Design of an antibacterial gelatin based on a covalent protein–protein coupling

An antibacterial peptide (AMP), i.e., nisin, was covalently bound to gelatin through a protein–protein coupling. Various reaction conditions were tested to study and optimize parameters of grafting e.g., orientation and density of AMP, which could impact the final antibacterial activity of the modified biopolymer. Modification was investigated by Fourier transform infrared (FT‐IR) spectroscopy and zeta potential. The antibacterial activity of the nisin‐enriched gelatin was evaluated against two staphylococci bacterial strains, i.e., Staphylococus epidermidis and Staphylococcus aureus. A higher activity was found for gelatin modified at pH = 7.4 revealing an influence of the nisin orientation on the protein antibacterial property. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2015 , 132, 41825.     

Food recognition using neural network classifier and multiple hypotheses image segmentation

ABSTRACT

This paper proposes the multiple-hypotheses image segmentation and feed-forward neural network classifier for food recognition to improve the performance. Initially, the food or meal image is given as input. Then, the segmentation is applied to identify the regions, where a particular food item is located using salient region detection, multi-scale segmentation, and fast rejection. Then, the features of every food item are extracted by the global feature and local feature extraction. After the features are obtained, the classification is performed for each segmented region using a feed-forward neural network model. Finally, the calorie value is computed with the aid of (i) food volume and (ii) calorie and nutrition measure based on mass value. The experimental results and performance evaluation are validated. The outcome of the proposed method attains 0.947 for Macro Average Accuracy (MAA) and 0.959 for Standard Accuracy (SA), which provides better classification performance.     

A Sketch-Based Interface for Clothing Virtual Characters

This interactive system for garment creation determines a garment's shape and how the character wears it based on a user-drawn sketch. The system then uses distances between the 2D garment silhouette and the character model to infer remaining distance variations in 3D     

Complete oxidation of methane at low temperature over Pt and Pd catalysts for the abatement of lean-burn natural gas fuelled vehicles emissions: influence of water and sulphur containing compounds

The catalytic activity of fresh Pd and Pt catalysts supported on γ-alumina in the complete oxidation of CH₄ traces under lean-burn conditions was studied in the presence or the absence of water or H₂S. Steam-aged catalysts were also studied in order to simulate long-term ageing in real lean-burn natural gas fuelled vehicles (NGVs) exhaust conditions. Without water or H₂S added to the feed, Pd catalysts exhibit a superior catalytic activity in methane oxidation compared to Pt ones, whatever the catalysts were fresh or aged. The addition of 10 vol.% water vapour to the feed strongly affects the activity of the fresh Pd catalyst, thus being only slightly more efficient than the fresh Pt one. H₂S has a strong poisoning effect on the catalytic activity of Pd catalysts, while Pt catalysts are more resistant. The fresh H₂S-poisoned Pd/Al₂O₃ catalyst was studied by TPD in O₂/He. Poisoning species decompose above 873 K as SO₂ and O₂ in relative concentrations consistent with the decomposition of surface sulphate species. However, a treatment in O₂/He at temperatures as high as 923 K does not allow the complete regeneration of the catalytic activity of H₂S-poisoned Pd/Al₂O₃. A mechanism involving the poisoning of PdO by sulphate species is proposed. Different diffusion processes by which these sulphate species can migrate back and forth between PdO and the support, depending on the experimental conditions, are suggested.     

An efficient 3-dim FFT for plane wave electronic structure calculations on massively parallel machines composed of multiprocessor nodes

Three-dimensional Fast Fourier Transforms (FFTs) are the main computational task in plane wave electronic structure calculations. Obtaining a high performance on a large numbers of processors is non-trivial on the latest generation of parallel computers that consist of nodes made up of a shared memory multiprocessors. A non-dogmatic method for obtaining high performance for such 3-dim FFTs in a combined MPI/OpenMP programming paradigm will be presented. Exploiting the peculiarities of plane wave electronic structure calculations, speedups of up to 160 and speeds of up to 130 Gflops were obtained on 256 processors.     

Golden interfaces: The Surface of Self-Assembled Monolayers

Self-assembled monolayers (SAMs) of alkanethiols and disulfides on gold form organic interfaces with properties largely controlled by the end groups of the molecules composing the film. SAMs provide a unique link between the science of organic surfaces and technologies that seek to exploit their adaptable character. Many techniques are useful for probing the structure of SAMs although only scanning tunneling microscopy (STM) at picoamperes reveals the details of the packing of their end groups at the sub-angstrom level. This review demonstrates that STM effectively tests new types of control over the microscopic structure–property relationships characteristic of SAMs on gold that should prove useful to their application.     

Part II: An example of the use of the comsis software: simulation of an optical network which uses wavelength multiplexing,fsk modulation format and direct detection

This second article deals with using the Comsis software for a particular application. Simulation is used to determine the maximum channel density in presence of crosstalk. In a first part, the modelling of the system is described. The simulation parameters of different optical elements are given. The results show that in the case of channels modulated at 500 Mbitls using fsk modulation format, and a direct detection operation at 1,5 μm, a minimum spacing of 6 GHz can be obtained with a 2 dB penalty. Thus if only the bandwidth of the erbium doped fibre amplifier is taken into account, the maximum number of channels which can be used is 250. However if the fsr (free spectral range) of optical filter is taken into account, the maximun number of channels is limited to 30.     

Comparative influence of a single allergen exposure on the different components of airway response to methacholine

We compared the effects of an allergen challenge on airway responsiveness to methacholine, the slope of the dose-response curve (DRC) and post-methacholine fall in forced vital capacity (FVC) or forced expiratory volume in 1 s (FEV1)/FVC, and determined whether any changes in these parameters were related to the presence and magnitude of the late asthmatic response (LAR) in mild stable asthma. Twenty-three allergic asthmatic subjects had an allergen challenge, preceded and followed 24 (n = 12) and/or 48 (n = 22) h later by a methacholine challenge. Sixteen subjects had a dual asthmatic response to the allergen. On the post-allergen methacholine challenge, as compared with the pre-allergen test, differences in mean fall in FVC or FEV1/FVC at 20% fall in FEV1 and the slope of the DRC did not achieve statistical significance, even in the group with LAR, which showed a significant increase in airway responsiveness at 24 h. There was, however, a correlation between allergen-induced changes in PC20 and (1) the change in post-methacholine FVC fall in the LAR group at 48 h, and (2) the change in the slope of the DRC in the early-asthmatic-response group at 24 h. In conclusion, allergen-challenge-induced changes in airway response to methacholine are heterogeneous among asthmatic subjects and although it may increase airway responsiveness (PC20), particularly in late responders, it minimally affects the other aspects of airway response to methacholine, suggesting that a more powerful or sustained allergic stimulus is required to modify the latter.