Effect of lectins from Diocleinae subtribe against oral Streptococci

Surface colonization is an essential step in biofilm development. The ability of oral pathogens to adhere to tooth surfaces is directly linked with the presence of specific molecules at the bacterial surface that can interact with enamel acquired pellicle ligands. In light of this, the aim of this study was to verify inhibitory and antibiofilm action of lectins from the Diocleinaesubtribe against Streptococcus mutans and Streptococcus oralis. The inhibitory action against planctonic cells was assessed using lectins from Canavaliaensi formis (ConA), Canavalia brasiliensis (ConBr), Canavalia maritima (ConM), Canavalia gladiata (CGL) and Canavalia boliviana (ConBol). ConBol, ConBr and ConM showed inhibitory activity on S. mutans growth. All lectins, except ConA, stimulated significantly the growth of S. oralis. To evaluate the effect on biofilm formation, clarified saliva was added to 96-well, flat-bottomed polystyrene plates, followed by the addition of solutions containing 100 or 200 μg/mL of the selected lectins. ConBol, ConM and ConA inhibited the S. mutans biofilms. No effects were found on S. oralis biofilms. Structure/function analysis were carried out using bioinformatics tools. The aperture and deepness of the CRD (Carbohydrate Recognition Domain) permit us to distinguish the two groups of Canavalia lectins in accordance to their actions against S. mutans and S. oralis. The results found provide a basis for encouraging the use of plant lectins as biotechnological tools in ecological control and prevention of caries disease.     

Electron interaction with nitromethane embedded in helium droplets: attachment and ionization measurements

Results of a detailed study on electron interactions with nitromethane (CH(3)NO(2)) embedded in helium nanodroplets are reported. Anionic and cationic products formed are analysed by mass spectrometry. When the doped helium droplets are irradiated with low-energy electrons of about 2 eV kinetic energy, exclusively parent cluster anions (CH(3)NO(2))(n)(-) are formed. At 8.5 eV, three anion cluster series are observed, i.e., (CH(3)NO(2))(n)(-), [(CH(3)NO(2))(n)-H](-), and (CH(3)NO(2))(n)NO(2)(-), the latter being the most abundant. The results obtained for anions are compared with previous electron attachment studies with bare nitromethane and nitromethane condensed on a surface. The cation chemistry (induced by electron ionization of the helium matrix at 70 eV and subsequent charge transfer from He(+) to the dopant cluster) is dominated by production of methylated and protonated nitromethane clusters, (CH(3)NO(2))(n)CH(3)(+) and (CH(3)NO(2))(n)H(+).     

Low-level laser therapy promotes vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-1 expression in endothelial and nonendothelial cells of mice gastrocnemius exposed to snake venom

Crotalinae snake venoms cause severe local myonecrosis and microvasculature failure at the bite site. We evaluated whether low-level laser therapy (LLLT) could accelerate angiogenesis and myoregeneration in male Swiss mice injected with Bothrops moojeni venom through immunohistochemistry of the vascular endothelial growth factor receptor-1 (VEGFR-1). Envenomed gastrocnemius was either unirradiated (V) or irradiated with HeNe (VHN, 632.8 nm) or GaAs (VGA, 904 nm, 10000 Hz). Animals sacrificed at 3 and 12 h were irradiated once (4 J cm(-2)), at 24 h (twice) and at 3, 7, 21 days (4, 8, 22 times, respectively). At 3 days, LLLT increased angiogenesis (80%:HeNe vs 40%:GaAs), decreased neutrophils and increased proliferation of regenerating cells. However, after 21 days, myoregeneration observed in the VHN group appeared delayed compared with the V group. As LLLT improved revascularization, the suggestive delay in myoregeneration could be a dose-response inhibitory effect caused by multiple irradiations in myogenesis. The immunodetection of VEGFR-1 in neutrophils, macrophages, satellite cells, fibroblasts, Schwann cells and skeletal and smooth muscle fibers (not seen in saline-controls) at only the acute stages of envenoming suggests a mediator role for VEGFR-1 in local alterations. This is the first time that VEGFR-1 expression, and its modulation by photostimulation, has been demonstrated in endothelial and nonendothelial cells of snake envenomed skeletal muscle.     

A finite element dynamical nonlinear subscale approximation for the low Mach number flow equations

In this work we propose a variational multiscale finite element approximation of thermally coupled low speed flows. The physical model is described by the low Mach number equations, which are obtained as a limit of the compressible Navier–Stokes equations in the small Mach number regime. In contrast to the commonly used Boussinesq approximation, this model permits to take volumetric deformation into account. Although the former is more general than the latter, both systems have similar mathematical structure and their numerical approximation can suffer from the same type of instabilities.     

Elective course planning

Efficient planning increasingly becomes an indispensable tool for management of both companies and public organizations. This is also the case for high school management in Denmark, because the growing individual freedom of the students to choose courses makes planning much more complex. Due to reforms, elective courses are today an important part of the curriculum, and elective courses are a good way to make high school education more attractive for the students. In this article, the problem of planning the elective courses is modeled using integer programming and three different solution approaches are suggested, including a Branch-and-Price framework using partial Dantzig-Wolfe decomposition. Explicit Constraint Branching is used to enhance the solution process, both on the original IP model and in the Branch-and-Price algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, no exact algorithm for the Elective Course Planning Problem has been described in the literature before. The proposed algorithms are tested on data sets from 98 of the 150 high schools in Denmark. The tests show that for the majority of the problems, the optimal solution can be obtained within the one hour time bound. Furthermore the suggested algorithms achieve better results than the currently applied meta-heuristic.     

Establishing strong connectivity using optimal radius half-disk antennas

Given a set S of points in the plane representing wireless devices, each point equipped with a directional antenna of radius r and aperture angle $\alpha ?180\mathrm{°}$, our goal is to find orientations and a minimum r for these antennas such that the induced communication graph is strongly connected. We show that $r=\sqrt{3}$ if $\alpha \in [180\mathrm{°},240\mathrm{°})$, $r=\sqrt{2}$ if $\alpha \in [240\mathrm{°},270\mathrm{°})$, $r=2\sin (36\mathrm{°})$ if $\alpha \in [270\mathrm{°},288\mathrm{°})$, and $r=1$ if $\alpha ?288\mathrm{°}$ suffices to establish strong connectivity, assuming that the longest edge in the Euclidean minimum spanning tree of S is 1. These results are worst-case optimal and match the lower bounds presented in [I. Caragiannis, C. Kaklamanis, E. Kranakis, D. Krizanc, A. Wiese, Communication in wireless networks with directional antennae, in: Proc. of the 20th Symp. on Parallelism in Algorithms and Architectures, 2008, pp. 344–351]. In contrast, $r=2$ is sometimes necessary when $\alpha <180\mathrm{°}$.     

Lower semicontinuity and relaxation of signed functionals with linear growth in the context of {\mathcal A}-quasiconvexity

A lower semicontinuity and relaxation result with respect to weak-* convergence of measures is derived for functionals of the form $$\mu \in \mathcal{M}(\Omega; \mathbb{R}^d) \to \int \limits_\Omega f(\mu^a(x))\,{\rm {d}}x +\int \limits_\Omega f^\infty \left( \frac{{\rm{d}}\mu^s}{d|\mu^s|}(x)\right) \, d| \mu^s|(x),$$ where admissible sequences {μ _n } are such that ${\{{\mathcal{A}}\mu_{n}\}}$ converges to zero strongly in ${W^{-1 q}_{\rm loc}(\Omega)}$ and ${\mathcal {A}}$ is a partial differential operator with constant rank. The integrand f has linear growth and L ^∞-bounds from below are not assumed.     

The consultation timetabling problem at Danish high schools

In the different stages of the educational system, the demand for efficient planning is increasing. This article treats the $\mathcal NP $ NP -hard Consultation Timetabling Problem, a recurrent planning problem for the high schools in Denmark, which has not been described in the literature before. Two versions of the problem are considered, the Parental Consultation Timetabling Problem (PCTP) and the Supervisor Consultation Timetabling Problem (SCTP). It is shown that both problems can be modeled using the same Integer Programming model. Solutions are found using the state-of-the-art MIP solver Gurobi and Adaptive Large Neighborhood Search (ALNS), and computational results are established using 300 real-life datasets. These tests show that the developed ALNS algorithm is significantly outperforming both Gurobi and a currently applied heuristic for the PCTP. For both the PCTP and the SCTP, it is shown that the ALNS algorithm in average provides results within 5 % of optimum. The developed algorithm has been implemented in the commercial product Lectio, and is therefore available for approximately 95 % of the Danish high schools.