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Title: Inflammation induced changes in adipocytes
Creator: Kim, Kihwan
Date: 2019
Description: The significant features of Crohn’s Disease include creeping fat that covers more than 50% of both small and large intestine surfaces and high...
Show moreThe significant features of Crohn’s Disease include creeping fat that covers more than 50% of both small and large intestine surfaces and high level of inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-alpha and IL-6. However, the relationship between these two factors of Crohn’s Disease is still unknown. Therefore, verifying the relationship could contribute to understanding the cause of Crohn’s Disease. In this study, preadipocytes were used because they have a potential to grow as adipocytes which are developed as creeping fat. The objective of this study was to observe proliferation, differentiation, and chemotaxis of preadipocytes in inflammatory microenvironment. It was found that only TNF-alpha stimulates preadipocyte proliferation whereas IL-6 does not. However, both TNF-alpha and IL-6 inhibit differentiation of preadipocytes. Furthermore, preadipocytes did not have chemotactic responses towards both cytokines. Therefore this study concludes that these inflammatory microenvironments induce the preadipocytes proliferation in Crohn’s. However, they inhibit adipogenesis and recruitment of the preadipocytes in Crohn’s.
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Title: FRANK-KASPER PHASES IN THE CO-NB-NI TERNARY SYSTEM AND THE ISOTHERMAL SECTION OF THE CO-NB-NI SYSTEM AT 1473K
Creator: Jia, Hui
Date: 2019
Description: The present study is to determine the Frank-Kasper phases in the Co-Nb-Ni system. Frank-Kasper phases, also called topological close packed ...
Show moreThe present study is to determine the Frank-Kasper phases in the Co-Nb-Ni system. Frank-Kasper phases, also called topological close packed (TCP) phases are one of the largest groups of intermetallic compounds. They are classified into several phases: A15, Laves, σ, µ and the M, P, R phases. In the 1200°C-isothermal section of the Co-Nb-Ni system, the µ phase and Laves phases exist over large composition ranges. In this study, the Co-Nb-Ni ternary system was investigated using optical microscopy(OM), X-ray diffraction (XRD), scanning electron microscopy (SEM), energy-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (EDS) and differential scanning calorimetry (DSC). The experimental results were compared with literature data and thermodynamic calculations. XRD was used to identify the Frank-Kasper phases. In comparison with previous investigations, the large extensition of µ phase in the Co-Nb-Ni system was verified. In addition, the small phase (~67at. % Nb) shown in the alloys with ~50at. % Nb is the unstablized impurity phase. On the other hand, according to the results of experiments and thermo-calc, C15 phase was found instead of C14 phase compared with Gupta's study.
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Title: DAMAGE ASSESSMENT OF CIVIL STRUCTURES AFTER NATURAL DISASTERS USING DEEP LEARNING AND SATELLITE IMAGERY
Creator: Jones, Scott F
Date: 2019
Description: Since 1980, millions of people have been harmed by natural disasters that have cost communities across the world over three trillion dollars....
Show moreSince 1980, millions of people have been harmed by natural disasters that have cost communities across the world over three trillion dollars. After a natural disaster has occurred, the creation of maps that identify the damage to buildings and infrastructure is imperative. Currently, many organizations perform this task manually, using pre- and post-disaster images and well-trained professionals to determine the degree and extent of damage. This manual task can take days to complete. I propose to do this task automatically using post-disaster satellite imagery. I use a pre-trained neural network, SegNet, and replaced its last layer with a simple damage classification scheme. This final layer of the network is re-trained using cropped segments of the satellite image of the disaster. The data were obtained from a publicly accessible source, the Copernicus EMS system. They provided three channel (RGB) reference and damage grading maps that were used to create the images of the ground truth and the damaged terrain. I then retrained the final layer of the network to identify civil structures that had been damaged. The resulting network was 85% accurate at labelling the pixels in an image of the disaster from typhoon Haiyan. The test results show that it is possible to create these maps quickly and efficiently.
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Title: MODELING OF MAMMALIAN CELL CULTURE
Creator: Jackson, Robert David
Date: 2019
Description: This work uses two different techniques for modeling mammalian cell culture: Differential Equation (DE) based Modeling and Agent-Based...
Show moreThis work uses two different techniques for modeling mammalian cell culture: Differential Equation (DE) based Modeling and Agent-Based Modeling (ABM). The development of both models was done in free open-source software instead of the traditional software that requires the purchase of licenses. The DE model was developed in Python and can predict total, viable, and dead cell densities, glucose, lactate, glutamine, ammonia, and product titer. To expand on the detail level capabilities of previous DE models it has added temperature, pH, and dissolved oxygen dependence. The ABM can predict viable cell density, glucose, lactate, and the distribution of the three experimentally detectable cell cycle phases G1G0, S, and G2M. The ABM was developed for high-performance computing to improve on a previous ABM and allow for running at a hundred-fold smaller run-time with a much higher capacity for the amount of agents that can be simulated.
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Title: Ultrasensitive protein quantification using Rolling Circle Amplification
Creator: Hetzel, Laura Ann
Date: 2019
Description: There are several protein biomarkers that can aid in diagnosing and evaluating the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), including Amyloid...
Show moreThere are several protein biomarkers that can aid in diagnosing and evaluating the progression of Alzheimer’s Disease (AD), including Amyloid Beta-42 (Aβ42), Amyloid Beta-40 (Aβ40), and Tau proteins. The proteins are most prevalent in the brain and cerebral spinal fluid, becoming more diluted in the bloodstream. Since diagnosis and progression would require evaluating and comparing protein levels over time and identifying miniscule changes, an assay with high sensitivity is paramount. Similarly, evaluating how a drug treatment affects the levels of protein requires a highly sensitive assay. Currently, enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA) is accepted as the most sensitive assay for protein detection and quantification. However, in the case of Aβ40 and Aβ42 proteins, oftentimes the levels of the proteins in patients are very close to the sensitivity of the commercial ELISA. The uncertainty in these measurements is very high, which results in reporting of conflicting outcomes. One of the challenges of quantifying proteins is that proteins, unlike nucleic acids, cannot be amplified. To overcome this limitation, we have cleverly pseudo-amplified proteins using rolling circle amplification (RCA). By doing so, we have demonstrated a ten to forty times improvement in sensitivity over ELISA and radioimmunoassays. In previous experiments, C-peptide has been used as the protein of interest, and ELISA reports the smallest detectable quantity is 0.01 ng in buffer. Using RCA, we have found that as little as 0.00075 ng C-peptide in buffer could be quantified, and 0.004 ng in 10% serum could be quantified. The same process can be applied to other proteins such as Aβ40 and Aβ42, and the results are expected to be similar. In fact, we have measured Type I Diabetes autoantibodies with approximately forty times improvement over the gold standard radioimmunoassay. With excellent results in buffer and 10% serum, expansion to human samples holds great potential. If the human experiments are as successful as anticipated, RCA could be used to precisely evaluate the effect of a drug on protein levels, contributing to the overall evaluation of the success of the drug.
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Title: Concurrency and Locality Aware GPGPU Thread Group Scheduling
Creator: Nosek, Janusz M
Date: 2018
Description: Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) once served a limited function for rending of graphics. With technological advances, these devices gained new...
Show moreGraphics Processing Units (GPUs) once served a limited function for rending of graphics. With technological advances, these devices gained new purposes beyond graphics. Most modern GPUs have exposed their APIs to allow processing of data beyond the display, thus leading to a revolution in computing where instructions and intensive tasks can be offloaded to these now General Purpose Graphical Processing Units (GPGPUs). Many compute and memory intensive tasks have utilized GPGPUs for acceleration and these devices are especially prevalent in the financial, pharmaceutical and automotive industries. As computing resources have increased exponentially, memory resources have not and now create a limiting factor known as the memory wall. GPUs have been designed as an application specific processing unit for the streaming data access patterns found in graphical applications. They are successful at their original purpose, but when extended to general purpose problems, they meet the same memory wall data access problem as their CPU counterparts; they can be more susceptible to the effects latency due to the locality and concurrency of instructions beside data. This thesis reviews the current GPGPU landscape, including the design of current scheduling systems, GPGPU architecture, as well as a way of computing and describing the memory access penalty with Concurrent Average Memory Access Time (C-AMAT). We will also demonstrate the current GPGPU landscape, including design of schedulers, simulators as well as how Concurrent Average Memory Access Time (C-AMAT) can be computed. We have devised a solution to manipulate the number of scheduled thread groups to allow a GPGPU’s processing units to match their current memory states defined by C-AMAT. Our solution results in the increase in IPC, the reduction in C-AMAT and decrease in memory misses. The solution also has different effects on different types of computing problems, with highest improvements achieved in compute intensive memory patterns with as much as a 12% improvement in the instructions per cycle and a 14% reduction in C-AMAT.
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Title: CHARACTERIZATION OF NOVEL PULSED UV-LIGHT SYSTEMS FOR INACTIVATION OF LISTERIA MONOCYTOGENES IN APPLE JUICE AND ON APPLE SURFACE
Creator: Malik, Sargun
Date: 2018
Description: Pulsed light processing can effectively inactivate microorganisms from the surface of foods or in transparent liquid foods. Pulsed light...
Show morePulsed light processing can effectively inactivate microorganisms from the surface of foods or in transparent liquid foods. Pulsed light systems currently available in the market operate at a fixed pulse duration and frequency and might not be optimized for microbial inactivation. A novel pulsed light system (Model X 1100; Xenon Corporation, USA) enables the researchers to adjust various parameters including pulse duration (100-7000μsec), voltage(1000-3000V), frequency (0.1-20Hz),% of energy (0-100%), and energy (up to 9J /cm2 / pulse of optical energy or 2433J / pulse of electrical energy ) . This study evaluated the effect of various parameters (treatment time, voltage, frequency, energy / pulse) on inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes in buffered peptone water (BPW), apple juice, and apple surface. For liquids, a 4-mL of sample (4-mmdepth) artificially inoculated with Listeria monocytogenes was treated in a quartz Petri dish (5.5-cmdiameter). For solid food, the top surface (skin side) of a slice of apple (1×1×0.5cm）was inoculated and exposed to various pulsed light treatment conditions. The results indicated that the impact of these factors vary as many of these factors are inter-related. In general, increasing the frequency, input voltage, pulse duration, and percentage of energy, increased the microbial reduction at the tested conditions (p<0.05). For instance, reductions of 1.21and 5.47 log10 CFU/mL were obtained in BPW and reductions of 1.35 and 4.70 log10 CFU/mL was acquired in apple juice, at 0.1and 0.82Hz, respectively, for a 20-sec treatment at 2500V (50% energy,700 μsec pulse width). Increased energy per pulse resulted in increased microbial reduction. For example, reductions of 2.30, 5.59, 6.69, and 6.69 log10 CFU/mL were obtained at 645, 1241, 1837, and 2433J/ pulse of electrical energy, respectively, in apple juice. Similarly, reductions of 5.34, 6.45, 6.02, and 6.56 log10CFU/mL were obtained at 645, 1241, 1837, and 2433J/ pulse, respectively in BPW. Lower reduction was obtained from the skin surface of the apple, for instance, reductions of 0.70 and 1.19 log10 CFU/ slice were obtained at 0.10 and 0.82 Hz, respectively, after a 10 seconds treatment at 2500V (50%energy). Similarly, reductions of 2.44, 2.43, 3.39, and 3.48 log10 CFU/ slice were obtained at 645, 1241, 1837, and 2433J/ pulse of electrical energy, respectively, after a 15 seconds treatment at 3000V (0.2Hz). The results were similar to the pulsed light treatment with RC 800 system (Xenon Corporation, USA). Absorption of pulsed light energy resulted in temperature increase in the products. Temperature increase of up to 11°C was observed at the treated conditions. The results suggest that this novel pulsed light system can potentially be used for inactivation of Listeria monocytogenes.
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Title: STRUCTURAL DEFECT CONTROL TO IMPROVE SOLID-STATE REACTION AND ELECTROCHEMICAL PERFORMANCE OF NaCrO2 CATHODE FOR SODIUM-ION BATTERIES
Creator: Luo, Mei
Date: 2018
Description: NaCrO2 has been studied lately as a promising cathode material for Na-ion batteries. Consequently, this study was conducted to investigate how...
Show moreNaCrO2 has been studied lately as a promising cathode material for Na-ion batteries. Consequently, this study was conducted to investigate how high-energy ball milling before the high temperature reaction influences the synthesis reaction and electrochemical performance of NaCrO2 cathodes for Na-ion batteries. In-situ synchrotron X-ray diffractometry is employed for the first time to provide a comprehensive understanding of the critical reaction temperatures and reaction pathway. It is found that high-energy ball milling at room temperature can result in significant changes in the synthesis reaction of NaCrO2 when compared to reactants without high-energy ball milling. These changes include a decreased onset temperature for the formation of O3-NaCrO2, an increased reaction kinetics, an alternation of the reaction pathway, and a complete reaction at 900℃ to form thermally-stable O3-NaCrO2 phase. In contrast, without high-energy ball milling the reaction product at 900℃ is a highly impure NaCrO2 with a poor thermal stability. Equally important, it is found that mechanical activation enhances the bulk ionic conductivity as well as the conductivity at the interface of NaCrO2 particles; moreover, high-energy ball milling before reaction can lead to higher specific discharge capacities of NaCrO2 half cells and contribute to the best capacity retention over 50 cycles among all the reported NaCrO2 without coatings. All these improvements of NaCrO2 cathodes for Na-ion batteries are ascribed to the mechanical activation induced by high-energy ball milling before high temperature reaction.
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Title: THE RELATION BETWEEN DEPRESSION AND TRAIT ANXIETY SYMPTOMS AND MATERNAL UTTERANCES DURING SONOGRAM PROCEDURES
Creator: Hamilton, Catharine Elizabeth
Date: 2018
Description: The present study examines the relation between depression and trait anxiety symptoms and women’s utterances during a routine ultrasound...
Show moreThe present study examines the relation between depression and trait anxiety symptoms and women’s utterances during a routine ultrasound procedure in the second trimester of pregnancy. Participants included a diverse group of 70 women seeking prenatal care at an academic medical center in the Midwestern United States. The Depression Anxiety Stress Scales (DASS-21) depression subscale and the State Trait Anxiety Inventory (STAI), trait form were used to assess symptoms of depression and trait anxiety, respectively. Audio and video of participants’ faces during the ultrasound examination were used to assess the content, sentiment, and number of utterances. Results of regression analyses indicated that higher levels of depression symptoms were significantly related to a lower proportion of fetus-related utterances to total utterances. Higher levels of depression symptoms and trait anxiety were significantly related to a lower proportion of positive fetus-related utterances to total fetus-related utterances, after controlling for gestational age. Higher levels of depression symptoms were significantly related to a higher proportion of negative-fetus-related utterances to total fetus-related utterances, after controlling for education. These findings suggest that pregnant women who are experiencing symptoms of depression and anxiety may exhibit certain types and patterns of utterances during routine prenatal sonogram procedures. Thus, observation of pregnant women’s naturalistic speech may provide helpful supplemental information to the traditional self-report measure in screening for symptoms of depression and anxiety.
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Title: Role of Respiratory Enzymes on Growth of Pseudomonas aeruginosa in Luria-Bertani and Artificial Urine Media
Creator: Hu, Yuyao
Date: 2018
Description: Pseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen that causes many hospital-acquired infections. The treatment of P. aeruginosa...
Show morePseudomonas aeruginosa is a Gram-negative opportunistic pathogen that causes many hospital-acquired infections. The treatment of P. aeruginosa infections is difficult due its multiple defense and adaptive mechanisms. One of these mechanisms is the flexibility of its respiratory chain. The human cell respiratory chain is composed of four respiratory enzymes with low mechanistic flexibility. On the other hand, the respiratory chain of P. aeruginosa contains 23 respiratory enzymes that ensure survival under harsh conditions. To elucidate the physiologic role of these respiratory enzymes, our research compared the growth parameters of wild type P. aeruginosa and nine separate respiratory enzyme mutants, in both LB and artificial urine media (AUM). The deletion mutants include the sodium-translocating NADH: quinone oxidoreductase, complex I, succinate dehydrogenase, cytochrome bc1 complex, cytochrome c oxidase and cyanide insensitive terminal oxidase. Our data indicate that the growth curve of the cytochrome bc1 complex knockout mutant showed a significantly lower yield and lower growth rate compared with the wild type in both LB and AUM media. Additionally, the cyanide insensitive terminal oxidase mutant showed a significant lower yield compared with the wild type in LB media growth. These results indicate the important roles of these enzymes in the cell biology of P. aeruginosa.
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Title: Maternal-Fetal Attachment: Does it predict parenting outcomes?
Creator: Desai, Shivani S.
Date: 2018
Description: Maternal-fetal attachment (MFA) predicts critical aspects of the caregiver-child relationship, including parental sensitivity and engagement....
Show moreMaternal-fetal attachment (MFA) predicts critical aspects of the caregiver-child relationship, including parental sensitivity and engagement. However, little is known about the relation between MFA and specific parenting beliefs and attitudes that contribute to these positive parenting behaviors, such as parenting sense of competence and parenting stress. The aim of this longitudinal study was to examine if MFA predicts specific domains of parenting sense of competence and parenting stress when children are two years of age. Participants included 53 mainly Caucasian women with a mean age of 33.9 years. MFA was assessed during pregnancy (mean gestational age = 27.02 weeks) using the Maternal Fetal Attachment Questionnaire. Parenting sense of competence and stress were assessed when the children were 2 years of age with the Parenting Sense of Competence questionnaire and the Parenting Stress Index questionnaire. Results of regression analyses indicated that higher levels of MFA significantly predicted higher levels of parenting satisfaction, a domain of parenting sense of competence. They also indicated that higher levels of MFA predicted lower levels of two domains of parenting stress, including stress associated with attachment and role restriction. These findings suggest that prenatal attachment is important to assess during pregnancy, as it may predict future parenting beliefs and attitudes, including sense of competence and stress.
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Title: SHARING COMMUNITY HOUSING YOUNG PROFESSIONALS IN CHINESE BIG CITIES
Creator: ZHANG, HAOYU
Date: 2018
Description: In the past few decades, China has achieved an unbelievable fast development, from a poor after-war country to the second largest economy in...
Show moreIn the past few decades, China has achieved an unbelievable fast development, from a poor after-war country to the second largest economy in the world. Under the leadership of the Chinese central government and people’s corporate effort, China made significant achievements in its economic growth, modernization construction. With these achievements, Chinese urbanization has gone through a rapid development and expansion process. Nowadays, city living quality and urban development became one of the most popular focal points in Chinese people’s daily life.The Chinese urbanization enters rapid expansion era. Urbanization with Chinese characteristics does bring a rich material life and improve the standard of people’s living. Meanwhile, city problems started to appear and bring inexpediency and troubles to urban resident’s daily life. At the same time when cities are developing, the distance between people seems to get further. Comparing to other groups of people, the young professionals, are facing more challenges in the cities. They are under pressure from intense competition and high living cost. Most of them must live in space with bad conditions and gradually lose confidence under the heavy load from life. They are also in self-enclosed status, losing normal social relationships and scare to communicate with others. In Chinese big cities, having a comfortable space to live and not being lonely seems to be an unattainable wish for the young generation. Meanwhile, as an emerging economic pattern, Sharing Economy started to appear in most countries of the world during past years. China, as one of the largest economies, and a country with extremely high population base and rapid development speed became the best place for sharing economy to be developed. The Chinese urbanization situation gave a massive push to the sharing economy which is highly expected and considered to be able to solve the problem of conflict between people and urban. This thesis aims to prove that the idea of sharing can create an efficient, economical and comfortable living environment for young professionals in Chinese big cities, by looking at the urbanization with Chinese characteristics, young professionals living conditions, the development of sharing economy in China and developing a community prototype. This community will help young people to relieve living stress and rebuild social connections, also become a solution to reduce the conflict between young professionals and urban environment.
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Title: SINGLE-POINT MUTATION OF UBL4A ABOLISHES ITS INTERACTION WITH THE ARP2/3 COMPLEX
Creator: Yao, Qi
Date: 2018
Description: Ubl4A is a member of the ubiquitin-like protein family with multiple functions, such as pro-survival and anti-tumor. Our group previously...
Show moreUbl4A is a member of the ubiquitin-like protein family with multiple functions, such as pro-survival and anti-tumor. Our group previously found that Ubl4A directly interacts with actin-related protein Arp2/3 complex to promote Arp2/3-dependent actin “Y shape” branching formation. However, the binding region of Ubl4A for Arp2/3 still remains unknown. To address this question, we generated several Ubl4A mutant and truncated constructs, and cloned them into a GST vector in which GST was fused in-frame with Ubl4A at the N-terminus. We used Glutathione-beads to purify GST fusion proteins and performed pull-down assay with purified Arp2/3 complex. We show that C-terminus of Ubl4A is the region where the Arp2/3 complex interacts with. A single point mutation (D122A) in Ubl4A C-terminal “DYD” motif can abolish Ubl4A ability to bind Arp2/3. These results indicate that C-terminus, especially D122, is critical for Ubl4A association with Arp2/3.
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Title: ESTIMATES OF FINE AND ULTRAFINE PARTICLE REMOVAL EFFICIENCY FOR RESIDENTIAL HVAC FILTERS USING IN-SITU SIZE-RESOLVED EFFICIENCY MEASUREMENTS
Creator: Zeng, Yicheng
Date: 2018
Description: Central heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) filters are commonly evaluated for their size-resolved particle removal efficiency ...
Show moreCentral heating, ventilating, and air-conditioning (HVAC) filters are commonly evaluated for their size-resolved particle removal efficiency (for particles 0.3 to 10 µm in diameter) by challenging them with a test aerosol in a laboratory setting. However, aerosol measurement and reporting classifications that are most commonly used in regulatory monitoring and building measurements include integral measures of mass-based concentrations (e.g., PM2.5, or the mass concentration of particles smaller than 2.5 µm) or total number concentrations (e.g., total UFPs, or ultrafine particles smaller than 100 nm). Because filter test standards have not traditionally considered these measures, building owners, occupants, and other key personnel cannot make informed decisions on HVAC filtration for these classifications. Moreover, because the removal efficiency for integral measures of total mass and number concentrations are also a function of the underlying particle size distributions that challenge the filter, one must consider the varied sources and size distributions of aerosols that filters encounter in real building applications. This work has two objectives: (1) to measure the in-situ size-resolved particle removal efficiency of a large number of commercially available residential HVAC filters, and (2) to use those size-resolved efficiency data to estimate integral measures of PM2.5 and total UFP removal efficiency for the same filters for typical residential indoor settings based on a literature survey of measured indoor particle size distributions. Particle concentration measurements were made upstream and downstream of a wide range of commercially available filters installed in a central air handling unit in an unoccupied residential apartment unit. A literature review was conducted to gather a variety of indoor particle size distributions (PSDs) from across the world and tri-modal lognormal distributions were fit to each of them. Finally, the particle removal efficiency for each filter for integral measures of indoor UFPs and PM2.5 were calculated for each indoor PSD. In-situ size-resolved measurements indicate that filters with similar rating values but from different manufacturers can have very different removal efficiencies for integral measures of PM2.5 and total UFPs, and that the assumption for indoor PSDs can greatly impact estimates of removal efficiency.
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Title: AN EXPERIMENTAL INVESTIGATION OF THE DYNAMICS OF AN INVERTED SERRATED FLAG
Creator: MURUGESAN PAZHANI, KAUSHIK
Date: 2018
Description: An experimental investigation of the role of leading-edge triangular serrations was conducted to understand the role of free leading edge in...
Show moreAn experimental investigation of the role of leading-edge triangular serrations was conducted to understand the role of free leading edge in large amplitude flapping of an inverted flag. The serrations are in the form of triangles arranged spanwise along the leading edge of the flag model. High – speed camera imaging experiment was conducted in open – loop wind tunnel at air – speeds ranging from 3.3m/s to 6.5m/s. For this velocity range, the non – dimensional bending stiffness (the ratio of bending force to the fluid inertial forces) ranges from 0.285 to 0.073. Flow visualization experiment using PIV technique was conducted for baseline flag and two serrated flags at flow velocity 4.8m/s (bending stiffness – 0.13). At a critical value of the velocity or bending stiffness, the flag oscillations transition from low amplitude asymmetric oscillations to symmetric high amplitude oscillations. This critical velocity is higher for the serrated flags indicating a reduction in the instantaneous lift force. The critical velocity was found to increase as serration height increased for a fixed number of serrations. The serrations create leading edge counter rotating eddy structures that interact with the primary tip vortex formation and breakdown process leading to changes in critical velocity, amplitude and frequency. The flapping amplitude and frequency were found to decrease as serration height increased for a fixed number of serrations. The “shallow” serrations have no effect of serrations while “tall” serrations decrease the non – dimensional flapping frequency and amplitude. The phase averaged velocity results show serrations delay leading edge vortex formations, and flow separation. This leads to decrease in pressure difference causing the serrated flag to deform less than baseline flag. Leading edge vortex formed in serrated flags were observed to be deformed compared to baseline flag leading edge vortex. Vortex deformation is due to serration induced three-dimensional flow effects. Serrated flags exhibit elongated vortical structures from flag tip instead of periodic vortex shedding in rebound phase. Streamlines used for qualitative analysis also shows, serrated flags lack periodic vortex formation and shedding during rebound phase. Using qualitative evidence from streamline plots and vorticity contour plots (elongated vortex structures) it could be stated due to change in leading edge geometry, serrated flags demonstrate a non – VIV flapping.
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Title: Efficiency of Stratification for Ensemble Reduction based on docking scores
Creator: Zhang, Hexi
Date: 2018
Description: Molecular docking has been widely used in structure-based drug design to virtually screen large chemical libraries to predict the prefer...
Show moreMolecular docking has been widely used in structure-based drug design to virtually screen large chemical libraries to predict the prefer conformations ligands that could bind the target site. Protein flexibility is a major issue that could be solved by ensemble docking which is docking to ‘ensemble’ of protein rigid conformations, such as snapshots obtained by molecular dynamics simulations. Our group has developed a method called ‘Efficiency of Stratification’ to evaluate a number of common snapshot selection strategies using a quality metric from stratified sampling (Xie et al. [19]). Docking was performed to four proteins and with each ligand numbers sets of up to five hundred ligands. In this paper, we generated distance matrices based on docking score to analysis the performance of the efficiency of stratification method. We observed that most docking score based score-based distance matrices have had better performance than structure-based distance matrices and with including any structure-based component overwhelms the docking-score component. Only a few ligands are required to get a good distance matrix.
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Title: PRIVACY PRESERVING BAG PREPARATION FOR LEARNING FROM LABEL PROPORTION
Creator: Yan, Xinzhou
Date: 2018
Description: We apply Privacy-preserving data mining standards (PPDM) to the Learning from label proportion (LLP) model to create the Private-preserving...
Show moreWe apply Privacy-preserving data mining standards (PPDM) to the Learning from label proportion (LLP) model to create the Private-preserving machine learning framework. We design the data preparation step for the LLP framework to meet the PPDM standards. In the data preparation step, we develop a bag selection method to boost the accuracy of the LLP model by more than 7%. Besides that, we propose three K- anonymous aggregation methods for the datasets which have almost zero accuracy loss and very robust. After the K-anonymous step, we apply Differential privacy to the LLP model and ensure a low accuracy loss for the LLP modelBecause of the LLP model’s special loss function, not only it is possible to replace all the feature vectors with the mean feature vector within each bag, but also the accuracy loss caused by Differential privacy can be bounded by a small number. The loss function ensures low accuracy loss when training LLP model on PPDM dataset. We evaluate the PPDM LLP model on two datasets, one is the Adult dataset and the other is the Instagram comment dataset. Both of them give empirical evidence of the low accuracy loss after applying the PPDM LLP model.
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Title: THE LATIN AMERICAN EXPORT: IMPLEMENTING LATIN AMERICAN URBAN STRATEGIES TO REDEVELOP AND RECONSTRUCT BRONZEVILLE
Creator: Saldaña Perales, Alejandro
Date: 2018
Description: The district and neighborhood of Bronzeville, located in the Near South Side of Chicago, suffers from crime, unemployment, abandonment, and...
Show moreThe district and neighborhood of Bronzeville, located in the Near South Side of Chicago, suffers from crime, unemployment, abandonment, and urban decay; more so than many of its metropolitan peers such as New York City, Los Angeles, or San Francisco.In Latin America, multidisciplinary operations and strategies focused on the investment in public spaces, mobility, and public assets have been successful in transforming decaying neighborhoods and redeveloping slums and blighted areas turning them into vibrant communities.Contextualizing and abstracting such strategies has the potential to import such ideas into new urban contexts; in this case, the United States of America, and to be implemented over the decaying North American urban fabric.
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Title: Enhancing Charge/Discharge Cycle Stability of NaCrO2 Cathode for Na-ion Batteries via Carbon Coatings
Creator: Shi, Zhepu
Date: 2018
Description: In this study, we report the effects of carbon coating on the electrochemical cycle stability of Na-ion batteries made of NaCrO2 cathodes....
Show moreIn this study, we report the effects of carbon coating on the electrochemical cycle stability of Na-ion batteries made of NaCrO2 cathodes. Various coating approaches and conditions have been investigated for 10-h high energy ball milled NaCrO2. It is shown that mixing the carbon source with NaCrO2 particles before the high-temperature carbonization reaction is a critical step. The solution-based mixing of the carbon source with NaCrO2 leads to the best carbon coating uniformity. Furthermore, carbonization treatment should be limited to 10 min at 650 ℃ in order to prevent the reaction between carbon and NaCrO2 to form chromium carbides. Uniform carbon coating can improve the capacity retention of NaCrO2 over charge/discharge cycles and the best capacity retention achieved in this study is 70% after 50 cycles. Furthermore, once the coating is uniformly distributed, NaCrO2 exhibits a very high specific capacity (140 mAh/g) which is significantly higher than the typical value of 110 mAh/g reported in the literature. The unusually high specific capacity observed is attributed to the enhancement of Na-ion intercalation and de-intercalation rates at the electrode/electrolyte interface because of the presence of the carbon coating.
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Title: A Complete Machine Learning Approach for Predicting Lithium-Ion Cell Combustion
Creator: Almagro Yravedra, Fernando
Date: 2020
Description: The object of the herein thesis work document is to develop a functional predictive model, able to predict the combustion of a US18650 Sony...
Show moreThe object of the herein thesis work document is to develop a functional predictive model, able to predict the combustion of a US18650 Sony Lithium-Ion cell given its current and previous states. In order to build the model, a realistic electro-thermal model of the cell under study is developed in Matlab Simulink, being used to recreate the cell's behavior under a set of real operating conditions. The data generated by the electro-thermal model is used to train a recurrent neural network, which returns the chance of future combustion of the US18650 Sony Lithium-Ion cell. Independently obtained data is used to test and validate the developed recurrent neural network using advanced metrics.
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