Enhancing Civil Engineering Education and ABET Criteria through Practical Experience

The Accreditation Board for Engineering and Technology (ABET) has adopted a revised set of criteria for accrediting engineering programs. Nevertheless, as in the past, civil engineering departments will be required to demonstrate proficiency in specific subject areas which are included in the ABET program criteria. This paper investigates how civil engineering students at Lamar University improved their understanding of various subject areas required by ABET and listed in the Program Criteria for Civil and Similarly Named Engineering Programs and the General Criteria (professional component) by being involved with cooperative, part-time, and summer work experiences. In particular, the findings suggest that both undergraduate and graduate students believe that three areas have been greatly enhanced with engineering work. They include structural engineering, project management/scheduling and estimating, and teamwork. In addition, undergraduates perceive that their understanding of health and safety issues and ethical considerations has also increased. In contrast, graduate students believe that their knowledge of hydraulics, hydrology, and water resources, constructability, and economic factors has been enhanced by civil engineering work experiences.     

Phototoxicity and fluorotoxicity combine to alter the behavior of neutrophils in fluorescence microscopy based flow adhesion assays

The use of fluorescent probes that allow visualization of leukocyte-endothelial cell (EC) interactions has greatly informed our understanding of leukocyte recruitment. However, effects of these agents on the biological functions of leukocytes are poorly described, leading to concerns about the interpretation of such data. Here we used two flow-based neutrophil adhesion assays to compare the effects of phase contrast illumination (PCI) with high intensity illumination (HII) used for fluorescent microscopy, in the presence or absence of five commonly used fluorochromes. Isolated neutrophils were either (1) perfused across P-selectin to establish a population of rolling cells, which were subsequently activated with fMLP; or (2) perfused across EC activated with TNF-alpha. In the absence of fluorescent dyes, HII did not affect levels of leukocyte adhesion; however, subsequent neutrophil behavior was dramatically altered when compared with cells under PCI, for example, dramatically reducing their migration velocities. In the presence of fluorescent dyes, the effects of HII were exacerbated, although the precise nature of the biological effects of these probes was agent specific. Thus, for the first time, our experiments describe the effects of fluorescent microscopy on the separate stages of the neutrophil recruitment process and reveal a previously unsuspected effect of HII on neutrophil migration.     

In Front of Your Nose

SUMMARY

Establishing meaningful connections to faculty is a continuing challenge for academic librarians. One library's efforts at faculty outreach received unexpected assistance from the Internet, when faculty and student curiosity about this resource created opportunities for new library staff to build connections to faculty and establish their credibility on campus. In the process, the library made progress towards meeting another challenge: determining the role of the Internet in the library. Internet instruction is now integrated with library instruction and is available to faculty and students in a variety of formats.     

Semat—Three Year Vision

The purpose of writing this Three Year Vision paper is threefold. Firstly, it briefly recaps the progress Semat has made thus far; secondly, it lays out the future directions for people working actively within the Semat community; thirdly, it provides the background for seeking funding support from agencies, such as the European Community and the like. Funding support is necessary to sustain the ongoing activities of Semat and its growth into a broader community effort, as most people working within Semat are volunteers. As such, the paper may be both too much and too little for the wider supporter base. However, we intend to make our work fully transparent, hence, we publish it widely. We seek feedback and comments from supporters and signatories in order to improve the vision. In this context, other companion papers are being written to better address the specific needs for the practitioners, the industry and the academia.     

Assessment of extreme and metocean conditions in the Maldives for OTEC applications

The Maldives is a group of tropical atolls, considered globally to be one of the most desirable holiday destinations. There is an urgent requirement to decrease their dependency on fossil fuels that are currently the main source of energy, and a number of renewable energy alternatives are being evaluated. Among these, due to the favorable oceanographic and bathymetric conditions, ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC) systems represent a viable opportunity for clean and reliable power. However, the stresses the OTEC platform will need to endure during adverse environmental conditions are not well defined. The magnitude of these stresses will then have a direct influence on the design of the OTEC device. In order to overcome this uncertainty, this paper uses hindcast data sets from global weather and ocean models to assess the metocean conditions of the Maldives, with particular reference to extreme conditions. After selecting a suitable location for the deployment of the devices, return values calculated using the peaks‐over‐threshold (POT) methodology are estimated for wind, waves, and currents. The 100‐year return value for the significant wave height is found to be 4.5 m, with a joint occurrence of energy periods between 7.5 and 8.5 seconds, whereas the 100‐year return wind has a velocity of 17.8 m/s and the 100‐year return current of 1.9 m/s. The directionality of these extreme events is also considered, showing the southern and western sub‐quadrants as the prevailing sources, which provides essential information for positioning of the platform. Additional evaluations of tropical revolving storms (TRS) and variations in temperature and salinity patterns are also provided over a 1500‐m water column; temperature varies by approximately 24°C, and salinity by around 2 ppt, showing the suitability of OTEC platforms in the Maldives. This work is therefore of interest to offshore renewable energy stakeholders interested in developing a project in the Maldives or those conducting an analogous analysis in other locations.     

Low Loss,High NA Chalcogenide Glass Fibers for Broadband Mid‐Infrared Supercontinuum Generation

High‐purity Ge–As–Se and Ge–As–S chalcogenide glasses were prepared by modified physical and chemical purification techniques. Using the purified glasses, step‐index fibers with a small core (~5.5 μm) and large numerical aperture (~1.3) were fabricated. When a 13.5‐cm‐long fiber was pumped with 320 fs pulses at a repetition rate of 10.5 MHz at 4.1 μm, supercontinuum spanning from ~1.8 to ~9.8 μm with a dynamic range of ±10 dB and an average power of ~3 mW was generated.     

High Brightness 2.2–12 μm Mid‐Infrared Supercontinuum Generation in a Nontoxic Chalcogenide Step‐Index Fiber

An environment friendly nonlinear chalcogenide glass fiber with a Ge‐Sb‐Se core and a Ge‐Se cladding is fabricated for bright broadband mid‐infrared (MIR) supercontinuum (SC) generation. The fabricated Ge‐Sb‐Se/Ge‐Se fiber with a core diameter of 6 μm shows zero group velocity dispersion at ~4.2 μm and ~7.3 μm. By pumping the fiber with a length of 11 cm at 4.485 μm with 330 fs pulses, we achieve a SC covering the 2.2–12 μm spectral range and with an output average power of ~17 mW. This bright broadband SC source is promising for high‐resolution MIR spectroscopy.