Energy Recovery in Pressurized Hydraulic Networks

Water Resources Management - This paper aims to evaluate the possibility of using non-utilized hydraulic energy in urban water distribution systems. For this purpose, the viability and possible...     

The Photomontage Activity of Postmodernism

For decades now, Douglas Crimp’s landmark 1980 essay ‘The Photographic Activity of Postmodernism’ has shaped our understanding of modernism’s aftermath, at least as it unfolded in North America and Western Europe. Less remembered, however, is the degree to which the procedures of disjunction, copying, appropriation, and outright theft that he highlighted were epitomised not just by contemporary photography, but by photomontage in particular. This article recovers the debates that led critics such as Crimp, Abigail Solomon-Godeau, Christopher Phillips, Benjamin Buchloh and others to turn to photomontage as one of their principal objects of concern in what became known as the postmodern critique of photography. Why was montage tasked to perform this critical function, particularly by people around the journal October who had not otherwise devoted the balance of their writing to photography’s history? The article suggests that these men and women, along with the contemporary artists they foregrounded, manifested what Mary Anne Doane has called a ‘desire for signification’, a reaction in the late 1970s against the mute theatricality of minimalist and conceptual art. Photomontage reintroduced representation to contemporary art and to the canon of art history. But unlike the reemerging illusionism in painting that also manifested this desire, montage guarded against an uncomplicated realism by highlighting and critiquing operations of representation in a manner that painting no longer could.     

Synthesis of Long-Chain β-Lactones and Their Antibacterial Activities against Pathogenic Mycobacteria

In the quest for new antibacterial agents, a series of novel long- and medium-chain mono- and disubstituted β-lactones was developed. Their activity against three pathogenic mycobacteria—M. abscessus, M. marinum, and M. tuberculosis—was assessed by the resazurin microtiter assay (REMA). Among the 16 β-lactones synthesized, only 3-hexadecyloxetan-2-one (VM005) exhibited promising activity against M. abscessus, whereas most of the β-lactones showed interesting activities against M. marinum, similar to that of the classical antibiotic, isoniazid. Regarding M. tuberculosis, six compounds were found to be active against this mycobacterium, with β-lactone VM008 [trans-(Z)-3-(hexadec-7-en-1-yl)-4-propyloxetan-2-one] being the best growth inhibitor. The promising antibacterial activities of the best compounds in this series suggest that these molecules may serve as leads for the development of much more efficient antimycobacterial agents.     

Polyetherimide-LaNi5 composite films for hydrogen storage applications

This study investigates the preparation of polyetherimide (PEI) – LaNi₅ composites films for hydrogen storage. Prior to the polymer addition, LaNi₅ was ball-milled at different conditions (250, 350, and 450 RPM) and annealed at 500 °C for 1 h under vacuum. The composites were produced with BM-LaNi₅-350 (PEI/LaNi₅-350) and annealed BM-LaNi₅-350 (PEI/LaNi₅-350-TT). Membranes were successfully produced through solvent casting assisted by an ultrasonic bath. The particles dispersion and the film morphology did not change after hydrogenation cycles. In the H₂ sorption experiments at 43 °C and 20 bar, the films stored H₂ without incubation time; both samples reached a capacity of ~0.6 wt%. The H₂ sorption kinetics of PEI/LaNi₅-350 was comparable to that of BM-LaNi₅-350, whereas PEI/LaNi₅-350-TT presented significantly slower kinetics. LaNi₅ oxidation was hindered by PEI, showing that it can be explored to improve metal hydrides air resistance. The results demonstrated that PEI films filled with LaNi₅ are promising materials for hydrogen storage.     

Mixture ratio modeling of dynamic systems

Any knowledge extraction relies (possibly implicitly) on a hypothesis about the modelled-data dependence. The extracted knowledge ultimately serves to a decision-making (DM). DM always faces uncertainty and this makes probabilistic modelling adequate. The inspected black-box modeling deals with “universal” approximators of the relevant probabilistic model. Finite mixtures with components in the exponential family are often exploited. Their attractiveness stems from their flexibility, the cluster interpretability of components and the existence of algorithms for processing high-dimensional data streams. They are even used in dynamic cases with mutually dependent data records while regression and auto-regression mixture components serve to the dependence modeling. These dynamic models, however, mostly assume data-independent component weights, that is, memoryless transitions between dynamic mixture components. Such mixtures are not universal approximators of dynamic probabilistic models. Formally, this follows from the fact that the set of finite probabilistic mixtures is not closed with respect to the conditioning, which is the key estimation and predictive operation. The paper overcomes this drawback by using ratios of finite mixtures as universally approximating dynamic parametric models. The paper motivates them, elaborates their approximate Bayesian recursive estimation and reveals their application potential.     

Structural Cues for Understanding eEF1A2 Moonlighting

Spontaneous mutations in the EEF1A2 gene cause epilepsy and severe neurological disabilities in children. The crystal structure of eEF1A2 protein purified from rabbit skeletal muscle reveals a post-translationally modified dimer that provides information about the sites of interaction with numerous binding partners, including itself, and maps these mutations onto the dimer and tetramer interfaces. The spatial locations of the side chain carboxylates of Glu301 and Glu374, to which phosphatidylethanolamine is uniquely attached via an amide bond, define the anchoring points of eEF1A2 to cellular membranes and interorganellar membrane contact sites. Additional bioinformatic and molecular modeling results provide novel structural insight into the demonstrated binding of eEF1A2 to SH3 domains, the common MAPK docking groove, filamentous actin, and phosphatidylinositol-4 kinase IIIβ. In this new light, the role of eEF1A2 as an ancient, multifaceted, and articulated G protein at the crossroads of autophagy, oncogenesis and viral replication appears very distant from the “canonical” one of delivering aminoacyl-tRNAs to the ribosome that has dominated the scene and much of the thinking for many decades.     

The generalized discrete ‐centroid problem

The ‐centroid problem or leader–follower problem is generalized considering different customer choice rules where a customer may use facilities belonging to different firms, if the difference in travel distance (or time) is small enough. Assuming essential goods, some particular customer choice rules are analyzed. Linear programming formulations for the generalized ‐medianoid and ‐centroid problems are presented and an exact solution approach is applied. Some computational examples are included.     

Microtubule Destabilizing Sulfonamides as an Alternative to Taxane-Based Chemotherapy

Pan-Gyn cancers entail 1 in 5 cancer cases worldwide, breast cancer being the most commonly diagnosed and responsible for most cancer deaths in women. The high incidence and mortality of these malignancies, together with the handicaps of taxanes—first-line treatments—turn the development of alternative therapeutics into an urgency. Taxanes exhibit low water solubility that require formulations that involve side effects. These drugs are often associated with dose-limiting toxicities and with the appearance of multi-drug resistance (MDR). Here, we propose targeting tubulin with compounds directed to the colchicine site, as their smaller size offer pharmacokinetic advantages and make them less prone to MDR efflux. We have prepared 52 new Microtubule Destabilizing Sulfonamides (MDS) that mostly avoid MDR-mediated resistance and with improved aqueous solubility. The most potent compounds, N-methyl-N-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl-4-methylaminobenzenesulfonamide 38, N-methyl-N-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl-4-methoxy-3-aminobenzenesulfonamide 42, and N-benzyl-N-(3,4,5-trimethoxyphenyl-4-methoxy-3-aminobenzenesulfonamide 45 show nanomolar antiproliferative potencies against ovarian, breast, and cervix carcinoma cells, similar or even better than paclitaxel. Compounds behave as tubulin-binding agents, causing an evident disruption of the microtubule network, in vitro Tubulin Polymerization Inhibition (TPI), and mitotic catastrophe followed by apoptosis. Our results suggest that these novel MDS may be promising alternatives to taxane-based chemotherapy in chemoresistant Pan-Gyn cancers.     

Mast Cell Chymase and Kidney Disease

A sizable part (~2%) of the human genome encodes for proteases. They are involved in many physiological processes, such as development, reproduction and inflammation, but also play a role in pathology. Mast cells (MC) contain a variety of MC specific proteases, the expression of which may differ between various MC subtypes. Amongst these proteases, chymase represents up to 25% of the total proteins in the MC and is released from cytoplasmic granules upon activation. Once secreted, it cleaves the targets in the local tissue environment, but may also act in lymph nodes infiltrated by MC, or systemically, when reaching the circulation during an inflammatory response. MC have been recognized as important components in the development of kidney disease. Based on this observation, MC chymase has gained interest following the discovery that it contributes to the angiotensin-converting enzyme’s independent generation of angiotensin II, an important inflammatory mediator in the development of kidney disease. Hence, progress regarding its role has been made based on studies using inhibitors but also on mice deficient in MC protease 4 (mMCP-4), the functional murine counterpart of human chymase. In this review, we discuss the role and actions of chymase in kidney disease. While initially believed to contribute to pathogenesis, the accumulated data favor a more subtle view, indicating that chymase may also have beneficial actions.