Matching Items (1,196)
Filtering by

Clear all filters

126890-Thumbnail Image.png
Description

Background: Healthcare providers are encouraged to prepare their practice to effectively manage the care of mild to moderate adolescent depression. Cost-effective screening, diagnostic, and newly developed pediatric primary care depression management guidelines have been established. To integrate guidelines into practice, primary care providers (PCPs) must document effectively to ensure a

Background: Healthcare providers are encouraged to prepare their practice to effectively manage the care of mild to moderate adolescent depression. Cost-effective screening, diagnostic, and newly developed pediatric primary care depression management guidelines have been established. To integrate guidelines into practice, primary care providers (PCPs) must document effectively to ensure a complete treatment plan is in place in the patient’s electronic health record (EHR).

Intervention: Elements from a flowsheet were implemented into the EHR to promote thorough assessment and documentation of care delivered to adolescents with depression.

Methods: An initial chart review was completed on patients diagnosed with depression. An updated depression template was implemented within the EHR for six weeks. A follow-up chart review was completed post-intervention to determine if documentation of elements from the adolescent depression guidelines improved after the EHR update. Pre-intervention and post- intervention surveys were delivered to PCP’s to understand their perspective on adolescent depression management.

Outcomes: The chart review revealed that baseline PHQ-9 screenings were documented in 91% (n=43) of the charts reviewed in the pre-intervention timeframe. Only 78% (n=7) of the charts reviewed during post-intervention included PHQ-9 screenings. Early intervention treatment options documented in the pre-intervention timeframe included education 100% (n=47), medication prescriptions 53% (n=25), and psychotherapy referrals 18% (n=18). During post- intervention, education 100% (n=9), medication prescriptions 78% (7), and psychotherapy referrals 22% (n=7) were documented by the PCPs.

Recommendation: The quality improvement project focused heavily on documentation completed over a one year pre-intervention timeframe compared to a six-week post-intervention timeframe. Further evaluation and chart review over the next year will provide a more adequate comparison of documentation within primary care practice.

ContributorsMomberg, Heather (Author) / Jacobson, Diana (Thesis advisor)
Created2020-05-01
126891-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Background: Health information technology (HIT) refers to the electronic health care systems organizations used to store, share and analyze healthcare information. A central component of the HIT infrastructure is an electronic health record (EMR) and although HIT has been shown to increase enthusiasm for patient care, decrease healthcare costs and

Background: Health information technology (HIT) refers to the electronic health care systems organizations used to store, share and analyze healthcare information. A central component of the HIT infrastructure is an electronic health record (EMR) and although HIT has been shown to increase enthusiasm for patient care, decrease healthcare costs and improve patient outcomes overall utilization in the United States (US) remains low.

Methods: At an urban primary care pediatric office located in the southwestern US, an educational quality improvement project for healthcare practice providers and front office staff was conducted to increase the utilization of the existing EMR-linked patient portal. The healthcare providers were asked to complete a pre- and post- survey evaluation of their knowledge and usage of the patient portal. Provider and patient portal data usage was collected over a five-month period, September 2019 to January 2020.

Results: Data was analyzed using the Intellectus Statistics softwareTM. Significant results were found at the conclusion of the project in the number of active patient portal users, web-enabled, portal logins, labs published/viewed, messages sent, appointment reminders and Santovia utilization. At the end of the project no significance was found with messages received by the healthcare providers or staff through the patient portal. Survey results found significant differences between pre- and post- portal usage. No significance was found on providers’ knowledge on how to web-enable patients. Providers’ also demonstrated no significant change in their perceptions of the benefit in utilizing the portal in patient care after the educational intervention. Survey results allowed for additional analysis of commonly utilized portal functionalities, disease or health topics utilized in Santovia, and suggestions on how to make the use of the patient portal easier for providers.

Implications for Health Care Providers: This quality improvement project found that implementation an EMR-linked patient portal requires a comprehensive practice approach with structured education sessions. Including all employees can improve patient portal utilization. This educational project resulted in significant increases in most portal functionalities within 5 months. Further practice change evaluations are needed to evaluate how to improve patient portal utilization with a larger group of participants in a variety of outpatient settings.
ContributorsProsev, Brittany (Author) / Jacobson, Diana (Thesis advisor)
Created2020-05-01
154395-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
The integration of passive optical networks (PONs) and wireless mesh networks (WMNs) into Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) networks has recently emerged as a promising strategy for

providing flexible network services at relative high transmission rates. This work investigates the effectiveness of localized routing that prioritizes transmissions over the local gateway to the optical

The integration of passive optical networks (PONs) and wireless mesh networks (WMNs) into Fiber-Wireless (FiWi) networks has recently emerged as a promising strategy for

providing flexible network services at relative high transmission rates. This work investigates the effectiveness of localized routing that prioritizes transmissions over the local gateway to the optical network and avoids wireless packet transmissions in radio zones that do not contain the packet source or destination. Existing routing schemes for FiWi networks consider mainly hop-count and delay metrics over a flat WMN node topology and do not specifically prioritize the local network structure. The combination of clustered and localized routing (CluLoR) performs better in terms of throughput-delay compared to routing schemes that are based on minimum hop-count which do not consider traffic localization. Subsequently, this work also investigates the packet delays when relatively low-rate traffic that has traversed a wireless network is mixed with conventional high-rate PON-only traffic. A range of different FiWi network architectures with different dynamic bandwidth allocation (DBA) mechanisms is considered. The grouping of the optical network units (ONUs) in the double-phase polling (DPP) DBA mechanism in long-range (order of 100~Km) FiWi networks is closely examined, and a novel grouping by cycle length (GCL) strategy that achieves favorable packet delay performance is introduced. At the end, this work proposes a novel backhaul network architecture based on a Smart Gateway (Sm-GW) between the small cell base stations (e.g., LTE eNBs) and the conventional backhaul gateways, e.g., LTE Servicing/Packet Gateway (S/P-GW). The Sm-GW accommodates flexible number of small cells while reducing the infrastructure requirements at the S-GW of LTE backhaul. In contrast to existing methods, the proposed Sm-GW incorporates the scheduling mechanisms to achieve the network fairness while sharing the resources among all the connected small cells base stations.
ContributorsDashti, Yousef (Author) / Reisslein, Martin (Thesis advisor) / Zhang, Yanchao (Committee member) / Fowler, John (Committee member) / Seeling, Patrick (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016
154195-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Improving energy efficiency has always been the prime objective of the custom and automated digital circuit design techniques. As a result, a multitude of methods to reduce power without sacrificing performance have been proposed. However, as the field of design automation has matured over the last few decades, there have

Improving energy efficiency has always been the prime objective of the custom and automated digital circuit design techniques. As a result, a multitude of methods to reduce power without sacrificing performance have been proposed. However, as the field of design automation has matured over the last few decades, there have been no new automated design techniques, that can provide considerable improvements in circuit power, leakage and area. Although emerging nano-devices are expected to replace the existing MOSFET devices, they are far from being as mature as semiconductor devices and their full potential and promises are many years away from being practical.

The research described in this dissertation consists of four main parts. First is a new circuit architecture of a differential threshold logic flipflop called PNAND. The PNAND gate is an edge-triggered multi-input sequential cell whose next state function is a threshold function of its inputs. Second a new approach, called hybridization, that replaces flipflops and parts of their logic cones with PNAND cells is described. The resulting \hybrid circuit, which consists of conventional logic cells and PNANDs, is shown to have significantly less power consumption, smaller area, less standby power and less power variation.

Third, a new architecture of a field programmable array, called field programmable threshold logic array (FPTLA), in which the standard lookup table (LUT) is replaced by a PNAND is described. The FPTLA is shown to have as much as 50% lower energy-delay product compared to conventional FPGA using well known FPGA modeling tool called VPR.

Fourth, a novel clock skewing technique that makes use of the completion detection feature of the differential mode flipflops is described. This clock skewing method improves the area and power of the ASIC circuits by increasing slack on timing paths. An additional advantage of this method is the elimination of hold time violation on given short paths.

Several circuit design methodologies such as retiming and asynchronous circuit design can use the proposed threshold logic gate effectively. Therefore, the use of threshold logic flipflops in conventional design methodologies opens new avenues of research towards more energy-efficient circuits.
ContributorsKulkarni, Niranjan (Author) / Vrudhula, Sarma (Thesis advisor) / Colbourn, Charles (Committee member) / Seo, Jae-Sun (Committee member) / Yu, Shimeng (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
154196-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
In order to ensure higher penetration of photovoltaics in the energy market and have an immediate impact in addressing the challenges of energy crisis and climate change, this thesis research focusses on improving the efficiency of the diffused junction silicon solar cells of an already existing line with established processes.

In order to ensure higher penetration of photovoltaics in the energy market and have an immediate impact in addressing the challenges of energy crisis and climate change, this thesis research focusses on improving the efficiency of the diffused junction silicon solar cells of an already existing line with established processes. Thus, the baseline processes are first made stable and demonstrated as a pilot line at the Solar Power Lab at ASU, to be used as a backbone on which further improvements could be made. Of the several factors that affect the solar cell efficiency, improvement of short circuit current by reduction of the shading losses is chosen to achieve the improvement.

The shading losses are reduced by lowering the finger width of the solar cell .This reduction of the front metal coverage causes an increase in the series resistance, thereby adversely affecting the fill factor and hence efficiency. To overcome this problem, double printing method is explored to be used for front grid metallization. Before its implementation, it is important to accurately understand the effect of reducing the finger width on the series resistance. Hence, series resistance models are modified from the existing generic model and developed to capture the effects of screen-printing. To have minimum power loss in the solar cell, finger spacing is optimized for the front grid design with each of the finger widths chosen, which are narrower than the baseline finger width. A commercial software package called Griddler is used to predict the results of the model developed to capture effects of screen-printing.

The process for double printing with accurate alignment for finger width down to 50um is developed. After designing the screens for optimized front grid, solar cells are fabricated using both single printing and double printing methods and an improvement of efficiency from 17.2% to 17.8%, with peak efficiency of 18% is demonstrated.
ContributorsSrinivasa, Apoorva (Author) / Bowden, Stuart (Thesis advisor) / Tracy, Clarence (Committee member) / Dauksher, Bill (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
154202-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
The recent proposal of two-way relaying has attracted much attention due to its promising features for many practical scenarios. Hereby, two users communicate simultaneously in both directions to exchange their messages with the help of a relay node. This doctoral study investigates various aspects of two-way relaying. Specifically, the issue

The recent proposal of two-way relaying has attracted much attention due to its promising features for many practical scenarios. Hereby, two users communicate simultaneously in both directions to exchange their messages with the help of a relay node. This doctoral study investigates various aspects of two-way relaying. Specifically, the issue of asynchronism, lack of channel knowledge, transmission of correlated sources and multi-way relaying techniques involving multiple users are explored.

With the motivation of developing enabling techniques for two-way relay (TWR) channels experiencing excessive synchronization errors, two conceptually-different schemes are proposed to accommodate any relative misalignment between the signals received at any node. By designing a practical transmission/detection mechanism based on orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM), the proposed schemes perform significantly better than existing competing solutions. In a related direction, differential modulation is implemented for asynchronous TWR systems that lack the channel state information (CSI) knowledge. The challenge in this problem compared to the conventional point-to-point counterpart arises not only from the asynchrony but also from the existence of an interfering signal. Extensive numerical examples, supported by analytical work, are given to demonstrate the advantages of the proposed schemes.

Other important issues considered in this dissertation are related to the extension of the two-way relaying scheme to the multiple-user case, known as the multi-way relaying. First, a distributed source coding solution based on Slepian-Wolf coding is proposed to compress correlated messages close to the information theoretical limits in the context of multi-way relay (MWR) channels. Specifically, the syndrome approach based on low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes is implemented. A number of relaying strategies are considered for this problem offering a tradeoff between performance and complexity. The proposed solutions have shown significant improvements compared to the existing ones in terms of the achievable compression rates. On a different front, a novel approach to channel coding is proposed for the MWR channel based on the implementation of nested codes in a distributed manner. This approach ensures that each node decodes the messages of the other users without requiring complex operations at the relay, and at the same time, providing substantial benefits compared to the traditional routing solution.
ContributorsSalīm, Aḥmad (Author) / Duman, Tolga M. (Thesis advisor) / Papandreou-Suppappola, Antonia (Committee member) / Tepedelenlioğlu, Cihan (Committee member) / Zhang, Junshan (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
154021-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
The development of high efficiency III-V solar cells is needed to meet the demands of a promising renewable energy source. Intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) using semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have been proposed to exceed the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit [1]. The introduction of an IB in the forbidden gap of

The development of high efficiency III-V solar cells is needed to meet the demands of a promising renewable energy source. Intermediate band solar cells (IBSCs) using semiconductor quantum dots (QDs) have been proposed to exceed the Shockley-Queisser efficiency limit [1]. The introduction of an IB in the forbidden gap of host material generates two additional carrier transitions for sub-bandgap photon absorption, leading to increased photocurrent of IBSCs while simultaneously allowing an open-circuit voltage of the highest band gap. To realize a high efficiency IBSC, QD structures should have high crystal quality and optimized electronic properties. This dissertation focuses on the investigation and optimization of the structural and optical properties of InAs/GaAsSb QDs and the development of InAs/GaAsSb QD-based IBSCs.

In the present dissertation, the interband optical transition and carrier lifetime of InAs/GaAsSb QDs with different silicon delta-doping densities have been first studied by time-integrated and time-resolved photoluminescence (PL). It is found that an optimized silicon delta-doping density in the QDs enables to fill the QD electronic states with electrons for sub-bandgap photon absorption and to improve carrier lifetime of the QDs.

After that, the crystal quality and QD morphology of single- and multi-stack InAs/GaAsSb QDs with different Sb compositions have been investigated by transmission electron microscopy (TEM) and x-ray diffraction (XRD). The TEM studies reveal that QD morphology of single-stack QDs is affected by Sb composition due to strain reducing effect of Sb incorporation. The XRD studies confirm that the increase of Sb composition increases the lattice mismatch between GaAs matrix and GaAsSb spacers, resulting in increase of the strain relaxation in GaAsSb of the multi-stack QDs. Furthermore, the increase of Sb composition causes a PL redshift and increases carrier lifetime of QDs.

Finally, the spacer layer thickness of multi-stack InAs/GaAsSb QDs is optimized for the growth of InAs/GaAsSb QD solar cells (QDSCs). The InAs/GaAsSb QDSCs with GaP strain compensating layer are grown and their device performances are characterized. The increase of GaP coverage is beneficial to improve the conversion efficiency of the QDSCs. However, the conversion efficiency is reduced when using a relatively large GaP coverage.
ContributorsKim, Yeongho (Author) / Honsberg, Christiana (Thesis advisor) / Goodnick, Stephen (Committee member) / Faleev, Nikolai (Committee member) / Smith, David (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
154022-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
There has been a lot of work on the characterization of capacity and achievable rate regions, and rate region outer-bounds for various multi-user channels of interest. Parallel to the developed information theoretic results, practical codes have also been designed for some multi-user channels such as multiple access channels, broadcast channels

There has been a lot of work on the characterization of capacity and achievable rate regions, and rate region outer-bounds for various multi-user channels of interest. Parallel to the developed information theoretic results, practical codes have also been designed for some multi-user channels such as multiple access channels, broadcast channels and relay channels; however, interference channels have not received much attention and only a limited amount of work has been conducted on them. With this motivation, in this dissertation, design of practical and implementable channel codes is studied focusing on multi-user channels with special emphasis on interference channels; in particular, irregular low-density-parity-check codes are exploited for a variety of cases and trellis based codes for short block length designs are performed.

Novel code design approaches are first studied for the two-user Gaussian multiple access channel. Exploiting Gaussian mixture approximation, new methods are proposed wherein the optimized codes are shown to improve upon the available designs and off-the-shelf point-to-point codes applied to the multiple access channel scenario. The code design is then examined for the two-user Gaussian interference channel implementing the Han-Kobayashi encoding and decoding strategy. Compared with the point-to-point codes, the newly designed codes consistently offer better performance. Parallel to this work, code design is explored for the discrete memoryless interference channels wherein the channel inputs and outputs are taken from a finite alphabet and it is demonstrated that the designed codes are superior to the single user codes used with time sharing. Finally, the code design principles are also investigated for the two-user Gaussian interference channel employing trellis-based codes with short block lengths for the case of strong and mixed interference levels.
ContributorsSharifi, Shahrouz (Author) / Duman, Tolga M. (Thesis advisor) / Zhang, Junshan (Committee member) / Tepedelenlioğlu, Cihan (Committee member) / Reisslein, Martin (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2015
153288-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Register file (RF) memory is important in low power system on chip (SOC) due to its

inherent low voltage stability. Moreover, designs increasingly use compiled instead of custom memory blocks, which frequently employ static, rather than pre-charged dynamic RFs. In this work, the various RFs designed for a microprocessor cache and

Register file (RF) memory is important in low power system on chip (SOC) due to its

inherent low voltage stability. Moreover, designs increasingly use compiled instead of custom memory blocks, which frequently employ static, rather than pre-charged dynamic RFs. In this work, the various RFs designed for a microprocessor cache and register files are discussed. Comparison between static and dynamic RF power dissipation and timing characteristics is also presented. The relative timing and power advantages of the designs are shown to be dependent on the memory aspect ratio, i.e. array width and height.
ContributorsVashishtha, Vinay (Author) / Clark, Lawrence T. (Thesis advisor) / Seo, Jae-Sun (Committee member) / Ogras, Umit Y. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
153289-Thumbnail Image.png
Description
Substation ground system insures safety of personnel, which deserves considerable attentions. Basic substation safety requirement quantities include ground grid resistance, mesh touch potential and step potential, moreover, optimal design of a substation ground system should include both safety concerns and ground grid construction cost. In the purpose of optimal designing

Substation ground system insures safety of personnel, which deserves considerable attentions. Basic substation safety requirement quantities include ground grid resistance, mesh touch potential and step potential, moreover, optimal design of a substation ground system should include both safety concerns and ground grid construction cost. In the purpose of optimal designing the ground grid in the accurate and efficient way, an application package coded in MATLAB is developed and its core algorithm and main features are introduced in this work.

To ensure accuracy and personnel safety, a two-layer soil model is applied instead of the uniform soil model in this research. Some soil model parameters are needed for the two-layer soil model, namely upper-layer resistivity, lower-layer resistivity and upper-layer thickness. Since the ground grid safety requirement is considered under the earth fault, the value of fault current and fault duration time are also needed.

After all these parameters are obtained, a Resistance Matrix method is applied to calculate the mutual and self resistance between conductor segments on both the horizontal and vertical direction. By using a matrix equation of the relationship of mutual and self resistance and unit current of the conductor segments, the ground grid rise can be calculated. Green's functions are applied to calculate the earth potential at a certain point produced by horizontal or vertical line of current. Furthermore, the three basic ground grid safety requirement quantities: the mesh touch potential in the worst case point can be obtained from the earth potential and ground grid rise; the step potential can be obtained from two points' earth potential difference; the grid resistance can be obtained from ground grid rise and fault current.

Finally, in order to achieve ground grid optimization problem more accurate and efficient, which includes the number of meshes in the horizontal grid and the number of vertical rods, a novel two-step hybrid genetic algorithm-pattern search (GA-PS) optimization method is developed. The Genetic Algorithm (GA) is used first to search for an approximate starting point, which is used by the Pattern Search (PS) algorithm to find the final optimal result. This developed application provides an optimal grid design meeting all safety constraints. In the cause of the accuracy of the application, the touch potential, step potential, ground potential rise and grid resistance are compared with these produced by the industry standard application WinIGS and some theoretical ground grid model.

In summary, the developed application can solve the ground grid optimization problem with the accurate ground grid modeling method and a hybrid two-step optimization method.
ContributorsZhang, Qianzhi (Author) / Tylavsky, Daniel (Thesis advisor) / Undrill, John (Committee member) / Ayyanar, Raja (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014