Browsing by Subject "engineering"

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    Curriculum Intervention: Assessing Need for and Implementation of Sustainability Development in a Global Context within the First-Year Engineering Curriculum at Purdue University
    (2017-05-04) Collins, Angela J.
    BACKGROUND & OBJECTIVE: Globalization is a world-wide phenomenon that is reshaping international relations in tremendous ways and at impossible rates. Due to rapid advancements in communication, transportation, and information technologies, there has been an increasing connectedness of humanity around the globe. With this trans-global integration comes many benefits, but also countless challenges. It is critical that engineering education facilities constantly update and restructure their curriculum to produce engineers who are capable of tackling the world’s greatest global challenges of this globalization era. Therefore, our team proposes a curriculum intervention of the First-Year Engineering Program. We wish to analyze the depth of global competency concepts taught in the course, with a specific focus on sustainability because it is crucial that young engineers develop an understanding of sustainability and perform their specialized tasks with a sustainable vision in mind. METHODS: To ensure high quality development of Purdue engineers is this area, our research team proposes a curriculum intervention involving two parts: (1) An analysis of the global competency and understanding of sustainability of current engineering sophomores who recently completed the First-Year Engineering (FYE) program at Purdue University; (2) An implementation of concepts from a current Purdue course, CE/EEE 355 Engineering Environmental Sustainability, into the FYE curriculum, as well as an implementation of globalization concepts as needed. Furthermore, our team seeks to answer the following research questions: (1) How consistent is the material that is taught across different sections within the FYE program? (2) How much control and influence does each engineering professor have in covering the topics of globalization and sustainability? (3) What hands-on, practical experience and exposure to globalization concepts are the students getting? EXPECTED OUTCOMES: At the conclusion of this research project, our team expects two tangible outcomes: (1) A plan of implementation of sustainability and globalization concepts into the Purdue engineering curriculum; (2) A set of data measurements and specific goals to determine whether the implemented concepts make a difference. Countless research papers stress the importance of evaluating the impact of new initiatives. Thus, our research team seeks statistical evidence that the concepts learned in CE/EEE 355 make a significant impact on the capability of the student, and the implementation of new concepts based off of CE/EEE 355 make a significant difference when implemented into the FYE engineering curriculum. CONCLUSION: In conclusion, the forces of globalization are leading to rapid changes among global dynamics and international relations, and several effects of globalization, such as poor resource utilization, are beginning to pose a threat to humanity. Therefore, engineers must be able to evolve alongside society and must have the skills to tackle the world’s leading problems. Engineers must also understand the importance of sustainable development to ensure a bright future for younger generations to come. As a result, our team suggests a curriculum intervention of the FYE program to better educated Purdue’s young engineers on issues of globalization and sustainability. Purdue is among the top engineering institutions, but to maintain its relevance and influence, there must be a shift in the curriculum to better prepare its graduates to work in this highly-globalized era.
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    Exploring the Manifestation of Empathy within Engineering Innovation and Design
    (Office of the Vice Chancellor for Research, 2016-04-08) Hess, Justin L.; Fila, Nicholas D.
    The study of empathy within engineering has potential to improve the education of innovative and ethically-oriented engineers through the application of empathically guided engineering principles and processes. However, the collective understanding of the role of empathy within engineering is minimal. Hence, the purpose of these two distinct but aligned investigations was to understand how empathy manifests within engineering innovation and design. Specifically, the guiding research questions included: (1) “In what manner and to what extent does empathy predict innovative behavioral tendencies?”, and (2) “In what ways does empathy manifest throughout design?” To address the initial research question, we disseminated two validated instruments (the Interpersonal Reactivity Index and Innovative Behavioral Scales) to students at a large, public, mid-western university. Through a series of multiple regression analyses, we found that that cognitive empathy types (e.g., perspective-taking, fantasy) showed a more pronounced relationship with innovative behavioral tendencies (e.g., questioning, idea networking, observation) than affective empathy types (e.g., empathic concern, personal distress). To address the second research question, we thematically analyzed a set of critical events extracted from eight videos that featured nine STEM students who participated in a three-week service-learning course at the same university. Through our analysis, we found four categories with 12 underlying themes that represented empathically-oriented techniques designers utilized to develop a user-centric empathic understanding, as well as how these informed their creation of design criteria, outcomes, and evaluation of those outcomes. Taken together, the results indicate that empathy is highly salient within engineering, and that emphasizing this salience throughout engineering programs and organizations could change broader societal images to demonstrate the relevance of empathy to engineering design and innovation. This, in turn, might attract more empathically-inclined students to engineering.
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    Fluorescent protein tagged hepatitis B virus capsid protein with long glycine-serine linker that supports nucleocapsid formation
    (Elsevier, 2018-05) Chen, Jiang-Yan; Gan, Chun-yang; Cai, Xue-fei; Zhang, Wen-lu; Long, Quan-xin; Wei, Xia-fei; Hu, Yuan; Tang, Ni; Chen, Juan; Guo, Haito; Huang, Ai-long; Hu, Jie-li; Microbiology and Immunology, School of Medicine
    Fusion core proteins of Hepatitis B virus can be used to study core protein functions or capsid trafficking. A problem in constructing fusion core proteins is functional impairment of the individual domains in these fusion proteins, might due to structural interference. We reported a method to construct fusion proteins of Hepatitis B virus core protein (HBc) in which the functions of fused domains were partially kept. This method follows two principles: (1) fuse heterogeneous proteins at the N terminus of HBc; (2) use long Glycine-serine linkers between the two domains. Using EGFP and RFP as examples, we showed that long flexible G4S linkers can effectively separate the two domains in function. Among these fusion proteins constructed, GFP-G4S186-HBc and RFP-G4S47-HBc showed the best efficiency in rescuing the replication of an HBV replicon deficient in the core protein expression, though both of the two fusion proteins failed to support the formation of the relaxed circular DNA. These fluorescent protein-tagged HBcs might help study related to HBc or capsids tracking in cells.
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    Not Small Technicalities: Gender's Impact on Choosing Careers in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics
    (2010-10-13) Romano, Gina Gabriele; Haas, Linda; Haas, Ain E.; Seybold, Peter James, 1950-
    This exploratory study looks at the underrepresentation of certain groups, especially women, in science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) occupations. Using longitudinal data, it investigates the impact of math and technical abilities as well as social status measures such as sex, race/ethnicity and household income on STEM career choice, arguing that social status variables have an important influence apart from abilities, with an emphasis on gender. Results show significant impacts of sex, race/ethnicity, income and both math and technical skills on STEM career choice; however, only sex, math and technical skill have statistically significant impacts when controlling for all other variables, with technical skill having the strongest impact in all tests. Implications of these findings are discussed, confirming previous studies but also setting the groundwork for inclusion of technical skill in research on STEM areas. Future efforts are argued to focus on technical ability, as well as gender and mathematical adroitness.