Selective encapsulation of volatile and reactive methyl iodide

A simple organic molecular container can selectively encapsulate the volatile and highly reactive MeI through hydrogen-bonding interactions in solution. The remarkable encapsulation of MeI without self-methylation of the container appears to be determined by the complementary binding sites and the rigidity of the hydrogen-bonding array constrained by the molecular framework.     

Synthesis,Structural Characterization and Biological Activity of Cu(II) Compounds Incorporating Pyrazole‐derived Ligand: Effect on Cell Growth in Human Colorectal Carcinoma

A series of Cu(II) compounds containing neutral multi‐dentate ligand [2,6‐diisopropylphenyl]‐bis[(1‐H‐pyrazol‐1‐yl)methyl]amine ( L₁ ) and pyrazole dimethoxethyl ligand [(1‐H‐pyrazol‐1‐yl)methyl]‐bis(2‐methoxyethyl)amine ( L₂ ) were synthesized. Reactions of L₁ and L₂ with copper(II) chloride generate L₁CuCl₂ ( 1 ) and L₂CuCl₂ ( 2 ), respectively. Compounds 1 and 2 have been characterized by elemental analysis and X‐ray single crystal diffractometry. The effects of compounds 1 and 2 on the cell viability of various human cancer cells (including A549, COLO 205, HT‐29, Hep3B, HepG2, Huh7, and PCL5 cells) were investigated. The results indicate that compound 2 has a strong inhibitory effect on cell growth in human colorectal carcinoma cells (COLO 205 cells and HT‐29 cells).     

Embedding evolutionary strategy in ordinal optimization for hard optimization problems

This work proposes a method for embedding evolutionary strategy (ES) in ordinal optimization (OO), abbreviated as ESOO, for solving real-time hard optimization problems with time-consuming evaluation of the objective function and a huge discrete solution space. Firstly, an approximate model that is based on a radial basis function (RBF) network is utilized to evaluate approximately the objective value of a solution. Secondly, ES associated with the approximate model is applied to generate a representative subset from a huge discrete solution space. Finally, the optimal computing budget allocation (OCBA) technique is adopted to select the best solution in the representative subset as the obtained “good enough” solution. The proposed method is applied to a hotel booking limits (HBL) problem, which is formulated as a stochastic combinatorial optimization problem with a huge discrete solution space. The good enough booking limits, obtained by the proposed method, have promising solution quality, and the computational efficiency of the method makes it suitable for real-time applications. To demonstrate the computational efficiency of the proposed method and the quality of the obtained solution, it is compared with two competing methods – the canonical ES and the genetic algorithm (GA). Test results demonstrate that the proposed approach greatly outperforms the canonical ES and GA.     

An agent-based system to discover protein-protein interactions, identify protein complexes and proteins with multiple peptide mass fingerprints

Proteins "work together" by actually binding to form multicomponent complexes that carry out specific functions. Proteomic analyses based on the mass spectrum are now key methods to determine the components in protein complexes. The protein-protein interaction or functional association may be known to exist among the extracted protein spots while analyzing the proteins on the 2D gel. In this study, we develop an agent-based system, namely AgentMultiProtIdent, which integrated two protein identification tools and a variety of databases storing relations among proteins and used to discover protein-protein interactions and protein functional associations, and identify protein complexes and proteins with multiple peptide mass fingerprints as input. The system takes Multiple Peptide Mass Fingerprints (PMFs) as a whole in the protein complex or protein identification. With the relations among proteins, it may greatly improve the accuracy of identification of protein complexes. Also, possible relationship of the multiple peptide mass fingerprints, such as ontology relation, can be discovered by our system, especially in the identification of protein complexes. The agent-based system is now available on the Web at http://dbms104.csie.ncu.edu.tw/ approximately protein/NEW2/.