Swiss stained-glass panels: an analytical study

The history and iconography of Swiss stained glass dating between the 16th and 18th centuries are well studied. However, the chemical and morphological characteristics of the glass and glass paints, particularly the nature of the raw materials, the provenance of the glass, and the technology used to produce it are less well understood. In this paper, we studied two sets of samples from stained-glass panels attributed to Switzerland, which date from the 16th to 17th centuries: the first set comes from Pena National Palace collection, the second from Vitrocentre Romont. The aims were to identify the materials used in the production of the glass, to find out more about their production origin and to characterize the glass paints. Both glass and the glass paints were analysed by particle-induced X-ray emission; the paints were additionally analysed by scanning electron microscopy–electron-dispersive X-ray spectroscopy (SEM-EDS). The results show that the glass from both sets was probably produced in the same region and that wood ash was used as a fluxing agent. Different recipes have been used to make the blue enamels. However, the cobalt ore used as a coloring agent in all of the blue enamels came from the mining district in Schneeberg, Germany

VITRAIL : Acquisition, Modelling and Rendering of Stained Glass

Stained glass windows are designed to reveal their powerful artistry under diverse and time-varying lighting conditions; virtual relighting of stained glass, therefore represents an exceptional tool for the appreciation of this age old art form. However, as opposed to most other artifacts, stained glass windows are extremely difficult if not impossible to analyze using controlled illumination because of their size and position. In this paper we present novel methods built upon image based priors to perform virtual relighting of stained glass artwork by acquiring the actual light transport properties of a given artefact. In a preprocessing step we build a material-dependent dictionary for light transport by studying the scattering properties of glass samples in a laboratory setup. We can now use the dictionary to recover a light transport matrix in two ways: under controlled illuminations the dictionary constitutes a sparsifying basis for a compressive sensing acquisition, while in the case of uncontrolled illuminations the dictionary is used to perform sparse regularization. The proposed basis preserves volume impurities and we show that the retrieved light transport matrix is heterogeneous, as in the case of real world objects. We present the rendering results of several stained glass artifacts, including the Rose Window of the cathedral of Lausanne, digitized using the presented methods

Novel bis-(1H-indol-2-yl)-methanones as potent inhibitors of FLT3 and platelet-derived growth factor receptor tyrosine kinase

FLT3 receptor tyrosine kinase is aberrantly active in many cases of acute myeloid leukemia (AML). Recently, bis(1H-indol-2-yl)methanones were found to inhibit FLT3 and PDGFR kinases. To optimize FLT3 activity and selectivity, 35 novel derivs. were synthesized and tested for inhibition of FLT3 and PDGFR autophosphorylation. The most potent FLT3 inhibitors I and II show IC50 values of 0.06 and 0.04 mM, resp., and 1 order of magnitude lower PDGFR inhibiting activity. The derivs. III and IV are 20- to 40-fold PDGFR selective. Docking at the recent FLT3 structure suggests a bidentate binding mode with the backbone of Cys-694. Activity and selectivity can be related to interactions of one indole moiety with a hydrophobic pocket including Phe-691, the only different binding site residue (PDGFR Thr-681). Compd. II inhibited the proliferation of 32D cells expressing wildtype FLT3 or FLT3-ITD similarly as FLT3 autophosphorylation, and induced apoptosis in primary AML patient blasts