Synthesis and stability analysis of papain-functionalized gold nanoparticles (P-AuNPs) for the colorimetric detection of mercury in milk

To detect mercury in dairy cow milk by colorimetric techniques, papain-functionalized gold nanoparticles (P-AuNPs) were synthesised. Papain-functionalized gold nanoparticles aggregated when mercury ions were introduced, causing their absorption peak to shift from 525 to 575 nm. Dynamic light scattering and transmission electron microscopy determined that aggregated P-AuNPs average sizes were 26.60 nm and 15.17–18.23 nm, respectively, with monodispersed. The detection limit of P-AuNPs for mercury in milk samples was 1.0 ppm with high recovery. This sensor showed relatively high selectivity and sensitivity towards Hg²⁺ ions in milk. This method shows utility in developing countries for monitoring the concentration of Hg²⁺ in water, milk and food items for safety purposes.     

LDES: detector design for version number attack detection using linear temporal logic based on discrete event system

International Journal of Information Security - The Internet Engineering Task Force (IETF) has defined routing protocols for low power and lossy networks (RPL) for constrained devices. RPL...     

Membranes in Solar-Driven Evaporation: Design Principles and Applications

Solar-driven evaporation process brings exciting opportunities to recover clean water and resources in a sustainable way from diverse sources like seawater and wastewater. Separation membranes, as a vital material in many environmental and energy applications, can contribute significantly to this process owing to their structural features. However, the unique roles of membranes in solar evaporator construction and process design are seldom recognized and not summarized yet from scientific principles and application demands, which forms the motivation of this review. Herein, the roles of membranes in different processes based on solar-driven evaporation are focused and the design principles of membrane materials and devices to meet the requirements of these applications are discussed. Fabrication strategies for photothermal membranes are introduced primarily, followed by a discussion on how to design membrane materials, devices, and processes to pursue optimal performance and realize advanced functions accompanied by evaporation. Furthermore, the future of this field is forecast with both challenges and opportunities.     

Programming pipelined CAD applications on message-passing architectures

Programming applications in computer-aided design of VLSI are difficult on parallel architectures, especially pipelined implementations derived from their sequential counterparts by algorithmic partitioning. The difficulty is primarily due to lack of good program development environments and tools. Our solution, applicable to message-passing architectures, is based upon a definition of a broad class of non-linear pipeline configurations and an asynchronous data-driven model for pipeline stage interactions. It provides object-oriented definitions of stages and interconnecting channels. These objects are embedded in C++ so that the correctness of application programs can be tested on a workstation in a simulated environment. The simulation is instrumented to provide data useful in assessing relative computational loading and balancing of stages. Thus a large part of program development can take place in the environment of a workstation familiar to the programmer. A non-trivial application is developed to illustrate these ideas.     

Protein Backbone Alteration in Non-Hairpin β-Turns: Impacts on Tertiary Folded Structure and Folded Stability

The importance of β-turns to protein folding has motivated extensive efforts to stabilize the motif with non-canonical backbone connectivity. Prior work has focused almost exclusively on turns between strands in a β-sheet (i. e., hairpins). Turns in other structural contexts are also common in nature and have distinct conformational preferences; however, design principles for their mimicry remain poorly understood. Here, we report strategies that stabilize non-hairpin β-turns through systematic evaluation of the impacts of backbone alteration on the high-resolution folded structure and folded stability of a helix-loop-helix prototype protein. Several well-established hairpin turn mimetics are shown detrimental to folded stability and/or hydrophobic core packing, while less-explored modification schemes that reinforce alternate turn types lead to improved stability and more faithful structural mimicry. Collectively, these results have implications in control over protein folding through chemical modification as well as the design of protein mimetics.