Anticancer Drugs

Plant‐derived anticancer drugs play a large role in anticancer pharmaceuticals. Through reviewing the four major types of plant anticancer drugs, namely vinca alkaloids, taxane diterpenoids, podophyllotoxin lignans, and camptothecin quinoline alkaloids, this article illustrates the development process, current status, existing challenges, and future perspective of the plant anticancer drug production. Moreover, this review explains how various biotechnologies, from the mature elicitation strategy to the “omics” techniques that are still undergoing development, can be applied to address the challenges in improving the production of the plant‐sourced anticancer drugs

Multiple planar coincidences with N-fold symmetry

Planar coincidence site lattices and modules with N-fold symmetry are well understood in a formulation based on cyclotomic fields, in particular for the class number one case, where they appear as certain principal ideals in the corresponding ring of integers. We extend this approach to multiple coincidences, which apply to triple or multiple junctions. In particular, we give explicit results for spectral, combinatorial and asymptotic properties in terms of Dirichlet series generating functions.Comment: 13 pages, two figures. For previous related work see math.MG/0511147 and math.CO/0301021. Minor changes and references update

Carbon flux patterns on U.S. public timberlands under alternative timber harvest policies

This study considers trade-offs between timber harvest and carbon sequestration on National Forest and other public lands by contemporaneously linking a model of public harvest and inventory to a carbon accounting system. The public harvest model treats three harvest scenarios. The first minimizes the cost of meeting harvest requests that approximate current harvest policy. The second and third models represent two extremes of harvest policy: maximum strict even-flow scheme and noharvest. The current harvest scenario results in a maximum average net carbon sequestration of approximately 35 Teragrams per decade. The maximum strict evenflow scenario results in a maximum of 19 Teragrams of net carbon sequestration on an average decadal basis, because of losses to forest product decay and reduced understory growth. The no harvest scenario results in the highest total carbon holdings, 164 Pentagrams at the end of the 100 year planning horizon, and has an average net sequestration rate of 65 Teragrams each decade

Quasar Clustering and the Lifetime of Quasars

Although the population of luminous quasars rises and falls over a period of 10^9 years, the typical lifetime of individual quasars is uncertain by several orders of magnitude. We show that quasar clustering measurements can substantially narrow the range of possible lifetimes with the assumption that luminous quasars reside in the most massive host halos. If quasars are long-lived, then they are rare phenomena that are highly biased with respect to the underlying dark matter, while if they are short-lived they reside in more typical halos that are less strongly clustered. For a given quasar lifetime, we calculate the minimum host halo mass by matching the observed space density of quasars, using the Press-Schechter approximation. We use the results of Mo & White to calculate the clustering of these halos, and hence of the quasars they contain, as a function of quasar lifetime. A lifetime of t_Q = 4 x 10^7 years, the e-folding timescale of an Eddington luminosity black hole with accretion efficiency eps=0.1, corresponds to a quasar correlation length r_0 ~ 10 Mpc/h in low-density cosmological models at z=2-3; this value is consistent with current clustering measurements, but these have large uncertainties. High-precision clustering measurements from the 2dF and Sloan quasar surveys will test our key assumption of a tight correlation between quasar luminosity and host halo mass, and if this assumption holds then they should determine t_Q to a factor of three or better. An accurate determination of the quasar lifetime will show whether supermassive black holes acquire most of their mass during high-luminosity accretion, and it will show whether the black holes in the nuclei of typical nearby galaxies were once the central engines of high-luminosity quasars.Comment: ApJ Accepted (Feb 2001). 30 pages, 8 embedded ps figures, AASTEX5. Added discussion of quasar luminosity evolution. Also available at http://www.ociw.edu/~martini/pubs

Improving Escherichia coli membrane integrity and fatty acid production by expression tuning of FadL and OmpF

Background Construction of microbial biocatalysts for the production of biorenewables at economically viable yields and titers is frequently hampered by product toxicity. Membrane damage is often deemed as the principal mechanism of this toxicity, particularly in regards to decreased membrane integrity. Previous studies have attempted to engineer the membrane with the goal of increasing membrane integrity. However, most of these works focused on engineering of phospholipids and efforts to identify membrane proteins that can be targeted to improve fatty acid production have been unsuccessful. Results Here we show that deletion of outer membrane protein ompF significantly increased membrane integrity, fatty acid tolerance and fatty acid production, possibly due to prevention of re-entry of short chain fatty acids. In contrast, deletion of fadL resulted in significantly decreased membrane integrity and fatty acid production. Consistently, increased expression of fadL remarkably increased membrane integrity and fatty acid tolerance while also increasing the final fatty acid titer. This 34% increase in the final fatty acid titer was possibly due to increased membrane lipid biosynthesis. Tuning of fadL expression showed that there is a positive relationship between fadL abundance and fatty acid production. Combinatorial deletion of ompFand increased expression of fadL were found to have an additive role in increasing membrane integrity, and was associated with a 53% increase the fatty acid titer, to 2.3 g/L. Conclusions These results emphasize the importance of membrane proteins for maintaining membrane integrity and production of biorenewables, such as fatty acids, which expands the targets for membrane engineering

Interacting Boson Theory of the Magnetization Process of the Spin-1/2 Ferromagnetic-Antiferromagnetic Alternating Heisenberg Chain

The low temperature magnetization process of the ferromagnetic-antiferromagnetic Heisenberg chain is studied using the interacting boson approximation. In the low field regime and near the saturation field, the spin wave excitations are approximated by the $\delta$ function boson gas for which the Bethe ansatz solution is available. The finite temperature properties are calculated by solving the integral equation numerically. The comparison is made with Monte Carlo calculation and the limit of the applicability of the present approximation is discussed.Comment: 4 pages, 7 figure

Semiclassical Quantization by Pade Approximant to Periodic Orbit Sums

Periodic orbit quantization requires an analytic continuation of non-convergent semiclassical trace formulae. We propose a method for semiclassical quantization based upon the Pade approximant to the periodic orbit sums. The Pade approximant allows the re-summation of the typically exponentially divergent periodic orbit terms. The technique does not depend on the existence of a symbolic dynamics and can be applied to both bound and open systems. Numerical results are presented for two different systems with chaotic and regular classical dynamics, viz. the three-disk scattering system and the circle billiard.Comment: 7 pages, 3 figures, submitted to Europhys. Let

The groups of automorphisms of the Witt W (n) and Virasoro Lie algebras

Let Ln = K[x1±1,..., xn±1] be a Laurent polynomial algebra over a field K of characteristic zero, Wn:= DerK(Ln) the Lie algebra of K-derivations of the algebra Ln, the so-called Witt Lie algebra, and let Vir be the Virasoro Lie algebra which is a 1-dimensional central extension of the Witt Lie algebra. The Lie algebras Wn and Vir are infinite dimen- sional Lie algebras. We prove that the following isomorphisms of the groups of Lie algebra automorphisms hold: AutLie(Vir

Implicit memory and cognitive aging

It is well documented that explicit (declarative, conscious) memory declines in normal aging. Studies have shown a progressive reduction in this form of memory with age, and healthy older adults (typically aged 65+ years) usually perform worse than younger adults (typically aged 18-30 years) on laboratory tests of explicit memory such as recall and recognition. In contrast, it is less clear whether implicit (procedural, unconscious) memory declines or remains stable in normal aging. Implicit memory is evident when previous experiences affect (e.g., facilitate) performance on tasks that do not require conscious recollection of those experiences. This can manifest in rehearsed motor skills, such as playing a musical instrument, but is typically indexed in the laboratory by the greater ease with which previously studied information is processed relative to non-studied information (e.g., repetition priming). While a vast amount of research has accumulated to suggest that implicit memory remains relatively stable over the adult lifespan, and is similar in samples of young and older adults, other studies have in contrast revealed that implicit memory is subject to age-related decline. Improving methods for determining whether implicit memory declines or remains stable with age is an important goal for future research, as the issue not only has significant implications for an aging society regarding interventions likely to ameliorate the effects of age-related explicit memory decline, but can also inform our theoretical understanding of human memory systems