A peptide mimetic of an anti-CD4 monoclonal antibody by rational design

Inherited and somatic mutations in the adenomatous polyposis coli occur in most colon cancers, leading to activation of β-catenin-responsive genes. To identify small molecule antagonists of this pathway, we challenged transformed colorectal cells with a secondary structure-templated chemical library, looking for compounds that inhibit a β-catenin-responsive reporter. We identified ICG-001, a small molecule that down-regulates β-catenin/T cell factor signaling by specifically binding to cyclic AMP response element-binding protein. ICG-001 selectively induces apoptosis in transformed cells but not in normal colon cells, reduces in vitro growth of colon carcinoma cells, and is efficacious in the Min mouse and nude mouse xenograft models of colon cancer.

https://www.pnas.org/content/pnas/101/34/12682.full.pdf

A small molecule inhibitor of β-catenin/cyclic AMP response element-binding protein transcription

We consider a fully SAT-based method of unbounded symbolic model checking based on computing Craig interpolants. In benchmark studies using a set of large industrial circuit verification instances, this method is greatly more efficient than BDD-based symbolic model checking, and compares favorably to some recent SAT-based model checking methods on positive instances.

Interpolation and SAT-based model checking

Salmonella enterica infections are common causes of bloodstream infection in low-resource areas, where they may be difficult to distinguish from other febrile illnesses and may be associated with a high case fatality ratio. Microbiologic culture of blood or bone marrow remains the mainstay of laboratory diagnosis. Antimicrobial resistance has emerged in Salmonella enterica, initially to the traditional first-line drugs chloramphenicol, ampicillin, and trimethoprim-sulfamethoxazole. Decreased fluoroquinolone susceptibility and then fluoroquinolone resistance have developed in association with chromosomal mutations in the quinolone resistance-determining region of genes encoding DNA gyrase and topoisomerase IV and also by plasmid-mediated resistance mechanisms. Resistance to extended-spectrum cephalosporins has occurred more often in nontyphoidal than in typhoidal Salmonella strains. Azithromycin is effective for the management of uncomplicated typhoid fever and may serve as an alternative oral drug in areas where fluoroquinolone resistance is common. In 2013, CLSI lowered the ciprofloxacin susceptibility breakpoints to account for accumulating clinical, microbiologic, and pharmacokinetic-pharmacodynamic data suggesting that revision was needed for contemporary invasive Salmonella infections. Newly established CLSI guidelines for azithromycin and Salmonella enterica serovar Typhi were published in CLSI document M100 in 2015.

Epidemiology, Clinical Presentation, Laboratory Diagnosis, Antimicrobial Resistance, and Antimicrobial Management of Invasive Salmonella Infections

Solar water splitting is a promising approach to transform sunlight into renewable, sustainable and green hydrogen energy. There are three representative ways of transforming solar radiation into molecular hydrogen, which are the photocatalytic (PC), photoelectrochemical (PEC), and photovoltaic–electrolysis (PV–EC) routes. Having the future perspective of green hydrogen economy in mind, this review article discusses devices and systems for solar-to-hydrogen production including comparison of the above solar water splitting systems. The focus is placed on a critical assessment of the key components needed to scale up PEC water splitting systems such as materials efficiency, cost, elemental abundancy, stability, fuel separation, device operability, cell architecture, and techno-economic aspects of the systems. The review follows a stepwise approach and provides (i) a summary of the basic principles and photocatalytic materials employed for PEC water splitting, (ii) an extensive discussion of technologies, procedures, and system designs, and (iii) an introduction to international demonstration projects, and the development of benchmarked devices and large-scale prototype systems. The task of scaling up of laboratory overall water splitting devices to practical systems may be called “an artificial photosynthetic leaf-to-farm challenge”.

Toward practical solar hydrogen production - an artificial photosynthetic leaf-to-farm challenge.

An Antibody Delivery System for Regulated Expression of Therapeutic Levels of Monoclonal Antibodies In Vivo

An open randomized comparison of 2 days (Ofx2) versus 3 days (Ofx3) of oral ofloxacin treatment (15 mg/kg/day) was conducted with Vietnamese children between 1 and 15 years of age with suspected typhoid fever. Of 108 children enrolled, 100 were blood culture positive for Salmonella typhi, and 86% of the isolates were multidrug resistant. There were no significant adverse effects. The therapeutic responses were similar in both groups, with mean (+/- standard deviation) fever clearances of 107 +/- 60 h in the Ofx3 group and 100 +/- 64 h in the Ofx2 group (P > 0.2). There were six "clinical" failures in the Ofx2 group and two clinical failures in the Ofx3 group (P > 0.2), in which fever and symptoms persisted for more than 1 week after the start of treatment, but only one of these was culture positive (Ofx3). There was one suspected relapse, and one carrier was identified. Short courses of ofloxacin are simple, inexpensive, safe, and effective for the treatment of uncomplicated multidrug-resistant typhoid fever.

Two or three days of ofloxacin treatment for uncomplicated multidrug-resistant typhoid fever in children.

We propose a methodology to formally prove protocol compliance for communication blocks in System-on-Chip (SoC) designs. In this methodology, a set of operational properties is specified with respect to the states of a central finite state machine (FSM). This central FSM is called main FSM and controls the overall behavior of the design. In order to prove a set of compliance properties, we developed an approach that combines property checking on a bounded circuit model with an approximate reachability analysis. The property checker determines whether a property is valid for an arbitrary state of the design regardless of its reachability. In order to avoid false negatives, reachability constraints are added to the property, which are generated by an approximate FSM traversal algorithm. We show how the existence of a main FSM can be exploited systematically in the reachability analysis and how to partition both the transition relation and the state space such that the computational complexity is reduced drastically. This makes formal verification of protocol compliance tractable even for large designs with several thousand state variables. Our approach has been applied successfully to verify several industrial designs.

Unbounded Protocol Compliance Verification Using Interval Property Checking With Invariants

Pendant dual sulfonated poly(arylene ether ketone) proton exchange membranes for fuel cell application

Proper satellite-based crop monitoring applications at the farm-level often require near-daily imagery at medium to high spatial resolution. The combination of data from different ongoing satellite missions Sentinel 2 (ESA) and Landsat 7/8 (NASA) provides this unprecedented opportunity at a global scale; however, this is rarely implemented because these procedures are data demanding and computationally intensive. This study developed a robust stream processing for the harmonization of Landsat 7, Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 in the Google Earth Engine cloud platform, connecting the benefit of coherent data structure, built-in functions and computational power in the Google Cloud. The harmonized surface reflectance images were generated for two agricultural schemes in Bekaa (Lebanon) and Ninh Thuan (Vietnam) during 2018–2019. We evaluated the performance of several pre-processing steps needed for the harmonization including the image co-registration,
Bidirectional Reflectance Distribution Functions correction, topographic correction, and band adjustment. We found that the misregistration between Landsat 8 and Sentinel 2 images varied from 10 m in Ninh Thuan (Vietnam) to 32 m in Bekaa (Lebanon), and posed a great impact on the quality of the final harmonized data set if not treated. Analysis of a pair of overlapped L8-S2 images over the Bekaa region showed that, after the harmonization, all band-to-band spatial correlations were greatly improved. Finally, we demonstrated an application of the dense harmonized data set for crop mapping and monitoring. An harmonic (Fourier) analysis was applied to fit the detected unimodal, bimodal and trimodal shapes in the temporal NDVI patterns during one crop year in Ninh Thuan province. The derived phase and amplitude values of the crop cycles were combined with max-NDVI as an R-G-B false composite image. The final image was able to highlight croplands in bright colors (high phase and amplitude), while the non-crop areas were shown with grey/dark (low phase and amplitude). The harmonized data sets (with 30 m spatial resolution) along with the Google Earth Engine scripts used are provided for public use.

/pdf/harmonization-of-landsat-and-sentinel-2-for-crop-monitoring-3q9ltvvtvm.pdf

Minh Nguyen

Papers

An Antibody Delivery System for Regulated Expression of Therapeutic Levels of Monoclonal Antibodies In Vivo

Two or three days of ofloxacin treatment for uncomplicated multidrug-resistant typhoid fever in children.

Unbounded Protocol Compliance Verification Using Interval Property Checking With Invariants

Pendant dual sulfonated poly(arylene ether ketone) proton exchange membranes for fuel cell application

Harmonization of Landsat and Sentinel 2 for Crop Monitoring in Drought Prone Areas: Case Studies of Ninh Thuan (Vietnam) and Bekaa (Lebanon)