Dendritic Nanotheranostic for the Delivery of Infliximab: A Potential Carrier in Rheumatoid Arthritis Therapy

Antibodies are macromolecules that specifically recognize their target, making them good candidates to be employed in various therapies. The possibility of attaching a drug to an immunoglobulin makes it possible to release it specifically into the affected tissue as long as it overexpresses the target. However, chemical coupling could affect the functionality (specificity and affinity) of the antibody. It has been observed that the use of intermediaries, such as dendrimers, could resolve this issue. Because carbosilane dendrimers have aroused great interest in the field of biomedicine, this report describes the synthesis of an anionic carbosilane dendrimer with a fluorochrome on its surface that then forms a conjugate with an antibody. It has been used as immunoglobulin and infliximab, whose target is TNF-α, which is a cytokine that is overexpressed in the inflamed area or even in the blood of patients with autoimmune diseases, such as rheumatoid arthritis. In addition, the integrity and functionality of the antibody has been studied to see if they have been affected after the chemical coupling process.     

A low-level approach to improve programming learning

Universal Access in the Information Society - Learning to program is becoming a universally desired ability. Discovering better ways to teach programming and improving existing ones is essential to...     

Binary monkey algorithm for approximate packing non-congruent circles in a rectangular container

A Packing problem consists in the best arrangement of several objects inside a bounded area named as the container. This arrangement must fulfill with technological constraints, for example, objects should not be overlapping. Some packing models for circular objects are typically formulated as non-convex optimization problems; where the continuous variables are the coordinates of the objects, so they are limited to not finding optimal solutions. Due to the combinatorial nature in the arrangement of such objects, heuristic methods are being used extensively which combine methods of global search and methods of local exhaustive search of local minima or their approximations. In this paper, we will address the packing problem for non-congruent (different size) circles with the binary version of the monkey algorithm which incorporates a cooperation process and a greedy strategy. We use a rectangular grid for covering the container. Every node in the grid represent potential positions for a circle. In this sense, binary monkey algorithm for the knapsack problem, can be used to solve de 0–1 approximate packing problem for non-congruet circles. The binary monkey problem uses two additional processes of the original monkey algorithm, these two processes are a greedy process and a cooperation processes.

     

Efficient implementation of the implicit error correction nVoD schema

Implicit Error Correction is a near Video-on-Demand (nVoD) schema that trades bandwidth utilization for initial playback delay while potentially allowing an infinite number of users. Additionally, it provides error protection without further bandwidth increase by exploiting the implicit redundancy of nVoD protocols, using linear combinations of the segments transmitted in a given time slot. This paper introduces a new implementation that outperforms the original schema by adding two new mechanisms: redundancy channels and feedback error correction.     

Charge Migration in Organic Materials: Can Propagating Charges Affect the Key Physical Quantities Controlling Their Motion?

Charge migration is a ubiquitous phenomenon with profound implications throughout many areas of chemistry, physics, biology, and materials science. The long-term vision of designing functional materials with tailored molecular-scale properties has triggered an increasing quest to identify prototypical systems where truly molecular conduction pathways play a fundamental role. Such pathways can be formed due to the molecular organization of various organic materials and are widely used to discuss electronic properties at the nanometer scale. Here, we present a computational methodology to study charge propagation in organic molecular stacks at nano and sub-nanoscales and exploit this methodology to demonstrate that moving charge carriers strongly affect the values of the physical quantities controlling their motion. The approach is also expected to find broad application in the field of charge migration in soft matter systems.     

Preliminary Developments of Miniplate-Type Fuel of U-2.5Zr-7.5Nb Alloy Dispersed and Cladded in Zircaloy

Nuclear fuel based on uranium metal alloys is utilized in research and test reactors. For the purpose of the reduction of fuel enrichment, high densities of uranium-235 in this kind of fuel are needed. This can be achieved when uranium alloys are used containing elements such as Zr, Mo and Nb. The construction of fuel element with high-uranium density requires materials with low cross sections for neutron absorption, stability under irradiation and absence of the chemical interactions between the fuel and cladding elements. In case of U-Zr-Nb alloys, Zry （zircaloy） cladding is a better option due to the fact that they have a higher chemical compatibility when compared with the use of aluminum alloys. This study aims to develop plate type nuclear fuel using the U-2.5Zr-7.5Nb alloy dispersed in Zry. Powders of this uranium based alloy and Zry were obtained by hydriding-dehydriding process. These powders were homogenized, compacted in pellet that was sandwiched in plates and frame of Zry. This assembly was hot rolled forming the dispersion fuel miniplate.