Highly selective and sensitive detection of glutathione using mesoporous silica nanoparticles capped with disulfide-containing oligo(ethylene glycol) chains

[EN] Mesoporous silica nanoparticles loaded with safranin O and capped with disulfide-containing oligo(ethylene glycol) chains were used for the selective and sensitive fluorimetric detection of glutathione.Financial support from the Spanish Government (Project MAT2012-38429-C04-01) and the Generalitat Valencia (Project PROMETEOII/2014/047) is gratefully acknowledged. S. E. is grateful to the Generalitat Valenciana for his Santiago Grisolia fellow. Also, C. G. is grateful to the Spanish Ministry of Science and Innovation for the grant.El Sayed Shehata Nasr, S.; Giménez Morales, C.; Aznar Gimeno, E.; Martínez Mañez, R.; Sancenón Galarza, F.; Licchelli, M. (2015). Highly selective and sensitive detection of glutathione using mesoporous silica nanoparticles capped with disulfide-containing oligo(ethylene glycol) chains. Organic and Biomolecular Chemistry. 13(4):1017-1021. https://doi.org/10.1039/C4OB02083AS1017102113

Epidemiology of pemphigus in Turkey: One-year prospective study of 220 cases

Pemphigus is a group of rare and life-threatening autoimmune blistering diseases of the skin and mucous membranes. Although they occur worldwide, their incidence shows wide geographical variation, and prospective data on the epidemiology of pemphigus are very limited. Objective of this work is to evaluate the incidence and epidemiological and clinical features of patients with pemphigus in Turkey. All patients newly diagnosed with pemphigus between June 2013 and June 2014 were prospectively enrolled in 33 dermatology departments in 20 different provinces from all seven regions of Turkey. Disease parameters including demography and clinical findings were recorded. A total of 220 patients were diagnosed with pemphigus during the 1-year period, with an annual incidence of 4.7 per million people in Turkey. Patients were predominantly women, with a male to female ratio of 1:1.41. The mean age at onset was 48.9 years. Pemphigus vulgaris (PV) was the commonest clinical subtype (n=192; 87.3%), followed by pemphigus foliaceus (n=21; 9.6%). The most common clinical subtype of PV was the mucocutaneous type (n=83; 43.2%). The mean Pemphigus Disease Area Index was 28.14±22.21 (mean ± Standard Deviation).  The incidence rate of pemphigus in Turkey is similar to the countries of South-East Europe, higher than those reported for the Central and Northern European countries and lower than the countries around the Mediterranean Sea and Iran. Pemphigus is more frequent in middle-aged people and is more common in women. The most frequent subtype was PV, with a 9-fold higher incidence than pemphigus foliaceus.   </p

Comparison of Adaptation Mechanisms on MRAC

Model reference adaptive control (MRAC) could be designed using different adaptation mechanisms. An adaptation mechanism could affect the Model Reference Adaptive System (MRAS) performance. High adaptive gain increases the transient response performance while decreasing the robustness of the MRAS even under perfect conditions (no time delay, without unmatched uncertainty and absence of disturbance) and increasing control signal oscillation in classical MRAC. Classical MRAS do not perform satisfactorily on such time-delayed adaptive signals. This study presents and compares two different adaptation mechanisms in MRAS, which are the low-frequency learning method on MRAC and MRAC with PI adjustment mechanism. We have proposed a modification to the low-frequency learning method on MRAC to get a transient response as good as MRAC with a PI adjustment mechanism on the time delay system. The best performance is obtained from MRAS with PI adaptation mechanism

Competitiveness in Services: Turkey versus European Union

Giving the fact that services as a trade instrument have become quite crucial and critical in the growth of economies in many nations, the research associated with measuring the competiveness in services are limited, especially for developing countries such as Turkey. The aim of this study is to investigate the competitiveness of the selected services in Turkey in comparison with the EU and the selected EU countries based on three comparative advantage indices. In this context, three different revealed comparative advantage indices were utilised in a combined way using import and export figures of six service sectors for the period of 2000-2010. The results indicate that strong comparative advantages exist for Turkey in construction, tourism and transportation sectors. Although Turkish financial and insurance and communication and computer-information sectors appear to be weak compared to EU, there is a substantial potential for improvement in these sectors. (C) 2012 Published by Elsevier Ltd. Selection and/or peer review under responsibility of Prof. Dr. Huseyin Arasl

PROCESS PLANNING AND WEIGHTED SCHEDULING WITH WNOPPT WEIGHTED DUE-DATE ASSIGNMENT USING HYBRID SEARCH FOR WEIGHTED CUSTOMERS

Although scheduling with due date assignment and, integrated process planning and scheduling are two popular topics studied by researchers, there are few works on the integration of process planning, scheduling, and due date assignment. In this study integration of process planning and scheduling with the weighted due date, the assignment is studied. Different level of integration of these three functions is tested. As a solution techniques random search and hybrid search are applied. The hybrid search starts with random search and continues with the genetic search. Search results are compared with ordinary solutions and searches are found very useful and hybrid search outperformed random search. Hybrid search with full integration combination found as the best combination.&nbsp