Water treatment facilities strive to provide potable drinking water to the community which they service. The most common way of insuring drinkable water that is free of pathogens is water chlorination, but this can lead to the production of...
A potential source of fine grained suspended sediments in a stream system is the
upper hillslopes of the drainage. Quantifying the sediment produced and transported to a
stream from these hillslopes is challenging because of the complex nature of...
Orbital shakers are commonly used in the cell culture industry due to their ease of use, but the fluid dynamics of this system have not been extensively modeled as the system is difficult to quantify analytically. It is desirable to understand how...
In the electronic and microfabrication industry, die separation is one of the most critical steps in producing an undamaged, stand-alone micro-scale device. For silicon based devices, it is the predominant step governing resistance to die failure...
The vast knowledge of nucleic acids is evolving and it is now known that DNA can adopt highly complex, heterogeneous structures. Among the most intriguing are the G-quadruplex structures, which are thought to play a pivotal role in cancer...
Aortic Valve Bypass surgery has found renewed interest to researchers due to its application in high-risk patients with severe aortic stenosis. This therapy consists of construction of a conduit containing a bioprosthetic or mechanical valve from...
Symmetric piezoresistive microcantilever beams have been demonstrated in previous research to be capable of sensing the presence of surrounding gas. This occurs as the damping effect of the gas changes the beam resonance behavior. Device...
In this work, micro fabrication techniques are explored not only to simplify the production of complex lab on-a-chip devices (LOC), but also micro fabrication will be utilized to create intelligent design features that will enhance an...
An investigation was made into the relative costs of excavation retention by two systems: conventional soldier pile-wale-tieback support, and support by soil nailing. The investigation included design of excavation supports by the two...
This work presents a novel comprehensive effort to understand the fluid dynamics within orbiting dishes and the effects of the resulting oscillating fluid flow on shear and endothelial cellular responses within the dishes. It is well documented...
Cardiac mapping has become an important area of research for understanding the mechanisms responsible for cardiac arrhythmias and the associated diseases. Current technologies for measuring electrical potentials on the surface of the heart are...
Blood flow--Measurement; Magnetic resonance imaging
Peripheral Arterial Disease (PAD) is a progressive atherosclerotic disorder which
is defined as any pathologic process obstructing the blood flow of the arteries supplying
the lower extremities. Moderate stenoses mayor may not be...
Dermal wounds, including bed sores, pressure ulcers, and diabetic ulcers have a large impact on American healthcare costing up to $7 billion per year. Adequate pharmaceutical remedies applied at constant rate could prove to increase the healing...
The thesis focuses on improving the flowrate of the Knudsen gas pump. The Knudsen pump uses thermal transpiration as the driving mechanism to pump gas. It is a motionless gas pump as the pump does not require any moving actuators for pumping. The...
Estimating and analysis of deformation, either rigid or non-rigid, is an active area of research in various medical imaging and computer vision applications. Its importance stems from the inherent inter- and intra-variability in biological and...
The inherited bone marrow failure syndromes (IBMFS) encompass a heterogeneous collection of rare disorders characterized by hematological abnormalities, generalized growth delays, and an increased incidence of malignant transformation. These...
The focus of this dissertation work is the formulation and improvement of anemia management process involving trial-and-error. A two-stage method is adopted toward this objective. Given a medical treatment process, a discrete Markov representation...
Computer-aided minimally invasive surgery (MIS) has progressed significantly in the last decade and it has great potential in surgical planning and operations. To limit the damage to nearby healthy tissue, accurate modeling is required of the...
Cardiology--Research--Methodology; Microfluidics--Equipment and supplies
Cardiovascular disease (CVD) is the leading cause of death in the United States and accounts for nearly 1,372,000 deaths each year. In addition, ~81 million Americans suffer from some form of CVD. Understanding the molecular basis of various...
Electroencephalography; Visual evoked response; Drug addicts--Research
In 2006 it was estimated by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Service Administration (SAMHSA, 2007) that 19.9 million Americans used illicit drugs, computing to roughly 8.0 % of the United States population. In 2007, there were 2.1 million...