FYR 2022 Graduate RISE Impact Report- Research & Innovation- Prairie View A&M University by PVAMU Research&Innovation

2022

Magesh T. Rajan, Ph.D., P.E., M.B.A. Vice President, Research & Innovation

The RISE-graduate students are able to devote more time and effort to their research because of the assistantships they receive. During the fiscal year 2021-2022, the program supported approximately 70 students. Many of these students participated in the TAMUS Pathways Student Research Symposium—a System-wide event where the students from the 11 member-institutions present posters and talks on their research projects. Two RISE graduate students won awards for excellence in research. R&I is pleased to present the research reports of the Faculty-RISE graduate students in this compendium. Their research areas range from “Non-Catalytic Process of Converting Waste Plastics into Low-Viscosity Oil Lubricants” to “Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life”; from “Evaluating Young Architect’s Moral Level through Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment Test” to “African American Educators’ Perceptions of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Preparation and Practice.” The research reports compiled in this booklet come from the seven colleges and one school in the university. R&I is proud to support graduate research through the Faculty-RISE Graduate Research Grant program as it serves as a vehicle to produce future scholars, educators, engineers, scientists, nurses, and architects. The program also celebrates and promotes the spirit of interdisciplinary collaborations across the university. 2

The Division of Research & Innovation (R&I) is committed to fostering and growing the research and innovation enterprise of Prairie View A&M University (PVAMU). The Faculty RISE-Graduate Research grant program supports faculty-mentored graduate students’ research and innovation activities. The program enables faculty researchers to sustain and expand their research projects while mentoring graduate students to become the next generation of experts.

Messagefromthe Vice President

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Department of Chemistry and Physics, College of Arts and Sciences

Coddy Cash and Gina Chiarella*

The procedure consists in dissolving the amino acid and adding the metal salt. The preparation may proceed by refluxing (the traditional way) or by microwave assisted synthesis. The procedure using solvent methanol is challenging due to the low solubility of the amino acid; the advantage is the easy formation of single crystals for structural characterization. The preparation in water solvent is simple due to the higher solubility of L histidine, but the purity of the product is lower; in this case, the crystallization process requires increasing the pH of the solution. The traditional preparation method usually takes place in one week. By using a microwave synthesizer, the procedure occurs in around 20 minutes. It leads to the formation metal complex, which is purified by crystallization. The resulting metal complexes were analyzed and characterized by FTIR, UV visible, x ray single crystal diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and Zetasizer. The redox and optical properties are analyzed by cyclic voltammetry and fluorimetry. We have attained the complete characterization of the L histidine nickel (II) complex, and we are on the way to concluding the study of the remaining metal complexes.

Synthesis and Characterization of Histidine

Arts and Sciences

L histidine is an amino acid that plays a unique role in different biological systems like signal transduction, which is crucial to the structural part of enzymes. This research aims to determine the outcomes of the reaction of L

Metal Complexes

histidine amino acid with transition metal complexes in different solvents. The procedure utilizes copper (II), nickel (II), manganese (II), and zinc (II) metallic salts. L histidine, L histidine methyl ester, and L histidine hydrochloride are ligands used in this research. The reactions take place in an aqueous and methanol solution.

Introduction

• Added 0.00135 moles (0.27g) of Copper Acetate monohydrate into the flask.

• To the dried mixture, 10ml of ethanol and 2ml acetylacetone were added, and let’s settle.

The numbers shown represent the different functional groups present in each case and show the change and movement in each spectrum.Cyclic voltammetry and fluorescent experiments have been performed on the nickel complex showing that the compound is highly luminescent and shows redox reversibility at Ph 12

In a 100 mL round bottom flask, 0.0027 moles (0.42g) of L Histidine were dissolved in 20ml of water are stirring at neutral pH

• The compound is highly luminescent and shows redox reversibility at Ph 12

•

The spectrophotometric characterization shows the nitrogen nickel and oxygen nickel bonding 5

After preparing the metal complex, I was able to obtain the crystals for both Ni (II) at pH 7 and Cu (II)

Synthesis Procedure of Cu (II) and Histidine.

The reaction mixture changes into a royal blue color. Keep stirring for 10 minutes

•

Methods

Histidine were dissolved in 20ml of water are stirring at pH initial was around 5

• Added 0.00135 moles (0.34g) of Nickel Acetate tetrahydrate into the flask.

•

• In the case of Cu (II), no adjusting of the pH was needed to obtain crystals.

• Remove the 20ml of water from the complex by evaporation in a vapor bath for approximately 30 minutes to an hour.

• The reaction mixture changes into a blue color. Keep stirring for 10 minutes, then added approx. 1ml of Potassium Hydroxide (KOH) or until the pH change to neutral Results

•

After running the experiment in different ways, I found in the case of Nickle, by adjusting the pH 7 and 12, I was able to obtain the crystals at each pH.

• Below shows the FTIR for Ni (II) and Cu (II,) and it’s color

• After one day blue/purple crystals were formed.

•

In a 100ml round bottom flask, 0.0027 moles (0.42g) of L

coded to represent the different steps in the synthesis.

Discussion The nickel L histidine complex crystal structure shows the formation of an extended network.

•

Synthesis Procedure of Ni (II) and Histidine

Vladimír Hejtmánek, Martin Dracínský and Jan Sýkora. Crystals 2019, 9, 159. 6

interactions by the flat signals on the NH2 groups and the shift of the CO peak in the IR. Those

References G.C. Boles; R.A. Coates; G. Berden; J. Oomens, P.B. Armentrout.

results confirm the findings in the crystal structure. The luminescence properties indicate the presence of relaxation transitions (from MO of high energy to low energy). The redox reversible results at high pH indicate that the possible redox activation requires deprotonation of amino and carboxylic groups. Studies on the Copper

L histidine complex just started a few weeks ago. The production of single crystals for this compound is a challenge that has almost been attained. About Mn (II) and Zn (II), experiments are ongoing and in the process of being synthesized. The metal Nickle (ll) and Copper (II) Histidine complexes has been synthesized.

The study of histidine complexes is important to understand the behavior of the amino acid in biological systems and to explore the possibility of using this compound to prepare green catalysts and luminescent materials.

J.Phys.Chem. B, 2016, 12486−12500 Lei Zhou, Shenhui Li, Yongchao Su, Xianfeng Yi, Anmin Zheng, and Feng Deng. J. Phys. Chem. B, 2013, 117, 8954−8965

Significance

2PtCl6 salt produced a higher percentage of platinum than the H2PtCl6 salt.

Green Synthesis of Platinum Nanoparticles for Biomedical Applications

Introduction Platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs) are widely used in the biomedical industry. They have been studied because of their antioxidant, antimicrobial, and anticancer properties.

Ayesha Long and Harshica Fernando* Department of Chemistry and Physics, College of Arts and Sciences

Platinum has proven to be good catalyst for many reactions. With so much pollution in the world, we wanted to see if there was a way to produce platinum nanoparticles with as little negative environmental impact as possible. Green synthesis methods are preferred over the traditional synthesis methods as they minimize environmental pollution. Using green chemistry, we wanted to attempt to produce platinum nanoparticles with naturally occurring materials. Methods Chloroplatinic acid hydrate was from Sigma Aldrich and potassium hexachloroplatinate (IV), from Strem Chemicals, INC. Platinum nanoparticles (PtNPs, were prepared using different Pt salt at different time points, and a green source. The synthesized PtNPs were characterized using UV

Visible spectroscopy, Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X ray spectrometry. The average size of the particles was estimated using dynamic light scattering measurements and the redox properties were measured using cyclic voltammetry. Results Figure 1 shows the SEM/EDS data of the PtNPs made using both Pt salts. The data show that PtNPs are formed, and that K

FTIR profiles of the PtNPs synthesized using K

Electron transfer properties of the PtNPs formed using both salts were investigated using cyclic voltammetry studies. The results revealed that the oxidation and reduction peaks very between the salt. Significance

Figure 2. ATR

In order to find the interactions of biomolecules with PtNPs, FTIR spectroscopy was performed. The data obtained for the two salts are shown in Figure 2. Peak positions were relatively the same for the two salts and the broad peak observed in the region between 2500 and 3550 was an indication of the presence of OH groups. The peak between 2850 and 330, is an indication of the presence of a CH group. The Dynamic light scattering results show that H

2PtCl6 and H2PtCl6.

2PtCl6 salt that was incubated for four hours showed smaller Z averages with the H2PtCl6 salt held at both incubation periods. K2PtCl6 salt that was incubated for 72 hours had at least 1/3 lower Z averages. This could be due to K2PtCl6 salt showing less aggregation (data not shown.

2PtCl6 salt has similar Z averages for both incubation periods. K

. “Platinum Nanoparticles: Green Synthesis and Biomedical Applications.” Molecules, vol. 25, no. 21, 2020, p. 4981. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.3390/molecules25214981.

References Arroyo, Geovanna V., et al. “Green Synthesis of Silver Nanoparticles for Application in Cosmetics.”

Dobrucka, Renata, et al. “Evaluation of Biological Synthesized Platinum Nanoparticles Using Ononidis Radix Extract on the Cell Lung Carcinoma A549.” Biomedical Microdevices, vol. 21, no. 3, 2019. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1007/s10544 019 0424 7.

Using Sheep Milk for the Synthesis of Platinum Nanoparticles: The Role of Milk Protein in Platinum Reduction and Stabilization, vol. 12, no. 4, 2016, pp. 199 206. 9

The results show that PtNPs can be formed in a green manner using both salts. Preliminary data shows they can be used as a catalyst in chemiluminescence reactions. This observation is promising as once developed the environmentally friendly particles can be tested in other biomedical applications.

Journal of Environmental Science and Health, Part A, vol. 55, no. 11, 2020, pp. 1304 20. Crossref, https://doi.org/10.1080/10934529.2020.1 790953.

Gholami Shabani, Mohammadhassan, et al. “Int. J. Nanosci. Nanotechnol.” Biogenic Approach

Agriculture and Human Sciences

Although there is evidence to suggest that precision nutrition and/or web based and app interventions are successful in promoting weight loss and preventing chronic diseases, well designed and evaluated interventions of this nature are sparse among low income medically underserved, rural and minority communities. The goals and objectives of this research is to 1) examine whether a precision nutrition web based multi platform nutrition, exercise, and lifestyle coaching program will support weight loss and the reduction of type 2 diabetes disease risk factors among minorities who are overweight, obese or have prediabetes; 2) determine sustainability of appropriates changes in dietary behavior, physical activity and self rated health at 3 months; and 3) develop a precision nutrition mobile app specific to this research project for future and further studies. Discussion A validated questionnaire will be used to obtain sociodemographic and medical history information, including demography, income, household food security, medical history, and 10

Jennifer Asuquo and Janet Antwi* Department of Agriculture, Nutrition and Dietetics College of Agriculture and Human Sciences

Overweight and obesity are universally recognized as a risk factor for numerous health conditions such as type 2 diabetes, hypertension, some types of cancer, cardiovascular disease, poor quality of life, functional limitations, and mental health concerns.

Project Summary

Precision Nutrition for Obesity and Type 2 Diabetes Prevention and Wellness in the COVID 19 Era

Precision interventions are not a “one size fits all dit”, but are tailored to key characteristics of the participant such as current diet, phenotype and genotype.

1 An estimated 34% of adults have prediabetes, a condition in which individuals have blood glucose levels higher than normal but not high enough to be classified as diabetes.2 Precision nutrition approaches offer an alternative and potentially more effective strategy to improve dietary intake and prevention of obesity and chronic diseases.3 4

medication use. A SECA balance scale (Seca Corp, Columbia, MD), the BOD POD® machine (COSMED USA, Inc., California), and tape measure will be used take anthropometric and body composition measurements (weight, height, waist circumference, body fat mass, and muscle mass).

Impact It is expected that the feasibility and acceptability of the precision nutrition intervention would be established. At the end of the project, study participants would have improved dietary intake and physical activity, and reduction in weight gain and disease metabolic profile to prevent obesity and type 2 diabetes. There will also be availability of preliminary data for NIH grant funding application. Students will demonstrate increased entry level obesity and prediabetes programming knowledge and skills. The combined activities of this project will build capacity and facilitate the student’s ability to develop, implement, and evaluate precision nutrition.

Dietary intake and food preferences will be assessed via 24 hour recalls using a standardized multiple pass method and online food frequency questionnaire and the Healthy Eating Index calculated to assess diet quality. All blood and biometric data including fasting blood glucose, HbA1C, total cholesterol, low density lipoprotein (LDL), high density lipoproteins (HDL), and triglycerides will be collected by Onsite Health Diagnostics (Onsite Health Diagnostics®, https://onsitehealthdiagnostics.com/). A blood pressure sphygmomanometer (Omron BP652N 7 Series, Omron Healthcare Inc. IL, U.S.) will be used to measure participant’s blood pressure. No actual results have been gathered yet. However, questionnaires have been pre tested, and laboratory services have been set up to begin the data collection this summer 2022.

3. Celis Morales C, Lara J, Mathers JC (2014) Personalising nutritional guidance for more effective behaviour change. Proc Nutr Soc 12, 1 9.

4. Nielsen DE, El

References

2. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. Diabetes. Prediabetes Your Chance to Prevent Type 2 Diabetes. 2020.

5. Carlos Celis Morales, Katherine M Livingstone, Cyril FM Marsaux, and et

al. on behalf of the Food4Me Study, Effect of personalized nutrition on health related behaviour change: evidence from the Food4Me European randomized controlled trial. Int. J. Epidemiol. 2017; 46(92):578 588.

1. J.B. Dixon. The effect of obesity on health outcomes. Mol. Cell. Endocrinol. 2010;316;104 108.

Sohemy A (2014) Disclosure of Genetic Information and Change in Dietary Intake: A Randomized Controlled Trial. PLoS ONE 9, e112665.

Hana Sulaiman and Yunxiang Gao* Department of Chemistry and Physics, College of Arts and Sciences

Although highly effective, LCE thin films

The classical method for fabrication of highly ordered monodomain LCEs requires two crosslinking steps.[2] The first step is just mixing monomers and crosslinkers in controlled ratio and let the first crosslinking reaction proceeds to generate a weakly crosslinked polymer network. However, the polymerization of mesogens at this step only yields polydomain networks, which consist of random small domains of mesogen organization due to the local intramolecular LC interactions but lacks of macroscopic alignment. To achieve monodomain mesogen orientations, the second step applies an external mechanical force uniaxially to stretch the polydomain LCE networks that were loosely crosslinked in the first step and achieve a uniform mesogen orientation along the stretching direction, and then locks the monodomain orientation of the polymer network via triggering the 2nd crosslinking reaction.

Introduction The liquid crystals (LCs) are molecules having a rod like, rigid, aromatic core and flexible aliphatic tails. Due to the rod

like aromatic core, LC molecules strongly interact with one another to generate long range molecular order even in liquid state, a state of matter between crystalline solid and isotropic liquid. The LC molecules forming liquid crystalline phases are referred as mesogens

Novel Molecular Alignments in Liquid Crystal Elastomers Thin Films

The Problem to be solved: synthesized by the above mechanical alignment process have their mesogens always aligned parallelly along the film surface. It is very challenge to vertically stretch a thin film in its normal direction or twist the top and bottom surface of a thin film along the normal direction. In this work, we have developed a novel method to stretch a thin LCE thin films in the normal direction or twist their top and

Liquid crystal elastomers (LCEs) are lightly cross linked LC polymers that combine liquid crystalline order and rubber elasticity to exhibit a wide range of novel physical properties, which are not likely to exist on man

made materials prepared by other means. However, to enable the novel application LCE materials, such as actuators, artificial muscles, or smart issue engineering scaffolds, [1] the molecular orientation of all mesogens needs to be oriented on a macroscopic scale to form monodomain alignments.

bottom surface along the normal director. As a result, we can lock mesogens vertically or in twisted pattern in LCE thin films for novel applications. Method We modified the glass surface of microscope slides with reactive functional groups. The monomer mixtures used to synthesize the LCE thin film will be cast on and sandwiched between two modified glass slides. These reactive surface moieties on the glass slides can react with the LCE thin films during the film formation, forming a strong chemical bonding between the glass and LCE film. Compared to directly sandwiching the LCE thin film with unmodified glass slides, which do not offer reactive surface groups to form chemical bonding with the LCE thin film, the adhesion between our LCE thin film and chemically bonded glass slides are much more robust and will not be peeled off during vertical or twisted stretching. Results

As shown in the above figure, the left panel shows an LCE film after vertical stretching and locking, while the right panel is PI’s previous work, in which we used very expensive nickel foams as sacrificial templates to synthesize porous LCE foams for 3D tissue engineering.[3] Surprisingly, when we vertically stretch the glass slides that chemically sandwiched the LCE thin film, we can create and lock similar LCE foam without the expensive Ni templates! It’s a low cost, template free method for 3D tissue engineering scaffold synthesis. We plan to conduct cell cultures on these 3D LCE foam developed by vertically stretching LCE thin films and develop these findings into an upgrade work for publication in the summer.

3. Gao, Y.X., et al., Biocompatible 3D Liquid Crystal Elastomer Cell Scaffolds and Foams with Primary and Secondary Porous Architecture. Acs Macro Letters, 2016. 5(1): p. 14 19.

1. Sharma, A., et al., Biocompatible, Biodegradable and Porous Liquid Crystal Elastomer Scaffolds for Spatial Cell Cultures. Macromolecular Bioscience, 2015. 15(2): p. 200 214.

2. Yakacki, C.M., et al., Tailorable and programmable liquid

crystalline elastomers using a two stage thiol acrylate reaction. Rsc Advances, 2015. 5(25): p. 18997 19001.

As shown in the above figure, we can also successfully twist and lock an LCE thin film via rotating the glass slides that are chemically bonded to the LCE, which can be used as a smart window. Significance To the best of our knowledge, this work represents the first success in stretching or twisting polymeric thin films along the film’s surface normal, which contributes to new molecular structure design of polymer thin films as well as novel functional applications.

19 and YPV Secondly, to question the understanding of the influence of COVID 19 and YPV. And lastly, to identify resources for families entangled with YPV. Family dynamics of rural youth and caregivers in relation to teen dating violence were presented in the literature to learn to what extent caregiver and adolescent perceptions of family operation interact in their influence on teenage dating violence. Participants were 493 adolescents, 53% Black, 40% White, 2.2% Hispanic, and 4.7% others. Their primary caregivers (93%) female, the majority were parents or stepparents, (5.7%) grandparents, (3.1%) were aunts and other relatives were from a rural southeastern community in the USA. Researchers used a short version of the General Functioning subscale of the McMaster Family Assessment Device (Sianko, 2020). The research suggested that adolescents with negative perceptions of the family environment were most likely to be victims and perpetrators of dating violence when their parents also reported more negative views family environment. Conclusion and concluding how the findings can advance the knowledge of the

The Influence of COVID

Exploring Youth to Parent Violence in Rural Communities: A Pilot Study

The available literature highlights the phenomenon of parents abused by their children as one of the most underreported, misunderstood, and traumatizing forms of family violence, youth to parent violence (YTPV). It involves youth, ranging in age from 10 to18 boys and girls, who use physical, psychological, emotional, and financial abuse and other forms of manipulative violence to gain control of family dynamics (Wilcox, 2012), (Suárez Relinque, 2019), (Cortina, 2020), (Arias Rivera, 2020), (Cano Lozano M. C., 2021), (Beckmann, 2021), (Simmons, 2022). The Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) identifies exposure to IPV during childhood as an adverse childhood experience that may impact future violence, victimization, and perpetration. It may produce adverse outcomes related to health and opportunity (Ravi, 2018). The existing knowledge of rural communities and YTPV is limited, and this literature review sought to understand the types of YTPV experienced by parents residing in rural communities.

Department of Agriculture, Nutrition and Human Ecology, College Agriculture and Human Sciences

Roberto De Freitas and Selena D. Tate*

Introduction Youth to Parent Violence

Resources for Families Dealing with YPV

Based on the nature and magnitude of the behaviors and age of the youth, it is most important to seek appropriate support, including a community centered approach, schools, family therapists for youth and parents, and music therapy in the treatment of anxiety for those YTPV family members, family violence support organizations, law enforcement, and justice system (Walter, 2020), (Drevitch, 2021), (Pérez

Furthermore, rural criminal justice systems have been ignored in research and underfunded in the USA, fueling the challenges by COVID19 pandemic and access to victims’ services has been an established issue in rural communities, however, has become increasingly tough with stay at home requirements and changes in routine activities (Hansen, 2020), (Can o Lozano M. C. M., 2021). As such, the literature raised the question has COVID19 changed crime? Crime rates in the USA during the pandemic, as measured by calls for service to law enforcement (Boman, 2020). To that end, mandatory confinement orders may have placed offenders where there is ample opportunity for IPV and YTPV (Boman, 2020), (Armstrong, 2021), (Cano Lozano M. C., 2021).

impact of family dynamics on teen dating interaction and inform practical efforts targeted at preventing aggressions among teens YTPV living in rural communities (Sianko, 2020).

Eizaguirre, 2022). Moreover, investment from government and policymakers to address intersecting issues of IPV and YTPV, where IPV and YPV disproportionately impact women in urban and rural communities (Kethineni, 2004), (Walter, 2020), (Cortina, 2020).

Summary The literature overwhelmingly contends that YTPV is a social phenomenon that remains significantly understudied (Arias Rivera, 2020) (Beckmann, 2021), (Cano Lozano M. C., 2021), (Cano Lozano M. C. M., 2021). Additionally, the literature suggests that YPV research has increased since 2000 since the exponential growth in frequency (Arias Rivera, 2020), (Cano Lozano M. C., 2021), (Simmons, 2022).

Key References

Arias Rivera, S. &. (2020). Theoretical framework and explanatory factorsfor child to parent violence. A scoping review

. Annuals of Psychology, 220 231. Boman, J. H. (2020). Has COVID 19 changed crime? Crime rates in the United States during the pandemic.

American Journal of Criminal Justice, 537 545. Cano Lozano, M. C. M. (2021). Child to Parent Violence during Confinement Due to COVID 19: Relationship with Other Forms of Family Violence and Psychosocial Stressors in Spanish Youth. Sustainability, 11431.

Objectives The aim of the project is to find out the level of morality among young architects. The main objectives of the study were to find out whether certain demographic factors play a role in developing the level of morality, and if so, what could be the implicit reasons behind them. Methodology The methodological framework followed Construction related Moral judgment Test (CMT), which is a customized version of Kohlberg’s Defining Issues Test (DIT) (Law, 2015). Following their methods, three dilemmas act as a questionnaire for the study, which were validated through peer review to fit to the context of architects. For each dilemma, six questions represented six stages of Morality stated by Kohlberg, and four neutral questions was added to remove the bias as 19

A person, whatever the profession is, needs to maintain a certain moral level for the sake of humanity. Architects are of no exception. Professional architects need to maintain a high moral level. This study attempted to measure the degree of their moral level by using Kohlberg’s model of moral judgment (Kohlberg, 1969).

Introduction

Department of Architecture, School of Architecture

Architecture Evaluating Young Architect’s Moral Level through Kohlberg’s Moral Judgment Test Miranda R. Sharp and Tareef H Khan*

Background Kohlberg’s model describes morality as comparatively comprehensible, falling under six levels. Humans tend to reach to a higher level of morality as they grow older. However, not everyone can reach the top level. His method includes reading and comprehending three dilemmas, which offer the respondents different options to choose from several given statements. The scores from these statements determine the respondents’ level of morality: scores 18 to 12 (Very High Morality), scores 12 to 6 (High Morality), scores 6 to 0 (High Normal), scores 0 to 6 (Low Normal), scores 6 to 12 (Low Morality), 12 to 18 (Very Low Morality). The dilemmas have been adjusted to fit with the architecture related field following the method of Construction related Morality Test (CMT), developed by Law (2015).

Finally, the data was analyzed using the stepwise backwards regression analysis by using SPSS (Fig. 1). This method shows the significance of the independent variables from least to greatest. The results determined that ‘classification’ was the least significant. This was followed by ‘age’, ‘ethnicity’, and lastly ‘gender’ in this order. Although ‘gender’ was the most significant variable (valued at 0.209) it did not pass the 0.05 level of significance, and therefore produced inconclusive results.

suggested by DIT method by Rest (1986). The scoring system followed CMT, where the two best and worst choices from respondents were matched by the questions at the top and bottom two levels of morality. The range of the score was divided into 5 categories with equal intervals, as stated before. Demographic data recorded were gender, work experience and age range. ANOVA test and Backward Stepwise Regression were performed to check the statistical significance of the mean values, and the impact of the demographic factors on morality. Results First, the mean and standard deviation of the sample population was calculated and analyzed through Excel. The overall mean score from the sample was 5.54 this score falls under the ‘High Normal’ morality category according to Kohlberg’s study. Demographic data such as gender (male and female), age (18 32), classification (undergraduates, graduates, and young architects), and ethnicity (African, African American, White, Hispanic, and Indian) were also analyzed from the sample population. The results determined that females scored better than males, younger respondents scored better than older respondents, undergraduates scored the best, and respondents of Indian descent scored the best. However, these mean values did not pass the ANOVA T Test, so the results at this point in time are inconclusive. The next set of results examined was the correlation analysis by using SPSS software. The results found that the dependent variable (the morality score) had no strong correlation with any of the independent variables (gender, age, classification, ethnicity). The variable with the strongest correlation was ‘gender’ with a value of 0.153. However, that value was not close to 1 (the maximum possible correlation value).

Kohlbergian approach to morality research. Journal of Moral Education, 29. 381 396 Vallero, D. (2008) Macroethics and Engineering Leadership.

Kohlberg, L. (1969) Stage and sequence: The cognitive developmental approach to socialization. Handbook of socialization theory. Chicago: Rand McNally. Rest, J.R. (1986). Moral development: Advances in research and theory.

Currently the results do not show enough level of significance because the sample size is still small. The study will continue and the sample size will increase, and in the future, the results might start showing statistical level of significance.

Significance

Leadership and Management in Engineering, 8 (4), 287 296. Law, On Kay Angel (2015), An ethical decision making model for sustainability in the Hong Kong construction industry: toward corporate social responsibility, Hong Kong Polytechnic University Dissertations 21

Fig. 5

: Backward stepwise regression Analysis

New York: Praeger. Rest, J.R., Naravez, D., Thoma, S. J., and Bebeau, M. J. (2000), A neo

The study also aims to compare the results with similar studies around the world and try to reach significant interpretations. References

After concluding the quantitative analysis, the research will move to qualitative analysis in search for the implicit reasons behind the results. That will lead to the validity and the reliability of the study.

d. Intrusion Detection In Depth [SANS]

The following SANS/ISACA courses

3. Identifying malicious code injection and rootkit abnormally

The research discusses “Next Generation Endpoint Security”. It focuses on how organizations are targeted and how on entity can protect its endpoints through a new security lifecycle of preventing, detecting, and responding to security incidents. We will discuss about identifying patterns in an intrusion detection investigation scheme and reveal how secured an organization is. Our result will show symptoms of system that is under attack and how to identify compromised networks or evidence of attack in an organization. We will know “Abnormality” in a system but will find “Evil” in a penetration testing scheme. We will identify symptoms through memory artifacts such as rogue processes, code injection and rootkit behavior and suspicious network activities. We will also look for operating systems artifacts such as unknown services, unusual OS artifacts, and evidence of persistence. Significance System is under attack when there is evidence of...

Business

4. Operating systems Artifact Anomalies

1. CompTia Security + Guide to Network Security Fundamentals Mark Ciampa PhD 5th Edition Rootkit Arsenal, 2nd Edition

References

e. Hacker Tools Techniques, Exploits and Incident Handling

b. Security Essentials bootcamp [SANS] c. Advanced Security Essentials Enterprise Defender [SANS]

2. Identifying unknown services that are running

Next Generation End Point Security Ibraheem Ejalonibu and Emmanuel Uzoma Opara* Department of Accounting, Finance, & Management Information Systems, College of Business Introduction

1. Linux and Windows Rogue processes

a. Introduction to Information Security [ISACA]

5. Abnormal Systems and Network Activities

Methods

Implementing Culturally Relevant Pedagogy in the K

It’s My Turn on the Mic! African American Educators’ Perceptions of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy: Preparation and Practice

Education

1. A quantitative approach was implemented to study this data.

4. Data will be retrieved via an online survey instrument.

5. Participants will answer multiple choice questions and Likert scale statements.

Preliminary Results

3. Qualified participants were located through online social media groups specialized for African American educators.

2. The target population for this research are African American K 12 educators.

12 school system involves the input of a diverse group of educators that are currently in school systems. The purpose of this research study is to study the perceptions of African American educators as it relates to the preparation and practice of culturally relevant pedagogy.

Introduction

Tiesha Seabrook and Katina Thomas* Department of Curriculum and Instruction, College of Education

6. This is a measure for a statistical significance amongst different instructional roles in K 12 education.

Homeroom… Non-…Instructional… CounselorAdministrator Other 23

My school system offers professional development opportunities that primarily focus on culture. 43210

Discussion Cultural relevant pedagogy is a practice that incorporates student achievements along with affirming their cultural background. CPR impacts campuses with large populations of students of color. As African American only account for 7% of K 12 education; they must incorporate their voices to be the foundational source for the preparation and practices needed for effective curriculums, frameworks, and instructional programs. The preliminary results show lack of consist practices and preparation of CRP in Black educators. As we continue to collect data, we look forward to discovering more of Black educators' perceptions of CRP. Significance The purpose of this research study is to study the perceptions of African American educators as it relates to the preparation and practice of culturally relevant pedagogy. This study’s finding will help increase African American educators ’influence with culturally relevant instruction within or outside their district.

86420 Homeroom Non-… Instructional… Counselor Administrator Other I consider culture when preparing lesson plans/instructional programs. 24

, 32(3), 465 491. https://doi.org/10.2307/1163320

. 3rd ed., New York, NY, Teachers College Press, 2018. Ladson Billings, G. (1995). Toward a Theory of Culturally Relevant Pedagogy.

References

American Educational Research Journal

Ashby Bey, J. (2007). An exploration of identity development and culturally relevant teaching practices among African American elementary pre service teachers in urban communities (Ph.D.). Available from ProQuest Dissertations & Theses Global. (304757886). Gay, Geneva. Culturally Responsive Teaching: Theory, Research, and Practice

David M. Burrows II and Md Jobair Bin Alam*

Engineering Investigation of Rainfall Pattern and its impact on the Harris County Embankments

Project Summary Highway embankments are one of the most crucial elements of the transportation infrastructure system in the United States. Therefore, keeping the integrity of the highway slopes is of utmost importance for the economic sustainability of the country. However, the variation of the environmental condition and the presence of unsuitable soil that constitutes many of the highway embankments often pose a serious threat to these infrastructures’ stability and cause property damages and casualties. Highway embankments constructed with unsuitable soil, especially expansive clayey soil is susceptible to reduction in the shear strength properties and eventually, cause the failure. Southern Texas (greater Houston region) has been experiencing multiple natural disasters and subsequent deterioration of the transportation infrastructures (e.g., pavement distress, slope failure, etc.). Among these, the variable rainfall pattern is one of the major causes of slope instability. Additionally, substantial heterogeneities of geological composition have been observed in this region. In the proposed study, we aim to study the rainfall characteristics of the southern part of Texas and develop the rainfall pattern for this region. The typical measurement of rainfall is executed by a rain gauge network, which is straightforward to estimate the surface precipitation and has significant spatial variation. To achieve greater resolution in rainfall measurement, this proposed research will incorporate weather radar networks. Furthermore, we aim to develop a geotechnical database containing information such as sub soil characteristics (e.g., physical, hydraulic, strength), slope geometrical configuration, and other pertinent information on highway slopes for this region to synthesize the hydro geotechnical analysis. This project is significant because it will benefit key stakeholders and other researchers to design and plan for new embankments in areas of critical climate conditions. Discussion The key results from the laboratory soil characterization and precipitation investigation are provided in the following figures.

Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering

Fig. 3 SWCC determined from collected samples Fig. 4 CU Triaxial Test Results Impact The results from this research are expected to address a few of the critical design considerations of embankments to the local stakeholders for future design and construction. References A.R. Estabragh, B. P. (2015). Laboratory investigation of the effect of cyclic wetting and drying on the behavior of an expansive soil. Soil and Foundations, 304 314. Alam, M. J. (2021). Investigation of the Impact of Rainfall Patterns on Highway Slope Instability. Tran SET. Alam, M. J. (n.d.). Highway Slope Stability. Chao Zhang, N. L. (2019). Unitary Definition of Matric Suction. Journal of Geotechnical and Geotechnical Engineering, Volume 145 Issue 2. Der Her Lee, M. H. L. H. Y. T. L. (2013). Slope management criteria for Alishan Highway based on database of heavy rainfall 107. 26

Fig. 1 Line Graph of Annual Rainfall

induced slope failures. Engineering Geology 162, 97

Fig. 2 Scatter Graph of Monthly Rainfall

A contest between benign users and the malicious attackers takes place for the hardware security which is both dynamic and influences economic factors for the service provider [13]. This occurs in an environment where both enter, leave, and migrate within the datacenter [4]. Beyond risk factors developed from observed behavior [6] and probabilistic methods, game theory’s utility evaluation axioms have sought to approach the economic aspects of this security contest [3]. However, no method has been found that provides scoring sufficient to balance profit and cost for an attack. This study examines the contest applying its parallels to a predator prey dynamic [14]. Methodology A predator prey model is a population growth rate relationship with parameters for environmental and participant characteristics which apply to themselves and how they interact. The model is described by the Lotka Voltara differential equations which may reach a steady state depending on these characteristics [15] and is applicable to adversarial contests [16]. This project seeks to implement the adversarial character of the hacker and benign user 27

Project Summary Cloud datacenters present a scalable and flexible computation resource for users in a range of working environments. Infrastructure, platforms, and software are available as a service for customers through tailored virtual machines (VMs). Security threats arise from virtual machines co resident on the same host, or physical machine (PM). Co residence has the capacity to amplify traditional networking threats and exists in this study as co tenancy of VMs on a rack or host and co location on processing elements [5]. This is so because co residence is a prerequisite for architecture exploitation in side channel attacks [6]. Such methods are capable of inferring information about other virtual machines through unintended emissions. Attacks can infer anything from web activity to cryptographic keys, depending on channel granularity [7].

Cloud Security Modeled as a Predation Game

Damon Alsup and Md Jobair Bin Alam* Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, College of Engineering

attack or escape [17].

Cycles reflecting the similarity between animal and virtual machine phases. Results Preliminary results show an agreement to the oscillations in population that the Lotka Voltarra predicts. See Figure 2a. This is in accord with the system of growth rate in two competing populations defined by:

Figure 1: a. A Predator

co residency constrained by predator

prey interaction frequency and probability of successful

Prey model implemented in Java. Two species exist on a landscape. b.

dx/dt = a11x + a12xy (1) dy/dt = a21xy − a22y (2) where the parameters a11 and a22 represent species characteristics and a21 and a12 model the result of species interaction. After a period of adjustment for the reproduction and predation, a series of peaks and valleys form. See Figure 2b. Further evaluation for power, delay in computation, and latency are achievable through the data extracted. These show good agreement with the overall number of virtual machines in use. See Figure 2b. 28

a. b.

Figure 2: a. Risk of predation/hacking within the data center over time. b. Cost in delay due to predation/hacking in the data center while users seek to recover. References

This study seeks to quantify risks and costs to cloud operators by extending game theory security models [3] [4] to predation game models. This effort has produced evaluations for risk and completion delay as it relates to the population of users. See Figures 3a and 3b. Evaluating the economic model in its ecological terms will provide feedback to determine system sustainability.

Figure 2: a. Fluctuation in predator and prey populations predicted by the Lotka Voltarra equations. b. Population of predator and prey representing cloud users/hackers in simulation. Significance

[1] M. Armbrust, A. Fox, R. Griffith, A. D. Joseph, K. R. H, A. Konwinski, G. Lee, D. A. Patterson, A. Rabkin, I. Stoica et al., “Above the clouds: A berkeley view of cloud computing,” UC Berkeley Reliable Adaptive Distributed Systems Laboratory, Tech. Rep., 2009. [2] T. Ristenpart, E. Tromer, H. Shacham, and S. Savage, “Hey, you, get off of my cloud: exploring information leakage in third party compute clouds,” pp. 199 212, 2009.

Z. Xu, H. Wang, and Z. Wu, “A measurement study on co residence threat inside the cloud,” in Proceedings of the 24th USENIX Security Symposium, August 2015. [7] T. Zhang, Y. Zhang, and R. B. Lee, “CloudRadar: A real time side channel attack detection system in clouds,” in Research in Attacks, Intrusions, and Defenses. Springer International Publishing, 2016, pp. 118 140. [Online]. Available: https: //doi.org/10.1007%2F978 3 319 45719 2 6 [8] Y. Zhang, A. Juels, A. Oprea, and M. K. Reiter, “Homealone: Co residency detection in the cloud via side channel analysis,” in Security and Privacy (SP), 2011 IEEE Symposium on. IEEE, 2011, pp. 313 328. [9] M. Stillwell, D. Schanzenbach, F. Vivien, and H. Casanova, “Resource allocation algorithms for virtualized service hosting platforms,” Journal of Parallel and Distributed Computing, vol. 70, no. 9, pp. 962 974, 2010. [10] M. B. Gawali and S. K. Shinde, “Task scheduling and resource allocation in cloud computing using a heuristic approach,” Journal of Cloud Computing, vol. 7, no. 1, p. 4, 2018. 30

[3] M. M. Hasan and M. A. Rahman, “Protection by detection: A signaling game approach to mitigate co resident attacks in cloud,” in 2017 IEEE 10th International Conference on Cloud Computing (CLOUD), 2017, pp. 552 559.

Forensics and Security, vol. 11, no. 3, pp. 556 570, 2015. [5] S. Jaydip, “Security and privacy issues in cloud computing,” pp. 1 42, 2013. [6]

[4] Y. Han, T. Alpcan, J. Chan, C. Leckie, and B. I. Rubinstein, “A game theoretical approach to defend against co resident attacks in cloud computing: Preventing co residence using semi supervised learning,” IEEE Transactions on information

“Chapter 10: Vn 10.1 a predator prey simulation,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v= F7KtfGELZsM, October 2014. [19] A. Storhaug, “Predator prey simulator,” https://github.com/andstor/ predator prey simulator, March 2019. [20]

[13] D. Tank, A. Aggarwal, and N. Chaubey, “Virtualization vulnerabilities, security issues, and solutions: a critical study and comparison,” International Journal of Information Technology, 02 2019. [14] N. Serra, “Utility functions and lotka

[11] K. D. Patel and T. M. Bhalodia, “An efficient dynamic load balancing algorithm for virtual machine in cloud computing,” in Proceedings of the International Conference on Intelligent Computing and Control Systems, 2019, pp. 145 146.

the predator prey game theoretic environ ment to army tactical edge scenarios w computational multiagent systems,” August 2018. [17] C. Cooper, A. Frieze, and T. Radzik, “Multiple random walks in random regular graphs,” 2010. [18]

volterra model: A possible connection in predator prey game,” Journal of Game Theory, vol. 3, pp. 31 34, 2014.

H. K., E. T.H.G., O. Jones, S. G. R, and B. Y.M., “Animal life history is shaped by the pace of life and the distribution of age specific mortality and reproduction.” Nat Ecol Evol., vol. 3, no. 8, pp. 1217 1224, 2019. [21] R. U. Ayres, “On the life cycle metaphor: where ecology and economics diverge,” Ecological Economics, vol. 48, no. 4, pp. 425 438, 2004. [22] J. Wellington, “Lectures of ecology, biology 4468,” https://uh.edu/ biolcz/class/eco4468/ lect13.htm.

D. E. Asher, E. Saroukian, and B. S. L, “Adapting

[15] S. Chen and S. Bao, “A game theory based predation behavior model,” 2009. [16]

[12] S. Wang, X. Zhou, M. Shang, and X. Shi, “Coordinated power and performance efficient virtual machines scheduling in the cloud,” in The 10th International Conference on Communications, Circuits and Systems, 2019.

R. N. Calheiros, R. Ranjan, A. Beloglazov, C. A. F. De Rose, and R. Buyya, “Cloudsim: A toolkit for modeling and simulation of cloud computing environments and evaluation of resource provisioning algorithms,” Software

[23]

P. Humane and J. Prof. Varshapriya, “Simulation of cloud infrastructure using cloudsim sim ulator: A practical approach for researchers,” May 2015, pp. 207 211. 32

[24]

Practice and Experience, vol. 41, pp. 23 50, August 2011.

Project Summary

like robot which can scout for damage inside pipelines maintained by the Bechtel Corporation the largest construction company in the United States. The main goal of the project is to minimize the risks to workers’ safety by deploying an Unmanned Aerial Vehicle (UAV) to inaccessible places which are frequently found in the Oil & Gas Industry such as confined pipelines. The autonomous UAV can fly through a series of pipelines to identify corrosion or debris. The developed UAV will be able to send a signal to its operations to determine the exact location of the problem in the line and generate a 3D map of the flight path. We used the Light Detection and Ranging (LIDAR) technology to map the surrounding environment as the UAV flies through the environment. The feedback from the LIDAR sensors are used for real time autonomous navigation and obstacle avoidance. The route is also logged for subsequent navigation. As the UAV navigates the pipes, it records a video of all it sees which can then be replayed by the maintenance engineers.

Constructing 3D Maps for Dynamic Environments using Autonomous UAVs and LIDAR Technology Olumide Abel, Adeoluwa Akinwa and Ahmed Ahmed* Department of Computer Science, College of Engineering

Discussion The key results from the laboratory soil characterization and precipitation investigation are provided in the following figures.

Our approach involves running a simulation using the Robotics Operating System (ROS) to assert and fine tune our algorithms before applying them directly to the hardware. At this stage, we have successfully implemented the autonomous navigation using LIDAR scanners in the ROS simulation environment. We also implemented an algorithm to manage the battery life of the UAV though which the UAV can use to return home when the battery level drops down to a certain percentage.

In this project, we present the design and implementation of a drone

The significance of the simulation result is that we are more confident of replicating this in hardware. After testing the UAV in our research lab, we will carry out a series of experiments at Bechtel’s premises.

Der Her Lee, M. H. L. H. Y. T. L. (2013). Slope management criteria for Alishan Highway based on database of heavy rainfall induced slope failures. Engineering Geology 162, 97 107. Camera Feed, 2D and 3D Maps in Rviz Simulation of a confined Space in Gazebo 34

Impact The results from this research are expected to address a few of the critical design considerations of embankments to the local stakeholders for future design and construction. References A.R. Estabragh, B. P. (2015). Laboratory investigation of the effect of cyclic wetting and drying on the behavior of an expansive soil. Soil and Foundations, 304 314. Alam, M. J. (2021). Investigation of the Impact of Rainfall Patterns on Highway Slope Instability. Tran SET. Alam, M. J. (n.d.). Highway Slope Stability. Chao Zhang, N. L. (2019). Unitary Definition of Matric Suction. Journal of Geotechnical and Geotechnical Engineering, Volume 145 Issue 2.

Elizabeth Osadare and Emmanuel Dada Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering

Non Catalytic Process of Converting

Plastic production has become the largest contributor of waste generation because of the extensive periods of degradation of plastic molecules due to its complexity and heterogeneous nature.[4] Polyethylene (PE) is the most commonly used plastics products by consumers across the globe because of its enormous domestic and industrial applications. Hence, plastic production rate will continue to grow as well as the waste generation. Many companies have showcased commitment to recycling of plastic wastes into reusable plastic materials through mechanical recycling methods. Notable limitations with this method negates the benefits and so could not adequately tackle the global environmental challenges emanating from plastic waste accumulation. Since there are different types of plastics which are determined by their recycling codes, only selected few are recyclable, the non recyclable plastic wastes are often disposed of as garbage which ends up in landfills and in the ocean. The EPA reported that only about 9.1% of plastic wastes were recycled in 2019 meanwhile the annual production rate increased.

[2] Some corporate entities, small to medium enterprises (SMEs) and some research institutes are now actively participating in plastic pyrolysis. The major global plastic pyrolysis players are the Americas (45%), EMEA (32%) and the Asia Pacific (23%). This research focuses on the greener approach to converting plastic wastes into low viscosity lubricating oil. The main objective is to process mixed plastic wastes into generating high grade low viscosity oil lubricants. This technique has the potential for utilizing non recyclable plastics and mixed plastic wastes, thus beneficial to mitigating the global ever increasing stream of waste plastic pollutions in the environment. Discussion This process uses non catalytic, thermal pyrolysis process at atmospheric pressure in the absence of oxygen to depolymerize the high molecular weight polyethylene (plastic wastes) molecules into a range of lower molecular weight hydrocarbon molecules.

Project Summary

[1] The process starts with washing and shredding of the plastic wastes followed by preheating and slow pyrolysis process at 370oC to obtain the desired products. The pyrolyzed oils product obtained are 35

Waste Plastics into Low Viscosity Oil Lubricants

• The low viscosity lubricating oils is generally beneficial for reducing engine friction and thereby improving fuel economy.

[4] Sustainable end of life solution to plastic waste and environmental issues remains a strong debate that needs close attention. Significance

• This technique is also suitable for any mixed plastics and does not require high degree of sorting unlike the conventional mechanical recycling methods.

ray (CXR) and computed tomography (CT) can provide useful information to clinical staff for facilitating a diagnosis of COVID 19 in a more efficient and comprehensive manner [1]. As a breakthrough of artificial intelligence (AI), deep learning (DL) has been applied to perform COVID 19 infection region segmentation and disease classification by analyzing CXR and CT data. This project focused on developing mobile COVID 19 detector on CXR images by image segmentation. During this process, we realized that it seems 36

further hydro isomerized and fractionated to generate the desired high quality, low pour point oils of unconventional lube base oil. The products yield as determined by the reaction temperature and long residence times is high quality low viscosity oil lubricants.[2, 4] The kinematic viscosity and density of the product shows that the lubricating oils produced from plastic wastes is relatively similar to that of motor oils and other bio lubricants.[4] The coefficient of friction of the product compared with that of motor oils and bio lubricants indicates that the friction behavior of the lubricating oils produced from plastic wastes is similar and even better in some cases.

• This techniques has the potential to recycle huge portion of ever increasing stream of waste plastics thereby mitigating global plastic waste pollutions.

CoV 2) causes coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID 19). Imaging tests such as chest X

• Optimization of plastic waste conversion into lubricant base oil relies on having large liquid products and minimizing the solid waste Development of Mobile COVID 19 Detector on Chest X ray Images Lucy Nwosu and Xishuang Dong* Electrical and Computer Engineering Department, College of Engineering Introduction Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS

19 applications, applying uncertain predictions to clinical processes would result in disastrous consequences such as missing serious COVID cases or delayed treatments.

We show an example of prediction visualization on semantic segmentation generated by the baselines and proposed models in Figure 1. It is observed that the baselines missed some key components for detecting region of interests (ROIs) that are related to COVID. Taking UNet as an example, through comparing the predictions with ground truth, three key components circled are missed on subfigure (g). On the contrary, ensemble models such as MV, ECE, and MVEM perform better in that regard of predictions since they only miss one or two smaller components for detecting ROIs, where the proposed method including ECE and MVEM outperform other baselines. It means that the proposed method can effectively improve recall on detecting ROIs by distributing contributions of prediction based on calibration errors such as ECE and MCE. 37

Discussion To overcome this challenge, this project has developed a novel ensemble deep learning model that integrates bagging deep learning and model calibration to enhance performance of semantic segmentation, as well as reduce prediction uncertainty [3]. It includes three stages: 1) training multiple state of the art DL models; 2) Calculating calibration errors to measure prediction uncertainties of these DL models on validation CXR datasets, where expected calibration error (ECE) and maximum calibration error (MCE) [4] are employed to estimate the prediction uncertainties; 3)

to not be comprehensively investigated on prediction uncertainty of deep learning models for the image segmentation since many DL models focus on performance improvement on this task. However, for safety critical applications like medical image processing, the prediction uncertainty of DL models is a key evaluation metric on reliability of model predictions, where high prediction uncertainty means low prediction reliability. For example, for COVID

Appling weighted voting of predictions on testing CXR datasets generated by these DL models to implement calibrated bagging deep learning, where the weight of each DL model is inversely proportional to the calibration error;

ray images will advance various fields including big data analytics, artificial intelligence, and medical image processing, which significantly meets with the research priorities of the university and improves the diagnosis efficiency of COVID 19. Moreover, it could be beneficial to other disease diagnosis, like tumor identification, where these disea ses would require imaging test as complimentary diagnosis information. Finally, these research activities have provided this rare opportunity to train graduate students in biomedical imaging analytics. 38

Figure 1. An example of prediction visualization on semantic segmentation generated by the baselines and proposed models. F32_R50 and F32_M denotes FCN32 ResNet50 and FCN32 MobileNet while MV, ECE, and MVEM denotes Ensemble (Majority Voting (MV)), Ensemble (Weighted Voting (ECE)), and Ensemble (Majority Voting + ECE + MCE (MVEM)). Significance Image segmentation on chest X

19 xray image segmentation by modified whale optimization algorithm with population reduction,” Computers in Biology and Medicine, vol. 139, p.104984, 2021

[3] Lucy Nwosu, Xiangfang Li, Lijun Qian, Seungchan Kim, Xishuang Dong. “Calibrated Bagging Deep Learning for Image Semantic Segmentation: A Case Study on COVID 19 Chest X ray Image”, to be submitted to PLOS ONE. 2022

References [1] X. Wang, X. Song, Y. Guan, B. Li, and J. Han, “Comprehensive named entity recognition on cord 19 with distant or weak supervision,” arXiv preprint arXiv:2003.12218, 2020.

[4] C. Guo, G. Pleiss, Y. Sun, and K. Q. Weinberger, “On calibration of modern neural networks,” in International Conference on Machine Learning. PMLR, 2017, pp. 1321 1330. 39

[2] S. Chakraborty, A. K. Saha, S. Nama, and S. Debnath, “Covid

The total global natural based composite materials market is expected to grow in the next few decades, efforts must be carried out to find new uses for natural fibers or fabric resource wastes, including its utilization as reinforcement in polymer composites. Discussion Three research tasks were identified in correspondence with the research objectives to achieve the research goal: Task 1: Thermal pressing of woven jute fiber reinforced composites through fiber sandwiched by thermoplastic polymer sheets and process optimization. 40

There has been a considerable increase in composite materials usage over the past 30 years since they have become lighter, stronger, and more stable. Traditional fiber reinforced composites are made from high strength reinforcements such as carbon or glass fibers combined with thermoplastic or thermoset polymers as the matrix. These materials are not environmentally friendly at the end of their service life due to difficulties in the recyclability and decomposition of individual constituents. The utilization of bast fibers from plants as rei nforcements is one possible option to make composite material use more sustainable.

Modulus and density than E glass reinforced composites. The density of a material is a key consideration in lower weight material applications which can reduce costs in real applications, therefore, applications for natural fiber composites could be a good replacement to glass fiber composites [6]. Natural based composites have increased and are gaining preference over glass fiber and carbon fiber, having in view that the natural based composites excel in most parameters except strength.

5] and have comparable mechanical properties to E glass, while their densities (hemp fiber = 1.5 g/cm³, flax = 1.4 g/cm³, jute = 1.46 g/cm³) are generally lower than that of E glass (2.55 g/cm³). Hence, their properties like specific modulus sometimes achieve a better ratio between E

Manufacturing of Polymer Biocomposite Parts Reinforced by Woven Bast Fibers through

Bast fibers are plant fibers collected from the outer bark or bast surrounding the inner woody stem of certain dicotyledonous plants [1] such as flax, industrial hemp, kenaf, sisal, etc. Such fibers are stronger compared to other natural fibers [2

Introduction

Upgraded Compression Molding Processes

Sazidur Shahriar and Lai Jiang* Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

This is a comprehensive project that utilizes the upgraded compression molding process in making woven bast fiber reinforced composite parts. One graduate student has been funded by this award since Spring 2022. The research work done from this Faculty RISE project has been served as the preliminary study of a more detailed research proposal that was submitted to the NSF HBCU EiR Program. References

The team has tested making woven jute fiber reinforced composites with two thin acrylic sheets through a thermal pressing process (can be considered as a compression molding process with a flat mold). Two 5" × 7" acrylic sheets with 0.04" thickness (shown in Fig. 1a) were used to infuse a piece of plain woven jute fabric (fiber thread density = 13 threads/in., avg. area density = 1.11 oz/ft2 , avg. thickness = 0.0028 in.) that is slightly larger (shown in Fig. 1b). The sandwiched plies were then sandwiched by two pieces of Teflon PTFE film and thermally pressed on a Carver hydraulic thermal press at 320ºF under 5000 lbf for 10 min. After being removed from the press and cooled down, the sheet polymer was observed molten and infused into the woven fiber reinforcement (shown in Fig. 1c), with no air bubbles seen from naked eyes. The tensile properties of the polymer were significantly strengthened from 4,400 psi to over 5,250 psi by the woven reinforcement fabric. Due to the late start of the project in Spring 2022, the following two research tasks are still to be carried out during Summer 2022: Task 2: Manufacturing of pre infused bast fiber prepregs infused with thermoset polymer resins, followed by thermal pressing and process optimization.

Figure 1: Thermal pressing using jute woven fiber reinforcement sandwiched by two thin acrylic sheets.

(a) Two 1 mm acrylic sheets, (b) woven jute fiber sandwiched by two acrylic sheets, (c) finished part 41

Task 3: Upgraded compression molding process using woven bast fibers sandwiched by polymer sheets and bast fiber prepregs. Significance

Britannica, 1998, "Bast fibre," from https://www.britannica.com/technology/bast fiber

[6] Todor, M. P., Bulei, C., Kiss, I., and Cioata, V. G., 2019, “Recycling of textile wastes into textile composites based on natural fibres: the reinforcement type and the architecture,” Conf. Ser.: Mater. Sci. Eng., 477, p. 012055.

[3] Pickering, K. L., Efendy, M. G. A. and Le, T. M., 2016, “A review of recent developments in natural fibre composites and their mechanical performance,” Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 83, pp. 98 112.

[1] Encyclopedia

[4] Tan, B. K., Ching, Y. C., Poh, S. C., Abdullah, L. C. and Gan, S. N., 2015, “A review of natural fiber reinforced poly (vinyl alcohol) based composites: Application and opportunity,” Polymers, 7(11), pp. 2205 2222.

[2] Gurunathan, T., Mohanty, S. and Nayak, S. K., 2015, “A review of the recent developments in biocomposites based on natural fibres and their application perspectives,” Composites Part A: Applied Science and Manufacturing, 77, pp. 1 25.

[5] Mochane, M. J., Mokhena, T. C., Mokhothu, T. H., Mtibe, A., Sadiku, E. R., Ray, S. S., Ibrahim, I. D. and Daramola, O. O., 2019, “Recent progress on natural fiber hybrid composites for advanced applications: a review,” eXPRESS Polymer Letters, 13(2), pp. 159 198.

Thermodynamics and the Origin of Life

This project combines research primarily through literature study in two lines of study with development of teaching strategies and materials with the goal of leading students at the undergraduate and graduate levels to understand the origin of life through the lens of thermodynamics principles. The two lines of study follow (1) the history of the cosmos from its beginning to the origin of life event and through present day and (2) thermodynamic principles going beyond the concepts traditionally taught in typical science and engineering programs. The work entails academic enquiry on the part of undergraduate research

Thermodynamics is an area of engineering science with wide ranging applicability and power to provide insight to real life situations and analytical capacity for solving problems of contemporary importance, such as climate change and solutions thereunto. Yet, there remain unanswered questions about the nature of life, how it began, and its future trajectory. We are to leveraging the tool of thermodynamics to address some of the crucial questions, with the goal of developing an effective strategy for teaching the next and future generations of engineers and scientists to comprehend enough about thermodynamics to think more clearly about life on the planet going forward. Methodology

Jose Adjibi, Doron Montgomery, and Irvin W. Osborne Lee* Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering

The question of how life began is as elusive as it is interesting. It is clear that planet Earth is a living thing, being a habitat for a complex ecosystem with many and diverse constituents (Kleidon1). Much work has been done considering the chemical components necessary for life to begin and where those components originated (Ehrenfreund2) as well as the conditions needed for an origin of life event to occur. Yet an application of the 1st and 2nd Laws of Thermodynamics cannot account for the occurrence of life and, in fact, would seem to argue against it. This study explores the most recently emerged principles of thermodynamics, such as the Maximum Entropy Production Principle (Lineweaver3) and Thermodynamic Inversion (Kompanichenko4) and applies these to explain and describe the sequence of events of the origin of life on this planet The ultimate goal of this work is to develop a narrative with accompanying illustrative support materials for effective instruction of the life processes, including emergence as well as its evolutionary trajectory

assistants as well as 43

Introduction

Discussion Throughout the fall 2021 and spring 2022 semesters, we met regularly as a 3 member team: graduate researcher, undergraduate researcher, and faculty mentor. We each engaged in searching the literature and studying and reviewing the relevant articles that we uncovered. During our meetings we discussed and exchanged ideas based on what we had found. Highlights of our findings are summarized below.

Goal 1: Understanding the cosmic timeline, toward developing a teaching strategy for learning cosmic history leading up to and since the origin of life event. Key references were found to be useful for laying out the sequence of events. Some are listed here with comments on their value.

National Geographic, Origins of the Universe 101, 6

minute video last accessed 5/24/2022 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HdPzOWlLrbE. This is valuable as the core of an initial discussion about the origin of the universe and grand sequence of events, and sets the stage for questions about the origin life.

graduate research assistants led by a faculty research mentor. Work products will include conference presentations, publications, and course curriculum materials including syllabi, lesson plans, and teaching modules such as screen casts.

• National Geographic, The Whole History of the Earth and Life, 1 hour video last accessed 5/24/2022 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NQ4CUw9RcuA. This is documentary is a thorough account of events with excellent visualization to illustrate concepts. It will need to be divided into 5

minute video last accessed 5/24/2022 at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oGKX3kFdZBU. Gives explanation with illustrations and demonstrations of how stars and planets form and how our planet came to develop life.

• Naked Science Series: Birth of the Earth, 50

8 minute nuggets of informations, according to the brain science of learning.

•

Goal 4: Develop curricula (one course or a two course sequence) for instruction at the undergraduate level and also at the graduate level for teaching thermodynamics in the context of the origin of life question. Some progress was made toward this goal as we have a general outline for a proposed syllabus. Impact Significant understanding has been advanced and a strong set of references have been developed, with some tools developed, including some lectures and a general course outline. A poster was presented at Research Innovation Week and a manuscript is. 45

Goal 3: Understanding the laws of thermodynamics, We extending the concept set from 1st Law and 2nd Law include irreversible thermodynamics, with consideration of the principle of maximum entropy production (MEPP), with a look at the proposed 4th Law by Jorgensen as future work. We looked at the thermodynamic inversion with a different eye than Kompanichenko, incorporating his consideration of the balance between the growth of information to that of entropy, but refining the explanation of the concept ac counting for the relationship between information and entropy and incorporating the dependency of free energy on both entropy and enthalpy. The latter should aid in understanding the conditions for spontaneity of processes such as those leading to transformation from an abiotic system to a biotic (living) one.

Goal 2: Understanding the origin of life event. We considered the thermodynamic inversion theory of Kompanichenko, and the theory on dissipative structures driven by UV spectrum of sunlight by Michaelian,, RNA World theories, and others, how to frame the discussion to generate possible explanations for the origin of life event. Article reviews were written and PowerPoint presentations were created. Doron produced a presentation supporting a lecture on the role or UVC in the appearance of RNA on early Earth. Jose produced article reviews and presentations on subjects including the thermodynamic inversion theory of Kompanichenko.

To achieve the research goal, we are applying structural optimization, specifically topology optimization, to the upper tong weldment of the Canrig TM100 iron roughneck. The selected part will be optimized using the commercially available software Ansys Workbench 2021R2. Methods

The last few decades have seen an increase in the number of Computer

Aided Engineering (CAE) commercial packages available to conduct finite elements analysis (FEA) and optimization in the diverse engineering fields. In this work, the simulation and optimization of the selected part are performed in Ansys® Workbench version 2021R2. ANSYS® Workbench is a user friendly platform designed to seamlessly integrate the ANSYS suite of advanced engineering simulation technology [3].

The objective of this research is to optimize the structure of an iron roughneck, one of the most important equipment involved in the process of drilling for oil and gas. We are specifically aiming to the reduction of the weight of the equipment without affecting its functioning and reliability of it. The initial target is a component of the torque mechanism of the wrench, a critical subassembly consisting of heavy weldments that rotate to transmit the torque needed to connect and disconnect drilling pipes.

Topology optimization finds the best size, shape, and location of the material in the domain of the part analyzed so that the final structure performs optimally for a given objective function and design constraints.

Topology optimization (TO) is a relatively new but rapidly expanding research field [1]. Since its introduction in the seminal paper by Bendsøe and Kikuchi in 1988, topology optimization has undergone tremendous development [2].

Structural Performance Enhancement of Equipment Used In the Oil Industry: Application to the Structure of an Iron Roughneck Marnolin Querol and Jaejong Park* Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction

It recently introduced topology optimization as a feature, integrating its solver and pre and post processing tools. With the newly acquired knowledge, we were able to optimize the part using the density based method, one of the topology optimization methods. A sample of the work done is shown in Figure 1. a. b. c. Figure 1. Upper Tong weldment. a. boundary conditions b. FEA result equivalent stresses c.Topology optimized structure. Summary Now that we have learned the topology optimization method in Ansys Workbench and obtained the optimized geometry, the plan is to numerically and experimentally validate the results. As part of it, the structural performance of the optimized geometry is studied. Post processing is needed before the validation to smooth the geometry and eliminate the roughness. References 1. G. I. N. Rozvany, “A Critical Review of Established Methods of structural Topology Optimization,” in WCSMO 7, Seoul, 2007. 2. O. Sigmund and K. Maute, “Topology optimization approaches A comparative review,” Springer Verlag , Berlin, 2013. 3. X. Chen and Y. Liu, Finite Element Modeling and Simulation with ANSYS Workbench, Boca Raton, FL: Taylor & Francis Group, 2015.

Discussion During this time, I have learned Ansys Workbench and its mechanical software module. It allows solving complex structural engineering problems, customizing and parameterizing them to analyze different design scenarios.

Carl Upchurch and Xiaobo Peng* Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Using Finite Element Analysis

Introduction Finite element analysis methods (FEA) are valuable tools in predicting the behavior of the forging process before needing to perform expensive production trials. FEA methods significantly reduces the overall cost of process development while simultaneously allowing educated decisions to be made with a more robust understanding of the process. The work presented in this paper is the demonstration of FEA analysis tools to troubleshoot and optimize a problematic forging process of large diameter bolt with hard to form material. Discussion The part used for testing is a 1.375” hex flange bolt made from UNS N07718. The forging is performed as a single blow hot forged process. Post processing inspection rejected the part for defects observed at the base of the bolt hex. Finite element analysis tool was used to determine the root cause. A series of alternative solutions have been proposed. FEA tool DEFORM was used to evaluate the alternative solutions to determine an optimal solution.

Three variables were identified to minimize the deformation during the forging process. The first variable is to shorten the length of the upper portion of the billet from 1.750’’ to 1.375’’. The next change is to alter the billet angle from the original tapered angle 11°to 25°. The last change is altering the dimensions of the die to more closely match the final part. A 25° angle is added on the die instead of squaring off the corner of the die.

The FEA analyses were performed to find the difference between the stress above the fold point and below the fold point; designated as

Optimization of Design Parameters for Large Diameter N07718 Hex Bolts in Hot Forging

σ(Fold up) andσ(Fold down), respectively. Table 1 presents the σ(Fold up) and σ(Fold down) data for all 8 trails. All trials were evaluated with the material fold criteria in consideration.

Figure 1. (a) Qualitative stress band at fold in all 8 trials; (b) Liquid penetrant testing of DOE 6 sample It is concluded that DOE 6 was successful and passed all testing requirements. This trial included the changes to the die angle and upper billet length. The billet angle is the same the 50

Table 1. Ranked testing data with material fold

The trials were ranked first by whether or not a material fold exists and then the strain value. The objective is to remove the chance of folds creating rejectable criteria then minimize strain to reduce a compressive fracture. Figure 1 shows the details of the stresses in the folding region in all 8 trials. The qualitative analysis shows bands of high stress

(b)

at the same location of the folding point on DOEs 3, 4, 7, and 8. Figure 1 shows the details of the stresses in the folding region in all 8 trials. The qualitative analysis shows bands of high stress at the same location of the folding point on DOEs 3, 4, 7, and 8. As shown in Table 1, DOE 6 was ranked as no. 1. DOE 6 configuration was then used in the forging trial. The liquid penetrant testing was performed. As shown in Fig. 2, no indications of cracking or material fold was observed in the penetrant testing.

3D FEM,” Engineering Solid Mechanics, 8(1). Lee, H. C., Saroosh, M. A., Im, Y. T., Kim, H. S., Son, I. H., and Lee, D. L., 2008, “Two Dimensional Finite Element Approximation of the Hexagonal Bolt Forming Process,” Journal of Materials Processing Technology, 201(1 3). 51

AIP Conference Proceedings. Obiko, J., Mwema, F., and Akinlabi, E. T., 2020, “Strain Rate Strain/Stress Relationship during Isothermal Forging: A Deform

References (3 to 5) Maarefdoust, M. and Kadkhodayan, M., 2010, “Simulation and Analysis of Hot Forging Process for Industrial Locking Gear Elevators,”

original configuration. The effective strain was reduced from 4.4 to 3.6, a 20% decrease in the strain as a measurement of the original value. The strain reduction reduces the likelihood of compressive fracture occurring at the hex base as occurred in the original problem. Reducing the upper billet length had a positive effect on the overall forging process. By changing the height, the die was able to engage with the base of the billet and transfer the deformation into the base of the billet more quickly. Changing the die angle was the most effective method of reducing the forging strain. Die angle is directly related to the volume reduction of material in the die. Reduction of the overall material that needs to be deformed will reduce strain. Significance Developing new forging processes is an expensive undertaking. Significant amounts of capital and time can be spent producing tooling and trial runs that may or may not yield successful results once implemented. FEA methods significantly reduces the overall cost of process development while simultaneously allowing educated decisions to be made with a more robust understanding of the process.

Binder excipients used in pharmaceuticals are inactive ingredients that play a big role in drug formulations, and drug delivery systems. Binders are crucial to the stability of the tablet, and tablet characteristics. Fully synthetic excipients, such as polyvinylpyrrolidone, are commonly used due to great formulation traits; however, these materials may have slow dissolution rate, reduced bioavailability, or the potential to cause allergic reactions. Poorly soluble drugs can also have bioavailability effecting the delivery of the pharmaceutical active ingredient (API), lowering the effectiveness of the drug (Amiri). This is also true for more recent tablet formulations including ibuprofen and similar drugs due to the molecules of synthetic excipient becoming more complex. Due to these limitations, natural excipients would be a great alternative due to their biocompatibility and faster dissolution rate.

dissolution, but crystalline forms has a better long term stability, and less issues with phase transformations (Chaturvedi). The focus of this report is to show the physical characteristics of using natural excipients on API paracetamol. Discussion Matrix tablets containing a single excipient and API was used in order to characterize a single excipients interaction. Tablets were created using a wet granulation method, which involves the excipient being added to the dry powder AI paracetamol (APAP) via liquid solution. The liquid solution is made of a known amount of excipient along with deionized water, where the precent saturation or water absorption capacity (WAC) of the excipient is used to label the granules. Once dried, the tablets would be placed into the Agilent Reciprocation Cylinder Apparatus to perform dissolution in a solution with a pH of 7.0 at 37.0°C. Samples are removed at the following time intervals: 5, 10, 15, 30, 45, and 60 minutes. Samples are then analyzed using a UV 1280 Spectrophotometer to measure the concentration of APAP that dissolved into the solution. The 52

Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering Introduction

Nigel Brooks Jr., and Sheena M. Reeves*

Natural polysaccharides and sugars can be applied to solid dosage forms and are highly biocompatible making them non toxic and stable (Shirwaikar). It is also important that the excipients improve the crystal structure of API to improve drug dissolution. Improving the amorphous form of a drug can improve

Characterization of Single Excipient Tablet Matrix of Paracetamol Tablets from Natural Excipients

tablets are also characterized by XRD, FTIR, and DSC using the, Shimadzu XRD 7000, Agilent Cary 630 FTIR, and Mettler Toledo DCS

Figure 1: Cumulative Drug Release vs. Time of 5GG (Grey), 10GG (Orange), 15GG (Blue)

3 respectively. The dissolution of guar gum (GG) was measured at the following WAC percentages of 5, 10 and 15% (5GG, 10GG, and 15GG respectively) shown in figure 1. The data suggest that changing the concentration of GG affects the dissolution characteristics of the drug. 10GG and 15GG shows similar characteristics, while 5GG’s drug release reaches 100% dissolution at the 10 minute mark. XRD study shows the effect of guar gum on APAP through the wet granulation process, resulting in a modified crystal structure. Figure 2 shows two graphs between 10 and 20, and 20 to 30 degrees respectively comparing pure APAP and 15GG in powder forms. Multiple peaks show a decrease in intensity, and very slight shifts, signifying that the APAP crystals are in an improved orientation for dissolution. Crystallinity calculations were also done using the XRD software showing an increase percentage of crystallinity in GG tablets compared to pure APAP shown in table 1 resulting from the wet granulation method. DSC data show that the thermodynamic properties of pure APAP and GG samples slightly differ but more comparisons and testing is needed. FTIR test also display a change in physical properties between GG tablets and APAP, although more analysis is also needed to see what it says about the physical structure.

Significance The results show the characteristics of guar gum tablets produced through wet granulation. The dissolution of GG tablets displays controlled release between the first 10 minutes of 5GG and 45 minutes for 10GG and 15GG. XRD shows how guar gum as an excipient interacts with APAP through wet granulation, resulting in improving the crystal structure for dissolution, and increasing the crystallinity of powder APAP. Future research includes increased analysis of guar gum, as well as other natural excipients through dissolution, XRD, FTIR, and DSC analysis.

References Amiri, M. etal. "Plant Based Gums and Mucilages Applications in Pharmacology and Nanomedicine: A Review." Molecules (March 22, 2021). Chaturvedi, K. et al. "Contribution of Crystal Lattice Energy on the Dissolution Behavior of Eutectic Solid Dispersions." acsomega (April, 21, 2020): 9690 9701. Shirwaikar, A. et al. "Herbal Excipients in Novel Drug Delivery Systems." Indian Journal of Pharmaceutical Sciences (August 2008): 415 422. Sample APAP 5GG 10GG 15GG Crystallinty (%) 68.47 74.02 77.72 69.75 54

Figure 2: XRD scans comparing pure APAP (Red) and 15GG (Blue) at 10 20° (Left) and 20 30° (Right) Table 1: Crystallinity of APAP and GG Samples

Recent studies show electrospinning is used to fabricate scaffolds for biomedical applications because it generates high surface area submicron and nano size fibers. In tissue engineering, a porous scaffold is used to aid in cellular growth that is physically implanted onto a patient wound. Scaffold is a three dimension (3D) substrate that is made from a biodegradable or a bioresorbable material (polymer). Biodegradable polymers have a wide range in pharmaceutical, medical, and biomedical engineering applications

Daisaku Gicheha and Nabila Shamim* Department of Chemical Engineering, College of Engineering

Thermophysical properties of Poly (ɛ caprolactone) (PCL) and MgO Incorporated PCL nanofibers

2. In this project, a synthetic polymer (poly (� caprolactone)) PCL was selected for fabricating nanofibers. PCL is a favorable synthetic polyester that is used as drug delivery system (carrier) because of its biocompatibility, and hydrolysability in a human body4. A pure PCL biodegradation rate is very slow compared to a PCL blended with other polymers with a higher degradation rate, due to its high degree of crystallinity

4. The aim of this project is to study non isothermal crystallization of nanofibers by differential scanning calorimetry (DSC), and X ray diffraction (XRD). The chemical structure of the nanofibers are obtained using Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectroscopy. Discussion A 10wt% Poly (ɛ caprolactone 114.0 g mol 1) PCL, and MgO incorporated PCL nanofibers were fabricated at the University of Central Oklahoma, and then shipped to PVAMU for characterization. This experiment investigated the crystallization kinetics, and melting behavior of poly (ɛ caprolactone) and MgO incorporated

PCL nanofibers using DSC 3 from Mettler Toledo with oxygen and nitrogen purge. The experiment was conducted in series running concurrently at a scanning rate of 25℃ to 120℃ with cooling rate ranged between 0.5 30 K/min. The heating rate was kept constant at 10 K/min. FTIR from Thermo Scientific Nicolet iS5/ATR iD5, is used to identify the chemical bond, and organic content of nanofiber, and nanofiber composite. The 55

Introduction Nanofibers have attracted more awareness because of their large specific surface area, controllable pore structures, high surface to volume ratio, and light weight with small diameters, that makes them an exemplary use in applications such as tissue engineering, and functional materials1

1, and 1721.98cm 1. The bands of symmetric C O C stretching at 1171 cm 1, asymmetric C O C stretching at 1238 cm 1, and (C O and C C) stretching in the crystalline phase at 1293 cm 1 was observed. This is because when most molecular chains are oriented in a specific direction the infrared beam encounter a large number of C O C, C O and C C bond as a result higher absorbance intensities are observed. There is no aldehyde C H, no hydroxyl O H, and no N H. There is a weak absorption at 2865cm 1, and with a strong C=O absorption at 1720.71 cm

1, and 1721.98cm 1 From the results, the compound appears to be saturated because of no visible C=C stretch, and no unsaturated C H absorption above 3000cm 1. Overall higher absorbance intensities were observed for PCL nanofibers compared to

samples were analyzed using Attenuated Total Reflection (ATR) sampling technique in conjunction with infrared spectroscopy (IR), to be examine directly in the solid state without further preparation. XRD is used to determine the lattice geometries of the nanofibers molecules by using x rays. In Contact angle studies, the surface wettability is determined by measuring the material surface contact angle by placing a water droplet at room temperature onto the nanofibers. In thermal analysis, heating and cooling curves of PCL nanofiber, and MgO PCL nanofiber composite results are as shown in Fig 1. The heating thermograph showed that the melting peak at 60℃ for both PCL and MgO PCL nanofibers. Additionally, minimal change in melting temperature was observed as a function of cooling rate. The cooling thermograph is obtained in the non isothermal crystallization process at a cooling rate of 0.5 5 k/min. Thermal curves have distinct exothermic peaks attributed to the crystallization temperatures as a function of cooling rates. Experiments were also conducted at higher cooling rate of 10 30K/min however, no crystallization peaks were observed. For both PCL and MgO PCL, a 4 oC shift in crystallization temperature was observed as the cooling rate decreased. The FTIR results showed the absorbance

intensities of the two spectra were almost identical, which suggests that the infrared beam encountered almost the same number of characteristics. The spectrum shows a carbonyl absorption at 1720.71 cm

Fig. 1 DSC crystallization exotherm of PCL MgO nanofibers 56

MgO PCL nanofiber that suggests that the molecular chains are oriented along the axes of PCL nanofibers.

PCL nanofiber composite were investigated to analyze the crystal lattice of the materials. PCL nanofiber and MgO

The XRD analysis for PCL nanofibers and MgO

Reduction in the corresponding peak intensities and peak broadening were also observed in composite nanofibers compared to pristine PCL. The change in crystallinity using XRD indicates a change in chain mobility and might translate to higher mechanical properties. The contact angle (�) was measured by wetting both PCL and MgO PCL nanofibers by distilled water, and is dependent on the surface area. PCL and MgO PCL contact angles are 65�, and 79� respectively. The results shows that the fibers are hydrophobic and incorporating magnesium into the PCL nanofibers, does not change the hydrophobicity. Significance Wound healing has been a challenge in the medical field; however, skin tissue engineering has overcome the shortcomings of the traditional skin grafts as the new method for wound treatment. Mg and a number of its alloys are effective because they exhibit excellent in vivo biocompatibility, biodegradability, and during degradation, it releases Mg ions (Mg2+) with the potential to improve tissue repair. References 1. Lihua Lou, Odia Osemwegie, and Seshadri S. Ramkumar Functional Nanofibers and Their Applications. Ind. Eng. Chem. Res. 2020, 59, 13, 5439 5455. 2. Bikiaris, Dimitrios N., et al. “Miscibility and Enzymatic Degradation Studies of Poly (ε Caprolactone) /Poly (Propylene Succinate) Blends.”

3. L. Wang, W. Ma, R.A. Gross, S.P. McCarthy. “Reactive compatibilization of biodegradable blends of poly (lactic acid) and poly (� caprolactone)” Polym Degrad Stab, 59 (1998), p. 161. 57

PCL nanofibers shows characteristic crystalline peak of MgO at 2θ = 44.17° (200).

European Polymer Journal, vol. 43, no. 6, 2007, pp. 2491 2503.

PCL nanofiber composite shows (110) and (200) diffraction peaks at 21.2

o and 23.5o respectively which are associated with the well known orthorhombic crystal lattice of PCL. PCL nanofibers shows an additional peak at 44.1 and MgO

Preliminary designs for an apparatus for this work have been attempted using AUTOCAD through analysis of previous and current successful combustion projects. A concept of a preliminary apparatus is illustrated in Figure 1. Key features that can be observed are a combustion box, a collimating lens with a stand, a laser diode, and a combustion system. This apparatus is not a completely developed or accurate depiction of a full scale model needed for this study, but the diagram showcases major components of a standard setup. 58

Caleb Riggins and Yuhao Xu* Department of Mechanical Engineering, College of Engineering

Introduction

Developing Data Analysis Tools for Assessing Sooting Dynamics of Liquid Fuels

As a necessary component in combustion processes, sooting behavior has received much attention due to its close relationship with radiant heat transport and post flame particulate control [1]. The complexities of sooting analysis in spray combustors can be simplified by studying the combustion of individual droplets, which represent the fine grid structure of sprays. Droplet flame under microgravity facilitates soot analysis since it removes the convective effect to produce spherical symmetry and simplifies the transport phenomenon in the radial direction only. Therefore it provides an ideal condition for extended soot agglomerate observation [2]. This project aims to provide quantitative measurements for soot concentration inside a droplet flame by examining the soot volume fractions (SVF), which reflects the flame volume occupied by soot [3]. Discussion An extensive literature review was necessary to incorporate an appropriate demonstration of the experimental apparatus planned for this project’s development. Studies conducted previously described experiments performed at the 2.2 s microgravity facility at NASA Lewis Research Center using n heptane droplets burning in atmospheric pressure air [4]. The apparatus used in this experiment facilitates a basis of similarity of many droplet combustion research initiatives. Several hardware elements come into play in order to be able to produce, ignite and record the combustion process of a droplet in the International Space Station (ISS) as well as other droplet combustion based experiments. Main components include ignition hot wires, cameras, a collimator lens, a laser diode, and other supporting elements.

Figure 1: Preliminary apparatus design for droplet combustion emission observation. The future plan also includes developing a MATLAB code that allows for the interpretation of Soot Volume Fraction. Extractions of soot volume fraction will be obtained through images from n heptane combustion taken during the ISS experiments and interpreted through an open source program.

Significance In direct relation to Prairie View’s partnership and collaborative opportunities with NASA Glenn Research Center and Cornell University, this research will be significant with the concurrent construction of the new engineering building. The building will feature a new Center for combustion with a drop tower like the 2.2 s drop tower at NASA. The attempts to study and understand the combustion processes will be incorporated into future studies and findings once the building and drop tower are fully operational. The preliminary apparatus also allows for the examination of the cost effectiveness of the system. With many delicate components, the sustainability of equipment and proper safety protocol will be another vital focus. The current attempts help to provide pioneering efforts for the future students and efforts that will be introduced in the future.

References

[1] M. Choi, G.W. Mulholland, A. Hamins, T. Kashiwagi, Comparisons of the soot volume fraction using gravimetric and light extinction techniques, Combust. Flame 102 (1995) 161 169. [2] C.T. Avedisian, Developing Surrogates for Liquid Transportation Fuels: The Role of Spherically Symmetric Droplet Combustion, (2014). [3] S. Bard, P. Pagni, Spatial variation of soot volume fractions in pool fire diffusion flames, Fire Safety Science 1 (1986) 361 369. [4] K. O. Lee, The effects of sooting in droplet combustion under microgravity and normal gravity conditions, Ph.D., The University of Illinois at Chicago, 1997. 60

The fear of sexual victimization has strongly impacted legislation in the U.S. Many people believe that if they were aware of potential predators in their communities, they would be able to defend themselves and their families. To reduce sexual crimes and recidivism, the federal government passed a series of laws that compel individuals, including youth, who commit sexual violations to register publicly with a local law enforcement agency. Justice and mental health professionals play a key role in managing juvenile sex violators and in understanding the impacts of the present legislation on successful rehabilitation. Justice and mental health professionals are uniquely positioned to provide context and highlight the benefits and failures of registration policies for youth. The current study assessed professionals’ perceptions of the pros and cons of registration policies using a thematic analysis of open ended survey responses.

Justice and Mental Health Professionals’ Perspectives on the Pros and Cons of Sex Offense Registration of Youth: Findings from a Thematic Analysis

Discussion The data we have analyzed is part of a larger national survey administered via Qualtrics. This survey was given explicitly to criminal justice and mental health professionals who currently work directly with youth who have been adjudicated for sexual offenses. We employed a purposive snowball sampling approach to reach this population, sending recruitment emails to over 250 organizations across the U.S. (several in each state), targeting probation and detention officers, law enforcement, therapy professionals, and those employed in residential settings. We also asked these individuals to pass the survey along to anyone who may be eligible to participate. The survey was also posted on social media such as Twitter to help reach more eligible respondents. The results yielded three primary themes and show that most professionals believe the registry has no advantages and harms the registered youth. Several respondents indicated that the registry was suitable for public awareness. However, most respondents believed that the registry contributes too many barriers, including educational, social, and employment. Registered youth also may be stigmatized and labeled, making it more difficult to reintegrate into society 61

Vineeth Vijayan and Kristan Russell*

Texas Juvenile Crime Prevention Center, College of Juvenile Justice

Project Summary

Juvenile Justice

successfully. These findings provide a better understanding of the benefits and detriments of utilizing registration with youth and have implications for policy reform. Impact We wanted to examine this from a qualitative aspect to gather information about benefits or advantages that were not discussed in the literature to better understand their justification of use. However, even those professionals working most closely with this population agree that there are very few benefits and significant concerns of applying registration to youth. Again, most of what these professionals discussed reiterates what other researchers have found regarding what consequences exist for these youth. Given that the research demonstrates that these policies are ineffective and not developmentally appropriate to be used with youth, as was reiterated by the mental health and criminal justice professionals in our sample, we must consider policy reform. Many scholars and professionals working with these youth argue that public registration should never be used with youth. We would agree that these policies are doing more harm than good and that alternative practices that are more developmentally appropriate would be more effective in reducing sexual offending. Thus, we recommend policy reform altogether, such that they not be applied to a youth; however, in the meantime, we recommend to those with judicial decision making power to avoid applying for registration as a sanction to youth whenever possible. This will be a critical and necessary step in reducing short and long term collateral consequences that could obstruct desistence trajectories. Additionally, research shows that mental health services and educational programs are beneficial in reducing youth sexual offending, and thus, we should reallocate funding and resources to support these more effective strategies. 62

Impact Justice (2022). Ending the abusive practice of placing children on sex offender registries. Center on Youth Registration Reform. https://impactjustice.org/impact/center on youth registration reform

012 9189 8

Craun, S. W., & Kernsmith, P. D. (2006). Juvenile offenders and sex offender registries: Examining the data behind the debate. Federal Probation, 70, 45

References Craun, S. W., & Kernsmith, P. D. (2006). Juvenile offenders and sex offender registries: Examining the data behind the debate. Federal Probation, 70, 45

4 63

Russell, K. N., & Marsh, S. A. (2020). Moving toward a person first approach in addressing youth adjudicated for sexual offenses in the courtroom. Trends in State Courts, 40 45. Meloy, M., Boatwright, J., & Curtis, K. (2013). Views from the top and bottom: Lawmakers and practitioners discuss sex offender laws. American Journal of Criminal Justice, 38, 616 638. https://doi.org/10.1007/s12103

2022 RESEARCH@PVAMU.EDU WWW.PVAMU.EDU/RESEARCH