Proposal for encoding additional Bamum characters in the SMP of the UCS

This is a proposal to encode the historic characters of the Bamum script in the international character encoding standard Unicode. This set of extensions, which appear in the Bamum Supplement block, was published in Unicode Standard version 6.0 in October 2010. The Bamum scripts developed through a series of phases. The characters in this proposal were used to write the Bamum language of the Cameroon in the earlier phases of the script. (The modern orthography uses characters in the main Bamum block and were proposed in .

Stabilité monétaire dans l'Egypte ottomane du XVIe siècle et commerce de l'or en poudre à partir du Bilâd al-Takrûr

International audienceDuring the 16th century, the Ottoman Province of Egypt and its dependencies (Yemen, Hedjaz and Habash) formed a monetary area, distinctively different from other parts of the Ottoman Empire. After a severe crisis, its monetary system recovered stability around 1525. The mamluk silver medin (nisf fidda) continued to be mint, but gold coins prevailed largely and Egypt remained unaffected by debasements until the very end of the sixteenth century. This was probably due to the influx of large quantities of gold powder carried into Egypt from Bilâd al-Takrûr by caravans.Durant le XVIe siècle, la province ottomane d'Egypte et ses dépendances (Hedjaz, Yémen et Habash) constituaient une zone monétaire notablement différente de celle des autres régions de l'Empire ottoman. Après une période de crise à partir de la fin du XVe siècle, le système monétaire égyptien retrouva sa stabilité aux alentours de 1525. Avec le maintien du médin mamelouk (nisf fidda), elle se distinguait par la place dominante occupée par les espèces or. L'Egypte semble aussi avoir échappé aux tensions monétaire jusqu'à l'extrême fin du XVIe siècle. Cette singularité était sans doute largement liée à l'afflux d'or en poudre en provenance du Bilâd al-Takrûr, grâce au trafic caravanier transsaharien

Toward the Design of Highly Efficient, Readily Accessible Peptide N-caps for the Induction of Helical Conformations

A series of novel peptide N-caps was designed with an emphasis on ease of synthesis and an abundance of hydrogen bond acceptors. Different scaffolds based on sugars, cyclic hydrocarbons, and amino acids are developed with a variety of hydrogen bond acceptors including esters, carboxyls, amides and a sulfonic acid. The efficient use in solid-phase peptide synthesis was demonstrated by incorporating the N-caps to a resin-bound model peptide. Their differential helix nucleating power in aqueous buffer was determined by CD studies. Increases in peptide helicity to a significant extent are observed, leading to a discussion of N-capping efficiency versus ease of synthesis. The potential of the elaborated N-caps for the reversal of β-sheet to α-helix conformations in the context of fibrillogenesis is discusse

Deterministic spatio-temporal control of nano-optical fields in optical antennas and nano transmission lines

We show that pulse shaping techniques can be applied to tailor the ultrafast temporal response of the strongly confined and enhanced optical near fields in the feed gap of resonant optical antennas (ROAs). Using finite-difference time-domain (FDTD) simulations followed by Fourier transformation, we obtain the impulse response of a nano structure in the frequency domain, which allows obtaining its temporal response to any arbitrary pulse shape. We apply the method to achieve deterministic optimal temporal field compression in ROAs with reduced symmetry and in a two-wire transmission line connected to a symmetric dipole antenna. The method described here will be of importance for experiments involving coherent control of field propagation in nanophotonic structures and of light-induced processes in nanometer scale volumes.Comment: 5 pages, 5 figure

Improving the perfomance of elevator systems using exact reoptimization algorithms

The task of an elevator control is to schedule the elevators of a group such that small average and maximal waiting and travel times for the passengers are obtained. We present a novel exact reoptimization algorithm for this problem. A reoptimization algorithm computes a new optimal schedule for the elevator group each time a new passenger arrives. Our algorithm uses column generation techniques and is, to the best of our knowledge, the first exact reoptimization algorithm for a group of elevators. We use our algorithm to compare the potential performance that can be achieved for conventional (ie up/down buttons) and two variants of destination call systems, where a passenger enters his destination floor when calling an elevator. This research is part of an ongoing project with our industry partner Kollmorgen Steuerungstechnik

A model of partial differential equations for HIV propagation in lymph nodes

Texto completo versión postprint de autor.-- PACS numbers: 02.30.Ks,02.30.Hq,87.18.Hf,87.19.XxA system of partial differential equations is used to model the dissemination of the Human Immunodeficiency Virus (HIV) in CD4+T cells within lymph nodes. Besides diffusion terms, the model also includes a time-delay dependence to describe the time lag required by the immunologic system to provide defenses to new virus strains. The resulting dynamics strongly depends on the properties of the invariant sets of the model, consisting of three fixed points related to the time independent and spatial homogeneous tissue configurations in healthy and infected states. A region in the parameter space is considered, for which the time dependence of the space averaged model variables follows the clinical pattern reported for infected patients: a short scale primary infection, followed by a long latency period of almost complete recovery and third phase characterized by damped oscillations around a value with large HIV counting. Depending on the value of the diffusion coefficient, the latency time increases with respect to that one obtained for the space homogeneous version of the model. It is found that same initial conditions lead to quite different spatial patterns, which depend strongly on the latency interval.This work was partially supported by the following Brazilian funding agencies: CAPES, FAPESB/PRONEX, CNPq and National Institute for Science and Technology/Complex Systems.Peer reviewe

Engineering of zinc finger and MHC motifs to locked-in tertiary folds

The assembly of helical and β-sheet peptide blocks containing reactive chain ends results inhighly branched chain architectures (‘locked-in folds') mimicking native tertiary structures.This molecular kit strategy allows to bypass the protein folding problem in protein de novodesign and gives access to protein mimetics of high thermodynamic stability. The validity ofthis concept is exemplified for the design and synthesis of locked-in folds mimicking the zincfinger and MHC folding motif

Sub-wavelength localization of near-fields in coupled metallic spheres for single emitter polarization analysis

We numerically demonstrate selective near-field localization determined by the polarization state of a single emitter coupled to plasmonic nano-cluster. Seven gold nanospheres are carefully arranged such that up to ten polarization states of the single emitter, including linear, circular, and elliptical polarizations, can be distinguished via the distinct field localization in four gaps. The ability to transform polarization state into field spatial localization may find application for single emitter polarization analysis.Comment: 4 pages, 4 figures; accepted by Optics Letter