Batteries have gone through a wide variation of faces from voltaic pile to Daniell Cell, to Lead acid battery, to nickel cadmium and lithium-ion battery. All these progressions started in the late 1700's. All these olden days batteries were stored in various containers, like plastic containers, metal containers and glass jars. What we shall be focusing on in this research shall be more about the batteries used in resent time electronic/hybrid vehicles.

These batteries are composed of Lithium ions. After use of these batteries, the get retraced by their and stored in specialized facilities which are designed to handle the batteries I such a way that leakages and residual charges are prevented. Most of these batteries should still be enlarged for secondary use in renewable energy systems. If not, they get into a recycling process where they get disassembled, shredded and recycled. 

Cybersickness (aka VR sickness) is motion sickness that occurs when someone uses virtual reality (VR). It can cause dizziness, nausea, headaches, fatigue, etc. Our study investigates the difference between the male and female cybersickness experience when exposed to virtual reality. Human participants will navigate through a maze in virtual reality, using KATVR 360 Virtual Reality Treadmill, simulating a mine with a focus on finding three victims, avoiding fire, and saving oxygen. Surveys and basic vitals were recorded pre- and post-simulation. Our goal is to compare the male and female virtual reality experiences to better understand how sex may influence tolerance to virtual reality, as these findings could give insight into how males and females experience VR cybersickness and initiate further research to understand how to reduce it. 

The study explores the feasibility of using airships for Mars missions. An analysis of previously published research reveals conflicting results. Some studies emphasize the potential of airships due to their low energy consumption and maneuverability, while others highlight their enormous size and implementation challenges caused by Mars' thin atmosphere. We developed a model that accounts for the parameters of Mars' atmosphere, the influence of solar radiation, mass, and aerodynamic drag. An analysis of the relationship between airship dimensions and design parameters was conducted. The results indicate that, despite optimistic assumptions, airships require excessively large sizes and complex structures for mission implementation. 

Various scientific papers have endeavored to determine how lightning interacts with temperature, precipitation, and the Oceanic Niño Index (ONI) on a global scale. However, this analysis narrows the scope to include only three locations in the Americas: The Mississippi, Amazon, and La Plata river basins. Through the use of data collected from the Geostationary Lightning Mapper (GLM), transitional periods between La Niña and El Niño were observed in order to determine if a regional correlation between ONI and lightning frequency could be determined, as implied by previous studies. A strong relationship was seen in all basins, with the most consistent results coming from the Southern Hemisphere. We then look deeper into the interaction between temperature and lightning, focusing on seasonal trends as suggested by the literature. The variability in lightning anomaly appears to be largest during the Fall and Spring months, the time of year with the most dramatic temporal transitions. Finally, the linear correlation between lightning and temperature, precipitation and ONI were calculated. The results show that precipitation does not largely impact lighting activity, and that the most positive concurrences between lightning and temperature occur in the transition period of the recent Super Niño event in 2023-2024. Additionally, the results of this exploratory analysis prompted us to deploy a weather station at Langmuir Lab to determine the correlations between lightning and weather data for New Mexico. 

Mining emergencies pose significant risks due to toxic gases, reduced visibility, and unstable environments. Rapid and informed decision-making is essential to ensuring the safety of miners and rescue teams. This research focuses on developing bio-inspired deployable sensor nodes, called Sensor Eggs, to enhance real-time environmental awareness and improve emergency evacuation and autonomous navigation in underground mines. We hypothesize that a network of low-cost, self-deploying sensors can provide critical data to assist in emergency response and evacuation planning. The Sensor Eggs are designed to withstand harsh mining conditions while collecting real-time data on gas concentrations, air quality, temperature, and humidity. Each unit transmits data wirelessly, allowing for continuous monitoring and integration with unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) and drones. The sensor network supports autonomous path-planning algorithms, enabling safer and more efficient evacuation strategies. Experimental testing in a controlled underground mine environment validated the Sensor Eggs’ ability to operate effectively, withstand environmental stresses, and provide actionable data for hazard detection and route optimization. Results indicate that this approach may enhance emergency response by reducing reliance on human assessment in hazardous conditions. The findings suggest that deployable sensor networks may improve safety and coordination in mining and other extreme or remote environments, such as disaster response and industrial safety. This research demonstrates a scalable, adaptable approach to real-time hazard monitoring, with potential applications in any environment where situational awareness and autonomous decision-making are critical to safety. 

This project combines experimental results and computational analysis to find and understand the heated bed temperature for laser powder bed fusion (LPBF) printed recycled Al10SiMg that produces optimized mechanical properties. The hypothesis is that the control group (no heated bed) will provide the highest strength and lowest ductility, and the highest heated bed temperature will produce the highest ductility and lowest strength. Research has primarily focused on post-printed heat treatments. This project aims to produce a part using recycled Al10SiMg powder with optimized tensile strength and ductility upon completion of the printing process by utilizing the heated bed. To analyze the underlying mechanisms that cause the differing strengths, a molecular Dynamics simulation was utilized for aluminum and magnesium during LPBF under different heated bed conditions. Two large simulation cells are subjected to various temperatures mimicking the heating and cooling of the LPBF process, with a powder cell and a single crystal cell, as well as differentiating between a pure aluminum cell and a 99Al1Mg cell. A region of the cells is selected and heated to the temperature of the laser and rapidly cooled, similar to the rapid cooling involved in LPBF. The underlying layers are held to a constant temperature consistent with the heated bed during printing. The resulting phases, dislocations, and temperature gradients will be analyzed further to understand the molecular interactions of ambient conditions on rapid cooling conditions. 

Reinforcement learning (RL) algorithms have made strives over the past decade applying them to a wide range of problems and control tasks. While the primary improvements are noted in discrete environments, using techniques like convolutional neural networks, the concerns of their continuous environment counterparts lag behind. The neuromorphic hardware implementations have shared in this struggle, failing to make progress in implementing RL frameworks that operate in a continuous environment consistently. Key implementations of spiking neural networks (SNN) work to solve these problems but find additional challenges in addressing continuous environments using RL frameworks. We propose the Spiking Actor Network Soft Actor Critic (SANSAC) to address an RL framework with continuous environments, designed with neuromorphic hardware philosophy. We compare a traditional Soft Actor Critic (SAC) network to SANSAC evaluating the performance of agents designed for neuromorphic hardware in a Von Neumann architecture. We demonstrate the near equivalent performance of SANSAC to SAC, while addressing the impact of hidden dimensions on both. Our results demonstrate the viability of SNNs in Von Neumann architectures, providing a basis to continue exploring the use of SNNs in continuous RL frameworks. 

The ability of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) to execute precise and autonomous landings remains a significant technological challenge, particularly in dynamic and GPS-denied environments. Inspired by the natural world, this research explores the electroreception mechanism in bees as a novel approach to enhancing UAV landing systems. Bees rely on weak electromagnetic fields generated by flowers to guide their precise landings on specified flowers during pollination, a capability that could revolutionize drone navigation. This study examines the biological foundations of electroreception, compares similar mechanisms in other species, and evaluates the limitations of conventional drone landing technologies, including GPS, vision-based systems, and LiDAR. By integrating bio-inspired electrostatic sensors into UAVs, drones can detect electromagnetic landing pads, allowing for enhanced accuracy, energy efficiency, and resilience in low-visibility conditions. This presentation outlines the potential of an electrostatic-based landing system, its engineering feasibility, and its applications in logistics, agriculture, space exploration, and disaster response. The findings suggest that bridging biological principles with technological innovation can lead to more autonomous and adaptable UAV operations, paving the way for next-generation drone navigation. 

The rapid progression of technology and manufacturing has a demand for dissimilar metal joining to increase design flexibility and performance. The objective of this work is to facilitate laser welding of Ti-6Al-4V and Inconel 625 through a vanadium interlayer to form an intermetallic free, strong, and corrosion resistant joint. Vanadium was chosen based on binary phase diagram solubilities, literature, and theoretical CalPhaD calculations in PanDat. Our hypothesis is that we can create crack-free welds throughout the joint by varying process parameters. Varied parameters include laser power from 325 to 650 watts, laser scan speed from 80 to 160 in/min, and beam offset up to a ¼ of the beam diameter. Parameters were chosen based on previous dissimilar joining research and those found in the literature. Metallography, including optical and scanning electron microscopy, was used to analyze the weld chemical composition, grain structure, and defects through both the fusion and heat affected zones. The results and discussion will examine the relationship between process parameters, microstructure, and observed weld defects. Our findings will not only assess the weldability of vanadium and Inconel 625 but also establish a transferable framework for studying other dissimilar material combinations, providing valuable insights for future research in this field. 

Over the past decade, social media platforms have transformed from a means of escapism into a tool for shaping government actions and public opinion. No platform is more known for this than X (formally known as Twitter). Now more than ever, government officials around the world are utilizing X to campaign and update their followers on policies and beliefs. This tonal shift for social media platforms, namely X, has meant that many people are now hearing news directly from political candidates or government officials instead of traditional news outlets. Due to this tonal shift in the use of social media, it is critical to examine how government officials are using social media platforms to address their audiences. We will examine the past three most recent sitting presidents of the United States, Barack Obama, Donald Trump, and Joe Biden. An overarching question is how, if at all, has tone changed over the past decade on the social media accounts of the Presidents of the United States. As we implement tonal analysis research to posts on X, we have the opportunity to better understand how our highest-ranking government officials have evolved in how they address the American people. 

At New Mexico Tech, the outreach program sends robotic combat kits to schools around the state for young students to get a taste of engineering projects and inspire the next generation of New Mexico Tech students. The MESA class of robot kits are sent to middle school and high school students to build and then participate in a competition at the end of the school year. The focus of this project is to provide an additional design and accompanying lesson plans for the MESA robot kit that is more interesting and involved. The new design is aimed at more experienced builders that want a slightly more challenging project while still remaining similar to the original MESA robot kit and within a reasonable margin of safety. The chosen design for the new MESA kit is one with a low RPM, higher torque rotating disk weapon, which lowers the impact of a strike from the weapon while remaining powerful enough to lift another robot. The new kit has proven to be simple to assemble without power tools and remains similar to the original kit, using many of the same parts. Along with the kit, students will learn how to model the robot chassis in CAD software and construct the robot using lesson plans that teach them STEM concepts such as rotational kinetic energy along the way. 

Cardiovascular diseases (CVDs) are the leading cause of death worldwide, and early treatment of CVDs has been shown to improve patient health outcomes. The enzyme lipoprotein-associated PLA2 (Lp-PLA2) is an emerging biomarker that can help identify individuals at risk for developing CVDs. A blood concentration of 5.2 nM Lp-PLA2 has been established as the threshold for distinguishing between healthy individuals and those at risk. Currently, the primary detection method is through enzyme-linked immunosorbent assay (ELISA), which is costly, requires special expertise to perform, and has a long detection time. For these reasons, a new method is needed for simple, cheap, and easy detection. Our group has been exploring fluorescence and flow cytometry-based methods to address current limitations. This is achieved using porous silica microspheres with supported lipid membranes (SLM). The SLM consists of a lipid mixture of zwitterionic, anionic, and fluorescently labeled lipids that selectively undergo hydrolysis in the presence of Lp-PLA2. As the lipid membrane degrades due to Lp-PLA2 activity, a fluorescence decrease in the lipo-beads is monitored via flow cytometry, providing a quantitative measure of Lp-PLA2. However, at lower Lp-PLA2 concentrations (<5nM) it becomes more difficult to measure the fluorescence decrease. To enhance the sensitivity of our method, we hypothesize that: (i) increasing the proportion of anionic lipids, (ii) enhancing the porosity of the lipo-beads, and (iii) reducing the lipo-bead size will make the SLM more susceptible to Lp-PLA2-catalyzed hydrolysis, thereby improving detection. This presentation will discuss our progress in optimizing these parameters for more sensitive Lp-PLA2 detection. 

Lying within the bounds of an area containing enhanced seismic activity in the Rio Grande Rift, the Socorro Magma Body is a relatively large and thin magma body 19 km beneath the surface (with an area of approximately ~3400 km2). The end goal of this project is to re-measure the bounds of the magma body, so as to reaffirm its dimensions; though currently, the focus is still on evaluating the crustal structure within the area. This is done by measuring the converted phases, or the way in which seismic waves reflect and (especially) refract through the structure, with particular attention on the time delays, which is then used to trace the subterranean discontinuities that mark crustal structure. Though all still underway, the hope is to ultimately attain measurements that might be compared with other previous studies done on the structure, so as to give a better understanding of such a major geologic formation. Analysis of these converted phases reveals evidence of an area of lower wave velocity present there, which may be related to the presence of molten material of the magma body. 

The Wide field Infrared Kuiper belt and Exoplanet Explorer Telescope, also known as the WIKEE telescope, is a longstanding project that the New Mexico Tech astronomy club has been developing over the past few years. One of the goals of asteroid tracking is a publicly available, easy to use program where positional information, either found online or user observations, are uploaded and trajectories are calculated. The objective of orbital mechanics is to take multiple observations of where planetary bodies are located, then either using vectors or angles, compute where they are going. Currently, the project is still young, but advancing rapidly, deriving formulas for Gauss’ algorithm for orbital detection and creating the aforementioned programming python, so anyone can compute the trajectories. The long term goals of this project is to eventually, be able to test the code on well known orbits and see the accuracy of the program, and eventually, be able to independently chart asteroid orbits. 

Carbon capture and storage (CCS) is a leading technology in the fight against global climate change, recognized for its potential to reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Among various geological storage options, depleted gas reservoirs have gained prominence due to their proven containment capability, existing infrastructure, and extensive operational and geological data. This study evaluates the feasibility and efficiency of storing CO₂ in a depleted gas reservoir in the Permian Basin, sub of the Delaware Basin. The reservoir contains residual gases, including CO₂, CH₄, and minor components such as H₂S and C₂H₆, offering a realistic case for studying fluid interactions during injection. A compositional simulation was conducted using CMG-GEM, incorporating reservoir rock properties, native fluid composition, and geological structure. CO₂ injection scenarios across multiple wells were analyzed to track plume behavior, pressure evolution, and trapping mechanisms which is structural, residual, and solubility trapping. Results showed stable plume confinement with low upward migration risk and pressure build-up within safe limits. Solubility and residual trapping emerged as key contributors to long-term storage security. The reservoir's performance, supported by effective caprock integrity, confirmed its suitability for safe CO₂ sequestration. By combining multi-component gas modeling with field-scale simulation, this study provides a practical and realistic approach to evaluating storage efficiency in mature reservoirs. These insights strengthen the case for using depleted gas fields for CCUS and offer valuable guidance for well placement, injection design, and long-term risk assessment in similar settings. 

The research we are conducting will use a bio-mimetic mesh that has been shown to improve heat-transfer capability of heat pipes, which are used in heat rejection systems. The bio-mesh was made to mimic the trabecular or cancellous bone tissue structure, found at the end of long bones like the femur. The purpose of this structure is to resist dynamic loads, but the characteristic that we are concerned about within this research is the porosity that this tissue exhibits. The high porosity allows for a thorough mixing of the working fluid inside of the heat pipe as it travels the length and recycles. The bio-mesh structure was developed on campus in 2023 by a previous graduate student. The purpose of this research is to develop a manufacturing method for, as well as to test bio-mimetic heat pipes. This work is meant to delve further into the effects that the structure has on heat transfer capability, specifically at high temperatures. Preliminary research has shown that at mid-range temperatures (~45°C-80°C), heat-pipes utilizing bio-mesh outperformed both the off-the-shelf solution, and the heat pipes manufactured that did not contain the bio-mesh. Prior research, however, was unable to determine how this mesh held up at temperatures over 150°C, which is what we will be focusing our testing around. Comparison will be made between two heat pipes with the same structure – one utilizing bio-mesh – as well as with an off-the-shelf solution. 

Traumatic brain injuries (TBI) affect approximately 69 million people worldwide annually and imposing a staggering $400 billion economic burden. This study proposes a helmet design inspired by the woodpecker’s ability to endure high-impact forces without injury. Woodpeckers can withstand impacts of 1200-1400g without brain injury - approximately 14 times the force that causes human concussions. The helmet features fluid-filled adaptive strips. To enhance protection, Time-of-Flight (ToF) sensors predict impact locations, prompting rapid fluid redistribution and localized stiffening to minimize force transmission across that load path. The U* index method is employed to predict the load path, allowing the adaptive strips to direct and mitigate the force effectively. Additionally, a helmet-to-shoulder connection is designed to transfer part of the impact load away from the head, further reducing the severity of the impact. The methodology includes modeling the helmet structure in SolidWorks and simulating the material properties and fiber direction using ANSYS Composite PrepPost. The computational predictions will be validated through experimental testing. Results from computational simulations using ANSYS Workbench, ANSYS APDL, MATLAB, and ParaView will be compared with experimental data to ensure accuracy. This research aims to provide a safer, biomimetic solution for protective headgear, with applications in high-risk activities such as sports and motorcycling, offering potential to reduce the occurrence and severity of TBIs. 

In this research paper, we investigate the existence of Hopf bifurcations in a mathematical model that includes economic growth, corruption, and unemployment. The model links these social and economic factors to provide insight into the dynamics of the economy. The motivation for investigating the appearance of Hopf bifurcations is that economic cycles occur often in economics and play an important role. The mathematical model was presented previously, but the important topic of the appearance of limit cycles was not investigated. The authors studied some effects and impacts of corruption on economic growth and unemployment. However, in our work, we focus on the existence of limit cycles. We used different bifurcation parameters to find the conditions for the appearance of Hopf bifurcations. We perform a variety of numerical simulations in which the system presents several Hopf bifurcations. The numerical simulations provide additional support to the theoretical results related to stability and Hopf and bifurcations. Finally, we present a discussion and future directions of research. 

Fluid filled sandwich core composites are a special category of composites that utilize flow of liquid for dynamic strengthening. In past analysis by researchers at NMT, FFSCC materials have been found to have many useful properties like: high strain rate impact attenuation, improved acoustic attenuation, thermal energy dissipation, and potential as a radiation shielding material. Yet these structures have not been characterized for their mechanical properties. This research proposes a custom flexure test for determination of FFSCC plate properties based on relevant theory.