A microwave dielectric biosensor based on suspended distributed MEMS transmission lines

Design and characterization of a miniature microwave dielectric biosensor based on distributed microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) transmission lines (DMTL) is reported in this paper. The biosensor has been realized by bonding the DMTL device with an acrylic fluidic channel. In order to demonstrate the sensing mechanism, the sensor is used to detect the small variation of the concentration of aqueous glucose solutions by measuring the electromagnetic resonant frequency shift of the device. It is observed from the results that the second notch of the reflection coefficient (S-11) varies from 7.66 to 7.93 GHz and the third notch of the reflection coefficient varies from 15.81 to 15.24 GHz when the concentration of the glucose solution ranges from 0 to 347 mg/ml, which indicates that higher order notches have higher sensitivities if looking at the absolute change in frequency

Fast user-level inter-thread communication, synchronisation

This project concerns the design and implementation of user-level inter-thread synchronisation and communication algorithms. A number of these algorithms have been implemented on the SMASH user-level thread scheduler for symmetric multiprocessors and multicore processors. All inter-thread communication primitives considered have two implementations: the lock-based implementation and the lock-free implementation. The performance of concurrent programs using these user-level primitives are measured and analyzed against the performance of programs using kernel-level inter-thread communication primitives. Besides, the differences between the lock- based implementations and lock-free implementations are also analyzed.peer-reviewe

Expression of CPI-17 in smooth muscle during embryonic development and in neointimal lesion formation.

Ca(2+) sensitivity of smooth muscle (SM) contraction is determined by CPI-17, an inhibitor protein for myosin light chain phosphatase (MLCP). CPI-17 is highly expressed in mature SM cells, but the expression level varies under pathological conditions. Here, we determined the expression of CPI-17 in embryonic SM tissues and arterial neointimal lesions using immunohistochemistry. As seen in adult animals, the predominant expression of CPI-17 was detected at SM tissues on mouse embryonic sections, whereas MLCP was ubiquitously expressed. Compared with SM alpha-actin, CPI-17 expression doubled in arterial SM from embryonic day E10 to E14. Like SM alpha-actin and other SM marker proteins, CPI-17 was expressed in embryonic heart, and the expression was down-regulated at E17. In adult rat, CPI-17 expression level was reduced to 30% in the neointima of injured rat aorta, compared with the SM layers, whereas the expression of MLCP was unchanged in both regions. Unlike other SM proteins, CPI-17 was detected at non-SM organs in the mouse embryo, such as embryonic neurons and epithelium. Thus, CPI-17 expression is reversibly controlled in response to the phenotype transition of SM cells that restricts the signal to differentiated SM cells and particular cell types

Protein flexibility is key to cisplatin crosslinking in calmodulin

Chemical crosslinking in combination with Fourier transform ion cyclotron resonance mass spectrometry (FTICR MS) has significant potential for studying protein structures and proteinprotein interactions. Previously, cisplatin has been shown to be a crosslinker and crosslinks multiple methionine (Met) residues in apo-calmodulin (apo-CaM). However, the inter-residue distances obtained from nuclear magnetic resonance structures are inconsistent with the measured distance constraints by crosslinking. Met residues lie too far apart to be crosslinked by cisplatin. Here, by combining FTICR MS with a novel computational flexibility analysis, the flexible nature of the CaM structure is found to be key to cisplatin crosslinking in CaM. It is found that the side chains of Met residues can be brought together by flexible motions in both apo-CaM and calcium-bound CaM (Ca4-CaM). The possibility of cisplatin crosslinking Ca4-CaM is then confirmed by MS data. Therefore, flexibility analysis as a fast and low-cost computational method can be a useful tool for predicting crosslinking pairs in protein crosslinking analysis and facilitating MS data analysis. Finally, flexibility analysis also indicates that the crosslinking of platinum to pairs of Met residues will effectively close the nonpolar groove and thus will likely interfere with the binding of CaM to its protein targets, as was proved by comparing assays for cisplatin-modified/unmodified CaM binding to melittin. Collectively, these results suggest that cisplatin crosslinking of apo-CaM or Ca4-CaM can inhibit the ability of CaM to recognize its target proteins, which may have important implications for understanding the mechanism of tumor resistance to platinum anticancer drugs

Remarks on the Scalar Graviton Decoupling and Consistency of Horava Gravity

Recently Horava proposed a renormalizable gravity theory with higher derivatives by abandoning the Lorenz invariance in UV. But there have been confusions regarding the extra scalar graviton mode and the consistency of the Horava model. I reconsider these problems and show that, in the Minkowski vacuum background, the scalar graviton mode can be consistency decoupled from the usual tensor graviton modes by imposing the (local) Hamiltonian as well as the momentum constraints.Comment: Some clarifications regarding the projectable case added, Typos corrected, Comments (Footnote No.9, Note Added) added, References updated, Accepted in CQ