A Traveling Wave Ion Mobility Spectrometry (TWIMS) Study of the Robo1-Heparan Sulfate Interaction

Roundabout 1 (Robo1) interacts with its receptor Slit to regulate axon guidance, axon branching, and dendritic development in the nervous system and to regulate morphogenesis and many cell functions in the nonneuronal tissues. This interaction is known to be critically regulated by heparan sulfate (HS). Previous studies suggest that HS is required to promote the binding of Robo1 to Slit to form the minimal signaling complex, but the molecular details and the structural requirements of HS for this interaction are still unclear. Here, we describe the application of traveling wave ion mobility spectrometry (TWIMS) to study the conformational details of the Robo1-HS interaction. The results suggest that Robo1 exists in two conformations that differ by their compactness and capability to interact with HS. The results also suggest that the highly flexible interdomain hinge region connecting the Ig1 and Ig2 domains of Robo1 plays an important functional role in promoting the Robo1-Slit interaction. Moreover, variations in the sulfation pattern and size of HS were found to affect its binding affinity and selectivity to interact with different conformations of Robo1. Both MS measurements and CIU experiments show that the Robo1-HS interaction requires the presence of a specific size and pattern of modification of HS. Furthermore, the effect of N-glycosylation on the conformation of Robo1 and its binding modes with HS is reported.

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Spectrophotometric Determination of Zirconium in Monazite Sand

A sensitive spectrophotometric method was developed for the determination of zirconium in monazite sand. The zirconium ion was previously separated from the other interfering elements by a 0.5 M thenoyltrifluoroacetone (TTA)-xylene extraction, then determined with Arsenazo III in 9 M HCl medium. Zirconium reacted with Arsenazo III to form an emeraled green coloured complex having maximum absorbance at 665 nm in 9 M HCl medium. The color was stable for at least 2 hours. Effects of time, HCl concentration, gelatine and various ions have been studied. The system confirms the Beer's law over the concentration range investigated. Optimum condition range for measurement in 1.0 cm quartz cell is 0.1–0.5 μg/ml of zirconium. The molar absorptivity is 1.51×10⁵ liter mole^?1 cm^?1. The metal-ligand ratio of 1:4 was confirmed by Job's Continuous Variation method and the conditional stability constant of Zirconium-Arsenazo III Complex in 4 M HCl and 9 M HCl were also determined by this method.     

Catalytic Pyrolysis of Methane

Methane decomposition over metal oxides/SiO₂ surface was investigated. At 1400 K obtained product distribution of this decomposition varied with metal oxide used. The effectiveness of these catalysts has been discussed in terms of activity and C₂ selectivity. ThO₂/SiO₂ was found to be the most effective catalyst for the catalytic decomposition of methane. Positive catalytic effect of ThO₂/SiO₂ on the pyrolysis has also been confirmed at 1073 K. At low reaction conversions, ethane and ethylene are found as major products. Yields of ethylene and other unsaturated products are sensitively inhibited by NO impurities in the methane. A reaction mechanism has been proposed to account observed experimental results.     

Optimal threshold values of age and two-phase maintenance policy for leased equipments using age reduction method

This paper investigates the optimal threshold values of age to perform preventive maintenance (PM) actions for leased equipment within the lease period. In this paper, we use age reduction method to describe the degree of PM and construct the maintenance cost function. For repairable leased equipment, two maintenance models are proposed: (i) maintenance policy of single-phase and (ii) maintenance policy of two-phase. During the lease period, PM actions are carried out when the age of equipment reaches a certain threshold value. Any failure of the leased equipment is rectified by a minimal repair within the lease period. Under these maintenance schemes, the mathematical models of the expected total cost for maintenance policies of single-phase and two-phase are established, and the optimal maintenance policies are derived such that the expected total cost is minimized. Finally, the features of the optimal maintenance policy are illustrated through numerical examples.     

A simple direct cosine simplex algorithm

Linear programming (LP) is the core model of constrained optimization. The Simplex method (Simplex in short) has been proven in practice to perform very well in small- or medium-sized LP problems. A new algorithm called the direct cosine Simplex algorithm (DCA) is presented here to improve upon Simplex and to solve LP problems. The proposed DCA implements a specific cosine criterion to choose the entering variable instead of the traditional most negative rule used in Simplex. Three examples are given to illustrate the implementation of the proposed DCA to improve Simplex and to serve as the optimization tool. The utility of the proposed approach is evident from the extensive computational results on test problems adapted from NETLIB. DCA reduced the number of iterations of Simplex in most cases in our computational experiment. Preliminary results for medium-sized problems are encouraging.     

Incorporating the learning effect into data envelopment analysis to measure MSW recycling performance

The effect of organizational learning, which results in continuous improvement of organizational performance over time, has been widely discussed. The cumulative learning effect may form as a source of intellectual capital. Thus far, the static data envelopment analysis (DEA) model has not been used to examine the longitudinal learning effect. Therefore, a two-stage approach is developed together with the estimation of a latent learning effect using time-series data; the estimated learning effect is then used as an input in the DEA Slacks-Based Measure (SBM) model. The proposed DEA SBM model can be used to investigate the efficiency of the organizational learning effect of Municipal Solid Waste (MSW) recycling systems.     

Some statistics on Stirling permutations and Stirling derangements

A permutation of the multiset $\{1,1,2,2,\dots ,n,n\}$ is called a Stirling permutation of order $n$ if every entry between the two occurrences of $i$ is greater than $i$ for each $i\in \{1,2,\dots ,n\}$. In this paper, we introduce the definitions of block, even indexed entry, odd indexed entry, Stirling derangement, marked permutation and bicolored increasing binary tree. We first study the joint distribution of ascent plateaux, even indexed entries and left-to-right minima over the set of Stirling permutations of order $n$. We then present an involution on Stirling derangements.