Assessment of cleaning effectiveness for new ecological systems on ancient tempera icon by complementary microscopy techniques

The study presents an old icon painted in egg tempera on lime wood, with a poor conservation condition and clogged dirt deposits. The icon is attributed to an anonymous painter of XIXth century and to the neo‐classical style of painting. The painting layer was done with only a hand full of pigments, earth colors that were often used in painting the icons from XVIIth to XIXth century in Eastern Europe, that have Byzantine influences. Taking into consideration the nature and the structure of the materials from the upper layers of the painting, affected by deposits of dirt over time, a series of cleaning recipes were studied, using the so called cleaning tests with compatible mixtures of different juices and infusion from indigenes plants, that were freshly done and odorless. A low alkaline 95% ethyl alcohol solution, combined with a few drops of ammoniac 25%, was used as a reference system, due to its compatibility with the greasy deposits found on the polychrome layer and on the wood. The cleaning capacity of the new systems used, in comparison with the standard solution, was analyzed through modern analytical methods of evaluating the degree of cleaning, more exactly by means of visible and UV reflectography, CIE L*a*b* colorimetry by reflection assisted by SEM‐EDX and IR spectroscopy. Microsc. Res. Tech. 77:1060–1070, 2014. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

ASH: tackling node mobility in large-scale networks

With the increased adoption of technologies like wireless sensor networks by real-world applications, dynamic network topologies are becoming the rule rather than the exception. Node mobility, however, introduces a range of problems (communication interference, path uncertainty, low quality of service and information loss, etc.) that are not handled well by periodically refreshing state information, as algorithms designed for static networks typically do. To address specifically this problem, the main contribution of this paper is the introduction of a novel mechanism (called ASH) for the creation of a quasi-static overlay on top of a mobile topology. It is powered by simple, local interactions between nodes and exhibits self-healing and self-organization capabilities with respect to failures and node mobility. We show that the overlay mechanism works without assumptions about position, orientation, speed, motion correlation, and trajectory prediction of the nodes. A preliminary evaluation by means of simulation shows that ASH succeeds in tackling node mobility, while consuming only minimal resources.     

Targeting Cell Death Mechanism Specifically in Triple Negative Breast Cancer Cell Lines

Triple negative breast cancer (TNBC) is currently associated with a lack of treatment options. Arsenic derivatives have shown antitumoral activity both in vitro and in vivo; however, their mode of action is not completely understood. In this work we evaluate the response to arsenate of the double positive MCF-7 breast cancer cell line as well as of two different TNBC cell lines, Hs578T and MDA-MB-231. Multimodal experiments were conducted to this end, using functional assays and microarrays. Arsenate was found to induce cytoskeletal alteration, autophagy and apoptosis in TNBC cells, and moderate effects in MCF-7 cells. Gene expression analysis showed that the TNBC cell lines’ response to arsenate was more prominent in the G2M checkpoint, autophagy and apoptosis compared to the Human Mammary Epithelial Cells (HMEC) and MCF-7 cell lines. We confirmed the downregulation of anti-apoptotic genes (MCL1, BCL2, TGFβ1 and CCND1) by qRT-PCR, and on the protein level, for TGFβ2, by ELISA. Insight into the mode of action of arsenate in TNBC cell lines it is provided, and we concluded that TNBC and non-TNBC cell lines reacted differently to arsenate treatment in this particular experimental setup. We suggest the future research of arsenate as a treatment strategy against TNBC.