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.     

Software Architecture Reconstruction: A Process-Oriented Taxonomy

To maintain and understand large applications, it is important to know their architecture. The first problem is that unlike classes and packages, architecture is not explicitly represented in the code. The second problem is that successful applications evolve over time, so their architecture inevitably drifts. Reconstructing the architecture and checking whether it is still valid is therefore an important aid. While there is a plethora of approaches and techniques supporting architecture reconstruction, there is no comprehensive software architecture reconstruction state of the art and it is often difficult to compare the approaches. This paper presents a state of the art in software architecture reconstruction approaches.     

Initial Molecular Recognition Steps of McjA Precursor during Microcin J25 Lasso Peptide Maturation

Microcin J25 (MccJ25) has emerged as an excellent model to understand the maturation of ribosomal precursor peptides into the entangled lasso fold. MccJ25 biosynthesis relies on the post‐translational modification of the precursor McjA by the ATP‐dependent protease McjB and the lactam synthetase McjC. Here, using NMR spectroscopy, we showed that McjA is an intrinsically disordered protein without detectable conformational preference, which emphasizes the active role of the maturation machinery on the three‐dimensional folding of MccJ25. We further showed that the N‐terminal region of the leader peptide is involved in interaction with both maturation enzymes and identified a predominant interaction of V43–S55 in the core McjA sequence with McjC. Moreover, we demonstrated that residues K23–Q34 in the N‐terminal McjA leader peptide tend to adopt a helical conformation in the presence of membrane mimics, implying a role in directing McjA to the membrane in the vicinity of the lasso synthetase/export machinery. These data provide valuable insights into the initial molecular recognition steps in the MccJ25 maturation process.     

Iterative interference cancellation and channel estimation in multibeam satellite systems

This paper deals with the use of non‐linear multiuser detection techniques to mitigate co‐channel interference on the reverse link of multibeam satellite systems. These techniques allow more capacity efficient frequency reuse strategies than classical ones, as they make possible to cope with lower C/I. The considered system takes as a starting point the DVB‐RCS standard, with the use of convolutional coding, and the use of the Ka‐band. We propose different iterative interference cancellation schemes, which operate at the beamformer outputs, and which use information from decoders. The proposed receivers assume an initial single‐user synchronization step: frame synchronization and timing recovery, and then perform channel estimation: beamformer coefficients; signal carrier phases and signal amplitudes. In a first step, these receivers are evaluated by simulation in terms of bit error rate and of channel estimation error on two interference configurations. For one of these receivers, sensitivity to imperfect timing recovery and to low‐frequency offsets from user terminals is evaluated. In a second step, since the receiver performances highly depend on the interference configuration, we propose an approach to evaluate performances on a multibeam coverage (by taking into account the variability of interference configurations on the coverage). This method is used to compare different receivers on an example based on a coverage designed on a digital focal array feed reflector antenna. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Dynamic gratings induced by electrostrictive compression of critical microemulsions

We report on preliminary forced Rayleigh scattering experiments in a microemulsion system close to a critical point. It is shown for the first time that electrostriction induces sizable concentration gradients in a critical liquid mixture. The amplitude and the relaxation time of the induced gratings are found to increase divergently in the vicinity of the critical point, as expected from the known critical behaviors of the osmotic compressibility and of the correlation length of the concentration fluctuations.     

Taking an object-centric view on dynamic information with object flow analysis

A large body of research analyzes the runtime execution of a system to extract abstract behavioral views. Those approaches primarily analyze control flow by tracing method execution events or they analyze object graphs of heap memory snapshots. However, they do not capture how objects are passed through the system at runtime. We refer to the exchange of objects as the object flow, and we claim that it is necessary to analyze object flows if we are to understand the runtime of an object-oriented application. We propose and detail object flow analysis, a novel dynamic analysis technique that takes this new information into account. To evaluate its usefulness, we present a visual approach that allows a developer to study classes and components in terms of how they exchange objects at runtime. We illustrate our approach on three case studies.