Engineering Commons^™

Synthesis Of Cellulose Nanocrystal-Gold Nanoparticle Hybrid System For Surface Plasmon-Enhanced Property, Mahshid Iraniparast

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Gold nanoparticles (AuNPs) have been brought to the forefront of various applications, ranging from theranostics, to organic photovoltaics, to biosensing owing to their localized surface plasmon resonance (LSPR) property. However, this property needs to be improved in order to allow for high sensitivity and quantitative detection of biomolecules. Hybrids of AuNPs with low-dielectric cellulose nanocrystal (CNCs) would yield enhancement of the LSPR property, which is driven by the confinement of electron oscillation at their interfaces. This study proposed a seed-mediated growth method to synthesize hybrids of CNCs-AuNPs. Sulfate groups on the surface of CNCs served as the sites for the …

Studies Of Initial Growth Of Gan On Inn, Alaa Alnami

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

III-nitride materials have recently attracted much attention for applications in both the microelectronics and optoelectronics. For optoelectronic devices, III-nitride materials with tunable energy band gaps can be used as the active region of devices to enhance the absorption or emission. A such material is indium nitride (InN), which along with gallium nitride (GaN) and aluminum nitride (AlN) embody the very real promise of forming the basis of a broad spectrum, a high efficiency solar cell. One of the remaining complications in incorporating InN into a solar cell design is the effects of the high temperature growth of the GaN crystal …

Suitability Assessment For Integrated Urban Development In Makkah City Of Saudi Arabia, Mislat Alotaibi

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Makkah – the third most populated city in Saudi Arabia with a population of 1,684,408 according to the 2010 demographic survey conducted by the Saudi General Authority for Statistics – is experiencing urban sprawl, which can be defined as an unplanned urban expansion that might degrade the environment and diminish the aesthetic view. This is a persisting problem in Makkah driven by multitude of processes involving the random expansion in its undeveloped land and the removal of its historic mountains surrounding Al-Masjid Al-Haram (the Holy Mosque) in an attempt to push the city limit of urban capacity within its administrative …

Quantitative Study Of The Antimicrobial Effects Of Silver On The Motility Of Escherichia Coli, Benjamin Russell

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

In recent decades, the number of antibiotic-resistant bacterial infections has grown to become a serious global threat. This rise can be attributed to the widespread misuse of antibiotics and the lack of newly developed drugs to fight resistant organisms. Novel bactericidal substances have, therefore, garnered significant research interest. Silver, due to its powerful antimicrobial effects, is one such substance. Silver is typically most effective in cationic form; however, advancements in nanotechnology have paved the way for the controlled fabrication of nano-silver. Silver nanoparticles have been shown to have increased antibacterial potency for a variety of reasons, including the release of …

In Vivo Metabolic And Vascular Response To Hypoxia In Twist Knockdown Murine Breast Cancer, Brandon Sturgill

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Twist transcription factor is often overexpressed in aggressive tumors. Although needed in early embryonic development for organogenesis, Twist is known to induce an epithelial to mesenchymal transition in cells. In cancer, epithelial to mesenchymal transitions can lead to increased motility and invasiveness. It has also been linked to metabolic reprogramming and increased metastatic risk. Furthermore, metabolic preferences can increase proliferation, enhance metastatic potential, and influence the site of metastasis. We hypothesize that Twist directly affects the metabolism of cancer cells. We expect to see in vivo what we have seen in vitro; Twist overexpression should promote a shift away from …

Development Of Forward Osmosis Based Separations: A Novel Approach In Membrane Technology, Yu-Hsuan Chiao

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Tackling the worldwide severe water shortage, the membrane technology is considered to be the most efficient approach and hence, used widely as a cost-effective sustainable solution. “Forward osmosis (FO)” has been the major attention in recent time. FO uses osmotic pressure as the driving force to draw the water passing the membrane and achieve the desired separation performance. In general, it is considered to be a process with tremendous potential to resolve the present-day water shortage with extremely low energy consumption. However, the challenges of membrane and draw solution regeneration associated with FO processes must be conquered prior to their …

Adaptive Boundary Control Using The Natural Switching Surfaces For Flyback Converters, Luciano Andres Garcia Rodriguez

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

The derivation and implementation of the natural switching surfaces (NSS) considering certain parametric uncertainties for a flyback converter operating in the boundary conduction mode (BCM) is the main focus of this paper. The NSS with nominal parameters presents many benefits for the control of nonlinear systems; for example, fast transient response under load-changing conditions. However, the performance worsens considerably when the converter actual parameters are different from the ones used in the design process. Therefore, a novel control strategy for NSS considering the effects of parameter uncertainties is proposed. This control law can estimate and adapt the control trajectories in …

Optimized Production And Evaluation Of Cellulose Nanocrystals Derived From Pre-Extracted Kraft Pulp Of Different Wood Species, Gurshagan Kandhola

Graduate Theses and Dissertations

Production of nanocellulose from a variety of naturally abundant, locally available and industrially significant wood species provides an opportunity for diversifying the portfolio of traditional pulp and paper industries. The U.S. has a prolific forest products industry with a well-established infrastructure that could be utilized for optimized and customized production of cellulose nanomaterials. However, to achieve that, it is important to a) understand how biorefining strategies for complete fractionation of biomass affect the downstream processing of pulp into nanocellulose, b) maximize the yields of cellulose nanocrystals and nanofibers (CNCs and CNFs) from pretreated raw materials, and c) evaluate if the …

Non-Invasive Detection And Assessment Of Coronary Stenosis From Blood Mean Residence Times., Javad Hashemi

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

Coronary artery stenosis is an abnormal narrowing of a coronary artery caused by an atherosclerotic lesion that reduces lumen space. Fractional flow reserve (FFR) is the gold standard method to determine the severity of coronary stenosis based on the determination of rest and hyperemic pressure fields, but requires an invasive medical procedure. Normal FFR is 1.0 and FFR RT, to account for varying volume and flow rate of individual segments. Blood_RT was computed in 100 patients who had undergone the pressure-wire FFR procedure, and a threshold for Blood_RT was determined to assess the physiological significance of a stenosis, …

Exploratory Learning Activities In The Physics Classroom: Contrasting Cases Versus A Rich Dataset., Campbell Rightmyer Bego

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

In exploratory learning, students engage in an exploration activity on a new topic prior to instruction. This inversion of the traditional tell-then-practice order has been shown to benefit learning outcomes, especially conceptual knowledge and preparation for future learning, but not always. In three studies, the current work examines whether the type of exploration activity impacts learning mechanisms and outcomes, on the topic of gravitational field in undergraduate physics classrooms. Activities using either contrasting cases (CC) or a rich dataset (RD) are compared in two instructional orders, explore-first (EF) and instruct-first (IF). Learning outcomes measured procedural knowledge, conceptual knowledge, and performance …

Simulation And Optimization Of A Multi-Agent System On Physical Internet Enabled Interconnected Urban Logistics., Long Zheng

Electronic Theses and Dissertations

An urban logistics system is composed of multiple agents, e.g., shippers, carriers, and distribution centers, etc., and multi-modal networks. The structure of Physical Internet (PI) transportation network is different from current logistics practices, and simulation can effectively model a series of PI-approach scenarios. In addition to the baseline model, three more scenarios are enacted based on different characteristics: shared trucks, shared hubs, and shared flows with other less-than-truckload shipments passing through the urban area. Five performance measures, i.e., truck distance per container, mean truck time per container, lead time, CO₂ emissions, and transport mean fill rate, are included in …

Iomt Malware Detection Approaches: Analysis And Research Challenges, Mohammad Wazid, Ashok Kumar Das, Joel J.P.C. Rodrigues, Sachin Shetty, Youngho Park

VMASC Publications

The advancement in Information and Communications Technology (ICT) has changed the entire paradigm of computing. Because of such advancement, we have new types of computing and communication environments, for example, Internet of Things (IoT) that is a collection of smart IoT devices. The Internet of Medical Things (IoMT) is a specific type of IoT communication environment which deals with communication through the smart healthcare (medical) devices. Though IoT communication environment facilitates and supports our day-to-day activities, but at the same time it has also certain drawbacks as it suffers from several security and privacy issues, such as replay, man-in-the-middle, impersonation, …

Characterization Of Thermo-Mechanical Properties Of Copper Nano-Particles Infused Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (Abs)- 3d Printed Specimens, Viswajit Talluru

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Theses - Archive

Now a days the use of metal nanoparticle infused polymer is becoming widespread, since the development of polymer with enhanced thermal properties are being used for the growth of electronic packaging industry. In this study, copper nanoparticles are mixed with the Acrylonitrile Butadiene Styrene (ABS) thermoplastic in varying mass proportions, to observe the changes in thermal and structural properties of ABS. As expected, the extruded wire with high nano-particle concentration exhibited much higher thermal conductivity than its raw ABS form. For the case of 2% copper nanoparticle infused ABS using one dimensional steady state heat flux method though extrude wire …

Introducing Digital Content To Kclc, Chad Briesacher

Theses

No abstract provided.

Design Of A Clc Testbed To Study High Voltage Capacitors, Christopher Francisco Martinez

Electrical Engineering Theses - Archive

Pulsed power systems rely on the interconnection of several unique stages for successful implementation. These stages can include, but are not limited to a prime power source, power conditioning circuit, intermediate energy storage, pulsed forming network, and the load. There are many possible intermediate energy storage devices that can be considered, two of which are inductive and capacitive. There are many advantages and disadvantages that each offer. Inductive energy storage is several times more energy dense than capacitive energy storage but most of the time, an opening switch is required to transfer the energy to the load and those are …

Spark Plasma Sintering Of Low Modulus Titanium-Niobium-Tantalum-Zirconium (Tntz) Alloy For Biomedical Applications, Nicholas Mavros, Taban Larimian, Javier Esqivel, Rajeev Kumar Gupta, Rodrigo Contieri, Tushar Borkar

Mechanical Engineering Faculty Publications

In metallurgy, titanium has been a staple for biomedical purposes. Its slow toxicity and alloying versatility make it an attractive choice for medical applications. However, studies have shown the difference in elastic modulus between titanium alloys (116 GPa) and human bone (10–40 GPa), which contributes to long term issues with loose hardware fixation. Additionally, long term studies have shown elements such as vanadium and aluminum, which are commonly used in Ti-6Al-4V biomedical alloys, have been linked to neurodegenerative diseases like Alzheimer and Parkinson. Alternative metals known to be less toxic are being explored as replacements for alloying elements in titanium …

Optical Spectrsocopy Of Murine Breast Tumor To Distinguish Indolent From Aggressive Disease, Joel Rodriguez Troncoso

Biomedical Engineering Undergraduate Honors Theses

Breast cancer accounts for 30% of all cancer. Metastasis is the primary cause of death among breast cancer patients. Additionally, current molecular profiling methods such as Oncotype DX, which are expensive and not widely available at all clinical facilities, only determine the risk of recurrence after treatment. Therefore, there are no current method capable of identifying metastatic patients in advance.As a result, there is an unmet clinical need to develop a cost-effective prognostic to differentiate between indolent and aggressive breast tumors. In this study, we implemented diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS) system to evaluate functional changes in tumor xenografts originated from …

Introduction To Production: Philosophies, Flow, And Analysis, Charles R. Standridge

Open Textbooks

Production is a fundamental societal and economic activity. Production has to do with the transformation of raw materials into useful objects and includes the knowledge to complete the transformation effectively. Thus, production is a board topic ranging from philosophies about how to approach production such as lean and quick response manufacturing, how to organize production facilities, how to analyze production operations, how to control the flow of materials during production, the devices used to move materials within a facility, and strategies for coordinating multiple production facilities.

An integrated introduction to production is presented in a set of learning modules. In …

Gearbox Baffle Optimization, Megan Arduin

Masters Theses

Current literature reveals there is limited consensus on the placement of baffles within a gearbox to reduce churning losses. Thus, there is a need for a process to identify baffle clearances that result in maximum and minimum churning losses. There are two types of baffles: axial and radial. While both axial and radial baffles cause reductions in churning losses to various degrees, the focus is on the effect of radial baffles. The effect of a board (rectangular plate) baffle location on the churning losses of a single gear gearbox are evaluated using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) implemented in Ansys. Several …

Reasoning From Point Clouds, Joey Wilson

Computer Engineering

Over the past two years, 3D object detection has been a major area of focus across industry and academia. This is primarily due to the difficulty of learning data from point clouds. While camera images are fixed size and can therefore be easily trained on using convolution, point clouds are unstructured series of points in three dimensions. Therefore, there is no fixed number of features, or a structure to run convolution on. Instead, researchers have developed many ways of attempting to learn from this data, however there is no clear consensus on what is the best method, as each has …

Mobile Robot Platform, Sukhman S. Marok

Electrical Engineering

The Mobile Robot Platform is a research and development tool designed for researchers working in the field of robotics. The cost of existing mobile robot platforms can easily be in the thousands of dollars, leading many researchers to choose between spending the time to create their own platform or buying an expensive pre-existing solution. The Mobile Robot Platform proposed combines pre-existing open source software and hardware solutions, along with a strong mechanical base that is capable of navigating on flat surfaces. The robot is designed to have many of the necessary components needed for teleoperation as well as autonomous navigation. …

Free Space Optical Communication, Anuj Gohil

Electrical Engineering

Communication is key to day to day activities for all companies and people. Wireless communication has made us expect more from our tools. Radio Frequency has been the preferred medium for a couple decades, but there is a need for faster secure communication. Free Space Optical Communication is an alternate wireless communication system which uses optics to create a link. It utilizes low-power and converts an analog signal into digital pulses which are transmitted across space to a receiver. Its only caveat is its vulnerability under atmospheric obstacles. The goal of this project is to create a free space optical …

Pv Mppt Water Pump Controller, Jacob R. Lamkin

Electrical Engineering

The intention of this project is to create a low cost way to extract the maximum useful power from a PV module to power a water pump. This approach will yield maximum financial and technical accessibility for end users. The project was successful in powering a water pump from a PV module as desired, and the microcontroller driven control circuitry was capable of finding and maintaining operation at the maximum power point of the PV module. Due to the low performance of the buck converter used in this project, this approach was not as efficient as desired and would require …

Study Of Amorphous Boron Carbide And Hydrogenated Boron Carbide Materials Using Molecular Dynamics And Hybrid Reverse Monte Carlo, Rajan Khadka

Graduate Theses/Dissertations

We present a computational study of amorphous boron carbide (a-B_xC) models using Molecular Dynamics (MD) studied with Stillinger-Weber (SW) and ReaxFF potential. The atomic structure factor (S(Q)), radial distribution function (RDF) and bond lengths comparison with other experimental and ab initio models shows that a random arrangement of icosahedra (B₁₂, B₁₁C) interconnected by chains (CCC, CBC) are present in a-B_xC. Afterward, Hybrid Reverse Monte Carlo (HRMC) technique is used to recreate a-B_xC structures. The existing SW potential parameters of Boron are optimized for the α-rhombohedral (Icosahedral B_{12 …}

Multiple Ssid Framework For Rss-Fingerprint Based Indoor Positioning Systems, Ahmed Kareem Abed

Dissertations

Location-Based Indoor positioning systems significance stems from the bloom of recent applications in various fields such as in tracking services for an elder or a patient within large living communities, mobile robot localization, and several other security applications. Currently, Global Positioning Systems (GPS) are the most widely used location-sensing technique. However, satellite-based GPS signals require line of sight (LOS) to work correctly, which is something cannot be achieved inside buildings. Fortunately, wireless LAN can be employed in indoor positioning systems (IPS), and since all large buildings such as malls, hospitals, airports, schools, and museums have hundreds of Wi-Fi access points, …

Analyzing Impacts Of Transportation And Non-Transportation Activities On Human Health With An Advanced Platform For Collecting Travel And Physical Activity Data, Raed Abdullah Hasan

Dissertations

Recently much attention is paid to the lack of physical activities that may cause the health problems in many counties. Travel activities provide a certain amount of physical activities, and the active transportation, such as walking and cycling, becomes more important as an essential element of transportation. The active transportation is expected to contribute to improving human health by reducing cardiovascular disease, obesity, and premature death. However, detailed relationship between the transportation choices and human health has not been well understood. Therefore, there is a need for investigating traveler behaviors and how their choices affect physical activities and public health. …

A Reinforcement Learning Approach To Spacecraft Trajectory Optimization, Daniel S. Kolosa

Dissertations

This dissertation explores a novel method of solving low-thrust spacecraft targeting problems using reinforcement learning. A reinforcement learning algorithm based on Deep Deterministic Policy Gradients was developed to solve low-thrust trajectory optimization problems. The algorithm consists of two neural networks, an actor network and a critic network. The actor approximates a thrust magnitude given the current spacecraft state expressed as a set of orbital elements. The critic network evaluates the action taken by the actor based on the state and action taken. Three different types of trajectory problems were solved, a generalized orbit change maneuver, a semimajor axis change maneuver, …

Demand-Side Load Management Using Single-Phase Residential Static Var Compensators, Muhammad Kamran Latif

Boise State University Theses and Dissertations

Distribution systems are going through a structural transformation from being radially-operated simple systems to becoming more complex networks to operate in the presence of the distributed energy resources (DERs) with significant levels of penetration. It is predicted that the share of electricity generation from DERs will keep increasing as the world is moving away from the power generation involving carbon-emission and towards cleaner energy sources such as solar, wind, and biofuels. However, the unstable behavior of the renewables resources presents challenges to the already existing distribution systems. One such problem is when the distribution feeder experience variable power supply due …

Fatigue Issues And Mitigation Strategies In Collegiate Aviation, Flavio A. C. Mendonca Ph.D., Julius Keller, Erik Levin, Aaron Teo

Publications

The reduction of fatigue-related accidents has been in the NTSB most wanted list since 2016 (NSTB, 2019).

Most research studies have focused on fatigue identification and management within the commercial and/or military aviation environments (Caldwell et al., 2009; Gawron, 2016; Sieberichs & Kluge, 2016).

However, collegiate aviation may be the most challenging in terms of fatigue mitigation. Flight instructors and students often have schedules which may increase the risks for fatigue.

Neural Network Classification Of Brainwave Alpha Signalsin Cognitive Activities, Ahmad Azhari, Adhi Susanto, Andri Pranolo, Yingchi Mao

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

The signal produced by human brain waves is one unique feature. Signals carry information and are represented in electrical signals generated from the brain in a typical waveform. Human brain wave activity will always be active even when sleeping. Brain waves will produce different characteristics in different individuals. Physical and behavioral characteristics can be identified from patterns of brain wave activity. This study aims to distinguish signals from each individual based on the characteristics of alpha signals from brain waves produced. Brain wave signals are generated by giving several mental perception tasks measured using an Electroencephalogram (EEG). To get different …