DESIGN AND INTEGRATION OF A TRAILER HITCH FOR A HYDRAULIC HYBRID CHEVY EQUINOX

ME450 Capstone Design and Manufacturing Experience: Winter 2008Rules for the Challenge X Competition, sponsored by General Motors and the United States Department of Energy, call for a trailer hitch with a towing capacity that meets the current baseline Chevy Equinox. The University of Michigan Challenge X Team’s vehicle requires redesign of the trailer hitch due to relocation of other vehicle subsystems. Specifically, the new design must improve packaging by providing structural support for the fluid lines and by avoiding interference with the oil cooler and emissions equipment.General Motorshttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/58695/1/me450w08project7_report.pd

One-Year Water-Stable and Porous Bi(III) Halide Semiconductor with Broad-Spectrum Antibacterial Performance

Hybrid metal halide semiconductors are a unique family of materials with immense potential for numerous applications. For this to materialize, environmental stability and toxicity deficiencies must be simultaneously addressed. We report here a porous, visible light semiconductor, namely, (DHS)Bi2I8 (DHS = [2.2.2] cryptand), which consists of nontoxic, earth-abundant elements, and is water-stable for more than a year. Gas- and vapor-sorption studies revealed that it can selectively and reversibly adsorb H2O and D2O at room temperature (RT) while remaining impervious to N2 and CO2. Solid-state NMR measurements and density functional theory (DFT) calculations verified the incorporation of H2O and D2O in the molecular cages, validating the porous nature. In addition to porosity, the material exhibits broad band-edge light emission centered at 600 nm with a full width at half-maximum (fwhm) of 99 nm, which is maintained after 6 months of immersion in H2O. Moreover, (DHS)Bi2I8 exhibits bacteriocidal action against three Gram-positive and three Gram-negative bacteria, including antibiotic-resistant strains. This performance, coupled with the recorded water stability and porous nature, renders it suitable for a plethora of applications, from solid-state batteries to water purification and disinfection

Assessment of dust size retrievals based on AERONET: a case study of radiative closure from visible‐near‐infrared to thermal infrared

Super‐coarse dust particles (diameters >10 μm) are evidenced to be more abundant in the atmosphere than model estimates and contribute significantly to the dust climate impacts. Since super‐coarse dust accounts for less dust extinction in the visible‐to‐near‐infrared (VIS‐NIR) than in the thermal infrared (TIR) spectral regime, they are suspected to be underestimated by remote sensing instruments operates only in VIS‐NIR, including Aerosol Robotic Networks (AERONET), a widely used data set for dust model validation. In this study, we perform a radiative closure assessment using the AERONET‐retrieved size distribution in comparison with the collocated Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) TIR observations with comprehensive uncertainty analysis. The consistently warm bias in the comparisons suggests a potential underestimation of super‐coarse dust in the AERONET retrievals due to the limited VIS‐NIR sensitivity. An extra super‐coarse mode included in the AERONET‐retrieved size distribution helps improve the TIR closure without deteriorating the retrieval accuracy in the VIS‐NIR

Value of information analytical methods: Report 2 of the ISPOR value of information analysis emerging good practices task force

The allocation of health care resources among competing priorities requires an assessment of the expected costs and health effects of investing resources in the activities, and on the opportunity cost of the expenditure. To date, much effort has been devoted to assessing the expected costs and health effects, but there remains an important need to also reflect the consequences of uncertainty in resource allocation decisions and the value of further research to reduce uncertainty. Decision-making with uncertainty may turn out to be suboptimal, resulting in health loss. Consequently, there may be value in reducing uncertainty, through the collection of new evidence, to better inform resource decisions. This value can be quantified using Value of Information (VOI) analysis. This report, from the ISPOR VOI Task Force, describes methods for computing four VOI measures: the Expected Value of Perfect Information (EVPI), Expected Value of Partial Perfect Information (EVPPI), Expected Value of Sample Information (EVSI) and Expected Net Benefit of Sampling (ENBS). Several methods exist for computing EVPPI and EVSI, and this report provides guidance on selecting the most appropriate method based on the features of the decision problem. The report provides a number of recommendations for good practice when planning, undertaking or reviewing VOI analyses. The software needed to compute VOI is discussed, and areas for future research are highlighted

Finishing the euchromatic sequence of the human genome

The sequence of the human genome encodes the genetic instructions for human physiology, as well as rich information about human evolution. In 2001, the International Human Genome Sequencing Consortium reported a draft sequence of the euchromatic portion of the human genome. Since then, the international collaboration has worked to convert this draft into a genome sequence with high accuracy and nearly complete coverage. Here, we report the result of this finishing process. The current genome sequence (Build 35) contains 2.85 billion nucleotides interrupted by only 341 gaps. It covers ∼99% of the euchromatic genome and is accurate to an error rate of ∼1 event per 100,000 bases. Many of the remaining euchromatic gaps are associated with segmental duplications and will require focused work with new methods. The near-complete sequence, the first for a vertebrate, greatly improves the precision of biological analyses of the human genome including studies of gene number, birth and death. Notably, the human enome seems to encode only 20,000-25,000 protein-coding genes. The genome sequence reported here should serve as a firm foundation for biomedical research in the decades ahead

Chemical exchange of labile protons by deuterium enables selective detection of pharmaceuticals in solid formulations

International audienceChemically assisted swapping of labile protons by deuterons is presented for amino acids, polysaccharides, pharmaceutical compounds, and their solid formulations. Solid-state packing interactions in these compounds are elucidated by 1H–2H isotope correlation NMR spectroscopy (iCOSY). A minuscule concentration of dopamine, 5 wt% or ∼100 μg, in a solid formulation can be detected by 2H NMR at 28.2 T (1H, 1200 MHz) in under a minute

Deuteron-proton isotope correlation spectroscopy of molecular solids

A dissolution followed by recrystallization from a deuterated solvent allows the site-selective deuteration of labile protons in molecular solids. High yields of deuteration obtained by this approach facilitates the structure elucidation of powdered solids by solid-state NMR spectroscopy, for example, by acquiring 1D 2H and 2D 2H-1H correlation NMR spectra with short experimental times. Along these lines, we present a cross-polarization 2H-1H isotope correlation spectroscopy (CP-iCOSY) approach for the characterization of deuterated amino acids and pharmaceutical compounds. We show that the high field NMR (28.2 T) coupled with fast magic-angle spinning (MAS) overcomes the sensitivity and resolution barrier for acquiring 2H MAS spectra, enabling the rapid detection of 2H peaks in a few seconds to minutes. Specifically, two-dimensional 2H-1H CP-iCOSY experiment allows the local structures and through-space interactions in a partially deuterated compounds to be elucidated. Analysis of partially deuterated L-histidine·HCl·H2O and dopamine.HCl is presented, whereby the detection of 2D peaks corresponding to 2H-1H pairs separated by >4 Å demonstrates the sensitivity and resolution power of the presented approach for the characterization of solid-state packing interactions. 2D ssNMR results are corroborate by NMR crystallography analysis using Gauge Including Projector Augmented Wave (GIPAW) approach. Molecular-level analysis enabled by this study is of considerable interest for further investigation of labile sites in a variety of molecular solids, reactive surfaces and interfaces, and supramolecular assemblies

Doubly ionic hydrogen bond interactions within the choline chloride-urea deep eutectic solvent

Deep eutectic solvents (DESs) are exemplars of systems with the ability to form neutral, ionic and doubly ionic H-bonds. Herein, the pairwise interactions of the constituent components of the choline chloride-urea DES are examined. Evidence is found for a tripodal CHCl doubly ionic H-bond motif. Moreover it is found that the covalency of doubly ionic H-bonds can be greater than, or comparable with, neutral and ionic examples. In contrast to many traditional solvents, an "alphabet soup" of many different types of H-bond (OHO[double bond, length as m-dash]C, NHO[double bond, length as m-dash]C, OHCl, NHCl, OHNH, CHCl, CHO[double bond, length as m-dash]C, NHOH and NHNH) can form. These H-bonds exhibit substantial flexibility in terms of number and strength. It is anticipated that H-bonding will have a significant impact on the entropy of the system and thus could play an important role in the formation of the eutectic. The 2 : 1 urea : choline-chloride eutectic point of this DES is often associated with the formation of a [Cl(urea)2](-) complexed anion. However, urea is found to form a H-bonded urea[choline](+) complexed cation that is energetically competitive with [Cl(urea)2](-). The negative charge on [Cl(urea)2](-) is found to remain localised on the chloride, moreover, the urea[choline](+) complexed cation forms the strongest H-bond studied here. Thus, there is potential to consider a urea[choline](+)·urea[Cl](-) interaction

Importance of Short-Range Order in Governing Thin Film Morphology and Electronic Properties of Polymeric Organic Semiconductors

Semiconducting polymers provide a ubiquitous platform for a range of applications in molecular electronics and photovoltaics, but the ordered and disordered regions of these materials impart different optoelectronic properties. By resolving local morphology using solid-state magnetic resonance spectroscopy and modeling techniques, here, we demonstrate that the PTB7-Th donor–acceptor (D–A) copolymer and P3HT and MEH-PPV homopolymers exhibit different degrees of the short-range order, which can be associated with the large differences in their charge carrier mobilities. The high degree of local order in PTB7-Th (84–99%) is facilitated by noncovalent interactions between D and A moieties. In contrast to this, the reduced local order in P3HT (30–44%) and MEH-PPV (39–43%) homopolymers is due to the distortions in the vicinities of backbone and side chain moieties that lead to conformationally tilted polymer chains. Combined solid-state NMR and density functional theory (DFT) modeling allows the degree of backbone torsion in these materials to be determined, and insights into packing interactions are obtained by two-dimensional (2D) 1H–1H, 1H–13C, and 1H–19F correlation NMR spectroscopy. In addition, the different paramagnetic species and hyperfine interactions are analyzed by EPR spectroscopy and are expected to influence the charge carrier mobilities. A detailed analysis of the local structures presented in this study helps explain the morphological anomalies and their impact on bulk charge carrier mobilities and electronic density of states, thus providing essential insights into the morphology–property relationships in polymeric organic semiconductors