Endocellulase and exocellulase activities of two Streptomyces strains isolated from a forest soil

Two Streptomyces strains, M7a and M23, from a Brazilian forest soil were evaluated for the cellulase production of their superna tants after growth in a microcrystalline cellulose medium, using carboxy methylcellulose and filter paper as substrates at different temperatures and pH values. Endoglucanase and exoglucanase activities were compared to a commercial Trichoderma reesei cellulase using fluorogenic conjugated substrates Similar specific activities were observed for the enzyme preparations of strain M23 and T. reesei. For M7a the activities were about seven times higher than those obtained for T. reesei. Extracellular or cell-associated cellobiase activities were not detected in both strains.

     

Flow-level performance and capacity of wireless networks with user mobility

The performance evaluation of wireless networks is severely complicated by the specific features of radio communication, such as highly variable channel conditions, interference issues, and possible hand-offs among base stations. The latter elements have no natural counterparts in wireline scenarios, and create a need for novel performance models that account for the impact of these characteristics on the service rates of users. Motivated by the above issues, we review several models for characterizing the capacity and evaluating the flow-level performance of wireless networks carrying elastic data transfers. We first examine the flow-level performance and stability of a wide family of so-called α-fair channel-aware scheduling strategies. We establish that these disciplines provide maximum stability, and describe how the special case of the Proportional Fair policy gives rise to a Processor-Sharing model with a state-dependent service rate. Next we turn attention to a network of several base stations with inter-cell interference. We derive both necessary and sufficient stability conditions and construct lower and upper bounds for the flow-level performance measures. Lastly we investigate the impact of user mobility that occurs on a slow timescale and causes possible hand-offs of active sessions. We show that the mobility tends to increase the capacity region, both in the case of globally optimal scheduling and local α-fair scheduling. It is additionally demonstrated that the capacity and user throughput improve with lower values of the fairness index α.     

Polling: past,present, and perspective

This is a survey on polling systems, focussing on the basic single-server multi-queue polling system in which the server visits the queues in cyclic order. The main goals of the paper are: (i) to discuss a number of the key methodologies in analyzing polling models; (ii) to give an overview of recent polling developments; and (iii) to present a number of challenging open problems.     

Selectivity over coverage in de novo sequencing of IgGs

Although incredibly diverse in specificity, millions of unique Immunoglobulin G (IgG) molecules in the human antibody repertoire share most of their amino acid sequence. These constant parts of IgG do not yield any useful information in attempts to sequence antibodies de novo. Therefore, methods focusing solely on the variable regions and providing unambiguous sequence reads are strongly advantageous. We report a mass spectrometry-based method that uses electron capture dissociation (ECD) to provide straightforward-to-read sequence ladders for the variable parts of both the light and heavy chains, with a preference for the functionally important CDR3. We optimized this method on the therapeutic antibody Trastuzumab and demonstrate its applicability on two monoclonal quartets of the four IgG subclasses, IgG1, IgG2, IgG3 and IgG4. The method is based on proteolytically separating the variable F(ab′)₂ part from the conserved Fc part, whereafter the F(ab′)₂ portions are mass-analyzed and fragmented by ECD. Pure ECD, without additional collisional activation, leads to straightforward-to-read sequence tags covering the CDR3 of both the light and heavy chains. Using molecular modelling and structural analysis, we discuss and explain this selective fragmentation behavior and describe how structural features of the different IgG subclasses lead to distinct fragmentation patterns. Overall, we foresee that pure ECD on F(ab′)₂ or Fab molecules can become a valuable tool for the de novo sequencing of serum antibodies.     

1,3-Dipolar cycloaddition reactions. Regioselective synthesis of heterocycles and theoretical studies

We report a 1,3-dipolar cycloaddition reaction between a oxazolium 5-oxide derivative with chloroacrylonitrile or ethyl propiolate as dipolarophiles, in order to obtain substituted pyrrolizidines. Experimentally we found that the reaction is regiospecific with chloroacrylonitrile and regioselective with ethyl propiolate. The secondary attractive orbital interactions from the Frontier Molecular Orbital Theory, the differences in stability of the possible biradical intermediaries postulated for the reaction and some hindrance effects, explain the regioselectivity observed experimentally.     

Sojourn time asymptotics in processor-sharing queues

Over the past few decades, the Processor-Sharing (PS) discipline has attracted a great deal of attention in the queueing literature. While the PS paradigm emerged in the sixties as an idealization of round-robin scheduling in time-shared computer systems, it has recently captured renewed interest as a useful concept for modeling the flow-level performance of bandwidth-sharing protocols in communication networks. In contrast to the simple geometric queue length distribution, the sojourn time lacks such a nice closed-form characterization, even for exponential service requirements. In case of heavy-tailed service requirements however, there exists a simple asymptotic equivalence between the sojourn time and the service requirement distribution, which is commonly referred to as a reduced service rate approximation. In the present survey paper, we give an overview of several methods that have been developed to obtain such an asymptotic equivalence under various distributional assumptions. We outline the differences and similarities between the various approaches, discuss some connections, and present necessary and sufficient conditions for an asymptotic equivalence to hold. We also consider the generalization of the reduced service rate approximation to several extensions of the M/G/1 PS queue. In addition, we identify a relationship between the reduced service rate approximation and a queue length distribution with a geometrically decaying tail, and extend it to so-called bandwidth-sharing networks. The state-of-the-art with regard to sojourn time asymptotics in PS queues with light-tailed service requirements is also briefly described. Last, we reflect on some possible avenues for further research. AMS Subject Classification 60K25 (primary), 60F10, 68M20, 90B18, 90B22 (secondary).