Engineering Commons^™

Snap-N-Snack: A Food Image Recognition Application, Stephen Hoff, Patterson Jaffurs, Michael Enriquez, Quintin Wilde

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Many people desire to be informed about the nutritional specifics of the food they consume. Current popular dietary tracking methods are too slow and tedious for a lot of consumers due to requiring manual data entry for everything eaten. We propose a system that will take advantage of image recognition and the internal camera of Android phones to identify food based off of a picture of a user’s plate. Over the course the last year, we trained an object detection model with images of different types of food, built a mobile application around it, and tested their integration and performance. …

Symptom Search: Predicting Symptom And Product Correlations Using Fda Adverse Effects Reports, Isabela Figueira, Neesha Godbole, Angelina Poole, Kelly Wesley

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Prescription and over-the-counter drugs are abundant now more than ever, and many people use them on a regular basis. These drugs come with a variety of side e↵ects, ranging from common to very rare. However, the symptoms listed on drug packaging might not be the only symptoms that a consumer might experience when taking a specific drug. When experiencing a symptom, consumers might think they have a disease, turn to the Web for answers, and attempt to diagnose themselves when a disease is not necessarily the cause. Instead, these symptoms might be reactions to medications; however, the first thought that …

Authenticated Authorship, Andrew Leonard, Mikhail Smelik, Stephen Chuang

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Recently there has been an increase of fake news which makes it so that people have a more difficult time of understanding if the article that they are reading is real or not. In addition, it is significantly easier for people to fabricate an article and pose it as if it was created by another person. Our solution to these problems is to create a system which will allow authors to sign their documents and publish them with a generated signature. This signature will allow readers to see if the article has not been tampered with as well as find …

Additive Manufacturing Of A Motorcycle Helmet Utilizing 7-Axis 3d Printing, Kyle Mcmorrow, Caleb Alleva, Luke Correnti, Danny Eckstein, Adam Fontana, Pranav Prabhakar

Mechanical Engineering Senior Theses

This project analyzes the structural properties of 7-axis 3D printing versus traditional FDM printing. The team worked with AREVO Inc to manufacture a motorcycle helmet and test samples made from carbon fiber in a PEEK matrix. A drop-test rig was designed and constructed in-house to test a traditionally printed carbon fiber helmet alongside commercial helmets of identical geometry. The lighter weight printed helmet experienced significantly lower peak deceleration in the test headform (223 G’s versus 371 G’s for average commercial), but fractured along a print layer on impact. Had time allowed for printing of a helmet utilizing AREVOS’s true 3D …

Realsense Relay Board, Shivam Gandhi, Sean Giblin

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

RealSense is an emerging technology owned by Intel. RealSense cameras are unique in the sense that they have depth sensing abilities allowing for object tracking and identification. Due to the wide range of applications RealSense cameras are found in a multitude of different environments. As with any new technology these cameras experience technical issues that can affect performance. It was the goal of this project to solve the particular problem of RealSense cameras freezing. RealSense cameras are data collection devices, often times the continuity of that data is extremely important and any downtime is to be avoided. Physical resets require …

Virtual Museum For Nacha, Sonali Chaudhry, Alisa Hawthorne

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Our team worked with the Nso’ Arts and Cultural Heritage Association and created a virtual museum in order to increase awareness of the unique culture of the Nso’ people in Cameroon, Africa. A lot of information from this region is in danger of being lost due to political tension and poor artifact conservation, and many people, including the Cameroonian youth, are not prioritizing the preservation of their culture and history. Creating a website where individuals can view the art, history, and culture found in Cameroon is the best way to increase the availability of knowledge of the Nso’ people. Such …

Wireless Multi-User Communication System, Brian Tjahjadi, Andrew Song

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

The project’s ultimate goal is to send and receive information wirelessly from multiple unique users at once. Our design includes an antenna with beam-switching capabilities to serve multiple users at once. The project also focused on providing a more compact solution along with additional uplink capability and power indication. This has the potential to be used in the upcoming 5G machine to machine communication. The antenna and feed network were made smaller by making use of less conventional structures. The power indicator was made by using a digital logic circuit. These components form a proof-of-concept communication system.

Eurasian Rail Freight In The One Belt One Road Era, Hans-Joachim Schramm, Xu Zhang

Conference Papers

This paper presents an overview of the recent development of Eurasian rail freight in the One Belt, One Road Era and further evaluates its service quality in terms of transit times and transport costs compared to other transport modes in containerised supply chains between Europe and China. A trade-off model of transit time and transport costs based on quantitative data from primary as well as secondary sources is developed to demonstrate the market niche for Eurasian rail freight vis-a-vis the more established modes of transport of sea, air, and sea/air. In a scenario analysis, further goods attributes influencing modal choice …

Halo - A Personal Iot Air Monitor Powered By Harvested Energy, Benjamin Lampe, Taylor Mau, Samantha Morehead, Naeem Turner-Bandele

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Urban air pollution leads to widespread respiratory illness and millions of deaths annually. PM2.5, particulate matter with a diameter less than 2.5 micrometers, is the product of many common combustion reactions and poses a particularly serious health risk. Its small size allows it to penetrate deep into the lungs and enter the bloodstream. Existing air quality monitors are aimed at scientific research, di↵erentiating between pollutants and providing high accuracy in measurement. These devices are prohibitively expensive and cannot easily be carried around. Due to the highly localized nature of air pollution, and in order to allow individuals and institutions to …

Electric Water Heater Modeling For Distributed Energy Resource Aggregation And Control, Anne E. Clarke

Dissertations and Theses

Today's utilities face new challenges due to the continually increasing penetration of residential solar and other distributed, stochastic generation sources. In order to maintain balance and stability in the grid without building costly, large-scale generation plants, utilities are turning to distributed energy resources for use in demand response programs. Demand response is a cost-efficient way to balance grid load/generation without the need for increased capital investment in traditional generation resources. Demand response programs are excellent exploiters of end-user devices that otherwise further accentuate the daily load curve and thus, add to the difficulties created by daily load peaks.

Electric water …

Regulatory Methodology And Unmitigated Wetland Loss In Southwest Florida, Kathleen B. Castor

USF Tampa Graduate Theses and Dissertations

This research used Geographical Information System (GIS) data to estimate the acreage of wetland loss due to small-scale activities (taking into account exempt, permitted, and unauthorized activities) in the Southwest District of the Department of Environmental Protection (DEP) between 2006 and 2011 and compared that net loss with the unmitigated wetland net loss that DEP documented during that time for authorized activities and violations that were discovered. The comparison allowed an estimation of the extent of undocumented small-scale unmitigated wetland loss that occurred during those six years. DEP records show that 88% of non-compliance cases remain unresolved, and the net …

Sensitivity Of Atmospheric Aerosol Scavenging To Precipitation Intensity And Frequency In The Context Of Global Climate Change, Pei Hou, Shiliang Wu, Jessica L. Mccarty, Yang Gao

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Wet deposition driven by precipitation is an important sink for atmospheric aerosols and soluble gases. We investigate the sensitivity of atmospheric aerosol lifetimes to precipitation intensity and frequency in the context of global climate change. Our sensitivity model simulations, through some simplified perturbations to precipitation in the GEOS-Chem model, show that the removal efficiency and hence the atmospheric lifetime of aerosols have significantly higher sensitivities to precipitation frequencies than to precipitation intensities, indicating that the same amount of precipitation may lead to different removal efficiencies of atmospheric aerosols. Combining the long-term trends of precipitation patterns for various regions with the …

Assessment Of Soil Erosion Vulnerability In The Heavily Populated And Ecologically Fragile Communities In Motozintla De Mendoza, Chiapas, Mexico, Selene González-Morales, Alex Mayer, Neptalí Ramírez-Marcial

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Variability in physical rates and local knowledge of soil erosion was assessed across six rural communities in the Sierra Madre del Sur, Chiapas, Mexico. The average erosion rate estimated using the RUSLE model is 274 t ha-1 yr-1, with the estimated erosion rates ranging from 28 to 717 t ha-1 yr-1. These very high erosion rates are associated with high rainfall erosivity (17 000 MJ mm ha-1 h-1 yr-1) and steep slopes (mean slope Combining double low line 67 %). Many of the highest soil erosion rates are found in communities that are dominated by forestland, but where most of …

Detecting Wildlife In Unmanned Aerial Systems Imagery Using Convolutional Neural Networks Trained With An Automated Feedback Loop, Connor Bowley, Marshall Bowley, Andrew Barnas, Susan Ellis-Felege, Travis Desell

Computer Science Faculty Publications

Using automated processes to detect wildlife in uncontrolled outdoor imagery in the field of wildlife ecology is a challenging task. This is especially true in imagery provided by an Unmanned Aerial System (UAS), where the relative size of wildlife is small and visually similar to its background. This work presents an automated feedback loop which can be used to train convolutional neural networks with extremely unbalanced class sizes, which alleviates some of these challenges. This work utilizes UAS imagery collected by the Wildlife@Home project, which has employed citizen scientists and trained experts to go through collected UAS imagery and classify …

Vplot, Dante Dalla Gasperina, Kush Mahajani, Alex Martin, Collin Walther

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Robotic systems under development in the Santa Clara University Robotic Systems Laboratory (RSL) generate large amounts of data that must be interpreted in real-time. Many dimensions of this data must be visualized at once, such as temperature, location, and certainty of the measurement. Current data visualization softwares (such as Mathematica and Simulink) are ill-suited to visualize this much data, due to lack of customization. To solve this, we propose a system that allows users to view real-time streaming data in a virtual reality environment. This allows the user to easily interpret large, detailed datasets through an intuitive interface.

Human Attention Region Of Interest In Video Compression, Olayinka Sylvia N’Guessan

Engineering Ph.D. Theses

In this thesis, we propose a generic human attention region-of-interest (Generic- HAROI) algorithm to improve video compression while preserving subjective quality. Precisely, this algorithm performs a perceptual adaptive quantization algorithm on video frames as a function of the distribution of their luminance, motion vector, and color saturation. Our research incorporates a psycho-visual study that demonstrated that human attention automatically enhanced perceived saturation. As a result, the adaptive quantization phase of our compression algorithm is characterized by a luminance and saturation-aware just noticeable distortion (JND) function. After running multiple experiments on 18 videos with various resolutions ranging from QCIF to 4K, …

Metabolic Patterning On A Chip: Towards In Vitro Liver Zonation Of Primary Rat And Human Hepatocytes, Young Bok (Abraham) Kang, Jinsu Eo, Safak Mert, Martin L. Yarmush, O. Berk Usta

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

An important number of healthy and diseased tissues shows spatial variations in their metabolic capacities across the tissue. The liver is a prime example of such heterogeneity where the gradual changes in various metabolic activities across the liver sinusoid is termed as “zonation” of the liver. Here, we introduce the Metabolic Patterning on a Chip (MPOC) platform capable of dynamically creating metabolic patterns across the length of a microchamber of liver tissue via actively enforced gradients of various metabolic modulators such as hormones and inducers. Using this platform, we were able to create continuous liver tissues of both rat and …

Rf Roaming System Locator: A Modular Omnidirectional Antenna System, George Stathakis, Josh Sullivan, Christian Ayscue

Interdisciplinary Design Senior Theses

Drones are increasingly common in everything from entertainment to delivery services. Currently, GPS and wireless triangulation are the two main methods of tracking drones and collision avoidance. The main problem with these two methods are accuracy and mobility. This thesis goes into building a system that is able to solve the two main drawbacks, by using a completely contained antenna system. The system is robust and can work in a variety of environments and situations. While the thesis focuses on drone tracking, the system is built with modularity in mind and can be adapted to track other RF signals with …

Design Of Metamaterials With Graduating Poisson's Ratio Through Periodic Void Patterns, Xiaoming Liang

Mechanical Engineering Master's Theses

It has been known that when introducing alternating elliptical extrusions in a solid material with a positive Poisson's Ratio, the material's effective Poisson's Ratio can become negative. Furthermore, the change in the effective Poisson's ratio depends on two factors: the elliptical extrusions' aspect ratio and the porosity. Using this phenomenon, a study is conducted by combining elliptical extrusions with different aspect ratios and porosity to construct a composite material with gradually varying Poisson's Ratio. Numerical and physical compression studies are conducted to characterize the material's effective properties. The results show that the material can effectively stabilize its own structure under …

Perfect Snap, Manoj Adhikari, Colby Harper, Sean Karstein

Computer Science and Engineering Senior Theses

Taking group photos during important events is a common practice. Group photos are taken to remember cheerful times when people had an opportunity to meet many other people. However, an unappealing facial expression of one person can easily ruin the entire photo. Capturing the wrong moments when a person doesn’t look attractive can leave him/ her displeased from the complete event experience. A solution is to develop a mobile app that captures the moment when everyone is smiling with eyes wide open. Our solution aims to develop an iPhone app that will preclude users from worrying about not having a …

Vehicle To Everything Communication Using Vlc, Andrew Harris, Michael Karachewski, Nick Schnabel

Electrical and Computer Engineering Senior Theses

Autonomous vehicles are currently self contained. However, we are coming to an age where there will be so many smart vehicles on the road, they will need a way to communicate with each other. In addition, the radio frequency spectrum is crowded and additional communication methods are needed to keep up with future needs. With these two ideas, this paper looks into a very new and developing form of communication - visible light communication - to provide an alternative to traditional radio waves for vehicular communication. We analyze the viability of this system as a proof-of-concept for the technology. We …

Metabolic Patterning On A Chip: Towards In Vitro Liver Zonation Of Primary Rat And Human Hepatocytes, Young Bok Abraham Kang, Jinsu Eo, Safak Mert, Martin L. Yarmush, O. Berk Usta

Faculty Publications - Biomedical, Mechanical, and Civil Engineering

An important number of healthy and diseased tissues shows spatial variations in their metabolic capacities across the tissue. The liver is a prime example of such heterogeneity where the gradual changes in various metabolic activities across the liver sinusoid is termed as “zonation” of the liver. Here, we introduce the Metabolic Patterning on a Chip (MPOC) platform capable of dynamically creating metabolic patterns across the length of a microchamber of liver tissue via actively enforced gradients of various metabolic modulators such as hormones and inducers. Using this platform, we were able to create continuous liver tissues of both rat and …

Strategic Competences For Pricing Quantity Surveying Consultancy Services, Michael Adesi, De-Graft Owusu-Manu, Róisín Murphy

Articles

Professional quantity surveying (QS) services are critical to successful delivery of construction projects within planned budget, quality, and duration. The supply of QS professional services is largely dependent on the price level of services and the willingness of clients to pay. The pricing of professional QS consultancy services has been confronted with a myriad of pricing challenges due to rapid changes in the business environment; the pervasive influence of information technology; and the complexity of clients’ expectation. It isthereforenecessary for QS consultancy firms to develop strategic competence for the pricing of their services. In addition, numerous studies have not given …

Process Intervention For Water Recovery In Food Manufacture, Christian Michael Wisniewski

Theses and Dissertations

A case study has been conducted for the recovery of water from complex wastewater at a soluble coffee manufacturing factory. The study has evaluated separation methods for process intervention based on environmental and economic assessments. Water recovery was identified in two possible wastewater streams at the factory: the overall plant effluent and an intermediate stream before it enters on-site pre-treatment. A novel vibratory field membrane separation was tested at the laboratory scale using real factory wastewater and scaled-up using appropriate design protocols. Recovery of water from the intermediate stream proved the most effective, both environmentally and economically. The full-scale vibratory …

Competitiveness Of Hybrid Electric Aircraft On Short Range Scheduled Flights, Johannes Anton, Hans-Joachim K. Ruff-Stahl

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Hybrid electric aircraft are expected to enter the small regional aircraft market within the next two decades. The aim of this study was to investigate if a hybrid electric passenger aircraft with 50 seats can be competitive against the established 100 seat aircraft on short range scheduled flights. The Embraer EMB 145 and EMB 190 regional jets were chosen as benchmarks for that market. A hypothetical hybrid version of the EMB 145 with increased fuel efficiency was tested on a cost per available seat mile (CASM) basis. The t tests confirmed significant (p < 0.05) competitiveness of the hybrid version, while in contrast the conventional 50-seater was significantly more expensive compared to the 100seat aircraft. This indicates that hybrid aircraft could enter the short haul market with a competitive advantage, even against the established 100 seat regional jets.

Investigation Into The Behavior Of An Open Web Steel Joist Bridge, Zahra Andalib, Piero Caputo, Sattar Dorafshan, Marc Maguire, William Collins

Civil Engineering Faculty Publications

Open web steel joists (OWSJ) have been extensively used in the building industry due to numerous advantages when compared with other structural systems. They are lighter than comparable rolled steel shapes, allowing for faster and less costly construction, in addition to their reduced material costs. However, OWSJ are rarely used for bridge structures. This paper examines the behavior of an OWSJ system in a bridge located at the Nucor plant in Brigham City, Utah.

High Efficiency, High Performance Metal-Organic Framework (Mof) Membranes In Hollow Fibers And Tubular Modules, Sankar Nair, Kiwon Eum, Christopher W. Jones, Ali A. Rownaghi

Chemical and Biochemical Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A reactor cell for measuring gas and liquid permeation is disclosed. A hollow fiber is supported by and sealed into a first hole and a second hole of the reactor module. The first and second ends of the hollow fiber are sealed with a sealing solution. Methods for making and using the reactor cell are also disclosed. As made and used, the reactor cell further comprises a molecular sieving membrane that is uniform and free of defects grown on an inner bore surface of the hollow fiber.

Dark Current Rts-Noise In Silicon Image Sensors, Benjamin William Hendrickson

Dissertations and Theses

Random Telegraph Signal (RTS) noise is a random noise source defined by discrete and metastable changes in the magnitude of a signal. Though observed in a variety of physical processes, RTS is of particular interest to image sensor fabrication where progress in the suppression of other noise sources has elevated its noise contribution to the point of approaching the limiting noise source in scientific applications.

There have been two basic physical sources of RTS noise reported in image sensors. The first involves a charge trap in the oxide layer of the source follower in a CMOS image sensor. The capture …

River Channel Geometry And Rating Curve Estimation Using Height Above The Nearest Drainage, Xing Zheng, David G. Tarboton, David R. Maidment, Yan Y. Liu, Paola Passalacqua

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

River channel geometry is an important input to hydraulic and hydrologic models. Traditional approaches to quantify river geometry have involved surveyed river cross-sections, which cannot be extended to ungauged basins. In this paper, we describe a method for developing a synthetic rating curve to relate flow to water level in a stream reach based on reach-averaged channel geometry properties developed using the Height Above Nearest Drainage (HAND) method. HAND uses a digital elevation model of the terrain and computes the elevation difference between each land surface cell and the stream bed cell to which it drains. Taking increments in water …

A Cybergis Integration And Computation Framework For High‐Resolution Continental‐Scale Flood Inundation Mapping, Yan Y. Liu, David R. Maidment, David G. Tarboton, Xing Zheng, Shaowen Wang

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Publications

We present a Digital Elevation Model (DEM)-based hydrologic analysis methodology for continental flood inundation mapping (CFIM), implemented as a cyberGIS scientific workflow in which a 1/3rd arc-second (10m) Height Above Nearest Drainage (HAND) raster data for the conterminous U.S. (CONUS) was computed and employed for subsequent inundation mapping. A cyberGIS framework was developed to enable spatiotemporal integration and scalable computing of the entire inundation mapping process on a hybrid supercomputing architecture. The first 1/3rd arc-second CONUS HAND raster dataset was computed in 1.5 days on the CyberGIS ROGER supercomputer. The inundation mapping process developed in our exploratory study couples HAND …