Adaptive Underactuated Finger with Active Rolling Surface

This paper presents the design, prototype and kinematic model of a new adaptive underactuated finger with an articulated skin/surface that is able to bend and, at the same time, provides active rolling motion along its central axis while keeping the finger configuration. The design is based on a planar chain of overlapping spherical phalanxes that are tendon-driven. The finger has an articulated surface made of an external chain of hollow universal joints that can rotate via its central axis on the surface of the internal structure. The outer surface provides a second active Degree of Freedom (DoF). The two actuators, driving the bending and/or rolling motion, can be used independently. A set of experiments have been included to validate and measure the performance of the prototype for the grasping and rolling actions. The proposed finger can be built with a different number of phalanxes and sizes. A number of these fingers can be arranged along a palm structure resulting in a multi-finger robotic grasper for applications that require adaptation and in-hand manipulation capabilities such as pHRI

Association of single nucleotide polymorphisms in Pre-miR-27a, Pre-miR-196a2, Pre-miR-423, miR-608 and Pre-miR-618 with breast cancer susceptibility in a South American population

Indexación: Web of ScienceBackground MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a novel class of endogenous, non-coding, single-stranded RNAs capable of regulating gene expression by suppressing translation or degrading mRNAs. Single nucleotide polymorphisms (SNP) can alter miRNA expression, resulting in diverse functional consequences. Previous studies have examined the association of miRNA SNPs with breast cancer (BC) susceptibility. The contribution of miRNA gene variants to BC susceptibility in South American women had been unexplored. Our study evaluated the association of the SNPs rs895819 in pre-miR27a, rs11614913 in pre-miR-196a2, rs6505162 in pre-miR-423, rs4919510 in miR-608, and rs2682818 in pre-mir-618 with familial BC and early-onset non-familial BC in non-carriers of BRCA1/2 mutations from a South American population. Results We evaluated the association of five SNPs with BC risk in 440 cases and 807 controls. Our data do not support an association of rs11614913:C > T and rs4919510:C > G with BC risk. The rs6505162:C > A was significantly associated with increased risk of familial BC in persons with a strong family history of BC (OR = 1.7 [95 % CI 1.0–2.0] p = 0.05). The rs2682818:C > A genotype C/A is associated with an increased BC risk in non-familial early-onset BC. For the rs895819:A > G polymorphism, the genotype G/G is significantly associated with reduced BC risk in families with a moderate history of BC (OR = 0.3 [95 % CI 0.1–0.8] p = 0.01). Conclusions The contribution of variant miRNA genes to BC in South American women had been unexplored. Our findings support the following conclusions: a) rs6505162:C > A in pre-miR-423 increases risk of familial BC in families with a strong history of BC; b) the C/A genotype at rs2682818:C > A (pre-miR-618) increases BC risk in non-familial early-onset BC; and c) the G/G genotype at rs895819:A > G (miR-27a) reduces BC risk in families with a moderate history of BC.http://bmcgenet.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/s12863-016-0415-

Towards Field Theory Amplitudes From the Cohomology of Pure Spinor Superspace

A simple BRST-closed expression for the color-ordered super-Yang-Mills 5-point amplitude at tree-level is proposed in pure spinor superspace and shown to be BRST-equivalent to the field theory limit of the open superstring 5-pt amplitude. It is manifestly cyclic invariant and each one of its five terms can be associated to the five Feynman diagrams which use only cubic vertices. Its form also suggests an empirical method to find superspace expressions in the cohomology of the pure spinor BRST operator for higher-point amplitudes based on their kinematic pole structure. Using this method, Ansaetze for the 6- and 7-point 10D super-Yang-Mills amplitudes which map to their 14 and 42 color-ordered diagrams are conjectured and their 6- and 7-gluon expansions are explicitly computed.Comment: 14 pages, harvmac, v4: trivial edits in the text to comply with JHEP refere

Pure spinor computation towards open string three-loop

Using the recent results in the pure spinor formulation, we lay out a ground-work towards the full momentum space amplitudes of open superstrings at three-loop. After briefly reviewing the one-loop amplitude, we directly work out the two-loop and reproduce the result that was obtained by a symmetry argument. For the three-loop, first we use the two-loop regulator as a warm-up exercise. The result vanishes. We then employ the regulator that has been recently proposed by Aisaka and Berkovits (AB). It is noted that the terms in higher power in $\frac{1}{\lambda\bar{\lambda}}$ that render the two-loop regulator disqualified for the three-loop do not contribute. This with a few other indications suggests a possibility that the AB regulator might also lead to a vanishing result. Nevertheless, we argue that it is possible to acquire the three-loop amplitude, and present a result that we anticipate to be the three-loop amplitude.Comment: 41 pages, latex, cosmetic change

Activity of the DNA minor groove cross-linking agent SG2000 (SJG-136) against canine tumours

BACKGROUND: Cancer is the leading cause of death in older dogs and its prevalence is increasing. There is clearly a need to develop more effective anti-cancer drugs in dogs. SG2000 (SJG-136) is a sequence selective DNA minor groove cross-linking agent. Based on its in vitro potency, the spectrum of in vivo and clinical activity against human tumours, and its tolerability in human patients, SG2000 has potential as a novel therapeutic against spontaneously occurring canine malignancies. RESULTS: In vitro cytotoxicity was assessed using SRB and MTT assays, and in vivo activity was assessed using canine tumour xenografts. DNA interstrand cross-linking (ICL) was determined using a modification of the single cell gel electrophoresis (comet) assay. Effects on cell cycle distribution were assessed by flow cytometry and measurement of γ-H2AX by immunofluorescence and immunohistochemistry. SG2000 had a multi-log differential cytotoxic profile against a panel of 12 canine tumour cell lines representing a range of common tumour types in dogs. In the CMeC-1 melanoma cell line, DNA ICLs increased linearly with dose following a 1 h treatment. Peak ICL was achieved within 1 h and no removal was observed over 48 h. A relationship between DNA ICL formation and cytotoxicity was observed across cell lines. The formation of γ-H2AX foci was slow, becoming evident after 4 h and reaching a peak at 24 h. SG2000 exhibited significant anti-tumour activity against two canine melanoma tumour models in vivo. Anti-tumour activity was observed at 0.15 and 0.3 mg/kg given i.v. either once, or weekly x 3. Dose-dependent DNA ICL was observed in tumours (and to a lower level in peripheral blood mononuclear cells) at 2 h and persisted at 24 h. ICL increased following the second and third doses in a repeated dose schedule. At 24 h, dose dependent γ-H2AX foci were more numerous than at 2 h, and greater in tumours than in peripheral blood mononuclear cells. SG2000-induced H2AX phosphorylation measured by immunohistochemistry showed good correspondence, but less sensitivity, than measurement of foci. CONCLUSIONS: SG2000 displayed potent activity in vitro against canine cancer cell lines as a result of the formation and persistence of DNA ICLs. SG2000 also had significant in vivo antitumour activity against canine melanoma xenografts, and the comet and γ-H2AX foci methods were relevant pharmacodynamic assays. The clinical testing of SG2000 against spontaneous canine cancer is warranted. ELECTRONIC SUPPLEMENTARY MATERIAL: The online version of this article (doi:10.1186/s12917-015-0534-2) contains supplementary material, which is available to authorized users

Highly Stable Perovskite Supercrystals via Oil-in-Oil Templating

Inorganic perovskites display an enticing foreground for their wide range of optoelectronic applications. Recently, supercrystals (SCs) of inorganic perovskite nanocrystals (NCs) have been reported to possess highly ordered structure as well as novel collective optical properties, opening new opportunities for efficient films. Here, we report the large-scale assembly control of spherical, cubic, and hexagonal SCs of inorganic perovskite NCs through templating by oil-in-oil emulsions. We show that an interplay between the roundness of the cubic NCs and the tension of the confining droplet surface sets the superstructure morphology, and we exploit this interplay to design dense hyperlattices of SCs. The SC films show strongly enhanced stability for at least two months without obvious structural degradation and minor optical changes. Our results on the controlled large-scale assembly of perovskite NC superstructures provide new prospects for the bottom-up production of optoelectronic devices based on the microfluidic production of mesoscopic building blocks

S-matrix for magnons in the D1-D5 system

We show that integrability and symmetries of the near horizon geometry of the D1-D5 system determine the S-matrix for the scattering of magnons with polarizations in AdS3 $\times$ S3 completely up to a phase. Using semi-classical methods we evaluate the phase to the leading and to the one-loop approximation in the strong coupling expansion. We then show that the phase obeys the unitarity constraint implied by the crossing relations to the one-loop order. We also verify that the dispersion relation obeyed by these magnons is one-loop exact at strong coupling which is consistent with their BPS nature.Comment: 40 pages, Latex, Role of Virasoro constraints clarified, version matches with published versio

The Beta Ansatz: A Tale of Two Complex Structures

Brane tilings, sometimes called dimer models, are a class of bipartite graphs on a torus which encode the gauge theory data of four-dimensional SCFTs dual to D3-branes probing toric Calabi-Yau threefolds. An efficient way of encoding this information exploits the theory of dessin d’enfants, expressing the structure in terms of a permutation triple, which is in turn related to a Belyi pair, namely a holomorphic map from a torus to a P1 with three marked points. The procedure of a-maximization, in the context of isoradial embeddings of the dimer, also associates a complex structure to the torus, determined by the R-charges in the SCFT, which can be compared with the Belyi complex structure. Algorithms for the explicit construction of the Belyi pairs are described in detail. In the case of orbifolds, these algorithms are related to the construction of covers of elliptic curves, which exploits the properties of Weierstraß elliptic functions. We present a counter example to a previous conjecture identifying the complex structure of the Belyi curve to the complex structure associated with R-charges