Amphiphilic Polymeric Nanocarriers with Luminescent Gold Nanoclusters for Concurrent Bioimaging and Controlled Drug Release

Multifunctional theranostic systems with good biocompatibility, strong clinical imaging capability, and target specificity are the desired features of future medicine. Here, the design of a theranostic nanocomposite capable of simultaneous targeting and imaging of the cancer cells is presented. It releases its drug payload by a controlled release mechanism. The nanocomposite contains luminescent gold nanocluster (L‐AuNC) photostable and biocompatible diagnostic probes conjugated to a folic acid (FA)‐modified pH‐responsive amphiphilic polymeric system for controlled drug release. The nanocomposite uses a core‐satellite structure to encapsulate hydrophobic drugs and releases the drug payload in mildly acidic endosomal/lysosomal compartments by the action of the pH‐labile linkages in the polymer. In vivo studies show the selective accumulation of the FA‐conjugated nanocomposite in tumor tissues by folate‐receptor‐mediated endocytosis. These findings demonstrate the potential of the nanocomposite as a nontoxic, folate‐targeting, pH‐responsive drug carrier that is useful for the early detection and therapy of folate‐overexpressing cancerous cells.     

A Strategy to Design Efficient Fermentation Processes for Traditional Beverages Production: Prickly Pear Wine

This paper describes a methodology to establish an optimal process design for prickly pear wine production that preserves the peculiar and unique traits of traditional products, generating at the same time, technical information for appropriate design of both bioreactor and overall process. The strategy includes alcoholic fermentation optimization by the mixed native culture composed by Pichia fermentans and Saccharomyces cerevisiae, followed by malolactic fermentation optimization by Oenococcus oeni. The optimization criteria were based on multiple output functions: alcohol content, volatile compounds profile, organic acids profile, and compound contents related to color, which were analyzed by spectroscopy–chromatography methods and sensory analysis. The results showed that the mixed culture inoculated into a bioreactor containing prickly pear juice with 20 °Bx of fermentable sugars concentration, processed at a constant temperature of 20 °C for 240 h, leads to a fermented product with 9.93% (v/v) total alcohol content, and significant abundance of volatile compounds, which provide fruity and ethereal aromatic notes, complemented by a lively but not unpleasant acidity. This young wine was further subjected to malolactic fermentation at constant temperature (16 °C) for 192 h, decreasing malic acid, and balancing volatile compounds contents, thus resulting in a product with better aroma and flavor perception, and a velvety feeling of long aftertaste. Repeated assays showed that the process is stable, predictable, controllable, and reproducible. These results were used for process design and spreadsheet construction in order to simulate the process, and properly select and size the equipment required for such process.     

Water,sanitation and hygiene and indigenous peoples: a review of the literature

The levels of sanitation and water services coverage as well as health attainment are low among indigenous peoples. This exclusion from basic service has not been sufficiently studied. The present review has analyzed 185 articles dealing with indigenous peoples and the water, sanitation and hygiene complex. The literature is dramatically skewed towards water resources, and overwhelmingly focused on conflicts, at the expense of basic sanitation and hygiene. More initiatives towards the acknowledgement of indigenous peoples’ world-views and institutions in all aspects of the water management cycle are needed. To this end, the development of effective intercultural dialogue mechanisms is crucial.     

Performance tradeoffs among low‐complexity detection algorithms for MIMO‐LTE receivers

The upcoming Third‐Generation Partnership Project—Long‐Term Evolution (3GPP‐LTE) cellular standard will employ spatial multiplexing to significantly increase the data rates. Detection of the spatially multiplexed signals is an essential issue in the design of an LTE receiver. In this paper, we evaluate the performance–complexity tradeoffs for a set of low‐complexity multiple input multiple output (MIMO) detection algorithms in a realistic LTE downlink system. Specifically, antenna correlation and channel estimation errors have been considered for a practical MIMO‐LTE receiver. An LTE downlink model has been implemented in order to evaluate three types of detectors: linear, unsorted successive interference cancellation (SIC), and ordered SIC. Our simulation results show that the unsorted SIC detectors present a very poor performance–complexity tradeoff. Besides, linear detectors are shown to be the best candidates as the performance improvement for the ordered SIC detectors is not significant in a realistic scenario. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Power from Perspective: Potential future United States energy portfolios

This paper presents United States energy portfolios for the year 2030, developed from seven different Perspectives. The Perspectives are characterized by different weights placed on fourteen defining values (e.g., cost, social acceptance). The portfolios were constructed to achieve three primary goals, energy independence, energy security, and greenhouse gas reductions. The portfolios are also evaluated over a comprehensive set of secondary criteria (e.g., economic growth, technical feasibility). It is found that very different portfolios based on very different defining values can achieve the three primary goals. Commonalities among the portfolios include reliance upon cellulosic ethanol, nuclear power, and energy efficiency to meet year 2030 energy demands. It is concluded that the US energy portfolio must be diverse and to achieve national energy goals will require an explicit statement of goals, a strong role for government, and coordinated action across society.     

Solving the Subset-Sum problem by P systems with active membranes

We present the first membrance computing solution to the Subset-Sum problem using a family of deterministic P systems with active membranes. We do not use priority among rules, membrane dissolution nor cooperation; it suffices to control the electrical charges of the membranes and to introduce some counters. The number of steps of any computation is of the linear order (but it is necessary a polynomial-time of precomputed resources).     

A singleton failures semantics for Communicating Sequential Processes

This paper defines a new denotational semantics for the language of Communicating Sequential Processes (CSP). The semantics lies between the existing traces and failures models of CSP, providing a treatment of non-determinism in terms of singleton failures. Although the semantics does not represent a congruence upon the full language, it is adequate for sequential tests of non-deterministic processes. This semantics corresponds exactly to a commonly used notion of data refinement in Z and Object-Z: an abstract data type is refined when the corresponding process is refined in terms of singleton failures. The semantics is used to explore the relationship between data refinement and process refinement, and to derive a rule for data refinement that is both sound and complete. Received October 2001 Revised September 2002, February 2003, June 2004 and October 2005 Accepted November 2005 by I. J. Hayes     

FSG：中国应加入开放标准组织

开源自身并不能够成为一个生态系统,这需要利用所有开源的标准,同时创造出一个生态的系统,比如说中国或者是全世界所有的使用者,使用新的软件,运用新的技术,创造新的环境。微软公司创造了一个非常好的生态系统,有许多的使用者,也有许多不同的应用软件,微软是如何做到这一点的呢?开源软件如果要达到同样的目标,需要完成两个步骤,首先要创造一个生态系统,开源软件给我们一个很好的机会。在中国,在全世界都可以创造出一个无成本,且使用率很高的软件,开源可以和全世界其他软件竞争,对于很多公司来说,我们要在开发过程中共享一些东西,如图形系统…     

Tool Building Requirements for an API to First-Order Solvers

Effective formal verification tools require that robust implementations of automatic procedures for first-order logic and satisfiability modulo theories be integrated into expressive interactive frameworks for logical deduction, such as higher-order logic theorem provers. This paper states some pragmatic requirements for implementations of decision procedures that make them well-suited to integration into such frameworks. The aim is to open a dialogue with the designers of decision procedure software that will lead to greater and easier uptake of their implementations by verification users.     

Efficient schemes for broadcasting popular videos

We provide a formal framework for studying broadcasting schemes and design a family of schemes for broadcasting popular videos, the greedy disk-conserving broadcasting (GDB) family. We analyze the resource requirements for GDB, i.e., the number of server broadcast channels, the client storage space, and the client I/O bandwidth required by GDB. Our analysis shows that all of our proposed broadcasting schemes are within a small factor of the optimal scheme in terms of the server bandwidth requirement. Furthermore, GDB exhibits a tradeoff between any two of the three resources. We compare our scheme with a recently proposed broadcasting scheme, skyscraper broadcasting (SB). With GDB, we can reduce the client storage space by as much as 50% or the number of server channels by as much as 30% at the cost of a small additional increase in the amount of client I/O bandwidth. If we require the client I/O bandwidth of GDB to be identical to that of SB, GDB needs only 70% of the client storage space required by SB or one less server channel than SB does. In addition, we show that with small client I/O bandwidth, the resource requirements of GDB are close to the minimum achievable by any disk-conserving broadcasting scheme.