Okay, welcome to this fifth topic, which is eigenvalues and eigenvectors. We'll introduce the problem and we'll see how to find eigenvalues. Finding eigenvectors is for the next video. So suppose that we are given a square matrix, just some matrix. But we are told that m multiplied by v is equal to lambda multiplied by v for some scalar, just some number, lambda, and for some column matrix, v. And a column matrix of course the same as a vector, I will just say vector from now on. Okay, so this scalar lambda could be positive, negative, or zero. Meanwhile, this vector v could be anything except the trivial boring case of just zeros. It's something other than that. Our challenge then is that we're going to be given a square matrix m and we have to look for any scalar, lambda, and vector v that satisfies the equation. And such a scalar is called an eigenvalue and such a vector is called an eigenvector.  Okay, so first off, let's notice that if we are given a candidate a possible eigenvector v to try, perhaps for a multiple choice, then it's easy to test. We'll just go ahead and try it. So here's a square matrix 2 by 2, 2 for 1 minus 1. And suppose we write down v is equal to 1 minus 1. And this is suggested as a possible eigenvector. Well then, we would just test it out to see if it matches our equation. We'd try multiplying m by v. So here we go, 2, 4, 1 minus 1, and v is 1 minus 1 as a column. And so we do rho times column, that's 2, and minus 4 is minus 2. And again, rho and column, that's going to be 1 plus 1 is 2. And we notice we can take out minus 2 as a factor, and then it will be the vector left is 1 minus 1, but that is just v. So minus 2 is indeed a scalar that multiplies v. And we've succeeded in proving that v is our eigenvector, and our eigenvalue that goes with it is minus 2. Okay, so that's great if we're given eigenvectors to check out. But what if we're not given any eigenvectors or eigenvalues? Then we must find any possible eigenvalues for ourselves, there could be more than one. And for each, we must find the corresponding eigenvector v. And in this first video, we're just going to be finding those eigenvalues. Okay, so here's a little bit of quick manipulation and a side. We know our equation is mv is equal to lambda v. I can certainly just bring it all to the left-hand side and write mv minus lambda v is equal to 0 as long as I don't have to write that as vector 0. But now let's do something interesting. Let's insert the identity matrix, which won't change the equation, but it will be important for the next step. mv minus lambda times the identity times v is equal to vector 0. The identity doesn't change the equation, but now I can factor out both those two matrices, the m and the minus lambda times the identity. That's a matrix, I can factor those out and it allows me to write that line. Now, that is a form of the equation. It turns out this can only be solved for any interesting v, any v other than just 0s. If the following equation is true, which we can easily prove, but we're not going to prove in this video, m minus lambda times the identity, the determinant of that is equal to 0. So we're going to have plenty of time to think about that, but let me just put a green box around it because that is the fundamental equation we're going to use. This will allow us to find all the eigenvalues that satisfy our basic eigenvalue equation. So let's do an example. It's the best thing. Let's do m as a 2, 4, this was the one we had before, 2, 4, minus 1, little square matrix. And so let's write down what this lambda times the identity is. For a 2 by 2, it's going to be lambda, 0, 0, lambda, very simple. And so this matrix, that's the difference of the two of them, 2 minus lambda, 4, 1, minus 1, minus lambda, just the difference of those two things as a determinant is equal to 0. That's all. So there we have it. We've just subtracted lambda off the down the diagonal, but now we need to solve this.  All right, so we expand this out. Minus 2 minus 2 lambda, plus lambda, plus lambda squared, minus 4 equals 0. Let's come over here for a bit more space, tidy that up a bit. What have we got? Lambda squared minus lambda is equal to 0. Solve this. Actually, it's quite easy to factor. That's going to be equal to 0. So that's true if either lambda is equal to 3 or it's equal to minus 2. And those are our two eigenvalues. We found them using that equation in the square box. Let's crack on and do one with a 3 by 3 matrix M. Here we go. Matrix M is equal to let's have minus 2, 1, 3, 1 minus 1, 0, and minus 1, 1, 2. I've worked that one out. I've checked that before and it will work for us nicely. Now, let's remember, of course, the rule from the previous screen. And we just need to apply that. So let's go ahead and write it as a right-hand determinant out. We need to have minus 2 minus lambda and then just 1 and minus 1 minus lambda and 3, 0, 2 minus lambda. I'm just subtracting lambdas down the diagonal, making it a determinant, setting it equal to 0. Now, I'm going to work along this row because it's got a 0 in it. So that makes me like it a bit more as a determinant. The first number is going to be minus 1. Why? Because it's a 1. And let me just quickly write out our little lookup table of pluses and minuses for doing determinants. So it was a 1 and then it picked up a minus sign. And then we have the mini determinant that's made out of those four terms. So that's 1, 3, 1 and 2 minus lambda. All right. And then the next term is going to be plus and then the term itself is minus 1 minus lambda. And the mini determinant that we get when we exclude that row and that column is just made out of the corner terms. That's going to be minus 2 minus lambda and 3 and 1 and 2 minus lambda. That's it because the zero term gives us nothing. So it was only those two mini determinants. Let's write them out. Minus 1, 2 times lambda, 1 is 3. Let's expand that one out.   Minus minus 3 is plus 3. There we are. Is equal to zero. And then we just need to tidy that up. We need to clean it up a bit. That's going to be minus of minus lambda minus 1. For the first term, let's turn that into pluses multiply through by the minus 1. And here we have minus. Let's make that lambda plus 1 right that way around and then tidy up inside here. We expand it out minus 4 plus 2 lambda minus 2 lambda plus lambda squared and this 3 is equal to zero. We need to keep on working to tidy that a bit more. This term here is in fact going to be just, I see the lambdas cancel out lambda squared minus 1. That's very nice. That's come down very, very neatly. So now we can really tidy that up and we can take out a common factor of lambda plus 1. And the first term was just that. So there's one for that. And the second term we've just found is lambda squared minus 1. Pause the video and check you agree that that's a tidied up version of the equation. Now the way that can be zero is either the first term is zero which requires lambda is equal to minus 1. So there's one eigenvalue for us. That's one option. Values has been found. Or the second term here has to be zero. So let's do a bit more work with that. What we're saying is to neaten that up, we're saying that 2 minus lambda squared is equal to zero. In other words, lambda squared is equal to 2. And so lambda is going to be plus or minus square root of 2. That's two more eigenvalues, 3 in all, that we found for this 3 by 3 matrix. And in the next video, we'll see how to take each of these values and derive the corresponding vector.


Ukrainian army is advancing and consolidating on two fronts. The Ukrainian defence forces continue to advance on the Melitopol and Burdiansk fronts and they are strengthening their positions in new locations. No positions have been lost where the Ukrainian armed forces are defending. General staff of the armed forces of Ukraine reported it. Offensive actions continue on the Melitopol and Burdiansk fronts, namely in the areas of Novo-Darivka, Pryutny, Makarivka, Rivnopil and Novo-Darivka. Robotine, the Ukrainian military had partial success, they are entrenching themselves in the achieved positions. The enemy concentrated its main efforts on defending and preventing the advance of our troops using reserves and trying to restore the lost ground. Andrey Kovalev, spokesman for the general staff of Ukraine's armed forces said. The general staff noted that the Russians continue to focus their main efforts on the Lyman-Barkhmut-Avdivka and Marinka fronts. Heavy fighting continues there. The general staff has reported that the Russian occupation forces are engaging in the looting of Ukrainian civilians in the temporarily occupied territory of Ukraine, which suffered flooding due to the deliberate destruction of the Karkovka hydroelectric power plant by Russian forces. In particular, at the checkpoints leading to Oleshkiy, the invaders are confiscating humanitarian aid meant for the affected population.


Thursday, January 2nd, Berlin Select Board meeting to order with us tonight as Flo Smith, Angelina Capron is on the phone and Brad Town with us also as Dana Hadley Town Administrator and Diane Isabel Town Treasurer. And we will start off with having a public hearing data. Yes, this is a public hearing to hear, gather input on the proposed ordinance for the wastewater. That's the ordinance that I've given you last time. Municipal wastewater collection system ordinance or sewer. And basically this is an update of the existing ordinance that we have. The existing ordinance was approved July of 2003 and that had been after a lot of revision since it was originally done in the 1980s. Much of it is to recognize that rather than a sewer, pollutioners, you have a public wastewater that oversees. They have added a few things as far as the descriptions of things, how they explain them, and it's the same as we had in the other ordinance. I have read through it basically. It's talking a little bit more about the control of the public works board over the decisions of the sewer workings. So I don't see anything other than that. That's a lot different but it does make it, I suppose, from a legal standpoint easier to handle the allocations and the cost to connect onto the sewer. That was something that's been added into it as well as updating it to a public works board. That's the way we are now. So this is a public hearing to gather input. If anyone has any input, maybe that'd be great. If not, the public works board is looking for you to approve the ordinance. The ordinance takes 60 days to take effect. There's a 60-day period that people can have a referendum petition. That's basically as much as I can tell you about it. That's interesting. So basically we need a motion on this. Yes. I make a motion to approve the ordinance on the public works as presented. I need a second. Any further discussion? Anything from the viewing public? Hearing none, those in favor signify by saying aye. Motion passes. And we will now close the public hearing and open and convene the select board. Additions or changes to the agenda, Dana? I have a few things I'd like to add. I'd like we received the letter from the state for the 2019 equalization results. I'd like to add that so we can discuss that. I would also like to, Rosemary has given me a draft warrant, warning for the town meeting that I would like to go over with you. I'd like to add that. And I need more signatures on the error and omissions paperwork than just the chairman. So I'd like to add that and basically I can just ask Flo to sign it and whoever comes in tomorrow. I was going to say everybody was here for that vote. Yes. They were. And that's all I had. Public comment? Hearing none, treasurer's report made. I'll let you know that a lot of our residents do pay their taxes through the credit card. And for 2019 we had 261 transactions. Now half of those were for reciprocates, which were like $10. However, we did have $109,450 that we collected through using the credit cards. So I think that's a really good thing to have and people are making good use of it at this point in time. What do they pay for that, Diane? We don't pay anything. What is the courtesy fee? It really depends on what you have. It goes by the dollar amount? No, not the dollar amount. It actually goes, if you're using e-checks at a certain amount, if you use a debit card at a certain amount, and then usually I think it's like maybe 1.5% to 2% if you're using a credit card. But a debit card, I think, might be like 295. And the e-check I think is 295. There's nothing below 295. So that's just a straight fee of 295 to use. If you're doing like a debit card, but if you're using a credit card and it's it's a good thing. Okay, thank you. And that's what I want to talk about. Okay, thank you, Dr. approvals of licenses, permits, vouchers, and applications. I make a motion to approve the general fund accounts payable warrant number 20G12 with checks 19.861 to 19.889 in the amount of $48,233.07. Also pay roll warrant number 20-13 for payroll from December 8th, 2019 to December 21st, 2019 in the amount of $43,155.14. Year's second? Yep. Year's second, sir. Any further discussion? All those in favor? Aye. Motion carries and we move on to the hazard mitigation plan. That's where Mr. Paul comes in here. Yes, hello Paul. Thank you. Paul had sent me there with me one moment. I'm gonna find it. This is the plan, the draft plan, and I think you can sit up here. Both of you have seen that. It can even come right here. He also had some rocking points. So the purpose of this, this is a required meeting to review the selected hazards for the town and the named mitigation actions that the town will venture forth in the next five years. So they're back in 2011. A lot of towns were including some hazards that really there's no reason to include those. So this fire and earthquake, you know, the risk is too low. It doesn't substantiate any effort to be put into it. So for the update, the proposed updated hazards would be flooding to include fluvial erosion and ice jams. Ice jams, thank you. Severe winter storm, extreme cold events. Based on data, the number, the impact of extreme cold is on the rise. And high winds. High winds is kind of the, you know, that's kind of the if and when for towns. But I did include it because since 2011, the town has sustained significant amount of damage, the financial. So with the mitigation actions, all relevant to the four hazards, as with any town in Vermont, you know, making sure your infrastructure is solid to flood damage. And it's, you know, to plowing and things to some extent, but mostly flood damage. And really, when you look at the benchmark is where the town was prior to 2011 in terms of how much money they received to repair infrastructure, had to spend to repair infrastructure, and then the two events in 2011 and where the town is now. And basically, you have two roads to go down. One, 2000, the mitigation efforts after the 2011 events worked, seemingly worked for the town. You've been very insulated since then. So I worked with the road foreman. There's a couple of projects that he mentioned that's included in the plan. You can add or delete at will, okay. And that's not committing anything. It's just suggested. Also, the second action is to improve rezoning, see the severe winter storms with action items given in the plan that the plan is available for review, for community review for the next month and a half or so, okay. And the third, reducing impact of extreme cold, which would be a lot of that is basically just educational outreach and trying to make people with community-based resources. The fourth is to raise public awareness. One great example is opportunities for our mobile home resident to take advantage of the UVM program. The mitigation efforts state has shown that mobile homes are disproportionately impacted during disasters and that there are specific mitigation actions that park owners and mobile home residents can do to help limit that. But I think Weston has, again, Weston's a lot better now than it was in 2000. Sure. So the fifth, you will receive your, they're calling it, I call it the road erosion kind of site inventory that's happening next year. Right, right. The road permit. Yes. So that will help identify some areas in need and then to continue any study of fluvial geomorphology. I love that word. Isn't it great? Yeah. And then as a way to make educated decisions about any future mitigation actions. And the sixth is to improve resiliency to high wind events. And a lot of that is just coordinating with your power companies and doing some outreach to residents and community organizations such as the hospital and the airport, obviously. So we have done a lot of, I know you've spoken with Tim Davis, so I know you've spoken with Mr. Richards and I know you spoke with Tom about the FEMA aspect because we've done a lot of things in the past since Irene. And I think we're in a better place than we were then. And as part of the road permit, we have done a lot of work in the, and I can't say the word, geomorphology. I'm sure you can. However, what, is there anything that you can think of that we should, that we should think about going forward? I'm going to go forward. Yes. One thing to make life easier to the next plan cycle the next time you do an update is, and it's written in here, FEMA is really wanting you to incorporate mitigation planning into daily operations, monthly operations, keeping it on your radar.  And then annually to track, and I gave you that spreadsheet at the end that every year for maybe prior to a town meeting, you just run through and you say, hey, we did this, we did that, and really have it trackable. And number one, it has to be reported on now. So I had to basically give an update on everything you said you do in 2011, which didn't take a lot of time. But when you look at what the approved plans were prior to 2011, basically a town could get away with a 20 page plan to get away with. But that was the standard. Right. Now that's unheard of. So we have these comprehensive data driven documents that FEMA is requiring to have an approved plan. And in five years that may increase even more. So it's best just to practice due diligence and incorporating and track better documentation. Ideally, in the next five year planning cycle, whoever's going to do that update for you, you'd say these are our annual updates for our defined mitigation strategies. And if there's nothing to report, there's nothing to report. But it would make life a bit easier. Potential. I would like to thank Bruce and the emergency management team. It's been very helpful. So thank you. So logistics again. We're going to go forward and if the board is, you're looking for the board to have a motion to accept this plan? Not yet. Not yet. You're not ready. You're going to finish the draft plan and we're going to send it off to the, you'll send it to the state. I'll send it to the neighboring communities. I'd like requesting after I make those changes that you suggested. I'd like you to provide it. You provide copies. Allow the neighboring towns to review if they should choose to send it to them. But let them know that it is available for review and comment. And then after we do that, while it's in state review, I'll just let them know that it's currently in time review process. Okay. And it's potential that a town could have a suggestion that could alter the document. Of course. So once the state has it for review, they will do the check boxes. They'll send a review tool that they have any issues, which they normally have a few. I'll make the corrections and then send it back. And once it's ready for submission, the state will send it to FEMA. FEMA will then review. Send it back. Maybe a couple revisions here and there. And then at the time FEMA then approves it, it's approved pending adoption. And that's when it comes back. You guys would have a select board meeting to adopt the plan. Okay. Thanks. This must be why we pay you. It's an excellent thank you very much. So I will hear from you, Paul. Yes. Okay. Center Vermont Medical Center. Yeah. I haven't seen Ron yet. So there we are. I didn't know if he was trying to, you know, you know, we are, we have two members here. You know, Bradtown is the chair. Hi. Flo Smith is a board member. And Angelina Capron is on the telephone. And the other two are unfortunately not here. So thanks for bearing with us. I'm so starting to start out. I'm Jim Albert. I'm the Vice President of Support Services for Central Vermont Medical Center. Thank you for allowing me to sign on your agenda this evening. Appreciate you being here. The genesis for the project you're about to see came from a request from the Greenmont Care Board back in the spring of 2018 that UBM Medical Center spent 20 million dollars on, let me get the quote here, a measurably increasing inpatient mental health capacity in Vermont. So from that request, the network planning team started about a year running analytics and working with stakeholders about what that would look like. The focus really became by increasing access to inpatient care, you get a two-fold impact. First being the patients that need psychiatric inpatient care are the important EDs waiting for a bed to open in the last few days. And so you address that issue of the boarding and the ED, which for the patient it's not a sexual scan of care. If it was a medical patient to wait for days to get to an inpatient bed, I mean you would be unheard of. And so the origin is ED emergency. So the goal is we want to get them out of the emergency department into a place they get the proper care. The second benefit you get by addressing this is that it deals with the flow of the ED because when you're boarding patients waiting for beds you're taking exam rooms out of service you actually need for daily flow of seeing other patients. And so when you have an ED like center of Vermont that has 21 exam rooms and you've got three of them taken by mental health patients are waiting for a bed, you've taken a percentage of your capacity to see all patients. And so that became the focus is increasing the send patient capacity on clogs not just central Vermont's ED but how does it affect EDs across the state. So that's the analytics that really the the network had ran over the past year. And so the magic number that it came up with was 25 beds. So if we add 25 beds to the system then that allows for patients to wait no more than eight hours in an ED 80 percent of the time. You're certainly going to have peaks because you can't you know build everything and so but at least we're dealing with the majority of it. It does not address geriatrics that care or child psych care really so under 12. Those are so ambitious for the state to deal with. Central Vermont was chosen for this expansion because it's central in the state and there's capacity on the campus to build. So the goal is then to if we add 25 beds to central Vermont and we have 15 there really look at a 40 bed psychiatric solution on the campus. In that we had to work that into what is the master plan for the hospital in the long term and how would it affect that. So the the the concept that you're seeing tonight is deals with the 40 inpatient site beds plus the replacement ED. And because of the building replacement we're now looking at what is the main interest of the hospital house parking happening on the campus and and what's the traffic pattern through some of the stuff still being worked through with us. Basically the scope of the project. So what if you guys want to start getting into the the fun part. Sure I mean I can give you an overview of where we are. I'm Eileen T. I'm the project and property manager at CVMC and I don't know where the best place to put this is. Okay so this is the entrance you all probably utilize to access CVMC over here is the access to the emergence the existing emergency department. So we studied a number probably five sites on the campus to see where we could fit this and this is where we ended up right here is the current main entrance to the building. So what we have here is a ground floor with the emergency department and then two stories of inpatient psychiatry above that with a shelled floor above that for mechanical and so that rest right here we're right now where we are in the design we're partway through the schematic design phase which is the first real phase of work and this would be a new access point and a new primary entry from this rear parking lot because the what happened when when this building went here in theory we lost a lot of our patient and visitor parking and also there's no real way to access the main lobby from here. So the concept is to have the primary patient parking in the rear a potential parking structure here and we've been working Ron's been working on a variety of parking studies and parking counts for us to really determine what we need and if it is a two-story structure there would be a pedestrian bridge that goes across to access the main hospital. Is the access still at the same intersection you just drive around the corner? Exactly yeah and then the ambulance access comes in right through to its own little zone back here with first responder parking. I think it's been interesting about the site that you don't realize until you get this keep into is that the hospital drive is actually nine feet lower than the entrance of the building so as you push the building out you got to deal with that nine feet and so that's been interesting. Ron's been playing with that. Actually doing some some improvements to this roadway adding a lane right turn lane now it's really cut off by the viewing traffic flickering really closely in a traffic study to be sure that we got good circulation good access and good functioning of the intersection so this will be improved somewhat to make it more of the major entry as opposed to well since you're coming down what's going behind the hospital at this point. And then there's a relocation of the helipad which is currently down here in this area and we get around I think we get 150 we had 150 helicopter visits this past year so having that close enough to the emergency department where you can wheel a stretcher over as opposed to moving patients into a ambulance and driving them around. Well it's part of the grading here Tim just to be sure that we have a two or three percent grade or not a 10 percent grade down. So that crossing is on the driveway. In general the the overall project from an engineering standpoint side engineering works really well but basically putting putting an addition on the existing building we're eliminating some parking obviously in the main entry here but saving quite a bit for the emergency room and emergency ambulances over here and so we save quite a bit of little parking down here on existing helipad is and this new helipad up here still can have most of the parking for the link seat so it really balances out pretty well. That's where we really are staying at closely and CBMC has looked very closely at parking on this site just to be sure it works. I mean it looks to me like the parking lot where it is now is always busy. It's always busy. And so I'm just I know you're aware of that. Yeah. How do you utilize that lower parking lot in the back of the building? This 95 percent full on pretty much all day. This is the primary staff parking area. And how many parking lots are you giving up on the upper part? About a hundred. About a hundred in this area. And how many parking spots in the lower one all together? Let's see. Without the parking garage or what it looks like now is we're actually going to gain on the site somewhere around a hundred total. If you had this in the parking garage and then this area here and then there's potential for some re-scribing in areas to pick up part of the plan is that the lower parking lot is going to be a garage or two floor or three floor. Back here, yeah. I mean what we're really we're getting into right now is seeing who parks where and how many of those people do we have and need spaces for and what that proximity is to where. Because when the emergency department's not over here anymore, who are these people parking here? You know we don't know yet. We have to that's part of the ongoing conversation. Do you know what's going to be with the emergency room is now? Well so that's a couple things. One short term we'll probably use it for physician offices, specifically for specialists that are on the campus themselves that have some relationship to the bill in patient care. Long term we need to have a plan that tears the old building down because it's it's past this useful life right now doing a study about what it's going to take to seal the building back up and get a few more years on it but it really is built in late 60s and you know it's got 50 years on it and it's at that point so the long-term mass facility plan was okay as we build people and we will tear down the old ones and then we basically end up with a new modern medical center. This is kind of that first floor plate because it's extremely expensive to go to hospitals and we've got to buy it off of those chunks and so short term we'll probably repurpose it for some kind of outpatient offices but long term it's going to start coming down and so to make room for whether the next phase is. And my selfish question is will it impact a change in the intersection? We're doing a traffic study or a done a traffic study and the implication on this is pretty minimal compared to. Okay you know when you did the work one was a two or three years ago and the line was put far back there was a lot of problems with getting that when the shift changes getting people out of the hospital driveway. We have replaced those traffic lights which I think helps. So I'm just you know I'd like to work with you on that if you can think of. I think you get rid of that artificial constraint because the right turn lane helps too because the thing bumps out so you can only get so many cars queued up there. You'll be able to get people by that way. Yeah that's something we looked at very closely because the worst case scenarios have ended up in the form of traffic coming to from the facility. And the roads the good news is the road system is really good in this area. It's got the interstate lots of work down in the 62 Fisher Road intersection by the state two years ago and this intersection was last year last year we replaced that yeah. So all together it's money amongst friends yeah. When this building was built it's going to be the net increase in employees. That's being stayed right now just the range is 92 110 would be a guess right now or we won't know for a little longer but we're basically going to part of my department kind of forecasting what that is and we have I just want to have as well affect those intersections yeah. Yeah well that's over the course of 24 hour periods so it's not all at once. Three shifts yeah. So that building is handling potential psychiatric patients. Yeah and here's just another this visual might help fill it in a little from the so this right here is the existing main front entry and so there's the new emergency department with the two stories of psych psychiatric care and the shell space and then here's that connector going through to the back. If you were to park at this side of the building is that what you're saying you haven't really decided how you get in the building that way? Well no we are really they will be the majority of people will be coming in from this time. Yeah unless they're going to the emergency department and what we will maintain this front area it's it's underutilized but it is where bus drop-off is and that will remain. Isn't that also the entrance for the dialysis people? Yes it is. You haven't gone to the DRB yet. That's correct we did we had a meeting with Tom a preliminary meeting and that was we're in the early stages. Yeah I actually I actually see and as much remember me a little more than the only network leader at the scene because you've seen this in the 14th and so I'm sure the board appreciates you coming in to give that from this that's uh I'm just trying to understand where the when is this going to be done. My ball goes well. Well I'll be up to first we got to submit a CON we're hoping to do that late spring early summer. CON. Certificate of need with the condom care board and then they have you know their process to approve it so that that can take you know 90 days to a year so once that once that approval happens assuming does then it's about 36 months of construction. The big hurdle is how pay for it still so it's a very expensive building and so that's that's the challenge of the moment. Right and that's where we're working trying to get an accurate cost so that we can figure then figure out how much money needs to come forward. CON. And it would have to go through that 250 and conditional use of the town site plan approval and actually we'll have to talk about water waste water waste water allocations minimum amount. Well away from the government we're here to help you know that. The hospital does a really good job with community outreach and educational opportunities too and that's something to potentially you know look at in terms of obtaining additional funding and perhaps grants etc for capital funding. And I think about like the change in the parking you know maybe there could be a designated area for you know folks that are there for educational opportunities too. It's a thought. CON. The educational opportunities up at the campus now I know just. CON. Tremendous. CON. Yeah. CON. A lot of things in there you want to know. CON. Sighting garages. CON. It is very exciting. CON. Yeah yeah. CON. Well as you say two in terms of how it relates to the town square which is you know I think exciting the two things come together and so. CON. That's a really good point with the town center zone. CON. It's kind of leaning towards this. CON. I think the parking garage is a really great um not only designed to have it but where you're looking to put it it just makes total sense. CON. Yeah. CON. Oh thank you that does kind of tuck away in the facts right there and come up the hill. CON. I don't know whether there's we're going to just the hospital's plans for the future that the building would be built for the addition if it was reasonable to put on additional stories. CON. Yeah so as this becomes the kind of the main plate of the future hospital for the next 50 years there may it may stack to three floors higher depending on what the needs is and we'll move all of our inpatient medical beds there too and uh basically the community ends up with you know the next hospital for the next 50 years and so. CON. So this application is just for the emergency department and the psychiatric uh but it's really great planning because if you look at a map and look at all we have for development of the land up here it gets pretty minimal unless you start yeah we get 10 years from now maybe those floors have to go up. CON. And we we own those three other lots there and and it's hard to push things that actually has so far people to travel so we're actually looking at how does that play into an ambulatory strategy so that where some of our doctor's offices are basically destination on that side of campus and so let's see kind of the 15-year master plan how does it all play out so. CON. I think a little subway would be nice to see a channel. CON. A tunnel where I'm trying to give us a tunnel. CON. I can notice. CON. We consider the hospital very important in that plan for the downtown designation as we've talked about. CON. That's all. CON. I was at the active 50 meeting for the senior center going in and there's a lot of conversation about the walkability and so that was my interest because as the town center plan develops you want to make sure that there's walkability between the hospital and the town center and so it's. CON. And like you are with your project this project with a lot of unknowns we don't have the answers to. CON. One of the things we want to plan for as we build this is we kind of build in that future walkability. CON. Right. CON. Sure. CON. It's been exciting to talk years and life of the town I think. CON. The town center and the house. CON. Maybe my son can wheel me back. CON. That's my really walkability. CON. Wheel of the Holy. CON. Do you hear the questions? CON. Can you hear them? CON. Thank you very much for coming in. CON. Thank you all very much. CON. Good to see you again. CON. Good to see you again. CON. Yeah. CON. Nice to meet you. CON. I'm sure I will see you. CON. Who will? CON. Thank you all. CON. Thank you Ron. CON. You. CON. You have been saying hello. CON. Nice weather here. CON. I know. CON. I know. CON.  It's going to be our next contestant. CON. Did you want a question about audit? CON. Yes, please. Thank you. CON. Thank you. CON. Thank you. CON. Thank you. CON. Thank you. CON. Um, did you get the word from Brian that he's going to take care of that tomorrow? CON. Nope. Not yet. CON. I just saw the email when I went to check something out about 10 minutes ago. CON. He had an email in there saying, and I think he sent it to you with a copy of me. CON. Maybe it was the other way around, but he said he was going to take care of that. CON. Okay, good. Yeah, I followed up with Yuri. CON. I saw it. CON. I was just saying, you know, the facts would be great. CON. We need it quick. CON. Yeah, facts will save about four days of mail time. CON. Yeah. CON. Yeah. CON. Did anybody have any questions on the audit before I start? CON. Because what I did, I went through it briefly at the last meeting. CON. Oh, okay. CON. And I knew, and I just picked one particular section. I think it was G that I picked. CON. Yeah. And I knew that you would just search on all the other ones just to say what each one actually means. CON. Yep. Okay. CON. G was one of my sections too. CON. Yeah, good. CON. I usually just gloss over exhibit A and B, and that's basically taking a governmental fund statement, which is the reports that you guys look at every month that Diane gives you, and basically converts it to like a for profit business out there, which is getting all the loans on there and getting all the fixed assets on there. But I know that's not what you guys use for budgeting purposes and setting the tax rate and all that. So we'll jump to page 12. And this is basically the balance sheet which shows the general fund separate, because that's really the only major fund you guys have. The rest of the other seven funds are all combined into the non-major funds. But for the general fund, you ended up the year with $1.2 million of fund balance. Some of that isn't spendable because it's prepaid as an inventory and the loan to one of the proprietary funds. And then there's restricted money, committed money, and assigned money. You know, like committed restricted money being maybe appraisal money that comes in and stuff. And those are all noted on page 39. So that equates to about $500,000 between all of those. So what's left is an unassigned fund balance of $603,000. And that's what you can use to decrease the tax rate if you want to, if you want to use it going forward. So that's pretty much where you stood at the end of June for last year. Linda, do you know what they recommend from the state to hold for fund balance? That's a very good question. Something like a percentage of your budget, I thought it was like 5% of the budget? I do not know what the state recommends. I know some places might have a minimum fund balance where they say we want to have 15% of whatever annual budget is. We want to have that as a minimum fund balance just to keep it kind of in our back pocket, so to speak. If we had a major disaster, for example, that we had no choice. I don't know what the state does when you know some non-profits who depend a lot on donation stuff. Sometimes they'll say a year's worth of operating expenses because timing of non-profit grants is so fluctuating, but I don't know what the state has. Okay, good question. Exhibit E is basically your income and expense for the year, showing the general fund as one that showed 140,000, basically a net profit for the year, which gets you down to the total ending of 1.2 million. And the other combined funds had a net loss of about 50,000, but really that's because 62,000 of that was transferred into the general fund. That was the bridge fund, the Rexon Park fund, and the Rhodes Project fund that you closed out and moved in. Those are those reserves that we decided to have, yeah. So, really, of that, you know, 61,000 is part of that, 140,000. So, okay. And then Exhibit G basically takes the general fund, budget to actual for the year. So, your revenue was over budget by 400 and almost $28,000, most of that being from the state, you know, the Mirror Lake Road Culvert and the Fisher Road Paving Grant. And then you also had insurance proceeds from some highway vehicle, 52,000. So, that really comes up with most of your excess revenue. Your expenditures were over budget by $305,000. Under 85 of that had to do with capital outlays, mostly for the highway, those highway projects.  Because we had in that, in that figure, we had those two pieces of equipment that we purchased that we hadn't planned. That's in the capital portion. Yeah, okay. Yeah, yeah. And then the police department was over budget by $76,000. A lot of that was due to wages. So, some contributing factors to what that, $305,000. Was for. So, overall, you'd budgeted a deficit of almost $44,000. You ended up with 140 excess. So, you were really better than budget by almost $184,000. So. Thanks for the revenues. Yeah. Yeah, overall. Yeah, yep. Yeah. And then over on page 23, shows your two proprietary funds, your water pollution fund and your water division fund. Both with about ending what they call net position versus net fund balance of $1.7 million. The water pollution fund on the next page ended the year with an excess of $168,000. The water division had a deficit of $100,000. The prior year for the water division fund, there was actually $50,000 of income from that for giving anyone. So, it was quite a shift from the year before. But overall, for both of them, you ended up with almost $18,000 profit. So. And the other non-major funds is way in the back and it shows the detail of each of those little funds but those are minor, minor accounts. It's a military fund. All right. The new asset forfeiture fund that was new this year. Yes. Yeah. Right. Yeah. Again, on page 39, there is the detail of what's, what is the committed, the restricted, and the assigned fund balance so you can see what all of those funds consist of. You know, I know the state gave you some money for I-89 closure that's coming up. You know, so that's part of that because it hasn't been spent. You know, records restoration from the state. And that's pretty much it. We didn't have any findings this year, which is good. There's a couple journal entries but nothing material that was a result of audit procedures. So that was good. Well, that is good. It is good. It's excellent. A lot of attention to detail here. I like that. Well, we're very lucky we have Diane. We are. We commend her. Very much appreciated. So we're looking for the board to accept this? Yes. Or are we looking for something? Yeah. Just whenever you guys are ready. And I did bring another copy of the rep letter that needs to get signed. So whenever you're ready. When is it, when you need that back? Whenever you guys want it. I mean, it's in your hands right now with the draft. So whenever you approve it, we just need a verbal approval or written something. And then this rep letter needs to be signed on the back basically saying, you know, you provide all the information to us and you accept the draft as is, etc. Is that the one, is that signed by Diane and me? Is that the one? We need this by the end of the month of the town report. So we can include it in the town report. Perhaps since we don't have a full contingent of people, maybe you could accept it your next meeting. Or we could do it tonight if you feel confident in what has been presented to us. I don't know if that, I mean. Because we did it at the full board when I went through everything. I'm thinking, you know, I'm willing to make the motion to go ahead and prove it tonight. So I make the motion to approve the FY19 audit, the review that we just did tonight, and presented by Linda Mullen from Father Gil Segali in Valley. Do you hear a second? Any further discussion? All those in favor? Motion carries. So Diane and I will sign that letter. I'll leave it with you and you can just fax it back when you hear it. Okay, all right. Very good. And so we'll do that tomorrow. And you'll, you should be getting the other item that you're looking for from the lawyers, the lawyer letter. And after that, you would just let Diane know when it's ready. Right, yep, yep. Yeah, we'll probably upload it to the portal. Yeah. And then you have a copy and do you need hard copies? Or we do, we usually get what, 10? I think we usually get 10, yeah. Okay, yeah, so we do want 10. And we get the, and you probably have this all figured out, the electronic one, so Corinne can put it in the report. Right, yeah. We do need that. Yeah, that's, you need to get that off the portal. Yeah, that's what I, yeah, yeah, get this one. They don't allow me to use the portal, so it's... Let me use it much easier. Okay, thank you. Are you all set? Thank you, Linda. You're welcome. Thank you very much. Good to see you. Thanks for getting to. Okay, approval of 24 minutes. I make a motion that we approve the select board minutes for both December 5th, 2019 and December 19th, 2019 as presented in our packet. Is everybody here? There's two minutes. Last two, yeah. They were, yeah. Yeah. The full board, okay. Full board. Go here a second. All right, any further discussion? Hearing none, those in favor? Aye. Motion carries. Thanks. This is a report, Linda. Well, I guess my report is basically, we've talked a little bit about the wall incident with the highway truck. We did get a new highway truck today. They went down and picked it up. The last couple weeks have been kind of odd with the holidays, but we're back on getting back to normal, which is always nice. It's nice to go on holiday. It's nice to come back. So the budget, you've talked about a little bit tonight. That's coming up the warning we're going to talk about. And we have to get the warning ready to post by the end of the month. And if people are running for office, it's July 25. They have to have their petitioning to the clerk. July. January. I'm sorry. Did I say July? January. January. Oh, yeah. Where am I? Yeah. January 25th. You're just going to warm or what? Yeah, I know what. And anything else? No. Your 2019 level of appraisal. Oh, thank you. Yes. We did get the letter from the state on the equalization study. And I am going to find it at any moment here. We have the common level of appraisals this year is 10309, which is... So it's still over 100 percent. You know, we were 10452. That's the common level of appraisal. The coefficient of dispersion, the COD was 13.2. I did have some questions. I haven't had a chance to talk to Clarissa about... I wanted to see, since we just had the mobile homes, the unlanded mobile homes, redone of what that did to our COD. But I wanted to... It hasn't changed very much from what it was last year, which doesn't indicate any need to do any reappraisal or major work, but I will have some answer on some of the individual sections of the total town, the mobile homes that are unlanded, the mobile homes that are landed. Those are our most difficult ones to keep a hold of with the sales and so forth. And a lot of it, and still was from the incident in 2011 from Irene, with homes that people were replacing, home was finally in. They were paying a lot more than what they were able to get. So that is in and nothing of surprise there. Here are the draft of the warning. And the warning, and I'll give you... This is obviously just a draft at this point. It doesn't require you to accept it at this point. Rosemary has typed this up and the special appropriations, everyone that she has received are not bolded. These are the ones that were on last year's, and the ones that are bolded she hasn't heard from yet, although she has until the 16th. And the pre-town meeting is going to be on the previous... Pre-town meeting, instead of the Monday evening, it will be on the Saturday morning. And I noticed she has to change, that's 10 a.m. Saturday morning. And that's really because the school is going to be having theirs on Monday night. It's the district school, it's not our school now, so it's different. So much better. Yes. Again, people have until the 16th to present a petition, either for this or something else for the morning. The articles that are going to be on the floor are the normal articles as far as the date that taxes are due and the penalty and the interest. This year, according to the Vermont State Law entities, such as the Volunteer Fire Department, that do not pay taxes and do not town-owned have to be approved by the town for tax exemption. So that's more or less a housekeeping thing. The Grange would be next year, that's five years. Also, the annual town meeting, it's been suggested that we move that from the first Tuesday, which is voting would still be the Tuesday, but the actual meeting to the Saturday before the first Tuesday. And so I don't know what the board feels about that. That was a suggestion of Rosemary. So we need to talk about that a little more. So this year around, they're talking about moving the, she wants to move the voting part, or not the voting part, but to tell the meeting part to... She can't move the voting. That's because of Vermont State Law. That's always the first Tuesday of the month. She's talking about moving the actual meeting part where you discuss different items. And I think what the theory is in so that people have a chance to discuss what's on the ballot before they, many times now people have already voted by the time it gets discussed. And I think what she's trying to do and what our thought is, is that people would have a chance to discuss it before they can make a decision how they want to vote. It'll be interesting to see what the pre-tell meeting attendance is. This time around, because it's not going to be the Monday before. It's going to be on the Saturday. Yes. I don't know. I've had people say to me, if you had it on a Saturday, we could attempt. But no matter when you have that, unfortunately, we all have times that we can't go. And that's kind of the same idea with the Tuesday meeting. People, even though employers are supposed to let employees go to town meeting, that's not always the case. Right. You know. Is he upstairs? No. That's the only thing for the... So I guess I, you know, we would, after next Thursday, which is not in July, will be... Rosemary will have all the petitions. If there's any potential for more petitions, she'll have them. Yeah. And she can have them on this. So be ready for you to vote on next time. And also as far as the annual meeting, if the board is going to support moving the date. So that's all. And when did we decide that we would switch to the Monday meeting? What date is that happening? That was because the clerk has to be at both meetings. And she can't physically be at the school meeting and at the town meeting at the same time. So we decided, we being Rosemary and I, that we'd go at the Saturday before. Very good. Yeah. Excellent. Did he also date on that? That's all, yeah. That's it. See you here. All I had was, I just needed, since I have flow, if I could have flow signed underneath the ground. Sure. And the other thing will be, so we move on now to round table? Floor? Nothing tonight from me, the round table. Thank you. Angelina? Okay. Stealing tonight is fine? Fine. No executive session. No. I make a motion to conclude and adjourn the meeting for this evening. Very second. Second. All those in favor? Aye. Those opposed? Motion carries. Adjourned.


Okay, so we are at 10-01 Pacific Standard Time, so that seems as good a time as any to start. I'm using a roomcaster slide show today. It's got a bit of a different hud, so excuse me if things seem a little bit weird as I'm getting used to it. So today I'm going to try and present a informal discussion of some bioprocesses that use light and title is green and purple. I've got green and purple things all through the talk and basically I'm going to tell you about two different biosystems that use green pigments and purple pigments that end up being able to harvest energy from sunlight. So yeah, there's all sorts of big scary molecules around me. I'll talk about that my little friend over there later in the talk if it's a kind of a benty chlorophyll. So without further ado, hey here's an abstract. You know basically I'm going to talk about light-driven biological processes. They are very complicated. I'm not a biochemist so I'm going to try to reduce them down to very simple behavior. The fundamental thing that these systems will do is that they'll take in light, they'll absorb that energy, that will move some electrons around and end up moving hydrogen ions, H pluses around, so as to accomplish tasks within cells. And one of these tasks is vision which plants don't have. I hope not. They don't really want them watching me too much but which we do. One of the things I'm struck by when we talk about photosynthesis and the similar mechanisms is just how complicated many of these processes are. The structures themselves rival Rube Goldberg machines and their complexity. So we'll take a look at some of them. That's what I'll focus on primarily today. Okay so what are the green and purple in the title? Well green will be photosystem one and two. Let's see if I can add some animation to what's going on. Maybe not. Green. Okay so I can move around on slides but I'm not getting very quick drawing on the slides. Okay well talking about photosystems one and two. They're in plants, cyanobacteria. Also going to talk about rhodopsin and related species which are in bacteria. Let's start with the purple ones. They're rhodopsins. Talking about Rube Goldberg machines. Here's a sketch of one I've given the image credit below. I'm still trying to make little squares and circles and things and it was working right before the seminar so that's something that we'll have to fix. So there's a recent CBS story and I can give you the URLs as I'm speaking. There you are. Okay so that's not working right now either. Okay very well. There's the URLs. I'll be able to send those to people later. Maybe I can try one last thing. There we go. Okay that's the URL for more on Rube Goldberg machines. Very complicated as we say. So first thing I'm going to talk about is a bacterial rhodopsin and it comes from this halo bacterium selenarium. And so the halo bacterium selenarium ends up living in very salty waters. Very salty waters. And there is an article on them at this link. Okay that's working better. And these are a few of the denizens that live in such salty waters and very salty lakes. And this little rod shaped one that I've got the arrow pointing to is actually the halo bacterium selenarium. This was featured as a bacterial rhodopsin from this organism was featured as a molecule of the month about a decade ago I think on the protein database. I'll talk about that in a little bit. Essentially what it does is it pumps hydrogen ions H plus across bacterial cell membranes. And this action causes a pH difference inside the cell versus outside the cell. And that is what allows a molecule called ATP to be synthesized. Okay this ends up being a way for the cell to store energy. All right that's a mouthful and I'm not here to try and be intimidating about all of these structures. I will provide a direct link. Here's a direct link to the actual page that I'm showing you. If you haven't seen it the protein database has these molecules of the month and it is a really lovely introduction to structural biology and they bring it down to a level that even a poor interganate chemist like myself can understand. Next slide. So the whole point of what the rhodopsin does is to move the H plus around. Okay so on one side of the cell you've got high concentrations of H plus right you think of H plus as being acid. You've got low concentrations of H plus on the other side of the cell because there is a light driven pump that moves these ions. As a result this slide can happen where on the left I'm showing you adenosyl ribo-diphosphate. I think that's what it's called. Again I'm not a biochemist. The point is if you look at where I say have diphosphate labeled there's two phosphorus atoms with a bunch of oxygen atoms. There's a little enzyme in how that spans a cell membrane that will take and add to this diphosphate stuff another phosphorus atom with some oxygen. It takes energy to do that but that energy can be released reversibly so this is an energy storage mechanism. Okay let's see. So one can access a little bit more on that from LibraTex. These are open source textbooks out of the University of California system. That's where I got the figures from. So how ATP synthase works is going to be a story for another day. I'm going to go back to the rhodopsin. Next slide. So here's a structure of the rhodopsin from the halobacterium salinarium. It presents as a complex of three of these of three of these little structures. There we go. So on this slide on the figure in the lower right you see three of the proteins from above going forward. This is a view from the side. The rods I'm still trying my pointers and stuff. I have a pointer. Okay so the rods that are showing up from the the top and bottom of this figure that I've just put arrows on will represent the cell membrane. This thing spans a cell membrane. What are the coils? Okay well the coils are actually protein. Protein is basically a chain of amino acids. What does that mean? Well it's basically like one long molecule that's linked with little Lego bricks essentially that you can make into different shapes. There's a particular amino acid that if you repeat it over and over and over again will turn into these spirals. These are structural. They're essentially the building blocks of the they're essentially to keep all of the important machinery in place. They're basically the building in which the chemistry takes place. I've got the same structure lurking out behind the screen.  Because if I don't shrink it down it's going to get kind of big and intimidating. It's almost like something from HB Lovecraft. Let's stretch, make you a little bit smaller and move you in front of the screen. And when I said a little bit smaller it really meant just just a tiny bit smaller. Okay so hopefully I haven't engulfed anybody in in there. Okay it looks looks looks pretty good. This is the same structure. Essentially what you see is the pink spirals and those span the cell membrane. Those are very good at keeping the protein in place in a specific place in the cell. There's some loose-looking spaghetti ends at the top. There's some loose-looking spaghetti ends at the bottom. These represent the protein chain that aren't spiraling. And you'll notice some blue stuff kind of hanging out in the middle. And I don't know if you can zoom in on the blue stuff. These are molecules called retinol. Every three spirals represents one of the proteins and these proteins always occur in trimmers of three. And each retinol molecule is the pump. So what happens is that the blue like that blue blue array of molecules inside this protein gets hit by light changes shape and that shape change drives an H plus being moved from the top of all the spirals down through a channel and out out the bottom. Okay so I'll show you this on I'll show you what happens on the the slideshow screen. In the meantime let's edit this guy and move him out of the way. All right, goodbye. Okay I always have stage directions on my slide. C structure model here at Science Circle. I got to do that or else I forget what I'm doing and go off on to science and start talking to you more about my cats. I've got cat pictures later of course. So here's here's more pictures of bacteria or dops and remember I said Luke Goldberg machine you would expect that the H plus kind of starts at the top and moves down out the bottom in a logical flow. But there's five steps to moving the H plus and the step one right here right in the middle is where that retinol molecule was. Absorption of a photon causes retinol to change its shape and it basically shuttles an H plus from one place to another and in reaction to that an H plus is kicked out of the bottom and in reaction to that an H plus gets sucked further in and recharges the retinol followed by an H plus being sucked in from the rest of the cell and finally an H plus moves into position to be ejected when the next photon arrives. So this isn't like one two three four five in a like a logical sequence from from one end of the structure to the other. There is a logical sequence and all of these things have to happen but it's started off by the proton pumping action of the retinol.  I'm going to show you that in a second. Okay I actually like this loom cast screen. I like making arrows. There's an arrow. So what happens in the bacterial rhodopsin? Well that's the structure of the molecule. For those of you who aren't familiar with organic chemistry jargon I guess every every vertex right? So if I maybe circle one of these guys every vertex represents a carbon atom. So the one I've just put a square around is a carbon atom. You see two lines well carbons tend to have four things attached to them. You see two lines. Those are the bonds to other carbons. There's four things attached. The ones you don't see are assumed to be hydrogen. So what I've just put a square around is a CH2. This guy with the next square has oh four lines. There are no hydrogens attached to that one. The places where we see two parallel lines are referred to as double bonds. And when you have a pattern of single bond, double bond, single bond, double bond then you have some electronic mobility through a chain. So the electron mobility gives us some special features. Like having a chain that long with maybe a nitrogen at the end allows the molecule to absorb light. One of the things that happens when the molecule absorbs light is that the bonding becomes a bit looser. These double bonds tend to be rigid. They tend to basically keep the things attached to the carbon in a particular geometry. Happens to be a planar geometry. When you get into an excited state by absorbing an electron that ends up being loosened. And you can have rotations happening. So very simple thing. Very simple molecule. This retinal derivative is not quite retinal because it's actually attached to the protein in this case. But it's essentially the same molecule. In your eye, in your eye, oh I always forget this slide. Okay so I kind of explained why does the molecule change shape. You know in in molecules we've got electrons that are holding nuclei together. And the electrons where they're allowed to go is determined by quantum mechanics. I won't scare you with that. Essentially what happens is that the molecules arrange their electrons into states where you have low energy states and you have high energy states. My squares have gone away again. Oh no there we are. So I circled the high energy state. There's so high energy that the electrons avoid them. There's no electrons in there. Until the molecule absorbs some light. Each new is light. And then an electron can show up up here leaving a hole down there. This reduces the strength of interactions between neighboring carbon atoms. And that's what lets the free rotation start to happen. So orbital change reflects a change in the energy state of the electron. Absolutely yes. Because this is basically the same as taking a bucket of water and climbing a hill with it. You could do some work with the potential energy that you have invested in water in the bucket.  Okay that was meant to be a joke. So in your eye we have similar molecules. Here's retinal. Oh that's not what I wanted to do. Click. Here is retinal. And you know I keep saying retinal. It says retinilidine. All that's happening is that we're kind of changing kind of just changing this little bit there depending on what is connected to it. Okay so in your eye in your eye we have some recharging of the retinal that happens in the dark state. That's stuff down here. Okay my ability to draw comes and goes. Okay that's that's down in the lower block. And in the upper block this is what happens when light absorption occurs. That bit in red is exactly what happens when light absorption occurs. I'm going to zoom in on it. Okay notice how we get a structure change. What's the importance of the internal rotation? So essentially you move this H plus from one position in the protein to another position in the protein and or to another position in space. And that allows it to be transferred along a chain. In your eye this ends up developing a potential that can be trigger a nerve to fire. Okay so this is what happens in the rods in your eye. This structural change triggers H plus flow. Since H plus is a charged species movement of ion is the same thing as an electrical current. So that can trigger nerves to fire. And all the rest of what I had on the slide was the recharging. It takes about half an hour after this structural change to occur for the compound to go back. One of the things I'll just point out in your eye we are moving that bond but in the bacteria rhodopsin it's moving that the bond adjacent to it. And part of that is going to be determined by the space left in the protein and carefully managed by the protein. It's exactly like a conveyor belt. Let's see next slide. 16. Okay so the purple part was the bacteria rhodopsin and the visual purple it was called that's in the rods of your eye. I'm going to talk a little bit about photosystems one and two the green part of the title. And thank you for indulging me. These are some pictures from my garden we've got some purple cone flowers going on. I think these are some lavender and some blue bells and they just happen to be purple flowers and with green in the background. Otherwise no relevance to the talk so thank you for your indulgence. Taking a slight detour because I am an inorganic chemist and we like to look at biochemistry and structural biology and get inspiration for how to do things that might be useful for society. This is an early structure you'll call it bio-inspired inorganic chemistry. It's a molecular photovoltaic an example from 2004. If you take the photosystems in that values for photosynthesis and distill them down to their essence you have parts of the molecule that are antennas. Actually in photosystem one and photosystem two as I'll show you these molecule the molecules aren't actually joined to each other they're just in proximity held by the protein scaffolding. So anyway you have an antenna which helps photons which don't actually hit the active site. The donor which I've circled in green here helps channel their energy to the active site and increases the efficiency of absorption. Why donor? Well what happens like I described way back on the molecular orbital slide what happens when a molecule absorbs light is that an energy or is that an electron gets promoted from a low energy state to a high energy state. Most of the time that electron just falls back into the hole at left and the energy is released as useless heat. If you set things up right the electron in the high energy state can make it sell or can make its way somewhere else and be trapped there and avoid recombination. So it's still high energy oh and there's a low energy hole and now we've got an energy difference that can be used to drive some chemistry. Let's see when the electron returns to the cis energy state the shape returns to the cis form from the transform until it forms another photon is that it? So here's the thing the one form will turn into the different form on absorption of energy. The the energy can be transferred somewhere somewhere else the proton can be can be moved through the protein chain or whatever it does take some time for the molecule to relax back into the initial state. So in the rods in your eye there's a constant movement of the retinal from the light absorbing kind of tip of the rod back into the I'm going to just call it the lower portion where there are processes that actually reset the shape and manage the shape and then inject it back. So it's not instant it may take 10 to minutes to half an hour. Sometimes photon absorption doesn't excite an electron it can induce internal rotations and vibrations absolutely. So it does depend on the wavelength of light so usually visible light has the enough energy to promote electrons from low energy states to higher energy states but if you're looking at infrared light that tends to excite molecular vibrations it leaves the electrons alone and microwaves tend to be appropriate for exciting rotations molecules. But yeah all of those all of those are like fascinating techniques. Okay let's see back to this slide the three things you need to make photosynthesis happen are antennas are donor sites and acceptor sites and then some other chemistry to do some energy or do some useful work with the separated charges and their associated energy. Okay here's an example so Dan Nosira is at Harvard and he's done some lovely work this is a paper I saw last week or from a paper I saw last week from accounts of chem research and it talks about some of his work from the last 12 years. On this slide I've got one of his figures it's a comparison between natural photosynthesis and artificial photosynthesis and as we'll see later in my slides there's a thing called photosystem two there's a thing called photosystem one they both absorb energy photosystem two is where oxygen is evolved that plants and these things drive a couple of other processes that end up taking carbon dioxide and adding hydrogen to it and making biomass. So the artificial photosynthesis relies on a silicon chip or a silicon wafer and the silicon wafer can absorb light and cause charge separation as I've been describing and what the clever thing they've done is to put a surface on one side of the silicon chip that will be favorable for turning water into oxygen and H plus it happens to be a cobalt phosphate it's oh it's delightful because when the cell is running it's self healing any damage to the surface actually gets repaired as part of the dynamic chemistry of the process so it pretty much got no time limits on to its lifetime. On the other side you need H plus to turn into H2. There's lots of things that'll do that for you platinum is especially good but anything that will turn H plus into H2 at fairly low voltages has a problem with oxygen O2 molecules from the air can be turned into reactive oxygen species related to hydrogen peroxide well that's a problem because on this hydrogen side of the silicon wafer you want a colony of bacteria to live and if you're generating hydrogen peroxide it kind of bleaches them into death so the particular surface he came up with it says it says COP and that's confusing because the other one other side says COP the green side is a cobalt phosphate it's a salt the pink side is a cobalt phosphorus alloy and that has the property of allowing this H plus to H2 thing to happen but it suppresses the oxygen making reactive oxygen species happen the upshot is this cell operates pretty close to its ideal value and pretty much every photon that I should say every photon one out of every four photons that hits this thing it's got 25 efficiency ends up making these reactions go who cares well the bugs that are engineered use the hydrogen to fuel their metabolism right so they do they do all the same things that the the the regular leaf would do including taking carbon dioxide and turning it into biomass and they can be engineered to make methanol ethanol or biopolymers that are useful this was wonderful work it said really just appeared in his last sentence or I'm sorry in his last paragraph in this he said oh by the way we've also engineered the we've also engineered the bacteria to fix nitrogen and you know the nitrogen containing biomass also has pulled carbon dioxide from the air and if you spread that on on fields then you know you'll enrich the spoil with carbon organic matter and fertilizer at the same time in what should be a process that depletes the atmosphere of carbon dioxide this sounds to me like a wonderful thing because as some of you know night ammonia fertilizers are made by the Haber process which requires 500 degree iron powder at I think 200 atmospheres or something like that it's essentially responsible for one percent of the carbon dioxide formation on this planet or commercial activity so it's a huge contributor to climate change so having having bionic leaves do that work for us without having to burn any fossil fuels to make fertilizers that would be awesome I'll remind you that without fertilizers without the Haber process to make fertilizers there would not be enough food to feed all the people on this planet so let's see I'm going to catch up with the feed for a sec I kind of get too focused on what's happening inside my head to always look at the feed so sorry about that let's see can't see high energy gamma rays we will I love that one and the alloy so it's cobalt and phosphorus as the alloy I think it's a very small amount of phosphorus in cobalt they in in their paper they were also using a I think it's a nickel zinc tin alloy as well for that they started with but found that the cobalt phosphorus one worked and you know it's like steel steel is iron and carbon but the amount of carbon and steel is really really tiny but very significant so yes yes Haber process has been very important and here's the here's here's the actual reference I'll copy the URL so you can read the abstract to it no one's mostly behind the paywall okay and you know if you are actually wanting some much better information about photosynthesis than than I'm going to provide here here's here's a link to a beautiful paper I found this is in Journal of Chemical Education the article itself is probably behind the paywall but the supplementary material is not and in the supplementary material you've got zip file containing an executable file that has a wonderful set of animations that show dynamically how how photosynthesis let's see so I keep saying things about blue goldberg machines fundamentally the photosynthesis that you're used to runs by something called the z scheme and here the z is on its side you know essentially essentially this essentially that thing can look like a letter z or z if you happen to be Canadian if you rotate it by 90 degrees clockwise or counterclockwise and this is actually a lovely little slide to summarize because what happens at one end of the process is that hydrogen and or that water has electrons stolen from it and and is turned into oxygen that happens at a manganese cluster and photosystem two paradoxically I'm going to talk about photosystem two first photosystem two is that bit takes four photons and promotes four electrons to a higher energy level and then these electrons are allowed to come down in energy they drive some chemical reactions along the way and then they're stored in photosystem one which also absorbs some photons these nice little rg biv h news are the photons it absorbs four photons that essentially take h plus and turn into h2 the h2 is stored in nadh another energy storage molecule short-term energy storage molecule in cells and ultimately it's used to take carbon dioxide and turn that into carbohydrate turns out that co2 to carbohydrates is nearly thermo neutral right so costs very little energy to do that although the pathway has to be catalyzed to make it happen so that's the I like that picture that that gets the idea across here's another picture that kind of tells you a little bit more detail of what's going on there's a manganese part of the photosystem the electrons from the water are stored at a very low energy level light promotes them up and then like a slinky these electrons cascade through a series of molecule alone or in pairs no just just single electron transfers they cascade through these various structures doing some work along the way making ATP from ADP things that your cells need to live things that everyone's cells need to live the ATP until they're stored in another place where they can be promoted again and then there's a whole bunch of stops along the way I'm going to show you some of these structures okay so here's a structure of photosystem 2 again it was a molecule of the of the month in I think 2004 it's a big molecule so I'm going to show you different views of it click okay so this is from the molecule of the month page the photosystem 2 ends up being a dimeric photo protein so it shows up as dimers it spends membranes so one is still trying to get things to work eventually it will so it spends the protein membrane that's this gray area on the left hand side of the slide oh there we go there's a gray area there's a lot of chlorophyll molecules that act as antennas and direct energy towards the central bit okay and all of this is held in place by the scaffolding of the probe of the coils the alpha helices okay let's see is there this is there evidence that in certain cases there are additional photosystems 3 4 and 5 there may be there's a lot of structural there's a lot of structural diversity in photosystem 1 and photosystem 2 if you go to different organisms but I think that the core of them involve the manganese as the oxygen generating center and the chlorophyll in fact there's several different types of chlorophyll A chlorophyll B there tend to be letters so yeah you know what I'm showing you isn't V for the system it is A for the system let's see so changing colors going over here so that little section is shown more detail on this side of the slide the right hand slide so erasing those we tend to have as I said a lot of antenna chlorophylls they direct their energy down into this part of the molecule chlorophyll ends up being where charge separation takes place and the electrons make their way down through this part of the molecule while the holes i.e. where the electrons came from come from that oxygen evolving center let's look at that guy in a little more detail the oxygen evolving center ends up being a cluster of manganese atoms and calcium you'd think it a cube of manganese oxygen and calcium um like with one vertex of the cube being a calcium and then there's another manganese kind of capping one of the faces I'll show you that in more detail in a 3d structure but that's where the water gets stripped of its protons and the oxygen atoms somehow come together there's a number of variety of hypotheses as to how the how the oxygens come together and it basically makes the O2 molecule oh um a ligand yeah these things are coordinated by the protein right so metal atoms metal atoms don't just float around in solution naked they're very shy what you think of as maybe a copper solution like nice blue copper solution is usually a copper two plus ion that has six water molecules attached to it usually a common number of things attached to transition metals especially six but it can vary from um well it can vary from two to nine in fact um if i'm going to be real pedantic about it but six is um the normal number i'm reminded reminded of something from multi python about five being the number of the counting i'm following along on my powerpoint at home and i'm trying to make sure that i know what i'm going to talk about um so at this point i can talk about some of the some of the structures i've got hidden here there and everywhere um let's see i think way above us i've got uh something that i will let's see if i click on it it gives me a note card yay uh let's edit it and make it a bit smaller rich click click click click i really enjoy giving these talks i actually double dip because i will be using um i will be using um this this talk actually i'll send my students in my bio and organic class to watch it as homework let's see again i hope i haven't crushed anyone with a protein there we go okay so that thing that thing let's move it down a little bit more i wish i could do this in real life like have rhino sized molecules just kind of hovering in front of my students so um this this thing is a um i won't say uh photosystem two from a different molecule i think this one's from a cyanobacterium uh the black spheres well there used to be spheres in blender but i got rid of a lot of um details so i could upload them without crashing the sim the black spheres are carbon atoms red are oxygen atoms um green is magnesium and in the center of this maybe i can rotate this so that the chlorophyll unit faces front now since the chlorophyll is actually buried within kind of harder harder to see okay that's that's not bad um if you um if you pan in on the chlorophyll the green atom surrounded by four blue atoms those are nitrogens uh you'll see you'll see the actual chlorophyll this is an antenna chlorophyll um and um it's actually got antennas around it the um most of this kind of um um black and red molecules that's your beta carotene beta carotene um has a lot of those double bonds it makes it like a wire um ends up funneling energy towards the magnesium or towards the chlorophyll sites um which then is used um by the rest of the photosystem too so yay um one thing you'll notice let me move this guy out of the way edit and then back up into the sky with you back i say there we go you know make sure he's high enough so that he doesn't interfere in any recordings okay so um one thing that you'll know this is um similarities between things like heme and here's a molecule of heme i'll bring it to the uh front in front of the screen um heme is found in your blood heme is found in hemoglobin heme is found in your liver in cytochrome p450s heme is found uh in plants in photosystem one photosystem two as an electron transfer uh destination um heme is found everywhere the little brown atom in the middle of the square of the four uh green atoms that's iron um um heme looks a lot like chlorophyll but there are some important differences and those differences have to do with um in the lower half of this molecule uh you have more double bonds in heme than you do in chlorophyll okay otherwise they look structurally very similar um and i've actually got a um kind of weird looking um chlorophyll molecule on my other side so let's let's move you out of the way and move you back into focus here yeah okay so move move that one up a little bit one of the things you'll notice on this particular chlorophyll is that um where the magnesium atom is i should rotate that where the magnesium atom is and bring you in the front is not planar it's not flat it's like a shape like a saddle right so where that green atom is the four nitrogens look as if they're in a tetrahedron rather than a square plane around so that's unusual uh usually the chlorophyll magnesium part is really flat and that's just that's just one of the like weirdest things i've seen uh recently um the um it kind of shows some of the power of the structural biology this this these models i show you are from x-ray crystallographic studies uh they are faithful representations of where the atoms actually are in these molecules they have been measured uh right they're not an artist conception or anything they're um have pretty much the validity of photographs of um you know photographs of mars i mean they are the data essentially uh so you know to find find a structure that's a little bit unusual um kind of uh requires some requires some explanation so i have no explanation as to why this one is is is weird looking you will notice that it reminds me of the um it reminds me of the um um molecular photovoltaic that i showed you earlier in that there's this long chain um attached to a donor site in this case the chain doesn't have double bonds in it though so i think it's more for positioning than for electronic purposes a heme theme yeah i think there's an evolutionary similarity because i think making these um hemes um is uh something that's been coded for um in genes and you know there's a um um conservation of um conservation of genes to generations especially if they're important for living things but they can be adapted for other purposes i think making a heme and then adding um functionality to the heme molecule and then shoving a magnesium in instead of an iron allows um you know is um you know probably um an efficient reuse of that machinery although i gotta say um usually i usually if i say something like that i'm wrong okay um moving on with some more let's see i'm gonna move this guy out of the way boom boom boom boom and hopefully i'm gonna yeah that's fine okay next slide is there click down one there we go all right so here's some structures i talked about those structures um beta carotene uh i think i've got a picture beta carotene somewhere at chlorophyll a i showed you uh chlorophyll molecule i showed you a heme i showed you the antenna structures and here's some cats uh these uh all of these guys over here um passed away this was taken about a month ago and um they had the window open and there were birdies outside so dad dad there's birds dad and then the two little girl cats are um really looking at one neurotic bird um hey cat so um photosystem 2 basically um takes the electrons ultimately away from water that makes h plus which gets used for things uh makes o2 which is a useful byproduct for us the h plus makes its way to other um uh rhub goldberg machines we'll call them um enzymes and the electrons get shunted through into photosystem one here's photosystem one um or actually here's some more pictures that i thought i would share with you uh some of the cats uh got some tiger lilies hey it's purple and green and uh we actually have on my campus a um calendar or um it's a it's a it's a sundial sculpture and during the summer we have deer that roam around this is actually right outside the science building uh so um you know this is uh two minutes away from my office it's actually quite lovely okay so photosystem one um doesn't look like my cats uh here's a structure again from molecules of the month from a cyanobacterium called uh now i have to pronounce it right uh cynicococcus elongatus um it's a trimer if you look at the um structure this would be a view from above it's actually got three repeating units um that are all pointing in i was circling that but um it's not it's not coming up for me right now oh there it is okay but basically basically yeah well that's that's part of one of the trimmers you can kind of see there's there would be three of them um where am i next slide so this is actually what it looks like when it's uh in the when it's in this membrane i keep saying cell membrane but i should say that for the synthesis happens uh in chloroplasts so this is a membrane that is um on the chloroplast which is within the cell right so there's going to be um ph differences inside the chloroplast versus outside the chloroplast that's going to drive some um energy storing chemistry and the cells are small or small and transparent enough so that light can penetrate into them to make these processes happen okay so the the red and blue indicate where the cell membrane go uh kind of reminds me of an iceberg because there's um chunk of stuff that is um that is uh kind of happening like within within the ribosome no not ribosome chloroplast there we go here's the business end of photosystem one remember photosystem two had manganese in it photosystem one has these iron clusters in those iron clusters are where the equivalents of electrons get stashed while um the molecules are waiting for um light to come in and promote them so um we've got let's see we've got the iron sulfur um clusters that i've already uh circled in orange um there's electron transports change so these are molecules in gray where um electrons uh can um flow towards um towards the chlorophyll molecules that are in green uh that um uh are where the charge separation uh takes place well notice there's all these little um green atoms each one of those represents the center of an antenna molecule that happens to be a chlorophyll so are we now it's like 31 i think so if we put all of this together if we put all of this together um we can um usually find uh four types of uh super complexes um in the in close vicinity on the membranes of the ribosomes right so we have a photosystem two um lovely little a lovely little uh von von Neumann machine right that acts as we've described it basically takes some uh photons it destroys water liberates h plus which gets used over here in um i haven't really talked about this this is a cytochrome uh type of molecule um and it uses h plus and some of those electrons to to make some work happen it recharges some of these um nadhs i think maybe it's just flavonoid over here we have photosystem one which is definitely making some nadh and over here we have the ATP synthase just like the one i talked about earlier let's see i don't always get i don't always get to circle things for this one of this viewer so you know when we think of ruby goldberg machines we think of very complicated machinery that makes something simple happen well the simple thing that happens is that we take some water and carbon dioxide and rearrange some atoms to make oh something like glucose or some some carbohydrate um but it goes through a lot uh steps to get there and you know each one of these organic structures those um biochemical structures is a little machine on its own okay so i've uh i've got just a couple of more things to say i was hoping to be a little more quicker than i am uh um from a pea plant okay so on these panels over here let me just show you let's see edit let's move them into the metal they are actually taking up quite a bit of quite a bit of space uh so for me i actually shut off my media these actually show you 3d rotating cross-eyed gifts or stereograms so let's see i'm clicking on my media to make make those happen and takes a little bit to load in the meantime i will open up a file and give you give you some links let go while i let those load so what are we looking there well these are crystal structures these are crystal structures of um the uh super complex um all of the um photosystem uh two from a pea plant there's only so much ram in my head um so i'm actually um hunting down hunting down a document i wanted to share in text on dates click here we go uh so the bottom panel shows the entire protein so if you zoom in on it you zoom in on it and our um you know not too far away if you click on it it'll just like um dominate your whole screen so you know press escape just zoom in on it with your mouse camera um for some people not everybody if you cross your eyes and overlay the images um you can see the rotation happening in three dimensions the very bottom panel is the complete um protein plus all of the machinery you can see how it's put together the alpha helices the little pink spirals kind of i mean they look like hamburgers to me um they basically provide a scaffolding for all of the other stuff to be in the correct position to make the chemistry happen um up here in the middle um i've deleted all the machinery and just shown you the protein itself this is one molecule right it's one molecule but like like a like when you're doing knitting it's basically one strand of um wool for example and it's knitted into all of these shapes this means that somewhere in this mess there is a beginning end and a end end i guess so this is all one shape and what it does if you look in the top panel is it holds and i got rid of a lot of stuff i got rid of all the beta carotines that we we don't actually need to look at um it has the chlorophylls plus all of the intermediate stages that you need to get electrons um out of the iron sulfur clusters to the to the chlorophylls in the photosystem one i guess it is um the little bright yellow orange dots are the iron sulfur clusters and you can see there's kind of some molecules that bridge towards where the green dots are and those those are basically the electron transport chain um so let's see moving to my next slide um i've got oh yeah well i'm almost i'm almost done here let me move the um panels out of the way i guess i've gotten myself hidden behind one there we go um i made a whole bunch i made a whole bunch of these 3d rotating stereograms and viewed in second life they're not as interesting um because you know second life has a little bit of uh lag to it um so um here's links to the uh rest that i made enter there you go um and uh if you open those in something like uh chrome um some of them are 30 megabyte rotate like single gift files so it might take a little bit to open but if you open them in chrome you can kind of see things in a little more detail and you can expand them uh so yeah feel free to copy the chat um nearby chat for quick so at this point i'm going to conclude okay so um hope you've enjoyed seeing some structures seeing some data uh kind of getting a sense for how things work for um in uh photosynthesis um and um you know i want to thank uh um students uh members science circles shantal and jess especially for everything they do everyone in the board as well i thank my students and uh colleagues and nsf for um their generous support of my current research um you know the dp all c for hosting my animated gifts that that i gave you um and all my cats for their patience because i take lots of pictures of my cats so i okay i saw scissors he asked the question how exactly are the colors green and purple central to these processes it's more of a byproduct um the rhodopsin happens to be um purple uh and that of course is a um um consequence of the um light profile that they absorb uh and actually you know i heard once upon a time that uh in the early earth the rhodopsin um you know under low oxygen conditions um was a um early and dominant uh photosystem so it may have been and and i've heard it suggested that it may have been that uh photosynthetic plants um evolved to absorb green or you know evolved their um absorption uh profile because there was complementary to rhodopsin i i don't know the validity of of this but i do offer it as an explanation because um if you actually look at the absorption profiles the uvb spectra of these things uh there is a complementarity so the light that the um rhodopsin using molecules um organisms uh wasn't using was available um as maybe an evolutionary niche for the um plants that eventually came to dominate so i don't know um but you know that is a possibility uh let's see zoom in closely 3d rotating yes excellent um and let's see i've had a couple of messages as well from from people and uh yeah um so uh let me move forward a slide here's some resources um essentially what i do is i take i use jmail um which is available there i'll actually put the links in um in local local chat here we go there's another drawing of my cats we'll see so source for jmail is that um and it's a nice molecular um drawing program um you can get x-ray crystal structure data for um biological um molecules um for inorganic molecules for minerals uh from uh these sites let's see um crystallography dot net small molecules uh rough does um more minerals it didn't come up with everything that i had copied so let's try that again weird okay um oh i didn't copy the actual thing all right well anyway and i use blender basically um basically i just uh take um export the uh structure from jmail as x3d files imported into blender do some editing like you can get rid of like if there's a sphere inside a sphere no i'll get rid of the inner sphere um and then um um you know combine all of the objects into one mesh decimate the mesh so that it's not so big and then it can be uploaded as a dae final into second life so so yeah um anyway so uh that's my talk hope you enjoyed it i'm um happy to answer any questions as always so um hey all right well um if uh if if there aren't many questions then uh i'm going to wish everyone a happy thanksgiving because uh that's happening this week i get a week off from classes so i'll actually be traveling for some collaboration next week and my cats didn't eat well no they're sitting there asleep although i've got one that was grabbing my foot during uh during my talk and now she's inside um inside this little box that i have next to my feet awesome well um i'm going i'm going to sign off uh i'll uh tidy up some of these things later today and tomorrow for the next speaker and uh i thank you all for your attention


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