Only Child

For my creative endeavor symposium, I would like to focus on the topic of being an “only child.” I am a senior in IPFW’s Visual Communication and Design program, and I am currently in the process of starting my senior thesis on the same topic. Through national and regional research, I would like to be able to show statistics about being an only child, the positives and negatives, and also to be able to showcase this through photography. My photographic exploration of the experience of being an only child will start with me. I am an only child myself, and this will be the main aspect motivating my work. I will be creating an online survey to ask peoples thoughts and opinions on what it was like to be an only child, or is like. I will then use my photographic images to showcase these findings. For this specific project I will interview six subjects, and include personal quotes in my visual design aspect of this project

Monitoring Groundwater Properties within a Wetland on the IPFW Campus

YEATER, Rossand ISIORHO, K. Solomon A., Geosciences, Indiana University - Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW), 2101 E. Coliseum Blvd, Fort Wayne, IN 46805-1499, [email protected] Groundwater testing and monitoring is a crucial part of environmental management for urban and rural settings. This study examines the water chemistry in a well field located at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) campus in order to determine the contaminant and thus the water quality in the campus. The well field at the IPFW campus is located by a creek that drains into the St. Joseph River. Nitrate, nitrite pH, temperature, conductivity, total dissolved solids, dissolved oxygen and head elevation were measured over a 56 day testing period (late September – mid November) in 15 of the 20 installed wells. Soil samples were also collected from a burrow pit at the location to determine the hydraulic conductivity of the soil. The hydraulic conductivity (k value) was obtained using Hazen method and aided the determination of beds. The nitrate and nitrite levels ranged from 0.0 – 20.9 and 0.0 – 0.029 mg/L, respectively. A few readings were above EPA regulated contaminant levels for drinking water (10 and 1.0 mg/L for nitrate and nitrite respectively. Trends of nitrate and nitrite often show an inverse relationship, suggesting that nitrate is being reduced to nitrite via iron content and/or organic activity. There is a positive correlation between the head elevation and dissolved oxygen (DO) with the seasonal decrease in temperature. Grid wells that have elevations varying less that one inch are assumed to penetrate the same layer and head differences of these wells were used to determine the flow direction, which is northwest. This is in agreement with previous studies under the assumption that the creek is an influent stream and receives runoff and drainage from the IPFW campus. New data will be presented as it is an ongoing research project. Session No. 29--Booth# 24 T28. Undergraduate Research II (Posters) Tuesday, 19 April 2016: 8:00 AM-12:00 PM Illinois Ballroom AB (I Hotel and Conference Center) Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 48, No. 5 doi: 10.1130/abs/2016NC-27548

Getting Down to Earth Along the IPFW Creek

As water moves downstream, it carries sediments that become sorted and rounded. The purpose of this research project is to determine the water content of soil, overall composition of sediments (gravel, sand, etc.), and grain size changes (if it does change) along a river profile, using a creek that runs through the Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne (IPFW) campus. In the 2014 Fall semester, grain size distribution analysis was performed on 14 soil samples collected along the length of the creek. Fourteen soil samples were also collected from same sites in the 2015 Spring and Fall semesters resulting in three sets of data. Collected data indicates water content and grain size distribution vary along the creek profile. Water content for the Fall 2014 samples has a range of ~20 -28%. This is closely mimicked with the Fall 2015 samples with a range 20-25%. However the Spring 2015 data begins ~28% and falls to ~24% over the course of the creek profile. This could be due to a higher influx of water during the spring season keeping the sediments waterlogged. Certain soil samples contained significantly lower water content than others, that, when examined more closely, revealed different soil profiles containing less silt-clays and higher sand-gravel. The soil composition data ranges from coarse to fine grained sands, silts, and clays with less gravel present in the recent samples. This could be due to heavy flooding experienced in this area as well as recent construction on campus. Knowing the cause(s) of finning sediments downstream in the creek may help in managing the stream and probably other rivers in northern Indiana. This is an ongoing research and new data will be presented.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1037/thumbnail.jp

A Design with Purpose

The purpose of this project is to design a “Shared Space” that can be used as a multi-functional space for learning and collaborative activities. The users of this shared space include interior design students from the Latin University of Costa Rica and local interior design professionals. This “Shared Space” project is located in Santa Maria de Dota, Costa Rica, which is known for its coffee plantation and is a beautiful place to sit back to enjoy the wonderful natural surroundings. Unfortunately, deforestation has become a forefront issue in recent years in Santa Maria de Dota area that causes farmers to develop new ideas for coffee plantations in order to have more sun exposure for coffee plants. Local people in Santa Maria de Dota also have initiated a strategy of reducing water and energy consumption by using organic materials. This project is inspired by the concept of sustainability in the coffee industry and strategies of addressing the issue of deforestation. In this “Shared Space” facility, specific spaces for different activities are provided, such as a learning studio space for students, a place to meet and greet clients, spaces for collaboration with communities, offices for interior designers, and a place to showcase their design work. “Shared Space” fosters communication and collaboration between students, professionals, educators and communities. By integrating multiple functions, technologies, and interactions between team members, educators, and clients, a shared space can be used for collaboration among different levels of students in the service-learning model. Also these spaces can provide a more private space to support individual research. The design goal was to alleviate the issue of deforestation while providing a place for education and collaboration with the community. In order to be sustainable, it is important to incorporate recyclable materials and products in the design. Bamboos are used as the primary building material. Replacing timber is another approach to reduce deforestation. In addition, the design incorporates local products such as reusing defective coffee beans as wall partitions and reusing burlap bags left over from the coffee in attempt to keep the cost low for the Santa Maria de Dota economy. Another strategy to tackle deforestation in the design is to grow trees within “Shared Space” as decoration and replant them out in the community once they have outgrown the facility. The design approach has both purpose and impact of fostering education and community collaboration while promoting of designing a sustainable environment.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1011/thumbnail.jp

WoundView: A Prototype Telemedicine System Designed for Wound Assessment

The current standard of wound assessment is heavily dependent on manual measurements and visual inspection. This approach has areas that need to be improved to provide a better quality service to patients and to enhance the accuracy of the assessment. Some of existing steps can be digitally automated and the image data can be properly stored for later computation and analysis. These steps will reduce inconvenience for the patient and increase accuracy for wound care. This project is a creation of a prototype system that allows a team of medical practitioners to remotely record data of a patient’s wounds and then assess the healing process of the patient’s wounds with the assistance of computers and domain experts at a medical office. The system is developed as a web application, connected with a back-end sub-system including a database. By using a front-end graphical user interface, such as through the Internet or on a mobile phone, a local medical practitioner can capture the images of wounds at a patient’s location and request an evaluation by physicians who are located at their medical office. The physician remotely assesses the transmitted images and is able to give feedback or a diagnosis in real time. This assessment procedure provides a convenience to patients who are experiencing lack of mobility. This also enables the patients to receive high quality services from medical professionals at other facilities. In addition, the developed system improves the quality of service by utilizing a computer-assisted measuring process on the digitized images. This developed system will also allow color/shape tracking of the image in order to automatically measure the wound’s dimensions. Lastly, the data can be digitally archived and has the ability to be used for historical comparison to keep track of the wound’s healing progress with annotations attached to the image. The Senior Capstone team’s role in this project is the initialization of the WoundView system and the aforementioned tasks. Our sponsor institution is Parkview’s Mirro Center for Research and Innovation. This project has future potential to contribute greatly to the under-developed branch of telemedicine due its ability to be improved and expanded on. One such example includes deriving the wound depth and volume from the images. Another could include image morphing the progress of the healing wound through 3D modeling.http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1004/thumbnail.jp

Collective System Design: Healthcare System for Diabetics

http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1035/thumbnail.jp

Influence of Forest Characteristics on Plant Communities in Relation to Seed Mass and Dispersal Mechanisms

http://opus.ipfw.edu/stu_symp2016/1038/thumbnail.jp