A Potent Mimetic of the Siglec-8 Ligand 6’-Sulfo-Sialyl Lewisx

Siglecs are members of the immunoglobulin gene family containing sialic acid binding N-terminal domains. Among them, Siglec-8 is expressed on various cell types of the immune system such as eosinophils, mast cells and weakly on basophils. Cross-linking of Siglec-8 with monoclonal antibodies triggers apoptosis in eosinophils and inhibits degranulation of mast cells, making Siglec-8 a promising target for the treatment of eosinophil- and mast cell-associated diseases such as asthma. The tetrasaccharide 6’-sulfo-sialyl Lewis^x has been identified as a specific Siglec-8 ligand in glycan array screening. Here, we describe an extended study enlightening the pharmacophores of 6’-sulfo-sialyl Lewis^x and the successful development of a high-affinity mimetic. Retaining the neuraminic acid core, the introduction of a carbocyclic mimetic of the Gal moiety and a sulfonamide substituent in the 9-position gave a 20-fold improved binding affinity. Finally, the residence time, which usually is the Achilles tendon of carbohydrate/lectin interactions, could be improved.     

Performance comparison of space-time block coded and cyclic delay diversity MC-CDMA systems

Spatial diversity is a widely applied technique for enhancing wireless system performance since it greatly reduces the detrimental effects of multipath fading. Space-time block codes have been considered the best choice for transmit diversity in narrowband environments, but their use in broadband channels is questionable due to their inability to pick up multipath diversity. However, when used in conjunction with an MC-CDMA system, they achieve not only full spatial but also variable multipath diversity depending on the employed spreading. In comparison, cyclic delay diversity is an attractive approach to achieve spatial and multipath diversity. Its simplicity and conformability with current standards makes it desirable for multicarrier systems. Previous studies suggest that CDD is only advantageous with an outer channel code for OFDM systems. In this article, we compare STBCs and CDD applied to an MC-CDMA system in terms of complexity and performance. It is shown that for an MC-CDMA system, CDD benefits from spreading and channel coding that makes it very competitive with STBCs, particularly since it is applicable to any number of transmit antennas with no loss in rate.     

Electron escape time from single quantum wells

A theoretical model for electrons escaping a quantum well under the influence of an applied electric field is developed. Both the thermionic emission and tunneling components of the currents are calculated, taking into account the proper partitioning between the two currents. The group velocity for a nonuniform electron distribution within the quantum well, which is a function of position and energy, and the continuous energy dependence of the quantum well density of states is considered. A comparison between this model and previously reported experimental results are made which demonstrates excellent agreement     

Circuit analysis of an ultrafast junction mixing scanning tunnelingmicroscope

A lumped element circuit model for the operation of a junction mixing scanning tunneling microscope (JM-STM) is presented. Fits from this model show excellent agreement with experimental results in the picosecond time regime. The tip sample capacitance employed in the model was calculated to be 33 fF, using the method of images. By varying the capacitance, various tip/sample geometries can be investigated. Testing the response of the model tunnel junction, for faster electrical pulses, suggests how the JM-STM can be pushed into the femtosecond time regime     

ROLE OF COMPOSITION ON THE VISCOSITY AND SHEAR STRESS TEMPERATURE BEHAVIOUR OF SOME LUBE OIL BASE STOCKS

Lubricating oil base stocks differ greatly in their chemical composition and consequently in their physical properties and applications. Influence of waxes and various hydrocarbon type constituents viz saturates and aromatic components on the viscosity and shear stress as a function of temperature in different lube oil base stocks has been studied in the present paper.     

Bias dependence of high-frequency noise in heterojunction bipolar transistors

Hawkins' isothermal model developed to study noise in bipolar junction transistors (BJTs) is modified to investigate bias-dependent noise in heterojunction bipolar transistors (HBTs) by incorporating thermal effects. It is shown that the inclusion of thermal effects into the high-frequency noise model of HBTs is necessary as the temperature of the device may become very different from the ambient temperature, especially at high bias current. Calculation of the noise figure by including the thermal effect shows that the isothermal calculation may underestimate the noise figure at high bias current. It is observed that noise at low bias is ideality factor n dependent whereas high bias noise is insensitive to the variation of n. Moreover, the common base current gain plays a major role in the calculation of the minimum noise figure. The excellent fit obtained between the theoretical calculation and the measured data are attributed to the inclusion of the bias-dependent junction heating as well as C/sub De/ and C/sub bc/ into the present calculation.     

An asymmetric line-axis compound parabolic concentrating single basin solar still

An asymmetric line-axis compound parabolic concentrating single basin solar still of concentration 1.15, exit aperture 0.24 metres and length 0.48 metres, 30° inclination and 60° half acceptance angle has been designed fabricated and tested.     

An image multiresolution representation for lossless and lossycompression

We propose a new image multiresolution transform that is suited for both lossless (reversible) and lossy compression. The new transformation is similar to the subband decomposition, but can be computed with only integer addition and bit-shift operations. During its calculation, the number of bits required to represent the transformed image is kept small through careful scaling and truncations. Numerical results show that the entropy obtained with the new transform is smaller than that obtained with predictive coding of similar complexity. In addition, we propose entropy-coding methods that exploit the multiresolution structure, and can efficiently compress the transformed image for progressive transmission (up to exact recovery). The lossless compression ratios are among the best in the literature, and simultaneously the rate versus distortion performance is comparable to those of the most efficient lossy compression methods.     

Some Physical Properties of Pure and Doped Polyvinyl Alcohol under Applied Stress

Thick films of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) containing very finemetallic powder, copper (Cu), iron (Fe) and aluminum (Al) 2.5% by weight,were prepared by the casting method. The temperature dependence of Young'smodulus at constant stress, the stress dependence of Young's modulus(Y), the stress dependence of dielectric constant (ε) and stressdependence of phonon velocity, were studied. It was found that Young'smodulus (Y) of the pure sample has the lowest value and that of PVA + Alhas the highest value. This can be explained on the basis that Ydepends on the ratio between the energy of molecular interactions andthe energy of thermal motion of the sample units. We also found that thedielectric constant increases with the addition of metallic powder, andwith an increasing applied stress. The phonon velocity increased withincreasing stress. The increase of stress decreases imperfectionsleading to the increased phonon velocity. The electronic absorptionspectra of PVA is not affected by doping Al and Fe, whereas the PVA dopedwith Cu shows a shift of the absorption maxima toward a longer wavelength.The instantaneous elastic behavior may be observed only at lowtemperatures and very short creep times.