Relapsing syphilis

Although penicillin still remains highly effective for syphilis, concerns have been raised that current regimens may be inadequate for the treatment of early syphilis. We report the failure of benzathine penicillin in the treatment of secondary syphilis. Extensive tracing of sexual contact history failed to identify sources of possible reinfection; therefore, we believe that this case represents a treatment failure and an ensuing relapse of secondary syphilis.     

Reactive Oxygen Species‐Regulating Polymersome as an Antiviral Agent against Influenza Virus

Reactive oxygen species (ROS) produced during mitochondrial oxidative phosphorylation play an important role as signal messengers in the immune system and also regulate signal transduction. ROS production, initiated as a consequence of microbial invasion, if generated at high levels, induces activation of the MEK (mitogen‐activated protein kinase kinase)/ERK (extracellular signal‐regulated kinase) pathway to promote cell survival and proliferation. However, viruses hijack the host cells' pathways, causing biphasic activation of the MEK/ERK cascade. Thus, regulation of ROS leads to concomitant inhibition of virus replication. In the present study, poly(aniline‐co‐pyrrole) polymerized nanoregulators (PASomes) to regulate intracellular ROS levels are synthesized, exploiting their oxidizing‐reducing characteristics. Poly(aniline‐co‐pyrrole) embedded within an amphiphilic methoxy polyethylene glycol‐block‐polyphenylalanine copolymer (mPEG‐b‐pPhe) are used. It is demonstrated that the PASomes are water soluble, biocompatible, and could control ROS levels successfully in vitro, inhibiting viral replication and cell death. Furthermore, the effects of homopolymerized nanoregulators (polypyrrole assembled with mPEG‐b‐pPhe or polyaniline assembled with mPEG‐b‐pPhe) are compared with those of the PASomes. Consequently, it is confirmed that the PASomes can regulate intracellular ROS levels successfully and suppress viral infection, thereby increasing the cell survival rate.     

Agglomeration behavior of anhydrous L-ornithine-L-aspatate crystals during semi-batch drowning-out crystallization

Crystallization of L-ornithine-L-aspartate (LOLA) by drowning out was carried out to produce the anhydrous form of agglomerates. The primary crystal size in the agglomerate remained unchanged after completion of the crystallization. The LOLA aqueous solution introduced into the system was immediately dispersed and cluster coagulated on the surface of the crystals. On the surface of the crystals, a cluster reached critical nuclei size, nucleated and intergrowth to form agglomerates. It was proposed that a spherical agglomeration occurred during secondary nucleation by coagulation model and intergrowth. The agglomerates size and size distribution were varied with the process parameters. The agglomerate sizes of LOLA crystals appeared to be ruled not only by secondary nucleation rate but also by the mass of suspended agglomerates. Moreover, the agglomeration rates of fine particles were higher than the agglomeration rates of large agglomerates. Using these properties, the uniform agglomerates size distribution could be obtained.     

System identification and stability evaluation of an unmanned aerial vehicle from automated flight tests

This paper presents a consequence of the systematic approach to identify the aerodynamic parameters of an unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) equipped with the automatic flight control system. A 3-2-1-1 excitation is applied for the longitudinal mode while a multi-step input is applied for lateral/directional excitation. Optimal time step for excitation is sought to provide the broad input bandwidth. A fully automated programmed flight test method provides highquality flight data for system identification using the flight control computer with longitudinal and lateral/directional autopilots, which enable the separation of each motion during the flight test. The accuracy of the longitudinal system identification is improved by an additional use of the closed-loop flight test data. A constrained optimization scheme is applied to estimate the aerodynamic coefficients that best describe the time response of the vehicle. An appropriate weighting function is introduced to balance the flight modes. As a result, concurrent system models are obtained for a wide envelope of both longitudinal and lateral/directional flight maneuvers while maintaining the physical meanings of each parameter.     

Fabrication of a near-infrared sensor using a polyaniline conducting polymer thin film

Near infrared (NIR) photo-responsive polyaniline-based conducting thin films are developed for sensor application. Upon NIR illumination (2.43 W/cm²), the electrical conductance of the polyaniline thin films was enhanced 5.9% and the response time was 20 s. NIR sensing performance of polyaniline conducting polymer thin film is comparable with that of bolometric carbon nanotube (CNT) network devices with the merits of polymers over CNTs such as processability, productivity and economy.     

A modular control design method for a flexible manufacturing cell including error handling

This paper introduces a new modular control design method for a cell controller with integrated error handling. To make the complexity of the cell controller manageable, its control logic is separated into two parts: resource allocation control and operation control. To create the operation control not only quickly but correctly, modular operation blocks integrated with error handling are developed. An algorithm automatically generates the operation control. The operation control created by the proposed method is proved to have desired control behaviors. The method is applied to an example system.     

Self‐Doped Conjugated Polymeric Nanoassembly by Simplified Process for Optical Cancer Theragnosis

To access smart optical theragnosis for cancer, an easily processable heterocyclic conjugated polymer (poly(sodium3‐((3‐methyl‐3,4‐dihydro‐2H‐thieno[3,4‐b][1,4]dioxepin‐3‐yl)methoxy)propane‐1‐sulfonate), PPDS) nanoassembly is fabricated by a surfactant‐free one‐step process, without the laborious ordinary multicoating process. The conjugated nanoassembly, with a self‐doped structure, provides strong absorbance in the near‐infrared (NIR) range even in a neutral pH medium and exhibits excellent stability (>six months). In addition, the prepared PPDS nanoassembly shows a high photothermal conversion efficiency of 31.4% in organic photothermal nanoparticles. In particular, the PPDS nanoassembly is stably suspended in the biological medium without any additives. Through a simple immobilization with the anti‐CD44 antibody, the prepared biomarker‐targetable PPDS nanoassembly demonstrates specific targeting toward CD44 (expressed in stem‐like cancer cells), allowing NIR absorbance imaging and the efficient targeted photothermal damaging of CD44‐expressing cancer cells, from in vitro 3D mammospheres (similar to the practical structure of tumor in the body) to in vivo xenograft mice tumor models (breast cancer and fibrosarcoma). In this study, the most simplified preparation method is for this organic conjugated polymer‐based nanoassembly by a molecular approach is reported, and demonstrated as a highly promising optical nanoagent for optical cancer theragnosis.     

ID-based group signature

The authors present an ID-based group signature which is based on ordinary ID-based signature schemes such as Ohta-Okamoto's scheme and Guillou-Quisquater's scheme. Thus, the group signature is verified from the identities of group members. A signer proves that, by verifiable encryption of his ordinary signature, a group authority can identify him and, by Schoenmaker's method, he proves that he knows a signature of a group member     

Magnetic nanoparticle-based separation of metallic and semiconducting carbon nanotubes

We report a simple and scalable method for the separation of semiconducting single-walled carbon nanotubes (SWNTs) from metallic SWNTs using magnetic nanoparticles (MNPs) functionalized with polycationic tri-aminated polysorbate 80 (TP80). MNPs-TP80 are selectively adsorbed on acid-treated semiconducting SWNTs, which makes the semiconducting SWNTs be highly concentrated to over 95% under a magnetic field. Almost all the field effect transistor network devices, which were fabricated using separated semiconducting SWNTs, exhibited a p-type semiconducting behavior with an on/off ratio of higher than 10(4).     

Specific Near‐IR Absorption Imaging of Glioblastomas Using Integrin‐Targeting Gold Nanorods

Molecular imaging using nanoprobes with high resolution and low toxicity is essential in early cancer detection. Here we introduce a new class of smart imaging probes employing PEGylated gold nanorods (GNRs) conjugated to cRGD for specific optical imaging of α_vβ₃ integrins from glioblastoma. GNRs exhibiting an optical resonance peak in the near‐infrared (NIR) region were synthesized using the seed‐mediated growth method. CTAB (cetyl trimethylammonium bromide) bilayer on the GNRs was replaced with a biocompatible stabilizer, heterobifunctional polyethyleneglycol (COOH‐PEG‐SH). Further, the carboxylated GNRs (PGNRs; PEG‐coated GNRs) were functionalized with cRGD using EDC‐NHS chemistry to formulate cRGD‐conjugated GNRs (cRGD‐PGNRs) for α_vβ₃ integrins. In order to assess the potential of the cRGD‐PGNRs as a targeted imaging probe, we investigated their optical properties, biocompatibility, colloidal stability and in vitro/in vivo binding affinities for cancer cells. Consequently, cRGD‐PGNRs demonstrated excellent tumor targeting ability with no cytotoxicity, as well as sufficient cellular uptake due to stable and prolonged blood circulation of cRGD‐PGNRs.