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The Efficacy of Orange Lane Delineations in Highway Work Zones
Get PDFWith over 100,000 crashes in the work zone per year, it is essential that we as builders discover and implement innovative solutions to maximize field crew and public safety in high traffic areas. A recent trend in the Heavy Civil Construction industry has been the implementation of temporary fluorescent orange striping in active highway work zones. When traditional white or yellow lane markings are removed, a faint residue is left behind and as construction crews repeatedly shift lanes, multiple overlapping removal scars begin to create confusion for drivers that leads to an increased risk of crashes. To eliminate this confusion as well as to reduce traffic speeds and increase awareness in the work zone, the Wisconsin Department of Transportation, the North Texas Tollway Authority, and the Kentucky Transportation Cabinet have conducted successful experimentations with orange lane delineations. The most recent experimentation trial is currently being conducted by Caltrans District 11 and is expected to conclude in late 2022. The objective of this research is to measure the overall success rate of orange striping and to determine common obstacles faced during the installation, exposure, and removal of orange striping
Smart Bottle BLE Integration
Get PDFIn 1975, four percent of children aged five to nineteen were categorized as overweight or obese. As of 2016, this figure climbed above 18 percent [1]. Researchers at California Polytechnic State University San Luis Obispo (Cal Poly) want to investigate the effect of overeating in early childhood on later childhood obesity. This research requires collecting feeding pattern data on infants, which proves challenging. Parents cannot be relied on to regularly collect clean data due to factors including work schedule, multitasking, and general exhaustion. Thus, we have developed a tool to automatically collect data on feeding frequency and duration, as well as bottle angle during feeding.
The Smart Bottle is an attachment for baby bottles made of a flexible 3D-printed sleeve that slips on to the bottom of the bottle. The attachment itself is a two-inch (5cm) tall plastic housing with a diameter of seven centimeters in diameter to fit typical baby bottles. To collect data, this attachment houses a 3-dimensional accelerometer, a 3-dimensional gyroscope, and a real-time clock (RTC), and a volume sensor (left vague to protect intellectual property). For data storage and transmission, it includes an SD card reader, and a Bluetooth Low Energy (BLE) module. Finally, for power, it has a Lithium-Polymer (LiPo) battery, and a coin-cell battery. Using a neural network, measurement instruments identify feeding events and measure an infant’s feeding duration, feeding angle, and amount eaten. All measurement data is then recorded on the SD card and broadcast to researchers or parents via Bluetooth. The added Bluetooth functionality will increase the drain on the LiPo battery but using a BLE-capable module minimizes this.
After manufacturing and assembly, testing found that necessary systems were all functional. The accelerometer returned numbers that changed with movement, which allows the neural network to detect feeding events. The volume sensor was accurate within 0.5ml as tested with volumes ranging from 10 to 85 ml. The SD card correctly stored data without issue. The BLE module accurately transmitted data to connected devices. The RTC did not lose a second in the duration of testing. Finally, the board-to-board connector was successful in flashing the microcontroller unit (MCU) and the Bluetooth Low Energy module while the microUSB port facilitated successful uploading of Arduino code to the MCU
ENVIRONMENTAL JUSTICE MAPPING IN THE U.S. PACIFIC ISLAND TERRITORY OF GUAM
Get PDFAcademics, regulators, and the public currently use geospatial analysis tools to identify locations that may be candidates for further environmental justice review in the continental United States (U.S.). However, current environmental justice geospatial analysis tools overlook a small but significant portion of the U.S. - the U.S. Pacific Islands. This study analyzes environmental justice within the U.S. Territory of Guam using existing geospatial analysis methods and publicly available environmental, climate, and socio-economic data to: (1) Spatially map relevant demographic and environmental data and (2) determine the correlation, if any, between the exposure to environmental hazards and the socio-economic status of populations. The results of this work show both positive and negative correlations exist between environmental hazard indicators and socio-economic status and climate indicators and socio-economic status. Scientists, regulators, and the public can utilize the methodology and conclusions of this work to drive future spatial analysis of environmental justice in the U.S. Pacific Islands
Underground Transmission for Renewable Energy: Design, Modeling, and Analysis
No full textA microgrid is a local energy grid that could be disconnected from the larger grid and operate autonomously. This particular segment of the power industry is growing due to its reliability during times of emergency and crisis. Among these benefits are improved efficiency, lower operating costs, renewable generation sources, and improved resiliency of the regional electric grid. Communities can better prepare for unprecedented weather like wildfires, hurricanes, and other natural disasters. Regions that produce renewable energy can export their surplus through high voltage transmission lines to balance power supply and demand needs.
This Underground High-Voltage Transmission Network project aims to design a blueprint for an underground high voltage transmission network that connects the Cal Poly Solar Farm to campus via an underground network. This Solar Farm produces 4.5MW and provides a quarter of Cal Poly’s power demand, making it essential to everyday operations on campus. The safety of the communities living around these areas is a top priority. The project develops methods to examine network resiliency and analyze load growth or demography trends. These methods include: using GIS to properly locate any existing underground infrastructure and utilizing CYMCAP software to size cable. We use ETAP software to run load flow analysis and device coordination simulation
Effects of Intertidal Position on the Capacity for Anaerobic Metabolism and Thermal Stress Response in the Common Acorn Barnacle, Balanus glandula
Get PDFIntertidal habitats are characterized by dynamic, tidally-driven fluctuations in abiotic and biotic factors. Many of the environmental stressors that vary across the intertidal (e.g., temperature, oxygen, food availability, predation pressure) are strong drivers of metabolic rate in ectotherms. As such, we predicted that there may be pronounced differences in the metabolic and stress physiology of conspecific sessile invertebrates occupying at different relative tidal heights. The common acorn barnacle Balanus glandula represents an ideal model organism in which to investigate the possibility of tidal height-dependent physiological differences, owing to their wide distribution in the intertidal zone and their eurytolerant nature. In the first chapter of my thesis, we investigate the hypothesis that B. glandula anchored in the low intertidal have a greater capacity for anaerobic metabolism than conspecifics in the high intertidal, and that this is due to increased predation pressure during submersion. Further, we explore the temporal and spatial fidelity of certain tidal-height driven trends in lactate dehydrogenase activity previously observed in our lab (i.e., higher LDH activity in low intertidal barnacles; Horn et al., 2021), and attempt to identify environmental variables that drive plasticity in LDH activity. We found that, in general, there were higher densities of B. glandula and gastropod whelk predators in the low intertidal compared to the high intertidal, but follow-up studies in the lab revealed that opercular closure in B. glandula was induced by predator exposure (Acanthinucella spirata) for less than 24h. This time frame for shell closure is unlikely to result in internal hypoxia or enhance capacity for anaerobic metabolism. We were therefore not surprised to find that LDH activity in B. glandula was likewise not affected by predator exposures (48h) carried out in the lab. After failing to find an effect of predators on LDH activity in B. glandula, we attempted to replicate the previous finding that LDH activity was highest in low intertidal populations of B. glandula. We did this at the original location in San Luis Obispo Bay, CA as well as at three novel field sites and across seasons and years. While we did observe variation in LDH activity over time and between sites, we did not consistently observe the same trend in LDH activity whereby low intertidal barnacles had the highest activity. In response to these variable patterns, we attempted to identify what environmental parameters, other than predation, might be responsible for plasticity in LDH activity. Unfortunately, neither temperature nor emersion stress – the two variables we examined – had any significant an effect on LDH activity in B. glandula. These data suggest that there must be multiple, interacting stressors – including tidal position - that influence the anaerobic metabolic capacity of B. glandula. In the second chapter of my thesis, we went on to investigate how the response to thermal stress might differ between populations of B. glandula from different vertical heights in the intertidal zone. To this end, we assessed how aerial temperature stress affected oxygen consumption rates (MO2), superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, and time to mortality in B. glandula collected from both low and high intertidal positions. We found that barnacles from the low intertidal showed a significant increase in MO2 with higher temperature, while MO2 was unaffected by temperature in B. glandula from the high intertidal. We also observed that SOD activity levels were higher in the high intertidal barnacles compared to the low intertidal barnacles, although neither group was increasing SOD activity under higher temperature. Finally, we observed significantly longer survival times during thermal stress in barnacles from the high intertidal zone (e.g., LT50 = 8.75 h vs 5 h at 33˚C for the high and low barnacles, respectively), although this advantage seemed to be lost with the addition of desiccation stress at these same temperatures. It is evident that life in highest reaches of the intertidal zones is physiologically challenging, and this has resulted in a population of B, glandula barnacles that are less sensitive to and better suited to tolerate temperature extremes than conspecifics in the lowest intertidal regions. Understanding how habitat variation may differentially impact the metabolic and thermal stress physiology of B. glandula is increasingly important as climate change progresses. This is particularly significant considering that organisms in the intertidal already reside within a relatively stressful environment and may be living closer to their thermal tolerance limits than animals from less extreme habitats
Dynamical Systems and Matching Symmetry in Beta-Expansions
Get PDFSymbolic dynamics, and in particular β-expansions, are a ubiquitous tool in studying more complicated dynamical systems. Applications include number theory, fractals, information theory, and data storage.
In this thesis we will explore the basics of dynamical systems with a special focus on topological dynamics. We then examine symbolic dynamics and β-transformations through the lens of sequence spaces. We discuss observations from recent literature about how matching (the property that the itinerary of 0 and 1 coincide after some number of iterations) is linked to when Tβ,⍺ generates a subshift of finite type. We prove the set of ⍺ in the parameter space for which Tβ,⍺ exhibits matching is symmetric and analyze some examples where the symmetry is both apparent and useful in finding a dense set of ⍺ for which Tβ,⍺ generates a subshift of finite type
A Study of Grammar-Based Fuzzing Approaches
Get PDFFuzzing is the process of finding security vulnerabilities in code by creating inputs that will activate the exploits. Grammar-based fuzzing uses a grammar, which represents the syntax of all inputs a target program will accept, allowing the fuzzer to create well-formed complex inputs. This thesis conducts an in-depth study on two blackbox grammar-based fuzzing methods, GLADE and Learn&Fuzz, on their performance and usability to the average user. The blackbox fuzzer Radamsa was also used to compare fuzzing effectiveness. From our results in fuzzing PDF objects, GLADE beats both Radamsa and Learn&Fuzz in terms of coverage and pass rate. XML inputs were also tested, but the results only show that XML is a relatively simple input as the coverage results were mostly the same. For the XML pass rate, GLADE beats all of them except for the SampleSpace generation method of Learn&Fuzz. In addition, this thesis discusses interesting problems that occur when using machine learning for fuzzing. With experience from the study, this thesis proposes an improvement to GLADE’s user-friendliness through the use of a configuration file. This thesis also proposes a theoretical improvement to machine learning fuzzing through supplementary examples created by GLADE