Engineering Commons^™

Safety Analysis For Shift Implementation, Reginald R. Souleyrette, Riana Tanzen, William Nicholas Staats, Eric R. Green, Mei Chen

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

The Strategic Highway Investment Formula for Tomorrow (SHIFT) program research team evaluated the program’s 2018 safety component and developed a new methodology to rank the safety needs of 2020 projects. For the current year, the research team suggests replacing the SHIFT 2018 formulas (based on three naive crash measures) with a new metric, Excess Expected Crashes, formulated from the most current safety analysis guidelines available in the Highway Safety Manual. In addition, the research team developed a user-friendly network screening tool serving as a method to prioritize projects. Another automation tool was developed that will help safety professionals evaluate and …

A Study To Determine How To Measure The Laser Safety Climate At Academic Institutions, John Settlemyer

OTS Master's Level Projects & Papers

Statement of Problem

The purpose of this study was to determine if the laser safety climate can be measured at academic institutions and what factors would provide valid measures of the laser safety climate at academic institutions. Specifically, the study attempted to answer the following questions:

Research Questions

RQ1. Can laser safety climate be measured at academic institutions using a climate survey instrument?

RQ2. What factors should be measured by a laser safety climate instrument?

RQ3. What measures would provide actionable data for prescriptive intervention by laser safety professionals at academic institutions? (p. 4)

Tailoring Cell-Material Interactions Via Poly(Acrylic Acid) Brushes To Enhance Nonviral Substrate-Mediated Gene Delivery, Amy Mantz

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Nonviral gene delivery modifies gene expression by transferring exogenous genetic material into cells and tissues, typically through a bolus of complexes formed by electrostatic interactions between cationic lipid or polymer vectors with negatively charged nucleic acids (e.g. DNA). Although nonviral gene delivery is safer, more cost-effective, and more flexible compared to viral systems, nonviral transfection suffers from low efficiency due to extracellular and intracellular barriers. Much research has focused on tuning physiochemical properties of the complexing vectors to improve transfection, yet the cell-material interface may prove a better platform to immobilize DNA complexes for substrate-mediated delivery (SMD) and modulate the …

Entropy Based Independent Learning In Anonymous Multi-Agent Settings, Tanvi Verma, Pradeep Varakantham, Hoong Chuin Lau

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Efficient sequential matching of supply and demand is a problem of interest in many online to offline services. For instance, Uber, Lyft, Grab for matching taxis to customers; Ubereats, Deliveroo, FoodPanda etc for matching restaurants to customers. In these online to offline service problems, individuals who are responsible for supply (e.g., taxi drivers, delivery bikes or delivery van drivers) earn more by being at the ”right” place at the ”right” time. We are interested in developing approaches that learn to guide individuals to be in the ”right” place at the ”right” time (to maximize revenue) in the presence of other …

Recycling Of The Mixture Resulted From Roller Kiln Waste And Ceramic Tiles Sludge Waste In The Manufacturing Of Ceramic Floor Tiles, Mai H. Roushdy

Chemical Engineering

Ceramic tiles industry produced many types of wastes that are routinely discarded as stock piles. One of the environmental problems associated with roller kilns is the periodic need to grind its rollers which results in a waste powder. The second type of waste is ceramic tiles sludge which produced from a water treatment plant in the ceramic tiles factory. This paper investigates the probability of substituting part of the main body of floor tiles mixture by these two types of waste powder. Many Experiments were done on the raw materials. Rectangular tile specimens were molded, dried and fired. Linear firing …

Energy Transformation And Conservation Investigation, Mike Jackson, Holly Haney

High School Lesson Plans

Students will use a thermoelectric generator module to analyze the relationship between thermal and electrical energies. Using data collection sensors and analysis software, students will investigate the relationship between the temperature gradient across a thermoelectric generator module and the resulting electrical potential. Students will then use their data and analysis to solve problems relating to waste thermal energy in electrical systems and communicate their work to their peers and teacher.

The Impact Of Changes Mislabeled By Szz On Just-In-Time Defect Prediction, Yuanrui Fan, Xin Xia, Daniel A. Costa, David Lo, Ahmed E. Hassan, Shanping Li

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

Just-in-Time (JIT) defect prediction—a technique which aims to predict bugs at change level—has been paid more attention. JIT defect prediction leverages the SZZ approach to identify bug-introducing changes. Recently, researchers found that the performance of SZZ (including its variants) is impacted by a large amount of noise. SZZ may considerably mislabel changes that are used to train a JIT defect prediction model, and thus impact the prediction accuracy. In this paper, we investigate the impact of the mislabeled changes by different SZZ variants on the performance and interpretation of JIT defect prediction models. We analyze four SZZ variants (i.e., B-SZZ, …

Crude Palm Oil Prediction Based On Back Propagation Neutral Network Approach, Hijratul Aini, Haviluddin Haviluddin

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Crude palm oil (CPO) production at PT. Perkebunan Nusantara (PTPN) XIII from January 2015 to January 2018 have been treated. This paper aims to predict CPO production using intelligent algorithms called Backpropagation Neural Network (BPNN). The accuracy of prediction algorithms have been measured by mean square error (MSE). The experiment showed that the best hidden layer architecture (HLA) is 5-10-11-12-13-1 with learning function (LF) of trainlm, activation function (AF) of logsig and purelin, and learning rate (LR) of 0.5. This architecture has a good accuracy with MSE of 0.0643. The results showed that this model can predict CPO production in …

The Diffusion Of Ict For Corruption Detectionin Open Government Data, Darusalam Darusalam, Jamaliah Said, Normah Omar, Marijn Janssen, Kazi Sohag

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

Corruption occurs in many places within the government. To tackle the issue, open data can be used as one of the tools in creating more insight into the government. The premise of this paper is to support the notion that data opening can bring up new ways of fighting corruption. The current paper aimed at investigating how open data can be employed to detect corruption. This open data is trivial due to challenges like information asymmetry among stakeholders, data might only be opened partly, different sources of data need to be combined, and data might not be easy to use, …

Prediction Of Noise Associated With An Isolated Uav Propeller, Samuel O. Afari

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

The emergent field of interest in the Urban Air Mobility community is geared towards a world where aerial vehicles are commonplace. This poses the problem of the effects of the radiated noise. The present research presents an in-depth analysis of the noise generation mechanism of a propeller as a mode of propulsion of the said aerial vehicles. Numerical simulation utilizing a Hybrid Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) coupled with Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) solver, is adopted on an isolated propeller modeled from the commercial DJI Phantom II 9450 propeller. The Spalart-Allmaras one equation turbulence model with rotation/curvature correction is used. The Farassat’s …

Benefits Of Additional Runway Crossings On Parallel Runway Operations, Sergio Ezequiel Taleisnik

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

As the air transportation industry expands, airports face numerous challenges to manage the increasing traffic. Among these problems, runway crossings are a considerable source of ground traffic inefficiency and risk. Building end-around taxiways are the only strategy to avoid crossings, but these are not always feasible, and therefore airport planners must find alternatives. This study consisted of a simulation over an airport that currently requires a vast amount of its arrivals to go through runway crossings in order to reach the apron; the airport simulation software utilized was the Total Airspace and Airport Modeler (TAAM). The process began with a …

Electronic Cvt - Controls, Alec William Hardy, Jessalyn Leora Ann Bernick, Nicholas Esteban Capdevila, Tristan Charles Perry

Mechanical Engineering

The following document outlines the design process, manufacturing, and testing of the control system for an electronically controlled continuously variable transmission (ECVT). This control system was integrated into the custom designed and manufactured mechanical transmission system created in parallel by another senior project group. The transmission was designed for use in the Cal Poly Baja SAE vehicle. Through researching customer needs, competition requirements, previous and alternate CVT designs, and vehicle characteristics, we were able to determine the requirements and specifications for our unique system. Input, output, speed, and durability requirements guided our hardware selection. The primary components which comprised our …

Effect Of Carbon Addition On Microstructure And Properties Of Boron-Containing Steel Sintered Under Different Atmospheres, W Koetniyom, P Chantawet, N Tosangthum, M Morakotjinda, T Yotkaew, P Wila, R Tongsri

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

High performance sintered steels can be obtained by simultaneous tailoring microstructural feature and improving sintered density. Although sintered hardening is used to produce sintered components with microstructural features providing high tensile strength and hardness, but the performance is limited by low ductility due to the presence of porosity. Near full density can be achieved by liquid phase forming as a result of boron addition to a sintered steel. A liquid formed due to the eutectic reaction of Fe + Fe2B, spreads to interparticle spaces leading to densification improvement. Carbon is an indispensable element for high strength sintered steels. It plays …

Comparison Of Zno Film Prepared By Spray Pyrolysis And Screen Printing Methods, S Suchat, J Potisart, S Supprakob, G Gitgeatpong, P Prachopchok

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

Zinc oxide (ZnO) thin films were prepared and compared between spray pyrolysis and screen-printing techniques. The obtained thin films from both methods were annealed at 400, 450, 500 and 550°C in the air for 30 min, then characterized by x-ray diffraction, ultraviolet-visible spectroscopy and four-point probes techniques. Optical transmittance spectra of ZnO thin films prepared by spray pyrolysis methods and screen printing methods were transmitted through thin film in the range from 300 nm to 800 nm. The lowest of sheet resistance of thin films from both techniques were found to develop at the same annealing temperature of 400°C with …

Influences Of Chemical Composition, Microstructure And Bandgap Energy On Photocatalytic And Antimicrobial Activities Of Zno And Ag-Doped Zno By Solution Combustion Technique, O Jongprateep, K Meesombad, R Techapiesancharoenkij, K Surawathanawises, P Siwayaprahm, P Watthanarat

Journal of Metals, Materials and Minerals

Antibacterial agents, self-cleaning materials, H2 generators and air purifiers are among common applications of photocatalysts. ZnO is a low cost material with prominent photocatalytic performance. It is generally accepted that enhancement of photocatalytic activities of powders can be achieved through doping, particle refinement, as well as tailoring of bandgap energy. It has been reported that proper doping of zinc oxide by silver lead to reduction of bandgap energy, promoting electron and hole generation, which results in enhanced photocatalytic performance. The present study aims at synthesizing ZnO and ZnO doped with 2.5, 5, and 10 mol% Ag by solution combustion technique. …

Strain-Stress Study Of Alxga1−Xn/Aln Heterostructures On C-Plane Sapphire And Related Optical Properties, Yining Feng, Vishal Saravade, Ting-Fung Chung, Ian T. Ferguson

Faculty Articles

This work presents a systematic study of stress and strain of AlxGa1−xN/AlN with composition ranging from GaN to AlN, grown on a c-plane sapphire by metal-organic chemical vapor deposition, using synchrotron radiation high-resolution X-ray diffraction and reciprocal space mapping. The c-plane of the AlxGa1−xN epitaxial layers exhibits compressive strain, while the a-plane exhibits tensile strain. The biaxial stress and strain are found to increase with increasing Al composition, although the lattice mismatch between the AlxGa1−xN and the buffer layer AlN gets smaller. A reduction in the lateral coherence lengths and an increase in the edge and screw dislocations are seen …

Astrocyte Sensitivity To Dopamine In Culture And Ex Vivo, Ashley L. Galloway

Theses and Dissertations

Dopamine is critical for processing of reward and etiology of drug addiction. Astrocytes throughout the brain express dopamine receptors, but consequences of astrocytic dopamine receptor signaling are not well established. This thesis illustrates effects of dopamine on cultured astrocytes and astrocytes in brain slices (ex vivo). In striatal cultures, extracellular dopamine triggered changes in astrocytic Ca²⁺ signaling and rapid concentration-dependent stellation of astrocytic processes that was not a result of dopamine oxidation, but instead relied on both cAMP-dependent and cAMP-independent dopamine receptor signaling. To isolate possible mechanisms underlying these structural and functional changes, whole-genome RNA sequencing was …

Ranking And Clustering Of Drosophila Olfactory Receptors Using Mathematical Morphology, Jayanta Kumar Das, Pabitra Pal Choudhury, Neelambuj Chaturvedi, Mohd Tayyab, Sk Sarif Hassan

Journal Articles

This article introduces an alignment-free clustering method in order to cluster all the 66 DORs sequentially diverse protein sequences. Two different methods are discussed: one is utilizing twenty standard amino acids (without grouping) and another one is using chemical grouping of amino acids (with grouping). Two grayscale images (representing two protein sequences by order pair frequency matrices) are compared to find the similarity index using morphology technique. We could achieve the correlation coefficients of 0.9734 and 0.9403 for without and with grouping methods respectively with the ClustalW result in the ND5 dataset, which are much better than some of the …

Adam Optimization Algorithmfor Wide And Deep Neural Network, Imran Khan Mohd Jais, Amelia Ritahani Ismail

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

The objective of this research is to evaluate the effects of Adam when used together with a wide and deep neural network. The dataset used was a diagnostic breast cancer dataset taken from UCI Machine Learning. Then, the dataset was fed into a conventional neural network for a benchmark test. Afterwards, the dataset was fed into the wide and deep neural network with and without Adam. It was found that there were improvements in the result of the wide and deep network with Adam. In conclusion, Adam is able to improve the performance of a wide and deep neural network.

User Privacy Leakage In Location-Based Mobile Ad Services, Qicheng Lin

School of Computing: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

The online advertising ecosystem leverages its massive data collection capability to learn the properties of users for targeted ad deliveries. Many Android app developers include ad libraries in their apps as a way of monetization. These ad libraries contain advertisements from the sell-side platforms, which collect an extensive set of sensitive information to provide more relevant advertisements for their customers. Existing efforts have investigated the increasingly pervasive private data collection of mobile ad networks over time. However, there lacks a measurement study to evaluate the scale of privacy leakage of ad networks across different geographical areas. In this work, we …

Deposition Of Nb₃Sn Films By Multilayer Sequential Sputtering For Srf Cavity Application, Md. N. Sayeed, Hani E. Elsayed-Ali, U. Pudasaini, G.V. Eremeev, C.E. Reece, M. Burton, A.M. Valente-Feliciano

Electrical & Computer Engineering Faculty Publications

Nb₃Sn is considered as an alternative of Nb for SRF accelerator cavity application due to its potential to obtain higher quality factors and higher accelerating gradients at a higher operating temperature. Magnetron sputtering is one of the effective techniques that can be used to fabricate Nb₃Sn on SRF cavity surface. We report on the surface properties of Nb₃Sn films fabricated by sputtering multiple layers of Nb and Sn on sapphire and niobium substrates followed by annealing at 950°C for 3 h. The crystal structure, film microstructure, composition and surface roughness were characterized by X-ray …

Interdependent Mechanisms Of Stress Susceptibility, Julie Elaine Finnell

Theses and Dissertations

Social stress is a significant risk factor for the emergence of psychiatric disorders including depression and anxiety. While there are a number of commercially available therapeutic options for the treatment of these disorders, these treatments require weeks of continuous use to produce behavioral efficacy. It has also been suggested that these traditional therapies are only marginally effective in producing complete remission, suggesting that our understanding as it pertains to the mechanisms underlying stressinduced behavioral dysfunction is still in its infancy. In the last few years, inflammation has become a major focus in the field of stress and depression as clinical …

Effect Of External Expanded Polystyrene (Eps) Panels On Slabs Subjected To Impact Load, Yosra El Maghraby

Civil Engineering

No abstract provided.

Microbial Transport As Affected By Residue Cover And Manure Application Rate, Lisa M. Durso, John E. Gilley, Dave B. Marx, Chance A. Thayer, Brian L. Woodbury

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Faculty Publications

Manure is applied to cropland areas with varying surface cover to meet single- or multiple-year crop nutrient requirements. The objectives of this field study were to (1) examine microbial transport following land application of manure to sites with and without wheat residue, (2) compare microbial loads following land application to meet the 0, 1, 2, 4, and 8-year P-based requirements for corn, and (3) evaluate the effects of rainfall simulation run on microbial transport. Manure was added and incorporated by disking plots that were 0.75 m wide by 2.0 m long. Three 30 min simulated rainfall events, separated by 24 …

Selection Of Marine Security Policyusing Fuzzy-Ahp Topsis Hybrid Approach, Hozairi Hozairi, Buhari Buhari, Heru Lumaksono, Marcus Tukan

Knowledge Engineering and Data Science

The research was focused on the integration of Fuzzy set theory with Analytic Hierarchy Process (AHP) and Technique for Order Preference by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS) to choose the optimum maritime security policy to achieve Indonesia recognition as the world's maritime axis. The method used is AHP with fuzzy based enhancement. Here, the weight of each criterion is calculated to overcome the criticism of the scale of unbalanced rating, uncertainty, and inaccuracy in the pairwise of comparison process. The best recommendation for Indonesian maritime policies is multi task single agency which is greatly infuenced by several factors such as …

Ion Exchange Nutrient Recovery From Anaerobic Membrane Bioreactor Permeate, Patrick Mullen, Kaushik Venkiteshwaran, Daniel Zitomer, Brooke K. Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Nutrient recovery from municipal wastewater was evaluated using anion exchange media loaded with hydrated ferric oxide (HFO) and copper (Cu²⁺) (Dow‐HFO‐Cu resin) to selectively capture phosphate, followed by clinoptilolite for ammonium removal and recovery. Nutrients were concentrated in the regenerants and recovered as precipitated struvite. Media exchange capacity after multiple ion exchange cycles was determined using permeate from an anaerobic membrane bioreactor (AnMBR) treating synthetic or actual municipal wastewater from a full‐scale water reclamation facility. Regeneration through five ion exchange cycles using relatively low concentration regenerant solution (2% NaCl and 0.5% NaOH) resulted in the highest phosphate exchange …

Bacteriophage Inactivation As A Function Of Ferrous Iron Oxidation, Joe Heffron, Brad Mcdermid, Brooke K. Mayer

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Iron-based disinfection has been promoted as a potential low-cost, low-byproduct means of virus mitigation. This research is the first to establish that virus inactivation due to ferrous iron is impacted both by the extent of iron oxidation (from ferrous to ferric iron) and the rate of iron oxidation. Log inactivation of bacteriophages increased linearly with ferrous iron concentration at low doses (< 3 mg/L Fe), but higher doses limited disinfection, likely due to floc formation. The rate of iron oxidation was controlled by independently varying pH and dissolved oxygen concentration. Bacteriophage inactivation increased with the inverse of ferrous oxidation rate, suggesting that slower iron oxidation rates allow better contact between viruses and reactive ferrous iron. Ferrous iron showed potential for disinfection in conditions of low pH and dissolved oxygen, though these conditions preclude effective iron coagulation/flocculation.

A Microfluidics-Based Cross-Flow Filtration Platform For Rapid Processing Of Amphiphilic Biomarkers From Blood, Kiersten D. Lenz

Biomedical Engineering ETDs

Early and accurate detection of bacterial infections can help save lives, prevent the spread of disease, and decrease the overuse of antibiotics. Our team at the Los Alamos National Laboratory has developed novel assays to detect bacterial biomarkers from patient blood at the point-of-care in order to facilitate a universal diagnostic platform. However, these biomarkers are amphiphilic in nature, and this biochemical property causes them to be sequestered by high-density and low-density lipoproteins (HDL and LDL) in the host’s blood. Extraction of the bacterial biomarkers from the lipoprotein complexes is thereby required for the development and deployment of a diagnostic …

In Vivo Human-Like Robotic Phenotyping Of Leaf And Stem Traits In Maize And Sorghum In Greenhouse, Abbas Atefi

Department of Agricultural and Biological Systems Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

In plant phenotyping, the measurement of morphological, physiological and chemical traits of leaves and stems is needed to investigate and monitor the condition of plants. The manual measurement of these properties is time consuming, tedious, error prone, and laborious. The use of robots is a new approach to accomplish such endeavors, which enables automatic monitoring with minimal human intervention. In this study, two plant phenotyping robotic systems were developed to realize automated measurement of plant leaf properties and stem diameter which could reduce the tediousness of data collection compare to manual measurements. The robotic systems comprised of a four degree …

Effect Of Low Reactivity Fuel On Reaction Wave Growth Of Dual-Fuel Stratified Mixtures In A Rapid Compression Machine, David J. Roulo

Master's Theses (2009 -)

For over 40 years, researchers have been studying homogenous charge compression ignition (HCCI) as a combustion strategy to improve the efficiency and emissions of the internal combustion strategy. Although early results were promising, it has been since discovered that HCCI engines only operate to their potential over a narrow load band. To remedy this, introducing inhomogeneities has been suggested as a method of controlling HCCI combustion in such a way to improve its usefulness. One such inhomogeneity is referred to as fuel octane number stratification and consists of port injecting a low reactivity fuel, allowing it to become well mixed, …