The impact of undergraduate research experiences on students' academic development and retention in STEM fields is significant. Students' success in STEM fields is based on developing strong research and critical thinking skills that make it essential for students to engage in research activities throughout their academic programs. This work evaluates the effectiveness of undergraduate research experiences with respect to its influence on student retention and academic development. The cases presented are based on years of experience implementing undergraduate research programs in various STEM fields at Colorado State University Pueblo (CSU Pueblo) funded by HSI STEM Grants. The study seeks to establish a correlation between students' reten
... Show MoretA novel synthesis procedure is presented for preparing triethanolamine-treated graphene nanoplatelets(TEA-GNPs) with different specific areas (SSAs). Using ultrasonication, the covalently functionalizedTEA-GNPs with different weight concentrations and SSAs were dispersed in distilled water to prepareTEA-GNPs nanofluids. A simple direct coupling of GNPs with TEA molecules is implemented to synthesizestable water-based nanofluids. The effectiveness of the functionalization procedure was validated by thecharacterization and morphology tests, i.e., FTIR, Raman spectroscopy, EDS, and TEM. Thermal conduc-tivity, dispersion stability, and rheological properties were investigated. Using UV–vis spectrometer, ahighest dispersion stability of 0.876
... Show MoreIn the last few years, the literature conferred a great interest in studying the feasibility of using memristive devices for computing. Memristive devices are important in structure, dynamics, as well as functionalities of artificial neural networks (ANNs) because of their resemblance to biological learning in synapses and neurons regarding switching characteristics of their resistance. Memristive architecture consists of a number of metastable switches (MSSs). Although the literature covered a variety of memristive applications for general purpose computations, the effect of low or high conductance of each MSS was unclear. This paper focuses on finding a potential criterion to calculate the conductance of each MMS rather t
... Show MoreOlmesartan medoxomil (OM) has low bioavailability and limited solubility. To enhance bioavailability, fast dissolving films (FDF) with mixed micelles of soluplus (SPL) and solutol HS15 (STL H15) were developed using solvent casting. The optimised formula, FM2, used polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) and showed high entrapment efficiency, rapid disintegration, and significant improvement in OM bioavailability compared to the market tablet (Olmetec®). FM2 also demonstrated stability and potential for enhanced drug delivery.
Healthcare professionals routinely use audio signals, generated by the human body, to help diagnose disease or assess its progression. With new technologies, it is now possible to collect human-generated sounds, such as coughing. Audio-based machine learning technologies can be adopted for automatic analysis of collected data. Valuable and rich information can be obtained from the cough signal and extracting effective characteristics from a finite duration time interval that changes as a function of time. This article presents a proposed approach to the detection and diagnosis of COVID-19 through the processing of cough collected from patients suffering from the most common symptoms of this pandemic. The proposed method is based on adopt
... Show MoreAlthough its wide utilization in microbial cultures, the one factor-at-a-time method, failed to find the true optimum, this is due to the interaction between optimized parameters which is not taken into account. Therefore, in order to find the true optimum conditions, it is necessary to repeat the one factor-at-a-time method in many sequential experimental runs, which is extremely time-consuming and expensive for many variables. This work is an attempt to enhance bioactive yellow pigment production by Streptomyces thinghirensis based on a statistical design. The yellow pigment demonstrated inhibitory effects against Escherichia coli and Staphylococcus aureus and was characterized by UV-vis spectroscopy which showed lambda maximum of
... Show MoreNuclear structure of 20,22Ne isotopes has been studied via the shell model with Skyrme-Hartree-Fock calculations. In particular, the transitions to the low-lying positive and negative parity excited states have been investigated within three shell model spaces; sd for positive parity states, spsdpf large-basis (no-core), and zbme model spaces for negative parity states. Excitation energies, reduced transition probabilities, and elastic and inelastic form factors were estimated and compared to the available experimental data. Skyrme interaction was used to generate a one-body potential in the Hartree-Fock calculations for each selected excited states, which is then used to calculate the single-particle matrix elements. Skyrme interac
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