Passive Balancing Battery Management System for Cal Poly Racing\u27s Formula SAE Electric Vehicle

This senior project aims to replace the current battery management system (BMS) on Cal Poly’s Formula SAE electric vehicle with a more versatile, advanced, and reliable system. A BMS manages a rechargeable battery by ensuring the battery device operator’s safety, protecting battery cell integrity, prolonging battery lifetime, maintaining functional design requirements, and sending optimal usage information to the application controller. Passive balancing maximizes a battery pack’s capacity by dissipating excess energy through heat to regulate cell state of charge

Users Attitudes Toward Movie-Related Websites And E-Satisfaction

Numerous websites provide information, sell products, and offer services. However, not many websites have focused on usability issues, such as ease of use, usefulness, and customer satisfaction. Therefore, in this paper, the authors first consider what factors affect ease of use and usefulness and then how ease of use and usefulness affect attitudes toward websites and customer satisfaction. This study classified four different user groups based on their degree of involvement to measure different levels of perceived ease of use and usefulness. Uses and gratification theory (Herzog 1944; McGuire 1974; Luo 2002) has been applied in this study to explain users’ attitudes toward movie-related web sites and consumer satisfaction. This study found that online users’ positive attitudes towards movie-related websites impact their satisfaction, while their positive attitudes do not significantly lead to the actual purchase of tickets online. The findings of the study contribute to the development of the uses and gratification theory by applying it to the online users’ attitudes toward movie-related sites. Further, this study provides implications and offers suggestions to e-businesses dealing with movie-related products and services

Assessing Country-Of-Origin Effects: The Impact Of An International Event

This study is to investigate how consumers’ attitudes toward brands/products manufactured by a country are affected by an international event. Authors explored that consumers’ attitudes toward brand “made in ___” are affected by various constructs, such as prior beliefs about the products’ attributes, the country’s image along with the brand name, and attitudes toward the advertising during an international event

Analysis Of Global Trends In Building Ubiquitous Information Technology Market Environment

This study found that each country, in order to propel the Global Ubiquitous Information Technology (IT) Business Market, has initiated strategies that utilize its own strengths in the IT industry. Ubiquitous information technology is recognized as a new strategy to propel the information industry and to enhance country's competitive power in the global information economy. IT companies in leading IT countries including the United States, Japan, and several European countries engage in active investment and research through a cooperative system among the industry, universities, and the government. Transition to a ubiquitous society may be a quiet revolution, but the reaching effects of the transition will be tremendous. Countries and enterprises should sense what consumers and market demand and should respond to it quickly. Only when countries and enterprises catch the latest information and process it for application, they can expect to succeed

KinectVision360: A Real-time Human Tracking System

KinectVision360 project integrates multiple Microsoft Kinect sensors to investigate the capabilities of the low cost human interactive device to apply them to modern problems in comparison to high cost devices. The project includes human face/skeletal tracking and a larger field of vision. We incorporate three Kinects (1st generation) and a custom computer with components necessary to process large amounts of data in real-time. Figure 1 represents an overview of the processes the program follows in order to execute and visualize the data for tracking. The “FaceTracking” class contains algorithms and logic to retrieve skeletal information from infrared depth sensors in the API. In a two-stage process, body position is understood by calculating a depth-map with structured light and then infers the body position using machine learning. Microsoft trained the system with over a million samples using a random decision forest. We enhance the tracking by rejecting poor construction of skeletons or faces. The class also transfers data between the sensors to allow for communication. We are restricted in how much data we can process due to hardware limitations. We compensate for complexity of code and computer performance which we overcome by limiting ourselves to 3 sensors. Overall, the system can analyze realtime data and visualize the data as it is being recorded with multiple integrated sensors.https://scholarscompass.vcu.edu/capstone/1112/thumbnail.jp

Effects of replacing marine fishmeal with graded levels of Tra Catfish by-product protein hydrolysate on the performance and meat quality of pigs

A feeding trial was carried out to evaluate the effects of replacing fish meal (FM) with Tra Catfish (Pangasius hypophthalmus) by-product protein hydrolysate (TPH) on performance and carcass quality in pigs. Forty crossbred castrated (Yorkshire x Landrace) male pigs with an initial average bodyweight of 22.8 ± 1.5 kg were allocated to 40 individual pens in a randomized complete block design with eight replications. The pigs were fed a control diet (TPH0) with FM as sole protein supplement. In the experimental diets, 100% (TPH100), 75% (TPH75), 50% (TPH50) and 25% (TPH25) of the crude protein (CP) from FM was replaced by the CP from TPH. The results showed no significant differences in average daily feed intake (ADFI) in all treatments during the growing and finishing phases. However, daily weight gain (ADG) was higher in TPH75 (655 g/day) and TPH100 (663 g/day) than in TPH0 (639 g/day). Feed conversion ratio (FCR) was improved with higher inclusion of TPH in the diets. Carcass yield and dressing percentage were not affected by treatments, but abdominal fat and backfat thickness were higher and in the loin-eye area lower in TPH100 compared with TPH0. Polyunsaturated fatty acids (PUFA), ether extract (EE) contents and meat colour values a* (redness) in the longissimus dorsi muscle increased with TPH replacement level. Feed costs were 10% lower in TPH100 compared with TPH0. In conclusion, replacing FM with TPH improved the performance, but resulted in an increase in backfat thickness and fat content of meat. However, because of reduced feed costs, complete replacement of FM would still be profitable for pig producers in Vietnam.Keywords: Backfat thickness, longissimus dorsi muscle, fatty acid, Pangasius hypophthalmu

Healthcare Price Transparency: Policy Approaches and Estimated Impacts on Spending

Healthcare price transparency discussions typically focus on increasing patients' access to information about their out-of-pocket costs, but that focus is too narrow and should include other audiences -- physicians, employers, health plans and policymakers -- each with distinct needs and uses for healthcare price information. Greater price transparency can reduce U.S. healthcare spending.For example, an estimated $100 billion could be saved over the next 10 years if three select interventions were undertaken. However, most of the projected savings come from making price information available to employers and physicians, according to an analysis by researchers at the former Center for Studying Health System Change (HSC). Based on the current availability and modest impact of plan-based transparency tools, requiring all private plans to provide personalized out-of-pocket price data to enrollees would reduce total health spending by an estimated$18 billion over the next decade. While $18 billion is a substantial dollar amount, it is less than a tenth of a percent of the$40 trillionin total projected health spending over the same period. In contrast, using state all-payer claims databases to gather and report hospital-specific prices might reduce spending by an estimated $61 billion over 10 years.The effects of price transparency depend critically on the intended audience, the decision-making context and how prices are presented. And the impact of price transparency can be greatly amplified if target audiences are able and motivated to act on the information. Simply providing prices is insufficient to control spending without other shifts in healthcare financing, including changes in benefit design to make patients more sensitive to price differences among providers and alternative treatments. Other reforms that can amplify the impact of price transparency include shifting from fee-for-service payments that reward providers for volume to payment methods that put providers at risk for spending for episodes of care or defined patient populations. While price transparency alone seems unlikely to transform the healthcare system, it can play a needed role in enabling effective reforms in value-based benefit design and provider payment