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Nanocrystalline Negative temperature coefficient (NTC) of resistance thermistor compositions have attracted much attention due to their improved sensitivity and fast response. Ni-Mn-Fe-Cr-Co-O based nano NTC thermistor compositions were prepared through a simple and cost-effective self-propagated High temperature Synthesis method with urea as the fuel. An empirical formula is introduced for calculating the optimum oxidant to fuel ratio. Phase pure Spinel manganites were prepared by this method. The synthesized nano NTC compositions exhibited excellent NTC thermistor characteristics. This methodology can be adopted to prepare a wide range of NTC compositions for various thermistor applications.

Calmodulin (CaM) is a highly versatile Ca(2+) signaling transducer known to regulate over a hundred proteins. In this paper, we further demonstrate the versatility of CaM binding by showing that it binds to a synthetic peptide (revCKKp) made by reversing the amino acid sequence of the CaM-binding peptide (CKKp) from CaM-dependent protein kinase kinase (CaMKK) (residues 438-463). Sequence comparison between revCKKp and other CaM-binding peptides (CBPs) from the CaM target databank showed that revCKKp does not resemble any existing classes of CBPs, except CKKp [M. Zhang, T. Yuan, Molecular mechanisms of calmodulin's functional versatility, Biochem. Cell Biol. 76 (1998) 313-323; S.W. Vetter, E. Leclerc, Novel aspects of calmodulin target recognition and activation, Eur. J. Biochem. 270 (2003) 404-414]. Furthermore, computational modeling showed that revCKKp could bind CaM in a similar manner to CKKp. Lastly, we experimentally showed that our synthetic revCKKp binds to CaM in a reversible Ca(2+)-dependent manner.