Deoxyribonucleic acid damage in Iranian veterans 25 years after wartime exposure to sulfur mustard

• Background: More than 100,000 Iranian veterans and civilians still suffer from various long-term complications due to their exposure to sulfur mustard (SM) during the Iran–Iraq war in 1983–88. The aim of the study was to investigate DNA damage of SM in veterans who were exposed to SM, 23–27 years prior to this study. • Materials and Methods: Blood samples were obtained from the veterans and healthy volunteers as negative controls. Lymphocytes were isolated from blood samples and DNA breaks were measured using single-cell microgel electrophoresis technique under alkaline conditions (comet assay). Single cells were analyzed with “Tri Tek Comet Score version 1.5” software and DNA break was measured based on the percentage of tail DNA alone, or in the presence of H2O2 (25 μM) as a positive control. • Results: A total of 25 SM exposed male veterans and 25 male healthy volunteers with similar ages (44.66 ± 6.2 and 42.12 ± 5.75 years, respectively) were studied. Percentage of the lymphocyte DNA damage was significantly (p < 0.01) higher in the SM-exposed individuals than in the controls (6.47 ± 0.52 and 1.31 ± 0.35, respectively). Percentages of DNA damage in the different age groups of 35–39, 40–44, 45–49, and 50–54 years in SM-exposed veterans (5.48 ± 0.17, 6.7 3 ± 1.58, 6.42 ± 0.22, and 7.27 ± 0.38, respectively) were all significantly (p < 0.05) higher than the controls (1.18 ± 0.25, 1.53 ± 0.22, 1.27 ± 0.20, and 1.42 ± 0.10, respectively). The lymphocytes incubated with H2O2 had much higher DNA damage as expected. The average of tail DNA is 42.12 ± 2.75% for control cells + H2O2 and 18.48 ± 2.14% for patients cells + H2O2; P < 0.001. • Conclusion: SM exposure of the veterans revealed DNA damage as judged by the comet assay

RISA: Round-Robin Intra-Rack Friendly Scheduling Algorithm for Disaggregated Datacenters

Recent trends see a move away from a fixed-resource server-centric datacenter model to a more adaptable "disaggregated" datacenter model. These disaggregated datacenters can then dynamically group resources to the specific requirements of an incoming workload, thereby improving efficiency. To properly utilize these disaggregated datacenters, workload allocation techniques must examine the current state of the datacenter and choose resources that not only optimize the current workload request, but future ones. Since disaggregated datacenters are severely bottlenecked by the available network resources, our work proposes a heuristic-based approach called RISA, which significantly reduces the network usage of workload allocations in disaggregated datacenters. Compared to the state-of-the-art, RISA reduces the power consumption for optical components by 33% and reduces the average CPU-RAM round-trip latency by 50%. Additionally, RISA significantly outperforms the state-of-the-art in terms of execution time.Comment: Clarified some prior work and their citation

Arsitektur Titik Balik: Participatory Design Dan Memori Kolektif

Kenangan adalah ingatan yang akan menjadi cerminan manusia dalam menghadapi keadaan kedepannya. Sehingga, momen akan kenangan itu sendiri harus dibangkitkan. Arsitektur sebagai media membangkitkan momen tidak hanya sebatas intrusi ruang semata. Namun, juga mengajak pengguna dan penghuni untuk berpartisipasi dalam membangkitkan momen tersebut. Karena ruang bukanlah sesuatu yang statis melalui material yang disajikannya. Selama ini, kita tidak pernah menyadari bahwa arsitektur yang kita alami sehari-hari selalu menjadi bagian dari kenangan hidup kita. Dari permasalahan ini penulis menyadari perlu adanya sesuatu dari rancangan yang membuat user menyadari bahwa mereka sedang merakit kenangan mereka sendiri. Rancangan yang dapat disempurnakan oleh penggunanya, seperti baju jemuran yang menjadi elemen estetika, sirkulasi yang diberi pekerasan sendiri oleh penggunanya, dan material yang bersifat temporer yang diganti secara berkala, akan memberi kesadaran secara penuh kepada penggunanya bahwa mereka sedang merajut kenangan mereka terhadap tempat tinggal mereka

Cellular location and activity of Escherichia coli RecG proteins shed light on the function of its structurally unresolved C-terminus

RecG is a DNA translocase encoded by most species of bacteria. The Escherichia coli protein targets branched DNA substrates and drives the unwinding and rewinding of DNA strands. Its ability to remodel replication forks and to genetically interact with PriA protein have led to the idea that it plays an important role in securing faithful genome duplication. Here we report that RecG co-localises with sites of DNA replication and identify conserved arginine and tryptophan residues near its C-terminus that are needed for this localisation. We establish that the extreme C-terminus, which is not resolved in the crystal structure, is vital for DNA unwinding but not for DNA binding. Substituting an alanine for a highly conserved tyrosine near the very end results in a substantial reduction in the ability to unwind replication fork and Holliday junction structures but has no effect on substrate affinity. Deleting or substituting the terminal alanine causes an even greater reduction in unwinding activity, which is somewhat surprising as this residue is not uniformly present in closely related RecG proteins. More significantly, the extreme C-terminal mutations have little effect on localisation. Mutations that do prevent localisation result in only a slight reduction in the capacity for DNA repair. © 2014 The Author(s)

Graphene zigzag ribbons, square lattice models and quantum spin chains

We present an extended study of finite-width zigzag graphene ribbons (ZGRs) based on a tight-binding model with hard-wall boundary conditions. We provide an exact analytic solution that clarifies the origin of the predicted width dependence on the conductance through junctions of ribbons with different widths. An analysis of the obtained solutions suggests a new description of ZGRs in terms of coupled chains. We pursue these ideas further by introducing a mapping between the ZGR model and the Hamiltonian for N-coupled quantum chains as described in terms of 2N Majorana fermions. The proposed mapping preserves the dependence of ribbon properties on its width thus rendering metallic ribbons for N odd and zero-gap semiconductor ribbons for N even. Furthermore, it reveals a close connection between the low-energy properties of the ZGR model and a continuous family of square lattice model Hamiltonians with similar width-dependent properties that includes the $\pi-$flux and the trivial square lattice models. As a further extension, we show that this new description makes it possible to identify various aspects of the physics of graphene ribbons with those predicted by models of quantum spin chains (QSCs)

Bioherbicidal potential of the essential oils from mediterranean lamiaceae for weed control in organic farming

In all farming systems, weeds are the most expensive pest to manage, accounting for 30% of potential losses. In organic farming, the problem may be further amplified by restrictions on herbicides, thus making weeds the main problem faced by organic farmers in the field. In this sense, much research is focusing on the allelopathic potential of plants as an ecological weed control tool. Many plant species can release allelopathic compounds with high phytotoxicity that can be used in weed control. Species belonging to the Lamiaceae family have been studied widely for this purpose, and their essential oils (EOs) appear to be promising bioherbicides. However, there are still many challenges for their development. Considering these aspects, a review of the bioherbicidal effect of EOs from Mediterranean Lamiaceae could help identify the most effective ones and the challenges for their actual development