Engineering Commons^™

Two Pumps, One Volcano: An Epanet Feasbility Study Of Connecting Two Groundwater Pumps In Rural Coastal Communities In West Ambae, Vanuatu, Helen Amiri

Dissertations, Master's Theses and Master's Reports

In situations where groundwater supply shows vulnerability, improving water distribution network resiliency can be desirable. To do so, one water source can be linked with another to provide a redundant source.

On the South Pacific island of Ambae, the water demands of its residents routinely exceeded supply. Residents had traditionally used rainwater collection as their sole water supply source. In 2017, groundwater drilling operations created an alternative water supply at two community institutions, Ndui Ndui Health Center and Londua Junior Secondary School. One borehole went dry during pump testing; the feasibility of linking these two boreholes is investigated herein.

EPANET …

The Influence Of Employee's Perceptions Of Top Management Support, Information Technology Competence, Technology Strategy, Organizational Climate, And Organization's Nationality On Information Systems Security, And Quality Success, Saud Fawwaz Alsahli

Master's Theses and Doctoral Dissertations

This research investigated the relationship between levels of top management, information technology, competence, technology strategy, and organizational climate within an organization and organization’s success of information systems. The study conducted a quantitative study of 120 employees working for two organizations within the Ministry of Interior in Saudi Arabia and determine whether organizational attributes affect changes in information systems success. In addition, an American organization (40 employees) was used as a comparison. The analysis of the study found that top management support, information technology competence, technology strategy, and organizational climate were strongly correlated with information systems success in Saudi organizations. In …

Sequence Effects On The Glass Transition Temperature, William Drayer

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

Lithium ion batteries are widely used for the energy needs of portable electronic devices. Unfortunately, current liquid organic solvents used as the electrolytic portion of the battery have low thermal stability, resulting in batteries that may combust upon failure. This flammability can be attributed to the configurational strain in cyclic organic electrolytes. Due to the lack of configurational strain in a flexible polymer chain, designing polymer electrolytes for use in lithium ion batteries may result in a safer battery due to their lower flammability in comparison to traditional liquid organic electrolytes. From the perspective of an electrolytic polymer, lowering the …

Reflections On Teaching System Dynamics Modeling To Secondary School Students For Over 20 Years, Diana Fisher

Complex Systems Faculty Publications and Presentations

This paper contains the description of a successful system dynamics (SD) modeling approach used for almost a quarter-century in secondary schools, both in algebra classes and in a year-long SD modeling course. Secondary school students have demonstrated an ability to build original models from the news, write technical papers explaining their models, and present a newfound understanding of dynamic feedback behavior to an audience. The educational learning theory and instructional methods used for both the algebra and modeling courses are detailed, with examples. Successful student SD modeling experiences suggest the SD approach can expand the sophistication of topics that secondary …

Evaluation Of White Rot Fungus As A Pretreatment For Thermochemical Processing Of Switchgrass, Melody Embry

Theses and Dissertations--Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering

Hydrothermal liquefaction is a thermochemical technique for obtaining crude bio-oil from lignocellulosic biomass with moderate temperature and pressure. The crude bio-oil can then be upgraded to various biofuels and bioproducts. Hydrothermal liquefaction is amenable to use of biomass feedstocks that have high-moisture. The overall goal of this research is to demonstrate the effectiveness of white rot fungus (WRF) as a pretreatment option in the production of bio-oil from switchgrass through hydrothermal liquefaction. If WRF is an effective pretreatment, it could be a cost-effective option for commercialization, allowing hydrothermal liquefaction to be used on an industrial scale to produce high quality …

Robotic Mining Digging Core, John Stefan, Ryan Weir

Williams Honors College, Honors Research Projects

The purpose of this design project is to design a digging core for a lunar robot that will collect large amounts of material buried beneath the surface of Mars so one day, astronauts can use those resources. This lunar robot will be competing in the NASA Robotic Mining Competition, where teams from universities around the country display and test their designs. This design must adhere to a newly implemented rule which states that the amount of gravel a robot collects will determine the team score. The layer of gravel is located underneath a layer of Regolith, which simulates the surface …

Retail Data Analytics Using Graph Database, Rashmi Priya

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

Big data is an area focused on storing, processing and visualizing huge amount of data. Today data is growing faster than ever before. We need to find the right tools and applications and build an environment that can help us to obtain valuable insights from the data. Retail is one of the domains that collects huge amount of transaction data everyday. Retailers need to understand their customer’s purchasing pattern and behavior in order to take better business decisions.

Market basket analysis is a field in data mining, that is focused on discovering patterns in retail’s transaction data. Our goal is …

Interactive Clinical Event Pattern Mining And Visualization Using Insurance Claims Data, Zhenhui Piao

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

With exponential growth on a daily basis, there is potentially valuable information hidden in complex electronic medical records (EMR) systems. In this thesis, several efficient data mining algorithms were explored to discover hidden knowledge in insurance claims data. The first aim was to cluster three levels of information overload(IO) groups among chronic rheumatic disease (CRD) patient groups based on their clinical events extracted from insurance claims data. The second aim was to discover hidden patterns using three renowned pattern mining algorithms: Apriori, frequent pattern growth(FP-Growth), and sequential pattern discovery using equivalence classes(SPADE). The SPADE algorithm was found to be the …

Improving Table Scans For Trie Indexed Databases, Ethan Toney

Theses and Dissertations--Computer Science

We consider a class of problems characterized by the need for a string based identifier that reflect the ontology of the application domain. We present rules for string-based identifier schemas that facilitate fast filtering in databases used for this class of problems. We provide runtime analysis of our schema and experimentally compare it with another solution. We also discuss performance in our solution to a game engine. The string-based identifier schema can be used in addition scenarios such as cloud computing. An identifier schema adds metadata about an element. So the solution hinges on additional memory but as long as …

“Woodlands” - A Virtual Reality Serious Game Supporting Learning Of Practical Road Safety Skills., Krzysztof Szczurowski, Matt Smith

Conference Papers

In developed societies road safety skills are taught early and often practiced under the supervision of a parent, providing children with a combination of theoretical and practical knowledge. At some point children will attempt to cross a road unsupervised, at that point in time their safety depends on the effectiveness of their road safety education. To date, various attempts to supplement road safety education with technology were made. Most common approach focus on addressing declarative knowledge, by delivering road safety theory in an engaging fashion. Apart from expanding on text based resources to include instructional videos and animations, some stakeholders …

Mintbase V2.0: A Comprehensive Database For Trna-Derived Fragments That Includes Nuclear And Mitochondrial Fragments From All The Cancer Genome Atlas Projects., Venetia Pliatsika, Phillipe Loher, Rogan Magee, Aristeidis G. Telonis, Eric R. Londin, Megumi Shigematsu, Yohei Kirino, Isidore Rigoutsos

Computational Medicine Center Faculty Papers

MINTbase is a repository that comprises nuclear and mitochondrial tRNA-derived fragments ('tRFs') found in multiple human tissues. The original version of MINTbase comprised tRFs obtained from 768 transcriptomic datasets. We used our deterministic and exhaustive tRF mining pipeline to process all of The Cancer Genome Atlas datasets (TCGA). We identified 23 413 tRFs with abundance of ≥ 1.0 reads-per-million (RPM). To facilitate further studies of tRFs by the community, we just released version 2.0 of MINTbase that contains information about 26 531 distinct human tRFs from 11 719 human datasets as of October 2017. Key new elements include: the ability …

Optical Mapping Of Cardiac Electromechanics, Hanyu Zhang

All ETDs from UAB

Sudden cardiac arrest is a leading cause of death in the world. One of the common causes of sudden cardiac arrest is acute regional ischemia due to coronary occlusion. However, the mechanism of arrhythmia onset in this setting is still unclear. Previous stud-ies suggest that abnormal mechanical stretch during acute regional ischemia may play a role in initiating arrhythmia through triggering ectopic electrical activation. Optical map-ping has been widely used in cardiac electrophysiological research in the past decades. Compared with conventional electrical mapping techniques, optical mapping offers a number of advantages. But a major limitation of optical mapping is that …

Centrifugal Microfluidics For Label-Free Isolation Of Leukocytes Subpopulations From Whole Blood, Yuxi Sun

All ETDs from UAB

Leukocytes carry critical information regarding the immediate immune and inflammation status of the patients. Analysis of leukocytes requires isolation from blood since the leukocytes only consist <1% of all blood cells. Commonly used isolation processes exploit physical or biochemical differences between different cell types to enable separations. Current isolation methods inevitably subject cells to physical or biochemical stress that can activate leukocytes and change their natural state. Thus, information contained within isolated leukocytes is a combination of the natural state of the cell and an artifact of the isolation process. Microfluidics which takes advantage of scaling effects within microscale structures can ensure rapid and gentle alternatives to conventional isolation methods and is ideal for sorting, and analysis of cells and particles. The precise control of flow/particles and scaling effects of microfluidics have been applied for blood cells sorting and isolation. However, the limited processing capability and throughput as well as complex fabrication and operations have hampered widespread adoption of these approaches for replacement of conventional methods. My goal was to develop a simple yet powerful microfluidic tool that enables rapid separation of leukocytes while ensuring sufficient throughput, and minimizing isolation process induced activation without the need any sample pre-processing. This project is divided into two specific aims: i) to miniaturize the conventional density gradient centrifugation using centrifugal microfluidics for PBMC isolation and evaluate separation efficiency and activation status of isolated cells in comparison to conventional techniques; ii) develop new approach for PBMC sorting using microfluidic phase partitioning to enable separation of cells based on differences in cell surface energy. For specific aim 1, PBMCs were isolated based on differences in densities using microfluidic density gradient centrifugation. We show that PBMCs can be isolated from 100µl whole blood within 5 minutes. Evaluation of leukocyte activation via profiling of expression of surface integrins and chemokine receptors shows that our microfluidic approach significantly reduced PBMC activation in comparison to conventional isolation approaches. In specific aim 2, we sought to isolate cells based on differenced in surface energy using two-phase partitioning of dextran (DEX) and polyethylene glycol (PEG). Proof of concept demonstrations was accomplished using with polystyrene and silicon dioxide microbeads which represent a mixture of white blood cells and red blood cells. The DEX and PEG mixtures were introduced into a circular channel and phase separated under centrifugal force into unique DEX and PEG phases. The bead mixture was isolated via differences in their affinity to the two phases.

Novel Topologies Based Rf Filtering Components And Methodologies For Wireless Communication System, Wei Jiang

Theses and Dissertations

Driven by the rapid progress of wireless communication technology in the past several decades, multiple generations of cellular technologies have been developed, deployed, and adopted to provide more convenient communication services to users. Nowadays, the personal hand-held devices, supporting multiple wireless standards, have been a multimedia terminal encompassing elements and functions such as video callers, Internet connectivity, home appliances remote controller, GPS, TV reception, and beyond. In order to accommodate a variety of wireless standards in a single device without imposing a substantial increase in cost and size, current and future RF transceiver front-ends should be designed with more attention. …

Energy Management System Of Hybrid Wayside Storage In Urban Railway Traction, Anil Rajpatei

Dissertations and Theses

In a city that never sleeps, NYC, also called the big apple, there is the largest population in the United States with close to 9 million people. In addition, it is the second wealthiest city in the world according to ranking by gross domestic product (GDP). Being such a densely populated city, people cannot only rely on their vehicles as the only source of commute. The alternative is to use mass transit. New York City Transit (NYCT) is the largest mass transit system that offers commuting services via subway or buses. More than half of the population rely on mass …

Fundamental Aspects Of A Novel Technology For Abatement Of Indoor Allergens, Odell Lendor Glenn Jr.

Theses and Dissertations

The overall goal of this research was to develop a novel approach to reduce the potency of certain asthma triggers, namely, proteins produced by pests or pets in indoor environments. The broad hypothesis of the research was that naturally occurring essential oils will demonstrate enhanced denaturing ability. In any indoor environment, allergens are bound to dry dust particles. In this work, the effectiveness of using dry ice and CO2 with potential for essential oils on dry allergenic proteins through CFD modeling and ELISA methods were evaluated.

There are three objectives central to this work. The first objective was to apply …

Information Systems Continuance: Faculty Perceptions Of Canvas, Leila Halawi, Richard V. Mccarthy, James Farah

Publications

This research in process proposes a study of the theoretical background, motivation, and methods to examine factors that predict faculty perceived usefulness, ease of use, satisfaction and learning facilitation of the Canvas learning management system. We propose utilizing a model to predict continuance intention of use in an online class using Canvas and describe the methodology that will be used to test this model. The focus of this research is on continuance usage as it is the variable that enhances the teaching and learning experience with factors that are helpful in understanding the phenomenon.

Outsmart Moore’S Law With Machine Learning, Dustin Tanksley, Donald C. Wunsch

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

Over the last half century, computing has transformed most aspects of society due to a rapid increase in computation power. With the possible end of Moore’s Law in sight, much of this growth could come to an end. This paper will discuss why machine learning will continue growing even after Moore’s Law, and demonstrate why it is a great time to enter the field.

Ferrite Assisted Geometry-Conformal Magnetic Induction Antenna And Subsea Communications For Auvs, Debing Wei, Li Yan, Xuanheng Li, Jie Wang, Jiefu Chen, Miao Pan, Yahong Rosa Zheng

Electrical and Computer Engineering Faculty Research & Creative Works

This paper designs a novel geometry-conformal antenna for Magnetic Induction (MI)-based subsea wireless communications for autonomous underwater vehicles (AUV). The designed tri-directional antennas can be wrapped directly on the surface of AUVs, such that the AUVs fluid dynamics are well maintained to ensure power efficiency of the vehicles. In addition, ferrite materials are added between the MI antenna and the metallic body surface of the AUVs to overcome the shielding effect and enhance the MI signal strength. The designed MI communication system is implemented in hardware and the effectiveness of the geometry-conformal MI antenna is demonstrated through COMSOL simulations and …

Surface And Structural Modification Of Carbon Electrodes For Electroanalysis And Electrochemical Conversion, Yan Zhang

Theses and Dissertations--Chemistry

Electrocatalysis is key to both sensitive electrochemical sensing and efficient electrochemical energy conversion. Despite high catalytic activity, traditional metal catalysts have poor stability, low selectivity, and high cost. Metal-free, carbon-based materials are emerging as alternatives to metal-based catalysts because of their attractive features including natural abundance, environmental friendliness, high electrical conductivity, and large surface area. Altering surface functionalities and heteroatom doping are effective ways to promote catalytic performance of carbon-based catalysts. The first chapter of this dissertation focuses on developing electrode modification methods for electrochemical sensing of biomolecules. After electrochemical pretreatment, glassy carbon demonstrates impressive figures-of-merit in detecting small, redox-active …

Enhancing The Safety Training Of Ga Pilots To Reduce The Risk Of Bird Strikes: An Experimental Pilot Study, Flavio A. C. Mendonca Phd, Thomas Carney Phd, Richard O. Fanjoy Phd

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Analyses of wildlife strike data from 2000 through 2016 indicate that for the general aviation (GA) community, the number and rate of damaging strikes has increased both at and outside the airport environment. Pilots play an important role in the accident prevention process due to wildlife, ranging from reporting strikes to using appropriate aircraft operating techniques to mitigate the risk of strikes. Therefore, safety efforts require enhanced aeronautical decision-making (ADM) for pilots. The purpose of this pilot project was to investigate if a safety protocol would enhance Part 141 GA pilots’ knowledge and skills to mitigate the risk of bird …

Uas Maintenance: A Critical Component In Maintaining Airworthiness, Bettina M. Mrusek, Kristy W. Kiernan, Patti J. Clark

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Over the last several decades, the notion of traditional aircraft design has significantly changed. While there are many modern aircraft that resemble earlier models, their components, systems, and overall architecture have evolved, including the introduction of small unmanned aircraft systems (sUAS). Despite the growing consumer attraction to own and operate these aircraft, the subsequent impact on safety is an area of intense concern. The requirement of an established maintenance program for manned aircraft is rooted in ensuring that all aircraft are deemed safe for flight. Preventive maintenance schedules are based on component reliability data, which minimizes unnecessary maintenance while preventing …

Application Of Artificial Neural Networks For The Prediction Of Aluminium Agglomeration Processes, Tejasvi K, Y Pydi Setty, Vemana Venkateswara Rao, Kalyan Chakarvarthy

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

Aluminium is universal and vital constituent in composite propellants and typically used to improve performance. Aluminum agglomeration takes place on the burning surface of aluminized propellants, which leads to reduced combustion efficiency and 2P flow losses. To understand the processes and behaviour of aluminum agglomeration, particles size distribution of composite propellants were studied using a quench particle collection technique, at 2 to 8 MPa and varying quench distances from 5mm to 71mm. To predict the agglomerate diameter of metallized/ultra-fine aluminium of composite propellants, a new artificial neural network (ANN) model was derived. Five Layered Feed Forward Back Propagation Neural Network …

Quantitative Examination And Comparison Of Altimetry Rules-Of-Thumb For General Aviation, Thomas A. Guinn

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

General aviation rules of thumb (ROTs) for density altitude and true altitude are examined and developed. Both ROTs originate from the same basic principle of hydrostatic balance, but differ significantly in the assumptions made regarding the atmospheric temperature profile. While the ROT for DA assumes a standard atmospheric vertical temperature lapse rate, the ROT for true altitude requires information regarding the observed layer-mean temperature of the atmosphere. Since the layer-mean temperature between the aircraft and the surface is typically unknown, it must be inferred from the temperature at a single level by again assuming a linear lapse rate. This method …

Innovative Dodecacopter Design – Bulgarian Knight, Svetoslav Zabunov, Garo Mardirossian

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

The current article aims at introducing a novel dodecacopter multirotor design called Bulgarian Knight. The aircraft implements a number of innovations and characteristics that give it an advantage over other contemporary multi-copters. Some of its novel characteristics are the mounting of the rotors under the fuselage by use of pusher propellers. Further, the design implements twelve rotors positioned in an optimal geometric coverage.

Language-Related Communications Challenges In General Aviation Operations And Pilot Training, Bradley S. Baugh, Alan J. Stolzer

International Journal of Aviation, Aeronautics, and Aerospace

English is the basis for aviation communications worldwide creating challenges for both native and non-native English speakers. An unfortunate outcome of language-related communications issues, whether indirectly or directly, has been aircraft mishaps. As aviation grows worldwide, the potential for miscommunication increases. Previous studies have concentrated on commercial aviation accident analysis. A similar focus on general aviation operations and pilot training incidents in the U.S. is needed. Voluntary incident reporting is a key component in Safety Management Systems in order to address problems before they become accidents. This project studied voluntary incident reports to analyze the number of language-related reports filed …

Protocol For Energy Efficient Cluster Head Election For Collaborative Cluster Head Elections., David Otu

Dissertations

In wireless sensor networks (WSNs) , energy is a major constrain.Energy efficient network protocols is required to maintain reliable sensing of the sensing field . WSNs that use LEACH protocol, have node in a cluster periodically take trials to become cluster - head,such that the nodes in the cluster becomes cluster - head evenly. Nodes with greater transmission distance to the base station in the cluster dies out faster because it performs more work in transmitting data when it is cluster-head. The distance-based algorithm presented in this project, ensures that work is allocated to the nodes in the cluster more …

An Application Of Natural Language Processing For Triangulation Of Cognitive Load Assessments In Third Level Education, Luis Alfredo Contreras

Dissertations

Work has been done to measure Mental Workload based on applications mainly related to ergonomics, human factors, and Machine Learning. The influence of Machine Learning is a reflection of an increased use of new technologies applied to areas conventionally dominated by theoretical approaches. However, collaboration between MWL and Natural Language Processing techniques seems to happen rarely. In this sense, the objective of this research is to make use of Natural Languages Processing techniques to contribute to the analysis of the relationship between Mental Workload subjective measures and Relative Frequency Ratios of keywords gathered during pre-tasks and post-tasks of MWL activities …

Can Threshold-Based Sensor Alerts Be Analysed To Detect Faults In A District Heating Network?, Liam Cantwell

Dissertations

Older IoT “smart sensors” create system alerts from threshold rules on reading values. These simple thresholds are not very flexible to changes in the network. Due to the large number of false positives generated, these alerts are often ignored by network operators. Current state-of-the-art analytical models typically create alerts using raw sensor readings as the primary input. However, as greater numbers of sensors are being deployed, the growth in the number of readings that must be processed becomes problematic. The number of analytic models deployed to each of these systems is also increasing as analysis is broadened. This study aims …

Elasticity Measurement In Caas Environments - Extending The Existing Bungee Elasticity Benchmark To Aws's Elastic Container Service, Nora Limbourg

Dissertations

Rapid elasticity and automatic scaling are core concepts of most current cloud computing systems. Elasticity describes how well and how fast cloud systems adapt to increases and decreases in workload. In parallel, software architectures are moving towards employing containerised microservices running on systems managed by container orchestration platforms. Cloud users who employ such container-based systems may want to compare the elasticity of different systems or system settings to ensure rapid elasticity and maintain service level objectives while avoiding over-provisioning. Previous research has established a variety of metrics to measure elasticity. Some existing benchmark tools are designed to measure elasticity in …