NKp44-Derived Peptide Used in Combination Stimulates Antineoplastic Efficacy of Targeted Therapeutic Drugs

Lung cancer cells in the tumor microenvironment facilitate immune evasion that leads to failure of conventional chemotherapies, despite provisionally decided on the genetic diagnosis of patients in a clinical setup. The current study follows three lung cancer patients who underwent “personalized” chemotherapeutic intervention. Patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) were subjected to tumor microarray and treatment screening with chemotherapies, either individually or in combination with the peptide R11-NLS-pep8; this peptide targets both membrane-associated and nuclear PCNA. Ex vivo, employing PDX-derived explants, it was found that combination with R11-NLS-pep8 stimulated antineoplastic effect of chemotherapies that were, although predicted based on the patient’s genetic mutation, inactive on their own. Furthermore, treatment in vivo of PDX-bearing mice showed an exactly similar trend in the result, corroborating the finding to be translated into clinical setup.     

Nanophase catalytic oxides: I. Synthesis of doped cerium oxides as oxygen storage promoters

Doped CeO₂ materials were synthesized with the aim to improve the performance of CeO₂ as oxygen storage promoter in gas catalytic reactions. The coprecipitation method was used for the synthesis of fine oxalate precursors of high homogeneity and well defined composition. The chemical and morphological properties of both the coprecipitated oxalates and the calcined oxides were examined. The influence of doping of different metal cations into the CeO₂ structure on the oxygen storage capacity in particular was investigated. Some of the doped oxides Ce_0.9M_0.1 O_{2 − δ} (M = Ca, Nd, Pb, etc.) give an increased oxygen storage capacity, 20–40% higher than the undoped. Their redox activity also remarkably increased.     

Kinetics of the dissolution of uranium dioxide in nitric acid. I

The kinetics of the dissolution of uranium dioxide in nitric acid have been investigated over a range of acid concentration from 0·3 to 37·0 molal. A change in the reduction mechanism for nitric acid is indicated at about 16 molal concentration. A proposed mechanism for the initial rate period of dissolution is consistent with experimental results and with the known thermodynamics of the system.     

Control of Halogen Atom in Inorganic Metal-Halide Perovskites Enables Large Piezoelectricity for Electromechanical Energy Generation

Regulating the strain of inorganic perovskites has emerged as a critical approach to control their electronic and optical properties. Here, an alternative strategy to further control the piezoelectric properties by substituting the halogen atom (I/Br) in the CsPbX₃ perovskite (X = Cl, Br) structure is adopted. A series of piezoelectric materials with excellent piezoelectric coefficients (d₃₃) are unveiled. Iodine-incorporated CsPbBr₂I demonstrates the record intrinsic piezoelectric response (d₃₃ ≈47 pC N⁻¹) among all inorganic metal halide perovskites. This leads to an excellent electrical output power of ≈ 0.375 mW (24.8 µW cm⁻² N⁻¹) in the piezoelectric energy generator (PEG) which is higher than those of the pristine/mixed perovskite references with CsPbX₃ (X = I, Br, Cl). With its structural phase remaining unchanged, the strained CsPbBr₂I retains its superior piezoelectricity in both thin film and nanocrystal powder forms, further demonstrating its repeatability and versatility of applications. The origin of high piezoelectricity is found to be due to halogen-induced anisotropic lattice strain in the unit-cell along the c-axis, and octahedral distortion. This study reveals an avenue to design new piezoelectric materials by modifying their halide constituents and paves the way to design efficient PEGs for improved electromechanical energy conversion.     

Removal and recovery of lead(II) from single and multimetal (Cd, Cu, Ni, Zn) solutions by crop milling waste (black gram husk)

The study reports removal of heavy metals when present singly or in binary and ternary systems by the milling agrowaste of Cicer arientinum (chickpea var. black gram) as the biosorbent. The biosorbent removed heavy metal ions efficiently from aqueous solutions with the selectivity order of Pb>Cd>Zn>Cu>Ni. The biosorption of metal ions by black gram husk (BGH) increased as the initial metal concentration increased. Biosorption equilibrium was established within 30 min, which was well described by the Langmuir and Freundlich adsorption isotherms. The maximum amount of heavy metals (qmax) adsorbed at equilibrium was 49.97, 39.99, 33.81, 25.73 and 19.56 mg/g BGH biomass for Pb, Cd, Zn, Cu and Ni, respectively. The biosorption capacities were found to be pH dependent and the maximum adsorption occurred at the solution pH 5. Efficiency of the biosorbent to remove Pb from binary and ternary solutions with Cd, Cu, Ni and Zn was the same level as it was when present singly. The presence of Pb in the binary and ternary solutions also did not significantly affect the sorption of other metals. Breakthrough curves for continuous removal of Pb from single, binary and ternary metal solutions are reported for inlet-effluent equilibrium. Complete desorption of Pb and other metals in single and multimetal solutions was achieved with 0.1 M HCl in both shake flask and fixed bed column studies. This is the first report of removal of the highly toxic Pb, Cd, and other heavy metals in binary and ternary systems based on the biosorption by an agrowaste. The potential of application for the treatment of solutions containing these heavy metals in multimetal solutions is indicated.     

A novel active contour model for medical images via the Hessian matrix and eigenvalues

This paper presents a new level set formulation for active contour models (ACM). We propose the idea of integrating the eigenvalue information of Hessian matrix into the level set function. By this new level set function, the principal curvature information of images is used to enhance the ability of segmenting boundary regions. The advantages of our model are as follows: firstly, the interior and exterior object boundaries can be segmented with the initial contour being anywhere in the input image. Secondly, this method can work with heterogeneous images. Thirdly, the proposed model can produce smooth and right boundaries of objects having vital importance in medical operations. Extensive experiments demonstrate that the proposed model can obtain better segmentation results.     

Performance analysis of a threshold based distributed channel allocation algorithm for cellular networks

Rapid advances of the handheld devices and the emergence of the demanding wireless applications require the cellular networks to support the demanding user needs more effectively. The cellular networks are expected to provide these services under a limited bandwidth. Efficient management of the wireless channels by effective channel allocation algorithms is crucial for the performance of any cellular system. To provide a better channel usage performance, dynamic channel allocation schemes have been proposed. Among these schemes, distributed dynamic channel allocation approaches showed good performance results. The two important issues that must be carefully addressed in such algorithms are the efficient co-channel interference avoidance and messaging overhead reduction. In this paper, we focus on our new distributed channel allocation algorithm and evaluate its performance through extensive simulation studies. The performance evaluation results obtained under different traffic load and user mobility conditions, show that the proposed algorithm outperforms other algorithms recently proposed in the literature.