Investigating the scope of pseudoproline assisted peptide cyclization

The cyclization of linear peptides from six to nine amino acids in length and containing between two and four pseudoproline turn inducers derived from serine or threonine was investigated to determine the effect of peptide length, amino acid composition and spacing between the pseudoproline residues on macrocyclization yield.     

Toward optimizing stream fusion in multistream recognition of speech

A multistream phoneme recognition framework is proposed based on forming streams from different spectrotemporal modulations of speech. Phoneme posterior probabilities were estimated from each stream separately and combined at the output level. A statistical model of the final estimated posterior probabilities is used to characterize the system performance. During the operation, the best fusion architecture is chosen automatically to maximize the similarity of output statistics to clean condition. Results on phoneme recognition from noisy speech indicate the effectiveness of the proposed method.     

Thermal coherence tomography using match filter binary phase coded diffusion waves

Energy transport in diffusion-wave fields is gradient-driven and therefore diffuse, yielding depth-integrated responses with poor axial resolution. Using matched-filter principles, we propose a methodology enabling these parabolic diffusion-wave energy fields to exhibit energy localization akin to propagating hyperbolic wave fields. This not only improves axial resolution but also allows for deconvolution of individual responses of superposed axially discrete sources, opening a new field of depth-resolved subsurface thermal coherence tomography using diffusion waves.     

Photo-induced CdS nanoparticles growth

A photochemical approach on the size control of CdS nanoparticles is presented. CdS nanoparticles were grown using the photo-induced reaction of sodium thiosulfate with Cadmium sulfate, in the absence of any surfactant. Particles of 5.5–11 nm were obtained by changing the illumination time. The dark growth of nanoparticles was negligible, however we found by optical scattering measurements that a ripening phenomenon occurs and the size of nanoparticles slightly increases with time.     

Measurement of the thermal conductivity of MWCNT-CuO/water hybrid nanofluid using artificial neural networks (ANNs)

Journal of Thermal Analysis and Calorimetry - In this paper, artificial neural networks (ANNs) are developed to predict the thermal conductivity ( $$k_{\text{nf}}$$ ) of multi-walled carbon...     

From Oncogenic Signaling Pathways to Single-Cell Sequencing of Immune Cells: Changing the Landscape of Cancer Immunotherapy

Over the past decade, there have been remarkable advances in understanding the signaling pathways involved in cancer development. It is well-established that cancer is caused by the dysregulation of cellular pathways involved in proliferation, cell cycle, apoptosis, cell metabolism, migration, cell polarity, and differentiation. Besides, growing evidence indicates that extracellular matrix signaling, cell surface proteoglycans, and angiogenesis can contribute to cancer development. Given the genetic instability and vast intra-tumoral heterogeneity revealed by the single-cell sequencing of tumoral cells, the current approaches cannot eliminate the mutating cancer cells. Besides, the polyclonal expansion of tumor-infiltrated lymphocytes in response to tumoral neoantigens cannot elicit anti-tumoral immune responses due to the immunosuppressive tumor microenvironment. Nevertheless, the data from the single-cell sequencing of immune cells can provide valuable insights regarding the expression of inhibitory immune checkpoints/related signaling factors in immune cells, which can be used to select immune checkpoint inhibitors and adjust their dosage. Indeed, the integration of the data obtained from the single-cell sequencing of immune cells with immune checkpoint inhibitors can increase the response rate of immune checkpoint inhibitors, decrease the immune-related adverse events, and facilitate tumoral cell elimination. This study aims to review key pathways involved in tumor development and shed light on single-cell sequencing. It also intends to address the shortcomings of immune checkpoint inhibitors, i.e., their varied response rates among cancer patients and increased risk of autoimmunity development, via applying the data from the single-cell sequencing of immune cells.     

Multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling problem with material ordering under bonus–penalty policies

This study emphasizes that project scheduling and material ordering (time and quantity of an order) must be considered simultaneously to minimize the total cost, as setting the material ordering decisions after the project scheduling phase leads to non-optimal solutions. Hence, this paper mathematically formulates the model for the multi-mode resource-constrained project scheduling with material ordering (MRCPSMO) problem. In order to be more realistic, bonus and penalty policies are included for the project. The objective function of the model consists of four elements: the material holding cost, the material ordering cost, the bonus paid by the client and the cost of delay in the project completion. Since MRCPSMO is NP-hard, the paper proposes three hybrid meta-heuristic algorithms called PSO-GA, GA-GA and SA-GA to obtain near-optimal solutions. In addition, the design of experiments and Taguchi method is used to tune the algorithms’ parameters. The proposed algorithms consist of two components: an outside search, in which the algorithm searches for the best schedule and mode assignment, and the inside search, which determines the time and quantity of orders of the nonrenewable resources. First, a comparison is made for each individual component with the exact or best solutions available in the literature. Then, a set of standard PROGEN test problems is solved by the proposed hybrid algorithms under fixed CPU time. The results reveal that the PSO-GA algorithm outperforms both GA-GA and SA-GA algorithms and provides good solutions in a reasonable time.     

Miscible and Immiscible Foam Injection for Mobility Control and EOR in Fractured Oil-Wet Carbonate Rocks

Foam injection is a proven enhanced oil recovery (EOR) technique for heterogeneous reservoirs, but is less studied for EOR in fractured systems. We experimentally investigated tertiary \(\text {CO}_{2}\) injections, and \(\text {N}_{2}\) - and \(\text {CO}_{2}\) -foam injections for enhanced oil recovery in fractured, oil-wet limestone core plugs. Miscible \(\text {CO}_{2}\) and \(\text {CO}_{2}\) -foam was compared with immiscible \(\text {CO}_{2}\) - and \(\text {N}_{2}\) -foam as tertiary recovery techniques, subsequent to waterfloods, in fractured rocks with different wettability preferences. At water-wet conditions waterfloods produced approximately 40 % OOIP, by spontaneous imbibition. Waterflood oil recovery at oil-wet conditions was below 20 % OOIP, due to suppressed imbibition where water predominantly flowed through the fractures, unable to mobilize the oil trapped in the matrix. Tertiary, supercritical \(\text {CO}_{2}\) -mobilized oil trapped in the matrix, particularly at weakly oil-wet conditions, by diffusion. Recovery by diffusion was high due to small core samples, high initial oil saturation and a continuous oil phase at oil-wet conditions. Both immiscible \(\text {CO}_{2}\) - and \(\text {N}_{2}\) -foams and miscible, supercritical \(\text {CO}_{2}\) -foam demonstrated high ultimate oil recoveries, but immiscible foam was less efficient (30 pore volumes injected) compared to miscible foam (2 pore volumes injected) to reach ultimate recovery. This is explained by the capillary threshold pressure preventing the injected \(\text {N}_{2}\) gas from entering the matrix, verified by computed X-ray tomography, and the mobilized oil was displaced by the aqueous surfactant in the foam. At miscible conditions, there exists no capillary entry pressure between the oil-saturated matrix and the injected \(\text {CO}_{2}\) , allowing foam to invade the matrix for efficient oil recovery.     

Electromagnetically induced polarization conversion

Electromagnetically induced transparency and polarization conversion due to interference between two polarization-selective plasmonic resonances coexisting in the same planar metamaterial are studied. The metasurface represents a periodic array of two topologically distinct metamolecules combined on the same substrate: i) monopole antennas connected to wires and supporting a high-Q resonance radiatively coupled to x-polarization, and ii) dipolar antennas supporting a low-Q resonance coupled to y-polarization. We demonstrate that due to the interaction between these modes through a capacitive coupling between the metamolecules, one can observe a circularly-polarized Electromagnetically Induced Transparency (EIT) and thereby achieve an efficient ultra-thin quarter-wave plate.     

Influence of MgO/CeO2 ratio on CO2-oxidative transformation of C2H6 to C2H4 over highly active and stable Cr/MgO(x)–CeO2(100−x) nanocatalysts

Cr/MgO(x)–CeO₂(100?x) nanocatalysts were synthesized by a coprecipitation method and characterized by X-ray diffraction (XRD) analysis, field-emission scanning electron microscopy (FESEM), energy-dispersive x-ray (EDX) spectroscopy, diffuse reflectance spectroscopy (DRS), and Brunauer–Emmett–Teller (BET) analysis. The effect of ceria addition on their physicochemical characteristics was investigated, and the results were correlated with their catalytic performance in oxidative dehydrogenation of ethane. A decrease in the size of the metal particles was found when adding a suitable content of ceria to the support. Crystalline Cr₂O₃ was not found in the calcined samples, indicating good dispersion of Cr species on the support. All samples showed nanosized particles with uniform morphology, with the best surface morphology for the Cr/MgO(50)–CeO₂(50) sample, on which the particle distribution mainly lay in the range of 40–60 nm. Variation of the amount of Ce in the support led to an enhancement of the Cr⁶⁺/Cr³⁺ ratio, with the highest value for the Cr/MgO(50)–CeO₂(50) sample. This catalyst effectively dehydrogenated ethane to ethylene with CO₂ at 700 °C even after 5 h on-stream, giving 42.76 % ethylene yield.