A web-based online collaboration platform for formulating engineering design projects

Effective communication and collaboration among students, faculty and industrial sponsors play a vital role while formulating and solving engineering design projects. With the advent in the web technology, online platforms and systems have been proposed to facilitate interactions and collaboration among different stakeholders in the context of senior design projects. However, there are noticeable gaps in the literature with respect to understanding the effects of online collaboration platforms for formulating engineering design projects. Most of the existing literature is focused on exploring the utility of online platforms on activities after the problem is defined and teams are formed. Also, there is a lack of mechanisms and tools to guide the project formation phase in senior design projects, which makes it challenging for students and faculty to collaboratively develop and refine project ideas and to establish appropriate teams. In this thesis a web-based online collaboration platform is designed and implemented to share, discuss and obtain feedback on project ideas and to facilitate collaboration among students and faculty prior to the start of the semester. The goal of this thesis is to understand the impact of an online collaboration platform for formulating engineering design projects, and how a web-based online collaboration platform affects the amount of interactions among stakeholders during the early phases of design process. ^ A survey measuring the amount of interactions among students and faculty is administered. Initial findings show a marked improvement in the students\u27 ability to share project ideas and form teams with other students and faculty. Students found the online platform simple to use. The suggestions for improving the tool generally included features that were not necessarily design specific, indicating that the underlying concept of this collaborative platform provides a strong basis and can be extended for future online platforms. Although the platform was designed to promote collaboration, adoption of the collaborative platform by students and faculty has been slow. While the platform appears to be very useful for collaboration, more time is required for it to be widely used by all the stakeholders and to fully convert from email communication to the use of the online collaboration platform

Response of Soil Biochemical and Physical Properties to Long Term Prairie Cordgrass and Kura Clover Intercropping System

Prairie cordgrass (Spartina pectinata) (PCG) is a warm-season perennial grass that can be used as a biofuel feedstock and can be grown on marginal lands. Previous studies on intercropping of a perennial legume i.e., kura clover (Trifolium ambiguum) (KC) with PCG can improve soil biochemical properties, increase biomass production, mitigate greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions while reducing the chemical fertilizer requirement. However, there is a lack of evidence about the effects of PCG production on soil biochemical and physical properties during the cropping season and at deeper soil depths in reference to support plant growth, environmental implications and enhance the soil health of marginal lands. The overall objective of this study was to investigate the effects of PCG-KC intercropping on (1) soil biochemical properties at different sampling times during the season, and at different soil depths up to 60 cm, and (2) near-surface (0- 10 cm depth) hydro-physical properties. This field experiment was initiated in 2010 as a randomized complete block design with four replications of five treatments i.e., PCG intercropped with KC (PCG-KC), and PCG fertilized with different N fertilizer rates: 0 (PCG-0N), 75 (PCG-75N), 150 (PCG-150N), and 225 N kg ha-1 (PCG-225N). For seasonal biochemical properties assessment, surface soil samples were collected at 0-10 cm depth at three different times during the crop season: pre-emergence (PE), active growth (AG), and after harvest (PH) stages. To investigate the long-term effects on soil total carbon (TC) and total nitrogen (TN), deep soil cores were collected from 0-5, 5-15, 15-30, 30-45 and 45-60 cm depth after the crop harvest. The intact soil cores from 0-10 cm depth were collected at the AG stage to measure the soil physical properties. Overall, microbial biomass carbon (MBC) and nitrogen (MBN), and urease activity, were observed to be higher at the PE stage as compared to AG and PH stages. No treatment effect was observed for both MBC and MBN. Cold water-extractable C (CWC) showed a gradual increase from PE to AG to PH. Whereas, hot water extractable C (HWC), β-glucosidase activity, FDA, and glomalin, were highest at the AG stage and lowest at PE stage. The treatment effect was not significant for CWC, HWC and glomalin whereas, treatments had significant effect for all the enzymes, PCG-KC treatment had 45% higher mean β-glucosidase activity when compared to control (PCG-0), 56 and 42% higher mean urease compared to PCG-0 and PCG-75 N, and 13-19% higher FDA activity compared all other treatments. Total PLFA, bacterial, and fungal PLFA, CWN increased from PE to AG stage and showed similar or decreasing trend from AG to PH stages whereas HWN content decreased from AG to PH stage. Treatment effect was not significant for total PLFA and bacterial PLFA. There was a significant interaction between treatment and stage for CWN and HWN; PCG-KC showed higher mean values of CWN compared to PCG-0, PCG-75N and PCG-150N during the PE stage and was similar to all other N treatments except PCG-225N. PCG-KC had higher mean HWN when compared to control i.e., PCG-0 during AG stage and PCG-225N at PH stage. Nitrate concentration was higher at PE stage when compared to AG and PH stage which is contrary to the ammonium concentration that showed an increasing trend from PE to PH stage. Both the parameters had significant interaction between treatment and stage. The PCG-KC treatment had showed 34.3 and 24.4% lower nitrate concentration than PCG-150 and 225N during the AG stage and 24.3% lower than PCG-150N at PH stage. For ammonium PCG-KC treatment had a higher mean value than the control i.e., PCG-0 during PE stage and PCG-75N at PH stage. There was a gradual decrease in both TC and TN concentrations with soil depth. In the 0-5 cm layer, soil TC concentration was approximately 43% higher when compared to 45-60 cm soil depth. Similarly, TN concentration was approximately 83% higher in 0-5 cm soil layer when compared to deeper soil depth i.e., 45-60 cm. There was no treatment effect and its interaction with depth. The intercropping of KC with PCG had 0.024 cm3 cm-3 of macroporosity (MP), 50% higher Ksat, and 1% lower λ as compared to the other treatments. Moreover, PCGKC treatment had 1.42 g kg-1 of TN and 21.4 g kg-1 of TC in the surface layer which was comparable with PCG-75 treatment, however, were significantly higher as compared to the PCG-0. Overall, this study showed that the long-term maintenance of KC with PCG can provide soil health benefits through enhancing or maintaining the soil biochemical and hydro-physical properties. Therefore, long-term adoption of the perennial grass-legume system can enhance soil functional processes including, nutrient cycling, C sequestration, water storage, and availability, while maintaining biomass yields for biofuel production on marginal lands

Role of CD4+CD25+ Regulatory T Lymphocytes in Experimental Toxoplasmosis

Toxoplasmosis is an important cause of congenital disease, and it is one of the most common opportunistic infections in patients with acquired immunodeficiency syndrome. The need for a reliable experimental model of this infection is crucial not only for achieving a better understanding of the patho-physiology of the disease, but also for developing better methods for evaluating new therapeutic regimens. The purpose of the present study was to investigate the role of CD4+CD25+ T regulatory lymphocytes in mice infected with Toxoplasma gondii. T regulatory (Treg) cells have been shown to play an important role in our immune system in controlling the activity of other T lymphocytes. These cells are differentiated from other T lymphocyte populations based on the co-expression of CD4 and CD25 and expression of the Foxp3 gene. The results of several recent studies have suggested that certain pathogens may be able to increase their survival in the host by exploiting T reg cell activity. T regulatory cells have been shown to control the persistence of the protozoan parasite, Leishmania major, in mice; however, this population of cells plays only a limited role during murine infection with Trypanosoma cruzi. In the present study we have investigated the role of Treg cells during murine infection with the ME49 strain of T. gondii. In vivo depletion of Treg cells was accomplished by injecting mice with a monoclonal antibody (Mab) isolated from the 7D4 rat hybridoma cell line. This Mab is specific for the interleukin-2 receptor chain (also known as CD25). Female Swiss Webster mice of approximately 6-7 weeks of age were depleted of Treg cells by intraperitoneal injection of 400µg of Mab, mice were injected once 7days prior to infection, and a second time 1 day prior to infection, with 20 tissue cysts of T. gondii. Mouse weight and tissue cyst numbers were monitored to evaluate the impact of Treg depletion on the outcome of infection. Our results suggest that depletion of Treg cells has little measurable impact during the acute stage of infection with the ME49 strain of T. gondii. Further studies will be required to determine what role, if any, these cells play in the chronic stage of murine toxoplasmosis

Probing Dynamical Sensitivity of a Non-KAM System Through Out-of-Time-Order Correlators

Non-KAM (Kolmogorov-Arnold-Moser) systems, when perturbed by weak time-dependent fields, offer a fast route to classical chaos through an abrupt breaking of invariant phase space tori. In this work, we employ out-of-time-order correlators (OTOCs) to study the dynamical sensitivity of a perturbed non-KAM system in the quantum limit as the parameter that characterizes the $\textit{resonance}$ condition is slowly varied. For this purpose, we consider a quantized kicked harmonic oscillator (KHO) model, which displays stochastic webs resembling Arnold's diffusion that facilitate large-scale diffusion in the phase space. Although the Lyapunov exponent of the KHO at resonances remains close to zero in the weak perturbative regime, making the system weakly chaotic in the conventional sense, the classical phase space undergoes significant structural changes. Motivated by this, we study the OTOCs when the system is in resonance and contrast the results with the non-resonant case. At resonances, we observe that the long-time dynamics of the OTOCs are sensitive to these structural changes, where they grow quadratically as opposed to linear or stagnant growth at non-resonances. On the other hand, our findings suggest that the short-time dynamics remain relatively more stable and show the exponential growth found in the literature for unstable fixed points. The numerical results are backed by analytical expressions derived for a few special cases. We will then extend our findings concerning the non-resonant cases to a broad class of near-integrable KAM systems.Comment: 15 pages, 5 figure

Analysis of Behavioral Characteristics of Multiple Blackhole Attacks with TCP and UDP Connections in Mobile ADHOC Networks based on Machine Learning Algorithms

In Mobile Adhoc Networks (MANET’s), a suit of nodes which are under mobility work together to transmit data packets in a multiple-hop manner without relying on any fixed or centralized infrastructure. A significant obstacle in managing these networks is identifying malicious nodes, or "black holes". To detect black holes, we proposed a method involves broadcasting a Cseq to the neighboring nodes and awaiting the node's response is utilized. This Network is simulated with 25 number of nodes connected with TCP connection and observed the different behavioural characteristics of nodes. Then the connections are changed to UDP and observed the characteristics. Then characteristics are analyzed with different machine learning algorithms. The network is simulated in NS2 environment

Quantifying operator spreading and chaos in Krylov subspaces with quantum state reconstruction

We study operator spreading in many-body quantum systems by its potential to generate an informationally complete measurement record in quantum tomography. We adopt continuous weak measurement tomography for this purpose. We generate the measurement record as a series of expectation values of an observable evolving under the desired dynamics, which can show a transition from integrability to full chaos. We find that the amount of operator spreading, as quantified by the fidelity in quantum tomography, increases with the degree of chaos in the system. We also observe a remarkable increase in information gain when the dynamics transitions from integrable to non-integrable. We find our approach in quantifying operator spreading is a more consistent indicator of quantum chaos than Krylov complexity as the latter may correlate/anti-correlate or show no clear behavior with the level of chaos in the dynamics. We support our argument through various metrics of information gain for two models; the Ising spin chain with a tilted magnetic field and the Heisenberg XXZ spin chain with an integrability breaking field. Our study gives an operational interpretation for operator spreading in quantum chaos.Comment: 14 pages, 7 figure

Host-mediated Leishmania donovani treatment using AR-12 encapsulated in acetalated dextran microparticles

Leishmaniasis is a disease caused by parasites of Leishmania sp., which effects nearly 12 million people worldwide and is associated with treatment complications due to widespread parasite resistance toward pathogen-directed therapeutics. The current treatments for visceral leishmaniasis (VL), the systemic form of the disease, involve pathogen-mediated drugs and have long treatment regimens, increasing the risk of forming resistant strains. One way to limit emergence of resistant pathogens is through the use of host-mediated therapeutics. The host-mediated therapeutic AR-12, which is FDA IND-approved for cancer treatment, has shown activity against a broad spectrum of intracellular pathogens; however, due to hydrophobicity and toxicity, it is difficult to reach therapeutic doses. We have formulated AR-12 into microparticles (AR-12/MPs) using the novel biodegradable polymer acetalated dextran (Ace-DEX) and used this formulation for the systemic treatment of VL. Treatment with AR-12/MPs significantly reduced liver, spleen, and bone marrow parasite loads in infected mice, while combinatorial therapies with amphotericin B had an even more significant effect. Overall, AR-12/MPs offer a unique, host-mediated therapy that could significantly reduce the emergence of drug resistance in the treatment of VL

PROPOSE AND IMPLEMENTATION OF MISSILE APPRECIATION BY USING INTERNET OF THINGS

In the modern situation we're going thru lots of dangers through the use of means of bomb blasts so our task is to prepare an unmanned robotic that allows you to catch the bomb it's misting likely to not positive find the bomb nonetheless additionally reveals feature of bomb with the help of using means of the use of general practitioners component as well as the location of bomb can be intimated to the special personality thru web. We are interfacing the online electronic cam to control the robotic. Below we are using a steel detector to find the bomb as a result of the reality we understand that any type of bomb consists of a couple of passion or percent of steel components. We create correct right here to present a maker that does away with the desire for people in the minefield with the valuable source of altering them with a from another location handled discovery car. This cars and truck could be linked wirelessly to a base terminal situated at a relaxing range from the threat area. Doing so, this tool will certainly aid in conserving lives, reducing costs as well as embellish efficiency in the mine discovery technique. The steel detector circuit is interfaced with the robot and also it is left at the favoured are looking for an area to ensure that it will certainly stumble upon the steel parts made use of within the landmines. One of the most vital benefits of this endeavour is that we have the ability to making this robot at a reduced cost as well as extra unskilled