Structural Basis for S100B Interaction with its Target Proteins.

The S100B protein is an intra- and extracellular signaling protein that plays a role in a multitude of cellular processes and abnormal S100B is associated with various neurological diseases and cancers. S100B recognizes and binds effector proteins in a calcium-dependent manner. S100B has been shown to interact with the actin capping protein CapZ, protein kinase C, Hdm2 and 4, RAGE receptor, and p53, among others. These protein partners interact with a common area on the S100B protein surface, validating the method of using the consensus sequence for S100B target search. In addition, each S100B target protein distinguishes itself by additional contacts with S100B. This perspective suggests that the combination of sequence homology search and structural analysis promises to identify newer S100B-binding partners beyond the use of the consensus sequence alone as the given example in the XPB subunit of the TFIIH general transcription factor. XPB is a helicase required for both transcription and DNA repair. Inherited xpb mutations are associated with human disease Xeroderma Pigmentasum, Cockayne syndrome, and trichothiodystrophy. S100B protein is likely associated with much more biological pathways and processes. We believe that S100B will attract more and more attentions in the scientific community and S100B related studies will have important implications in human health and medicine

Perspective—Challenges in Developing Wearable Electrochemical Sensors for Longitudinal Health Monitoring

Wearable electrochemical sensors have the potential to overcome the problem of infrequent clinical visits that leads to transient events of potential diagnostic importance being unduly overlooked. The promise of real-time, personalized health care has driven multidisciplinary work on fabricating various forms of wearable sensors. Although remarkable advances in device form factor and integrated circuit design have been achieved, notable hurdles, such as shelf life, reuseability, flex and sweat resistance, and longitudinal performance, remain unaddressed. This perspective seeks to summarize major advances in current wearable electrochemical sensors and to highlight the most pressing challenges that will benefit from collective research endeavors

Surface Mapping of Earth-like Exoplanets using Single Point Light Curves

Spatially resolving exoplanet features from single-point observations is essential for evaluating the potential habitability of exoplanets. The ultimate goal of this protocol is to determine whether these planetary worlds harbor geological features and/or climate systems. We present a method of extracting information from multi-wavelength single-point light curves and retrieving surface maps. It uses singular value decomposition (SVD) to separate sources that contribute to light curve variations and infer the existence of partially cloudy climate systems. Through analysis of the time series obtained from SVD, physical attributions of principal components (PCs) could be inferred without assumptions of any spectral properties. Combining with viewing geometry, it is feasible to reconstruct surface maps if one of the PCs are found to contain surface information. Degeneracy originated from convolution of the pixel geometry and spectrum information determines the quality of reconstructed surface maps, which requires the introduction of regularization. For the purpose of demonstrating the protocol, multi-wavelength light curves of Earth, which serves as a proxy exoplanet, are analyzed. Comparison between the results and the ground truth is presented to show the performance and limitation of the protocol. This work provides a benchmark for future generalization of exoplanet applications

Cladding for transverse-pumped solid-state laser

In a transverse pumped, solid state laser, a nonabsorptive cladding surrounds a gain medium. A single tranverse mode, namely the Transverse Electromagnetic (TEM) sub 00 mode, is provided. The TEM sub 00 model has a cross sectional diameter greater than a transverse dimension of the gain medium but less than a transverse dimension of the cladding. The required size of the gain medium is minimized while a threshold for laser output is lowered