Engineering Commons^™

Identifying Prevalent Mathematical Pathways To Engineering In South Carolina, Eliza Gallagher, Christy Brown, D. Andrew Brown, Kristin Kelly Frady, Patrick Bass, Michael A. Matthews, Thomas T. Peters, Robert J. Rabb, Ikhalfani Solan, Ronald W. Welch, Anand K. Gramopadhye

Faculty Publications

National data indicate that initial mathematics course placement in college is a strong predictor of persistence to degree in engineering, with students placed in calculus persisting at nearly twice the rate of those placed below calculus. Within the state of South Carolina, approximately 95% of engineering-intending students who initially place below calculus are from in-state. In order to make systemic change, we are first analyzing system-wide data to identify prevalent educational pathways within the state, and the mathematical milestones along those pathways taken by students in engineering and engineering-related fields. This paper reports preliminary analysis of that data to understand …

Milkguard: Low-Cost, Polymer-Based Sensor For The Detection Of Escherichia Coli In Donated Human Breast Milk, Maggie May, Nicholas Kikuchi, Matthew Zweber

Bioengineering Senior Theses

Breast milk, the gold standard for infant nutrition, could prevent up to 13% of child deaths worldwide. However, many mothers are unable to breastfeed due to health conditions and other factors. Because of this, a network of more than 500+ human milk banks, which collect and distribute donated breast milk to infants, have emerged worldwide. However, operational costs to ensure the safety of this milk remain time-intensive and costly.

There are no existing diagnostics for rapid and on-site detection of bacterial contaminants in donated milk. Currently, many milk banks send samples to outside laboratories for bacterial culturing tests, which take …

Composite Bending-Dominated Hollow Nanolattices: A Stiff, Cyclable Mechanical Metamaterial, Biwei Deng, Rong Xu, Kejie Zhao, Yongfeng Lu, Sabyasachi Ganguli, Gary J. Cheng

Department of Electrical and Computer Engineering: Faculty Publications

Manufacturing ultralight and mechanical reliable materials has been a long-time challenge. Ceramicbased mechanical metamaterials provide significant opportunities to reverse their brittle nature and unstable mechanical properties and have great potential as strong, ultralight, and ultrastiff materials. However, the failure of ceramics nanolattice and degradation of strength/modulus with decreasing density are caused by buckling of the struts and failure of the nodes within the nanolattices, especially during cyclic loading. Here, we explore a new class of 3D ceramic-based metamaterials with a high strength–density ratio, stiffness, recoverability, cyclability, and optimal scaling factor. Deformation mode of the fabricated nanolattices has been engineered through …

Integration Of Remote Sensing And Proximal Sensing For Improvement Of Field Scale Water Management, Foad Foolad

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering: Dissertations, Theses, and Student Research

Water is one of the most precious natural resources, and sustainable water resources development ‎‎is a significant challenge facing water managers over the coming decades. Accurate estimation of ‎‎the different components of the hydrologic cycle is key for water managers and planners in order ‎‎to achieve sustainable water resources development. The primary goal of this dissertation was to ‎investigate techniques to combine datasets acquired by remote and proximal sensing and in-situ ‎sensors for the improvement of monitoring near surface water fluxes. This dissertation is ‎separated into three site-specific case studies. First study, investigated the feasibility of using ‎inverse vadose zone …

Beam Scanning Realized By Coupled Modes In A Single-Patch Antenna, Haozhan Tian, Kirti Dhwaj, Li (Lijun) Jun Jiang, Tatsuo Itoh

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

In this letter, we introduce a novel beam scanning in a single-rectangular-patch antenna realized by coupled modes. The design exhibits radiated beams that scan as a function of frequency but is different in its operation mechanism compared to a traditional leaky-wave antenna. The idea is to manipulate the phase difference between the fields at two radiating slots of the antenna to reform the beam. Metal vias are introduced to create two coupled half-mode cavities in the patch antenna. The mutual coupling between the two cavities makes the phase difference as a function of the operating frequency. The simulated beam scans …

Optimizing Available Surveying Technology To Streamline Project Delivery, Christopher Van Dyke, Adam J. Kirk, Steven Waddle, Steven Douglas Kreis

Kentucky Transportation Center Research Report

Kentucky Transportation Cabinet (KYTC) Project Managers bear responsibility for preparing all phases of highway projects, from initial concept to letting, while Section Engineers manage all phases of highway construction projects, from letting to completion. To perform the activities for which they are responsible, these stakeholders require knowledge of best practices for leveraging current surveying methodologies and equipment. With survey technologies having advanced significantly over the past 15-20 years, staff attrition at the Cabinet depleting its in-house surveying expertise, and contractors frequently undertaking their own surveying, acquiring this knowledge has become increasingly difficult. Drawing on a series of interviews with KYTC …

Generating Interest Among Undergraduates Toward Research In Environmental Engineering By Incorporating Novel Desalination Technology-Based Hands-On Laboratory Assignments, Sanjay Tewari, Md Ashique Ahmed, Chandra Mouli Tummala

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Undergraduate students were exposed to hands-on novel desalination laboratory experiments in an attempt to generate interest towards research in the broad field of environmental engineering and specifically in the field of water desalination. The laboratory exercises were designed to introduce desalination techniques, enhance their learning experiences, generate interest among them, and prepare them as potential researchers in laboratory settings. The hands-on experience of capacitive deionization (CDI) based laboratory experiments provided foundational and working knowledge of the CDI concept and allowed students to learn basic methodology followed in environmental laboratories to arrive at technical conclusions.

Students were given opportunity to desalinate …

Introduction To Public Health For Environmental Engineers: Results From A Three-Year Pilot, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The field of environmental engineering traces its origins to the integration of "civil engineering" infrastructure and the objectives of "public health", namely cost effective disease prevention at the community-scale. To address the urgent need to re-invigorate the "ancient" sub-specialization of "sanitary engineering" within the field of environmental engineering, a new course was created at the Missouri University of Science and Technology entitled, "Public Health for Environmental Engineers." The new course leverages available online materials disseminated by The Johns Hopkins University as well as materials disseminated by the National Environmental Health Association (NEHA) to emphasize environmental health practice in diverse communities …

Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, And Math (Steam) Diplomacy: Preliminary Results From An Initial Pilot Course, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A new course, "Science, Technology, Engineering, Art, and Math (STEAM) Diplomacy," has been developed at the Missouri University of Science and Technology to introduce engineering students to the field of foreign relations and the tripartite objectives of: 1) science in diplomacy; 2) science for diplomacy; and 3) diplomacy for science. The course employs an available scholarly monograph as a text and integrates materials created by the Center for Science Diplomacy of the American Association for the Advancement of Science (AAAS) as well as publically available materials. The new course employs a previously reported format including blended delivery, a flipped classroom, …

Resilient Civil Infrastructure Under Dynamic Loadings, Xing Ma, Nawawi Chouw, Mohamed Elgawady, Songye Zhu

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

A resilient infrastructural system is an important component of a modern city. The main principles are safety, sustainability, functionality, maintainability, and fast recoverability following natural and/or man-made hazards. This special issue addresses new research developments in resilient infrastructural systems under dynamic loadings, for example, wind, traffic, tsunamis, and earthquakes.

Incorporating Diegetic Elements To Increase Engagement In Games For Engineering Education, Katherine Smith, Yuzhong Shen, Anthony W. Dean

VMASC Publications

One of the difficulties in developing educational games is maintaining player engagement. This engagement is critical for games to provide effective learning experiences. One way to increase engagement in games is to limit interruptions during game play. In educational games, this can be accomplished by incorporating learning or problem-solving elements diegetically. Diegetic elements are those that are part of the game scene. With this in mind, a series of games for Science, Technology, Engineering, and Mathematics (STEM) education has been developed focusing on content in courses that are prerequisites to the engineering curriculum. These games cover topics in pre-calculus, calculus, …

Generation Of Three-Dimensional Optical Cusp Beams With Ultrathin Metasurfaces, Weiwei Liu, Yuchao Zhang, Jie Gao, Xiaodong Yang

Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Cusp beams are one type of complex structured beams with unique multiple self-accelerating channels and needle-like field structures owning great potentials to advance applications such as particle micromanipulation and super-resolution imaging. The traditional method to generate optical catastrophe is based on cumbrous reflective diffraction optical elements, which makes optical system complicated and hinders the nanophotonics integration. Here we design geometric phase based ultrathin plasmonic metasurfaces made of nanoslit antennas to produce three-dimensional (3D) optical cusp beams with variable numbers of self-accelerating channels in a broadband wavelength range. The entire beam propagation profiles of the cusp beams generated from the metasurfaces …

Bioactive Polydimethylsiloxane Surface For Optimal Human Mesenchymal Stem Cell Sheet Culture, Zichen Qian, David Ross, Wenkai Jia, Qi Xing, Feng Zhao

Michigan Tech Publications, Part 1

Human mesenchymal stem cell (hMSC) sheets hold great potential in engineering three-dimensional (3D) completely biological tissues for diverse applications. Conventional cell sheet culturing methods employing thermoresponsive surfaces are cost ineffective, and rely heavily on available facilities. In this study, a cost-effective method of layer-by-layer grafting was utilized for covalently binding a homogenous collagen I layer on a commonly used polydimethylsiloxane (PDMS) substrate surface in order to improve its cell adhesion as well as the uniformity of the resulting hMSC cell sheet. Results showed that a homogenous collagen I layer was obtained via this grafting method, which improved hMSC adhesion and …

Leveraging The Nam's 'Getting Nurses On Boards Coalition' To Promote Nae's 'Changing The Conversation' Campaign, Daniel B. Oerther

Civil, Architectural and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

As described in reports by the National Academy of Engineering (NAE), engineers and the profession of engineering lack visibility, relevance, and influence with the public. One approach to address this situation is the, "Changing the Conversation," campaign that uses market research techniques to improve the public image of the engineering profession. In related efforts, scientists have developed the, "March for Science," campaign to advocate for the role of science in evidence-based public policy at the local, state, and international levels. In contrast to marketing materials and advocacy campaigns, this article argues that the approach adopted by nurses and the profession …

A Retention Model For Community College Stem Students, Jennifer Snyder, Elizabeth A. Cudney

Engineering Management and Systems Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

The number of students attending community colleges that take advantage of transfer pathways to universities continues to rise. Therefore, there is a need to engage in academic research on these students and their attrition in order to identify areas to improve retention. Community colleges have a very diverse population and provide entry into science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) programs, regardless of student high school preparedness. It is essential for these students to successfully transfer to universities and finish their STEM degrees to meet the global workforce demands. This research develops a predictive model for community college students for degree …

Empath-D: Vr-Based Empathetic App Design For Accessibility, Wonjung Kim, Kenny Tsu Wei Choo, Youngki Lee, Archan Misra, Rajesh Krishna Balan

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

With app-based interaction increasingly permeating all aspects of daily living, it is essential to ensure that apps are designed to be inclusive and are usable by a wider audience such as the elderly, with various impairments (e.g., visual, audio and motor). We propose Empath-D, a system that fosters empathetic design, by allowing app designers, in-situ, to rapidly evaluate the usability of their apps, from the perspective of impaired users. To provide a truly authentic experience, Empath-D carefully orchestrates the interaction between a smartphone and a VR device, allowing the user to experience simulated impairments in a virtual world while interacting …

Cost Model Evaluation For Large Scale Additive Manufacturing, Andrea Piazza

Theses and Dissertations

Additive manufacturing (AM) is becoming a valuable option in medium to large scale manufacturing operations, due to the increasing technological advances and popularization of different techniques. Product development assembly costs can be greatly reduced with additive manufacturing, producing directly consumer-usable parts without the need of always rising labor costs. Entry level companies can bridge the gap between Tier 1 suppliers and Research & Development (R&D) businesses by utilizing the lower capital and reoccurring costs of modern additive manufacturing techniques, thereby avoiding the necessity for retooling and specialized machinery. The following study both explores the advantages and quantifies the cost factors, …

Parametrization Of Triple Screw Pumps For Aerospace Applications, Allison Putira

Doctoral Dissertations and Master's Theses

Triple Screw Pumps, a form of positive displacement pump, offer steady, high-pressure flow. In very small launch vehicles or upper stages turbopumps are not practical. This paper examines the performance of triple screw pumps to determine if they may serve as an alternative to turbopumps for use in small launch vehicles or upper stages. To this end, the geometry of the screws is first determined from the relative sizes of the screws and tooth height. From this — along with the screw angle and screw clearance — the performance parameters of flow rate, output pressure, and efficiency can be computed. …

Assessing The Accuracy Of Four Popular Face Recognition Tools For Inferring Gender, Age, And Race, Soon-Gyu Jung, Jisun An, Haewoon Kwak, Joni Salminen, Bernard J. Jansen

Research Collection School Of Computing and Information Systems

In this research, we evaluate four widely used face detection tools, which are Face++, IBM Bluemix Visual Recognition, AWS Rekognition, and Microsoft Azure Face API, using multiple datasets to determine their accuracy in inferring user attributes, including gender, race, and age. Results show that the tools are generally proficient at determining gender, with accuracy rates greater than 90%, except for IBM Bluemix. Concerning race, only one of the four tools provides this capability, Face++, with an accuracy rate of greater than 90%, although the evaluation was performed on a high-quality dataset. Inferring age appears to be a challenging problem, as …

Diffusion Tensor Imaging In A Large Longitudinal Series Of Patients With Cervical Spondylotic Myelopathy Correlated With Long-Term Functional Outcome, Avinash Rao, Hesham Soliman, Mayank Kaushal, Olesya Motovylyak, Aditya Vedantam, Matthew D. Budde, Brian D. Schmit, Marjorie C. Wang, Shekar N. Kurpad

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

BACKGROUND

Fractional anisotropy (FA) of the high cervical cord correlates with upper limb function in acute cervical cord injury. We investigated the correlation between preoperative FA at the level of maximal compression and functional recovery in a group of patients after decompressive surgery for cervical spondylotic myelopathy (CSM).

OBJECTIVE

To determine the usefulness of FA as a biomarker for severity of CSM and as a prognostic biomarker for improvement after surgery.

METHODS

Patients received diffusion tensor imaging (DTI) scans preoperatively. FA values of the whole cord cross-section at the level of maximal compression and upper cervical cord (C1-2) were calculated. …

Posterior Cervical Spine Crisscross Fixation: Biomechanical Evaluation, Joseph F. Cusick, Frank A. Pintar, Joseph S. Cheng, Jason I. Lifshutz, Narayan Yoganandan

Biomedical Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Background

Biomechanical/anatomic limitations may limit the successful implantation, maintenance, and risk acceptance of posterior cervical plate/rod fixation for one stage decompression-fusion. A method of posterior fixation (crisscross) that resolves biomechanical deficiencies of previous facet wiring techniques and not reliant upon screw implantation has been devised. The biomechanical performance of the new method of facet fixation was compared to the traditional lateral mass plate/screw fixation method.

Methods

Thirteen human cadaver spine segments (C2-T1) were tested under flexion-compression loading and four were evaluated additionally under pure-moment load. Preparations were evaluated in a sequence of surgical alterations with intact, laminectomy, lateral mass plate/screw …

Inter Process Communication Between Two Servers Using Mpich, Nagabhavana Narla

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

The main aim of the project is to launch multiple processes and have those processes communicate with each other using peer to peer communication to eliminate the problems of multiple processes running on a single server, and multiple processes running on inhomogeneous servers as well as the problems of scalability. This entire process is done using MPICH which is a high performance and portable implementation of Message Passing Interface standard.

The project involves setting up the passwordless authentication between two local servers with the help of SSH connection. By establishing a peer to peer communication and by using a unique …

Epicconfigurator Computer Configurator And Cms Platform, Ivo A. Tantamango

Electronic Theses, Projects, and Dissertations

Very often when we are looking to buy new IT equipment in an online store, we face the problem that certain parts of our order are not compatible with others or sometimes one part needs additional components. From another point of view in this process, when an online store owner wants to manage the products available in stock, assign prices, set conditions to make an order, or manage customer information, he or she must often rely on information from different systems, physical files, or other sources.

EpicConfigurator simplifies and solves the issues mentioned above. EpicConfigurator makes it easy for User …

Biosolids-Derived Biochar For Triclosan Removal From Wastewater, Lee K. Kimbell, Yiran Tong, Brooke K. Mayer, Patrick J. Mcnamara

Civil and Environmental Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Micropollutants, including antibiotics, hormones, pharmaceuticals, and personal care products, are discharged into the environment with liquid and solid effluent streams from water resource recovery facilities (WRRFs). The objective of this research was to determine whether biosolids-derived biochar (BS-biochar) could be used as a sorbent in continuous flow-through columns to remove micropollutants as a polishing step for wastewater treatment. Triclosan (TCS) was selected as a representative micropollutant due to frequent detection in liquid effluents, residual biosolids, and surface waters. Bench-scale column experiments were conducted to determine the effect of flow rate and competition due to the presence of other organic micropollutants …

Automatic Segmentation Of Trees In Dynamic Outdoor Environments, Amy Tabb, Henry P. Medeiros

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research and Publications

Segmentation in dynamic outdoor environments can be difficult when the illumination levels and other aspects of the scene cannot be controlled. Specifically in orchard and vineyard automation contexts, a background material is often used to shield a camera's field of view from other rows of crops. In this paper, we describe a method that uses superpixels to determine low texture regions of the image that correspond to the background material, and then show how this information can be integrated with the color distribution of the image to compute optimal segmentation parameters to segment objects of interest. Quantitative and qualitative experiments …

Intercellular Sodium Nanodomain Signaling Regulates Repolarization In Cardiac Tissue, Madison Nowak, Seth Weinberg Ph.D.

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Chemotherapeutic Drug Cytotoxicity Measurement With A 3d Biomimetic Microfluidic Device And Computational Fluid Dynamics Model, Maryam Moarefian, Caroline Jones, Luke Achenie, Danesh Tafti

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Investigating Smoke Exposure And Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (Copd) With A Calibrated Agent Based Model (Abm) Of In Vitro Fibroblast Wound Healing., J Alex Ratti, Angela Reynolds, Rebecca L. Heise

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Quantifying Effects Of Neutrophil Memory On Migration Patterns Using Microfluidic Platforms And Ode Modeling Of The Mechanistic Molecular Pathways, Brittany P. Boribong, Mark J. Lenzi, Mirjam Sarah Kadelka, Stanca Ciupe, Liwu Li, Caroline N. Jonea

Biology and Medicine Through Mathematics Conference

No abstract provided.

Online Edge Caching And Wireless Delivery In Fog-Aided Networks, Seyyed Mohammadreza Azimi

Dissertations

Multimedia content is the significant fraction of transferred data over the wireless medium in the modern cellular and wireless communication networks. To improve the quality of experience perceived by users, one promising solution is to push the most popular contents as close as to users, also known as the "edge" of network. Storing content at the edge nodes (ENs) or base stations (BSs) is called "caching". In Fog Radio Access Network (F-RAN), each EN is equipped with a cache as well as a "fronthaul" connection to the content server. Among the new design problems raised by the outlined scenarios, two …