Synthesis and photophysical studies of a multivalent photoreactive RuII-calix[4]arene complex bearing RGD-containing cyclopentapeptides

peer reviewe

Family Business Restructuring:A Review and Research Agenda

Although business restructuring occurs frequently and it is important for the prosperity of family firms across generations, research on family firms has largely evolved separately from research on business restructuring. This is a missed opportunity, since the two domains are complementary, and understanding the context, process, content, and outcome dimensions is relevant to both research streams. We address this by examining the intersection between research on business restructuring and family firms to improve our knowledge of each area and inform future research. To achieve this goal, we review and organize research across different dimensions to create an integrative framework. Building on current research, we focus on 88 studies at the intersection of family firm and business restructuring research to develop a model that identifies research needs and suggests directions for future research

Making Way in Corpus-based Intepreting Studies

The idea of editing a volume entirely focused on corpus-based interpreting studies was first discussed following the First Forlì International Workshop on Corpus-based interpreting studies: The State of the Art which was held at the Forlì Campus of the University of Bologna on May 7th and 8th 2015. This event gathered more than 100 scholars from different parts of the world with the aim of sharing their corpus-based research endeavors, ranging from studies that exploited fully machine-readable corpora to small collections of texts or transcripts for manual analysis. This volume serves a dual purpose. On the one hand, it aims at promoting the understanding of the interpretation process and product based not on anecdotal observations or small-size case-studies, but on comparatively large datasets of professional interpretations mostly stored and queried according to standard corpus linguistics methodologies. The volume showcases descriptions of and studies on major interpreting corpora available to date: the EPIC Corpus and its off-springs EPTIC (including also translations) developed at the University of Bologna, EPICG from the University of Ghent (Belgium) and the TIC Corpus from the University of Poznán (Poland); the 2249i Corpus, the DIRSI Corpus and the IMITES Corpus, again from the University of Bologna (Italy); the CorIT Corpus from the University of Trieste (Italy); the FOOTIE Corpus created at UNINT University in Rome (Italy); the NAIST Corpus from the Nara Institute of Science and Technology (Japan) and the CEIPPC Corpus, which was built at the Guangdong University of Foreign Studies (China). On the other hand, the volume is also intended as a renewed call (after Miriam Shlesinger’s first call in 1998) to the research community to further develop the field of corpus-based interpreting studies by offering scholars more corpus-based data and methodologies to compile their own corpora according to their research designs

Label-free femtomolar detection of target DNA by impedimetric DNA sensor based on poly(pyrrole-nitrilotriacetic acid) film.

An ultrahigh performance impedimetric DNA sensor is presented showing detection limits in the femtomolar range. This electrochemical setup was constructed initially by electrogeneration of poly(11-pyrrol-1-yl-undecanoic acid N(alpha'),N(alpha)-bis(carboxymethyl)-L-lysine amide) (poly(pyrrole-NTA)) film. The latter was then modified by the coordination of Cu(2+) ions onto the chelating NTA centers followed by the immobilization of the ssHIV-DNA previously modified by a polyhistidine tag by affinity binding. The immobilization of the DNA probe and hybridization with the complementary target ssHIV-DNA were investigated using fluorescence microscopy and quantified with quartz crystal microbalance experiments leading to DNA probe and duplex coverage of 1.7 x 10(-11) and 7.7 x 10(-12) mol cm(-2), respectively. The duplex formation was corroborated by amperometric measurements through the duplex labeling by a glucose oxidase. In the presence of hydroquinone as redox indicator, the DNA sensor was applied to the impedimetric detection of target DNA without a labeling step. A linear quantification of the HIV DNA target was carried out in the range 10(-15) to 10(-8) mol L(-1)

Building Interpreting and Intermodal Corpora: A How to for a Formidable Task

This contribution has a double aim. On the one hand, it highlights the various challenges and problems compilers of (simultaneous) interpreting and intermodal corpora are likely to face, and the solutions that were found and applied in three corpora of European Parliament plenary debates, i.e. EPIC, EPICG and EPTIC. On the other, it provides an accessible step-by-step guide for corpus developers who are working with European Parliament data, with the ultimate aim of bringing as far as possible into line the procedures used to transcribe the audio tracks, record metadata, annotate texts with part-of-speech and lemma information, perform text-to-text and text-to-audio/video alignment, and index the corpus for searching with appropriate corpus query tools. By adopting shared corpus building methods, it might be possible to leverage the substantial efforts already deployed by different research groups, and encourage others to take charge of new language pairs. This, we shall argue, might lead to a massively multilingual interpreting and intermodal corpus, through a distributed community effort

Systematic Evaluation of Benchmark G4 Probes and G4 Clinical Drugs using three Biophysical Methods: A Guideline to Evaluate Rapidly G4‐Binding Affinity

International audienceG-quadruplex DNA structures (G4) are proven to interfere with most genetic and epigenetic processes. Small molecules binding these structures (G4 ligands) are invaluable tools to probe G4-biology and address G4-druggability in various diseases (cancer, viral infections). However, the large number of reported G4 ligands (>1000) could lead to confusion while selecting one for a given application. Herein we conducted a systematic affinity ranking of 11 popular G4 ligands vs 5 classical G4 sequences using FRET-melting, G4-FID assays and SPR. Interestingly SPR data globally align with the rankings obtained from the two semi-quantitative assays despite discrepancies due to limits and characteristics of each assay. In the whole, PhenDC3 emerges as the most potent binder irrespective of the G4 sequence. Immediately below PDS, PDC-360A, BRACO19, TMPyP4 and RHPS4 feature strong to medium binding again with poor G4 topology discrimination. More strikingly, the G4 drugs Quarfloxin, CX5461 and c-PDS exhibit weak affinity with all G4s studied. Finally, NMM and Cu-ttpy showed heterogeneous behaviors due, in part, to their physicochemical particularities poorly compatible with screening conditions. The remarkable properties of PhenDC3 led us to propose its use for benchmarking FRET-melting and G4-FID assays for rapid G4-affinity evaluation of newly developed ligands

Luminescence Quenching of Ru-Labeled Oligonucleotides by Targeted Complementary Strands

AbstractThe yield of hole injection into guanines of different oligonucleotide duplexes by a photooxidizing tethered Ru(II) complex is examined by measuring the luminescence quenching of the excited complex. This yield is investigated as a function of the anchoring site of the complex (on a thymine nucleobase in the middle of the sequence or on the 5′ terminal phosphate) and the number and position of the guanine bases as compared with the site of attachment of the Ru(II) compound. In contrast to other studies, the tethered complex, [Ru(tap)2(dip)]2+, is a non-intercalating compound and has been shown previously to produce an irreversible photocrosslinking between the two strands as the ultimate step of hole injection. The study of luminescence quenching of the anchored complex by emission intensity and lifetime measurements for the different duplexes indicates that a direct contact between the complex and the guanine nucleobase is needed for the electron transfer to take place. Moreover, for none of the sequences a clear contribution of a static quenching is evidenced independently of the two types of attachment of the [Ru(tap)2(dip)]2+ complex to the oligonucleotide. A comparison of the fastest hole-injection process by electron transfer to the excited anchored [Ru(tap)2(dip)]2+, with the rate of the photo-electron transfer between the same complex free in solution and guanosine-5′-monophosphate, indicates that the hole injection by the anchored complex is slower by a factor of 10 at least. A bad overlap between donor and acceptor orbitals is probably the cause of this slow rate, which could be attributed to some steric hindrance induced by the complex linker