Dehydrogenation of pure and Ti-doped Na3AlH6 surfaces from first principles calculations

We have studied the dehydrogenation properties of pure and Ti-doped Na₃AlH₆ surfaces using density functional theory. For the clean surface dehydrogenation is a multistep process, and involves the desorption of AlH₄ complexes which disrupt the structure of the surface. By doping the system with Ti, we found that the segregation energy of Ti is negative, therefore favoring localization of the impurity to the surface of Na₃AlH₆. Here Ti doping is shown to kinetically favor H₂ desorption, by reducing the energy barrier that the molecule needs to climb to leave the surface.     

On the structure of positive behaviours

Positive systems in the behavioural approach are introduced as sets of non-negative trajectories that satisfy a closure condition with respect to linear combinations with non-negative coefficients. Completeness and finite memory properties are discussed and compared with the analogous properties of linear shift invariant behaviours.     

电网的结构性安全分析

复杂网络理论从结构性视角对电网安全进行分析。然而,当前多数文献使用的纯拓扑的研究方法无法体现电力系统特有的物理特性。文中讨论了电网运行状态和电网结构这2个不同的电网安全因素的相互关系,并指出电网安全指标应既能保持复杂网络理论在结构性分析方面的优势,又能够体现电力系统的特有属性。在网络能力和熵度的基础上,进一步提出了母线...     

Design,Synthesis, Biological Activity,and Structural Analysis of Lactam‐Constrained PTPRJ Agonist Peptides

PTPRJ is a receptor‐like protein tyrosine phosphatase mainly known for its antiproliferative and tumor‐suppressive functions. PTPRJ dephosphorylates several growth factors and their receptors, negatively regulating cell proliferation and migration. We recently identified a disulfide‐bridged nonapeptide, named PTPRJ‐19 (H‐[Cys‐His‐His‐Asn‐Leu‐Thr‐His‐Ala‐Cys]‐OH), which activates PTPRJ, thereby causing cell growth inhibition and apoptosis of both cancer and endothelial cells. With the aim of replacing the disulfide bridge by a chemically more stable moiety, we have synthesized and tested a series of lactam analogues of PTPRJ‐19 . This replacement led to analogues with higher activity and greater stability than the parent peptide.     

The Outcomes of Decorated Prolines in the Discovery of Antimicrobial Peptides from Temporin-L

Previously, we identified a potent antimicrobial analogue of temporin L (TL), [Pro³]TL, in which glutamine at position 3 was substituted with proline. In this study, a series of analogues in which position 3 is substituted with non-natural proline derivatives, was investigated for correlations between the conformational properties of the compounds and their antibacterial, cytotoxic, and hemolytic activities. Non-natural proline analogues with substituents at position 4 of the pyrrolidine ring were considered. Structure–activity relationship (SAR) studies of these analogues were performed by means of antimicrobial and cytotoxicity assays along with circular dichroism (CD) and NMR spectroscopic analyses for selected compounds. The most promising peptides were additionally evaluated for their activity against some representative veterinary microbial strains to compare with those from human strains. We identified novel analogues with interesting properties that make them attractive lead compounds.     

Biomarkers in Prostate Cancer Diagnosis: From Current Knowledge to the Role of Metabolomics and Exosomes

Early detection of prostate cancer (PC) is largely carried out using assessment of prostate-specific antigen (PSA) level; yet it cannot reliably discriminate between benign pathologies and clinically significant forms of PC. To overcome the current limitations of PSA, new urinary and serum biomarkers have been developed in recent years. Although several biomarkers have been explored in various scenarios and patient settings, to date, specific guidelines with a high level of evidence on the use of these markers are lacking. Recent advances in metabolomic, genomics, and proteomics have made new potential biomarkers available. A number of studies focused on the characterization of the specific PC metabolic phenotype using different experimental approaches has been recently reported; yet, to date, research on metabolomic application for PC has focused on a small group of metabolites that have been known to be related to the prostate gland. Exosomes are extracellular vesicles that are secreted from all mammalian cells and virtually detected in all bio-fluids, thus allowing their use as tumor biomarkers. Thanks to a general improvement of the technical equipment to analyze exosomes, we are able to obtain reliable quantitative and qualitative information useful for clinical application. Although some pilot clinical investigations have proposed potential PC biomarkers, data are still preliminary and non-conclusive.     

Rapid exploration of unknown areas through dynamic deployment of mobile and stationary sensor nodes

When an emergency occurs within a building, it may be initially safer to send autonomous mobile nodes, instead of human responders, to explore the area and identify hazards and victims. Exploring all the area in the minimum amount of time and reporting back interesting findings to the human personnel outside the building is an essential part of rescue operations. Our assumptions are that the area map is unknown, there is no existing network infrastructure, long-range wireless communication is unreliable and nodes are not location-aware. We take into account these limitations, and propose an architecture consisting of both mobile nodes (robots, called agents) and stationary nodes (inexpensive smart devices, called tags). As agents enter the emergency area, they sprinkle tags within the space to label the environment with states. By reading and updating the state of the local tags, agents are able to coordinate indirectly with each other, without relying on direct agent-to-agent communication. In addition, tags wirelessly exchange local information with nearby tags to further assist agents in their exploration task. Our simulation results show that the proposed algorithm, which exploits both tag-to-tag and agent-to-tag communication, outperforms previous algorithms that rely only on agent-to-tag communication.     

Widely convergent method for finding solutions of simultaneous nonlinear equations

The authors propose a new approach for solving the nonlinear problem, based on a model-reference adaptive control (MRAC). The algorithm is composed of three parts: a plant containing unknown parameters, a reference model for compactly specifying the desired output and an adaptation mechanism for updating the adjustable parameters. The structure of the adaptation mechanism is explicitly designed so that the asymptotical stability is guaranteed according to Lyapunov theorem. The method reformulates the algebraic nonlinear equations into a set of ordinary differential equations, whose equilibrium point corresponds to the solution of the original nonlinear problems. The stability and region of attraction coincide with entire state space no matter whether the parameters reside in solvable region or unsolvable region.