Cyclodextrins in innovative engineering tools for risk-based environmental management

Experimental results, which may serve as basis for innovative applications of cyclodextrins (CDs) in environmental technologies, are presented here. Some newly developed CD-aided tools are used in sampling, measuring the concentration or testing the effect of contaminants in water and soil. The innovative methods such as the bacterial bioassays with CD-increased sensitivity or the CD-filled absorptive samplers for air and water sampling are utilised in environmental exposure, hazard and risk assessment. Technological developments aim the reduction of the risk of chemical substances in waters and soils. CD-aided environmental remediation is introduced through examples for the elimination of organic contaminants from water by CD-filters, and for the enhancement of the mobility and availability of soil contaminants in this way increasing the efficiency of soil remediation by water extraction, chemical oxidation, biodegradation, etc.     

Influence of rhodium additive on hydrogen electrosorption in palladium-rich Pd�CRh alloys

Hydrogen electrosorption into Pd-rich (>80?at.% Pd in the bulk) Pd?CRh alloys has been studied in acidic solutions (0.5?M H₂SO₄) using cyclic voltammetry and chronoamperometry. The influence of temperature (in the range between 283 and 328?K), electrode potential and alloy bulk composition on hydrogen electrosorption properties of Pd?CRh alloys is presented. It has been found that the additive of Rh to Pd?CRh alloys increases the maximum hydrogen solubility (for Rh bulk content below 10?at.%), decreases the potential of absorbed hydrogen oxidation peak and decreases the potential of the ???????? phase transition. Increasing temperature decreases the potential of absorbed hydrogen oxidation peak, the maximum hydrogen solubility, and the potential of the ???????? phase transition. The amounts of electrosorbed hydrogen for ??- and ??-phase boundaries, i.e., ??_max and ??_min, have been determined from the integration of the initial parts of current?Ctime responses in hydrogen absorption and desorption processes. The H/M ratio corresponding to ??_max increases with increasing Rh content, while for ??_min a maximum of H/M ratio is observed for the alloys containing ca. 95% Rh.     

The N- and C-terminal domains of parathyroid hormone-related protein affect differently the osteogenic and adipogenic potential of human mesenchymal stem cells

Parathyroid hormone-related protein (PTHrP) is synthesized by diverse tissues, and its processing produces several fragments, each with apparently distinct autocrine and paracrine bioactivities. In bone, PTHrP appears to modulate bone formation in part through promoting osteoblast differentiation. The putative effect of PTH-like and PTH-unrelated fragments of PTHrP on human mesenchymal stem cell (MSCs) is not well known. Human MSCs were treated with PTHrP (1-36) or PTHrP (107-139) or both (each at 10 nM) in osteogenic or adipogenic medium, from the start or after 6 days of exposure to the corresponding medium, and the expression of several osteoblastogenic and adipogenic markers was analyzed. PTHrP (1-36) inhibited adipogenesis in MSCs and favoured the expression of osteogenic early markers. The opposite was observed with treatment of MSCs with PTHrP (107-139). Moreover, inhibition of the adipogenic differentiation by PTHrP (1-36) prevailed in the presence of PTHrP (107-139). The PTH/PTHrP type 1 receptor (PTH1R) gene expression was maximum in the earlier and later stages of osteogenesis and adipogenesis, respectively. While PTHrP (107-139) did not modify the PTH1R overexpression during adipogenesis, PTHrP (1-36) did inhibit it; an effect which was partially affected by PTHrP (7-34), a PTH1R antagonist, at 1 µM. These findings demonstrate that both PTHrP domains can exert varying effects on human MSCs differentiation. PTHrP (107-139) showed a tendency to favor adipogenesis, while PTHrP (1-36) induced a mild osteogenic effect in these cells, and inhibited their adipocytic commitment. This further supports the potential anabolic action of the latter peptide in humans.     

An Algorithm to Find the Lineality Space of the Positive Hull of a Set of Vectors

The positive hull of a finite set of vectors, V{\cal V}, in d-dimensional space may or may not contain a lineality space L{\cal L}. This article presents an algorithm that identifies the vectors of V{\cal V} that belong to L{\cal L}. This is done by means of a sequence of supporting hyperplanes because every supporting hyperplane of the positive hull of V{\cal V} contains L{\cal L}. Computational results show the effectiveness of the algorithm, which is compared to the best procedure currently available (to the best knowledge of the author) that solves the same problem. The algorithm introduced here is especially efficient in the case of large problems, where cardinality and/or dimensions are large.     

Stability and convergence in discrete convex monotone dynamical systems

We study the stable behaviour of discrete dynamical systems where the map is convex and monotone with respect to the standard positive cone. The notion of tangential stability for fixed points and periodic points is introduced, which is weaker than Lyapunov stability. Among others we show that the set of tangentially stable fixed points is isomorphic to a convex inf-semilattice, and a criterion is given for the existence of a unique tangentially stable fixed point. We also show that periods of tangentially stable periodic points are orders of permutations on n letters, where n is the dimension of the underlying space, and a sufficient condition for global convergence to periodic orbits is presented.     

Coincidence theorems and its applications to equilibrium problems

Given two maps h : X ×K ? \mathbbR{h : X \times K \rightarrow \mathbb{R}} and g : X → K such that, for all x ? X, h(x, g(x)) = 0{x \in X, h(x, g(x)) = 0} , we consider the equilibrium problem of finding [(x)\tilde] ? X{\tilde{x} \in X} such that h([(x)\tilde], g(x)) 3 0{h(\tilde{x}, g(x)) \geq 0} for every x ? X{x \in X} . This question is related to a coincidence problem.     

Pivoting in Extended Rings for Computing Approximate Gr?bner Bases

It is well known that in the computation of Gr?bner bases arbitrarily small perturbations in the coefficients of polynomials may lead to a completely different staircase, even if the solutions of the polynomial system change continuously. This phenomenon is called artificial discontinuity in Kondratyev’s Ph.D. thesis. We show how such phenomenon may be detected and even “repaired” by using a new variable to rename the leading term each time we detect a “problem”. We call such strategy the TSV (Term Substitutions with Variables) strategy. For a zero-dimensional polynomial ideal, any monomial basis (containing 1) of the quotient ring can be found with the TSV strategy. Hence we can use TSV strategy to relax term order while keeping the framework of Gr?bner basis method so that we can use existing efficient algorithms (for instance the F ₅ algorithm) to compute an approximate Gr?bner basis. Our main algorithms, named TSVn and TSVh, can be used to repair artificial e{\epsilon}-discontinuities. Experiments show that these algorithms are effective for some nontrivial problems.     

An Introduction to Closed/Open Neighborhood Sums: Minimax, Maximin, and Spread

For a graph G of order |V(G)| = n and a real-valued mapping f:V(G)?\mathbbR{f:V(G)\rightarrow\mathbb{R}}, if S ì V(G){S\subset V(G)} then f(S)=?_{w ? S} f(w){f(S)=\sum_{w\in S} f(w)} is called the weight of S under f. The closed (respectively, open) neighborhood sum of f is the maximum weight of a closed (respectively, open) neighborhood under f, that is, NS[f]=max{f(N[v])|v ? V(G)}{NS[f]={\rm max}\{f(N[v])|v \in V(G)\}} and NS(f)=max{f(N(v))|v ? V(G)}{NS(f)={\rm max}\{f(N(v))|v \in V(G)\}}. The closed (respectively, open) lower neighborhood sum of f is the minimum weight of a closed (respectively, open) neighborhood under f, that is, NS^-[f]=min{f(N[v])|v ? V(G)}{NS^{-}[f]={\rm min}\{f(N[v])|v\in V(G)\}} and NS^-(f)=min{f(N(v))|v ? V(G)}{NS^{-}(f)={\rm min}\{f(N(v))|v\in V(G)\}}. For W ì \mathbbR{W\subset \mathbb{R}}, the closed and open neighborhood sum parameters are NS_W[G]=min{NS[f]|f:V(G)? W{NS_W[G]={\rm min}\{NS[f]|f:V(G)\rightarrow W} is a bijection} and NS_W(G)=min{NS(f)|f:V(G)? W{NS_W(G)={\rm min}\{NS(f)|f:V(G)\rightarrow W} is a bijection}. The lower neighbor sum parameters are NS^-_W[G]=maxNS^-[f]|f:V(G)? W{NS^{-}_W[G]={\rm max}NS^{-}[f]|f:V(G)\rightarrow W} is a bijection} and NS^-_W(G)=maxNS^-(f)|f:V(G)? W{NS^{-}_W(G)={\rm max}NS^{-}(f)|f:V(G)\rightarrow W} is a bijection}. For bijections f:V(G)? {1,2,?,n}{f:V(G)\rightarrow \{1,2,\ldots,n\}} we consider the parameters NS[G], NS(G), NS ⁻[G] and NS ⁻(G), as well as two parameters minimizing the maximum difference in neighborhood sums.     

LocalSolver 1.x: a black-box local-search solver for 0-1 programming

This paper introduces LocalSolver 1.x, a black-box local-search solver for general 0-1 programming. This software allows OR practitioners to focus on the modeling of the problem using a simple formalism, and then to defer its actual resolution to a solver based on efficient and reliable local-search techniques. Started in 2007, the goal of the LocalSolver project is to offer a model-and-run approach to combinatorial optimization problems which are out of reach of existing black-box tree-search solvers (integer or constraint programming). Having outlined the modeling formalism and the main technical features behind LocalSolver, its effectiveness is demonstrated through an extensive computational study. The version 1.1 of LocalSolver can be freely downloaded at and used for educational, research, or commercial purposes.