Effect of Branching on Phase Behaviors of ABC Triblock Copolymers in Nonfrustrated Systems

The phase behavior of linear dendritic triblock copolymer melts(AB2C4) is studied by self-consistent-field theory (SCFT) in order to find the effects of branching on the phase behavior of ABC linear triblock copolymer melts. We focus on a nonfrustrated parameters that \c{hi}NAB=\c{hi}NBC=\c{hi}NAC=40 where A/C interface will not form. Frank-Kasper phases, asymmetric alternative sphere as well as traditional phases observed in diblock copolymer melts are found to be stable in the calculation

Synthetic culture platform and methods of using

The present invention provides a synthetic cell culture platform, comprising: a two dimensional and/or three dimensional surface comprising peptides conjugated to said surface and methods of using the platform for increasing cell adhesion, stable attachment and/or proliferation of cells grown on the platform and for promoting differentiation of neural stem cells into neurons

Applications of Magnetic Microbubbles for Theranostics

Compared with other diagnostic methods, ultrasound is proven to be a safe, simple, non-invasive and cost-effective imaging technique, but the resolution is not comparable to that of magnetic resonance imaging (MRI). Contrast-enhanced ultrasound employing microbubbles can gain a better resolution and is now widely used to diagnose a number of diseases in the clinic. For the last decade, microbubbles have been widely used as ultrasound contrast agents, drug delivery systems and nucleic acid transfection tools. However, microbubbles are not fairly stable enough in some conditions and are not well administrated distributed in the circulation system. On the other hand, magnetic nanoparticles, as MRI contrast agents, can non-specifically penetrate into normal tissues because of their relatively small sizes. By taking advantage of these two kinds of agents, the magnetic microbubbles which couple magnetic iron oxides nanoparticles in the microbubble structure have been explored. The stability of microbubbles can be raised by encapsulating magnetic nanoparticles into the bubble shells and with the guidance of magnetic field, magnetic microbubbles can be delivered to regions of interest, and after appropriate ultrasound exposure, the nanoparticles can be released to the desired area while the magnetic microbubbles collapse. In this review, we summarize magnetic microbubbles used in diagnostic and therapeutic fields, and predict the potential applications of magnetic microbubbles in the future

Identification of Protein Pupylation Sites Using Bi-Profile Bayes Feature Extraction and Ensemble Learning

Pupylation, one of the most important posttranslational modifications of proteins, typically takes place when prokaryotic ubiquitin-like protein (Pup) is attached to specific lysine residues on a target protein. Identification of pupylation substrates and their corresponding sites will facilitate the understanding of the molecular mechanism of pupylation. Comparing with the labor-intensive and time-consuming experiment approaches, computational prediction of pupylation sites is much desirable for their convenience and fast speed. In this study, a new bioinformatics tool named EnsemblePup was developed that used an ensemble of support vector machine classifiers to predict pupylation sites. The highlight of EnsemblePup was to utilize the Bi-profile Bayes feature extraction as the encoding scheme. The performance of EnsemblePup was measured with a sensitivity of 79.49%, a specificity of 82.35%, an accuracy of 85.43%, and a Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.617 using the 5-fold cross validation on the training dataset. When compared with other existing methods on a benchmark dataset, the EnsemblePup provided better predictive performance, with a sensitivity of 80.00%, a specificity of 83.33%, an accuracy of 82.00%, and a Matthews correlation coefficient of 0.629. The experimental results suggested that EnsemblePup presented here might be useful to identify and annotate potential pupylation sites in proteins of interest. A web server for predicting pupylation sites was developed

Media Façades in the Wild: Some Lessons

Media displays in public areas are becoming increasingly pervasive—they are used in many settings, come in different sizes, serve different purposes, and have varied degrees of interactivity. In this paper, we aim to provide a survey of how these displays, often named media façades, are used in the wild in a city in China which is undergoing a rapid growth. This survey is intended to raise greater awareness and discussion about the use and effect of these displays in public areas. Through this survey, we have been able to distill some lessons of what is good, bad, and ugly about some current examples of media displays used in a city that is transitioning into becoming a modern one and one that is located in one of the fastest growing areas in Asia. With this research, we hope that we can provide technology designers and architects with some general principles that can help them integrate these types of technologies into their architectural creations

Media Façades in the Wild: Some Lessons

Media displays in public areas are becoming increasingly pervasive—they are used in many settings, come in different sizes, serve different purposes, and have varied degrees of interactivity. In this paper, we aim to provide a survey of how these displays, often named media façades, are used in the wild in a city in China which is undergoing a rapid growth. This survey is intended to raise greater awareness and discussion about the use and effect of these displays in public areas. Through this survey, we have been able to distill some lessons of what is good, bad, and ugly about some current examples of media displays used in a city that is transitioning into becoming a modern one and one that is located in one of the fastest growing areas in Asia. With this research, we hope that we can provide technology designers and architects with some general principles that can help them integrate these types of technologies into their architectural creations

Media Façades in the Wild: Some Lessons

Media displays in public areas are becoming increasingly pervasive—they are used in many settings, come in different sizes, serve different purposes, and have varied degrees of interactivity. In this paper, we aim to provide a survey of how these displays, often named media façades, are used in the wild in a city in China which is undergoing a rapid growth. This survey is intended to raise greater awareness and discussion about the use and effect of these displays in public areas. Through this survey, we have been able to distill some lessons of what is good, bad, and ugly about some current examples of media displays used in a city that is transitioning into becoming a modern one and one that is located in one of the fastest growing areas in Asia. With this research, we hope that we can provide technology designers and architects with some general principles that can help them integrate these types of technologies into their architectural creations