Advances in heterometallic ring-opening (co)polymerisation catalysis

Truly sustainable plastics require renewable feedstocks coupled with efficient production and end-of-life degradation/recycling processes. Some of the most useful degradable materials are aliphatic polyesters, polycarbonates and polyamides, which are often prepared via ring-opening (co)polymerisation (RO(CO)P) using an organometallic catalyst. While there has been extensive research into ligand development, heterometallic cooperativity offers an equally promising yet underexplored strategy to improve catalyst performance, as heterometallic catalysts often exhibit significant activity and selectivity enhancements compared to their homometallic counterparts. This review describes advances in heterometallic RO(CO)P catalyst design, highlighting the overarching structure-activity trends and reactivity patterns to inform future catalyst design

A revised procedure to identify λ 0-measure values for applying Choquet integral in solving multi-attribute decision problems

Choquet integral is currently being employed in many multi-attribute decision problems thanks to its ability in capturing the interactions that usually exist between the evaluation attributes during the aggregation process However, the process of identifying 2n2n values of fuzzy measure prior to applying Choquet integral normally turns into a complex one especially when the decision problem involves large number of evaluation attributes, nn . Many patterns of fuzzy measure have been introduced to deal with this complexity and λ0λ0 -measure is one such pattern. Unfortunately, the existing λ0λ0 -measure identification procedure failed to provide clear indications as to which attributes need to be enhanced in order to significantly inflate the performance of alternatives.That being the case, this paper proposed a revised version of the original λ0λ0 -measure identification procedure through the integration of decision making trial and evaluation laboratory (DEMATEL) model. The revised procedure uses DEMATEL to identify the causal-effect relations between the attributes. The outputs of DEMATEL (i.e. digraph and importance ratios) are then utilized to determine the inputs required to identify the complete set of λ0λ0 -measure values.A vendor evaluation problem was used to demonstrate the feasibility of the procedure. The differences between the revised and original procedure were discussed as well

Bathymetry Estimates in the Southern Oceans from SEASAT Altimetry

A mean sea surface height based on Seasat altimeter data has been high-pass filtered to reveal a pattern of geoid anomalies which are highly correlated with sea-floor topography. The technique is used to locate new bathymetric features in the poorly surveyed southern oceans

Validation of the protein kinase PfCLK3 as a multistage cross-species malarial drug target

The requirement for next-generation antimalarials to be both curative and transmission-blocking necessitates the identification of previously undiscovered druggable molecular pathways. We identified a selective inhibitor of the Plasmodium falciparum protein kinase PfCLK3, which we used in combination with chemogenetics to validate PfCLK3 as a drug target acting at multiple parasite life stages. Consistent with a role for PfCLK3 in RNA splicing, inhibition resulted in the down-regulation of more than 400 essential parasite genes. Inhibition of PfCLK3 mediated rapid killing of asexual liver- and blood-stage P. falciparum and blockade of gametocyte development, thereby preventing transmission, and also showed parasiticidal activity against P. berghei and P. knowlesi Hence, our data establish PfCLK3 as a target for drugs, with the potential to offer a cure-to be prophylactic and transmission blocking in malaria

Validation of the protein kinase PfCLK3 as a multistage cross-species malarial drug target

The requirement for next-generation antimalarials to be both curative and transmission-blocking necessitates the identification of previously undiscovered druggable molecular pathways. We identified a selective inhibitor of the Plasmodium falciparum protein kinase PfCLK3, which we used in combination with chemogenetics to validate PfCLK3 as a drug target acting at multiple parasite life stages. Consistent with a role for PfCLK3 in RNA splicing, inhibition resulted in the down-regulation of more than 400 essential parasite genes. Inhibition of PfCLK3 mediated rapid killing of asexual liver- and blood-stage P. falciparum and blockade of gametocyte development, thereby preventing transmission, and also showed parasiticidal activity against P. berghei and P. knowlesi Hence, our data establish PfCLK3 as a target for drugs, with the potential to offer a cure-to be prophylactic and transmission blocking in malaria