Other Civil and Environmental Engineering Commons^™

Co-Culture Models Of Endothelial Cells, Macrophages, And Vascular Smooth Muscle Cells For The Study Of The Natural History Of Atherosclerosis, Martin Liu, Saurabhi Samant, Charu Hasini Vasa, Ryan M. Pedrigi, Usama Oguz, Sangjin Ryu, Timothy Wei, Daniel R. Anderson, Devandra K. Agrawal, Yiannis Chatzizisis

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Background

This work aims to present a fast, affordable, and reproducible three-cell co-culture system that could represent the different cellular mechanisms of atherosclerosis, extending from atherogenesis to pathological intimal thickening.

Methods and results

We built four culture models: (i) Culture model #1 (representing normal arterial intima), where human coronary artery endothelial cells were added on top of Matrigel-coated collagen type I matrix, (ii) Culture model #2 (representing atherogenesis), which demonstrated the subendothelial accumulation and oxidative modification of low-density lipoproteins (LDL), (iii) Culture model #3 (representing intimal xanthomas), which demonstrated the monocyte adhesion to the endothelial cell monolayer, transmigration into the …

Soil Water Sensors For Irrigation Scheduling In The United States: A Systematic Review Of Literature, Sumon Datta, Saleh Taghvaeian

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Soil water sensors (SWS) have been widely researched and practiced for irrigation scheduling. Due to popularity of this approach, there is a need for frequent reviews of the SWS literature to keep the researchers, extension professionals, and end-users updated and to help with defining and modifying future directions. In addition, existing literature reviews do not systematically report and summarize the results of previous studies. To address this gap, a systematic review was carried out to identify and analyze related literature published in the United States in the past two decades. Two focus areas were SWS accuracy assessment and SWS application …

Evaluation Of Artificial Intelligence Algorithms With Sensor Data Assimilation In Estimating Crop Evapotranspiration And Crop Water Stress Index For Irrigation Water Management, Abia Katimbo, Daran Rudnick, Jingwen Zhang, Yufeng Ge, Kendall C. Dejonge, Trenton E. Franz, Yeyin Shi, Wei‑Zhen Liang, Xin Qiao, Derek M. Heeren, Isa Kabenge, Hope Njuki Nakabuye, Jiaming Duan

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Irrigation water management using automated irrigation decision support system (IDSS) as a smart irrigation scheduling tool can improve water use efficiency and crop production, especially under circumstances of limited water supply. The current study evaluated the performance of different artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms and their ensembles in forecasting Crop Evapotranspiration (ET_c) and Crop Water Stress Index (CWSI) against calculated single crop coefficient FAO56 ET_c and Jackson’s theoretical CWSI, respectively. Soil moisture, canopy temperatures (T_c) and Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) were all measured from irrigated and non-irrigated maize plots in West Central Nebraska during 2020 …

Hdd Dataset: Optimising Retrofitted Insulation For Irish Residential Building Walls, Rakshit D. Muddu, Aimee Byrne, Anthony James Robinson

Datasets

In this study, a thermal-economic analysis was conducted to determine the optimum insulation thickness of retrofitted insulation walls in different regions in Ireland. This was based on the Heating Degree Day method (HDD). This dataset contains optimum insulation thickness, payback period, cost savings and carbon emission for all 25 counties in the Republic of Ireland

Survey Data: Optimising Retrofitted Insulation For Irish Residential Building Walls, Rakshit D. Muddu, Aimee Byrne, Anthony Robinson Dr.

Datasets

A survey was conducted to determine the preferred set point temperature and heating pattern among Irish households. The survey was sent to 237 people living across Ireland, out of which 32 respondents skipped the survey and 9 surveys were found to be incomplete. Amongst the counties in Ireland 71.1% respondents were from Dublin, 6.34% from Kildare, 5% from Meath, 5% from Wicklow and in all the remaining counties response rate was below 2%. Part 1: This section of the survey recorded information regarding characteristics of the building such as house type, wall type, insulation type, period the house was built. …

Application Of Metagenomic And Molecular Microbiology Techniques To Elucidate Sources Of Fecal Pollution And Anthropogenic Antibiotic Resistance Genes To Surface Water: A Step Towards A “One Health” Approach To Watershed Management, Mehedi Hasan Tarek

Graduate Theses, Dissertations, and Problem Reports

The use of fecal indicator bacteria, such as Escherichia coli, is a widely established regulatory and monitoring practice to detect surface water contamination associated with fecal pollution. However, the detection or quantification of fecal indicator bacteria alone does not accurately inform the sources of fecal pollution. The development of molecular and metagenomic methods that target the DNA of microorganisms has resulted in a host of new tools for monitoring fecal pollution and its sources, as well as for understanding emerging microbial threats, such as antimicrobial resistance. Antimicrobial resistance is a critical “One Health” challenge presenting a high risk to …

Osc-Co2: Coattention And Cosegmentation Framework For Plant State Change With Multiple Features, Rubi Quiñones, Ashok Samal, Sruti Das Choudhury, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Cosegmentation and coattention are extensions of traditional segmentation methods aimed at detecting a common object (or objects) in a group of images. Current cosegmentation and coattention methods are ineffective for objects, such as plants, that change their morphological state while being captured in different modalities and views. The Object State Change using Coattention-Cosegmentation (OSC-CO²) is an end-to-end unsupervised deep-learning framework that enhances traditional segmentation techniques, processing, analyzing, selecting, and combining suitable segmentation results that may contain most of our target object’s pixels, and then displaying a final segmented image. The framework leverages coattention-based convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and …

Clim4omics: A Geospatially Comprehensive Climate And Multi-Omics Database For Maize Phenotype Predictability In The United States And Canada, Parisa Sarzaeim, Francisco Muñoz-Arriola, Diego Jarquin, Hasnat Aslam, Natalia De Leon Gatti

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

The performance of numerical, statistical, and data-driven diagnostic and predictive crop production modeling relies heavily on data quality for input and calibration or validation processes. This study presents a comprehensive database and the analytics used to consolidate it as a homogeneous, consistent, multidimensional genotype, phenotypic, and environmental database for maize phenotype modeling, diagnostics, and prediction. The data used are obtained from the Genomes to Fields (G2F) initiative, which provides multiyear genomic (G), environmental (E), and phenotypic (P) datasets that can be used to train and test crop growth models to understand the genotype by environment (GxE) interaction phenomenon. A particular …

Estimating Battery Size Requirements For Tractor Electrification Of Row-Crop Planting Operations, Cheetown Liew, Andrew Donesky, Mark Freyhof, Ian Tempelmeyer, Santosh Kumar Pitla

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Power sources such as batteries, used for both on-road and off-road vehicles, are advancing at a rapid pace. Electric batteries are becoming more power dense, thus allowing them to be used as a power source to replace previous diesel or gasoline-powered systems. Efforts are underway to transition off-road agricultural vehicles from Internal Combustion Engine (ICE) vehicles to electric vehicles (EVs); however, the energy requirements of typical agricultural field operations need to be fully understood before such a transition can occur. Theoretical prediction equations available in the American Society of Agricultural and Biological Engineers (ASABE) standards or the use of engine …

Impact Of Eastern Redcedar Encroachment On Water Resources In The Nebraska Sandhills, Yaser Kishawi, Aaron R. Mittelstet, Troy E. Gilmore, Dirac Twidwell, Tirthankar Roy, Nawaraj Shrestha

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Worldwide, tree or shrub dominated woodlands have encroached into herbaceous dominated grasslands. While very few studies have evaluated the impact of Eastern Redcedar (redcedar) encroachment on the water budget, none have analyzed the impact on water quality. In this study, we evaluated the impact of redcedar encroachment on the water budget in the Nebraska Sand Hills and how the decreased streamflow would increase nitrate and atrazine concentrations in the Platte River. We calibrated a Soil and Water Assessment Tool (SWAT model) for streamflow, recharge, and evapotranspiration. Using a moving window with a dilate morphological filter, encroachment scenarios of 11.9%, 16.1%, …

Complab V1.0: A Scalable Pore-Scale Model For Flow, Biogeochemistry, Microbial Metabolism, And Biofilm Dynamics, Heewon Jung, Hyun-Seob Song, Christof Meile

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Microbial activity and chemical reactions in porous media depend on the local conditions at the pore scale and can involve complex feedback with fluid flow and mass transport. We present a modeling framework that quantitatively accounts for the interactions between the bio(geo)chemical and physical processes and that can integrate genome-scale microbial metabolic information into a dynamically changing, spatially explicit representation of environmental conditions. The model couples a lattice Boltzmann implementation of Navier–Stokes (flow) and advection–diffusion-reaction (mass conservation) equations. Reaction formulations can include both kinetic rate expressions and flux balance analysis, thereby integrating reactive transport modeling and systems biology. We also …

Evaluating Management Zones And Crop-Sensing Relationships For Improved Irrigated Maize Nitrogen Management, Joel D. Crowther, John Parrish, Joe Luck, Richard Ferguson

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Active crop canopy sensors and management zones (MZ) are two methods of directing variable-rate, in-season nitrogen (N) fertilizer applications in maize (Zea mays L.). Researchers have suggested that integrating these two approaches may result in improved performance of sensor-based N application algorithms through increased N use efficiency and profitability. The objectives of this research study were to (1) identify soil and topographic variables that are related to in-season canopy reflectance and yield for soil-based MZ delineation and (2) determine if delineated MZ can identify areas with differential crop response to N fertilizer. N ramp blocks were placed end-to-end in field-length …

Agricultural Machinery Operator Monitoring System (Ag-Oms): A Machine Learning Approach For Real-Time Operator Safety Assessment, Terence Irumva, Herve Mwunguzi, Santosh Pitla, Bethany Lowndes, Aaron Yoder, Ka-Chun Siu

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

The 2015 CS-CASH (Central States Center for Agricultural Safety and Health, 2015) Injury Surveillance Surveys showed that around 19% of injuries to agricultural producers are related to tractors or large agricultural machinery, yet only a limited number of studies are found that address tools and methods for monitoring safety behaviors of agricultural machinery operators in real-time. The current safety behavior monitoring approaches require an in-person presence, which can be both time- and cost-inefficient, and the other available methods lack a feedback element to alert operators in realtime. As a result, the research presented in this study aimed to develop an …

A Methodology To Optimize Site-Specific Field Capacity And Irrigation Thresholds, Hemendra Kumar, Puneet Srivastava, Jasmeet Lamba, Bruno Lena, Efstathios Diamantopoulos, Brenda Ortiz, Bijoychandra Takhellambam, Guilherme Morata, Luca Bondesan

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

The determination of field capacity (FC), irrigation thresholds, and irrigation amounts is characterized by site-specific soil hydraulic properties (SHPs). This study, conducted in two zones (zone 1 and zone 2) delineated based on soil, topography, and historical crop yield in Alabama (USA), focused on determining zone-specific FC using negligible drainage flux (q_fc) criterion. The HYDRUS-1D model was used to optimize zone-specific SHPs using measured soil matric potential (h). The zone-specific FCs were determined using optimized and raw SHPs at 0.01 cm/day as q_fc. The results showed that the optimized FC at q_{fc …}

Evaluation Of Cytocompatability And Safety Of Nerve Retraction Compounds For Local Disc Denervation To Treat Disc-Associated Low Back Pain, Fei San Lee, Uyen N. Nguyen, Rebecca A. Wachs

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Low back pain (LBP) is the leading cause of disability worldwide. Aberrant nerve growth into intervertebral discs is a common pathological feature of disc-associated LBP. Current treatments rely on short-term solutions using opioids or anti-inflammatory prescriptions which can lead to addiction and side effects, respectively. We hypothesize that removal of aberrant nerve fibers in the disc using nerve retraction compounds can alleviate discassociated LBP. We performed screening of nerve retraction compounds using adult rat dorsal root ganglia (DRG) explant culture in hydrogels to mimic disc innervation in vitro. Capsaicin, known to induce nerve retraction, was used as a positive control …

Goniometer In The Air: Enabling Brdf Measurement Of Crop Canopies Using A Cable-Suspended Plant Phenotyping Platform, Geng Bai, Yufeng Ge, Bryan Leavitt, John Gamon, David Scoby

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

The Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Function (BRDF) quantifies the distribution of the spectral reflectance of a target surface at various viewing and illumination angles. In-field measurement of the BRDF of vegetation canopies improves the characterization of offnadir measurements and informs radiative transfer models of canopy reflectance, where the Lambertian assumption does not hold. However, current field goniometers are unable to measure BRDF efficiently, especially for tall vegetation across the growing season because of the limitations of clearance, field accessibility, and flexibility of the sensor field of view. In this study, we explored the potential of using a large-scale cable-suspended field phenotyping …

Crop Stress Sensing And Plant Phenotyping Systems: A Review, Geng Bai, Yufeng Ge

Department of Biological Systems Engineering: Papers and Publications

Enhancing resource use efficiency in agricultural field management and breeding high-performance crop varieties are crucial approaches for securing crop yield and mitigating negative environmental impact of crop production. Crop stress sensing and plant phenotyping systems are integral to variable-rate (VR) field management and high-throughput plant phenotyping (HTPP), with both sharing similarities in hardware and data processing techniques. Crop stress sensing systems for VR field management have been studied for decades, aiming to establish more sustainable management practices. Concurrently, significant advancements in HTPP system development have provided a technological foundation for reducing conventional phenotyping costs. In this paper, we present a …

Phosphorus Release And Recovery From Simulated Ferric Wastewater Sludge, Aseel Alnimer

Theses and Dissertations (Comprehensive)

Phosphorus (P) is a fundamental element necessary for all life forms and a key component in the fertilizer industry. Meanwhile, the excessive load of P to water bodies due to human activities has the potential to promote eutrophication. Wastewater treatment plants remove P either biologically or chemically and produce P rich sludge which could be a potential renewable source for P. At present, commercial technologies exist for P recovery from biological wastewater sludge. However, P recovery from chemical sludge particularly iron(III)-phosphate (Fe-P) sludge generated in chemical P removal plants that use iron(III) salts remains a challenge.

This study explored, in …