Authentication of gold nanoparticle encoded pharmaceutical tablets using polarimetric signatures

The counterfeiting of pharmaceutical products represents concerns for both industry and the safety of the general public. Falsification produces losses to companies and poses health risks for patients. In order to detect fake pharmaceutical tablets, we propose producing film-coated tablets with gold nanoparticle encoding. These coated tablets contain unique polarimetric signatures. We present experiments to show that ellipsometric optical techniques, in combination with machine learning algorithms, can be used to distinguish genuine and fake samples. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first report using gold nanoparticles encoded with optical polarimetric classifiers to prevent the counterfeiting of pharmaceutical products

Elimination of the Warburg effect in Chinese hamster ovary (CHO) cells improves cell phenotype as a protein production platform

Lactate is a common metabolite and is central to many important processes. One of its more prominent roles is in the Warburg effect, in which cancer cells exhibit high rates of glycolytic flux followed by secretion of lactate, even in the presence of oxygen. This fermentation of pyruvate to lactate via lactate dehydrogenase (Ldh) accompanies increased proliferation of cancer cells and several other types of rapidly proliferating cell types in immune cell activation and embryonic development. Aerobic glycolysis is also prominent in biotherapeutic protein production, where mammalian production cells often secrete high levels of lactate. The accumulation of lactate is deleterious for cell growth, viability, product formation, and quality, both directly via acidification of the media and indirectly through base addition to control culture pH. Despite a clear genetic target, efforts to eliminate lactate secretion via knockout of Ldh(s) in mammalian cells have been unsuccessful, pointing to the essentiality of Ldh mediated NAD regeneration. A wide variety of approaches have been utilized to limit lactate accumulation in culture, including knockdown or inhibition of Ldh, replacement of glucose with alternate sugars, controlled feeding strategies, and many others, however none have proven successful in eliminating the Warburg effect. We report the elimination of the Warburg effect in a CHO cell line by using CRISPR/Cas9-based engineering to simultaneously knockout enzymes responsible for lactate production and ancillary regulators. The resulting cell lines remain proliferative while consuming significantly less glucose and can be used to generate protein producing lines using standard industrial processes. In a pH-controlled fedbatch process, the Warburg null cells require minimal base addition to maintain a stable pH, allowing an extended growth phase. The knockout strategy was also successfully applied to a CHO cell line producing Rituximab, again resulting in a prolonged growth phase. Additionally, protein production was maintained, while product quality was improved with increased glycan galactosylation. Thus, CHO cells without the capacity of Warburg metabolism may be useful for engineering production cell lines with enhanced bioproduction traits

All Aboard the Change Train : Administrative Heritage and Its Influence on Rebranding

Research Questions: How does the different aspects of administrative heritage influence the internal acceptance of a rebranding? What are the main determinants of administrative heritage for the internal acceptance of a rebranding?  Purpose: The purpose is to investigate how administrative heritage affects multinational corporations in order to leverage strengths and counterbalance limitations when striving for internal acceptance of a rebranding.  Method: This study applied a qualitative research with an abductive approach. A single case study was conducted and data was collected using semi-structured interviews from employees at different departments of an organization.  Conclusion: The result of this study has developed the concept of administrative heritage in relation to rebranding and have presented how and what aspects to leverage and counterbalance within strategy, structure and culture. The study has come to the conclusion that an MNC can leverage the strengths of strategy, structure and culture through communication which essentially creates inclusion, shared beliefs, brand champions, trust and headquarters culture. The aspect of strategy mostly affects rebranding on a general level whilst structure and culture have more direct influence on the internal acceptance of a rebranding.

KULF-TT53: A Display-Specific Turntable-Based Light Field Dataset for Subjective Quality Assessment

Light field datasets enable researchers to conduct both objective and subjective quality assessments, which are particularly useful when acquisition equipment or resources are not available. Such datasets may vary in terms of capture technology and methodology, content, quality characteristics (e.g., resolution), and the availability of subjective ratings. When contents of a light field dataset are visualized on a light field display, the display system matches the received input to its output capabilities through various processes, such as interpolation. Therefore, one of the most straightforward methods to create light field contents for a specific display is to consider its visualization parameters during acquisition. In this paper, we introduce a novel display-specific light field dataset, captured using a DSLR camera and a turntable rig. The visual data of the seven static scenes were recorded twice by using two settings of angular resolution. While both were acquired uniformly within a 53-degree angle, which matches the viewing cone of the display they were captured for, one dataset consists of 70 views per content, while the other of 140. Capturing the contents twice was a more straightforward solution than downsampling, as the latter approach could either degrade the quality or make the FOV size inaccurate. The paper provides a detailed characterization of the captured contents, as well as compressed variations of the contents with various codecs, together with the calculated values of commonly-used quality metrics for the compressed light field contents. We expect that this dataset will be useful for the research community working on light field compression, processing, and quality assessment, for instance to perform subjective quality assessment tests on a display with a 53-degree display cone and to test new interpolation methods and objective quality metrics. In future work, we will also focus on subjective tests and provide relevant results. This dataset is made free to access for the research community