Synthesis, Modification, and Application of Siloxane Materials for Environmental Sensing

As human populations and resource consumption increase, it is increasingly important to monitor the quality of our environment. While laboratory instruments offer useful information, portable, easy to use sensors would allow environmental analysis to occur on-site, at lower cost, and with minimal operator training. We explore the synthesis, modification, and applications of modified polysiloxane in environmental sensing. Multiple methods of producing modified siloxanes were investigated. Oligomers were formed by using functionalized monomers, producing siloxane materials containing silicon hydride, methyl, and phenyl side chains. Silicon hydride-functionalized oligomers were further modified by hydrosilylation to incorporate methyl ester and naphthyl side chains. Modifications to the siloxane materials were also carried out using post-curing treatments. Methyl ester-functionalized siloxane was incorporated into the surface of a cured poly(dimethylsiloxane) film by siloxane equilibration. The materials containing methyl esters were hydrolyzed to reveal carboxylic acids, which could later be used for covalent protein immobilization. Finally, the siloxane surfaces were modified to incorporate antibodies by covalent, affinity, and adsorption-based attachment. These modifications were characterized by a variety of methods, including contact angle, attenuated total reflectance Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, dye labels, and 1H nuclear magnetic resonance spectroscopy. The modified siloxane materials were employed in a variety of sensing schemes. Volatile organic compounds were detected using methyl, phenyl, and naphthyl-functionalized materials on a Fabry-Perot interferometer and a refractometer. The Fabry-Perot interferometer was found to detect the analytes upon siloxane extraction by deformation of the Bragg reflectors. The refractometer was used to determine that naphthyl-functionalized siloxanes had elevated refractive indices, rendering these materials more sensitive to some analytes. Antibody-modified siloxanes were used to detect biological analytes through a solid phase microextraction-mediated enzyme linked immunosorbent assay (SPME ELISA). The SPME ELISA was found to have higher analyte sensitivity compared to a conventional ELISA system. The detection scheme was used to detect Escherichia coli at 8500 CFU/mL. These results demonstrate the variety of methods that can be used to modify siloxanes and the wide range of applications of modified siloxanes has been demonstrated through chemical and biological sensing schemes.

It's Not Rocket Library Science: Design Epistemology and American Librarianship

Thesis (Ph.D.)--University of Washington, 2016-06

New Library-curated Faculty Profile Platform Launches Through bepress

As faculty needs evolve and become increasingly digital, libraries are feeling the pressure to provide relevant new services. At the same time, faculty members are struggling to create and maintain their professional reputations online. We at bepress are happy to announce the new SelectedWorks, the fully hosted, library-curated faculty profile platform that positions the library to better support faculty as well as the institution at large. Beverly Lysobey, Digital Commons and Resource Management Librarian, at Sacred Heart University, says: “Both faculty and administration have been impressed with the services we provide through SelectedWorks; we’re able to show how much our faculty really publishes, and it’s great for professors to get that recognition. We’ve had several faculty members approach us for help making sure their record was complete when they were up for tenure, and we’ve even found articles that authors themselves no longer had access to.” With consistent, organized, institution-branded profiles, SelectedWorks increases campus-wide exposure and supports the research mission of the university. As the only profile platform integrated with the fully hosted Digital Commons suite of publishing and repository services, it also ensures that the institution retains management of its content. Powerful integration with the Digital Commons platform lets the home institution more fully capture the range of scholarship produced on campus, and hosted services facilitate resource consolidation and reduces strain on IT. The new SelectedWorks features a modern, streamlined design that provides compelling display options for the full range of faculty work. It beautifully showcases streaming media, images, data, teaching materials, books – any type of content that researchers now produce as part of their scholarship. Detailed analytics tools let authors and librarians measure global readership and track impact for a variety of campus stakeholders: authors can see the universities, agencies, and businesses that are reading their work, and can easily export reports to use in tenure and promotion dossiers. Janelle Wertzbeger, Assistant Dean and Director of Scholarly Communications at Gettysburg College’s Musselman Library, says, “The new author dashboard maps and enhanced readership are SO GOOD. Every professor up for promotion & tenure should use them!” And of course, SelectedWorks is fully backed by the continual efforts of the bepress development team to provide maximum discoverability to search engines, increasing impact for faculty and institutions alike: Reverend Edward R. Udovic, Vice President for Teaching and Learning Resources at DePaul University, says, “In the last several months downloads of my scholarship from my [SelectedWorks] site have far surpassed the total distribution of all my work in the previous twenty five years.”

Backflow prevention certification workshop information and materials

The information enclosed in this booklet consists of memos, policy statements and other pertinent information to guide you in the establishment of a backflow prevention program.

Connect the dots: newsletter of the South Carolina State Library Talking Book Services

This Summer 2016 newsletter from the South Carolina State Library, volume 42, issue 3, features news and updates about the Talking Book Services, a federally-funded program to meet the reading needs of South Carolina residents who are physically unable to read or use standard printed materials.

Connect the dots: newsletter of the South Carolina State Library Talking Book Services 

This Spring 2016 newsletter from the South Carolina State Library, volume 42, issue 2, features news and updates about the Talking Book Services, a federally-funded program to meet the reading needs of South Carolina residents who are physically unable to read or use standard printed materials.

Connect the dots: newsletter of the South Carolina State Library Talking Book Services 

This Winter 2016 newsletter from the South Carolina State Library, volume 42, issue 1, features news and updates about the Talking Book Services, a federally-funded program to meet the reading needs of South Carolina residents who are physically unable to read or use standard printed materials.

Connect the dots: newsletter of the South Carolina State Library Talking Book Services

This Winter 2015 newsletter from the South Carolina State Library, volume 41, issue 1, features news and updates about the Talking Book Services, a federally-funded program to meet the reading needs of South Carolina residents who are physically unable to read or use standard printed materials.

Connect the dots: newsletter of the South Carolina State Library Talking Book Services 

This Summer 2015 newsletter from the South Carolina State Library, volume 42, issue 1, features news and updates about the Talking Book Services, a federally-funded program to meet the reading needs of South Carolina residents who are physically unable to read or use standard printed materials.

The role of the school library: resource center in the current educational environment

Principle 7 of the Declaration of the Rights of the Child (UN General Assembly, 1959) states in part: "The child has the right to receive education which will be free and compulsory ... You will be given an education that promotes their general education and training on an equal opportunity to develop their individual judgment skills and sense of moral and social responsibility, and to become a useful member of society. " I will expose to you that the school library resource center is the general instrument essential to fulfill this right of the child. Within the comprehensive range of materials and acquisition objective of their materials, school library complements and supports all aspects of the educational program.

Archetypes Library: Design of a Didactic Multimedia Contribute to Improving the Image of Librarianship in Costa Rica Society

This document describes each step of the research conducted to understand the factors that may be influencing the low enrollment of freshmen who have experienced the “Escuela de Bibliotecologia, Documentacion e Informacion de la Universidad Nacional” in recent years. It also raises a didactic - multimedia, in response to identified needs, to help improve the problems encountered by making use of technological tools with an educational foundation that fosters reflection of the population to be targeted by the product. Finally, it presents the conclusions and recommendations drawn from the research.

Design, Fabrication, and Mechanical Property Analysis of 3D Nanoarchitected Materials

Recent developments in micro- and nanoscale 3D fabrication techniques have enabled the creation of materials with a controllable nanoarchitecture that can have structural features spanning 5 orders of magnitude from tens of nanometers to millimeters. These fabrication methods in conjunction with nanomaterial processing techniques permit a nearly unbounded design space through which new combinations of nanomaterials and architecture can be realized. In the course of this work, we designed, fabricated, and mechanically analyzed a wide range of nanoarchitected materials in the form of nanolattices made from polymer, composite, and hollow ceramic beams. Using a combination of two-photon lithography and atomic layer deposition, we fabricated samples with periodic and hierarchical architectures spanning densities over 4 orders of magnitude from ρ=0.3-300kg/m³ and with features as small as 5nm. Uniaxial compression and cyclic loading tests performed on different nanolattice topologies revealed a range of novel mechanical properties: the constituent nanoceramics used here have size-enhanced strengths that approach the theoretical limit of materials strength; hollow aluminum oxide (Al₂O₃) nanolattices exhibited ductile-like deformation and recovered nearly completely after compression to 50% strain when their wall thicknesses were reduced below 20nm due to the activation of shell buckling; hierarchical nanolattices exhibited enhanced recoverability and a near linear scaling of strength and stiffness with relative density, with E∝ρ^1.04 and σy∝ρ^1.17 for hollow Al₂O₃ samples; periodic rigid and non-rigid nanolattice topologies were tested and showed a nearly uniform scaling of strength and stiffness with relative density, marking a significant deviation from traditional theories on “bending” and “stretching” dominated cellular solids; and the mechanical behavior across all topologies was highly tunable and was observed to strongly correlate with the slenderness λ and the wall thickness-to-radius ratio t/a of the beams. These results demonstrate the potential of nanoarchitected materials to create new highly tunable mechanical metamaterials with previously unattainable properties.

Experimental studies on comparison of microwave curing and thermal curing of epoxy resins used for alternative mould materials

In this present work attempts have been made to study the glass transition temperature of alternative mould materials by using both microwave heating and conventional oven heating. In this present work three epoxy resins, namely R2512, R2515 and R2516, which are commonly used for making injection moulds have been used in combination with two hardeners H2403 and H2409. The magnetron microwave generator used in this research is operating at a frequency of 2.45 GHz with a hollow rectangular waveguide. In order to distinguish the effects between the microwave and conventional heating, a number of experiments were performed to test their mechanical properties such as tensile and flexural strengths. Additionally, differential scanning calorimeter technique was implemented to measure the glass transition temperature on both microwave and conventional heating. This study provided necessary evidences to establish that microwave heated mould materials resulted with higher glass transition temperature than the conventional heating. Finally, attempts were also made to study the microstructure of microwave-cured materials by using a scanning electron microscope in order to analyze the morphology of cured specimens.