elastic energy storage capacity, and versatile processability. However, why some liquids can easily form metallic glasses while others donմ is still unclear. Since metallic glasses are formed when liquids are cooled fast enough to bypass crystallization, we hope to better understand glass formation by investigating the structural evolution and thermophysical properties of the liquids as they are cooled toward the glass transition. Multiple molecular dynamics simulations suggest a crossover temperature for the dynamics near the liquidus temperature, which corresponds to the onset of cooperative …

Joint Estimation Of Attenuation And Scatter For Tomographic Imaging With The Broken Ray Transform, Michael Ray Walker

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The single-scatter approximation is fundamental for many tomographic imaging problems. This class broadly includes x-ray scattering imaging and optical scatter imaging for certain media. In all cases, noisy measurements are affected by both local events and nonlocal attenuation. Related applications typically focus on reconstructing one of two images: scatter density or total attenuation. However, both images are media specific. Both images are useful for object identification. Knowledge of one image aides estimation of the other, especially when estimating images from noisy data.Joint image recovery has been demonstrated analytically in the context of the broken ray transform (BRT) for attenuation and …

Ultrasensitive Biodetection Based On Plasmonically-Active Materials, Jingyi Luan

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

A broad range of biomarkers continue to emerge as potentially important parameters for early detection of many pathological conditions.1 A disease biomarker (e.g. protein, a fragment of a pro-tein, DNA/RNA, or metabolites) is a ‘molecular signature’ of the physiological state of patient at specific time and is therefore extremely important for early and possibly pre-symptomatic diagno-sis and accurate monitoring of therapeutic intervention. Relevant concentrations of biomarkers related to diseases such as cancer, heart disease, inflammation, and neurological disorders can range in many orders of magnitude from μg/ml levels to sub-fg/ml, some of which possibly still remain unidentified due to the …

Self Capacitance Based Wireless Power Transfer For Wearable Electronics: Theory And Implementation, Yarub Omer Alazzawi

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Wireless power transfer (WPT)

Cfd Evaluation Of Blood Flow In An Improved Blalock-Taussig Shunt Using Patient Specific Geometries, Zhenghao Lin

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Blalock-Taussig (BT) Shunt is a palliative surgical procedure used during a Norwood surgery on a newborn baby suffering from cyanotic heart defects. The BT Shunt can increase blood flow in patients’ pulmonary artery which can ease the “Blue Baby Syndrome.” Currently used BT Shunts do not produce a balanced flow distribution to the pulmonary arteries (PAs) which can cause high wall shear stress (WSS) and blood flow separation resulting in blood clots. A modified BT Shunt was designed to partially solve this problem. In our previous work [1], the modified BT Shunt was shown by numerical simulations to have the …

Predicate Informed Syntax-Guidance For Semantic Role Labeling, Sijia Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In this thesis, we consider neural network approaches to the semantic role labeling task in seman-tic parsing. Recent state-of-the-art results for semantic role labeling are achieved by combiningLSTM neural networks and pre-trained features. This work offers a simple BERT-based modelwhich shows that, contrary to the popular belief that more complexity means better performance,removing LSTM improves the state of the art for span-based semantic role labeling. This modelhas improved F1 scores on both the test set of CoNLL-2012, and the Brown test set of CoNLL-2005 by at least 3 percentage points.In addition to this refinement of existing architectures, we also propose …

Blood Flow Simulation Of Particle Trapping In Models Of Arterial Bifurcations, Qihang Xu

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

This thesis describes the particle trapping mechanism in blood flow in different arterial bifurcation models. For validation of CFD calculations, a T-junction model and a Y-junction model are analyzed. In both the models, there is one inlet pipe with two outlet pipes creating a symmetric bifurcation at some angle from the centerline of the inlet pipe. Naiver-Stokes (RANS) equations are solved for single phase laminar flow using the commercial CFD software ANSYS Fluent. After validation, Eulerian simulations are performed by using the Discrete Phase Model (DPM) for two-phase flow with particles injected in different bifurcation models with bifurcation angle of …

Influence Of Separator Surface Charge On The Nucleation And Penetration Dynamics Of Metal Electrodes In Concentrated Electrolytes, Sikuang Wang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Ultrafine Particle-Particle And Particle-Ion Interactions In Aerosol Reactors, Girish Sharma

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Aerosol science and technology has enabled the material synthesis of ‘good’ nanoparticles, as well as, addressed the problem of air pollution by developing particle capture technologies for ‘bad’ nanoparticles. For material synthesis at industrial scale, flame aerosol reactors are extensively used for large-scale industrial production of ‘good’ nanoparticles. But, there exists a knowledge gap in understanding the early stages (1-10 nm) of particle formation and growth, which is necessary for tailoring the synthesized nanoparticles’ properties. To achieve this goal, measurement tools for the characterization of 1-10 nm particles are quintessential. On the other hand, to capture ‘bad’ particles, existing control …

Cognitive Radar Detection In Nonstationary Environments And Target Tracking, Yijian Xiang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Target detection and tracking are the most fundamental and important problems in a wide variety of defense and civilian radar systems. In recent years, to cope with complex environments and stealthy targets, the concept of cognitive radars has been proposed to integrate intelligent modules into conventional radar systems. To achieve better performance, cognitive radars are designed to sense, learn from, and adapt to environments. In this dissertation, we introduce cognitive radars for target detection in nonstationary environments and cognitive radar networks for target tracking.For target detection, many algorithms in the literature assume a stationary environment (clutter). However, in practical scenarios, …

Development Of Novel Instrumentation And Methods To Investigate The Composition And Phase Partitioning Of Semivolatile And Intermediately Volatile Organic Compounds In Atmospheric Organic Aerosol, Claire Fortenberry

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Atmospheric particulate matter (PM) is ubiquitous in both indoor and outdoor air and is generally detrimental to human health. PM composed of particles with aerodynamic diameters less than 2.5 um (PM2.5) are related to adverse health outcomes including heart disease and respiratory disease. Fundamentally, particle physical properties such as size and hygroscopicity are dictated by chemical composition, which can be highly complex, particularly for organic aerosol (OA). In both outdoor and indoor air, OA is composed substantially of intermediately volatile and semivolatile organic compounds (I/SVOCs), which exist in both gas and particle phases under typical atmospheric conditions. The distribution of …

Applying Bayesian Techniques To The Optimization Of Parameterized Quantum Circuits, Arthur Rattew

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

In this work, we explore the challenges faced when creating quantum algorithms for near-term quantum computers. We examine the characteristics of problems that are amenable to such advantage, and the limitations of existing approaches. Additionally, we explore the importance of the classical optimizer in the Variational Quantum Eigensolver (VQE), and propose a Bayesian method to optimally configure a single parameter in a given quantum circuit. Experimental testing confirms that our method is significantly more tolerant to noise than the existing analytical approach and its variants (p < 0.008).

First-Principles Studies Of Anion Engineering In Functional Ceramics, Steven Timothy Hartman

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Ceramic materials display a wide variety of valuable properties, such as ferroelectricity, superconductivity, and magnetic ordering, due to the partially covalent bonds which connect the cations and anions. While many breakthroughs have been made by mixing multiple cations on a sublattice, the equivalent mixed-anion ceramics have not received nearly as much attention, despite the key role the anion plays in the materials’ properties. There is great potential for functional ceramics design using anion engineering, which aims to tune the materials properties by adding and removing different types of anions in existing classes of ceramic materials. In this dissertation, I present …

Cfd Analysis Of A Wind Turbine Airfoil With Flap, Heyou Tan

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The focus of this thesis is to evaluate the aerodynamic performance of NREL S809 airfoil (widely used airfoil for wind turbine blades) with a trailing-edge flap by numerical simulations. In the simulations, the geometry of the flap and the gap between the main element and the flap are varied. The airfoil geometry is created in Design Modeler and structured mesh around the airfoil is generated using meshing software ICEM. Simulations are performed using the Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) equations with SST k-ω, Spalart-Allmaras (SA) and Wray-Agarwal (WA) turbulence models at Reynolds number 106 at angles of attack of 0, 5o, 10o, …

Nucleation Dynamics For Water Condensation On Hydrophobic Surfaces In The Presence Of Non-Condensable Gases, Xinyu Jiang

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

The density and rate of nucleation (here-in called nucleation density rate) significantly influences the heat transfer performance during dropwise condensation, as more than 70% of the total heat transfer happen for droplets smaller than 10 μm. Based on the classical nucleation theory, supersaturation strongly influences nucleation dynamics. However, the presence of non-condensable gas can strongly reduce the nucleation density rate by forming a vapor-depleted gas diffusion layer. Therefore, this work studied the relationship between nucleation density rate and supersaturation ratio during dropwise condensation on subcooled smooth hydrophobic surfaces with the presence of non-condensable gases in a custom-built condensation chamber. High-speed …

The Mechanobiology Of Elbow Contracture: Pathogenesis And Prevention, Chelsey Dunham

McKelvey School of Engineering Graduate Student Theses & Dissertations

Post-traumatic elbow contracture is a multi-tissue pathology which develops in up to 50% of patients following elbow trauma (e.g., fracture, dislocation). It is unclear which periarticular soft tissues are driving the functional deficit following injury because it is not possible in clinical settings to isolate each soft tissues’ mechanical and biological contributions to elbow contracture. Therefore, an animal model is needed to identify the primary periarticular soft tissue(s) which contribute to contracture. The first animal models of contracture were developed in the knee; however, these studies are not generalizable to the elbow due to anatomical and functional differences between these …

A Quantile-Based Approach For Transmission Expansion Planning, Jairo Cervantes, F. Fred Choobineh

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Transmission expansion planning is an integral part of power system planning and consists of generating and selecting transmission proposals for maintaining sufficient transmission capacity to satisfy the electric load. Specifically, the desire to increase the use of renewable energy has exposed the limitations of transmission networks and has elevated the importance of transmission expansion planning. However, considering the random nature of renewable sources in conjunction with the power outages makes the planning process very challenging. We present a new procedure for selecting the best transmission enhancement proposal from a set of finite proposals under uncertainty. The selection is based on …

Joint-Srvdnet: Joint Super Resolution And Vehicle Detection Network, Moktari Mostofa, Syeda Nyma Ferdous, Benjamin S. Riggan, Nasser M. Nasrabadi

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

In many domestic and military applications, aerial vehicle detection and super-resolution algorithms are frequently developed and applied independently. However, aerial vehicle detection on super resolved images remains a challenging task due to the lack of discriminative information in the super-resolved images. To address this problem, we propose a Joint Super-Resolution and Vehicle Detection Network (Joint SRVDNet) that tries to generate discriminative, high-resolution images of vehicles from low-resolution aerial images. First, aerial images are up-scaled by a factor of 4x using a Multi-scale Generative Adversarial Network (MsGAN), which has multiple intermediate outputs with increasing resolutions. Second, a detector is trained on …

Utility Of Vertically Integrated Liquid Water Content For Radar-Rainfall Estimation: Quality Control And Precipitation Type Classification, Bong Chul Seo, Witold F. Krajewski, Youcun Qi

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This study proposes a new estimation method for vertically integrated liquid water content (VIL) using radar reflectivity volume data and temperature sounding retrieved from the numerical weather model analysis. This method addresses uncertainty factors in conventional VIL estimation associated with the effects from the bright band (BB) and radar beam geometry near the radar site. The new VIL is then used for precipitation classification (convective/stratiform) and wind turbine clutter detection in the hope that the estimated VIL indicating vertical activities or development of precipitation systems will account for the two independent subjects together, in opposite ways. The non-precipitation radar echoes …

The Impact Of A Smartlab Implementation On Rural Schools In North Dakota, Tonya M. Greywind

Dissertations, Theses, and Projects

This mixed methods quasi-experimental phenomenological study investigated the impact that a SmartLab® implementation had on four rural schools in the state of North Dakota. This study featured semi structured interview questions for facilitators, semi-structured focus group questions for students, and a digital literacy pre and post assessment (DLA) that was administered to students. This study looked at student learning in terms of twenty-first century skills, teacher and student perspectives in terms of student learning as well as teacher perspectives on the impact of the SmartLab® on their own teaching methods.

Two facilitators from two of the four schools were interviewed …