Lithium-ion battery second life:pathways, challenges and outlook

Net zero targets have resulted in a drive to decarbonise the transport sector worldwide through electrification. This has, in turn, led to an exponentially growing battery market and, conversely, increasing attention on how we can reduce the environmental impact of batteries and promote a more efficient circular economy to achieve real net zero. As these batteries reach the end of their first life, challenges arise as to how to collect and process them, in order to maximise their economical use before finally being recycled. Despite the growing body of work around this topic, the decision-making process on which pathways batteries could take is not yet well understood, and clear policies and standards to support implementation of processes and infrastructure are still lacking. Requirements and challenges behind recycling and second life applications are complex and continue being defined in industry and academia. Both pathways rely on cell collection, selection and processing, and are confronted with the complexities of pack disassembly, as well as a diversity of cell chemistries, state-of-health, size, and form factor. There are several opportunities to address these barriers, such as standardisation of battery design and reviewing the criteria for a battery’s end-of-life. These revisions could potentially improve the overall sustainability of batteries, but may require policies to drive such transformation across the industry. The influence of policies in triggering a pattern of behaviour that favours one pathway over another are examined and suggestions are made for policy amendments that could support a second life pipeline, while encouraging the development of an efficient recycling industry. This review explains the different pathways that end-of-life EV batteries could follow, either immediate recycling or service in one of a variety of second life applications, before eventual recycling. The challenges and barriers to each pathway are discussed, taking into account their relative environmental and economic feasibility and competing advantages and disadvantages of each. The review identifies key areas where processes need to be simplified and decision criteria clearly defined, so that optimal pathways can be rapidly determined for each end-of-life battery

Evaluating Z-pin performance under high-velocity impact conditions

High-performance aerospace composite structures manufactured from pre-impregnated carbon fibre preforms are highly susceptible to delamination failure in the event of high-velocity impact. An established solution to this problem is to insert Z-pins into the composite structure to enhance through-thickness impact performance. This practice is known as through-thickness reinforcement (TTR). The production and impact testing of full-scale and sub-scale components is expensive and does not yield a suitable environment for the analysis of Z-pin behaviour and effects under the observed complex loading conditions. By contrast, prior small test scales and low strain-rates have not been sufficient to invoke the large-scale bridging action of Z-pins or study their behaviour at strain-rates representative of a real impact event. This study presents a test method which has been designed, using finite element analysis, to be capable of reproducing delamination failure at sub-element scale and high strain-rate using soft-body impact. This test makes use of a simple cantilevered tapered plate which is subjected to impact by a gelatine projectile using a gas-gun. This method will recreate the delamination failure mode observed under high-velocity impact at substantially reduced cost and provide a test-bed for assessing Z-pin performance at larger scales

Strategies for selection of subjects for sequencing after detection of a linkage peak

Linkage analysis has the potential to localize disease genes of interest, but the choice of which subjects to select for follow-up sequencing after identifying a linkage peak might influence the ability to find a disease gene. We compare nine different strategies for selection of subjects for follow-up sequencing using sequence data from the Genetic Analysis Workshop 17. We found that our more selective strategies, which included methods to identify case subjects more likely to be affected by genetic causes, out-performed sequencing all case and control subjects in linked pedigrees and required sequencing fewer individuals. We found that using genotype data from population control subjects had a higher benefit-cost ratio than sequencing control subjects selected as being the opposite extreme of the case subjects. We conclude that choosing case subjects for sequencing based on more selective strategies can be reliable and cost-effective

Unnatural Amino Acid Incorporation into Virus-Like Particles

Virus-like particles composed of hepatitis B virus (HBV) or bacteriophage Qβ capsid proteins have been labeled with azide- or alkyne-containing unnatural amino acids by expression in a methionine auxotrophic strain of E. coli. The substitution does not affect the ability of the particles to self-assemble into icosahedral structures indistinguishable from native forms. The azide and alkyne groups were addressed by Cu(I)-catalyzed [3 + 2] cycloaddition: HBV particles were decomposed by the formation of more than 120 triazole linkages per capsid in a location-dependent manner, whereas Qβ suffered no such instability. The marriage of these well-known techniques of sense-codon reassignment and bioorthogonal chemical coupling provides the capability to construct polyvalent particles displaying a wide variety of functional groups with near-perfect control of spacing

A 3D Map of the Human Genome at Kilobase Resolution Reveals Principles of Chromatin Looping

SummaryWe use in situ Hi-C to probe the 3D architecture of genomes, constructing haploid and diploid maps of nine cell types. The densest, in human lymphoblastoid cells, contains 4.9 billion contacts, achieving 1 kb resolution. We find that genomes are partitioned into contact domains (median length, 185 kb), which are associated with distinct patterns of histone marks and segregate into six subcompartments. We identify ∼10,000 loops. These loops frequently link promoters and enhancers, correlate with gene activation, and show conservation across cell types and species. Loop anchors typically occur at domain boundaries and bind CTCF. CTCF sites at loop anchors occur predominantly (>90%) in a convergent orientation, with the asymmetric motifs “facing” one another. The inactive X chromosome splits into two massive domains and contains large loops anchored at CTCF-binding repeats.PaperFlic

Integrative Genomics Viewer

Author Manuscript 2012 May 07.To the Editor: Rapid improvements in sequencing and array-based platforms are resulting in a flood of diverse genome-wide data, including data from exome and whole-genome sequencing, epigenetic surveys, expression profiling of coding and noncoding RNAs, single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) and copy number profiling, and functional assays. Analysis of these large, diverse data sets holds the promise of a more comprehensive understanding of the genome and its relation to human disease. Experienced and knowledgeable human review is an essential component of this process, complementing computational approaches. This calls for efficient and intuitive visualization tools able to scale to very large data sets and to flexibly integrate multiple data types, including clinical data. However, the sheer volume and scope of data pose a significant challenge to the development of such tools.National Institute of General Medical Sciences (U.S.) (R01GM074024)National Cancer Institute (U.S.) (R21CA135827)National Human Genome Research Institute (U.S.) (U54HG003067

A high-resolution map of human evolutionary constraint using 29 mammals.

The comparison of related genomes has emerged as a powerful lens for genome interpretation. Here we report the sequencing and comparative analysis of 29 eutherian genomes. We confirm that at least 5.5% of the human genome has undergone purifying selection, and locate constrained elements covering ∼4.2% of the genome. We use evolutionary signatures and comparisons with experimental data sets to suggest candidate functions for ∼60% of constrained bases. These elements reveal a small number of new coding exons, candidate stop codon readthrough events and over 10,000 regions of overlapping synonymous constraint within protein-coding exons. We find 220 candidate RNA structural families, and nearly a million elements overlapping potential promoter, enhancer and insulator regions. We report specific amino acid residues that have undergone positive selection, 280,000 non-coding elements exapted from mobile elements and more than 1,000 primate- and human-accelerated elements. Overlap with disease-associated variants indicates that our findings will be relevant for studies of human biology, health and disease

Discovery and saturation analysis of cancer genes across 21 tumour types

Although a few cancer genes are mutated in a high proportion of tumours of a given type (>20%), most are mutated at intermediate frequencies (2–20%). To explore the feasibility of creating a comprehensive catalogue of cancer genes, we analysed somatic point mutations in exome sequences from 4,742 human cancers and their matched normal-tissue samples across 21 cancer types. We found that large-scale genomic analysis can identify nearly all known cancer genes in these tumour types. Our analysis also identified 33 genes that were not previously known to be significantly mutated in cancer, including genes related to proliferation, apoptosis, genome stability, chromatin regulation, immune evasion, RNA processing and protein homeostasis. Down-sampling analysis indicates that larger sample sizes will reveal many more genes mutated at clinically important frequencies. We estimate that near-saturation may be achieved with 600–5,000 samples per tumour type, depending on background mutation frequency. The results may help to guide the next stage of cancer genomics