The Spin-Grower: A Machine for Rapid Layer-by-Layer Assembly of Nanostructured Materials

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Winter 2008Layer-by-layer (LBL) assembly is a well-established method of producing multilayered nanostructured materials. In Professor Nicholas A. Kotov’s lab at the University of Michigan, LBL assembly is often accomplished via a dip-coating process, which is time consuming and often performed on unreliable equipment. Spin-assisted LBL assembly has the potential to reduce the fabrication time of nanostructured materials by an order of magnitude and increase the quality of the films. The purpose of this project is to design and produce a spin-assisted LBL assembly prototype using a spin-coater and an automated fluid delivery system for the production of a variety of different nanocomposites.Prof. Nicholas A. Kotov, Prof. John Hart, and Paul Podsiadlohttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58685/1/me450w08project17_report.pd

"Death Itself Shall Be Deathless”: Transrationalism and Eternal Death in Don DeLillo’s Zero K

The status of human mortality in the face of rapid and overwhelming scientific and technological change is by no means a new topic in DeLillo’s fiction. For many critics, death fulfills a crucial function in the author’s work, its very possibility operating to maintain the boundaries of time and space that are otherwise under threat of disappearance in post war culture. Don DeLillo’s eighteenth novel, Zero K (2016), offers an augmented examination of this conjunction between death and technology, depicting an industrial and scientific landscape where fantasies of eternal life can be legitimately realized via radical advances in cryonic technologies. Yet rather than circumventing death and prolonging life as intended, this article argues that DeLillo instead presents cryonic freezing as a form of eternal death. Subsumed within the technological matrix, death’s ineluctability is disturbed and remodulated, meaning that temporal and spatial boundaries become violently unhinged and entirely immeasurable. This boundlessness becomes vividly mirrored in the architectural and temporal logic of the “Convergence” facility itself, a “transrational” space that unravels concepts such as time, space, language, and subjectivity

How Similar Are the Mice to Men? Between-Species Comparison of Left Ventricular Mechanics Using Strain Imaging

BACKGROUND: While mammalian heart size maintains constant proportion to whole body size, scaling of left ventricular (LV) function parameters shows a more complex scaling pattern. We used 2-D speckle tracking strain imaging to determine whether LV myocardial strains and strain rates scale to heart size. METHODS: We studied 18 mice, 15 rats, 6 rabbits, 12 dogs and 20 human volunteers by 2-D echocardiography. Relationship between longitudinal or circumferential strains/strain rates (S(Long)/SR(Long), S(Circ)/SR(Circ)), and LV end-diastolic volume (EDV) or mass were assessed by the allometric (power-law) equation Y = kM(β). RESULTS: Mean LV mass in individual species varied from 0.038 to 134 g, LV EDV varied from 0.015 to 102 ml, while RR interval varied from 81 to 1090 ms. While S(Long) increased with increasing LV EDV or mass (β values 0.047±0.006 and 0.051±0.005, p<0.0001 vs. 0 for both) S(Circ) was unchanged (p = NS for both LV EDV or mass). Systolic and diastolic SR(Long) and SR(Circ) showed inverse correlations to LV EDV or mass (p<0.0001 vs. 0 for all comparisons). The ratio between S(Long) and S(Circ) increased with increasing values of LV EDV or mass (β values 0.039±0.010 and 0.040±0.011, p>0.0003 for both). CONCLUSIONS: While S(Circ) is unchanged, S(Long) increases with increasing heart size, indicating that large mammals rely more on long axis contribution to systolic function. SR(Long) and SR(Circ), both diastolic and systolic, show an expected decrease with increasing heart size

The Melanin-Concentrating Hormone (MCH) System Modulates Behaviors Associated with Psychiatric Disorders

Deficits in sensorimotor gating measured by prepulse inhibition (PPI) of the startle have been known as characteristics of patients with schizophrenia and related neuropsychiatric disorders. PPI disruption is thought to rely on the activity of the mesocorticolimbic dopaminergic system and is inhibited by most antipsychotic drugs. These drugs however act also at the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathway and exert adverse locomotor responses. Finding a way to inhibit the mesocorticolimbic- without affecting the nigrostriatal-dopaminergic pathway may thus be beneficial to antipsychotic therapies. The melanin-concentrating hormone (MCH) system has been shown to modulate dopamine-related responses. Its receptor (MCH1R) is expressed at high levels in the mesocorticolimbic and not in the nigrostriatal dopaminergic pathways. Interestingly a genomic linkage study revealed significant associations between schizophrenia and markers located in the MCH1R gene locus. We hypothesize that the MCH system can selectively modulate the behavior associated with the mesocorticolimbic dopamine pathway. Using mice, we found that central administration of MCH potentiates apomorphine-induced PPI deficits. Using congenic rat lines that differ in their responses to PPI, we found that the rats that are susceptible to apomorphine (APO-SUS rats) and exhibit PPI deficits display higher MCH mRNA expression in the lateral hypothalamic region and that blocking the MCH system reverses their PPI deficits. On the other hand, in mice and rats, activation or inactivation of the MCH system does not affect stereotyped behaviors, dopamine-related responses that depend on the activity of the nigrostriatal pathway. Furthermore MCH does not affect dizocilpine-induced PPI deficit, a glutamate related response. Thus, our data present the MCH system as a regulator of sensorimotor gating, and provide a new rationale to understand the etiologies of schizophrenia and related psychiatric disorders

Three-dimensional motion tracking for assessment of motor tasks

Zusammenfassung in deutscher SpracheDer Microsoft KinectTM Sensor wurde für die Konsole X-Box entwickelt und soll eine Spielerfahrung ohne Kontroller mittels Bewegungserkennung ermöglichen. Nach seiner Veröffentlichung wurde diese neue Art von Technologie auch für andere Anwendungsgebiete interessant. Zahlreiche Papers wurden publiziert, in welche die Fähigkeiten bzw. Performance des KinectTM Sensors untersucht wurden. Basierend auf diesen Ergebnissen wurde auch der Einsatz des Sensors im medizinischen Bereich diskutiert. Einer dieser Bereiche ist die Rehabilitation, in der, der Sensor zur Gestenerkennung bzw. zur Überprüfung von Übungen verwendet wurde. Diese Arbeit befasst sich mit der Frage, ob der Microsoft KinectTM Sensor für genauere Analysen der menschlichen Bewegung, wie zum Beispiel der Berechnung der Flexion des Ellbogens, eingesetzt werden kann. Aus diesem Grund werden die Funktionen und Befehle des Sensors untersucht, um darauf aufbauend, ein Programm zu entwickeln, welches die gewünschten Parameter berechnet bzw. ausliest. Zusätzlich wird noch auf etwaige Hindernisse, die während der Entwicklung des Programmes auftreten, erläutert. Durch die Durchführung unterschiedlicher Messungen, wie Ganganalyse, Handbewegungen & Greifaufgaben (wobei der Schwerpunkt auf Handbewegungen & Greifaufgaben liegt), lässt sich die Genauigkeit und Zuverlässigkeit der Daten untersuchen. Zur Bestimmung dieser Eigenschaften bzw. der Limitierungen des Microsoft KinectTM Sensors werden diese Daten mit den Daten eines Elektrogoniometers verglichen.The Microsoft KinectTM sensor is a gaming device, developed for a control-free gaming experience, using motion tracking. When this technology was released, other fields of application got interested in this technology. Therefore, a lot of papers have been published, in which the capabilities of the KinectTM sensor were studied. Based on these results, the Microsoft KinectTM was used for medical applications. One of them was rehabilitation, where the sensor was used for gesture detection and for checking the performed exercises. This thesis describes the issue, whether the Microsoft KinectTM sensor can be used for a more detailed human motion analysis, such as calculating the flexion of the elbow. Therefore, the functions and commands provide from the KinectTM sensor are inspected and investigated, in order to create a program, which delivers the desired or calculated parameters. In addition, obstacles and limitations, deriving during the development of the program are explained. By performing different measurements, namely gait analysis and hand motion & grasping tasks (focusing on hand motion & grasping), the accuracy and reliability of the obtained data can be shown. As comparison, the data of an electrogoniometer are given, to determine the limitations and restrictions of the Microsoft KinectTM sensor, compared to a state of the art method for human motion analysis.8