A Bio-Conjugated Fullerene as a Subcellular-Targeted and Multifaceted Phototheranostic Agent

Fullerenes are candidates for theranostic applications because of their high photodynamic activity and intrinsic multimodal imaging contrast. However, fullerenes suffer from low solubility in aqueous media, poor biocompatibility, cell toxicity, and a tendency to aggregate. C₇₀@lysozyme is introduced herein as a novel bioconjugate that is harmless to a cellular environment, yet is also photoactive and has excellent optical and optoacoustic contrast for tracking cellular uptake and intracellular localization. The formation, water-solubility, photoactivity, and unperturbed structure of C₇₀@lysozyme are confirmed using UV-visible and 2D ¹H, ¹⁵N NMR spectroscopy. The excellent imaging contrast of C₇₀@lysozyme in optoacoustic and third harmonic generation microscopy is exploited to monitor its uptake in HeLa cells and lysosomal trafficking. Last, the photoactivity of C₇₀@lysozyme and its ability to initiate cell death by means of singlet oxygen (¹O₂) production upon exposure to low levels of white light irradiation is demonstrated. This study introduces C₇₀@lysozyme and other fullerene-protein conjugates as potential candidates for theranostic applications.     

Modelling of chromatic contrast for retrieval of wallpaper images

Colour remains one of the key factors in presenting an object and, consequently, has been widely applied in retrieval of images based on their visual contents. However, a colour appearance changes with the change of viewing surroundings, the phenomenon that has not been paid attention yet while performing colour‐based image retrieval. To comprehend this effect, in this article, a chromatic contrast model, CAMcc, is developed for the application of retrieval of colour intensive images, cementing the gap that most of existing colour models lack to fill by taking simultaneous colour contrast into account. Subsequently, the model is applied to the retrieval task on a collection of museum wallpapers of colour‐rich images. In comparison with current popular colour models including CIECAM02, HSI and RGB, with respect to both foreground and background colours, CAMcc appears to outperform the others with retrieved results being closer to query images. In addition, CAMcc focuses more on foreground colours, especially by maintaining the balance between both foreground and background colours, while the rest of existing models take on dominant colours that are perceived the most, usually background tones. Significantly, the contribution of the investigation lies in not only the improvement of the accuracy of colour‐based image retrieval but also the development of colour contrast model that warrants an important place in colour and computer vision theory, leading to deciphering the insight of this age‐old topic of chromatic contrast in colour science. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. Col Res Appl, 40, 361–373, 2015     

Do funded papers attract more usage?

Research funding has been seen as one of the most important resource in the reward system of science. And usage of publications denotes an interesting perspective of user behavior in scientific communication. This study aims to address the relationship between funding and Usage Count, which is a new metrics item established on the platform of Web of Science. Full records of 300,010 articles published in 2013 were downloaded in October 2015, and divided into six disciplines, including information science library science, education educational research, economics, computer science, materials science, and chemistry. Seven indicators were proposed to measure the impact, including Funding rate, Citation per paper, Usage rate, Usage per paper, Citation difference, Usage difference, and Conversion rate. It concluded funding has impact on usage and citation, and funded papers attract more usage, but varying in different disciplines. Usage Count can be used in the extension of citation metrics but with limits. This study originally engages with usage metrics and detected that there is positive correlation between usage and funding.     

Reexamination of the Ergothioneine Biosynthetic Methyltransferase EgtD from Mycobacterium tuberculosis as a Protein Kinase Substrate

Ergothioneine has emerged as a crucial cytoprotectant in the pathogenic lifestyle of Mycobacterium tuberculosis. Production of this antioxidant from primary metabolites may be regulated by phosphorylation of Thr213 in the active site of the methyltransferase EgtD. The structure of mycobacterial EgtD suggests that this post-translational modification would require a large-scale change in conformation to make the active-site residue accessible to a protein kinase. In this report, we show that, under in vitro conditions, EgtD is not a substrate of protein kinase PknD.     

Evolutionary algorithms and de novo peptide design

One of the goals of computational chemistry is the automated de novo design of bioactive molecules. Despite significant progress in computational approaches to ligand design and efficient evaluation of binding energy, novel procedures for ligand design are required. Evolutionary computation provides a new approach to this design issue. This paper presents an automated methodology for computer-aided peptide design based on evolutionary algorithms. It provides an automatic tool for peptide de novo design, based on protein surface patches defined by user. Regarding the restrictive constrains of this problem a special emphasis has been made on the design of the evolutionary algorithms implemented.     

Optimal algorithms for adjacent side routing

We consider the switchbox routing problem of two-terminal nets in the case when all thek nets lie on two adjacent sides of the rectangle. Our routing model is the standard two-layer model. We develop an optimal algorithm that routes all the nets whenever a routing exists. The routing obtained uses the fewest possible number of vias. A more general version of this problem (adjacent staircase) is also optimally solved.This research was supported in part by NSA Contract No. MDA-904-85H-0015, NSF Grant No. DCR-86-00378, and by NSF Engineering Research Centers Program NSFD CDR 88003012.     

An integrated system to remote monitor and control anaerobic wastewater treatment plants through the internet.

The TELEMAC project brings new methodologies from the Information and Science Technologies field to the world of water treatment. TELEMAC offers an advanced remote management system which adapts to most of the anaerobic wastewater treatment plants that do not benefit from a local expert in wastewater treatment. The TELEMAC system takes advantage of new sensors to better monitor the process dynamics and to run automatic controllers that stabilise the treatment plant, meet the depollution requirements and provide a biogas quality suitable for cogeneration. If the automatic system detects a failure which cannot be solved automatically or locally by a technician, then an expert from the TELEMAC Control Centre is contacted via the internet and manages the problem.