Matching Items (253)
Description
Dry and steam NanoBonding™ are conceived and researched to bond Si-based surfaces, via nucleation and growth of a two-dimensional SiOxHy or hydrated SiOxHy interphase connecting surfaces at the nanoscale across macroscopic domains. The motivation is to create strong, long lasting, hermetically bonded sensors with their electronics for the development of an artificial pancreas and to bond solar cells to glass panels for robust photovoltaic technology. The first step in NanoBonding™ is to synthesize smooth surfaces with 20 nm wide atomic terraces via a precursor phase, ß-cSiO2 on Si(100) and oxygen-deficient SiOx on the silica using the Herbots-Atluri process and Entrepix’s spin etching. Smooth precursor phases act as geometric and chemical template to nucleate and grow macroscopic contacting domains where cross bridging occurs via arrays of molecular strands in the hydrated SiOxHy interphase. Steam pressurization is found to catalyze NanoBonding™ consistently, eliminating the need for direct mechanical compression that limits the size and shape of wafers to be bonded in turn, reducing the cost of processing. Total surface energy measurements via 3 Liquids Contact Angle Analysis (3L CAA) enables accurate quantitative analysis of the total surface energy and each of its components. 3L CAA at each step in the process shows that surface energy drops to 42.4 ± 0.6 mJ/m2 from 57.5 ± 1.4 mJ/m2 after the Herbots-Atluri clean of an “As Received” wafer. 3L CAA after steam pressurization Nanobonding™ shows almost complete elimination from 13.8 mJ/m2 ± 1.0 to 0.002 ±- 0.0002 mJ/m2 in the contribution of acceptors to the total free surface energy, and an increase from 0.2 ± .03 to 23.8± 1.6 mJ/m2 in the contribution of donors. This is consistent with an increase in hydroxylation of the ß-cSiO2 surface as a consistent precursor phase for cross-bridging. This research optimizes the use of glycerin, water, and α-bromo-naphtalene in the use of 3L CAA to effectively quantify the components of total free surface energy which helps to better understand the most consistent method for NanoBonding™.
ContributorsBennett-Kennett, Ross Buchanan (Author) / Culbertson, Robert (Thesis director) / Herbots, Nicole (Committee member) / Foy, Joseph (Committee member) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Department of Physics (Contributor) / School of Historical, Philosophical and Religious Studies (Contributor)
Created2013-05
Description
In the last several years, there has been interest in the development of flexible batteries as a substitute for traditional Li-ion batteries. Flexible batteries can fold, bend, and twist; studies have shown that mechanical stresses and fatigue may decrease battery performance and cause defects. In this paper, the viability of producing a mechanical fatigue-testing device from 3D printed and other off-the-shelf components was explored. The device was made using a servomotor and LCD screen controlled by a programmed Arduino board, and successfully met the expectations to be cheap, easily reproducible, versatile, and applicable to the testing of battery components. In a proof-of-concept test, the device was used to perform repeated folding tests on lithium cobalt oxide cathodes in different configurations, which were then characterized using a laser microscope. 3D topographical renderings suggested that bending at acute angles induces defects on the surface of the electrode where the electrode is creased. In future work, the device will be used to further explore the effect of mechanical fatigue on Li-ion battery components.
ContributorsBurchard, Joshua Thomas (Author) / Chan, Candace (Thesis director) / Anwar, Shahriar (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Dean, W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2021-05
Description
Mathematical epidemiology, one of the oldest and richest areas in mathematical biology, has significantly enhanced our understanding of how pathogens emerge, evolve, and spread. Classical epidemiological models, the standard for predicting and managing the spread of infectious disease, assume that contacts between susceptible and infectious individuals depend on their relative frequency in the population. The behavioral factors that underpin contact rates are not generally addressed. There is, however, an emerging a class of models that addresses the feedbacks between infectious disease dynamics and the behavioral decisions driving host contact. Referred to as “economic epidemiology” or “epidemiological economics,” the approach explores the determinants of decisions about the number and type of contacts made by individuals, using insights and methods from economics. We show how the approach has the potential both to improve predictions of the course of infectious disease, and to support development of novel approaches to infectious disease management.
ContributorsPerrings, Charles (Author) / Castillo-Chavez, Carlos (Author) / Chowell-Puente, Gerardo (Author) / Daszak, Peter (Author) / Fenichel, Eli P. (Author) / Finnoff, David (Author) / Horan, Richard D. (Author) / Kilpatrick, A. Marm (Author) / Kinzig, Ann (Author) / Kuminoff, Nicolai (Author) / Levin, Simon (Author) / Morin, Benjamin (Author) / Smith, Katherine F. (Author) / Springborn, Michael (Author) / Simon M. Levin Mathematical, Computational and Modeling Sciences Center (Contributor) / College of Liberal Arts and Sciences (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution and Social Change (Contributor) / W.P. Carey School of Business (Contributor) / Economics (Contributor) / Julie Ann Wrigley Global Institute of Sustainability (Contributor)
Created2015-12-01
Description
In the past decade, the volume, variety, and velocity of amassed data relevant to healthcare have reached staggering levels. This data has come in the form of numerous sources such as electronic health records, genome sequencing, pharmaceutical research. This recent rise of big data in healthcare has enabled the rise of new healthcare research methods. One of these emerging methods is known as drug repositioning (also commonly known as drug repurposing) and is the process of finding new clinical applications for existing FDA-approved drugs that have previously been approved for a different indication (Naveja et al., 2016). This process often leverages big data sources containing information about specific drugs and diseases and utilizes specialized algorithms and bioinformatics techniques to find unknown connections between certain drugs and diseases.
The traditional drug discovery process often amasses substantial costs, faces high attrition rates, progress at an extremely slow pace, and has no guarantee of receiving FDA approval by the end of the process. On average, the total cost and timeframe of drug discovery are $2.6 billion and at least 10 years (PhRMA, 2015). Alternatively, drug repositioning has become an increasingly attractive approach to pharmaceutical development and drug discovery because it has the potential to circumvent these obstacles by utilizing “de-risked” FDA-approved compounds, employing lower-cost computational research methods, and necessitating shorter development timelines (Pushpakom et al, 2019). Used effectively, drug repositioning can save a lot of money, time, and lives.
One potential application of drug repositioning research is in neurodegenerative diseases, which are diseases that primarily affect neurons in the brain. Many of these diseases manifest themselves through complex mechanisms that can impair memory, cognition, and movement. Huntington’s Disease (HD) is a fatal genetic progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes the progressive breakdown of neurons in the brain. This disease is caused by a trinucleotide repeat disorder known as a CAG repeat. This means that, due to a mutation in a person’s DNA, a set of code in the DNA erroneously repeats itself an excessive number of times. These mutations lead to the production of deformed, highly reactive proteins that can cause neuronal dysfunction, degeneration, and death. The number of repetitions varies from person to person, and longer repeat chains tend to cause the onset of HD to occur earlier in life. Symptoms include loss in motor function, personality and behavioral changes, decline in cognitive function, severe weight loss, and suicidal ideation (Heemskerk and Roos, 2012). One unique facet of the disease is that symptoms generally do not begin to appear until ages 30-50 and worsen over the course of a 10-25-year period. HD is also an autosomal dominant hereditary disease, meaning that any parent who is a carrier of the genetic disorder has a 50% chance or higher of passing the gene to his/her child. The high transmission rate, coupled with the prolonged symptoms of the disease, makes HD a devastating disease for families, as individuals are often unaware of their HD disease until after they have already had offspring. Currently, there are approximately 30,000 symptomatic HD patients and more than 200,000 individuals at risk for developing HD. The disease is also significantly more frequent in Western countries. There is no known cure for the disease, and the only focus of treatment is managing symptoms.
The goal of this Honors Thesis project is to utilize basic drug repositioning methods to develop a disease profile for HD and curate a set of drugs that can be tested and validated for HD treatment in future experiments.
The traditional drug discovery process often amasses substantial costs, faces high attrition rates, progress at an extremely slow pace, and has no guarantee of receiving FDA approval by the end of the process. On average, the total cost and timeframe of drug discovery are $2.6 billion and at least 10 years (PhRMA, 2015). Alternatively, drug repositioning has become an increasingly attractive approach to pharmaceutical development and drug discovery because it has the potential to circumvent these obstacles by utilizing “de-risked” FDA-approved compounds, employing lower-cost computational research methods, and necessitating shorter development timelines (Pushpakom et al, 2019). Used effectively, drug repositioning can save a lot of money, time, and lives.
One potential application of drug repositioning research is in neurodegenerative diseases, which are diseases that primarily affect neurons in the brain. Many of these diseases manifest themselves through complex mechanisms that can impair memory, cognition, and movement. Huntington’s Disease (HD) is a fatal genetic progressive neurodegenerative disease that causes the progressive breakdown of neurons in the brain. This disease is caused by a trinucleotide repeat disorder known as a CAG repeat. This means that, due to a mutation in a person’s DNA, a set of code in the DNA erroneously repeats itself an excessive number of times. These mutations lead to the production of deformed, highly reactive proteins that can cause neuronal dysfunction, degeneration, and death. The number of repetitions varies from person to person, and longer repeat chains tend to cause the onset of HD to occur earlier in life. Symptoms include loss in motor function, personality and behavioral changes, decline in cognitive function, severe weight loss, and suicidal ideation (Heemskerk and Roos, 2012). One unique facet of the disease is that symptoms generally do not begin to appear until ages 30-50 and worsen over the course of a 10-25-year period. HD is also an autosomal dominant hereditary disease, meaning that any parent who is a carrier of the genetic disorder has a 50% chance or higher of passing the gene to his/her child. The high transmission rate, coupled with the prolonged symptoms of the disease, makes HD a devastating disease for families, as individuals are often unaware of their HD disease until after they have already had offspring. Currently, there are approximately 30,000 symptomatic HD patients and more than 200,000 individuals at risk for developing HD. The disease is also significantly more frequent in Western countries. There is no known cure for the disease, and the only focus of treatment is managing symptoms.
The goal of this Honors Thesis project is to utilize basic drug repositioning methods to develop a disease profile for HD and curate a set of drugs that can be tested and validated for HD treatment in future experiments.
ContributorsJategaonkar, Gaurav (Co-author) / Sulit, Christian (Co-author) / Readhead, Ben (Thesis director) / Dudley, Sean (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Communicating with Confidence: Evaluating Sexual Education Exposure’s Effect on Sexual Communication
Description
This study examined associations between reports of receiving information on sexual education topics common to different sexual education curricula (e.g. abstinence only until marriage, comprehensive) and reported confidence in sexual communication of information and preferences, taking into account information received from school health classes, parents/guardians, online resources, and peers.
Data used from 293 participants aged 18-25 was used to perform descriptive analyses and linear regressions adjusted for significant covariates. Exposure to a comprehensive sexual education curriculum was found to be significantly positively associated with increased sexual communication confidence, while exposure to an abstinence only until marriage curriculum was not found to be a significant predictor. All resources were found to be positively associated with sexual communication confidence with the exception of health class, which was an insignificant predictor.
Comprehensive sexual education is an important factor in increasing young adults’ confidence in sexual communication of information and preferences. However, sexual education delivery in health classes in the United States is currently ineffective. A reevaluation of how sexual education should be delivered in the United States is needed.
Data used from 293 participants aged 18-25 was used to perform descriptive analyses and linear regressions adjusted for significant covariates. Exposure to a comprehensive sexual education curriculum was found to be significantly positively associated with increased sexual communication confidence, while exposure to an abstinence only until marriage curriculum was not found to be a significant predictor. All resources were found to be positively associated with sexual communication confidence with the exception of health class, which was an insignificant predictor.
Comprehensive sexual education is an important factor in increasing young adults’ confidence in sexual communication of information and preferences. However, sexual education delivery in health classes in the United States is currently ineffective. A reevaluation of how sexual education should be delivered in the United States is needed.
ContributorsDouglass, Kathryn (Author) / Pivovarova, Margarita (Thesis director) / Loebenberg, Abby (Committee member) / Electrical Engineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-12
Description
The goal of this thesis was to simplify the sample preparation process for cryogenic electron microscopy (cryo-EM), clearing the way for the imaging of larger biomolecules and further expansion of the field. Various protic ionic liquids (PILs) were chosen for synthesis according to their pH and other physical properties. After several failed synthesizes, one PIL, cholinium dihydrogen phosphate, was chosen for further testing. This solution was put through a series of vitrification tests in order to understand its crystallization limits. Once limits were understood, cholinium dihydrogen phosphate was combined with ribosomal proteins and viewed under a transmission electron microscope to collect negative stain images. After adjusting the ratio of PIL to buffer and the concentration of ribosomes, images of whole intact ribosomes were captured. Samples were then placed in an EM grid, manually dipped in liquid nitrogen, and viewed using the the cryo-EM. These grids revealed ice too thick to properly image, an issue that was not solved by using a more aggressive blotting technique. Although the sample preparation process was not simplified, progress was made towards doing so and further testing using different techniques may result in success.
ContributorsStreet, Maya Ann (Author) / Angell, Charles Austen (Thesis director) / Chiu, Po-Lin (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Molecular Sciences (Contributor) / School of Human Evolution & Social Change (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05
Description
In this research, the effect of the crystal structure of the parent phase on the morphology of nanoporous gold is explored. Specifically, Cu-Au alloys are studied. For this experiment, Cu0.75Au0.25 is heat treated to achieve an ordered phase Cu3Au and a disordered random solid solution, face centered cubic, Cu0.75Au0.25 phase, which are then dealloyed to form nanoporous gold (NPG). Using a morphology digital image analysis software called AQUAMI, SEM images of the NPG morphology were characterized to collect data on the ligament length, ligament diameter, porosity size, etc. of the samples. It was determined that the NPG formed from the ordered parent phase had an average ligament diameter that was 10 nm larger than the NPG formed from the disordered parent phase. This may be due to the ordered crystal structure allowing for faster gold diffusion and coarsening resulting in an increased average ligament size. Further future work is needed in order to obtain further evidence to support this hypothesis.
ContributorsTse, Ariana Yusof (Author) / Sieradzki, Karl (Thesis director) / Wang, Qing Hua (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Walter Cronkite School of Journalism & Mass Comm (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The solid municipal waste contains approximately 60% of organic matter and after varying temperature, pressure and residence time as factors, the temperature influenced the yield at least twice more than the residence time. The pressure had the least effect on the production of the syngas. Different types of hydrogen separation were explored ranging from pressure swing adsorption (PSA) to water splitting, factional/cryogenic method and then hydrogen selective membranes. The membranes were found to be more cost efficient, and easily accessible and fabricated and produced purer hydrogen gas. The different membranes were explored, and their different characteristics were explored, and a decision matrix showed that the polymeric membrane was 1.37 time better than microporous membrane and 1.54 times better than dense metal membrane.
ContributorsAgbo, Benjamin Udama (Co-author) / Buyinza, Allan (Co-author) / Deng, Shuaguang (Thesis director) / Taylor, David (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / Chemical Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
The development of stab-resistant Kevlar armor has been an ongoing field of research
since the late 1990s, with the ultimate goal of improving the multi-threat capabilities of
traditional soft-body armor while significantly improving its protective efficiency - the amount
of layers of armor material required to defeat threats. To create a novel, superior materials
system to reinforce Kevlar armor for the Norica Capstone project, this thesis set out to
synthesize, recover, and characterize zinc oxide nanowire colloids.
The materials synthesized were successfully utilized in the wider Capstone effort to
dramatically enhance the protective abilities of Kevlar, while the data obtained on the 14
hydrothermal synthesis attempts and numerous challenges at recovery provided critical
information on the synthesis parameters involved in the reliable, scalable mass production of the
nanomaterial additive. Additionally, recovery was unconventionally facilitated in the absence of
a vacuum filtration apparatus with nanoscale filters by intentionally inducing electrostatic
agglomeration of the nanowires during standard gravity filtration. The subsequent application of
these nanowires constituted a pioneering use in the production of nanowire-reinforced
STF-based Kevlar coatings, and support the future development and, ultimately, the
commercialization of lighter and more-protective soft armor systems.
since the late 1990s, with the ultimate goal of improving the multi-threat capabilities of
traditional soft-body armor while significantly improving its protective efficiency - the amount
of layers of armor material required to defeat threats. To create a novel, superior materials
system to reinforce Kevlar armor for the Norica Capstone project, this thesis set out to
synthesize, recover, and characterize zinc oxide nanowire colloids.
The materials synthesized were successfully utilized in the wider Capstone effort to
dramatically enhance the protective abilities of Kevlar, while the data obtained on the 14
hydrothermal synthesis attempts and numerous challenges at recovery provided critical
information on the synthesis parameters involved in the reliable, scalable mass production of the
nanomaterial additive. Additionally, recovery was unconventionally facilitated in the absence of
a vacuum filtration apparatus with nanoscale filters by intentionally inducing electrostatic
agglomeration of the nanowires during standard gravity filtration. The subsequent application of
these nanowires constituted a pioneering use in the production of nanowire-reinforced
STF-based Kevlar coatings, and support the future development and, ultimately, the
commercialization of lighter and more-protective soft armor systems.
ContributorsDurso, Michael Nathan (Author) / Tongay, Sefaattin (Thesis director) / Zhuang, Houlong (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor, Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2019-05
Description
Immigrant families expect their children to go above and beyond since they have access to better facilities and opportunities in comparison to their home land. In my autobiographical works of art for my Barrett Honors Thesis project, I explore how my family has become more Americanized, yet still holds traditional values. I’ve focused on how differences in culture have molded different sets of morals between my parents, me, and my sibling. My series of graphite drawings on paper are a collection of milestones in my life. It may not be a completely fluid timeline but all the important points are present and the viewer can ponder what happened in snapshots of my life. The difference in culture is depicted through representations of clothing, posture, praying, religion, and subjects.
ContributorsChu, Amanda R (Author) / Hogden, Heidi (Thesis director) / Green, Heather (Committee member) / Materials Science and Engineering Program (Contributor) / School of Life Sciences (Contributor) / Harrington Bioengineering Program (Contributor) / Barrett, The Honors College (Contributor)
Created2020-05