Dagstuhl News January - December 2000

"Dagstuhl News" is a publication edited especially for the members of the Foundation "Informatikzentrum Schloss Dagstuhl" to thank them for their support. The News give a summary of the scientific work being done in Dagstuhl. Each Dagstuhl Seminar is presented by a small abstract describing the contents and scientific highlights of the seminar as well as the perspectives or challenges of the research topic

A Polyhedral Study of Mixed 0-1 Set

We consider a variant of the well-known single node fixed charge network flow set with constant capacities. This set arises from the relaxation of more general mixed integer sets such as lot-sizing problems with multiple suppliers. We provide a complete polyhedral characterization of the convex hull of the given set

Simulated Annealing

The book contains 15 chapters presenting recent contributions of top researchers working with Simulated Annealing (SA). Although it represents a small sample of the research activity on SA, the book will certainly serve as a valuable tool for researchers interested in getting involved in this multidisciplinary field. In fact, one of the salient features is that the book is highly multidisciplinary in terms of application areas since it assembles experts from the fields of Biology, Telecommunications, Geology, Electronics and Medicine

AIRO 2016. 46th Annual Conference of the Italian Operational Research Society. Emerging Advances in Logistics Systems Trieste, September 6-9, 2016 - Abstracts Book

The AIRO 2016 book of abstract collects the contributions from the conference participants. The AIRO 2016 Conference is a special occasion for the Italian Operations Research community, as AIRO annual conferences turn 46th edition in 2016. To reflect this special occasion, the Programme and Organizing Committee, chaired by Walter Ukovich, prepared a high quality Scientific Programme including the first initiative of AIRO Young, the new AIRO poster section that aims to promote the work of students, PhD students, and Postdocs with an interest in Operations Research. The Scientific Programme of the Conference offers a broad spectrum of contributions covering the variety of OR topics and research areas with an emphasis on “Emerging Advances in Logistics Systems”. The event aims at stimulating integration of existing methods and systems, fostering communication amongst different research groups, and laying the foundations for OR integrated research projects in the next decade. Distinct thematic sections follow the AIRO 2016 days starting by initial presentation of the objectives and features of the Conference. In addition three invited internationally known speakers will present Plenary Lectures, by Gianni Di Pillo, Frédéric Semet e Stefan Nickel, gathering AIRO 2016 participants together to offer key presentations on the latest advances and developments in OR’s research

Bionano-Interfaces through Peptide Design

The clinical success of restoring bone and tooth function through implants critically depends on the maintenance of an infection-free, integrated interface between the host tissue and the biomaterial surface. The surgical site infections, which are the infections within one year of surgery, occur in approximately 160,000-300,000 cases in the US annually. Antibiotics are the conventional treatment for the prevention of infections. They are becoming ineffective due to bacterial antibiotic-resistance from their wide-spread use. There is an urgent need both to combat bacterial drug resistance through new antimicrobial agents and to limit the spread of drug resistance by limiting their delivery to the implant site. This work aims to reduce surgical site infections from implants by designing of chimeric antimicrobial peptides to integrate a novel and effective delivery method. In recent years, antimicrobial peptides (AMPs) have attracted interest as natural sources for new antimicrobial agents. By being part of the immune system in all life forms, they are examples of antibacterial agents with successfully maintained efficacy across evolutionary time. Both natural and synthetic AMPs show significant promise for solving the antibiotic resistance problems. In this work, AMP1 and AMP2 was shown to be active against three different strains of pathogens in Chapter 4. In the literature, these peptides have been shown to be effective against multi-drug resistant bacteria. However, their effective delivery to the implantation site limits their clinical use. In recent years, different groups adapted covalent chemistry-based or non-specific physical adsorption methods for antimicrobial peptide coatings on implant surfaces. Many of these procedures use harsh chemical conditions requiring multiple reaction steps. Furthermore, none of these methods allow the orientation control of these molecules on the surfaces, which is an essential consideration for biomolecules. In the last few decades, solid binding peptides attracted high interest due to their material specificity and self-assembly properties. These peptides offer robust surface adsorption and assembly in diverse applications. In this work, a design method for chimeric antimicrobial peptides that can self-assemble and self-orient onto biomaterial surfaces was demonstrated. Three specific aims used to address this two-fold strategy of self-assembly and self-orientation are: 1) Develop classification and design methods using rough set theory and genetic algorithm search to customize antibacterial peptides; 2) Develop chimeric peptides by designing spacer sequences to improve the activity of antimicrobial peptides on titanium surfaces; 3) Verify the approach as an enabling technology by expanding the chimeric design approach to other biomaterials. In Aim 1, a peptide classification tool was developed because the selection of an antimicrobial peptide for an application was difficult among the thousands of peptide sequences available. A rule-based rough-set theory classification algorithm was developed to group antimicrobial peptides by chemical properties. This work is the first time that rough set theory has been applied to peptide activity analysis. The classification method on benchmark data sets resulted in low false discovery rates. The novel rough set theory method was combined with a novel genetic algorithm search, resulting in a method for customizing active antibacterial peptides using sequence-based relationships. Inspired by the fact that spacer sequences play critical roles between functional protein domains, in Aim 2, chimeric peptides were designed to combine solid binding functionality with antimicrobial functionality. To improve how these functions worked together in the same peptide sequence, new spacer sequences were engineered. The rough set theory method from Aim 1 was used to find structure-based relationships to discover new spacer sequences which improved the antimicrobial activity of the chimeric peptides. In Aim 3, the proposed approach is demonstrated as an enabling technology. In this work, calcium phosphate was tested and verified the modularity of the chimeric antimicrobial self-assembling peptide approach. Other chimeric peptides were designed for common biomaterials zirconia and urethane polymer. Finally, an antimicrobial peptide was engineered for a dental adhesive system toward applying spacer design concepts to optimize the antimicrobial activity