Women in the Boardroom: Stepping up to the Challenge

The Business Law Program examines an important trend in the post-Enron world: how women are changing corporate governance

Characterisation and calibration of a scintillating fibre detector with > 4000 multi-anode photomultiplier channels

In the Kaos spectrometer at the Mainz Microtron a high-resolution coordinate detector for high-energy particles is operated. It consists of scintillating fibres with diameters of 4000 multi-anode photomultiplier channels. It is one of the most modern focal-plane detectors for magnetic spectrometers world-wide. To correct variations in the detection efficiency, caused by the different gains and the different optical transmittances, a fully automated off-line calibration procedure has been developed. The process includes the positioning of a radioisotope source alongside the detector plane and the automated acquisition and analysis of the detector signals. It was possible to characterise and calibrate each individual fibre channel with a low degree of human interaction.Comment: Nucl. Instrum. Meth. A (2012

Rational, computer-aided design of multi-target ligands : poster presentation from 6th German Conference on Chemoinformatics, GCC 2010, Goslar, Germany. 7-9 November 2010

Over the past two decades the “one drug – one target – one disease” concept became the prevalent paradigm in drug discovery. The main idea of this approach is the identification of a single protein target whose inhibition leads to a successful treatment of the examined disease. The predominant assumption is that highly selective ligands would avoid unwanted side effects caused by binding to secondary non-therapeutic targets. In recent years the results of post-genomic and network biology showed that proteins rarely act in isolated systems but rather as a part of a highly connected network [1]. In addition this connectivity leads to more robust systems that cannot be interfered by the inhibition of a single target of that network and consequently might not lead to the desired therapeutic effect [2]. Furthermore studies prove that robust systems are rather affected by weak inhibitions of several parts than by a complete inhibition of a single selected element of that system [3]. Therefore there is an increasing interest in developing drugs that take effect on multiple targets simultaneously but is concurrently a great challenge for medicinal chemists. There has to be a sufficient activity on each target as well as an adequate pharmacokinetic profile [4]. Early design strategies tried to link the pharmacophors of known inhibitors, however these methods often lead to high molecular weight and low ligand efficacy. We present a new rational approach based on a retrosynthetic combinatorial analysis procedure [5] on approved ligands of multiple targets. These RECAP fragments are used to design a large combinatorial library containing molecules featuring chemical properties of each ligand class. The molecules are further validated by machine learning models, like random forests and self-organizing maps, regarding their activity on the targets of interest

All Rise!

Topical issues met the dramatic arts in three innovative programs staged by the School of Law and local theaters. Real-life drama ensued in the racial tensions of Hairspray, death-penalty cases came to life in The Exonerated, and the arguments raged anew in Brown v. Board of Education