Ligand Design to Acquire Specificity to Intended G-Quadruplex Structures

A G-quadruplex is a nucleic acid secondary structure that is adopted by guanine-rich sequences, and is considered to be relevant in various pharmacological and biological contexts. G-Quadruplexes have also attracted great attention in the field of DNA nanotechnology because of their extremely high thermal stability and the availability of many defined structures. To date, a large repertory of DNA/RNA G-quadruplex-interactive ligands has been developed by numerous laboratories. Several relevant reviews have also been published that have helped researchers to grasp the full scope of G-quadruplex research from its outset to the present. This review focuses on the G-quadruplex ligands that allow targeting of specific G-quadruplexes. Moreover, unique ligands, successful methodologies, and future perspectives in relation to specific G-quadruplex recognition are also addressed.     

Binding of acetylcholine and quaternary ammonium compounds to a C3-symmetric bowl-shaped tripeptide of 2-(3-aminophenoxy)propanoic acids acting as a ditopic receptor

The new tripeptide reported here is composed of (R)-2-(3-aminophenoxy)propionic acid and is a bowl-shaped receptor that simultaneously binds both cations and anions of acetylcholine chloride and benzyltrimethylammonium compounds. An intriguing conformational change of the host was observed in the complexation of the ionic pair, where anion-induced flipping of the amide group on the macrocycle occurred.     

Perimidine-based synthetic receptors for determination of copper(II) in water solution

Perimidine-based chelators 1 and 2 were prepared, and their structures were confirmed by ¹H and ¹³C NMR, MS spectroscopy and elemental analysis. These compounds were studied as specific synthetic receptors for the recognition of transition metal ions. They exhibited high affinity and selectivity towards Cu(II) ions. The conditional binding constants, linear dynamic range and detection limit were determined by UV–vis spectroscopy. These parameters demonstrated high potential of the prepared synthetic receptors for the recognition and determination of Cu(II) ions. The minimum detectable concentrations of Cu(II) ions for the synthetic receptors 1 and 2 were 270 and 75 nM (R ² = 0.9915 and 0.9964) in aqueous medium (water/DMSO; 99:1 (v/v)), respectively.     

Visual Speech Recognition with Lightweight Psychologically Motivated Gabor Features

Extraction of relevant lip features is of continuing interest in the visual speech domain. Using end-to-end feature extraction can produce good results, but at the cost of the results being difficult for humans to comprehend and relate to. We present a new, lightweight feature extraction approach, motivated by human-centric glimpse-based psychological research into facial barcodes, and demonstrate that these simple, easy to extract 3D geometric features (produced using Gabor-based image patches), can successfully be used for speech recognition with LSTM-based machine learning. This approach can successfully extract low dimensionality lip parameters with a minimum of processing. One key difference between using these Gabor-based features and using other features such as traditional DCT, or the current fashion for CNN features is that these are human-centric features that can be visualised and analysed by humans. This means that it is easier to explain and visualise the results. They can also be used for reliable speech recognition, as demonstrated using the Grid corpus. Results for overlapping speakers using our lightweight system gave a recognition rate of over 82%, which compares well to less explainable features in the literature.     

基于双向循环神经网络的汉语语音识别*

当前基于深度神经网络模型中,虽然其隐含层可设置多层,对复杂问题适应能力强,但每层之间的节点连接是相互独立的,这种结构特性导致了在语音序列中无法利用上下文相关信息来提高识别效果,而传统的循环神经网络虽然做出了改进,但是只能对上文信息进行利用。针对以上问题,该文采用可以同时利用语音序列中上下文相关信息的双向循环神经网络模型与深度神经网络模型相结合,并应用于语音识别。构建具有5层隐含层的模型,其中第3层为双向循环神经网络结构,其他层采用深度神经网络结构。实验结果表明:加入了双向循环神经网络结构的模型与其他模型相比,较好地提高了识别正确率;噪声对双向循环神经网络汉语识别有重要影响,尤其是训练集和测试集附加噪声类型不同时,单一的含噪声语音的训练模型无法适应不同噪声类型的语音识别;调整神经网络模型中隐含层神经元数量后,识别正确率并不是一直随着隐含层中神经元数量的增加而增加,神经元数量数目增加到一定程度后正确率出现了降低的趋势。     

Synthesis of Chiral Calix[4]arene Derivative and Evaluation of its Recognition Properties

The article describes the synthesis and extraction properties of a new chiral calix[4]arene Schiff base ligand 5, which has been synthesized from 5,17-diformyl-25,27-bis-(4-nitrobenzyloxy)-26,28-dihidroxycalix[4]arene (4) by treatment with (S)-(-)-1-phenylethylamine. In this synthesis, it was thought to explore the role of chiral, as well as Schiff base sites in the recognition of targeted species ions (such as dichromate anions) as well as neutral/chiral molecules. At low pH, the ligand 5 is more effective for transferring the dichromate anions from an aqueous into a dichloromethane layer; may be due to the protonation of nitrogen atoms.

The extraction properties of ligand 5 towards the some selected α -amino acid methylesters are also reported. However, the ligand 5 did not display any selectivity towards the selected α-amino acid methylesters.     

First Experience in Using Microdensitometer “Scandig 3” — Joyce Loebl for Autoradiographs Evaluation

The Device is composed of the basic microdensitometer, the control computer, the magnetic tape unit, the teletype, the interface, and the software package.

This apparatus is designated for digitalization of image data point by point (system “flying spot”) and for their record on magnetic tape for further data processing. The software package makes possible to realize some basic evaluation only by using configuration mentioned above — for example recording of measured values, determination of numbers of occurrences particular optical density (histogram), tresholding and mapping of measured values.

This paper describes the instrument and its using for autoradiographs evaluating.