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Radioactive iodine in nuclear waste is increasingly harmful to nature with continuous development and utilization of nuclear energy. Herein, two new two-dimensional covalent-organic frameworks (COFs, TJNU-201 and TJNU-202) were designed and synthesized by using sterically hindered 1,3,5-trimethyl-2,4,6-tris(4-aminophenyl)-benzene as a three-connected building block. Both COFs showed ultrahigh iodine capture capacity (5.625 g/g for TJNU-201 and 4.820 g/g for TJNU-202), which can be attributed to the physical-chemical adsorption. National Research Foundation (NRF) Submitted/Accepted version This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation of China (21771138) and the Natural Science Foundation of Tianjin (16JCYBJC19700). This research was also supported by the Singapore National Research Foundation Investigatorship (NRF-NRFI2018-03).

International audience; Adaptive coordination-driven supramolecular chemistry based on conformationally flexible pre-organized luminescent Cu(I) precursors paves the way to the ready formation of intricate supramolecular scaffold possessing intrinsic luminescence properties. A formal ring extension of a tetrametallic Cu(I) metallacycle bearing Thermally Activated Delayed Fluorescence (TADF) properties can thus be carried out, affording a new hexametallic Cu(I) metallacycle 1 bearing modulated solid-state TADF properties. Attempts to adapt this ring extension process to the formation of targeted heterometallic Au2Cu4 and Pt2Cu8 assemblies led to the unexpected and ready formation of the Au2Cu10 and Pt4Cu11 derivatives 2 and 3, respectively. These outcomes strengthen the scope and perspectives of adaptive coordination-driven supramolecular chemistry compared to those of conventional coordination-driven supramolecular chemistry. Indeed, it guides concerted intramolecular fragmentation and redistribution of the particular building blocks used, affording selectively supramolecular scaffolds of higher nuclearity and complexity. The study of the solid-state photophysical properties of the assemblies 2 and 3 highlights enhanced and original behaviors, in which the heavy metal spin-orbit coupling values significantly influence the relaxation processes centered on the Cu(I) metal centers.

The past 20 years have witnessed tremendous advances in the field of porous materials, including the development of novel metal–organic frameworks (MOFs) that show great potential for practical applications aimed at addressing global environmental and industrial challenges. A critical tool enabling this progress has been reticular chemistry, through which researchers can design materials that exhibit highly regular (i.e., edge-transitive) topologies, based on the assembly of geometrically matched building blocks into specific nets. However, innovation sometimes demands that researchers steer away from default topologies to instead pursue unusual geometries. In this Perspective, we cover this aspect and introduce the concept of geometry mismatch, in which seemingly incompatible building blocks are combined to generate non-default structures. We describe diverse MOF assemblies built through geometry mismatch generated by use of ligand bend angles, twisted functional groups, zigzag ligands and other elements, focusing on carboxylate-based MOFs combined with common inorganic clusters. We aim to provide a fresh perspective on rational design of MOFs and to help readers understand the countless options now available to achieve greater structural complexity in MOFs., This work was supported by the Spanish MINECO (project RTI2018-095622-B-I00) and the Catalan AGAUR (project 2017 SGR 238). It was also funded by the CERCA Program/Generalitat de Catalunya. ICN2 is supported by the Severo Ochoa program from the Spanish MINECO (Grant No. SEV-2017-0706).

1-Hydroxy-2,5-hexanedione, obtained in good yield from renewable 5-hydroxymethylfurfural, is a versatile building block for a variety of new compounds., The limits to the supply of fossil resources and their ever increasing use forces us to think about future scenarios for fuels and chemicals. The platform chemical 5-hydroxymethyl-furfural (HMF) can be obtained from biomass in good yield and has the potential to be converted in just a few steps into a multitude of interesting products. Over the last 20 years, the conversion of HMF to 1-hydroxyhexane-2,5-dione (HHD) has been studied by several groups. It is possible to convert HMF into HHD by hydrogenation/hydrolytic ring opening reaction in aqueous phase using various heterogeneous and homogeneous catalysts. This review addresses both the state of the art of HHD synthesis, including mechanistic aspects of its formation, as well as the recent progress in the application of HHD as a building block for many useful chemicals including pyrroles, cyclopentanone derivatives and triols.

Novel copper phosphate chloride has been obtained under middle-temperature hydrothermal conditions. Its crystal structure was established based on the low-temperature X-ray diffraction data: Na2 Li0.75 (Cs,K)0.5 [Cu5 (PO4)4 Cl]·3.5(H2 O,OH), sp. gr. C2/m, a = 19.3951(8) Å, b = 9.7627(3) Å, c = 9.7383(4) Å, β = 99.329(4)◦, T = 150 K, MoKα (λ = 0.71073 Å), R = 0.049. The crystal structure includes tetrameric copper clusters as the main building blocks, which are built of four CuO4 Cl pyra-mids sharing apical Cl vertices. The clusters are combined through phosphate groups and additional copper-centered polyhedra to form two mostly ordered periodic layers. between the layers and inside the framework channels, alkali ions, H2 O molecules, or OH groups are statistically distributed. Na2 Li0.75 (Cs,K)0.5 [Cu5 (PO4)4 Cl]·3.5(H2 O,OH) is a synthetic modification of a sampleite-polymorph of the lavendulan mineral group and represents a new member in a mero-plesiotype series of copper phosphates and arsenates, for which the crystal structures contain two-periodic [Cu4 X(TO4)4 ]∞ modules (T = As, P; X = Cl, O). Magnetically, this phase exhibits the phase transition at TC = 6.5 K, below which it possesses a weak ferromagnetic moment. © 2022 by the authors. Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. Funding: This work, in part of magnetic measurements, was supported by the Megagrant Program of the Government of the Russian Federation, project 075-15-2021-604. The crystal chemical research was provided by state budget research project AAAA-A16-116033010121-7, N 6-5.

This study introduces the exergy analysis method into the field of urban planning, in order to find out the amount of energy that can be conserved in a building block when an energy efficient construction design is applied. This was done in four steps. First, energy efficient design parameters were derived from the literature and design alternatives were developed accordingly. Second, data was gathered from the case area for the exergy calculations. Third, exergy analysis of existing building blocks and proposed design alternatives were separately carried out. Finally, the amount of decrease in the exergy loss due to suggested energy efficient design was found out. The results show that the exergy efficiency of the existing building blocks is about 2%, while the proposed design alternatives will be around 10–11%. The overall exergy loads of the alternative plans were found as 166.3 W, 225.1 W, 142.5 W and 137.8 W respectively for winter and 105.4 W, 140.0 W, 89.9 W and 86.3 W respectively for summer, on a housing unit basis. As a result, the suitability and importance of the exergy analysis on the built environment was proven, by revealing actual and considerable energy conservation and sustainable use of energy through application of energy efficient design parameters.

Spin-orbit coupling stands as a powerful tool to interconvert charge and spin currents and to manipulate the magnetization of magnetic materials through the spin torque phenomena. However, despite the diversity of existing bulk materials and the recent advent of interfacial and low-dimensional effects, control of the interconvertion at room-temperature remains elusive. Here, we unequivocally demonstrate strongly enhanced room-temperature spin-to-charge (StC) conversion in graphene driven by the proximity of a semiconducting transition metal dichalcogenide(WS2). By performing spin precession experiments in properly designed Hall bars, we separate the contributions of the spin Hall and the spin galvanic effects. Remarkably, their corresponding conversion effiencies can be tailored by electrostatic gating in magnitude and sign, peaking nearby the charge neutrality point with a magnitude that is comparable to the largest efficiencies reported to date. Such an unprecedented electric-field tunability provides a new building block for spin generation free from magnetic materials and for ultra-compact magnetic memory technologies., Comment: 13 pages, 4 figures

We combine state-of-the-art Green's-function methods and nonequilibrium molecular dynamics calculations to study phonon transport across the unconventional interfaces that make up crystal-phase and twinning superlattices in nanowires. We focus on two of their most paradigmatic building blocks: cubic (diamond/zinc blende) and hexagonal (lonsdaleite/wurtzite) polytypes of the same group-IV or III–V material. Specifically, we consider InP, GaP and Si, and both the twin boundaries between rotated cubic segments and the crystal-phase boundaries between different phases. We reveal the atomic-scale mechanisms that give rise to phonon scattering in these interfaces, quantify their thermal boundary resistance and illustrate the failure of common phenomenological models in predicting those features. In particular, we show that twin boundaries have a small but finite interface thermal resistance that can only be understood in terms of a fully atomistic picture., We acknowledge financial support by the Ministerio de Economía, Industria y Competitividad (MINECO) under grants FEDER-MAT2017-90024-P, TEC2015-67462-C2-1-R (MINECO/FEDER) and RTI2018-097876-B-C21 (MICINN/FEDER), the Severo Ochoa Centres of Excellence Program under Grant SEV-2015-0496 and by the Generalitat de Catalunya under grants no. 2014 SGR 301 and 2017 SGR 1506. M. L. S. is funded through a Juan de la Cierva fellowship. M. R. M. acknowledges support from FPU2016/02565., We acknowledge support of the publication fee by the CSIC Open Access Support Initiative through its Unit of Information Resources for Research (URICI)

Hybridization with exfoliated two-dimensional (2D) nanosheets provides a very effective and powerful way not only to control the physicochemical properties of hybridized species but also to explore nanocomposites with novel functionalities. Deliberate coupling between the hybridized species is critically important in maximizing the effect of hybridization on the physicochemical properties and functionality of hybridized components. The very small thickness and extremely large surface of exfoliated 2D nanosheets render these materials ideal candidates for achieving a strong coupling with diverse guest species. This Perspective focuses on the unique characteristics of exfoliated 2D nanosheets as building blocks for designing hybrid materials. Several intriguing examples of strong interaction between exfoliated 2D nanosheets and hybridized species are summarized with an emphasis on the effective control of electronic, optical, structural, and morphological characteristics. An outlook on the future research directions is provided along with new strategies to maximize the coupling in the 2D nanosheet-based hybrid materials. Refereed/Peer-reviewed

The i-motif structure is formed in cytosine-rich sequences, its building block being the cytosine·cytosine + base pair. This structure is particularly stable at pH values below physiological (∼7.4) and, because of that, it has not attracted as much biological interest as other non-canonical structures such as the G-quadruplex. Nowadays, the proposal of potential roles in vivo, as well as nanotechnological applications, has produced an increasing interest in its study. In this context, the present work provides an overall picture of the i-motif structure. Those aspects related to formation and stability, such as chemical modifications or the interaction with ligands, are discussed. Special attention has been made to the i-motif structures that could have a hypothetical role in vivo, such as those present near the promoter region of several oncogenes., We acknowledge funding from the Spanish government (CTQ2012-38616-C02-02 and CTQ-2010-20541-C03). Sanae Benabou thanks the Spanish Ministerio de Economía y Competitividad for a PhD grant.

International audience; The dinitroxide bis(TEMPO) bisketal (bTbk) was shown to crystallize into open frameworks whose structures were determined by single-crystal X-ray diffraction. We show that bTbk can be used as a supramolecular building block for the hosting of a plethora of guests inside the 1D channels of its paramagnetic framework, including other radicals such as TEMPO or 2-azaadamantane-N-oxyl. C60 and C70 were also found to be easily included in this open framework during its crystallization. This resulted in well-defined, nanostructured assemblies of composite radical crystals (bTbk/toluene/C60 or C70) or (bTbk/toluene/TEMPO) by a very simple dissolution/crystallization process with tunable guest content. Selective C60 extraction was also demonstrated directly from fullerene soot.

We ink-jet print a blend of 6,13-bis(triisopropyl-silylethynyl)pentacene and polystyrene as the active layer for flexible circuits. The discrete ink-jet printed transistors exhibit a saturation mobility of 0.5 cm2 V -1 s-1. The relative spread in transistor characteristics can be very large. This spread is due to the morphology of the TIPS-PEN crystals, and is difficult to control using inkjet printing. Here we apply a novel circuitry design to minimize the probability of differences between the transistors. We include up to four transistors under the same ink-jet printed deposit. With the new design, we demonstrate unipolar circuitry building blocks such as inverters, NANDs and 19-stage ring-oscillators. Additionally, we integrate almost 300 TFTs, on a surface area of 34 mm2 of plastic foil, for 8-bit RFID transponder circuits. © 2012 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.

The synthesis of a new alternating conjugated polymer, PDTTTPD, based on electron-donating dithieno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d]thiophene (DTT) and electron-withdrawing thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD) units is reported. This polymer shows strong thermochromic effect in chlorobenzene with a peak shift up to 170 nm. This phenomenon is studied with fluorescence spectroscopy and related to the steric hindrance along the polymer main chain. Polymer solar cells are fabricated from its blends with PC71BM, and shows modest power conversion efficiency up to 2.1%. The low efficiency is due to the low short-circuit current, which is also attributed to the steric effect. Based on these results, a general design rule for polymer photovoltaic material with controlled backbone conformation is proposed. A new alternating conjugated polymer, PDTTTPD, based on electron-rich dithieno[3,2-b:2′,3′-d] thiophene (DTT) and electron-deficient thieno[3,4-c]pyrrole-4,6-dione (TPD) building blocks is designed and synthesized. PDTTTPD shows strong thermochromic effect in chlorobenzene solution and modest PCE of 2.1% in organic solar cell devices due to the steric hindrance induced twisting of the conjugated main chain. A general design rule is then suggested to control the main chain conformation of polymer materials for photovoltaic applications. © 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

Synthesis of dehydrobenzoannulenes (DBAs) with pyrene core from 1,8-diethynylpyrene and 1,3,6,8-tetraethynylpyrene as building blocks is reported. A sequence involving Sonogashira coupling, Corey- Fuchs reaction and oxidative coupling (Eglinton coupling) is used for the synthesis of pyrene-based dehydrobenzoannulenes. Due to the presence of pyrenechromophore these DBAs and their precursors are highly fluorescent and emit in the visible region, due to extended conjugation of the acetylenic units with the pyrene core. � Indian Academy of Sciences.

A review. This Minireview provides a crit. account of the development of allene-contg. advanced functional materials, starting with the design and synthesis of stable and enantiopure building blocks. A variety of systems, including shape-persistent macrocycles, foldamers, polymers, charge-transfer chromophores, dendrimers, liq. crystals, and redox-switchable chiral chromophores are discussed from the viewpoint of their syntheses, properties, and potential applications. The goal of this Minireview is to inspire new uses of enantiopure allenes for the rational design of advanced materials.

Chip multiprocessors (CMPs) are expected to be the building blocks for future computer systems. While architecting these emerging CMPs is a challenging problem on its own, programming them is even more challenging. As the number of cores accommodated in chip multiprocessors increases, network-on-chip (NoC) type communication fabrics are expected to replace traditional point-to-point buses. Most of the prior software related work so far targeting CMPs focus on performance and power aspects. However, as technology scales, components of a CMP are being increasingly exposed to both transient and permanent hardware failures. This paper presents and evaluates a compiler-directed power-performance aware reliability enhancement scheme for network-on-chip (NoC) based chip multiprocessors (CMPs). The proposed scheme improves on-chip communication reliability by duplicating messages traveling across CMP nodes such that, for each original message, its duplicate uses a different set of communication links as much as possible (to satisfy performance constraint). In addition, our approach tries to reuse communication links across the different phases of the program to maximize link shutdown opportunities for the NoC (to satisfy power constraint). Our results show that the proposed approach is very effective in improving on-chip network reliability, without causing excessive power or performance degradation. In our experiments, we also evaluate the performance oriented and energy oriented versions of our compiler-directed reliability enhancement scheme, and compare it to two pure hardware based fault tolerant routing schemes. Copyright © 2010 ACM.

This paper presents the Flex5Gware project, whose goal is to deliver highly reconfigurable hardware (HW) platforms and HW-agnostic software (SW) platforms for 5G network elements and terminal devices. Flex5Gware will enable 5G HW/SW platforms to meet the requirements imposed by the growth in mobile traffic and the diversity of applications by increasing their capacity, reducing their energy footprint and enhancing their scalability and modularity. To put in place this vision in this early stage of 5G PPP research, Flex5Gware is designing and prototyping key building blocks of 5G HW/SW platforms. In particular, the developed technologies will be evaluated and demonstrated with proofs-of-concept by the end of the project. Copyright (c) 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The cornerstone of current Computational Linguistics research is the computation of semantic similarity between lexical items or some of their conceptualization in available semantic resources such as WordNet. However, measures for semantic similarity and/or relatedness usually work with numerical outputs, which are then used to solve tasks related to word disambiguation rather than information retrieval. In this paper, we start from the limitations of using numeric-based similarity measures, proposing a novel approach to provide explanations of similarity, even if still calculated through statistical and thus numerical analyses. This may allow a novel, fine-grained and context-based similarity reasoning over lexical entities. In this contribution, we define the concept of semantic similarity reasoning and a method of extraction from ConceptNet, a large common-sense resource. Finally, we present a number of hypotheses of how such shift of paradigm could represent a new building block of future natural language technologies.

WOS:000370678700053 Here we present the first account of conductive polymer/colloidal nanoplatelet hybrids. For this, we developed DEH-PPV-based polymers with two different anchor groups (sulfide and amine) acting as surfactants for CdSe nanoplatelets, which are atomically flat semiconductor nanocrystals. Hybridization of the polymers with the nanoplatelets in the solution phase was observed to cause strong photoluminescence quenching in both materials. Through steady-state photoluminescence and excitation spectrum measurements, photoluminescence quenching was shown to result from dominant exciton dissociation through charge transfer at the polymer/nanoplatelet interfaces that possess a staggered (i.e., type II) band alignment. Importantly, we found out that sulfide-based anchors enable a stronger emission quenching than amine-based ones, suggesting that the sulfide anchors exhibit more efficient binding to the nanoplatelet surfaces. Also, shorter surfactants were found to be more effective for exciton dissociation as compared to the longer ones. In addition, we show that nanoplatelets are homogeneously distributed in the hybrid films owing to the functional polymers. These nanocomposites can be used as building blocks for hybrid optoelectronic devices, such as solar cells.

We report the synthesis of two new three-dimensional coordination polymers (CPs) based on Co(II), adenine, and aromatic tetracarboxylate linkers. Adenine exhibits bidentate binding modes in both CPs, coordinating through the N3 and N9 sites in a first compact CP and through the more rare N3 and N7 sites in a second open, flexible, and H2O-responsive CP. These differences together with an analysis of the extended coordination structures made of adenine reported in the Cambridge Structural Database illustrate the rich coordination versatility of adenine as a building block for CPs. Although the latter CP is nonporous to N2 or CO2, it shows a reversible and detectable color change from pink to purple, and vice versa, upon hydration and dehydration, respectively., I.B. thanks SENESCYT-Ecuador for a Ph.D. fellowship. I.I. and K.C.S. are grateful to MINECO, for a Ramon y Cajal grant, and to the EU, for a Marie Curie Fellowship (300390 NanoBioMOFs FP7-PEOPLE-2011-IEF), respectively. ICN2 acknowledges support of the Spanish MINECO through the Severo Ochoa Centers of Excellence Program under Grant SEV-2013-0295.

Chemical building blocks: ?-Sulfenylated imines containing a quaternary center, an ubiquitous subunit and excellent building block, were achieved by rhodium-catalyzed denitrogenative [2,3] sigmatropic rearrangements of N-sulfonyl-1,2,3-triazoles with allylaryl(alkyl) sulfides. Coupling of this methodology with a copper-catalyzed cycloaddition reaction provides a platform for the direct regioselective functionalization of alkynes (see scheme; TC=thiophenecarboxylate; Ts=p-toluenesulfonyl). � 2013 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim.

A new dielectric metamaterial building block based on high refractive index silicon spherical nanocavities with Mie resonances appearing in the near infrared optical region is prepared and characterized. It is demonstrated both experimentally and theoretically that a single silicon nanocavity supports well-defined and robust magnetic resonances, even in a liquid medium environment, at wavelength values up to six times larger than the cavity radius. Copyright © 2012 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim., The authors acknowledge financial support from the following projects FIS2009-07812, Consolider 2007-0046 Nanolight, and the PROMETEO/2010/043. L. S. thanks the financial support from the MINECO (Estancias de profesores e investigadores extranjeros en centros espanoles) fellowship program. T. U. T. acknowledges the FPI fellowship the MINECO.

Web Service reuse is embraced both by the industry and the academia. Especially in the field of context-awareness, where Web Services are usually employed as building blocks for larger applications, the existence of adequate service descriptions is vital. The semantic Web technologies have assisted in providing richer descriptions of resources However, elaborated constructs that allow the potential user to understand the behaviour and relation of the Web Service to context information are missing. In the current paper context-related information that should form part of the service description is presented in three categories: context dependencies, context offering and context special handling. The categories are analyzed to their ingredient elements and incorporated in service descriptions as en extension to the OWL-S ontology for Web Services demonstrating the preliminary use of the proposed approach. 213 218 Sponsors: Inst. Syst. Technol. Inf., Control Commun. (INSTICC) Conference code: 91905 Cited By :4

Wireless sensor networks (WSNs) have become a hot research topic in recent years and are considered to be one of the building blocks of pervasive computing. Many diverse, mission-critical applications are deployed, including military, rescue, healthcare, factory floor, and smart homes. Security is a fundamental requirement in such sensitive applications in order to ensure their reliable and stable operation. However, security is a fairly difficult task to achieve. The open nature of the wireless communication, the unrestricted deployment and limitations of WSNs and the existence of a variety of attacks threaten the security of a sensor network. Currently, research efforts have mainly focused on developing prevention and intrusion detection mechanisms in WSNs. Intrusion recovery is also an important aspect of security provisioning that is not given the same attention. Researchers have proposed intrusion recovery protocols to restore the network's operation when an attack is detected. Their designs are mostly based on simplified threat models, making the intrusion recovery countermeasures vulnerable to advanced threat models. Although the network may recover its operation after an attack is detected, it does not mean that the threat is eliminated. For example, a persistent adversary can adapt his intrusion strategy to compromise the deployed recovery countermeasure. This research work evaluates the robustness and reliability of well-known recovery countermeasures in WSNs against persistent adversaries. Evaluation results have shown that existing intrusion recovery solutions are vulnerable and can be exploited under different attack strategies in order to compromise the applied recovery countermeasures, and thus the network. The vulnerability assessment is carried out using ns-2 simulations in an IEEE 802.15.4 network and within the AODV context. Observations derived from the assessment contribute towards future directions that can drive new designs of intrusion recovery protocols in WSNs. © 2011 IEEE. 706 712 Sponsors: IEEE IEEE Computer Society IEEE Communications Society Conference code: 86395 Cited By :1

This paper further examines the use of mixed-signal circuits for power system emulation. It has already been proven that analog emulation overcomes the speed limits of numerical simulators by means of a simple fixed-topology prototype. In order to enhance the modularity and the size of the emulated power system a dedicated platform based on a field programmable power network system (FPPNS) has been developed. This platform contains an application specific integrated circuit as main building block. Details on the designed hardware are given in this paper. Furthermore the emulator is validated comparing its emulation results with numerical reference simulations. The promising results of this platform show that the design of a fully integrated solution containing an array of 100 atoms can be started.

A systematic study of noise barriers based on sonic crystals made of cylinders that use recycled materials like absorbing component is reported here. The barriers consist of only three rows of perforated metal shells filled with rubber crumb. Measurements of reflectance and transmittance by these barriers are reported. Their attenuation properties result from a combination of sound absorption by the rubber crumb and reflection by the periodic distribution of scatterers. It is concluded that the porous cylinders can be used as building blocks whose physical parameters can be optimized in order to design efficient barriers adapted to different noisy environments. © 2011 Acoustical Society of America., This work has been partially supported by the Spanish MICINN under Grant Nos. TEC2007-67239 and CSD2008-66 (CONSOLIDER Program). D.T. acknowledges a research contract provided by the program Campus de Excelencia 2010 UPV. The authors acknowledge F. Payri and A. Broatch for providing the technical facilities that made possible sonic of the measurements.

Context-awareness is gaining wide importance, especially when targeting pervasive environments, whereas Web Services are often exploited as building blocks of context-aware applications because of their interoperability properties. In this framework, Web Services can be used as business services requiring context data for their functionality, but also as context sources offering access to context information. Combining the development of context-aware Web Services with Model-Driven Engineering techniques requires the identification and matching of appropriate context models with Web Service models. In this paper, a new ongoing research direction is presented, which refers to model transformation for allowing the identification of appropriate context sources and ensuring their compatibility with Web Services. Matchmaking principles between Web Service and context models are examined in order to extract a reasoning mechanism on context adaptation compatibility. In specific, the principles of graph transformation are mainly exploited. © 2011 ACM. 511 514 Conference code: 88513 Cited By :2

The self-assembly of peptides and proteins into nanostructures is related to the fundamental problems of protein folding and misfolding and has potential applications in medicine, materials science and nanotechnology. Natural peptides, corresponding to sequence repeats from self-assembling proteins, may constitute elementary building blocks of such nanostructures. In this work, we study by implicit-solvent replica-exchange simulations the self-assembly of two amyloidogenic sequences derived from the naturally occurring fiber shaft of the adenovirus, the octapeptide NSGAITIG (asparagine-serine-glycine-alanine- isoleucine-threonine-isoleucineglycine) and its hexapeptide counterpart, GAITIG. In accordance with their amyloidogenic capacity, both peptides form readily intermolecular β-sheets, stabilized by extensive main- and side-chain contacts involving the C-terminal moieties (segments 3-8 and 2-6, respectively). The structural and energetic properties of these sheets are analyzed extensively. The N-terminal residues Asn1 and Ser2 of the octapeptide remain disordered in the sheets, suggesting that these residues are exposed at the exterior of the fibrils and accessible. On the basis of insight provided by the simulations, cysteine residues were recently substituted at positions 1 and 2 of NSGAITIG the newly designed peptides maintain their amyloidogenic properties and can bind to silver, gold and platinum nanoparticles [Kasotakis et al. Biopolymers 2009, 92, 164-172]. Computational investigation can identify suitable positions for rational modification of peptide building blocks, aiming at the fabrication of novel biomaterials © 2009 American Chemical Society. 113 47 15639 15647 Cited By :22

A strong interest in H-plane waveguide components composed of a large number of cascaded planar junctions is recently renewed. Therefore, the more efficient development of full-wave analysis tools of such devices is again receiving consideration, specially for its potential use within modern design tools. A novel technique for providing the wideband generalised impedance matrix representation of the inductive devices in the form of pole expansions, thus extracting the most expensive computations from the frequency loop is proposed. For such purpose, the whole device is first decomposed into simpler building blocks, i.e. planar junctions and uniform waveguides, which are modelled in terms of the proposed wideband matrices. Then, a novel iterative algorithm for the efficient combination of such matrices is followed. The complete technique has been successfully applied to the full-wave analysis of several inductive waveguide filters of great practical interest.

The construction of an A-switch, derived from the artificial nucleic acid called acyclic Butyl Nucleic Acid (BuNA) was accomplished. The phosphoramidite building blocks of (S)-BuNA were synthesized from (R)-aspartic acid. To demonstrate its use as an A-switch, a stretch of polyadenine nucleotides of (S)-BuNA was studied by circular dichroism (CD) and ultraviolet (UV) spectroscopy under neutral and acidic conditions. Acid-base titration revealed two state transitions at pH 4.8 and highly pH-dependent structural conformation reversibility. Thermal melting (Tm) studies suggest that at neutral pH, poly BuNA(A) is a weakly organized single strand, while at low pH it adopts a highly organized and rigid structure. Furthermore, MALDI-TOF-MS data revealed intermolecular interactions which led to the formation of an A-motif composed of a double helical structure. Since BuNA does not suffer from depurination under acidic conditions, this allowed us to determine the thermodynamic parameters of the A-motif. This is the first report of the construction of an A-switch using artificial nucleic acids. � 2013 The Royal Society of Chemistry.

We have introduced the pentafluorophenyl substituted benzimidazole as a building block of conjugated polymers for optoelectronic applications. We present the synthesis of a copolymer bearing fluorene as the comonomer. A detailed characterization of the novel material including structural, electrochemical and optical (using absorption, emission and time-resolved photoluminescence techniques) properties as well as computational modeling is described. The polymer exhibits highly efficient photoluminescence quenching when blended with fullerene derivatives (PCBM). The experimental results are compared with the alternating fluorene copolymer (APFO-3) in order to identify structure and property relations with the novel synthesized conjugated polymer. Early photovoltaic performance data are presented and compared with the well established APFO-3:PCBM material system. © 2012 The Royal Society of Chemistry. 3 8 2236 2243 Cited By :10

The paper describes the design, development, and implementation issues of a digital signal processor-based -integrated hardware set-up for a distribution static compensator (DSTATCOM). A detailed documentation revealing all the design aspects of the important building blocks of the set-up is presented. The transducer, signal conditioning, synchronizing, blanking, protection, optoisolation, and power supply circuits are constructed and assembled to form a prototype laboratory model. In the present work, an H-bridge voltage source inverter-based DSTATCOM has been realized. The efficacy of this arrangement is demonstrated by conducting experiments and the results are discussed. � 2010 by the IETE.

The association ability of model amphiphilic polyelectrolytes with multi-block architecture, i.e. ABA, BABAB, ABABABA and BABABABAB (A hydrophobic, B polyelectrolyte block) was studied in aqueous media. The gelation efficiency of these multiblock copolymers in semidilute aqueous solutions with variable molecular weights, hydrophobic content, topology and length of the associative stickers has been investigated by rheological measurements, light scattering and transmission electron microscopy (TEM). The behaviour of these associative polyelectrolytes seems to be governed by the interplay of the hydrophobic attractive interactions of the A blocks and the electrostatic repulsive interactions of the B blocks. Rheological results showed that only the copolymers bearing hydrophobic end-blocks are able to form hydrogels at relatively low copolymer concentrations. Therefore the topology of the A blocks and the degree of ionization of the B blocks influence significantly the gelation efficiency of these polymeric materials. Comparing the rheological behavior of multiblocks of the same topology (heptablock) it was observed that small differences in the degree of polymerization of the building blocks result in remarkably different rheological properties. © 2010 The Royal Society of Chemistry. 6 21 5417 5424 Cited By :16

We propose a novel context-sensitive segmentation and rec- ognition method for connected letters in Ottoman script. This method first extracts a set of segments from a connected script and determines the candidate letters to which extracted segments are most similar. Next, a function is defined for scoring each different syntactically correct se- quence of these candidate letters. To find the candidate letter sequence that maximizes the score function, a directed acyclic graph is con- structed. The letters are finally recognized by computing the longest path in this graph. Experiments using a collection of printed Ottoman docu- ments reveal that the proposed method provides 90% precision and recall figures in terms of character recognition. In a further set of experi- ments, we also demonstrate that the framework can be used as a build- ing block for an information retrieval system for digital Ottoman archives. © 2009 Society of Photo-Optical Instrumentation Engineers. DOI: 10.1117/1.3262346

Date of Conference: 19-22 June 2005 Conference Name: 35th International Conference on Computers and Industrial Engineering, ICC and IE 2005 This paper introduces a multi-population genetic algorithm (M-PPGA) using a new genetic representation, the kth-nearest neighbor representation, for Euclidean Traveling Salesman Problems. The proposed M-PPGA runs M greedy genetic algorithms on M separate populations, each with two new operators, intersection repairing and cheapest insert. The M-PPGA finds optimal or near optimal solutions by using a novel communication operator among individually converged populations. The algorithm generates high quality building blocks within each population; then, combines these blocks to build the optimal or near optimal solutions by means of the communication operator. The proposed M-PPGA outperforms the GAs that we know of as competitive with respect to running times and solution quality, over the considered test problems including the Turkey81.