Design and Verification of an Optical System to Interrogate Dermally-implanted Microparticle Sensors

Diabetes mellitus affects 25.8 million Americans (8.3%) and over 300 million people worldwide. Clinical trials indicate that proper management of blood glucose levels is critical in preventing or delaying complications associated with diabetes. Thus, there is a common need to monitor and manage blood glucose properly for people with diabetes. However, the patients’ compliance for recommended monitoring frequency is low due to the pain and inconvenience of current standard finger-pricking tests. To promote patient adherence to the recommended self-monitoring frequency, non-invasive/ minimally invasive glucose testing approaches are needed. Luminescent microparticle sensor is an attractive solution. For these sensors to be deployed in vivo, a matched optical system is needed to interrogate dermally-implanted sensors. This research project investigated the light propagation in skin and the interaction with implants using Monte Carlo modeling. The results of the modeling were used to design an optical system with high interrogation and collection efficiency (40~300 times improvement). The optical system was then constructed and evaluated experimentally. A stable skin phantom mimicking the optical properties of human skin was developed as a permanent evaluation medium to minimize the use of animals. The optical properties of the skin phantom matched the maximum published values of human skin in scattering and absorption over the spectral range of 540~700nm in order to avoid overestimation of the capability of the system. The significant photon loss observed at the connection between the designed system and a commercial spectrometer was overcome using two optimized designs: a two-detector system and a customized low-resolution spectrometer system. Both optimization approaches effectively address the photon loss problem and each showed good SNR (>100) while maintaining a sufficient system resolution for use with fluorescent materials. Both systems are suitable for luminescence measurement, because broad bands of the luminescent spectrum are of interest. In the future, either system can be easily modified into a more compact system (e.g. handheld), and it can be directly coupled to an analog-to-digital converter and integrated circuits offering potential for a single compact and portable device for field use with luminescent diagnostic systems as well as implanted sensors

Comparative Analysis of Small-Scale Organic Rankine Cycle Systems for Solar Energy Utilisation

Small-scale organic Rankine cycle (ORC) systems driven by solar energy are compared in this paper, which aims to explore the potential of power generation for domestic utilisation. A solar thermal collector was used as the heat source for a hot water storage tank. Thermal performance was then evaluated in terms of both the conventional ORC and an ORC using thermal driven pump (TDP). It is established that the solar ORC using TDP has a superior performance to the conventional ORC under most working conditions. Results demonstrate that power output of the ORC using TDP ranges from 72 W to 82 W with the increase of evaporating temperature, which shows an improvement of up to 3.3% at a 100 °C evaporating temperature when compared with the power output of the conventional ORC. Energy and exergy efficiencies of the ORC using TDP increase from 11.3% to 12.6% and from 45.8% to 51.3% when the evaporating temperature increases from 75 °C to 100 °C. The efficiency of the ORC using TDP is improved by up to 3.27%. Additionally, the exergy destruction using TDP can be reduced in the evaporator and condenser. The highest exergy efficiency in the evaporator is 96.9%, an improvement of 62% in comparison with that of the conventional ORC, i.e., 59.9%. Thus, the small-scale solar ORC system using TDP is more promising for household application

Reconstructing the basal angiosperm phylogeny: evaluating information content of mitochondrial genes

Three mitochondrial (atp1, matR, nad5), four chloroplast (atpB, matK, rbcL, rpoC2), and one nuclear (18S) genes from 162 seed plants, representing all major lineages of gymnosperms and angiosperms, were analyzed together in a supermatrix or in various partitions using likelihood and parsimony methods. The results show that Amborella + Nymphaeales together constitute the first diverging lineage of angiosperms, and that the topology of Amborella alone being sister to all other angiosperms likely represents a local long branch attraction artifact. The monophyly of magnoliids, as well as sister relationships between Magnoliales and Laurales, and between Canellales and Piperales, are all strongly supported. The sister relationship to eudicots of Ceratophyllum is not strongly supported by this study; instead a placement of the genus with Chloranthaceae receives moderate support in the mitochondrial gene analyses. Relationships among magnoliids, monocots, and eudicots remain unresolved. Direct comparisons of analytic results from several data partitions with or without RNA editing sites show that in multigene analyses, RNA editing has no effect on well supported relationships, but minor effect on weakly supported ones. Finally, comparisons of results from separate analyses of mitochondrial and chloroplast genes demonstrate that mitochondrial genes, with overall slower rates of substitution than chloroplast genes, are informative phylogenetic markers, and are particularly suitable for resolving deep relationships.Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/147147/1/tax25065680.pd

Search for dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks in √s = 13 TeV pp collisions with the ATLAS detector

A search for weakly interacting massive particle dark matter produced in association with bottom or top quarks is presented. Final states containing third-generation quarks and miss- ing transverse momentum are considered. The analysis uses 36.1 fb−1 of proton–proton collision data recorded by the ATLAS experiment at √s = 13 TeV in 2015 and 2016. No significant excess of events above the estimated backgrounds is observed. The results are in- terpreted in the framework of simplified models of spin-0 dark-matter mediators. For colour- neutral spin-0 mediators produced in association with top quarks and decaying into a pair of dark-matter particles, mediator masses below 50 GeV are excluded assuming a dark-matter candidate mass of 1 GeV and unitary couplings. For scalar and pseudoscalar mediators produced in association with bottom quarks, the search sets limits on the production cross- section of 300 times the predicted rate for mediators with masses between 10 and 50 GeV and assuming a dark-matter mass of 1 GeV and unitary coupling. Constraints on colour- charged scalar simplified models are also presented. Assuming a dark-matter particle mass of 35 GeV, mediator particles with mass below 1.1 TeV are excluded for couplings yielding a dark-matter relic density consistent with measurements