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Title: EL CABAÑAL, A SUSTAINABLE NEIGHBORHOOD FOR THE TWENTY-FIRST CENTURY
Creator: Peris, Blanca
Date: 2013, 2013-07
Description: Every generation builds its own city in terms of the social, economic, technological and cultural conditions of its time. We have the...
Show moreEvery generation builds its own city in terms of the social, economic, technological and cultural conditions of its time. We have the opportunity to put forward a new model of urban development that responds to the new conditions of habitability for the start of the 21st century. The fact is that we no longer live in a compact metropolis, but in a discontinuous metapolis, an extensive territory criss-crossed by road and rail transport routes and occupied by kernels of population, logistics centers, industry parks and shopping and leisure centers around which people (local, national and foreign) move according to their needs. In this situation it is as necessary to propose strategies for the renewal and compaction of the urban centers as for the integration and protection of the elements that constitute the natural and geographical landscape of our environment. The challenge of constructing a new neighborhood on the boundary between the city of Valencia, in Spain, and it’s orchard (the famous ‘Huerta’) will enable to explore this open and dynamic new hybrid condition of the territory and to propose a new model for the construction of the urban fringes. I would like to address the challenge of integrating the landscape that surrounds the city of Valencia, the landscape we have inherited from our ancestors. To do this it is necessary to reformulate the very concepts of urbanism with which traditionally is operated in the city. The word 'urbanism' was coined by Ildefons Cerdà to designate the science of urban growth, a process based on the implanting of a rational grid, superposed on an agricultural layout, in which the owners of a plot of agricultural x land had transferred to them the ownership of a plot of urban land eligible for development. It is this principle that has informed and overseen the urban expansions of the 19th century and the modern city of the 20th, the typically North American low-density city and the historical revivalism of the end of the last century. But the challenge facing urbanism now is to manage to make the city grow, integrating into our developments the anthropological and cultural elements of the landscape that surrounds us - constructing and conserving are accomplished in the same act. As against the old city-country dichotomy I now propose to bring about an intelligent transition between these two formerly antagonistic modes of dwelling, an integration that lets us recognize the social and cultural value of -in this case- the landscape of the Huerta of Valencia and incorporate it into the urban fabric by means of appropriate management strategies. Given an increasingly uniform global society, we need to recognize the specific cultural and landscape values of each territory as fundamental to the quality of life of the people who live there and to reaffirm a distinct identity that can provide a competitive advantage. Because of this, in contrast to the town planning of the 20th century, conceived on the basis of the speed of the car, I would like to propose a new model of 'urban-agricultural' development that guarantees the creation of a high-quality local environment. More than designing a city, I would like to create habitable environments that effectively resolve the different factors that give people the assurance habitability at different scales: the neighborhood, the landscape and the home.
M.S. in Architecture, July 2013
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Title: EXPLORING THE SHEAR-AND-TIME DEPENDENT DEGRADATION OF VON WILLEBRAND FACTOR UNDER VENTRICULAR ASSIST DEVICE-RELATED FLOW CONDITIONS
Creator: Yang, Shuo
Date: 2015, 2015-12
Description: Abnormalities in VWF can cause impaired blood coagulation which results in higher bleeding tendency in patients with this disorder. Alteration...
Show moreAbnormalities in VWF can cause impaired blood coagulation which results in higher bleeding tendency in patients with this disorder. Alteration in VWF is characteristic in ventricular assist devices (VADs) implanted subjects with failing hearts. The nature of the abnormalities produced and the conditions which produce such abnormalities are not fully understood. The studies in this thesis investigate quantitatively the effects of VADs and VAD-related flow conditions on VWF degradation. This thesis consists of three studies: 1) an in vitro VAD loop study in which was investigated the degradation effects of three VADs either under preclinical development (VAD I) or being commercially available (VAD II & III); 2) a viscometer shear study in which was investigated a variety of factors under the controlled condition of a modified Couette viscometer, namely, shear stress, exposure time, pulsatile frequency and protease function, with respect to VWF degradation 3) a tubular shear study in which was investigated the relative degradation effects of shear stress versus exposure time under more VAD-related shear stresses (10 - 100 times higher than physiological levels) and exposure times of miliseconds. In the VAD flow loop, significant VWF degradation induced by VADs wee observed with an approximately 95% loss of high molecular weight VWF by 60 minutes. In the viscometer and the tubular studies, the factors studied enhanced VWF degradation in the following manner: increased shear stress above physiological levels, prolonged exposure time and higher pulsatile shear frequency were associated with greater degradation; shear stress was a more dominant factor than exposure time with respect to the degradation; and a various shear stress regions demonstrated maximal degradation effects. In addition, calcium-dependent protease function was a necessity for VWF degradation at all shear stress levels investigated. The studies also revealed that the unfolding of VWF to expose the cleavage sites appeared to take more time under shear than the refolding to re-cover those sites under static conditions. Critical shear regions may be important for unfolding and degrading VWF multimers of various sizes.
Ph.D. in Biomedical Engineering, December 2015
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Title: AN INTEGRATED DATA ACCESS SYSTEM FOR BIG COMPUTING
Creator: Yang, Xi
Date: 2016, 2016-07
Description: Big data has entered every corner of the fields of science and engineering and becomes a part of human society. Scientific research and...
Show moreBig data has entered every corner of the fields of science and engineering and becomes a part of human society. Scientific research and commercial practice are increasingly depending on the combined power of high-performance computing (HPC) and high-performance data analytics. Due to its importance, several commercial computing environments have been developed in recent years to support big data applications. MapReduce is a popular mainstream paradigm for large-scale data analytics. MapReduce-based data analytic tools commonly rely on underlying MapReduce file systems (MRFS), such as Hadoop Distributed File System (HDFS), to manage massive amounts of data. In the same time, conventional scientific applications usually run on HPC environments, such as Message Passing Interface (MPI), and their data are kept in parallel file systems (PFS), such as Lustre and GPFS, for high-speed computing and data consistency. As scientific applications become data intensive and big data applications become computing hungry, there is a surging interest and need to integrate HPC power and data processing power to support HPC on big data, the so-called big computing. A fundamental issue of big computing is the integration of data management and interoperability between the conventional HPC ecosystem and the newly emerged data processing/analytic ecosystem. However, data sharing between PFS and MRFS is limited currently, due to semantics mismatches, lacking communication middleware, and the diverged design philosophies and goals, etc. Also, challenges also exist in cross-platform task scheduling and parallelism. At the application layer, the data model mismatch between the raw data kept on file systems and the data management software of an application impedes cross-platform data processing as well. To support cross-platform integration, we propose and develop the Integrated Data Access System (IDAS) for big computing. IDAS extends the accessibilities of programming models and integrates the HPC environment with the data processing MapReduce/Hadoop environment. Under IDAS, MPI applications and MapReduce applications can share and exchange data under PFS and MRFS transparently and efficiently. Through this sharing and exchange, MPI and MapReduce applications can collaboratively provide both high-performance computing and data processing power for a given application. IDAS achieves its goal with several steps. First, IDAS enhances MPI-IO so that MPI-based applications can access data stored in HDFS efficiently. Here the term efficient means that HDFS is enhanced to support MPI-based applications. For instance, we have enhanced HDFS to transparently support N-to-1 file write for better write concurrency. Second, IDAS enhances Hadoop framework to enable MapReduce-based applications process data that resides on PFS transparently. Please notice that we have carefully chosen the term “enhance” here. That is MPI-based applications not only can access data stored on HDFS but also can continue access data stored on PFS. The same is for MapReduce-based applications. Through these enhancements, we achieve seamless data sharing. In addition, we have integrated data accessing with several application tools. In particular, we have integrated image plotting, query, and data subsetting within one application, for Earth Science data analysis. Many data centers prefer erasure-coding rather than triplication to achieve data durability, which trades data availability for lower storage cost. To this end, we have also investigated performance optimization of the erasure coded Hadoop system, to enhance Hadoop system in IDAS.
Ph.D. in Computer Science, July 2016
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Title: CONSTRUCT AND MEASUREMENT EQUIVALENCE ACROSS GENDER OF THE DYADIC ADJUSTMENT SCALE
Creator: Yap, Bonnie Joyce
Date: 2012-10-16, 2012-12
Description: The Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) is the most widely used measure of dyadic adjustment for individuals in committed relationships (Spanier,...
Show moreThe Dyadic Adjustment Scale (DAS) is the most widely used measure of dyadic adjustment for individuals in committed relationships (Spanier, 1976). However, little research has focused on whether DAS measures the construct of dyadic adjustment in a way that is equivalent and unbiased across genders. The current study utilized matched moderated regression (MMR) to assess each item of the DAS to detect if gender differences in the relationships between item responses and the construct being measured are due to (a) factors other than the construct and (b) differences in the construct. Archival data were acquired from a previously published study (Eddy, Heyman, & Weiss, 1991). The sample was very large (N =3322) so it was divided into two replication groups in such a way that no couples were included in the same group. A number of statistically significant differences were found on items in both replication samples; however: (1) many of these items were not consistent across replicate groups; (2) Even when there was a consistent gender difference in both replication groups, the magnitude was small; (3) When all of the differences were summed across items, bias in total scale score was minimal because the direction of the biases differed across items and so cancelled out and; (4) A small gender difference may exist in preferences for demonstrations of affection. Findings suggest that there are not substantial gender bias or scale equivalence problems with the DAS. The construct of dyadic adjustment was similar in men and women. These findings are congruent results from the recent study of South and Kruger (2009) on gender differences in the factor structure on the DAS and lend support to the valid use of the DAS in studies of dyadic adjustment.
M.S. in Psychology, December 2012
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Title: COMMUNICATION AND COMPUTATION ARCHITECTURES FOR DISTRIBUTED WIRELESS SENSOR NETWORKS AND INTERNET OF THINGS
Creator: Yi, Won-jae
Date: 2017, 2017-07
Description: Real-time data communication has been viral since the era of the smartphone rose to prominence in this decade. All communications from human...
Show moreReal-time data communication has been viral since the era of the smartphone rose to prominence in this decade. All communications from human to human, from device to human, and from device to device are handled over the Internet connection either through a mobile Internet service provider or Wi-Fi, which enables information exchange including weather service, road traffic conditions, news alerts, package tracking notifications. By looking at different perspectives of the role of a smartphone, it reveals itself as an ideal device to mobilize critical user data to construct a real-time monitoring application such as in remote healthcare and home automation systems. Not only can the smartphone handle real-time data transmissions, but it can also handle real-time computations on the device itself by utilizing its embedded CPU. This dissertation is a comprehensive study of the investigation, exploration and experimentation on a real-time health monitoring system where quality of life can be improved when the conventional system may affect and hamper regular daily activities. The design flow of this system is based on the Internet connection where any device that is communicatively associated with the smartphone can be connected to the Internet. By utilizing the Android smartphone, not only does the system gain real-time data transmission capability, but it also obtains flexibility to communicate with different types of sensors and platforms through multiple wireless protocols. This system is highly adaptable to the currently trending Internet of Things (IoT) standards, where significantly increasing anticipation over its social impact, where it can assist populations in rural and distant areas for healthcare, day-to-day activity monitoring, and prevention against hazardous conditions for workers. The system architecture introduced in this research is focused on reconfigurability and compatibility of wireless sensors where they are independent from a certain platform in which sensors are not limited to medical devices but also detect movement, location, climate condition and any other sensor for analyzing the environment. Four major components are introduced in this research including wireless sensor nodes, a central sensor data processing and communication node, an Android application, and a central database server. They are discussed and explored to seek for solutions to improve and enhance features in the fundamental system design. Communication and computation processing capabilities are evaluated for all major components for practical usage of the system for different case studies. Also as a quantitative case study, a posture and fall detection system is presented which determines the patient's activities, medical conditions and the cause of an emergency event through the integration of all system architecture components. Adapting the IoT system is also explored in this dissertation by introducing a protocol standard to improve data transmission efficiency and to enable cross-platform compatibility of wireless devices. In addition to improving system efficiency, a study on data security issues and assessment on sensor data has been explored by implementing a proposed security scheme to each major component within the real-time mobile monitoring system. Also, a concept of Quality-of-Service (QoS) for mobile monitoring system using a wireless sensor network has been investigated to provide a solution to prioritize sensor data transmissions based on the results obtained from the sensor data assessment application. The proposed solutions can be either implemented on or under the application layer.
Ph.D. in Computer Engineering, July 2017
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Title: MOBILE ANDROID SENSOR SYSTEM FOR REAL-TIME PATIENT MONITORING AND HEALTHCARE APPLICATION
Creator: Yi, Won-jae
Date: 2012-04-25, 2012-05
Description: A system using Android devices that collects, displays sensor data on the screen and streams to the central server in real-time is presented...
Show moreA system using Android devices that collects, displays sensor data on the screen and streams to the central server in real-time is presented in this research. Common Android devices, such as smartphones and tablets, are considered for this system to demonstrate its flexibility and compatibility of the application on any Android device. Bluetooth and wireless Internet connections are used for data transmission among the devices. Also, using Near Field Communication (NFC) technology on the smartphone, the system constructs a more efficient and convenient mechanism to achieve an automatic Bluetooth connection and an automatic application execution. This system is beneficial on Body Sensor Network (BSN) establishments for medical healthcare applications by adding wireless technology. Various types of sensors can be adapted to monitor a patient’s status in real-time. For demonstration purposes, an accelerometer, a temperature sensor and vital signs signal sensor data, including electrocardiography (ECG), blood pressure, electroencephalography (EEG) and respiration, are used to perform the experiment to provide fundamentals of remote patient diagnosis. Raw sensor data is interpreted to either graphical or text notations to be presented on the Android device and the central server. Furthermore, a Java-based central server application is introduced to demonstrate communication with the Android system for data storage and analysis through Internet connections. This system is capable of data transmission in real-time without exploiting system resources for data collection and interpretation. This system is also can be further extended for additional sensors, such as a sweatiness sensor, an electromyography (EMG) sensor, a glucose sensor and more for enhanced patient status diagnosis.
M.S. in Computer Engineering, May 2012
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Title: IN VITRO STUDIES OF VIRULENCE SUPPRESSION ON P. AERUGINOSA BY PHOSPHATE / POLYPHOSPHATE-LOADED NANOPARTICLES
Creator: Yin, Yushu
Date: 2015, 2015-07
Description: Critically ill patients harbor multi-drug resistant pathogens that can activate their virulence in the response to low nutrient conditions and...
Show moreCritically ill patients harbor multi-drug resistant pathogens that can activate their virulence in the response to low nutrient conditions and host stress derived factors. It was recently shown that the oversupply of inorganic phosphate to bacterial environment can profoundly suppress the virulence of pathogens. Here we hypothesized that phosphateand/ or polyphosphate-loaded nanoparticles can present a tool to deliver and slowly release phosphate in pathogen-rich niche, thereby suppressing bacterial virulence. In this work, a designed study on effect of different phosphate levels (including the phosphate released from hydrogel nanoparticles) on virulence of P. aeruginosa is addressed. In this work, we developed formulations for preparing hexametaphosphate-loaded nanoparticles on the basis of that for phosphate loaded nanoparticles. We utilized inverse miniemulsion polymerization in the synthesis of these nanoparticles. Polyethylene glycol diacrylate (PEGDA, moleculat weight of 575 Da) and N-vinyl pyrrolidone (molecular weight: 111.14 Da ) were chosen to be the initial monomers because the main crosslinker, polyethylene glycol is a kind of biocompatible material that has been approved by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA). Several parameter could be adjusted among the experiment. We selected the monomer mole fraction of PEGDA-575 as our parameter. After the synthesis, a nanoparticle size distribution between 110 nm and 150 nm was obtained. And these nanoparticles were proved to be able to release phosphate and hexametaphosphate as drug molecules. Although there were release bursts in the test of release kinetics, the crosslink density could be adjusted in following researches. The second part of this study is to test the virulence suppression effect of the nanoparticles in in vitro experiment on a kind of opportunistic pathogen, P. aeruginosa. This kind of gram-negative bacteria is one of the common intestinal microbial communities. We presented the strategy of suppressing virulence while containing rather than killing the bacteria. As a result, polyphosphate loaded nanoparticles showed to be the most effective one among several experiment groups. This result gave this study a promising future in further research in several aspects, such as in vivo test in biomedical and biomedical engineering.
M.S. in Chemical Engineering, July 2015
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Title: NOVEL METHOD OF MANUFACTURING HYDROGEN STORAGE MATERIALS COMBINING WITH NUMERICAL ANALYSIS BASED ON DISCRETE ELEMENT METHOD
Creator: Xuzhe, Zhao
Date: 2015, 2015-07
Description: High efficiency hydrogen storage method is significant in development of fuel cell vehicle. Seeking for a high energy density material as the...
Show moreHigh efficiency hydrogen storage method is significant in development of fuel cell vehicle. Seeking for a high energy density material as the fuel becomes the key of wide spreading fuel cell vehicle. LiBH4 + MgH2 system is a strong candidate due to their high hydrogen storage density and the reaction between them is reversible. However, LiBH4 + MgH2 system usually requires the high temperature and hydrogen pressure for hydrogen release and uptake reaction. In order to reduce the requirements of this system, nanoengineering is the simple and efficient method to improve the thermodynamic properties and reduce kinetic barrier of reaction between LiBH4 and MgH2. Based on ab initio density functional theory (DFT) calculations, the previous study has indicated that the reaction between LiBH4 and MgH2 can take place at temperature near 200°C or below. However, the predictions have been shown to be inconsistent with many experiments. Therefore, it is the first time that our experiment using ball milling with aerosol spraying (BMAS) to prove the reaction between LiBH4 and MgH2 can happen during high energy ball milling at room temperature. Through this BMAS process we have found undoubtedly the formation of MgB2 and LiH during ball milling of MgH2 while aerosol spraying of the LiBH4/THF solution. Aerosol nanoparticles from LiBH4/THF solution leads to form Li2B12H12 during BMAS process. The Li2B12H12 formed then reacts with MgH2 in situ during ball milling to form MgB2 and LiH. Discrete element modeling (DEM) is a useful tool to describe operation of various ball milling processes. EDEM is software based on DEM to predict power consumption, liner and media wear and mill output. In order to further improve the milling efficiency of BMAS process, EDEM is conducted to make analysis for complicated ball milling process. Milling speed and ball’s filling ratio inside the canister as the variables are considered to determine the milling efficiency. The average and maximum speed of balls is critical to affect the collision force among balls. High collision force can be achieved by applying large torque on the milling shaft. The high milling speed and large ball’s filling ratio increase the torque and average speed of balls. However, the high average speed and large torque lead to non-uniformed milled material. Therefore, appropriate milling speed and ball’s filling ratio are ought to be selected to have better milled materials. The results of this study lead to the feasibility of LiBH4 + MgH2 system for reversible hydrogen storage application near ambient temperature. Applying appropriate ball’s filling ratio and milling speed can improve the milling efficiency of BMAS method.
M.S. in Material Science Engineering, July 2015
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Title: WIRELESS COMMUNICATION FOR AN ACTUATED GLOVE FOR HAND REHABILITATION
Creator: Yuan, Ning
Date: 2016, 2016-12
Description: Stroke survivors often experience long-term upper extremity impairment. This can greatly impair activities of daily living. The eXtension...
Show moreStroke survivors often experience long-term upper extremity impairment. This can greatly impair activities of daily living. The eXtension Glove (X-Glove) is a soft robotic device to aid hand therapy. It uses cables serving as external extensor tendons to assist digit extension and control digit flexion. Load cells are located on each motor to detect the force value of fingers. This paper provides a way to add a biofeedback function on the X-Glove and update the microprocessor to a PIC32MX795. So the X-Glove can establish a wireless communication transmit data with terminals, like PC. In order to display the biofeedback, a graphic user-interface is also developed so that therapists can optimize the therapy for each individual patient in real time.
M.S. in Biomedical Engineering, December 2016
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Title: MODELING OF A DCFC ANODE IN CONNECTION WITH THE EXPERIMENTAL RESEARCH ON THE WETTING BEHAVIOR OF A GRAPHIC ROD IN MOLTEN CARBONATE
Creator: Li, Yue
Date: 2013, 2013-12
Description: Not available
M.S. in Civil Engineering, July 2013

Title: INVESTIGATION OF NIOBIUM SURFACE STRUCTURE AND COMPOSITION FOR IMPROVEMENT OF SUPERCONDUCTING RADIO-FREQUENCY CAVITIES
Creator: Trenikhina, Yulia
Date: 2014, 2014-12
Description: Nano-scale investigation of intrinsic properties of niobium near-surface is a key to control performance of niobium superconducting radio...
Show moreNano-scale investigation of intrinsic properties of niobium near-surface is a key to control performance of niobium superconducting radio-frequency cavities. Mechanisms responsible for the performance limitations and their empirical remedies needs to be justified in order to reproducibly control fabrication of SRF cavities with desired characteristics. The high field Q-slope and mechanism behind its cure (120◦C mild vacuum bake) were investigated by comparison of the samples cut out of the cavities with high and low dissipation regions. Material evolution during mild field Q-slope nitrogen treatment was characterized using the coupon samples as well as samples cut out of nitrogen treated cavity. Evaluation of niobium near-surface state after some typical and novel cavity treatments was accomplished. Various TEM techniques, SEM, XPS, AES, XRD were used for the structural and chemical characterization of niobium near-surface. Combination of thermometry and structural temperature-dependent comparison of the cavity cutouts with different dissipation characteristics revealed precipitation of niobium hydrides to be the reason for medium and high field Q-slopes. Step-by-step effect of the nitrogen treatment processing on niobium surface was studied by analytical and structural characterization of the cavity cutout and niobium samples, which were subject to the treatment. Low concentration nitrogen doping is proposed to explain the benefit of nitrogen treatment. Chemical characterization of niobium samples before and after various surface processing (Electropolishing (EP), 800◦C bake, hydrofluoric acid (HF) rinsing) showed the differences that can help to reveal the microscopic effects behind these treatments as well as possible sources of surface contamination.
Ph.D. in Physics, December 2014
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Title: SURVIVAL AND ATTACHMENT OF SALMONELLA ENTERICA ON ALMOND, HAZELNUT, AND BLACK PEPPER
Creator: Zhai, Yang
Date: 2016, 2016-05
Description: S. Enteritidis (SE) and S. Typhimurium (ST) are the two most common Salmonella enterica serovars that cause foodborne illnesses in U.S....
Show moreS. Enteritidis (SE) and S. Typhimurium (ST) are the two most common Salmonella enterica serovars that cause foodborne illnesses in U.S. Outbreaks of these serovars have been attributed to low moisture foods such as nuts and spices. However, little is known about the mechanisms of attachment on low moisture food surfaces. This study evaluated the associations between attachment and survival of Salmonella enterica serovars, storage temperatures, and surface characteristics of selected food samples. In the study, S. Enteritidis PT4 and S. Typhimurium LT2 were inoculated onto the surfaces of black peppercorns, almonds and hazelnuts at ~108 CFU/g. After 2 h air-drying, samples were stored at 4 and 25°C with 58 ± 2% relative humidity for up to 14 d. At specific time points, the food sample were washed two times in 1 × Phosphate Buffered Saline (PBS) to remove attached bacterial cells. The bacterial suspensions were serially diluted and plated on Brain Heart Infusion (BHI) and Xylose Lysine Deoxycholate (XLD) agar plates for enumeration. Significant differences (P<0.05) were found in the survival and attachment of SE and ST under all the conditions. ST can survive and attach better than SE at both 4 and 25°C. The decline rates on almonds, hazelnuts, and black peppercorns at 25°C were 0.348 ± 0.017, 0.273 ± 0.015, and 0.196 ± 0.017 log CFU/g per day for SE and 0.077 ± 0.008, 0.157 ± 0.008, and 0.048 ± 0.005 log CFU/g per day for ST, respectively. The attachment rates on almonds, hazelnuts and black peppercorns at 25°C were 18.71 ± 14.38, 1.56 ± 1.50, and 4.68 ± 0.76% for SE and 38.46 ± 11.32, 18.45 ± 7.73, and 56.30 ± 14.72% for ST, respectively. In addition, low temperature (i.e. 4°C) may contribute more to the survival of Salmonella than ambient temperature (i.e. 25°C). Certain surface characteristics (roughness & hydrophobicity) of hazelnut may probably result in weaker attachment of both Salmonella serovars. The results can be used to better understand the physiology of Salmonella enterica on low moisture foods and aid in developing effective control measures to reduce pathogen contamination.
M.S. in Food Safety and Technology, May 2016
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Title: OPERATION AND PLANNING OF COORDINATED NATURAL GAS AND ELECTRICITY INFRASTRUCTURES
Creator: Zhang, Xiaping
Date: 2015, 2015-07
Description: Natural gas is becoming rapidly the optimal choice for fueling new generating units in electric power system driven by abundant natural gas...
Show moreNatural gas is becoming rapidly the optimal choice for fueling new generating units in electric power system driven by abundant natural gas supplies and environmental regulations that are expected to cause coal-fired generation retirements. The growing reliance on natural gas as a dominant fuel for electricity generation throughout North America has brought the interaction between the natural gas and power grids into sharp focus. The primary concern and motivation of this research is to address the emerging interdependency issues faced by the electric power and natural gas industry. This thesis provides a comprehensive analysis of the interactions between the two systems regarding the short-term operation and long-term infrastructure planning. Natural gas and renewable energy appear complementary in many respects regarding fuel price and availability, environmental impact, resource distribution and dispatchability. In addition, demand response has also held the promise of making a significant contribution to enhance system operations by providing incentives to customers for a more flat load profile. We investigated the coordination between natural gas-fired generation and prevailing nontraditional resources including renewable energy, demand response so as to provide economical options for optimizing the short-term scheduling with the intense natural gas delivery constraints. As the amount and dispatch of gas-fired generation increases, the long-term interdependency issue is whether there is adequate pipeline capacity to provide sufficient gas to natural gas-fired generation during the entire planning horizon while it is widely used outside the power sector. This thesis developed a co-optimization planning model by incorporating the natural gas transportation system into the multi-year resource and transmission system planning problem.This consideration would provide a more comprehensive decision for the investment and accurate assessment for system adequacy and reliability. With the growing reliance on natural gas and widespread utilization of highly efficient combined heat and power (CHP), it is also questionable that whether the independent design of infrastructures can meet potential challenges of future energy supply. To address this issue, this thesis proposed an optimization framework for a sustainable multiple energy system expansion planning based on an energy hub model while considering the energy efficiency, emission and reliability performance. In addition, we introduced the probabilistic reliability evaluation and flow network analysis into the multiple energy system design in order to obtain an optimal and reliable network topology.
Ph.D. in Electrical and Computer Engineering, July 2015
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Title: OIL RECOVERY IN SINGLE CAPILLARIES AND POROUS MEDIA USING WETTING NANOFLUIDS
Creator: Zhang, Hua
Date: 2016, 2016-05
Description: Recent experiments and modeling conducted in our laboratory have demonstrated that the spreading of nanofluids, liquid suspensions of...
Show moreRecent experiments and modeling conducted in our laboratory have demonstrated that the spreading of nanofluids, liquid suspensions of nanosized particles, on solids are enhanced due to self-structuring of nanoparticles in the confined three-phase oil-nanofluid-solid contact region. Nanofluids have recently been proposed as agents for enhanced oil recovery (EOR). Despite recently widely conducted research using nanofluids for EOR, the underlying operating mechanism is not well understood. In this thesis, we attempt to understand the mechanism of nanofluid based EOR and evaluate its performance from reservoir core samples and model systems (glass capillary and sintered bead-pack). To visualize how oil displacement in the rock pores by nanofluid, we conducted model study using hexadecane and single glass capillary and showed the oil film dynamics in air and nanofluid after oil was displaced in the capillary. Based on the understanding of the role of nanofluid on oil displacement in capillaries, we conducted imbibition tests using Berea sandstones and flooding experiments in sintered glass-beads. X-ray microtomography was used to visualize and analyze fluid distribution and to see the effect of nanofluid in EOR. We finally considered fractured media by fabricating such structures. The dynamics of a cylindrical hexadecane layer deposited inside glass capillaries after the oil/air displacement was studied experimentally and by modeling. The oil layer subject to surface perturbation becomes unstable forming uniform, regularly-spaced double concave menisci across the capillary that are bridged with dimples (collars). In order to reveal the phenomena of the film thinning and stability between the double concave meniscus and the dimple, we monitored an air bubble approaching a flat glass surface in hexadecane. We found that the oil film thinning in a cylindrical glass capillary and on a flat glass substrate were similar; We adapted the model proposed by Gauglitz and Radke for our system (oil-air displacement) and solved it numerically. The numerical result shows a stable film between the liquid bridge and the dimple, which is consistent with our experimental observations. We also estimated the meniscus-film-dimple thickness profile and found it was in fair agreement with the model prediction. The dynamics of cylindrical hexadecane film after displacement by a nanofluid in a glass capillary was studied. We found the thick hexadecane film is unstable, and over time it breaks and forms a thin film. Once the thick film ruptures, it retracts and forms an annular rim (liquid ridge) that collects liquid. As the volume of the annular rim increases over time, it forms a double concave meniscus across the capillary and dewetting stops. The thin film on the right side of the double concave meniscus then breaks and the contact angle increases. The process repeats until droplets build along the capillary wall. Finally, the droplets are displaced from the capillary wall by the nanofluid and spherical droplets appear inside the capillary. This is a novel phenomenon not observed during dewetting by a solution without nanoparticles. The theoretical model based on the lubrication approximation using the capillary pressure gradient was developed to estimate the annular rim dewetting velocity. The predicted dewetting velocity is found to be in fair agreement with the experimental value. We conducted imbibition tests using a reservoir crude oil and a reservoir brine solution with a high salinity and a suitable nanofluid that displaces crude oil from Berea sandstone and single glass capillaries. We present visual evidence of the underlying mechanism based on the structural disjoining pressure for the crude oil displacement using a polymeric nanofluid (our definition of such a fluid means a suspension of polymeric particles in an aqueous substrate) in high salinity brine. The polymeric nanofluid is specially formulated to survive in a high salinity environment and is found to result in an increased efficiency of 50% for Berea sandstone compared to 17% using the brine alone at a reservoir temperature of 55 oC. These results aid our understanding of the role of the nanofluid in displacing crude oil from the rock especially in a high salinity environment containing Ca++ and Mg++ ions. Results are also reported using Berea sandstone and a nanofluid containing silica nanoparticles. We conducted a series of flooding experiments at different capillary numbers to quantify the performance of a polymeric nanofluid compared to brine using the sintered glass-beads. A high resolution X-ray microtomography (microCT) was used to visualize oil and brine distribution in a sintered bead-pack before and after nanofluid flooding. The results of flooding experiments showed that an additional oil recovery of approximately 15% is possible with nanofluids compared to brine at low capillary numbers, and is as effective as high capillary number brine flooding. Nanofluid induced additional oil recovery decreases as we increase the capillary number and the total oil recovered shows a marginal decrease. At first glance, these results are opposite of what one expects in the conventional EOR, where oil recovery is known to increase progressively with increasing capillary number. These results cannot be explained based on mobilization theories due to the reduced capillarity. Our results however are consistent with the mechanism of wettability alteration caused by structural disjoining pressure leading to the formation of the wetting nanofluid film between oil and substrate.We presented experimental studies of nanofluid flooding in fractured porous media formed with sintered glass-beads. The nanofluid injection is conducted at a rate where structural disjoining pressure driven recovery is operational. We found an additional 23.8% oil can be displaced using nanofluid after brine injection with an overall displacement efficiency of 90.4% provided the matrix was in its native wettability state. In summary, nanofluids are excellent EOR agents and their economic viability needs to be examined.
Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, May 2016
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Title: TOWARDS THE EXACT CALCULATIONS OF THE FREE ENERGY FOR ENTANGLED SEMIFLEXIBLE POLYMER CHAIN
Creator: Pilyugina, Ekaterina
Date: 2015, 2015-05
Description: This work consists of two separate projects unified by the idea to extend the Discrete Slip-Link Model, which has been being successfully...
Show moreThis work consists of two separate projects unified by the idea to extend the Discrete Slip-Link Model, which has been being successfully developed in this group to predict rheological behavior of entangled flexible polymers, to new applications. The first project was dedicated to application of the Discrete Slip-Link Model to dielectric relaxation in order to simultaneously predict linear rheology and dielectric relaxation experiments of entangled polyisoprenes. Linear monodisperse, linear bidisperse and star-branched monodisperse systems were studied. It was found that all circumstances save one are well described. Namely, dilute long chains in a sea of short chains can be predicted rheologically, but dielectric relaxation data show a reduction in the relaxation time of long chains greater than that predicted by either the DSM or the expected Rouse motion. The second project was focused on the derivation of the exact free energy expression for semiflexible chains in the presence of entanglements in order to implement the DSM for semiflexible polymers. The special cases of chains with one, two and three strands are examined. An additional implementation of obtained results for one and two strands to buckling instability was performed. It is believed that in two dimensional case the critical buckling force is increased by thermal fluctuations in comparison to classical Euler buckling. However, how the critical buckling force is influenced by thermal fluctuations in three dimensions remains unclear. Some research groups calculate the critical buckling force approximately and conclude that, in opposite to 2D case, in 3D the force is decreased by thermal fluctuations. In this work the critical buckling force for semiflexible chain under compression was calculated exactly. It was shown that thermal fluctuations significantly increase the critical force over classical Euler buckling force in both two and three dimensions.
Ph.D. in Chemical Engineering, May 2015
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Title: FLOW DISTRIBUTION AND TURBULENCE CHARACTERISTICS IN AN URBAN ENVIRONMENT
Creator: Goudarzi, Sepehr Aboutorabi
Date: 2014, 2014-12
Description: The amount of the urban flow studies has been excessively increased during past decade. Pollutant dispersion quality has been the main...
Show moreThe amount of the urban flow studies has been excessively increased during past decade. Pollutant dispersion quality has been the main motivation in these investigations. Besides, a more recent goal is to provide a spatial map of the flow distribution which can be used for micro aerial vehicles (MAV) flight control. These all have developed advanced methodologies in both computational and experimental researches. In this study flow distribution and characteristics are investigated in a 7×5 urban array model (blocks are representing buildings) in a low-speed wind tunnel. Stereoscopic Particle Image Velocimetry (SPIV) is employed as the velocimetry method to acquire three-dimensional velocity filed in the three-dimensional region of street areas. A large amount of SPIV data was acquired in four consecutive streets for four wind incidence angle. The evolution of the three-dimensional coherent structures is investigated. Also, flow characteristics are studied using parameters such as mean velocity, turbulent kinetic energy (TKE), vorticity magnitude and Reynolds stress tensor components. All flow characteristics are studied in four consecutive streets of the array. Also, the effects of the wind direction on the flow characteristics and arch vortex location are studied. A valuable achievement of this study is to suggest a method to find the location of the arch vortex legs, and find the angle between the arch horizontal axis with the spanwise direction (𝜑). It is shown that this angle is increasing significantly in variation of angle of incidence (AOI) in the range of 𝐴𝑂𝐼=0° to 𝐴𝑂𝐼=15°. The rate of increment of 𝜑 is much slower between 𝐴𝑂𝐼=15° and 𝐴𝑂𝐼=30° but the 𝜑 range is still greater than AOI. Existence of geometrical symmetry in 𝐴𝑂𝐼=0° case, brings unique features for this condition such as zero spanwise flow velocity in streets.. Increasing AOI to higher magnitudes will cause severe change in flow distribution and turbulence level, in the sense that turbulence intensity starts to impoverish.
M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, December 2014
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Title: DELAYING THE ONSET OF ROTATING STALL IN AN AXIAL COMPRESSOR
Creator: Thomas, Seth
Date: 2011-04-12, 2011-05
Description: The optimal performance of axial compressors is crucial in a number of appli- cations, including power plants and gas turbine engines. Their...
Show moreThe optimal performance of axial compressors is crucial in a number of appli- cations, including power plants and gas turbine engines. Their efficiency is limited by the onset of stall, when the pressure rise across the compressor drops suddenly and destructive flow patterns emerge. Because of this, all compressors operate at conditions away from the stall point, but with an accompanying penalty in efficiency. The objective of this study is to examine the detailed fluid dynamic processes lead- ing to stall and devise a scheme of active flow control to delay stall onset, allowing compressors to operate safely much closer to the stall point and at greater efficiency. This is done on the low speed axial compressor rig in the Fluid Dynamics Research Center at the Illinois Institute of Technology. Results indicated that the stall cell appears at a flow coefficient, φ = 0.292 and that it is small, located close to the casing, rotating with the rotor blade row, but at 55% of the rotor rotation rate. Detailed stall inception investigation revealed that small amplitude modal waves instigated flow breakdown upstream of the rotor blade row, causing a spike stall cell to develop. This spike cell rotates very quickly (70%) and grows rapidly into a finite stall cell, slowing its rotation rate as it becomes fully developed. Stagnation pressure in the wake of the rotor blades was phase locked to both the rotor and stall cell rotation, allowing phase-averaging techniques to reveal the averaged stall cell structure. A new actuator was designed for rotating stall control. Based on the stall inception results, a disturbance rejection scheme was devised to interact with the incipient stall cell, preventing its growth into a finite stall cell. The single blade was studied in a number of open loop control experiments, which indicated that pulsing at 2psi over a range of frequencies can inhibit stall inception, extending the operating range by 0.4% mass flow, thus stabilizing a previously unstable operating point.
M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, May 2011
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Title: NEW TOOLS FOR JET ANALYSIS IN HIGH ENERGY COLLISIONS
Creator: Duffty, Daniel
Date: 2015, 2015-05
Description: Our understanding of the fundamental interactions of particles has come far in the last century, and is still pushing forward. As we build...
Show moreOur understanding of the fundamental interactions of particles has come far in the last century, and is still pushing forward. As we build ever more powerful machines to probe higher and higher energies, we will need to develop new tools to not only understand the new physics objects we are trying to detect, but even to understand the environment that we are searching in. We examine methods of identifying both boosted objects and low energy jets which will be shrouded in a sea of noise from other pasts of the detector. We display the power of boosted-b tagging in a simulated W' search. We also examine the effetc of pile up on low energy jet reconstructions. For this purpose we develop a new priority-based jet algorithm, "p-jets", to cluster the energy that belongs together, but ignore the rest.
Ph.D in Physics, May 2015
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Title: FLOW FIELD STRUCTURE AND UNSTEADY AERODYNAMIC LOADS ON AN AIRFOIL IN SURGING FLOW
Creator: Iliev, Simeon Milenov
Date: 2015, 2015-05
Description: Airfoils subject to unsteady freestream velocity as in the case of helicopter rotor blades and vertical axis wind turbines have been observed...
Show moreAirfoils subject to unsteady freestream velocity as in the case of helicopter rotor blades and vertical axis wind turbines have been observed to exhibit very interesting lift behavior. Depending on the frequency of the oscillating freestream velocity, the uctuating lift amplitude can reach values as much as twice of that predicted by a quasi-steady approximation or as low as only one-half of that. Experimental data and analysis presented in this study provide the exact relationship between surging ow frequency and amplitude of the uctuating lift force for a range of reduced fre- quencies between k=0.1 and k=1.5. Furthermore, surface pressure measurements on the suction surface of the airfoil are used to supplement the measured lift force data and provide a measure of the level of unsteady ow e ects. Finally, experimental particle image velocimetry ow eld data is presented for the two surging ow cases corresponding to the maximum and minimum uctuating lift amplitude and is used to extract coherent ow eld structures which are related to the respective lift be- havior. Both the experimental lift force data and ow eld structures are compared to corresponding, low Reynolds number numerical simulation results.
M.S. in Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, May 2015
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Title: RECONFIGURABLE ANALOG FRONT-END SYSTEM FOR ULTRASONIC IMAGING APPLICATIONS
Creator: Vasudevan, Vidya
Date: 2014, 2014-12
Description: Ultrasonic systems, applied in the field of Medical Imaging and Non-Destructive Testing, have evolved from the trolley-based units to more...
Show moreUltrasonic systems, applied in the field of Medical Imaging and Non-Destructive Testing, have evolved from the trolley-based units to more portable, hand-held devices. These systems are built to suit a specific application or aim at specific target material. In order to make these systems portable and adaptable to the testing environment, a flexible and programmable hardware is built. A fully configurable Analog Front-End (AFE) is presented, which possesses the capability for dynamic re-configuration by using ARM processing core for real-time control, data acquisition and signal analysis in a Linux environment. This system supports up to 8 ultrasonic sensors. The flexibility built into the AFE allows for various beamforming and signal conditioning requirements. This reconfigurable system enables ultrasonic researchers to efficiently prototype different experiments and to incorporate high performance ultrasonic signal and image processing algorithms. This system provides real-time signal processing for nondestructive evaluation (NDE) and imaging applications using ultrasonic sensors ranging from 60 KHz to 15 MHz operating frequencies. A dynamically reconfigurable sensor interface is presented for ultrasonic pulse-echo measurements targeting flaw detection and parametric echo classification applications. For real-time implementation, a SoC-based system is developed on an ARM platform. For a working system, a BCM2835 SoC on a Raspberry Pi hardware system is explored with a further upgrade to Xilinx Zynq 7020 SoC in order to achieve a higher throughput.
M.S. in Electrical Engineering, December 2014
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