Accommodation of a D-Phe residue into a right-handed 3(10)-helix: structure of Boc-D-Phe-(Aib)4-Gly-L-Leu-(Aib)2-OMe, an analogue of the amino terminal segment of antiamoebins and emerimicins

Recently an unstable trinucleotide CTG repeat, located within the 3' untranslated region of a gene on 19q13.3 was discovered in kindreds with myotonic dystrophy (DM). The age-of-onset/severity of DM shows a good correlation with CTG repeat size, and pedigrees and data reported to date have shown a striking trend toward amplification of the size of the CTG repeat during transmission from parent to child. The amplification has been accepted as the biological explanation for anticipation in the clinical severity observed in many families with DM. In this paper we report on 3 families where CTG amplification decreased during transmission from parent to child. In one case there was a gene conversion event, while in the remaining 2 there was a simpler reduction in the size of the repeat length. The changes appear to have been accompanied by a reduction in clinical severity in the child when compared to the parent. These observations are discussed in terms of their clinical implications and the biases that may exist in much of the reported data.     

Planetary exploration by robotic aerovehicles

Planetary aerobots are a new type of telerobotic science platform that can fly and navigate in a dynamic 3-dimensional atmospheric environment, thus enabling the global in situ exploration of planetary atmospheres and surfaces. Aerobots are enabled by a new concept in planetary balloon altitude control, developed at JPL, which employs reversible-fluid changes to permit repeated excursions in altitude. The essential physics and thermodynamics ofreversible-fluid altitude control have been demonstrated in a series of altitude-control experiments conducted in the Earth's atmosphere, which are described. Aerobot altitude-control technology will be important in the exploration of seven planets and satellites in our solar system. Three of these objects—Venus, Mars, and the Saturnian satellite Titan—have accessible solid surfaces and atmospheres dominated by the dense gases nitrogen or carbon dioxide. They will be explored with aerobots using helium or hydrogen as their primary means of buoyancy. The other four planets—Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune—have deep atmospheres that are predominantly hydrogen. It may be possible to explore these atmospheres with aerobots inflated with atmospheric gas that is then radiatively heated from the hotter gaseous depths below. To fulfill their potential, aerobots to explore the planets will need autonomous state estimators to guide their observations and provide information to the altitude-control systems. The techniques of acquiring these data remotely are outlined. Aerobots will also use on board altitude control and navigation systems to execute complex flight paths including descent to the surface and exploiting differential wind velocities to access different latitude belts. Approaches to control of these systems are examined. The application of aerobots to Venus exploration is explored in some detail: The most ambitious mission described, the Venus Flyer Robot (VFR), would have the capability to make repeated short excursions to the high-temperature surface environment of Venus to acquire data and then return to the Earth-like upper atmosphere to communicate and recool its electronic systems. Finally a Planetary Aerobot Testbed is discussed which will conduct Earth atmospheric flights to validate autonomous-state-estimator techniques and flight-path-control techniques needed for future planetary missions.     

Hydration Study of the System Ca3Al2O6–CaSO4· 2H2O–Ca(OH)2–H2O with and without Citric Acid

Hydration occurring in the system Ca₃Al₂O₆–CaSO₄· 2H₂O–Ca(OH)₂–H₂O has been studied at different temperatures and it was found that the reactions are diffusion controlled. The kinetic data obeyed Jander's equation and the rate of reaction increased with increasing temperature. X-ray diffraction studies and calorimetric measurements show that when gypsum is consumed, ettringite is converted into monosulfate. The rate of this conversion also increased with the increasing temperature and decreased in the presence of citric acid. Spectroscopic studies showed that there was some interaction between citric acid and the cement and that the product of hydration is of colloidal nature. Zeta potential measurements show that retardation of Ca₃Al₂O₆ hydration in the presence of gypsum and Ca(OH)₂ is not due to SO²⁻₄ adsorption. Electrical conductivity and thermoelectric potential measurements of solid Ca₃Al₂O₆ show that Ca₃Al₂O₆ is an n -type semiconductor and contains defects. The retardation of Ca₃Al₂O₆ may be due to poisoning of reaction sites by gypsum and Ca(OH)_2.     

Hierarchical and Hybrid Cell Load Balancing in 5G Heterogeneous Mobile Networks

In Fifth Generation (5G) Heterogeneous Mobile Networks (HetNets), deploying dense small cell networks makes user association more challenging. The process of collecting cell load information from the User Equipments (UEs) and broadcasting the feedback message involves significant overhead and time complexity. Moreover, the UEs may not know the optimum cell to reselect, satisfying its data rate requirements. In order to overcome these drawbacks, in this paper, we propose to design an Hierarchical and Hybrid Cell Load Balancing (HHCLB) technique using Selective Handoff. In this technique, the UEs of each cell are grouped into clusters depending on their proximity distance. Each cluster contains a cluster controller (CC) which is in charge of determining the intra-cell load and redirecting the cell-reselection request of a UE. If the data rate of any UE in a cluster becomes less than its required rate, then the cell reselection process is performed. By simulation results, it is shown that load balancing can be done proactively (implicitly) by the CCs when the load is unbalanced or can be done on demand (explicitly) when a UE send a request for cell reselection. In the case of Macro cells, HHCLB attains 71% higher throughput for low load scenario and 59% higher throughput for high load scenario. Similarly, in the case of Femto cells, HHCLB attains 19% higher throughput for low load scenario and 27% higher throughput for high load scenario.     

Disallowed Ramachandran conformations of amino acid residues in protein structures

An analysis of the nature and distribution of disallowed Ramachandran conformations of amino acid residues observed in high resolution protein crystal structures has been carried out. A data set consisting of 110 high resolution, non-homologous, protein crystal structures from the Brookhaven Protein Data Bank was examined. The data set consisted of a total of 18,708 non-Gly residues, which were characterized on the basis of their backbone dihedral angles (phi, psi). Residues falling outside the defined "broad allowed limits" on the Ramachandran map were chosen and the reported B-factor value of the alpha-carbon atom was used to further select well defined disallowed conformations. The conformations of the selected 66 disallowed residues clustered in distinct regions of the Ramachandran map indicating that specific phi, psi angle distortions are preferred under compulsions imposed by local constraints. The distribution of various amino acid residues in the disallowed residue data set showed a predominance of small polar/charged residues, with bulky hydrophobic residues being infrequent. As a further check, for all the 66 cases non-hydrogen van der Waals short contacts in the protein structures were evaluated and compared with the ideal "Ala-dipeptide" constructed using disallowed dihedral angle (phi, psi) values. The analysis reveals that short contacts are eliminated in most cases by local distortions of bond angles. An analysis of the conformation of the identified disallowed residues in related protein structures reveals instances of conservation of unusual stereochemistry.     

Understand Students Feedback Using Bi-Integrated CRF Model Based Target Extraction

Educational institutions showing interest to find the opinion of the students about their course and the instructors to enhance the teaching-learning process. For this, most research uses sentiment analysis to track students’ behavior. Traditional sentence-level sentiment analysis focuses on the whole sentence sentiment. Previous studies show that the sentiments alone are not enough to observe the feeling of the students because different words express different sentiments in a sentence. There is a need to extract the targets in a given sentence which helps to find the sentiment towards those targets. Target extraction is the subtask of targeted sentiment analysis. In this paper, we proposed the innovative model to find the targets of the given sentence using Bi-Integrated Conditional Random Fields (CRF). A Parallel fusion neural network model is designed to perform this task. We evaluate the model using the Michigan dataset and we build a dataset for target extraction from student reviews. The experimental results show that our proposed fusion model achieves better results compared to baseline models.     

Rheological and thermal properties of saponified cassava starch‐g‐poly(acrylamide) superabsorbent polymers varying in grafting parameters and absorbency

Cassava starch‐graft‐poly(acrylamide) superabsorbent polymers (SAPs) with varying absorbencies were synthesized. Weight average molecular weight (M_w) of the hydrolyzed starch‐graft‐copolymers ranged from 1.6 × 10⁶ to 2.8 × 10⁶ g/mol, the largest being shown by the sample with highest percentage grafting. The storage (G′) and loss modulus (G″) of hydrogels were determined as a function of frequency. G″ was larger than G′ for the hydrogels with higher absorbencies and exhibited a liquid‐like behavior. However, hydrogels with lower absorbencies showed a reverse viscoelastic behavior. The viscosity of hydrogels determined using a Brookfield viscometer at different shear rates was found to be larger for the hydrogels with higher absorbencies. The melting temperature (T_m) and enthalpy change of fusion (ΔH_f) of the SAPs ranged from 149.7 to 177.7°C and 65 to 494.9 J/g, respectively and showed a positive correlation with grafting parameters and M_w. Heavy metal ion removal capacity of hydrogel followed the order Cu²⁺ > Pb²⁺ > Zn²⁺. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014 , 131, 40368.     

Problems Involved in Using Improper Calibration CRMs in Geochemical Analyses: A Case Study on Mafic Rocks of Boggulakonda Pluton, East of Cuddapah Basin, India

The performance and response of two commonly used certified reference materials (CRMs) for mafic rocks MRG-1 (CANMET, Canada) and JGb-1 (Geological Survey of Japan), both gabbroic in composition, are evaluated for a set of mafic plutonic rocks (gabbros) from Boggulakonda (BK) occurring to the east of Proterozoic Cuddapah Basin, South India. In this study, quadrupole-inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry was used to generate trace and rare earth element (REE) data using MRG-1 and JGb-1 as calibration standards separately for a comparative study. It is found that the two CRMs show highly variable major, minor and trace element compositions except ΣREE. When used for BK gabbros, JGb-1 has yielded better results than MRG-1 with respect to trace elements (HFS elements Nb and Ta in specific), whereas a good agreement was observed between both CRMs for REE concentrations when compared with certified data. The Nb–Ta element distribution patterns for BK gabbros in the spidergrams plotted using JGb-1 as CRM show relatively prominent and pronounced negatively spiking anomalies with reference to Th, whereas using MRG-1 as calibration CRM yielded unresolved and unclear Nb–Ta anomalies in the present study. The geochemistry (major, minor and trace) of MRG-1 is different when compared to that of JGb-1. Probably this is reason for the disparity in the results obtained by inductively coupled plasma mass spectrometry on mafic plutonic rocks. The study conducted on the BK gabbros, reveals better and reliable results using JGb-1 as CRM. This study also reveals the importance of using proper CRM for calibration having closely matching trace and REE concentrations in addition to major and minor elements, for obtaining reliable data in geological samples.     

The Future of Mental Health.

Examines the two sets of criteria that generally categorize mental health: those that emphasize internal events and those that deal with external events. The author discusses the future of mental health in light of many of its current trends, including greater acceptance of diversity, and he discusses the potential future role of the mental health professional. The author notes that greater numbers of mental health professionals have gotten involved with different populations, and suggests that the majority of mental health professionals will probably be experts in handling small units of behavior or experience for a limited time. The very process of making predictions changes the future course of events. Let us hope that this intricate process will result in greater satisfaction for greater numbers of people. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Photoconduction investigations in 75 MeV oxygen ion irradiated kapton-H polyimide

Photoconduction behaviour of 75 MeV oxygen ion irradiated (Fluences: 1.8 × 10¹¹, 1.8 × 10¹² and 1.8 × 10¹³ ions/cm²) kapton-H polyimide film in the visible region has been investigated at different temperatures ranging 400-2500 °C and at various electric fields ranging 40-600 kV/cm. A photoinduced exciton formation is the major source for providing charge carriers through thermolization and field-assisted dissociation processes. An attempt has been made to fit the field dependence of the steady state photocurrent to one of the several possible conduction mechanisms. In the high and low fluence (1.8 × 10¹³ and 1.8 × 10¹¹ ions/cm²) irradiated samples there exists a possibility of Poole-Frankel type of photoconduction mechanism, whereas at intermediate fluence (1.8 × 10¹² ions/cm²) a Schottky type photoconduction mechanism may be operative. The log I_ps versus 1/T plots consist of two straight lines with a knee point around 800-1000 °C. The activation energy estimated from the slope of these lines is field dependent varying from 0.40 to 0.73 eV and 0.18 to 0.23 eV above and below the knee point, respectively. This indicates the presence of more than one type of trapping levels in irradiated kapton-H polyimide.