Greening of ILL at Himmelfarb Library

Traditionally, the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Department consumed the largest amount of paper from routine printing of articles/chapters before delivery. In 2010, staff examined existing processes to find ways to print only when necessary and become a greener department. This poster presentation explains the implementation and the outcomes of the greening initiative in the Interlibrary Loan (ILL) Department of the Himmelfarb Health Sciences Library

Rodzimowiercza tożsamość i jej źródła

"Zagadnienie tożsamości wyszło już poza wąskie ramy logiki i stało się obiegowym pojęciem w wielu krajach. Pytanie o narodową lub wyznaniową tożsamość jest częstym tematem wśród rozważań nad tym, kim jesteśmy. W Polsce rozpatruje się narodową tożsamość zazwyczaj odrębnie od religijnej. Takie stanowisko wynika z historycznej zaszłości, gdy panująca stała się religia obcego pochodzenia. To nie dotyczy Rodzimej Wiary. Z czym zatem może ona się utożsamiać?"(...

2,3-Difluoro­benzoic acid

2,3-Difluoro­benzoic acid, C7H4F2O2, forms dimers that are stabilized by hydrogen bonds. The dimers are stacked and the stacks are held together by weak C—H⋯F and C—H⋯O inter­actions

Visualizing Mechanics: Improving Student Learning through Video Demonstrations

The Purdue Mechanics Freeform Classroom (PMFC) is a project that seeks to reform engineering mechanics education by integrating content and technology; enhancing communication between students, their peers, and instructors; accommodating a broader range of learning styles; and facilitating greater depths of understanding. In an attempt to increase the PMFC’s efficacy, a series of demonstration videos has been produced. As demonstrated by the popularity and pervasiveness of websites such as YouTube, short videos have the potential to captivate audiences. As such, these videos have incredible promise in educational contexts. In the PMFC series of videos, entitled Visualizing Mechanics, each imitates the length and format of a generic YouTube video, but is specifically designed to highlight and elucidate interesting phenomena in engineering mechanics. Various techniques are used in the course of video production, including student voiceovers, equation overlays, and advanced video enhancement techniques designed to improve student visualization. The result is videos capable of conveying key mechanics concepts that could not easily be recreated in a classroom setting. To date, the videos have been produced for only one class, ME 274: Basic Mechanics II at Purdue University, which provides an overview of particle and rigid body kinematics and kinetics, as well as an introduction to mechanical vibrations. Once this initial batch of videos is finalized, student surveys and YouTube Analytics tools will be used to assess their effectiveness. If the results of this assessment prove positive, the approach will be expanded to incorporate additional course content and allow for distribution to other colleges and universities outside the Purdue University College of Engineering

Synergy of solid-state NMR, single-crystal X-ray diffraction, and crystal structure prediction methods : a case study of teriflunomide (TFM)

In this work, for the first time, we present the X-ray diffraction crystal structure and spectral properties of a new, room-temperature polymorph of teriflunomide (TFM), CSD code 1969989. As revealed by DSC, the low-temperature TFM polymorph recently reported by Gunnam et al. undergoes a reversible thermal transition at −40 °C. This reversible process is related to a change in Z’ value, from 2 to 1, as observed by variable-temperature 1H–13C cross-polarization (CP) magic-angle spinning (MAS) solid-state NMR, while the crystallographic system is preserved (triclinic). Two-dimensional 13C–1H and 1H–1H double-quantum MAS NMR spectra are consistent with the new room-temperature structure, including comparison with GIPAW (gauge-including projector augmented waves) calculated NMR chemical shifts. A crystal structure prediction procedure found both experimental teriflunomide polymorphs in the energetic global minimum region. Differences between the polymorphs are seen for the torsional angle describing the orientation of the phenyl ring relative to the planarity of the TFM molecule. In the low-temperature structure, there are two torsion angles of 4.5 and 31.9° for the two Z’ = 2 molecules, while in the room-temperature structure, there is disorder that is modeled with ∼50% occupancy between torsion angles of −7.8 and 28.6°. These observations are consistent with a broad energy minimum as revealed by DFT calculations. PISEMA solid-state NMR experiments show a reduction in the C–H dipolar coupling in comparison to the static limit for the aromatic CH moieties of 75% and 51% at 20 and 40 °C, respectively, that is indicative of ring flips at the higher temperature. Our study shows the power of combining experiments, namely DSC, X-ray diffraction, and MAS NMR, with DFT calculations and CSP to probe and understand the solid-state landscape, and in particular the role of dynamics, for pharmaceutical molecules

Advice on describing Bayesian analysis of neutron and X-ray reflectometry

Driven by the availability of modern software and hardware, Bayesian analysis is becoming more popular in neutron and X-ray reflectometry analysis. The understandability and replicability of these analyses may be harmed by inconsistencies in how the probability distributions central to Bayesian methods are represented in the literature. Herein, we provide advice on how to report the results of Bayesian analysis as applied to neutron and X-ray reflectometry. This includes the clear reporting of initial starting conditions, the prior probabilities, and results of any analysis, and the posterior probabilities that are the Bayesian equivalent of the error bar, to enable replicability and improve understanding. We believe that this advice, grounded in our experience working in the field, will enable greater analytical reproducibility among the reflectometry community, as well as improve the quality and usability of results

NMR investigations of the interaction between the azo-dye sunset yellow and Fluorophenol

The interaction of small molecules with larger noncovalent assemblies is important across a wide range of disciplines. Here, we apply two complementary NMR spectroscopic methods to investigate the interaction of various fluorophenol isomers with sunset yellow. This latter molecule is known to form noncovalent aggregates in isotropic solution, and form liquid crystals at high concentrations. We utilize the unique fluorine-19 nucleus of the fluorophenol as a reporter of the interactions via changes in both the observed chemical shift and diffusion coefficients. The data are interpreted in terms of the indefinite self-association model and simple modifications for the incorporation of a second species into an assembly. A change in association mode is tentatively assigned whereby the fluorophenol binds end-on with the sunset yellow aggregates at low concentration and inserts into the stacks at higher concentrations

No Excess Gene Movement Is Detected off the Avian or Lepidopteran Z Chromosome

Most of our knowledge of sex-chromosome evolution comes from male heterogametic (XX/XY) taxa. With the genome sequencing of multiple female heterogametic (ZZ/ZW) taxa, we can now ask whether there are patterns of evolution common to both sex chromosome systems. In all XX/XY systems examined to date, there is an excess of testis-biased retrogenes moving from the X chromosome to the autosomes, which is hypothesized to result from either sexually antagonistic selection or escape from meiotic sex chromosome inactivation (MSCI). We examined RNA-mediated (retrotransposed) and DNA-mediated gene movement in two independently evolved ZZ/ZW systems, birds (chicken and zebra finch) and lepidopterans (silkworm). Even with sexually antagonistic selection likely operating in both taxa and MSCI having been identified in the chicken, we find no evidence for an excess of genes moving from the Z chromosome to the autosomes in either lineage. We detected no excess for either RNA- or DNA-mediated duplicates, across a range of approaches and methods. We offer some potential explanations for this difference between XX/XY and ZZ/ZW sex chromosome systems, but further work is needed to distinguish among these hypotheses. Regardless of the root causes, we have identified an additional, potentially inherent, difference between XX/XY and ZZ/ZW systems

Splicing and the Evolution of Proteins in Mammals

It is often supposed that a protein's rate of evolution and its amino acid content are determined by the function and anatomy of the protein. Here we examine an alternative possibility, namely that the requirement to specify in the unprocessed RNA, in the vicinity of intron–exon boundaries, information necessary for removal of introns (e.g., exonic splice enhancers) affects both amino acid usage and rates of protein evolution. We find that the majority of amino acids show skewed usage near intron–exon boundaries, and that differences in the trends for the 2-fold and 4-fold blocks of both arginine and leucine show this to be owing to effects mediated at the nucleotide level. More specifically, there is a robust relationship between the extent to which an amino acid is preferred/avoided near boundaries and its enrichment/paucity in splice enhancers. As might then be expected, the rate of evolution is lowest near intron–exon boundaries, at least in part owing to splice enhancers, such that domains flanking intron–exon junctions evolve on average at under half the rate of exon centres from the same gene. In contrast, the rate of evolution of intronless retrogenes is highest near the domains where intron–exon junctions previously resided. The proportion of sequence near intron–exon boundaries is one of the stronger predictors of a protein's rate of evolution in mammals yet described. We conclude that after intron insertion selection favours modification of amino acid content near intron–exon junctions, so as to enable efficient intron removal, these changes then being subject to strong purifying selection even if nonoptimal for protein function. Thus there exists a strong force operating on protein evolution in mammals that is not explained directly in terms of the biology of the protein