Preface

Microsystem Technologies -     

A Novel Artificially Humanized Anti-Cripto-1 Antibody Suppressing Cancer Cell Growth

Cripto-1 is a member of the EGF-CFC/FRL1/Cryptic family and is involved in embryonic development and carcinogenesis. We designed a novel anti-Cripto-1 artificial antibody and assessed the recognition to the antigen and the potential to suppress the growth of cancer stem cells. First, single chain antibody clones were isolated by bio-panning with the affinity to recombinant Cripto-1 protein from our original phage-display library. Then, the variable regions of heavy chain VH and light chain VL in each clone were fused to constant regions of heavy chain CH and light chain CL regions respectively. These fused genes were expressed in ExpiCHO-S cells to produce artificial humanized antibodies against Cripto-1. After evaluation of the expression levels, one clone was selected and the anti-Cripto-1 antibody was produced and purified. The purified antibody showed affinity to recombinant Cripto-1 at 1.1 pmol and immunoreactivity to cancer tissues and cell lines. The antibody was available to detect the immunoreactivity in tissue microarrays of malignant tumors as well as in Cripto-1 overexpressing cells. Simultaneously, the antibody exhibited the potential to suppress the growth of human colon cancer derived GEO cells overexpressing Cripto-1 with IC₅₀ at approximately 110 nM. The artificially humanized antibody is proposed to be a good candidate to target cancer cells overexpressing Cripto-1.     

Index-Based Cache Coherence Protocol

A multiprocessor envirorLment may encounter many problems such as deadlock, load balancing and cache coherence. However, the latter is considered the most dangerous if not properly designed, the system works naturally but generates inaccurate results. This occurs if obsolete versions of a memory block are used. Users may not be aware of the presence of such problem. Two main approaches are known to maintain data consistency： namely, snoopy and directory-based protocols. Each approach has its advantages and limitations. This paper proposes a new technique that considers both previously mentioned approaches. The network architecture is slightly updated by adding an index table to each processor. The proposed protocol is expected to reduce the access time, decrease the number of accesses to main memory, maintain data consistency, and assure the usage of the most recent value of a shared variable.     

Structure,properties, and applications of polyacrylonitrile/carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers at low CNT loading

Bi-component, polyacrylonitrile (PAN)/carbon nanotube (CNT) fibers were processed, at different core-sheath area ratios, by gel spinning. A percolated CNT network at 10 wt% CNT in the sheath enhanced electrical conductivity as compared to the neat PAN fiber, while PAN polymer in the core contributed to the good mechanical properties. Fibers with relatively thin sheath allowed overall CNT loading as low as 3.7 wt% to be made with good electrical conductivity, and PAN stabilization by Joule heating was demonstrated. Such fibers with combined good mechanical properties and electrical conductivity can also potentially be used for electrical heating of fabrics, for making smart textiles, and for electromagnetic interference shielding.     

Wallace E. Lambert (1922–2009).

On August 23, 2009, psychology lost an innovative researcher with the passing, at 86, of Wallace E. Lambert. A professor of psychology at McGill University from 1954 until 1990, Wallace (“Wally”) Lambert was among the founders of psycholinguistics and sociolinguistics. His highly productive career included contributions to social and cross-cultural psychology (intergroup attitudes, child-rearing values, and psychological consequences of living in multicultural societies), language education (the French immersion program), and bilingualism (measurement of language dominance, attitudes and motivation in second-language learning, and social, cognitive, and neuropsychological consequences of bilingualism). Indeed, because of the scope and influence of his work, Wally Lambert is widely considered the father of the psychological study of bilingualism. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2010 APA, all rights reserved)     

Chemical,rheological and parotta making characteristics of flourmill streams

Chemical, rheological and parotta-making characteristics of wheat-milling flour streams were studied with the main aim of developing a speciality flour for parotta. Important quality characteristics such as ash, flour colour, dry gluten content, sedimentation value, free and bound lipid content, farinograph and alveograph characteristics of the mill streams were determined. The studies showed an increase in ash, gluten content and sedimentation value with increasing numbers of breaks in the flour streams. An increase in percentage whiteness and bound lipids was observed in the first five reduction passages (C1 to C5). The alveograph characteristics indicated that the average abscissa at rupture (L) length of the curve increased with increasing reduction streams from C1 to C5, and also that the curves were better balanced when compared to 1 BK to 5 BK. The parottas made from the first five break passages had a decreased spread ratio, dull brown colour, and fused layers and lower overall quality score (43–79). The initial reduction streams (C1 to C5) produced good quality parottas in terms of appearance, spread, layers and texture. The shear force values indicating the texture of the product ranged from 1,120 to 1,250 g. The speciality flour made by combining C1 to C5 streams had 0.45% ash, 9.63% dry gluten, 45 ml sodium dodecyl sulphate sedimentation value, 0.7% free lipid and 1.8% bound lipid and produced parottas having creamish white colour, excellent pliability, thin, transparent and distinct layers, soft texture and moderate chewiness. In the mouth the parottas broke down easily, without leaving any residue. The overall quality score of parotta was highest (93.5) for the speciality flour when compared to break and reduction streams (43–77 and 56–92 respectively).     

Feasibility of neural network approach in spectral mixture analysis of reflectance spectra

In the present work, we perform spectral mixture analysis using Chi‐square minimization (χ² minimization) procedure and test the feasibility of applying an inverse technique, neural network (NN) approach, for the spectral unmixing. The training of NN is carried out using the Levenberg–Marquardt algorithm (LM) with the initial weights for training being chosen randomly. The experiments are performed in the laboratory by mixing young, matured and dead leaves of a sequoia tree in various proportions and reflectance spectra of these mixtures are recorded. The proportions are chosen to model a few near‐real situations like different kinds of vegetation in a forest (by mixing young leaves and matured leaves) and trees damaged in a forest fire or affected by certain virus (by mixing matured and dead leaves) and a combination of all these (by mixing young, matured and dead leaves). The spectral mixture analysis employing χ² minimization and the inverse procedure utilizing NN with two hidden layers yielded consistent results in accordance with the proportion of each kind of leaf.     

Reliability analysis of a powerloom plant with cold standby for its strategic unit

A powerloom plant consists of two units A and B(n) connected in series. Unit B(n) has n components in parallel redundancy that carry threads of different varieties/colours to unit A. Unit A is the strategic unit that weaves these threads together and produces a long piece of cloth of some standard size. Failure of unit A makes the entire system fail whereas the failure of k components out of n in unit B(n) results in the system working in a degraded state. The present paper deals with the reliability analysis of the powerloom plant with a cold standby for its strategic unit. The common cause failure and critical human errors have also been considered to avoid overestimation of the reliability of the system. Results of Dhillon [Int. J. cyst. Sci. 23, 1277–1287 (1992)] have been deduced as a particular case of our result.     

A performance evaluation of a fault-tolerant path recommendation protocol for smart transportation system

Recommending traveling vehicles to take a certain path towards their targeted destinations have received great interest recently. At the downtown area several paths can lead to the same located destination, this is due to the grid-layout architecture of modern downtowns. Drivers always wish to reach their destinations as fast as possible and without traveling drastically long distance or without consuming extra fuel. The best path towards any destination is determined based on the relative location of the vehicle from its destination and based on other vehicles traffic distribution on the road network. Although numerous studies have investigated this issue over the road network, the communication failures and their effects on the obtained path have been neglected in those previous studies. In this paper, we investigate these potential faults and their effects on the correctness of the selected paths. We then proposed a new protocol to tackle these potential failures while selecting the best path towards each destination over the road network, fault tolerant path recommendation protocol (FT-PR). From the experimental results, we can see that the FT-PR protocol has a higher success ratio than previous path recommendation protocols, such as ICOD. This is demonstrated by obtaining paths with shorter traveling time and shorter traveling distance. The FT-PR protocol also eliminates extra loops over the road network in each selected path.     

Editorial preface

Innovations in Systems and Software Engineering -