Two Possible Strategies for Drug Modification of Gemcitabine and Future Contributions to Personalized Medicine

Drug repurposing is an emerging strategy, which uses already approved drugs for new medical indications. One such drug is gemcitabine, an anticancer drug that only works at high doses since a portion is deactivated in the serum, which causes toxicity. In this review, two methods were discussed that could improve the anticancer effect of gemcitabine. The first is a chemical modification by conjugation with cell-penetrating peptides, namely penetratin, pVEC, and different kinds of CPP6, which mostly all showed an increased anticancer effect. The other method is combining gemcitabine with repurposed drugs, namely itraconazole, which also showed great cancer cell inhibition growth. Besides these two strategies, physiologically based pharmacokinetic models (PBPK models) are also the key for predicting drug distribution based on physiological data, which is very important for personalized medicine, so that the correct drug and dosage regimen can be administered according to each patient’s physiology. Taking all of this into consideration, it is believed that gemcitabine can be repurposed to have better anticancer effects.     

Applying Text Analytics for Studying Research Trends in Dependability

The dependability of systems and networks has been the target of research for many years now. In the 1970s, what is now known as the top conference on dependability—The IEEE/IFIP International Conference on Dependable Systems and Networks (DSN)—emerged gathering international researchers and sparking the interest of the scientific community. Although it started in niche systems, nowadays dependability is viewed as highly important in most computer systems. The goal of this work is to analyze the research published in the proceedings of well-established dependability conferences (i.e., DSN, International Symposium on Software Reliability Engineering (ISSRE), International Symposium on Reliable Distributed Systems (SRDS), European Dependable Computing Conference (EDCC), Latin-American Symposium on Dependable Computing (LADC), Pacific Rim International Symposium on Dependable Computing (PRDC)), while using Natural Language Processing (NLP) and namely the Latent Dirichlet Allocation (LDA) algorithm to identify active, collapsing, ephemeral, and new lines of research in the dependability field. Results show a strong emphasis on terms, like ‘security’, despite the general focus of the conferences in dependability and new trends that are related with ’machine learning’ and ‘blockchain’. We used the PRDC conference as a use case, which showed similarity with the overall set of conferences, although we also found specific terms, like ‘cyber-physical’, being popular at PRDC and not in the overall dataset.     

A multi-parametric programming approach for multilevel hierarchical and decentralised optimisation problems

In this paper, we outline the foundations of a general global optimisation strategy for the solution of multilevel hierarchical and general decentralised multilevel problems, based on our recent developments on multi-parametric programming and control theory. The core idea is to recast each optimisation subproblem, present in the hierarchy, as a multi-parametric programming problem, with parameters being the optimisation variables belonging to the remaining subproblems. This then transforms the multilevel problem into single-level linear/convex optimisation problems. For decentralised systems, where more than one optimisation problem is present at each level of the hierarchy, Nash equilibrium is considered. A three person dynamic optimisation problem is presented to illustrate the mathematical developments.     

Inclusion of Polyphenol Oxidase Substrates in β-Cyclodextrin: A 1 H-NMR Study

A ¹H-NMR study of the interactionsbetween -cyclodextrin (-CD) and included phenolic molecules (chloragenic acid and caffeic acid ) in aqueous medium is reported. The results confirm that inclusion occurs. Data analysis by the continuous variation method shows that all the complexes have 1 : 1 stoichiometries. Values for the apparent association constants of the inclusion compounds are estimated and compared with previously reported values.     

Gas chromatographic-mass spectrometric method for quantification of 3-chloro-4-(dichloromethyl)-5-hydroxy-2[5H]-furanone in chlorinated water samples

A method for the determination of 3-chloro-4-(dichloromethyl)-5-hydroxy-2[5H]-furanone (MX), in drinking water by GC-MS with a limit of detection of 3.0 microg/l and a limit of quantification of 7.0 microg/l is presented. Clean-up by SPE and extraction of water samples with dichloromethane were carried out before the preconcentration of MX, which was derivatized directly in the injector of the GC, and the MX trimethylsilyl derivative was identified and quantitatively determined by MS.     

Distribution of film orientations in free and strained foams

We show that the distribution of film orientations in a free (i.e., unstrained) foam cluster, though in general not uniform, has the same second moments as a uniform distribution. This is, however, in general not true of its other moments, which reflects the internal order of film orientations imposed by Plateau's laws. For a strained cluster, we relate the deviations of the second moments of the orientation distribution from their values for an unstrained cluster, to the stresses acting on the cluster. Our predictions are corroborated by experimental results for free and strained two-dimensional clusters, allowing us to find the force on a cluster bounded by two parallel walls.     

Twist impeded self-diffusion in a cholesteric

Molecular self-diffusion along the pitch axis of a twisted nematic is measured by its motional averaging effect on the deuterium quadrupole interaction. The diffusion constant is found to decrease as the pitch length is decreased. This result is explained by simple phenomenological considerations and is consistent with published viscosity measurements.     

Symmetry-breaking transitions and dissociation of two-dimensional Plateau borders

We have experimentally studied the dissociation/coalescence of internal Plateau borders (PBs) in simple monolayer bubble clusters, as a result of changing the liquid fraction. At large liquid content, the clusters consist of n bubbles of the same size, symmetrically placed around an internal n-sided PB (n-PB). On decreasing the liquid fraction we observed symmetry-breaking transitions in the 4- and 5-bubble clusters (but not in the 3-bubble cluster), followed by dissociation of the PBs. We used the Surface Evolver to determine the various equilibrium configurations of the corresponding two-dimensional wet clusters and their surface energies. The sequence of 4-bubble cluster configurations observed on varying the liquid fraction correlates qualitatively with that predicted on the basis of Surface Evolver calculations. The same is not true of the 5-bubble cluster.