Resolution improvement in digital holography by angular and polarization multiplexing

Angular and polarization multiplexing techniques are utilized in both object and reference arms in the digital holographic microscopy system to improve its resolution. The angular multiplexing provides on-axis and off-axis illumination and reference beams with different carrier frequencies. Polarization multiplexing prohibits the occurrence of interference between low and high object spatial frequencies and reference beams. The proposed system does not require special light sources or filtering masks. Experimental results show that the resolution of the synthesized image exceeds the resolution determined by the numerical aperture of the imaging microscope objective.     

Protein modification by acrolein: relevance to pathological conditions and inhibition by aldehyde sequestering agents

Acrolein (ACR) is a toxic and highly reactive α,β-unsaturated aldehyde widely distributed in the environment as a common pollutant and generated endogenously mainly by lipoxidation reactions. Its biological effects are due to its ability to react with the nucleophilic sites of proteins, to form covalently modified biomolecules which are thought to be involved as pathogenic factors in the onset and progression of many pathological conditions such as cardiovascular and neurodegenerative diseases. Functional impairment of structural proteins and enzymes by covalent modification (crosslinking) and triggering of key cell signalling systems are now well-recognized signs of cell and tissue damage induced by reactive carbonyl species (RCS). In this review, we mainly focus on the in vitro and in vivo evidence demonstrating the ability of ACR to covalently modify protein structures, in order to gain a deeper insight into the dysregulation of cellular and metabolic pathways caused by such modifications. In addition, by considering RCS and RCS-modified proteins as drug targets, this survey will provide an overview on the newly developed molecules specifically tested for direct or indirect ACR scavenging, and the more significant studies performed in the last years attesting the efficacy of compounds already recognized as promising aldehyde-sequestering agents.     

童年的积木 哥伦比亚EL PORVENIR幼儿园

哥伦比亚的建筑师Giancarlo Mazzanti在首都波哥大的郊区为当地的孩子们规划了一座全新的幼儿园。项目所在的地区是一个没有被规划过的贫民区,四周铁锈斑斑的建筑和零星分布的房子无不体现着这个地区的荒凉与边缘化。Giancarlo Mazzanti的新建筑像一道曙光划破黑暗的天际,     

Impact of waste cooking oil in biodiesel blends on particle size distributions from a city-car engine

Using biodiesel as a blending component in diesel engine has demonstrated to reduce hydrocarbon and particulate matter emissions. Literature showed that biodiesel type, engine architecture and test conditions deeply affect performance and emission characteristics. Among suitable biodiesel fuels, waste cooking oil (WCO) is considered very attractive due to the reduced environmental impact without sacrificing engine performance.This paper aims at investigating how mixing ratio of biodiesel from WCO and mineral diesel affects the particle size distributions of a current state of art small displacement diesel engine.Experimental tests have been performed on an up-to date light common rail diesel engine. Its complete operative field has been investigated. The results obtained show that the use of biodiesel blends from WCO reduces the total number of particles emitted from the engine with respect to the diesel fuel; the reduction is more evident as the percentage of biodiesel in the blend increases. The number of particles in WCO biodiesel soot with diameter smaller than 10 nm is reduced as compared to diesel fuel; the same trend is observed for diameters larger than 200 nm; comparable particle numbers were obtained in the ultrafine range (Dp < 100 nm).     

Lactoferrin Inhibition of the Complex Formation between ACE2 Receptor and SARS CoV-2 Recognition Binding Domain

The present investigation focuses on the analysis of the interactions among human lactoferrin (LF), SARS-CoV-2 receptor-binding domain (RBD) and human angiotensin-converting enzyme 2 (ACE2) receptor in order to assess possible mutual interactions that could provide a molecular basis of the reported preventative effect of lactoferrin against CoV-2 infection. In particular, kinetic and thermodynamic parameters for the pairwise interactions among the three proteins were measured via two independent techniques, biolayer interferometry and latex nanoparticle-enhanced turbidimetry. The results obtained clearly indicate that LF is able to bind the ACE2 receptor ectodomain with significantly high affinity, whereas no binding to the RBD was observed up to the maximum “physiological” lactoferrin concentration range. Lactoferrin, above 1 µM concentration, thus appears to directly interfere with RBD–ACE2 binding, bringing about a measurable, up to 300-fold increase of the K_D value relative to RBD–ACE2 complex formation.     

Standard versus uniform binary search and their variants in learned static indexing: The case of the searching on sorted data benchmarking software platform

Learned Indexes use a model to restrict the search of a sorted table to a smaller interval. Typically, a final binary search is done using the lower_bound routine of the Standard C++ library. Recent studies have shown that on current processors other search approaches (such as k-ary search) can be more efficient in some applications. Using the SOSD learned indexing benchmarking software, we extend these results to show that k-ary search is indeed a better choice when using learned indexes. We highlight how such a choice may be dependent on the computer architecture used, for example, Intel I7 or Apple M1, and provide guidelines for the selection of the Search routine within the learned indexing framework.     

Nonlinear All-Optical Coherent Generation and Read-Out of Valleys in Atomically Thin Semiconductors

With conventional electronics reaching performance and size boundaries, all-optical processes have emerged as ideal building blocks for high speed and low power consumption devices. A promising approach in this direction is provided by valleytronics in atomically thin semiconductors, where light-matter interaction allows to write, store, and read binary information into the two energetically degenerate but non-equivalent valleys. Here, nonlinear valleytronics in monolayer WSe₂ is investigated and show that an individual ultrashort pulse with a photon energy tuned to half of the optical band-gap can be used to simultaneously excite (by coherent optical Stark shift) and detect (by a rotation in the polarization of the emitted second harmonic) the valley population.     

Revisitation of the reaction between aniline and formaldehyde. VI. The accumulated amide ester function from Addition of Carboxylic Anhydrides to N-methyleneamines or their trimers

Some aliphatic carboxylic anhydrides gave excellent yields of the novel addition products to both aliphatic and aromatic N-methyleneimines, starting from their aliphatic and aromatic trimeric cyclic oligomers. A preliminary positive ion mass spectrometric study is here reported. They hydrolyze surprisingly faster than the corresponding acid amides, making necessary the intervention of a special mechanism. The reduction of the acetylamideester of cyclohexylmethyleneimine ( 3c ) with LiAlH₄ was also “abnormal”, as it yielded N-methyl-N-ethylcyclohexylamine in quantitative yield.