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AbstractAptamers, as short single-stranded nucleic acids, can bind to targets in a similar way to antibodies. Relying on the advantages of low cost, high stability, and flexibility, they are widely applied in biosensors, disease therapy, and synthetic biology. As an aptamer screening method, the Systematic Evolution of Ligands by Exponential Enrichment (SELEX) offers almost unlimited possibilities for functional aptamer generation. However, at present, the SELEX procedure has not reached a satisfactory level, and it still faces some challenges in practical application, such as the relatively blind initial library, laborious and time-consuming selection process, typically requires 9–20 rounds for screening, and the entire process generally extends over 2–3 months, and sub-optimal performance of aptamers obtained. In the past few years, researchers have made great efforts to address these obstacles. Hence, in this review, we first summarize the aptamer screening mechanism and the existing limitations of SELEX. Then analyze the principle and technical key points of the SELEX optimization screening strategy. By incorporating rational library design, novel screening awareness, and advanced screening equipment, the number of aptamer screening cycles is significantly reduced to <8 rounds, with some methods achieving single-round screenings. This has led to a considerable decrease in the overall screening time to <3 weeks, while simultaneously enhancing the performance of the aptamers. Finally, critically discuss the present challenges and future directions of aptamer screening. This review aims to provide a practical reference for designing suitable aptamer screening methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Stockholm Public Library was realized in two distinct phases of construction in the 1920s and early 1930s, and remains a well-known work in twentieth-century architecture, with a heritage status today. While previous studies have focused on the library's architectural design, particularly its lighting, acoustics were also an important aspect of the building's design and construction. This study marks the first detailed investigation of the library's architectural acoustics, with a suite of standard measurements performed to assess and characterize the library's historical room and building acoustics. Reverberation time measurements in the library's reading rooms yielded results of about 1.5–2 s for frequencies associated with speech. A significantly longer reverberation time of 5–6 s was measured in the library's central rotunda, confirming a prominent acoustic issue in the library, where appropriate heritage discussions are needed in the future as the library undergoes a major renovation in the coming years. A comparison of the measured airborne and impact sound insulation of the 1920s and 1930s reading room ceilings also yielded interesting results. While the materials in library's two construction periods are notably different, the airborne sound insulation performance of the 1920s and 1930s floors or ceilings was comparable and in line with contemporary standards. Impact sound insulation results from the 1920s and 1930s floors, however, differed significantly, with the latter displaying a relatively poor performance. Flanking transmission effects related to historical construction details and deviations from archival plans were investigated and discussed. This work emphasizes the practical and academic importance of conducting on-site measurements, and the close mutual development of modern architecture, construction, and architectural acoustics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

AbstractThis study explored user perspectives on library design elements, amenities, and services that can potentially enhance the reading experience. Data were collected through a self-administered questionnaire with 537 students. The majority of respondents (86.8%) reported enjoying reading in library environments. Regarding design aspects, having an integrated layout with shelves, chairs and tables cohesively arranged in the reading room was most appealing. Users also favored the presence of other readers and collaborative table designs. Group-study rooms were viewed positively, with 51.2% strongly liking the option to use them and perceiving benefits for learning. While opinions were divided on introducing food services, most supported adding new technologies like 3D printers, art galleries, and museum exhibits. Chi-square analysis revealed significant associations between enjoying library reading and preferences for shared reading spaces with other users (p = 0.024) and group-study rooms. In conclusion, fostering a sense of community, scholarly exchange, and integrated space conducive to focused reading emerged as key factors for enhancing the reading experience in libraries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Stockholm Public Library was realized in two distinct phases of construction in the 1920s and early 1930s, and remains a well-known work in twentieth-century architecture, with a heritage status today. While previous studies have focused on the library’s architectural design, particularly its lighting, acoustics were also an important aspect of the building’s design and construction. This study marks the first detailed investigation of the library’s architectural acoustics, with a suite of standard measurements performed to assess and characterize the library’s historical room and building acoustics. Reverberation time measurements in the library’s reading rooms yielded results of about 1.5–2 s for frequencies associated with speech. A significantly longer reverberation time of 5–6 s was measured in the library’s central rotunda, confirming a prominent acoustic issue in the library, where appropriate heritage discussions are needed in the future as the library undergoes a major renovation in the coming years. A comparison of the measured airborne and impact sound insulation of the 1920s and 1930s reading room ceilings also yielded interesting results. While the materials in library’s two construction periods are notably different, the airborne sound insulation performance of the 1920s and 1930s floors or ceilings was comparable and in line with contemporary standards. Impact sound insulation results from the 1920s and 1930s floors, however, differed significantly, with the latter displaying a relatively poor performance. Flanking transmission effects related to historical construction details and deviations from archival plans were investigated and discussed. This work emphasizes the practical and academic importance of conducting on-site measurements, and the close mutual development of modern architecture, construction, and architectural acoustics.

Designing and developing inhibitors against the epigenetic target DNA methyltransferase (DNMT) is an attractive strategy in epigenetic drug discovery. DNMT1 is one of the epigenetic enzymes with significant clinical relevance. Structure-based de novo design is a drug discovery strategy that was used in combination with similarity searching to identify a novel DNMT inhibitor with a novel chemical scaffold and warrants further exploration. This study aimed to continue exploring the potential of de novo design to build epigenetic-focused libraries targeted toward DNMT1. Herein, we report the results of an in-depth and critical comparison of ligand- and structure-based de novo design of screening libraries focused on DNMT1. The newly designed chemical libraries focused on DNMT1 are freely available on GitHub. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This research endeavored to investigate best practices in public library design in Dublin, Ireland. It examined how three different library building types fulfil their user's needs. A predominantly quantitative survey with some qualitative elements was sent to patrons of three selected libraries: the Dlr LexIcon, a contemporary new-build; Malahide, a renovated Carnegie library; and Rush, a converted church. The results demonstrate how these buildings successfully meet the user needs, but different factors must be considered. These include engaging patrons in the design phase of new-builds; the heritage of library buildings; and the perception of the library building in the community. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2021, ECU Library embarked on a year-long user experience project to explore students' experiences of a newly refurbished space and investigate what facilities and services students would like to see at a new city campus to be opened in 2025. The study employed a number of user experience and ethnographic methods including observation, interviews, surveys, focus groups and surveys, and worked in partnership with library peer assistants to collect data. Students want a library of the future that offers a variety of flexible informal study spaces, good lighting, comfortable and ergonomic furniture, visible services, and access to technology. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The use of recombinant antibodies developed through phage display technology offers a promising approach for combating viral infectious diseases. By specifically targeting antigens on viral surfaces, these antibodies have the potential to reduce the severity of infections or even prevent them altogether. With the emergence of new and more virulent strains of viruses, it is crucial to develop innovative methods to counteract them. Phage display technology has proven successful in generating recombinant antibodies capable of targeting specific viral antigens, thereby providing a powerful tool to fight viral infections. In this mini-review article, we examine the development of these antibodies using phage display technology, and discuss the associated challenges and opportunities in developing novel treatments for viral infectious diseases. Furthermore, we provide an overview of phage display technology. As these methods continue to evolve and improve, novel and sophisticated tools based on phage display and peptide display systems are constantly emerging, offering exciting prospects for solving scientific, medical, and technological problems related to viral infectious diseases in the near future.

ABSTRACTIn this study, we generated a novel library approach for high throughput de novo identification of humanized single-domain antibodies following camelid immunization. To achieve this, VHH-derived complementarity-determining regions-3 (CDR3s) obtained from an immunized llama (Lama glama) were grafted onto humanized VHH backbones comprising moderately sequence-diversified CDR1 and CDR2 regions similar to natural immunized and naïve antibody repertoires. Importantly, these CDRs were tailored toward favorable in silico developability properties, by considering human-likeness as well as excluding potential sequence liabilities and predicted immunogenic motifs. Target-specific humanized single-domain antibodies (sdAbs) were readily obtained by yeast surface display. We demonstrate that, by exploiting this approach, high affinity sdAbs with an optimized in silico developability profile can be generated. These sdAbs display favorable biophysical, biochemical, and functional attributes and do not require any further sequence optimization. This approach is generally applicable to any antigen upon camelid immunization and has the potential to significantly accelerate candidate selection and reduce risks and attrition rates in sdAb development.

ABSTRACTMonoclonal antibodies (mAbs) and their derivatives have emerged as one of the most important classes of biotherapeutics in recent decades. The success of mAb is due to their high versatility, high target specificity, excellent clinical safety profile, and efficacy. Antibody discovery, the most upstream stage of the antibody development pipeline, plays a pivotal role in determination of the clinical outcome of an mAb product. Phage display technology, originally developed for peptide directed evolution, has been extensively applied to discovery of fully human antibodies due to its unprecedented advantages. The value of phage display technology has been proven by a number of approved mAbs, including several top-selling mAb drugs, derived from the technology. Since antibody phage display was first established over 30 years ago, phage display platforms have been developed to generate mAbs targeting difficult-to-target antigens and tackle the drawbacks present in in vivo antibody discovery approaches. More recently, the new generation of phage display libraries have been optimized for discovery of mAbs with ”drug-like” properties. This review will summarize the principles of antibody phage display and design of three generations of antibody phage display libraries.

Enzymes are potent catalysts with high specificity and selectivity. To leverage nature’s synthetic potential for industrial applications, various protein engineering techniques have emerged which allow to tailor the catalytic, biophysical, and molecular recognition properties of enzymes. However, the many possible ways a protein can be altered forces researchers to carefully balance between the exhaustiveness of an enzyme screening campaign and the required resources. Consequently, the optimal engineering strategy is often defined on a case-by-case basis. Strikingly, while predicting mutations that lead to an improved target function is challenging, here we show that the prediction and exclusion of deleterious mutations is a much more straightforward task as analyzed for an engineered carbonic acid anhydrase, a transaminase, a squalene-hopene cyclase and a Kemp eliminase. Combining such a pre-selection of allowed residues with advanced gene synthesis methods opens a path toward an efficient and generalizable library construction approach for protein engineering. To give researchers easy access to this methodology, we provide the website LibGENiE containing the bioinformatic tools for the library design workflow.

In our previous research, some screened 1,3-thiazole fragments were found to be potent by inhibiting LPS-induced TNF$\alpha $ and IL-8 release with IC50 values in the $\mu $M range without cytotoxic activity. In the current study, 1,3-thiazole fragments were further investigated as potent cholinesterase inhibitors prompted by the previously documented anti-inflammatory effect of AChE inhibitors. Molecular docking enabled insight into stabilizing interactions between the selected thiazoles and the active site of AChE and BChE. According to these experimental results, the cholinesterase inhibitory and anti-inflammatory activity of 1,3-thiazoles were correlated and confirmed that the same compounds inhibited LPS-stimulated TNF$\alpha $ cytokine production in PBMCs and enzymes cholinesterases.

Bis zum Jahr 2040 ist eine Zäsur längst Geschichte: Bibliotheken entstehen ausschließlich in umgewidmeten Gebäuden, Bauen im Bestand hat aus Gründen der Nachhaltigkeit die Entstehung von Bibliotheksneubauten vollständig abgelöst. Die drastische Verringerung des ökologischen Fußabdrucks dieser Art des Bauens stellt nicht nur einen Fortschritt in Bezug auf Nachhaltigkeit dar, sondern die Umnutzung bringt neben den längst bekannten Vorteilen der Transformation von nicht mehr genutzten Gebäuden zu Bibliotheken auch bedeutende städtebauliche Potenziale zur Revitalisierung unserer verödeten Innenstädte und Ortskerne. Andererseits werden heute Bibliotheksfunktionen auch in das verdichtete städtische Wohnen integriert. Mehr als nur eine ‚ökologische' Renaissance von Bibliotheken! This article is about a utopian outlook into the future of designing libraries. By the year 2040, a crucial turn has long been history: libraries are designed exclusively in reused buildings then, the conversion of old buildings has been completely replaced the design of new library buildings for reasons of sustainability. That means a dramatic progress concerning the ecological footprint of library buildings. In addition to the well-known advantages of transforming old buildings beside sustainability, the reuse has an important effect on revitalising of desolate inner cities, even of rural villages. On the other hand, library functions are now also being integrated into buildings of residential buildings with high-density living. More than a renaissance of libraries just in terms of ecological sustainability! [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The current generation of millennial university students is more accustomed to searching reference information online than visiting the physical library facility, compared to the previous generations of students. Studies have shown that the role of the physical library facilities as a mere collection point of reading and reference materials is being threatened by the availability of free and high-speed online search engines. University libraries have always been an integral part in higher education learning activities, and they are not exempted from this threat. Based on a structural equation modelling framework, we analysed empirically the importance of different library design features that help enhance students' learning satisfaction, and found that lighting environment, acoustic environment as well as location of the library building were the main determinants impacting on the use of the university library by students in a major university in China. We conclude the paper with our suggestions in modifying library design to accommodate students' learning needs, and more importantly in recon uring the spatial and functional role of university libraries in this age of digital information from a mere provider of reference materials to a physical space of learning commons on campus. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Araştırma, çalışma ve arşiv amaçlı kullanılan kütüphane binaları, günümüzde “öğrenme merkezi” olarak büyük programlı yapılara dönüşmüştür. Bu dönüşüm kütüphane mekânlarının, kullanıcılarına kaliteli hizmet vermesi için güncel gereksinim ve anlayışların tasarıma yansıması gerekliliğini beraberinde getirmiştir. 21. yüzyıl kütüphane binalarında i. bina- çevre ilişkisi, ii. plan kurgusu, iii. yatay-düşey sirkülasyon, iv. eylem alanları, v. raf düzeni ve vi. aydınlatma kararları tasarım niteliği açısından önem taşımaktadır. Söz konusu başlıklar, 21. yüzyılda tasarlanmış kütüphane binalarının analiz başlıkları olarak belirlenmiş ve dünyadan/ülkemizden seçilen toplam dört kütüphane binasının tasarım anlayışlarını ortaya koymak amaçlanmıştır. İncelenen örnekler doğrultusunda, 21. yüzyıl kütüphane binaları tasarımına ilişkin olarak esnek plan kurgusu içerisinde özellikle eylem alanları mekân düzeninin her kütüphane yapısında ve her katta farklı şekilde tekrar ettiği, teknolojik-dijital materyallerin çeşitliliği ile farklı işlevlerin olduğu; sirkülasyon alanlarının, raf düzeninin ve gün ışığının mekânı algılamada, yönlendirmede ve biçimlendirmede aktif rol oynadığı sonuçları elde edilmiştir.

Review of Hickerson, H. T., Lippencott, J. K., and Crema, L., eds. (2022) Designing libraries for the 21st century. Association of College and Research Libraries.

Libraries in Nigeria and other developing countries have constantly decried low patronage of library services due to several reasons. Wellspring University library is not an exception but the story seem to have changed as the library started experiencing increased patronage when the library was rebuilt after the old library building was engulfed in fire. This calls for an inquiry to determine the reasons for the sudden change in users' attitude, thus, this study set out to find out whether library building aesthetics and functionality will help solve the problem of low patronage. The authors adopted a descriptive survey method using a Web-based questionnaire to collect data from a sample of 105 students, 15 students each in 300 and 400 level from the seven departments that used the old library and are now using the new library. The collected data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, Results show that library building aesthetics and functionality will positively influence library patronage. It was therefore recommended that aesthetics facilities should be considered before building a library and the old library buildings should be renovated to include this. All necessary attention should also be given to the library building to ensure the functionality of the building. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of Journal of Social Sciences Research / Sosyal Bilimler Arastirmalari Dergisi is the property of ODU Journal of Social Sciences Research and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

In 2017, the Riyad Nassar Library of the Lebanese American University - Beirut, Lebanon - conducted a student survey as part of its assessment plan to evaluate all functions offered to its stakeholders including space design. The results of said survey are discussed in this paper to ensure if the executed redesign of the library space, carried out during the last 5 years, helped in meeting students' perceptions and expectations. The authors will discuss the methods used to assess space change such as survey, behavioral observation and statistics as well as the challenges faced by the library during this process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

With the exponential increase in publicly available protein structures, the comparison of protein binding sites naturally emerged as a scientific topic to explain observations or generate hypotheses for ligand design, notably to predict ligand selectivity for on- and off-targets, explain polypharmacology, and design target-focused libraries. The current review summarizes the state-of-the-art computational methods applied to pocket detection and comparison as well as structural druggability estimates. The major strengths and weaknesses of current pocket descriptors, alignment methods, and similarity search algorithms are presented. Lastly, an exhaustive survey of both retrospective and prospective applications in diverse medicinal chemistry scenarios illustrates the capability of the existing methods and the hurdle that still needs to be overcome for more accurate predictions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By exploring the labyrinth as a metaphor for a student's shift from information consumer to knowledge creator, an approach to library design emerges in which the whole library facilitates that transformative journey. Approaching this idea from multiple perspectives, the author joins ideas from education, architecture, environmental psychology, and retail shopping to build a case for the use of the labyrinth as a metaphor for both the student's learning journey and library design, and offers the beginnings of how such a library might work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-throughput virtual screening (HTVS) is, in conjunction with rapid advances in computer hardware, becoming a staple in drug design research campaigns and cheminformatics. In this context, virtual compound library design becomes crucial as it generally constitutes the first step where quality filtered databases are essential for the efficient downstream research. Therefore, multiple filters for compound library design were devised and reported in the scientific literature. We collected the most common filters in medicinal chemistry (PAINS, REOS, Aggregators, van de Waterbeemd, Oprea, Fichert, Ghose, Mozzicconacci, Muegge, Egan, Murcko, Veber, Ro3, Ro4, and Ro5) to facilitate their open access use and compared them. Then, we implemented these filters in the open platform Konstanz Information Miner (KNIME) as a freely accessible and simple workflow compatible with small or large compound databases for the benefit of the readers and for the help in the early drug design steps. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract The scaffold representation is widely employed to classify bioactive compounds on the basis of common core structures or correlate compound classes with specific biological activities. In this paper, we present a novel approach called “Molecular Anatomy” as a flexible and unbiased molecular scaffold-based metrics to cluster large set of compounds. We introduce a set of nine molecular representations at different abstraction levels, combined with fragmentation rules, to define a multi-dimensional network of hierarchically interconnected molecular frameworks. We demonstrate that the introduction of a flexible scaffold definition and multiple pruning rules is an effective method to identify relevant chemical moieties. This approach allows to cluster together active molecules belonging to different molecular classes, capturing most of the structure activity information, in particular when libraries containing a huge number of singletons are analyzed. We also propose a procedure to derive a network visualization that allows a full graphical representation of compounds dataset, permitting an efficient navigation in the scaffold’s space and significantly contributing to perform high quality SAR analysis. The protocol is freely available as a web interface at https://ma.exscalate.eu .

The discovery of molecular toxicity in a clinical drug candidate can have a significant impact on both the cost and timeline of the drug discovery process. Early identification of potentially toxic compounds during screening library preparation or, alternatively, during the hit validation process is critical to ensure that valuable time and resources are not spent pursuing compounds that may possess a high propensity for human toxicity. This report focuses on the application of computational molecular filters, applied either pre- or post-screening, to identify and remove known reactive and/or potentially toxic compounds from consideration in drug discovery campaigns., (© 2025. The Author(s), under exclusive license to Springer Science+Business Media, LLC, part of Springer Nature.)

Saturation mutagenesis is a semi-rational approach for protein engineering where sites are saturated either entirely or partially to include amino acids of interest. We previously reported on a codon compression algorithm, where a set of minimal degenerate codons are selected according to user-defined parameters such as the target organism, type of saturation and usage levels. Here, we communicate an addition to our web tool that considers the distance between the wild-type codon and the library, depending on its purpose. These forms of restricted collections further reduce library size, lowering downstream screening efforts or, in turn, allowing more comprehensive saturation of multiple sites. The library design tool can be accessed via http://www.dynamcc.com/dynamcc%5fd/. Graphical Abstract [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

El propósito de este artículo es hacer una revisión de la literatura sobre el término Learning Commons (LC) para bibliotecas universitarias, un modelo que ha pasado de una conceptualización meramente física (centrada en la transformación material de los espacios para facilitar el trabajo colaborativo y el confort), a un enfoque más académico y complejo, que contempla incluso la creación y operación de entornos virtuales, un perfil y trabajo del bibliotecario más orientado a lo académico, además de iniciativas pedagógicas de diversa índole. Así pues, se presenta una definición de este esquema bibliotecario acorde a las últimas tendencias existentes sobre el tema, enumerando sus atributos más importantes y, finalmente, se expone una breve nota sobre los retos que implica la puesta en marcha de un espacio con estas características.= The purpose of this article is to review the literature on the term Learning Commons (LC) for academic libraries, a model that has gone from a purely physical conceptualization (focused on the material transformation of spaces to facilitate collaborative work and comfort ), to a more academic and complex approach, which includes even the creation and operation of virtual environments, a profile and work of the more academic-oriented librarian, as well as pedagogical initiatives of various kinds. Thus, a definition of this library scheme will be made according to the latest trends on the subject, listing its most important attributes and, finally, a brief note will be made about the challenges involved in setting up a space like this.

In the era of information parallel to technological developments, the methods and tools used to access information have been transformed and the functions of the libraries have diversified and transformed in line with the needs of information workers. Parallel to these changing requirements, library spaces have turned into activity-based “learning centers” that are visited for creating and sharing new information, rather than being places where merely books are physically stored, borrowed and read. The aim of this study is to examine the transformation observed in library spaces depending on the social, cultural and technological developments within the era of information and to reveal the spatial characteristics that incline their interior designs. In this context, the changing learning and working practices of information societies have been primarily examined; the transformation in library functions is revealed and the spatial characteristics that direct the interior design of new libraries are investigated. In this study, as a method, a literature review was carried out, prominent spatial characteristics were systematically reclassified and explained with the help of best practice library cases. As a result, the spatial characteristics of new libraries have been determined as “building community/social permeability”, “diversity”, “interactivity”, “conformity to information technologies” and “design aesthetics/atmosphere”.

ABSTRACT The success of natural product-based drug discovery is predicated on having chemical collections that offer broad coverage of metabolite diversity. We propose a simple set of tools combining genetic barcoding and metabolomics to help investigators build natural product libraries aimed at achieving predetermined levels of chemical coverage. It was found that such tools aided in identifying overlooked pockets of chemical diversity within taxa, which could be useful for refocusing collection strategies. We have used fungal isolates identified as Alternaria from a citizen-science-based soil collection to demonstrate the application of these tools for assessing and carrying out predictive measurements of chemical diversity in a natural product collection. Within Alternaria, different subclades were found to contain nonequivalent levels of chemical diversity. It was also determined that a surprisingly modest number of isolates (195 isolates) was sufficient to afford nearly 99% of Alternaria chemical features in the data set. However, this result must be considered in the context that 17.9% of chemical features appeared in single isolates, suggesting that fungi like Alternaria might be engaged in an ongoing process of actively exploring nature’s metabolic landscape. Our results demonstrate that combining modest investments in securing internal transcribed spacer (ITS)-based sequence information (i.e., establishing gene-based clades) with data from liquid chromatography-mass spectrometry (i.e., generating feature accumulation curves) offers a useful route to obtaining actionable insights into chemical diversity coverage trends in a natural product library. It is anticipated that these outcomes could be used to improve opportunities for accessing bioactive molecules that serve as the cornerstone of natural product-based drug discovery. IMPORTANCE Natural product drug discovery efforts rely on libraries of organisms to provide access to diverse pools of compounds. Actionable strategies to rationally maximize chemical diversity, rather than relying on serendipity, can add value to such efforts. Readily implementable biological (i.e., ITS sequence analysis) and chemical (i.e., mass spectrometry-based feature and scaffold measurements) diversity assessment tools can be employed to monitor and adjust library development tactics in real time. In summary, metabolomics-driven technologies and simple gene-based specimen barcoding approaches have broad applicability to building chemically diverse natural product libraries.

With the exponential increase in publicly available protein structures, the comparison of protein binding sites naturally emerged as a scientific topic to explain observations or generate hypotheses for ligand design, notably to predict ligand selectivity for on- and off-targets, explain polypharmacology, and design target-focused libraries. The current review summarizes the state-of-the-art computational methods applied to pocket detection and comparison as well as structural druggability estimates. The major strengths and weaknesses of current pocket descriptors, alignment methods, and similarity search algorithms are presented. Lastly, an exhaustive survey of both retrospective and prospective applications in diverse medicinal chemistry scenarios illustrates the capability of the existing methods and the hurdle that still needs to be overcome for more accurate predictions.

Physical space in an academic library is increasingly important to fully support students' diverse needs for learning spaces. However, inefficient space design and planning give rise to crowded and underutilized spaces in a library, thereby probably lowering students' learning outcomes and wasting costly space. Understanding students' use of space can facilitate effective design and planning, which in turn will result in more efficient use of space. As students' spatial choices (i.e., the act of decision-making of an individual or group among two or more space alternatives for a certain activity) account for much of the space use in a library, this study explored the factors that influence their choice of space in an academic library using a paper-based survey (n = 252) at the central academic library, Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. The five most important space attributes were “Amount of space,” “Noise level,” “Crowdedness,” “Comfort of furnishing” and “Cleanliness.” The spatial choice patterns also differed according to different user and activity profiles. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Colleges increasingly are recognized as student workplaces, inspiring campus leaders to create healthier campus environments. Yet challenging this vision is burgeoning research regarding the health risks of sedentary behavior, an under-studied college health concern that implies deleterious health outcomes and, by extension, academic impediments as well. Can movement be incorporated into academic activities such as studying or reading? This question—particularly relevant to libraries due to their increasing use as study spaces—requires the expansion of standard methods of evaluating student health needs and behaviors. We propose Post-Occupancy Evaluation (POE) methods as a novel way to investigate sedentary behaviors in a campus library and identify designs and practices to help promote movement. In 2012 and 2013, as part of an undergraduate architecture class, we conducted two POEs of Berkeley's newest library to learn how the space is used and, inspired by new research about the perils of sedentary behavior, we also considered how the library could be used. Through our findings we confirmed the changing role of campus libraries as study spaces, observed social and built environment contexts of sedentary behaviors in library settings, and identified possible interventions to introduce postural variation and physical activity into observed patterns of library use. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The scaffold representation is widely employed to classify bioactive compounds on the basis of common core structures or correlate compound classes with specific biological activities. In this paper, we present a novel approach called "Molecular Anatomy" as a flexible and unbiased molecular scaffold-based metrics to cluster large set of compounds. We introduce a set of nine molecular representations at different abstraction levels, combined with fragmentation rules, to define a multi-dimensional network of hierarchically interconnected molecular frameworks. We demonstrate that the introduction of a flexible scaffold definition and multiple pruning rules is an effective method to identify relevant chemical moieties. This approach allows to cluster together active molecules belonging to different molecular classes, capturing most of the structure activity information, in particular when libraries containing a huge number of singletons are analyzed. We also propose a procedure to derive a network visualization that allows a full graphical representation of compounds dataset, permitting an efficient navigation in the scaffold's space and significantly contributing to perform high quality SAR analysis. The protocol is freely available as a web interface at https://ma.exscalate.eu. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

High-throughput virtual screening (HTVS) is, in conjunction with rapid advances in computer hardware, becoming a staple in drug design research campaigns and cheminformatics. In this context, virtual compound library design becomes crucial as it generally constitutes the first step where quality filtered databases are essential for the efficient downstream research. Therefore, multiple filters for compound library design were devised and reported in the scientific literature. We collected the most common filters in medicinal chemistry (PAINS, REOS, Aggregators, van de Waterbeemd, Oprea, Fichert, Ghose, Mozzicconacci, Muegge, Egan, Murcko, Veber, Ro3, Ro4, and Ro5) to facilitate their open access use and compared them. Then, we implemented these filters in the open platform Konstanz Information Miner (KNIME) as a freely accessible and simple workflow compatible with small or large compound databases for the benefit of the readers and for the help in the early drug design steps.

The use of recombinant antibodies developed through phage display technology offers a promising approach for combating viral infectious diseases. By specifically targeting antigens on viral surfaces, these antibodies have the potential to reduce the severity of infections or even prevent them altogether. With the emergence of new and more virulent strains of viruses, it is crucial to develop innovative methods to counteract them. Phage display technology has proven successful in generating recombinant antibodies capable of targeting specific viral antigens, thereby providing a powerful tool to fight viral infections. In this mini-review article, we examine the development of these antibodies using phage display technology, and discuss the associated challenges and opportunities in developing novel treatments for viral infectious diseases. Furthermore, we provide an overview of phage display technology. As these methods continue to evolve and improve, novel and sophisticated tools based on phage display and peptide display systems are constantly emerging, offering exciting prospects for solving scientific, medical, and technological problems related to viral infectious diseases in the near future., Competing Interests: Declaration of Competing Interest The authors declare that they have no known competing financial interests or personal relationships that could have appeared to influence the work reported in this paper., (Copyright © 2024. Published by Elsevier Inc.)

Background: Traditional methods for chemical library generation in virtual screening often impose limitations on the accessible chemical space or produce synthetically irrelevant structures. Incorporating common chemical reactions into generative algorithms could offer significant benefits. Materials & methods: In this study, we developed NeuroClick, a graphical user interface software designed to perform in silico azide-alkyne cycloaddition, a widely utilized synthetic approach in modern medicinal chemistry. Results & conclusion: NeuroClick facilitates the generation and filtering of large combinatorial libraries at a remarkable rate of 10,000 molecules per minute. Moreover, the generated products can be filtered to identify subsets of pharmaceutically relevant compounds based on Lipinski's rule of five and blood-brain barrier permeability prediction. We demonstrate the utility of NeuroClick by generating and filtering several thousand molecules for dopamine D3 receptor ligand screening.

Copyright of Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art & Communication is the property of Turkish Online Journal of Design, Art & Communication and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)

Library, as one of the oldest public building types known in history that have been existed for centuries, plays a substantial role in the development of countries by providing access to information and to spread it. More specifically, university libraries are helping to increase academic development because of their users. Due to their mission, university libraries have to provide all kinds of scientific needs of their users in a fast and reliable way. However, the increase in information sources that are easily accessible from the internet by the advancement of technology has allowed users to research in different places rather than library visits. Under these conditions, the spatial structure of a library that is trying to preserve its existence has gained significant importance. The researches have shown that the number and duration of library visits are directly proportional to the design qualities and the facilities provided by the library. This study aims to analyze the effect of selected factors on the library visit of users by considering architectural design criteria and user opinion. In this context, structural equation modeling (SEM) has been utilized as a method that enables all these effects to be interpreted over a single model. Within the scope of the study, a previously validated scale was adapted for Akdeniz University Central Library; the data of 392 participants were analyzed, and the results were discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper arises from work undertaken by the James Reckitt Library Trust to chart a new direction for public libraries in Kingston upon Hull, a port city on the northeast coast of England. The paper aims to generalize a number of key aspects of the Trust's thinking. It addresses the fundamental purpose of public libraries; presents the concept of the deconstructed library, along with its associated business model, and explores the application of the concept of deconstruction to the physical spaces that libraries occupy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this article is to review the literature on the term Learning Commons (LC) for academic libraries, a model that has gone from a purely physical conceptualization (focused on the material transformation of spaces to facilitate collaborative work and comfort), to a more academic and complex approach, which includes even the creation and operation of virtual environments, a librarian profile and work more academically oriented, as well as pedagogical initiatives of various kinds. Thus, a definition of this library scheme is presented according to the latest trends on the subject, listing its most important attributes and, finally, it includes a brief note about the challenges involved in setting up a space like this. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Copyright of New Architecture is the property of New Architecture Editorial Office and its content may not be copied or emailed to multiple sites or posted to a listserv without the copyright holder's express written permission. However, users may print, download, or email articles for individual use. This abstract may be abridged. No warranty is given about the accuracy of the copy. Users should refer to the original published version of the material for the full abstract. (Copyright applies to all Abstracts.)