Department of Computer and Information Science

Team members: Scott Hoffman, John Papke, Alexander Paull and Nicholas Smith
Faculty Advisors: Bruce Maxim

ABSTRACT

The Suite Management System is a web-based, interactive tool for managing suite sales at major entertainment venues. The project was completed for Olympia Entertainment, Inc. (OEI), which operates Joe Louis Arena, Comerica Park, the Fox Theater, Cobo Arena, and several other venues around the City of Detroit. The system manages the entire sales workflow from reserving a suite for client and recording food and beverage requests, to tracking payment information, to management reporting. The application supports multiple venues and events, giving the sales staff the flexibility to customize rental packages for each client.

All of the departments involved in suite rentals utilize this fully-integrated solution. The primary users work in the Premium Sales, Accounting, and Hospitality departments. In addition, the included access control mechanisms allow users to only perform actions and see data that is relevant to their duties.
The system is built using a three tier architecture consisting of an ASP.NET back end, which provides data from Microsoft SQL Server through RIA Services, and a Silverlight frontend.

ABSTRACT

A report by the Institute of Medicine of the National Academy of Sciences estimates that as many as 98,000 people die in U.S. hospitals each year because of medical errors. Politically driven reform has brought healthcare to the forefront of Americans' minds; one can only surmise that more affordable healthcare will result in a greater demand on medical institutions. The imminent aging of the "Baby-Boom" generation will undoubtedly supplement this demand. Doctors, nurses, and caregivers are already required to manage multiple tasks, work long and sometimes irregular hours, all the while trying to provide the best health care possible. It is then a reasonable assertion that life-threatening mistakes are only a matter of time, and will presumably increase in frequency as the demand for healthcare grows in the coming years. However, advances in technology, such as biotelemetry, provide an opportunity to counteract this predictable increase in unnecessary, deadly mistakes at a reasonably low cost. Although hospitals and clinics cannot be on the forefront of modern technology (due to strict regulations and the extensive testing required for approving the use of such devices) . There is room for improvement in medical care error-prevention. Therefore, due diligence must be made to explore an "innovative IT-based approach to prevent errors in various medical processes by utilizing advances in radio frequency identification and wireless communications," specifically in the areas of biotelemetry and asset tracking.

Department of Mechanical Engineering

Faculty Advisor: Oleg Zikanov

ABSTRACT

Light-emitting diodes (LEDs) have begun to replace incandescent bulbs inside traffic lights, reducing the amount of electricity needed to operate them. LEDs have a greater efficiency partly because they generate much less heat than incandescent bulbs; however, this advantage has some contingencies. Due to the lower heat generation, the LEDs have become a problem in cold climates, where accidents have resulted from snow covered lights. This investigation explored the most effective and economic solutions to prevent snow from covering LED traffic lights. The most feasible option was found to be a resistive heater wire system incorporated into the traffic light structure that dissipates heat throughout the optic surface. From experimentation, the ideal power supply input to eliminate potential snow buildup was found to be 49 W, much less than the usage for incandescent bulbs. This design effectively prevented snow buildup, but at the same time decreased the energy cost savings of LEDs. In order to improve energy efficiency, several options were considered, including replacing an existing resistor in the circuitry with resistive wire rerouted to the outer lens.