Inhibition of neuronal calcium channels by a novel peptide spider toxin, DW13.3

Peptide toxins have proved to be useful agents, both in discriminating between different components of native calcium channel currents and in the molecular isolation and designation of their cloned channel counterparts. Here, we describe the isolation and characterization of the biochemical and physiological properties of a novel 74-amino acid peptide toxin (DW13.3) extracted from the venom of the spider Filistata hibernalis. The subtype specificity of DW13.3 was investigated using calcium channel currents recorded from two separate expression systems and several different cultured mammalian cell preparations. Overall, DW13.3 potently blocked all native calcium channel currents studied, with the exception of T-type currents recorded from GH3 cells. Examination of transiently expressed calcium channels in oocytes showed that DW13.3 had the highest affinity for alpha1A, followed by alpha1B > alpha1C > alpha1E. The affinity of DW13.3 for alpha1B N-type currents varied by 10-fold between expressed channels and native currents. Although block occurred in a similar 1:1 manner for all subtypes, DW13.3 produced a partial block of both alpha1A currents and P-type currents in cerebellar Purkinje cells. Selective occlusion of the P/Q-type channel ligand omega-conotoxin MVIIC (but not omega-agatoxin IVA) from its binding site in Purkinje neurons suggests that DW13.3 binds to a site close to the pore of the channel. The inhibition of different subtypes of calcium channels by DW13.3 reflects a common "macro" binding site present on all calcium channels except T-type.     

The shadow approach: An orphan detection protocol for mobile agents

Orphan detection in distributed systems is a well-researched field for which many solutions exist. These solutions exploit well defined parent-child relationships given in distributed systems. But they are not applicable in mobile agent systems, since no similar natural relationship between agents exist. Thus new protocols have to be developed. In this paper one such protocol for controlling mobile mobile agents and for orphan detection is presented. The shadow approach presented in this paper uses the idea of a placeholder (shadow) which is assigned by the agent system to each new agent. This defines an artificial relationship between agents and shadow. The shadow records the location of all dependent agents. Removing the root shadow implies that all dependent agents are declared orphan and are eventually be terminated. We introduce agent proxies that create a path from shadow to every agent. In an extension of the basic protocol we additionally allow the shadow to be mobile.The shadow approach can be used for termination of groups of agents even if the exact location of each single agent is not known.     

Kinetic Facility Location

We present a deterministic kinetic data structure for the facility location problem that maintains a subset of the moving points as facilities such that, at any point of time, the accumulated cost for the whole point set is at most a constant factor larger than the optimal cost. In our scenario, each point can change its status between client and facility and moves continuously along a known trajectory in a d-dimensional Euclidean space, where d is a constant.     

ID-Services: an RFID middleware architecture for mobile applications

The use of RFID middleware to support application development for and integration of RFID hardware into information systems has become quite common in RFID applications where reader devices remain stationary, which currently represents the largest part of all RFID applications in use. Another field for applying RFID technology which is offering a huge set of novel possibilities and applications are mobile applications, where readers are no longer fixed. In order to address the specific issues of mobile RFID-enabled applications and to support developers in rapid application development, we present ID-Services, an architecture for an RFID middleware that is designed to support mobile applications. The ID-Services approach has been used to implement MoVIS (Mobile Visitor Information System), a mobile application which allows museum visitors to request individually adapted multimedia information about exhibits in an intuitive way.     

Modelling water dynamics with DNDC and DAISY in a soil of the North China Plain: A comparative study

The performance of the DNDC and Daisy model to simulate the water dynamics in a floodplain soil of the North China Plain was tested and compared. While the DNDC model uses a simple cascade approach, the Daisy model applies the physically based Richard's equation for simulating water movement in soil. For model testing a three years record of the soil water content from the Dong Bei Wang experimental station near Beijing was used. There, the effect of nitrogen fertilization, irrigation and straw removal on soil water and nitrogen dynamics was investigated in a three factorial field experiment applying a split-split-plot design with 4 replications. The dataset of one treatment was used for model testing and calibration. Two other independent datasets from further treatments were employed for validating the models. For both models, the simulation results were not satisfying using default parameters. After parameter optimisation and the use of site-specific van Genuchten parameters, however, the Daisy model performed well. But, for the DNDC model, parameter optimisation failed to improve the simulation result. Owing to the fact that many biological processes such as plant growth, nitrification or denitrification depend strongly on the soil water content, our findings bring us to the conclusion that the site-specific suitability of the DNDC model for simulating the soil water dynamics should be tested before further simulation of other processes.     

Anomalies in ontologies with rules

For the development of practical semantic applications, ontologies are commonly used with rule extensions. Prominent examples of semantic applications not only are Semantic Wikis, Semantic Desktops, but also advanced Web Services and agents. The application of rules increases the expressiveness of the underlying knowledge in many ways. Likewise, the integration not only creates new challenges for the design process of such ontologies, but also existing evaluation methods have to cope with the extension of ontologies by rules.Since the verification of Owl ontologies with rule extensions is not tractable in general, we propose to verify ontologies at the symbolic level by using a declarative approach: With the new language Datalog^?, known anomalies can be easily specified and tested in a compact manner. We introduce supplements to existing verification techniques to support the design of ontologies with rule enhancements, and we focus on the detection of anomalies that especially occur due to the combined use of rules and ontological definitions.     

Nonlinear ceramics for tunable microwave devices

The research on materials and systems for tunable microwave devices has gained attraction within the last years. The radio frequency characterization and the component design of tunable microwave components based on dielectric ceramics especially barium-strontium-titanate (BST) are presented in this second part, whereas the basic material properties are discussed in detail in the first part. After a short introduction to the processing technology used for the fabrication of tunable components based on a BST thick film, the relations between microwave properties and material properties as well as the microstructure are presented in detail. The design process for tunable microwave components based on BST thick films is described. Especially the considerations related to micro- and macrostructure and their connection are highlighted. The paper closes with two different application examples: a reconfigurable array antenna for satellite communication and varactors for high power applications.     

The geometric element transformation method for mixed mesh smoothing

The geometric element transformation method (GETMe) is a geometry-based smoothing method for mixed and non-mixed meshes. It is based on a simple geometric transformation applicable to elements bounded by polygons with an arbitrary number of nodes. The transformation, if applied iteratively, leads to a regularization of the polygons. Global mesh smoothing is accomplished by averaging the new node positions obtained by local element transformations. Thereby, the choice of transformation parameters as well as averaging weights can be based on the element quality which leads to high quality results. In this paper, a concept of an enhanced transformation approach is presented and a proof for the regularizing effect of the transformation based on eigenpolygons is given. Numerical examples confirm that the GETMe approach leads to superior mesh quality if compared to other geometry-based methods. In terms of quality it can even compete with optimization-based techniques, despite being conceptually significantly simpler.