Engineering – Page 2 – UROP Spring Symposium 2021

Engineering

3d Online Body Shape Model Development

In the automotive industry, there have been an increasing number of fatalities, easily preventable by building safer vehicles. In the medical field, it is almost impossible to thoroughly test accuracy of medical technology without using a physical model, which are oftentimes very expensive. This study involves the development of realistic user-manipulated 3D body models for usage in the medical, automotive, and engineering fields. Along with my mentor and fellow researcher, we have been building a nuanced body model application using Unity to be put out on the apple store and google play store. While results are inconclusive so far, as the application has not been released yet, it hopefully will facilitate the lives of engineers, researchers, and manufacturers working in a number of industries.

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Pollutant Data Prediction: Protecting our Watershed Through Sensing

Watershed health largely influences quality of life, but it is difficult to quantify. Tracking and reducing pollutants is one way to improve watershed health. Total suspended solids (TSS) is an invaluable measurement in determining the amount of pollutants in a body of water. Despite many studies relating TSS to turbidity (water opacity) or doppler backscatter (sound refraction), there is yet to be a way to accurately predict TSS on a long term basis. This study takes previously calculated correlations between suspended solids concentration (SSC) and doppler backscatter using linear regression and conducts a gaussian process on the data to determine a more accurate model. The model created is based on probabilistic computations with a 95% confidence interval. This model will require initial data points from a site before a model can be developed, unlike the previous model, but the confidence interval will decrease in size as more data points are added. Therefore, we will be able to determine a more accurate model for each specific site. The model developed in this study will then be used to predict TSS values for new sites as TSS and SSC are related measurements, and TSS is a more widely used measurement in regulations. This result allows us to continue with further research into the number of true TSS/ SSC samples necessary to determine an accurate model and how the model will react to changes in flow rate implemented by controlled valves.

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Eye tracking to determine cognitive load during programming practice

Novice programmers need scaffolded instruction to maximize their ability to learn how to program. Parsons problems are an increasingly popular solution. These problems require learners to place mixed-up code blocks in the correct order to solve a problem. We are conducting think-aloud sessions and a within-subjects experiment to understand the efficiency and cognitive load of solving adaptive Parsons problems versus writing the equivalent (isomorphic) code. We are also investigating the impact of prior programming experience on students’ experiences and changes in students’ self-efficacy. This study will report on cognitive load and self-efficacy ratings before and after the task for the two problem times. We expect students to exhibit greater learning gains on fixing code with errors when solving Parsons problems with distractors than without. We also expect to find a correlation between self-efficacy and cognitive load ratings. The implications of this study are to improve programming learning tools for novice programmers.

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Eye tracking to determine cognitive load during programming practice

Novice programmers need scaffolded instruction to maximize their ability to learn how to program. Parsons problems are an increasingly popular solution. These problems require learners to place mixed-up code blocks in the correct order to solve a problem. We are conducting think-aloud sessions and a within-subjects experiment to understand the efficiency and cognitive load of solving adaptive Parsons problems versus writing the equivalent (isomorphic) code. We are also investigating the impact of prior programming experience on students’ experiences and changes in students’ self-efficacy. This study will report on cognitive load and self-efficacy ratings before and after the task for the two problem times. We expect students to exhibit greater learning gains on fixing code with errors when solving Parsons problems with distractors than without. We also expect to find a correlation between self-efficacy and cognitive load ratings. The implications of this study are to improve programming learning tools for novice programmers.

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Antarctic Atmospheric Rivers

Atmospheric Rivers (ARs) are long and narrow areas of concentrated moisture found within the first few kilometers of the atmosphere. When they make landfall, this moisture is released in the form of rain or snow, at times transporting moisture from the tropics or subtropics. Due to their impacts at landfall, there has been an explosion of interest in characterizing ARs. However, the AR definition is largely qualitative and relies on regionally specific case studies from the North Pacific, therefore, a number of AR detection algorithms exist. I will be focusing on the region of Antarctica because there is little studied from that region, and there are large differences between algorithms when applied to that region. The Atmospheric River Tracking Method Intercomparison Project (ARTMIP) aims to identify and quantify the uncertainty in AR science due to algorithm choice. The focus of this project is on a set of AR catalogues from ten algorithms run on MERRA-2 reanalysis (1 hour time intervals and 0.5 degree latitude and longitude intervals). This project seeks to understand and quantify the differences between regional and global algorithms when applied to the region of Antarctica by examining how the number of AR events changes with algorithm and comparing algorithms along transects in Antarctica. We can cross analyze the output of each of the detection algorithms to identify areas of inconsistency in atmospheric river detection and understand the nature and source of those inconsistencies, which is the goal of this UROP project.

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Testing a New Search Engine for Class Videos

The current research project investigates the relationship between a new search engine for instructional videos and the academic performance of university-level students and instructors. During the new-age of virtual learning, the hindrance of social interaction combined with the sudden increase in digital screen time has negatively impacted the mental health and in turn, the academic performance of many students because they are not being able to focus or concentrate on their work. A study proposed to determine if a new academic tool provides help for students academically utilized participants, who were recruited through email communication to various universities across America, to use the engine and record their grades on academic assignments and poll their opinions on the product. Currently, the research is still in progress and has no definite conclusion.

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Testing a New Search Engine for Class Videos

The current research project investigates the relationship between a new search engine for instructional videos and the academic performance of university-level students and instructors. During the new-age of virtual learning, the hindrance of social interaction combined with the sudden increase in digital screen time has negatively impacted the mental health and in turn, the academic performance of many students because they are not being able to focus or concentrate on their work. A study proposed to determine if a new academic tool provides help for students academically utilized participants, who were recruited through email communication to various universities across America, to use the engine and record their grades on academic assignments and poll their opinions on the product. Currently, the research is still in progress and has no definite conclusion.

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Silicon Oxynitride Derived from Rice Hull Ash (RHA) as An Anode Material for Lithium-ion Batteries

Climate change has increased the urgency to replace current energy production and storage techniques with more eco-friendly ones. Of all efforts that have been dedicated to improving the performance of the lithium-ion batteries (LIB) present in the market, Ulvestad et al. demonstrated that LIB anodes containing SiNx exhibit significantly higher capacities than commercial graphite anodes. Herein, we explore and optimize the performance of silicon oxynitride as an anode material for LIB. Carbothermal reduction of rice hull ash, an agricultural waste that is composed of carbon and SiO2 that intimately mixed in nano-scale, was used as the production methods in attempts to access high-performance anode materials in environmental- and economical-friendly processes. Factors such as temperatures, atmosphere, heating duration were adjusted to investigate their effects on Si2N2O yields in the products . Heretofore, it was found that: 1) higher reaction temperatures (1350-1600 °C) and longer treating durations (2-8 hours) lead to higher conversion of SiO2 in the starting materials; 2) the gaseous atmosphere (N2, NH3, N2+H2) is an essential factor determining the Si2N2O:Si3N4 ratio in the products. Future plans will focus on the influence of different densities of starting materials (pellet vs. mound powders). Testing and analyzing the electrochemical performance of the optimized products would be the goal for the longer-term.

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Taking a Stand: The Effect of Social Issue Stance-Taking on Human Capital Attraction

Companies can attract human capital, or potential employees, through wage incentives and non-wage incentives, such as commitments to causes like workplace diversity and environmental sustainability. This project examines the question of as these commitments to social issues become more prevalent in recruitment efforts, does this make companies more likely to support them. A data set of every job posting in the United States over the past decade is being analyzed by a code written in the program R that automatically sorts job postings based on keywords relating to specific non-wage incentives. In order to test the functionality of this code, smaller samples of the data set are being analyzed by manually searching for these keywords. The expected results of my role in this project is that by analyzing the smaller samples of the dataset, the main code will be validated in classifying job postings. We hope to find that this is a reliable way to find a company’s commitment to social issues and if so, that we can apply this technique to other demographics regarding the job market.

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Residue Depth Computation

Proteins, a class of macromolecules essential to biological processes, are characterized by their structure which directly correlates to functionality. Residues are considered the building blocks of proteins and studying their positions has been crucial in understanding the role a protein plays in a biological system. This research project investigates different measures of residue depth through calculations of RSA, DPX, Residue Depth, HalfSpace Depth, and L1 depth. The L1 depth function surpasses other residue structure predictors in that it can obtain positions of residues buried under the protein surface, or nested in pockets. In addition, the function uses O(N) time complexity, making it much more efficient than the HalfSpace predictor. Values of depth have strong correlations with properties such as physiochemical propensities, flexibility and polarity. Data was obtained from CULLPDB, Phospho3D, and PLB datasets. After reading in necessary information into an IDE, residue depth of each protein in the datasets and the correlation coefficients between the means of depth values of amino acids and hydrophobicity index of amino acids were calculated through an algorithm written in C++. These results showed that the means of depth values were strongly relative with hydrophobicity of amino acids. In addition, the secondary structures of the residues are also associated with L1 depth values, as residues in sheets are deeper under the surface in comparison to residues in coils and helices.

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