Adhiron: a stable and versatile peptide display scaffold for molecular recognition applications

We have designed a novel non-antibody scaffold protein, termed Adhiron, based on a phytocystatin consensus sequence. The Adhiron scaffold shows high thermal stability (Tm ca. 101°C), and is expressed well in Escherichia coli. We have determined the X-ray crystal structure of the Adhiron scaffold to 1.75 Å resolution revealing a compact cystatin-like fold. We have constructed a phage-display library in this scaffold by insertion of two variable peptide regions. The library is of high quality and complexity comprising 1.3 × 10(10) clones. To demonstrate library efficacy, we screened against the yeast Small Ubiquitin-like Modifier (SUMO). In selected clones, variable region 1 often contained sequences homologous to the known SUMO interactive motif (V/I-X-V/I-V/I). Four Adhirons were further characterised and displayed low nanomolar affinities and high specificity for yeast SUMO with essentially no cross-reactivity to human SUMO protein isoforms. We have identified binders against >100 target molecules to date including as examples, a fibroblast growth factor (FGF1), platelet endothelial cell adhesion molecule (PECAM-1; CD31), the SH2 domain Grb2 and a 12-aa peptide. Adhirons are highly stable and well expressed allowing highly specific binding reagents to be selected for use in molecular recognition applications

Graphical Visualization of User Movements in Smart Environments Using Capacitive Proximity Sensor Data

During the last few years the number of care-dependent persons has continuously grown, whereas this trend is predicted to keep on in the next years without any amendment. Due to this fact and the massive costs incurred by a continuous care, it is necessary to develop new methods to ensure an adequate care but also keep the costs and the needed personell to a minimum. For enabling this the care personell has to be equipped with new technology, which enables them to work more efficient and is able to detect persons with problems faster than nowadays. Also a method has to be found, how their routine controls can be reduced to a minimum. This work therefore provides a system, which makes use of capacitive proximity sensors to monitor the care-dependent person and at the same time ensures a high level of privacy for the observed person due to the fact, that it only can provide an indirect visualization of the person. Nevertheless it is assured, that the care attendants are able to reconstruct the daily routine of the supervised person through the visualization and are able to intervent, if a possibly dangerous situation becomes obvious. This work provides the proof of concept for such a system and therefore elaborates the theoretical basics, like localization, for such a system. Furthermore a prototype is developed as proof of concept for the thesis, that such a system is realizable. Additionally this work presents further challenges in connection with such a system and gives possible solutions to those. Aside from that useful extensions for the system are considered, which would support the users of the presented system in the every day usage. In conclusion a comparison between the here developed system and two already existing systems (UbiSense and SenseFloor) is made and it is shown, that the here presented system has several benefits in contrast to these systems. In comparison to the SenseFloor platform the here presented system needs fewer sensor modules whereby only a small decrease in precision has to be accepted. In contrast to UbiSense the precision is improved and additionally no hardware at an object is needed. In den letzten Jahren stieg die Zahl der pflegebedürftigen Personen kontinuierlich an, wobei auch in den nächsten Jahren keine signifikante Verbesserung in Hinsicht auf die Zahl der pflegebedürftigen Personen erwartet wird. Aufgrund der steigenden Zahl der bedürftigen Personen und den hohen Kosten, die bei einer dauerhaften Betreuung entstehen, ist es nötig nach neuen Methoden zu suchen um eine ausreichende Betreuung bei möglichst niedrigem Personalaufwand und geringen Kosten zu ermöglichen. Um dies zu ermöglichen müssen dem Pflegepersonal Mittel an die Hand gegeben werden, mit denen es effektiver arbeiten und gezielter Problempersonen ausmachen kann ohne ständig bei allen Schutzbefohlenen präsent seien zu müssen. Diese Arbeit befasst sich daher mit der Machbarkeit und Entwicklung eines Systems, welches anhand von kapazitiven Näherungssensoren die zu betreuende Person überwacht und gleichzeitig eine hohe Akzeptanz von Seiten der überwachten Person sicherstellt, da die Person und ihre Handlungen nur indirekt dargestellt werden. Trotz der indirekten Beobachtung wird sichergestellt, dass das Pflegepersonal anhand der Visualisierung den Tagesablauf der Person rekonstruieren kann und zudem bei eventuell gefährlichen Ereignissen eingreifen kann. Es wird die generelle Machbarkeit eines solchen Systems bewiesen und die für die Umsetzung nötigen theoretischen Grundlagen, wie z.B. Lokalisierung, geschaffen. Desweiteren wird ein Prototyp vorgestellt, der als Beweis der Machbarkeit entwickelt worden ist. Außerdem werden im weitern Verlauf noch weitere Herausforderungen in Verbindung mit einem solchen System dargestellt und zudem mögliche Lösungen vorgestellt. Es werden unter anderem auch mögliche Erweiterungen zu dem System vorgestellt, welche im realen Betrieb die Arbeit weiter erleichtern könnten. Abschließend wird noch ein Vergleich zu den beiden bereits bestehenden Systemen UbiSense und SenseFloor gezogen, welcher die Verbesserungen im Vergleich zu diesen Systemen darstellt. Im Vergleich zu SenseFloor erreicht das hier vorgestellte System dabei eine drastische Reduzierung der benötigten Sensoren, wobei nur ein geringer Genauigkeitsverlust in Kaufe genommen werden muss. Im Gegensatz zu UbiSense wird ein deutlicher Anstieg der Genauigkeit erreicht und zudem keine weitere Hardware am Objekt benötigt

CIPSEC (by Deutsche Bahn AG)

Presentació de la participació de Deutsche Bahn AG dins el projecte CIPSEC : Enhancing Critical Infrastructures Protection with Innovative SECurity framework, a càrrec de Christian Schlehuber

Adaptive implicit interaction for healthy nutrition and food intake supervision

The current work is going to provide you information about our solution in the challenge of nutrition and food intake supervision, which has been developed lately. We will give an overview of the system and the implemented mechanisms, which were needed for aiding users in supervising and improving their eating habits. We will show the features, which may be useful for persons who want to analyze their eating habits and try to improve those. Therefore our system provides a cooking advisor, which is able to recognize the available food and respecting those presents the user a list of recipes, which fit his available ingredients and also his nutritional needs. If he wishes, he has also the possibility to set other filter parameters. Additionally the cooked menus are logged by the system and may be subject to further analyses. For determining the available ingredients our system uses RFID technology and also provides the user some community-like features for submitting new receipts or new ingredients

Graphical user interface for an elderly person with dementia

Developing Graphical User Interfaces for elderly people with dementia requires a special care for the needs of the target group. This paper addresses the requirements and the development of a Graphical User Interface for elderly people with dementia with the focus of developing a calendar-like application to support the elderly person in everyday life. Furthermore, it describes the design of an interface for caregivers to enter data into the system

CIPSEC Project

Descripció del projecte CIPSEC : Enhancing Critical Infrastructures Protection with Innovative SECurity framework