Angela O. Afriyie SUNY New Paltz COMPUTER SCIENCE Faculty Mentor: Dr. Glenn Smith Technology and Society
GATHERING EXPERIMENTAL DATA OVER THE INTERNET AND TRANSFERRING IT TO A DATABASE AT ANOTHER INTERNET LOCATION The objective was to gather results obtained from an Internet conducted test of spatial visualization (skill with geometric shapes), and store them to a server over the Internet in a database. The spatial visualization tests were used to investigate how computer game playing affects spatial skills. The Software to conduct the tests was written in Javascript and HTML code. A Perl script over a Computer Gateway Interface (CGI) was used to handle the transfer of results into a database. The purpose of writing the results to a server over the Internet was to save labour and minimize the loss of data from the experiment. The Javascript code was also modified to make the tests more user-friendly.
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	Eric Alvarez SUNY Stony Brook MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Faculty Mentor: Dr. Raman P. Singh Mechanical Engineering
HIGH STRAIN-RATE TESTING Materials of different properties perform in different manners. Materials in structural members that are used in construction such as metal are widely used in applications to resist bending loads. Under extreme environments, these structures must be designed to resist high loading rates, as those caused by earthquakes or even strong winds. Persistent loading eventually will lead the structure or material to collapse by material fatigue and fracture. To effectively use these materials, it is essential to understand their dynamic responses and energy dissipation characteristics. A device that is used to determine these dynamic responses is the split Hopkinson Bar. The split Hopkinson bar experiment consists of a cylindrical specimen which is sandwiched between two pressure bars. A striker bar is fired towards the incident bar by the use of a pressurized gun. After impact, a compressive wave is generated within the incident bar. Upon arrival at the specimen, the wave is partially reflected back as a tensile wave along the incident bar. When a specimen is deforming uniformly, the reflected and transmitted waves are proportional to the specimen's strain-rate and stress, respectively. This relationship is demonstrated by the use of strain gages that are mounted onto each bar to average out any bending strain. Also, the velocity of the striker bar is determined by infrared photo sensors and by the use of an oscilloscope. The analysis of strain-rate testing will allow engineers to understand the deformation, fracture, and load-carrying capability of materials in order to safely select materials for design purposes.
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	Wesley Francillon SUNY Stony Brook ENGINEERING SCIENCE Faculty Mentor: Dr. Clive Clayton Dr. Gary P. Halada Materials Science and Engineering
SURFACE ANALYSIS OF CIRCUIT BOARD NICKEL PADS The complexity of circuit boards has increased over the years. Due to miniaturization and manufacture of boards that are not only doubled-sided but multi-layered. Increases in complexities have lead to the increase of process defects. Circuit boards have many potential causes of failure. These include having metal traces that are not of proper specification, component misalignment, and solder joints. These causes of failure present new challenges to the circuit board industry that already include finding new methods to achieve higher tolerances and better solder contacts. Printed Circuit Board manufacturers have observed dark colored films on these nickel pads when they noticed opening or fractured solder joints that appeared after assembly. The appearances of these openings happen sporadically and are a major concern for the industry. In this work, we explore different ways to determine the nature of these dark colored spots and their chemistry. Circuit boards have been analyzed using surface analytical techniques such as X-Ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Scanning Electron Microscopy (SEM), Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS), and Energy Dispersive Analysis by X_Ray (EDAX). Since the dark films are formed on the surface of the the nickels pads, the surface analytical tools mentioned above are most-suited for their analysis.
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	Antonio Gonzalez SUNY Stony Brook ENGINEERING SCIENCE Faculty Mentor: Dr. Petar Djuric Electrical Engineering
MAXIMUM LIKELIHOOD SEQUENCE ESTIMATION (MLSE) In communications systems it is inevitable that distortion occurs to the signal being transmitted due to noise in the channel. It is therefore necessary to implement certain steps to correct for these errors. In one specific case the noise in the channel is mathematically modeled as additive white gaussian noise (AWGN). There are different algorithms used to detect and correct errors in such environment. The Viterbi algorithm is one of them. The Viterbi algorithm is a maximum likelihood sequence estimator for convolution codes. With this algorithm and the knowledge of the generator polynomial it is possible to detect and correct errors with good accuracy in long data streams. Using Matlab we can model the transceiver, the channel and the receiver in order to determine the best parameters that yields a low error bit rate.
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	Alains Gratien SUNY Stony Brook MECHANICAL ENGINEERING Faculty Mentor: Dr. Raman Singh Mechanical Engineering
PHOTOELASTICITY AND BEAMS UNDER THREE-POINT BENDING The method of Photoelasticity is based on the principle of double refraction under stress observed in certain class of transparent materials called photoelastic or birefringent materials. This double refraction is a temporary phenomenon associated with mechanical stressing of the object. When the load is removed, the optical property of the material returns to normal, i.e. optically isotropic. Knowledge of a material stress field is important in understanding the method in which it may respond to loading. The method of photoelasticity allows for the observation of stress field as a function of magnitude and application of force, location, and presence of stress concentrations. This is an advantage which strain gages do not pertain, allowing for stress measurements at point of gage application. The purpose of this lab research is to observe stress fields of beams under various type of bending using photoelasticity and strip copper layer. Nevertheless, understanding of the elements of photoelastic method for stress measurement, determination of stresses in a beam under three-point bending, pure bending, pure bending with one crack-layer interaction, and multi-layer interaction have to be covered to fully understand the concept of this lab research experiment.
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	Rupert Green SUNY Old Westbury CHEMISTRY Faculty Mentor: Dr. Nancy Goroff Chemistry
MODIFICATION OF CYCLODEXTRINS Conjugated belt-shaped molecules are very difficult to synthesis. No record has indicated the existence of such a molecule without the structural involvement of the fullerene cage. We are trying to synthesize an open sphere conjugated belt-shaped molecule resembling the structure of fullerene, but are not a part of its cage. This new compound promise to have interesting electronic properties and also show some potential as novel host molecule for specific binding of non-polar cylindrical molecules. Our approach is to use a molecular scaffold to bring the intermediates together, forcing them into close proximity in the proper arrangement to form the desired belt. Making use of the regioselective property of cyclodextrins, silylated cyclodextrins were used as the scafford for creating our desire product. By permanently preventing the secondary side of the cyclodextrin from reacting, we are trying to add 3, 2-(2-hydroxyethyl)-1,3indandione, to each primary hydoxyl group. The framework for our desired molecule is shown in Scheme 1.
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	Usman Oyibo SUNY Farmingdale MATHEMATICS Faculty Mentor: Dr. Folkert Tangerman Applied Math & Statistics
MATHEMATICAL MODELING OF EFFICIENCY OF A SUPERCOMPUTER BUILT AND COMMODITY COMPONENTS We built a Supercomputer called Galaxy by connecting various Intel Pentium-based computer nodes with Fast, Gigabit Ethernet switches. The node in our computer each contain two nodes with clocks speeds ranging from 300 MHz to 600 MHz, up, 300MB to 512MB, and small 2Gb local disk. Red-Hat Linux runs the nodes and the communication between nodes is regulated by MPI. We have benchmarked a sub-Galaxy with NAS and Parallel LINPACK benchmark suites. In order to evaluate the efficiency of Galaxy we have developed a mathematical model to predict and explore the efficiency of the program.
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	Paul Redwood SUNY Stony Brook ENGINEERING SCIENCE Faculty Mentor: Dr. Miriam Rafailovich Materials Science and Engineering
PLASMA ETCHING Plasma etching is a new technology that will be used to replace photolithography, the rater complex process that etches circuit designs onto computer chips. In photolithography the etching process must be repeated for each chip rather than casting circuit designs from one master design. In my research involving plasma etching microscopic molds are made on silicon oxide wavers. This procedure involves, cleaning the oxide layer off the silicon chip to produce pure silicon waver, then spinning (coating) the pure silicon chip with two polymers (PS & PMMA) which are equally mixed together in one solution, then exposing the chip to plasma etching. The two polymers are not mixable and separate, during plasma etching the surface of the silicon chip is harden by ultraviolet light. The mask on the surface of the silicon makes up the skeleton of the chip´s electronic circuit.
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	Daniel Rodriguez SUNY Stony Brook ENGINEERING SCIENCE Faculty Mentor: Dr. Clive Clayton Materials Science and Engineering
APPLICATION OF SURFACE ANALYSIS TECHNIQUES TO THE CHARACTERIZATION OF CHROMATE CONVERSION COATINGS Thin films technology is widely used and extremely beneficial to various fields of engineering. More specifically, this study involves the use of intermetallic compounds (IMC) found on the surface of Al AA2024-T3. Intermetallic compounds control the electrochemical behavior of the aluminum alloy. The first part of this project involves the use of thin film technology to recoat the anode, consisting of Aluminum and Magnesium, of an X-ray head in an XPS system. The X-ray head is a vital tool used in creating X-rays in an XPS system. Sputtering will be used to apply the thin films. Here, the evaporation of materials from one surface to another occurs producing a thin film with a desired thickness. For the recoating of the anode, the desired thickness is approximately 10 micrometers. In a second set of experiments, the thin films of the various intermetallic compounds are created by laser ablation and chromate conversion coated (CCC). Chromate conversion coatings inhibits the corrosion in aluminum alloy AA2024-T3. The results should give a better understanding as to the interaction between the conversion coatings and the intermetallic compounds. Several surface analysis techniques including X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy (XPS), Secondary Ion Mass Spectroscopy (SIMS) and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy (FT-IR) will be used to characterize the various thin films.
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	Samantha Rodriguez SUNY Stony Brook BIOCHEMISTSRY Faculty Mentor: Dr. Miriam Rafailovich Materials Science and Engineering
THE EFFECTS OF NANOPARTICLE FILLERS ON DEWETTING DYNAMICS Fillers are added to polymers to increase their material properties such as mechanical strength, UV resistance, thermal degradation, and other radiation stability. The dynamics of dewetting at the interface between the mixture of polystyrene-gold (PS-Au) and polymethylmethacrylate (PMMA) as a function of the gold nanoparticles (fillers) concentration and the molecular weight of the two polymers were studied. The gold was added to the polystyrene film by mixing a fixed weight percentage in the toluene/polystyrene solution used for spin casting. A solution of monodisperse polystyrene PMMA and toluene was spun cast on a clean silicon wafer. Two other thin films of monodisperse polystyrene were prepare, one contained gold and the other without gold were floated into different of the substrate. The film was annealed at 160 C in a vacuum of 10^-3 Torr for various times. The sample was then analyzed by optical microscopy, AFM and TEM. We found that the dewetting velocity increases with filler concentration. Similar results were also obtained for free standing films. Due to these results, we propose that fillers decrease the viscosity and entanglements in the film.
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	Niranjana Ruiz SUNY Stony Brook ENGINEERING SCIENCE Dr. Sanjay Sampath Materials Science and Engineering
THE EFFECTS ON THE MICROSTRUCTURE, HARDNESS AND WEAR PROPERTIES OF MOLYBDENUM THERMALLY SPRAYED ON STEEL SUBSTRATES Thermal spray coatings are used to enhance the properties of materials. For instance, the resistance of materials to oxidation, corrosion, surface wear and erosion are improved by thermally s praying a coating on a material substrate. In this experiment, molybdenum with two different particle size distributions was thermally sprayed on steel substrates. Different thermal spray gun nozzles were used for varying velocities and temperatures. In addition, the steel substrates were composed of stainless and mild steel, both of which were sprayed at high and low temperatures. A series of tests were performed in order to determine the how both the spraying parameters and particle size affected the properties of molybdenum. In order to determine the microstructural characteristics of the molybdenum coatings, metallographic preparation techniques were used. The three main stages used in metallographic preparation are the planar grinding step, the specimen integrity step and the final polishing step. These steps should produce a clean and undistorted microstructure. Once the surface of the coatings were polished, the integrity of the coating-substrate interface, the presence of impurities (such as oxides) and the overall coating thickness was determined by the use of an optical microscope and the SEM (scanning electron microscope). In particular, the SEM scans the surface of the coating with an electron beam, which is backscattered, collected, and displayed on the screen. The SEM will demonstrate the surface features of the coating, both polished and fractured surfaces, in more detail than the optical microscope. The hardness of both the top and the cross section of the coating were evaluated using the Vicker´s microhardness test, which uses a diamond pyramid indenter. Finally, the wear properties of some of the coatings can be determined. These properties can be affected by the non-homogenous variations in grain size, the nature of the phases, and the presence of inclusions.
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	Woodley St. Louis SUNY OLD WESTBURY MATHEMATICS Faculty Mentor: Dr. Anthony Philips Mathematics
LEAST SQUARES APPROXIMATION AND FOURIER SERIES IN THE HARMONIC ANALYSIS OF TIDES We study and compare two methods for the harmonic analysis of tides. We are given tidal data (from the National Ocean Service, 1000 consecutive hourly records for Bridgeport, Connecticut). The predicted tide is known to be an almost periodic function, and therefore should be representable as a sum of cosines: (H + H0 + H1 cos (a1 T + p1) + H2 cos (a2 T + p2) + ... The problem is how to determine the coefficients. The Fourier analysis method takes a given set of "speeds" a1, a2, etc., calculated from astronomical data, and calculates the corresponding H´s and p´s by the standard method of integrating cos (a T) and sin (a T) times the data over a long time period. The approach tried here is to determine the a´s directly from the data, by taking H0 to be the average height, H1 cos (a1 T + p1 ) to be the cosine which best approximates the record minus H0 (determined by the least square analysis), and the H2 cos (a2 T + p2), to be the cosine which best approximates the difference between the record and H0 + cos (a1 T + p1), etc. The least squares analysis is performed using the computer calculating package Maple.
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	Shridatt Sugrim SUNY Stony Brook MATHEMATICS and PHYSICS Dr. Amy Ksir Mathematics
GROUP REPRESENTATION Formally a group is a set with an operation (usually called multiplication) that obeys certain axioms. Groups are a fundamental structure in the study of abstract algebra. A group can take on different properties (e.g. cyclic groups, infinite groups etc.) based on the elements of the group. A representation of a group is a set of nonsingular, square matrices, all of same order, each of which corresponds to an element in the group. Representations are rich in structure, and there are many theorems that can be used to make explicit calculation. Among these is the reducibility theorem. It roughly states that any given reducible representation can be written as a direct sum of irreducible representations. A method of determining some of these decompositions can be found by appealing to the properties of irreducible representations, specifically the properties dealing with characters and tensor products. The focus of this talk is the decomposition of tensor products of a given representation.
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	Dominic Vasquez SUNY Stony Brook ENGINEERING SCIENCE Dr. Chris Berndt Materials Science and Engineering
ELASTIC MODULUS OF AIR PLASMA SPRAYED YTTRIA PARTIALLY STABILIZED ZIRCONIA COATINGS Thermal spray technology is an area of research that has improved the wear resistance and thermal resistance of materials. This technology has increased the operating life of automobile and airplane jet engines. It has also increased corrosion resistance of various materials. At the Center for Thermal Spray Research, properties and characteristics are being investigated to further understand and improve thermally sprayed coatings. The current project looks into the mechanical characteristics of thermal spray coatings of yttria partially stabilized zirconia (YSZ) applied under different parameters. The different parameters are as follows: Continuous spraying of the coating versus pausing during spraying Applying a bond coat layer of a Nickel-based alloy to the substrate versus no bond coat application Cooling the substrate while spraying versus non-cooling The elastic moduli of the air plasma sprayed YSZ coatings were measured using (i) four-point bend test, and (ii) Knoop indentation. The coatings were produced on mild steel substrates of 60 × 7 × 2.54 mm size to examine the i nfluence of varying the above parameters on the elastic properties. The application of the Nickel-based alloy bond coat layer to some of the substrates was done to understand the influence of bond coat layer on the mechanical characteristics of the coatings. The results from different measurements were compared and contrasted, and the advantages and disadvantages of each technique were highlighted. Using four-point bend tests proved to be a disadvantage in analyzing mechanical properties and did not produce reliable data. Knoop Hardness testing was a simpler technique and gave reliable data. This project will provide further understanding into how the preparation of substrates and different spray techniques used affect the properties of thermal barrier coatings.
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	Chris Williams SUNY Stony Brook BIOLOGY Dr. Partap Khalsa Bioengineering
NEURAL ENCODING OF PHYSIOLOGICAL MOTIONS OF THE LUMBAR SPINE Up to 80‰ of adult Americans experience debilitating low back pain at least once in their lives (1). One cause of low back pain is mechanical injury to the capsular ligament of the bony joints in the lumbar spine (the facet joint capsule). The sensation of pain is due, in part, to the nocireceptors that innervate the facet joint capsule. These neurons are specialized to encode noxious stimuli. During physiological movement of the spine, the capsule is stretched. However, it is unknown if the physiological movements stretch the capsule sufficiently to activate the mechanical sensory neurons. Furthermore, there are few (if any) quantitative studies of the mechanical state of the capsule during the physiological movements of the spine. In this study, to measure how the facet joint capsule (facet capsule, for short) responded to changes in mechanical loading, an apparatus was used to actuate the spine specimen (un-embalmed, cadaveric lumbar spine). The distance and duration of the actuation differed. The deformation of the capsule, as it would be during non-injurious physiological activity, was measured. From these measurements, the mechanical strain was computed. One of the most notable observations is the principal strain is greatest in the caudal facet capsule and least in the cephalic facet capsule. This observation is consistent for all motions that were studied. The study is currently ongoing. Final results are yet to be determined. Reference 1. Tierney Jr., Lawrence M., & et al., ed. Current Medical Diagnosis & Treatment 1999 38th ed. Appleton & Lange: Stamford, Connecticut, 1999, 796-798.