“The I-81 Project: Then and Now” – A Documentary Tracing Interstate 81’s History and Potential Future in Syracuse

“The I-81 Project: Then and Now” is a documentary regarding the history of Interstate 81 in Syracuse and the ongoing debate regarding the highway’s future in the city. Interstate 81 was built on top of the 15th ward, a neighborhood that was mostly demolished around the time the highway’s bridges were first built in the 1960s. Today, as these bridges reach the age of 50, the New York State Department of Transportation has decided that it is time to replace them. However, several different options are on the table for the new I-81 in Syracuse, including a boulevard replacing the bridges and turning Interstate 481 into the new I-81, building a tunnel underground near the location of the current bridges, constructing a depressed highway along the current viaduct, and rebuilding the bridges, which would need to be wider due to federal regulations. However, there are many factors to consider with each option, and the community remains divided as city residents, area suburbs, elected officials, businesses, and other groups hold varying opinions. Ultimately, there are so many competing interests, so the final decision most likely will not satisfy everyone. This is also due to the highway’s widespread impact on thousands of residents in Central New York as well as travelers through the region. The documentary can be viewed here: http://youtu.be/ttcr26UJEh8 A corresponding website, including bonus scenes and more information, can be found here: https://kaeskow.expressions.syr.edu/i81project

A Novel Method for Characterization and Quantification of Flexibility and Mobility in Proteins

Proteins in vivo are not completely rigid molecules, and mobilities within their structure play a key role in protein function. We discuss a novel method for measuring two distinct types of protein fl exibility by comparing pairs of static protein structure coordinates. The measures focus on the mobility of a subset of atoms in the protein known as the backbone, and they quantify mobility or exibility at the level of the amino acids (or residues), which are the basic constituents of proteins. We validate our measures against a subset of proteins from the protein-protein docking benchmark, and against a number of individual proteins known to have mobility or exibility that is significant to their function. We also demonstrate the applicability of our methodology to several important biochemical topics including examples that apply to drug and enzyme design, and evaluation of computational protein structure prediction. We conclude with an analysis of protein structural and energetic terms showing which terms are associated with our exibility measures, and may therefore be useful within the context of protein modeling algorithms to predict the locality of exible regions