Optimal life strategies in organisms exposed to recurrent critical events

The optimal partition of energy between survival and reproduction is considered for a population subject to recurrent and potentially lethal critical events. The best strategy is found by maximizing fitness, a functional derived from the Lotka equation. The dynamics is governed by a second-order, age-varying, nonlinear system. The energy storage and the probability of survival are the state variables, while the amounts of energy placed into and withdrawn from the storage are the controls. The optimal life strategy is shown to be as follows: build up the storage at the very beginning of life, and then progressively deplete it to resist the critical events.This work was partially supported by MURST Project Ricerche sui Fondamenti della Conservazione della Natura. The authors would like to thank C. Ricci for suggesting the problem and C. Matessi for helpful discussion.     

Cyclical games with prohibitions

We consider a certain combinatorial game on a digraph for two cases of the price function. For one case the game in question extends the cyclical game studied in Ehrenfeucht and Mycielski (1979) and Gurvitch, Karzanov and Khachiyan (1988) which, in its turn, is a generalization of the well-known problem of finding a minimum mean cycle in an edge-weighted digraph. We prove the existence of optimal uniform stationary strategies for both cases and give algorithms to find such strategies.This work was partially supported by Chaire municipale, Mairie de Grenoble.     

新工科视阈下石油化工类高校应用化学专业课程体系重构

Taking a typical local and industry-orientated applied chemistry major as an example with focusing on the major changes in the form and content of the petrochemical industry, the way to reform the core curriculum system and teaching contents is presented. Based on the changing tendency of refinement of the petrochemical industry, a complete curriculum system with distinctive industry characteristics is set up according to the principles of the emerging engineering education (3E) with several reasonable suggestions. A new model for the construction of a 3E major in chemistry-related majors is suggested. It is a good reference for the construction of curriculum systems for other local and industry-orientated colleges who want to make 3E reform.     

液相组合合成的纯化方法

综述了近8年来液相平行合成和组合合成中应用的不同技术, 包括可溶性载体、氟合成技术、离子液体、固相试剂树脂以及低聚乙烯二醇(OEG)衍生物的应用等几方面内容. 论述了它们的基本原理以及相关的应用实例, 并着重强调了目标化合物的分离纯化方法.     

Unraveling the mystery of efficacy in Chinese medicine formula: New approaches and technologies for research on pharmacodynamic substances

Traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) is the key to unlock treasures of Chinese civilization. TCM and its compound play a beneficial role in medical activities to cure diseases, especially in major public health events such as novel coronavirus epidemics across the globe. The chemical composition in Chinese medicine formula is complex and diverse, but their effective substances resemble “mystery boxes”. Revealing their active ingredients and their mechanisms of action has become focal point and difficulty of research for herbalists. Although the existing research methods are numerous and constantly updated iteratively, there is remain a lack of prospective reviews. Hence, this paper provides a comprehensive account of existing new approaches and technologies based on previous studies with an in vitro to in vivo perspective. In addition, the bottlenecks of studies on Chinese medicine formula effective substances are also revealed. Especially, we look ahead to new perspectives, technologies and applications for its future development. This work reviews based on new perspectives to open horizons for the future research. Consequently, herbal compounding pharmaceutical substances study should carry on the essence of TCM while pursuing innovations in the field.     

Solid-phase synthesis of lipidated peptides

A new flexible and efficient methodology for the solid-phase synthesis of lipidated peptides has been developed. The approach is based on the use of previously synthesized building blocks and overcomes the limitations of previously reported methods, since long doubly lipidated peptides can be synthesized by using this route. Furthermore, it was thus possible to prepare a large number of N- and H-Ras peptides bearing a wide range of reporter and/or linking groups--efficient tools for the investigation of biological processes. In terms of efficiency and flexibility this solid-phase method is superior to the solution-phase synthesis. It gives pure peptides in multimilligram amounts within a much shorter time and with superior overall yield.     

Improving (Q)SAR predictions by examining bias in the selection of compounds for experimental testing

ABSTRACT

Existing data on structures and biological activities are limited and distributed unevenly across distinct molecular targets and chemical compounds. The question arises if these data represent an unbiased sample of the general population of chemical-biological interactions. To answer this question, we analyzed ChEMBL data for 87,583 molecules tested against 919 protein targets using supervised and unsupervised approaches. Hierarchical clustering of the Murcko frameworks generated using Chemistry Development Toolkit showed that the available data form a big diffuse cloud without apparent structure. In contrast hereto, PASS-based classifiers allowed prediction whether the compound had been tested against the particular molecular target, despite whether it was active or not. Thus, one may conclude that the selection of chemical compounds for testing against specific targets is biased, probably due to the influence of prior knowledge. We assessed the possibility to improve (Q)SAR predictions using this fact: PASS prediction of the interaction with the particular target for compounds predicted as tested against the target has significantly higher accuracy than for those predicted as untested (average ROC AUC are about 0.87 and 0.75, respectively). Thus, considering the existing bias in the data of the training set may increase the performance of virtual screening.     

An iterative acetylene-epoxide coupling strategy for the total synthesis of longimicin C

Longimicin C, a naturally occurring annonaceous acetogenin possessing a C₂-symmetrical bis-THF moiety and a short hydrocarbon chain between its THF-containing region and a terminal γ-lactone, was synthesized for the first time. The total synthesis was successfully achieved by an iterative acetylene-epoxide coupling strategy. d-Mannitol was used to establish the bis-THF-containing segment, in which the additional stereochemistries were introduced by Sharpless dihydroxylations and intramolecular Williamson etherifications. Regioselective epoxide-openings by the appropriate terminal acetylenes allowed coupling and elaboration of all four fragments including the introduction of three essential hydroxyls into the proper sites of the target skeleton.     

借鉴梅西大学经验开展农科有机化学在线教学

Massey University is a world-leading university in remote-instruction, online and mixed teaching based on the Stream teaching platform. This paper analyzed the advantages of the Stream teaching platform, resource utilization, course format, teaching team cooperation and course evaluation in Massey University. The paper also analyzed the enlightenment of teaching experience of Massey University to undergraduate teaching. During the outbreak of COVID-19 epidemic, drawing on Massey's experience, combined with the rapid development of information technology in China, the teaching team of organic chemistry adopted the multi-teaching strategy of "teacher-centered and student-centered", and the teaching mode of "teacher-led and self-taught by students". The online teaching practice of organic chemistry was carried out in agriculture university. It has been demonstrated that this model can effectively improve teaching effects.     

Designing a contaminated soil sampling strategy for human health risk assessment

Human health risk assessment is a site-based approach used to identify the potential health hazards which are induced by an old site contamination. For a proper evaluation of the daily doses of contaminants to which people will be exposed given the future occupation of the site, both a characterization and a quantification of soil pollution are needed. Such information can be provided by soil sampling. Thus the choice of the location, the number, depth and type of soil samples is very important and ought to follow a well-defined strategy. A review of contaminated site sampling practices in Europe and North America could not identify any completely formalized sampling strategy for human health risk assessment. On the contrary there are several approaches which can be roughly classified into two categories: a systematic sampling scheme over the whole site, on the one hand, and a sampling design driven by an initial knowledge of the contamination sources and fitted to the suspected pollution pattern, on the other. The first approach provides a complete coverage of the site but it may be rather expensive and entail useless sampling. The performance of the second depends on the quality of prior information. Actually both methods can be combined as explained hereafter. In view of the specificity of each site, the requirements of health risk assessment and the time and cost constraints, it seems difficult to work out a typical soil sampling strategy suitable for all sites. However, some recommendations can be made according to the site dimensions, the nature, degree and heterogeneity of contamination, and the (future) use of the site. The scientist should thus rely on a thorough examination of all available information (site history, geology and hydrogeology, soil properties, contaminants behaviour , etc.) to delimit contaminated areas as homogeneous as possible and then distribute the sampling points (e.g.using a sampling grid). They should also take the potential exposure paths into account in order to define the areas and soil strata to be sampled as a priority. Statistical and geostatistical tools can be helpful for formulating a sampling strategy as well as for interpreting the collected data. Received: 7 December 2001 Accepted: 24 February 2002