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The AUS Library and the Writing Center: Partnering for Student Success... one year later...
No full textPresentation by Rhonda Stricklett and Christine Furno entitled "The AUS Library and the Writing Center: Partnering for Student Success... one year later...," presented at the NYUAD Writing Studies Working Group: Writing Studies and Global Literacies, Abu Dhabi, UAE, April 2017
Design and Development of a Synergetic Controller for a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor Drive System
No full textA Master of Science thesis in Mechatronics Engineering by Andrew Ayman Adib entitled, "Design and Development of a Synergetic Controller for a Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor Drive System," submitted in December 2017. Thesis advisor is Dr. Rached Bin H'mida Dhaouadi. Soft and hard copy available.Electric vehicles are gaining increasing attention by automotive manufacturers in an attempt to reduce carbon footprint and produce more eco-friendly vehicles. Electric vehicles are powered by electric motor drives instead of the conventional combustion engine. Permanent Magnet Synchronous Motor (PMSM) drives receive most interest in this field for their powerful torque profiles that are suitable for vehicle traction. This study explores a new non-linear controller, the synergetic controller, and evaluates its performance in motor drives applications and particularly for the PMSM. Firstly, the new controller is presented and the controller design is explained. A new macro-variable is proposed to improve the performance of the controller. The effect of each of the controller’s gains is studied separately. Finally, the controller’s performance is compared with the field oriented controller, which is the most robust and reliable control technique in motor drives applications. This work also investigates the regenerative braking phenomenon in PMSM. Regenerative braking is crucial for electric vehicle applications since the mechanical energy of the motor during deceleration or braking periods can be harvested and used to charge the vehicle’s battery or a proper energy storage unit designed for such purpose. Regenerative braking is implemented using two techniques; speed control and torque control. The different algorithms are validated through experiments using a PMSM drive system developed in the Mechatronics (MTR) lab. The experimental results show that the proposed macro-variable improves the performance of the synergetic controller significantly. The synergetic controller is able to overcome non-linearities in the system, such as static friction, faster than the field oriented controller. The system also experiences fewer harmonics under the synergetic controller. Synergetic controller is also more prone to wide signal variations. As for regenerative braking, the speed control mode of operation is suitable for harvesting more energy. On the other hand, the torque control mode generates more power and higher current values flow back to the DC source. Synergetic controller improves the performance of the PMSM drive.College of EngineeringMultidisciplinary ProgramsMaster of Science in Mechatronics Engineering (MSMTR
Sustainability Assessment of Welding Processes
No full textA Master of Science thesis in Mechanical Engineering by Jaber Jamal entitled, "Sustainability Assessment of Welding Processes," submitted in May 2017. Thesis advisor is Dr. Basil Darras and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Hossam Kishawy. Soft and hard copy available.In today's world, calls for 'sustainability' are increasing in order to preserve our resources and our environment. Many initiatives are being put in motion to make our lives more 'sustainable'. This concept of 'sustainability' has recently risen to take the old concept of going 'green' further. To elaborate, where 'green' aimed to preserve the environment and decrease the emissions of greenhouse gases and other harmful substances, 'sustainability' takes the economy and society into consideration. This is done by considering how much money it would cost, how it would affect the society, and how to be more environmentally friendly for a particular product or process. This thesis aims to outline general methodologies for sustainability assessments. This would then be adapted for manufacturing processes, and then would be applied to measure and assess the sustainability of welding processes. The objective is to build a complete framework that would be used to determine the best welding process for a particular application. To apply this methodology, data about the welding processes was collected and segregated into four categories: environmental impact, economic impact, social impact, and physical performance. Each of these categories had a number of indicators which would quantify the performance of each process. This quantification step was done by developing specific equations and applying them to the indicators. An aggregate sustainability score was then obtained from the individual scores of each category. However, to avoid taking the arithmetic average which indicates equal importance for each category, a weighted average was suggested in this thesis. To obtain the respective weights, a survey was created and distributed to experts. The collected results were analyzed and incorporated to calculate the aggregate score. To demonstrate the capability of this methodology, three welding processes, gas tungsten arc welding (GTAW), gas metal arc welding (GMAW), and friction stir welding (FSW) were assessed on welding Aluminum 5083. This would determine the most sustainable process in that particular application. The final outcome showed that FSW was the most sustainable process for the application.College of EngineeringDepartment of Mechanical EngineeringMaster of Science in Mechanical Engineering (MSME
Through These Veins: Translation and Commentary
No full textA Master of Arts thesis in Translation and Interpreting MATI (English/Arabic/English) by Vian F. Kurrbassy entitled, "Through These Veins: Translation and Commentary," submitted in January 2017. Thesis advisor is Dr. Sattar Izwaini. Soft and hard copy available.This thesis investigates translation problems and strategies by carrying out an Arabic translation of a literary text taken from the novel Through These Veins, by Ann Marie Ruff, and by discussing the challenges and the decisions that were made to overcome difficulties. These challenges are associated with the translation of culture-specific terms, idioms, collocations, metaphors, similes and connotation; application of changes at the word level; and other challenges at text level-all of which are needed to achieve textual equivalence. These problems are discussed with reference to translation theories and strategies such as modulation and shift theory. The discussion is illustrated by examples taken from the chosen text along with the Arabic translations and a commentary that justify the decisions made. The most important conclusion with regards to the literary text translated and discussed here is the significance of providing a literary translation that deals appropriately with particular cultural aspects, especially in a language that has a long literary tradition.College of Arts and SciencesDepartment of Arabic and Translation StudiesMaster of Arts in English/Arabic/English Translation and Interpreting (MATI
Predicting Compression Modes and Split Decisions for HEVC Video Coding Using Machine Learning Techniques
No full textA Master of Science thesis in Computer Engineering by Mahitab Alaaeldin Hassan entitled, "Predicting Compression Modes and Split Decisions for HEVC Video Coding Using Machine Learning Techniques," submitted in May 2017. Thesis advisor is Dr. Tamer Shanableh. Soft and hard copy available.The High Efficiency Video Coding (HEVC) standard presents a substantial video compression efficiency improvement at the expense of increasing the computational complexity. This enhancement is primarily due to the introduction of flexible quad-based-tree partitioning structures for motion estimation (ME) and image transformation. However, finding the optimum coding structure, which is done by an exhaustive rate-distortion optimization (RDO) process, is what contributes to increasing the computational complexity. In this thesis, we propose a set of early termination algorithms to reduce the HEVC video encoding complexity by predicting both the split decisions of Coding Units (CUs) and the coding modes of Prediction Units (PUs). A video sequence-dependent approach is used in which frames belonging to the video being encoded are utilized for generating a classification model. At each CU depth level, features representing the given CU are extracted from both the current and previously encoded CUs. The feature vectors (FVs) are then utilized for generating dimensionality reduction and classification models. These models are in turn used at each coding depth to predict the split and mode decisions of subsequence CUs. In this work, we use stepwise regression, random forest feature importance, and Principal Component Analysis (PCA) for dimensionality reduction. Moreover, polynomial networks, random forests, and J48 decision trees are used for classification. Using seventeen video sequences with four different spatial resolution classes, the proposed solution is assessed in terms of the classification accuracy, Bjontegaard Delta bitrate (BD-rate), BD Peak Signal-to-Noise Ratio (BD-PSNR) and computational complexity reduction (CCR). On average, the CU early termination scheme achieved a CCR of 38.5% with an average classification accuracy of 78.1% at a negligible cost of 0.539% and -0.021 dB in terms of BD-rate and BD-PSNR, respectively. The PU early termination scheme attained an overall CCR of 20.9% with an average classification accuracy of 86.5% at the cost of a BD-rate of 0.248% and a BD-PSNR of -0.01 dB. When jointly implemented, an overall CCR of 50.1% was achieved with a BD-rate increase of 2% and a BD-PSNR decrease of 0.079 dB.College of EngineeringDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringMaster of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCoE
First Library in the Middle East to Adopt WMS
No full textThe American University of Sharjah Library is the first in the Middle East to adopt OCLC WorldShare Management Services (WMS) as their Library Management System. This presentation covers issues of Arabic searching and cataloging, customer support, updates to cloud systems, and patron privacy. Presented at the OCLC EMEA Regional Council Meeting in Berlin, February 2017
Anti-cancer Drug Delivery Using Metal Organic Frameworks (MOFs)
No full textCancer is the uncontrolled growth of cells in the body and is considered as one of the major causes of death globally. There are several cytotoxic chemotherapeutic agents used to treat cancer including methotrexate, 5-fluorouracil, cisplatin, tamoxifen, doxorubicin and others. Although billions of dollars have been spent on cancer research to develop these chemotherapies, it still remains a major illness for mankind partly due to the shortcomings of these therapies. These shortcomings include low targeting specificity, severe side effects (due to high doses) and poor pharmacokinetics. To avoid these drawbacks, anti-cancer drug delivery systems have been developed recently using nanocarriers including liposomes, micelles, polyelectrolyte capsules and others. One of the recent class of nanoparticles investigated for chemotherapeutic use are metal organic frameworks (MOFs) which are hybrid polymers that consist of metal ions or clusters and organic ligands. MOFs are used in many applications including gas/vapor separation, gas storage, catalysis, luminescent materials, and biomedical imaging. These structures have additional features that promote their use as drug carriers in the biomedical field. First, they are nontoxic, biodegradable and have the ability to carry high loadings of the anti-neoplastic agent due to their porous nature. Also, they have well-defined crystalline structures that can be characterized by different analytical techniques and their sizes are suitable to control their in vivo drug release
Al Salam Community
No full textAn Urban Planning Research Workshop II (UPL 682) project by Ahmed Ezzat, Hatem Fares, and Shahad Layth entitled, "Al Salam Community", submitted in Spring 2017. Project supervisor is Prof. Rafael Pizarro
Optimizing Energy Consumption of Cloud Computing IaaS
No full textA Master of Science thesis in Computer Engineering by Huda Ibrahim Mohamed entitled, "Optimizing Energy Consumption of Cloud Computing IaaS," submitted in May 2017. Thesis advisor is Dr. Raafat Aburukba and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Khaled El-Fakih. Soft and hard copy available.Cloud computing infrastructures are designed to support the accessibility and availability of various services to consumers over the Internet. Datacenters hosting Cloud applications consume massive amounts of power, contributing to high carbon footprints to the environment. Hence, Green Cloud computing solutions are needed within the Cloud datacenters that optimize the energy consumption. The main objective of this thesis is to address the problem of power and carbon efficient resource management in a Cloud datacenter. This work focuses on the development of a dynamic task scheduling algorithm to enhance the datacenter power efficiency over time. To achieve this objective, a formal optimization model is proposed using Integer Linear Programming (ILP) that minimizes the energy consumption in a Cloud datacenter. The model is verified using exact techniques and the Genetics Algorithm (GA) heuristic-based technique. Furthermore, an adaptive GA is proposed to reflect the dynamic nature of the Cloud computing environment. The proposed adaptive GA is validated by simulating an IaaS Cloud environment and conducting a set of performance and quality evaluation study in this environment. The results demonstrate that the proposed solution offers performance gains with regards to response time and in reducing the power consumption in the Cloud datacenter.College of EngineeringDepartment of Computer Science and EngineeringMaster of Science in Computer Engineering (MSCoE
Electrochemical Studies on the Corrosion Behavior of Common Metals in Eutectic Ionic Liquids
No full textA Master of Science thesis in Chemical Engineering by Rami Alhasan entitled, "Electrochemical Studies on the Corrosion Behavior of Common Metals in Eutectic Ionic Liquids," submitted in May 2017. Thesis advisor is Dr. Taleb Ibrahim and thesis co-advisor is Dr. Nabil Abdel Jabbar. Soft and hard copy available.Recently, new green novel solvents called Deep Eutectic Solvents (DES) were investigated as substitute for none environmentally friendly organic solvents and ionic liquids that are used in many applications such as metal processing, organic synthesis, extraction and adsorption processes, and in medical and pharmaceutical researches. DES are biodegradable and eco-friendly solvents. However, their corrosivity is not well studied. Corrosion of metals is a major problem in the chemical, oil and gas industries. In this work, several DES were synthesized and their corrosivity towards mild steel, stainless steel and copper was investigated using electrochemical techniques such as electrochemical impedance spectroscopy (EIS) and Cyclic Sweep (CS). DES were synthesized by mixing choline chloride with a hydrogen bond donor at 70oC for about an hour. The corrosivity of DES at three different temperatures (25 oC, 50 oC and 75 oC) and as a function moisture content (0%, 5% and 10%) was determined. In most of the observations, corrosion rate increases as temperature and moisture content increase. Moreover, the corrosion rate of stainless steel was found to be the lowest of the tested metals at all conditions which makes it a good material for different applications. It was concluded that urea and glycol based DES are good candidates as green solvents due to their low and resilient corrosion rate values.College of EngineeringDepartment of Chemical EngineeringMaster of Science in Chemical Engineering (MSChE