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The Role of Graphics and Packaging in Brand Protection
Get PDFThis project was focused on how packaging and graphics can be utilized to help minimize the occurrence and risks of counterfeit products in the pharmaceutical industry. During this project, a brand protection plan for a fictional pharmaceutical product was formulated that focused on both developing packaging that is difficult to counterfeit and fostering consumer education. This plan involved covert, semi-covert and overt anti-counterfeiting features which were implemented in the packaging. An educational website was also created for users and distributors in order to enable the end users to identify if that product is genuine. The project objective was to better understand how graphics and packaging can be used to protect products from counterfeiting, and to better understand how graphics and packaging can be used to protect users from counterfeit products
Low-Cost Vehicle Controller Testing System
Get PDFThis project aims to create a system to facilitate easier evaluation of PCBs designed for low-voltage vehicle applications with an emphasis on accessibility for student teams in collegiate design series\u27 such as Formula SAE. Student teams or smaller vehicle electronics manufacturers often need to verify designs and validate functionality during both development and manufacturing. An inexpensive, small, and portable, yet capable, system for taking measurements and simulating inputs would allow designers to put their boards into vehicle-representative conditions and environments without needing to connect to actual vehicle hardware. Additionally, while systems exist off-the-shelf that could fulfill the requirements needed by engineers, a more specifically oriented, open-source design would increase the accessibility for groups with less monetary capital, or for those who want to add their own custom devices into an existing system
Investigating the Conversion of a Signalized Intersection to a Turbo Roundabout
Get PDFTurbo roundabouts are multilane roundabouts that utilize a spiral design with raised lane dividers to guide traffic flow effectively. While they have seen widespread use in Europe, California is the second state in the US (after Florida) to have installed a turbo roundabout. Turbo roundabouts separate the ingress and circulating lanes. The concept was first proposed and implemented in the Netherlands to address safety concerns and improve traffic flow efficiency on conventional multilane roundabouts.
This research evaluates the first-ever turbo roundabout in California and compares its safety and operational performance with the previously existing 4-legged signalized intersection. The research team obtained safety and operational performance measures using well-calibrated simulation models and video analytics of real-world conditions recorded before and after the installation of the turbo roundabout. The safety metrics include surrogate safety measures defining traffic conflicts between vehicles, enabling a more prompt safety evaluation compared to multi-year collision data. The results show that the turbo roundabout effectively reduced crash potential and queuing delays at this site. The real-world conflict data show that more severe crossing and head-on conflicts at the former 4-legged signalized intersection have all but been eliminated.
The rear-end conflicts that do occur on the roundabout involve vehicles traveling at significantly reduced speeds compared to similar conflicts observed at the signalized intersection. The results show that turbo roundabouts may be an effective option on rural routes where the siting criteria for multilane roundabouts are satisfied. Given the timeline for this research project, the evaluation was conducted within months of the roundabout’s completion. It is therefore advised that California Department of Transportation (Caltrans) continues to monitor traffic crash data to ensure that the long-term crash data shows the expected safety improvement
Pokémon GO: Fostering Community in Location-Based Augmented Reality
No full textWhile most modern video games are played from the comfort of one\u27s own home, Pokémon GO (2016) is a game that requires people to leave their homes and interact with other people in the real world. Pokémon GO contains community-building mechanics that reward players for interacting with each other and catching Pokémon. Due to this, players use third-party applications to organize meetups, particularly through Campfire, which is an app owned by the same company who created the game, Niantic. Uses and Gratifications Theory can be applied to understand why players choose to play Pokémon GO and what needs the game fulfills. The community-building mechanics combined with player motivations can be useful in understanding why this game is still so successful, and how social needs are fulfilled by meeting up in person that other games cannot provide. Through an ethnographic study of the San Luis Obispo, California Pokémon GO Community, including several months of immersion within the community and interviews with ten of the more dedicated players, it was determined that players are motivated by the intersection of personal goals and social interaction, mainly by collaborative efforts to complete these goals
Ultrasound Denoising and Speckle Reduction using Artificial Neural Networks
Get PDFThis paper focuses on improving speckle reduction and denoising performance in ultrasound images by leveraging neural networks. A dataset of simulated ultrasound images was created using Field-II simulation software based on CT scan images, to create clean and noisy image pairs. Various Convolutional Neural Network models based on U-Net and generative adversarial networks were developed and tested. Peak Signal-to-Noise-Ratio (PSNR) and Structural Similarity Index Measurement (SSIM) were used as metrics along with qualitative assessment. Results show that our tuned U-Net generator network outperformed traditional filtering such as Lee and BM3D
Socially Situated Scientific Discourse: Learning Under the Perceived Threat of Being a Woman
Get PDFAs a companion piece to “Diminishing Dialogue: The Fallacy of Florida Politics,” this critical commentary explores how undergraduate humanities courses and feminist standpoint theory shaped the perspective of an aspiring STEM PhD candidate. The subjective nature of scientific objectivity is examined through the lens of feminist historiography and the author’s own experiences as a woman in STEM
