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Search results for: SURFACE ACTIVE AGENTS
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The influence of combination of binding agents on fatigue properties of deep cold in-place recycled mixtures in Indirect Tensile Fatigue Test (ITFT)
PublicationThe publication presents fatigue properties of cold recycled mixtures for eight combinations of binding agents (cement and bituminous emulsion). Cold recycled mixtures were evaluated in Indirect Tensile Fatigue Test (ITFT) at the temperature of 20 C in controlled stress mode. As a function of horizontal stress, fatigue life is strongly influenced by combination of the binding agents. When fatigue life is analyzed as a function...
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Quantum strategies for rendezvous and domination tasks on graphs with mobile agents
PublicationThis paper explores the application of quantum nonlocality, a renowned and unique phenomenon acknowledged as a valuable resource. Focusing on an alternative application, we demonstrate its quantum advantage for mobile agents engaged in specific distributed tasks without communication. The research addresses the significant challenge of rendezvous on graphs and introduces a distributed task for mobile agents grounded in the graph...
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Antimicrobial molecular nanocarrier–drug conjugates
PublicationMany antimicrobial drugs are poorly active against pathogenic microbes causing intracellular infections, such as Mycobacterium tuberculosis or Plasmodium falciparum. On the other hand, several known antimicrobial agents are not effective enough because of their limited cellular penetration. A common feature of both challenges is the inability of an active agent to cross the biological membrane(s). One of the possible approaches...
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Inspired by Nature: The Use of Plant-derived Substrate/Enzyme Combinations to Generate Antimicrobial Activity in situ
PublicationThe last decade has witnessed a renewed interest in antimicrobial agents. Plants have received particular attention and frequently rely on the spontaneous enzymatic conversion of an inactive precursor to an active agent. Such two-component substrate/enzyme defence systems can be reconstituted ex vivo. Here, the alliin/alliinase system from garlic seems to be rather effective against Saccharomyces cerevisiae, whilst the glucosinolate/myrosinase...
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Transport of paracetamol in swellable and relaxing polyurethane nanocomposite hydrogels
PublicationPolyurethane hydrogels are potentially attractive materials for biomedical applications. They are able to absorb large amount of water, biological fluids or active substances, and thus, they have potential to be used as absorbents or wound-healing dressings. They are also used for the controlled release of therapeutics because of their capacity to embed biologically active agents in their water-swollen network. The presence of...
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Synthetic strategies in construction of organic low molecular-weight carrier-drug conjugates
PublicationInefficient transportation of polar metabolic inhibitors through cell membranes of eukaryotic and prokaryotic cells precludes their direct use as drug candidates in chemotherapy. One of the possible solutions to this problem is application of the ‘Trojan horse’ strategy, i.e. conjugation of an active substance with a molecular carrier of organic or inorganic nature, facilitating membrane penetration. In this work, the synthetic...
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Selective Cytostatic and Cytotoxic Anticancer Effects of Bisfunctional Agents: A Strategy for the Design of DNA Binding Agents
PublicationVarious agents have been synthesized and proved useful for the National Cancer Institute's anticancer testing as potential new drugs, but most agents suffer side effects from their limited selectivity against cancer cells over healthy ones. Therefore, this paper attempts to describe drugs in terms of the level of tumor cell selectivity which they possess to define the features of mols. that are essential for useful cytotoxicity....
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Document Agents with the Intelligent Negotiations Capability
PublicationThe paper focus is on augmenting proactive document-agents with built -in intelligence to enable them to recognize execution context provided by devices visited durning the business process, and to reach collaboration agreement despite of their conflicting requirements. We propose a solution based on neural networks to improve simple multi-issue negotiation between the document and the device, practically with no excessive cost...
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Anticancer Properties of Amino Acid and Peptide Derivatives of Mycophenolic Acid
PublicationBackground: Although Mycophenolic Acid (MPA) is applied as prodrugs in clinic as an immunosuppressant, it also possesses anticancer activity. MPA acts as Inosine-5’-Monophosphate Dehydrogenase (IMPDH) inhibitor, where the carboxylic group at the end of the side chain interacts with Ser 276 of the enzyme via hydrogen bonds. Therefore, MPA derivatives with other polar groups indicated high inhibition too. On the other hand, potent...
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A Review of Traffic Analysis Attacks and Countermeasures in Mobile Agents' Networks
PublicationFor traditional, message-based communication, traffic analysis has been already studied for over three decades and during that time various attacks have been recognised. As far as mobile agents’ networks are concerned only a few, specific-scope studies have been conducted. This leaves a gap that needs to be addressed as nowadays, in the era of Big Data, the Internet of Things, Smart Infrastructures and growing concerns for privacy,...
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Travel agents and destination management organizations: eLearning as a strategy to train tourism trade partners.
PublicationThis article offers an overview of the existing online courses run by national destination management organizations (DMOs) in order to better equip travel agents and tour operators in the sales activities of the tourism destinations. These online courses represent one of the B2B offers by DMOs and an interesting opportunity for travel agents, who are trying to find their identity and competitive advantage within the context of...
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Nickel phase deposition on V2CTx/V2AlC as catalyst precursors for a dry methane reforming: The effect of the deposition method on the morphology and catalytic activity
PublicationDry reforming of methane (DRM) is a promising alternative technology for the production of syngas with simultaneous utilization of two main greenhouse gases (CH4, CO2). However, DRM technology is still an industrially immature process due to the lack of stable and active catalyst. Therefore, the search for new catalytic materials is of great research interest. Recently, MAX and MXenes materials are increasingly being tested as...
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9,10-Dioxoanthracenyldithiocarbamates effectively inhibit the proliferation of non-small cell lung cancer by targeting multiple protein tyrosine kinases
PublicationAnthraquinones have attracted considerable interest in the realm of cancer treatment owing to their potent anticancer properties. This study evaluates the potential of a series of new anthraquinone derivatives as anticancer agents for non-small-cell lung cancer (NSCLC). The compounds were subjected to a range of tests to assess their cytotoxic and apoptotic properties, ability to inhibit colony formation, pro-DNA damage functions,...
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Deterministic rendezvous of asynchronous bounded-memory agents in polygonal terrains
PublicationWe consider two versions of the rendezvous problem: exact RV, when the points representing agents have to coincide at some time, and e-RV, when these points have to get at distance less than e in the terrain. In any terrain, each agent chooses its trajectory, but the movements of the agent on this trajectory are controlled by an adversary that may, e.g. speed up or slow down the agent.
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Recent progress in the development of steroid sulfatase inhibitors – examples of the novel and most promising compounds from the last decade
PublicationThe purpose of this review article is to provide an overview of recent achievements in the synthesis of novel steroid sulfatase (STS) inhibitors. STS is a crucial enzyme in the biosynthesis of active hormones (including estrogens and androgens) and, therefore, represents an extremely attractive molecular target for the development of hormone-dependent cancer therapies. The inhibition of STS may effectively reduce the availability...
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Arsenic-Based Warfare Agents: Production, Use, and Destruction
PublicationSince the beginning of time, civilizations have looked for more creative ways to dominate and defeat their enemies. The rapid development of the chemical industry just before the Second World War started the era of modern chemical weapon production based on poisons, including toxic arsenic compounds. This paper provides a detailed overview of the production, usage and destruction of this dangerous chemical weapon. Milestones include:...
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Novel Functionalization of Boron-Doped Diamond by Microwave Pulsed-Plasma Polymerized Allylamine Film
PublicationWe report the novel modification of a hydrogen-terminated polycrystalline boron-doped electrode with a microwave pulsed-plasma polymerized allylamine. Boron-doped diamond (BDD) was coated with a very thin layer of adherent cross-linked, pinhole- and additive-free allylamine plasma polymer (PPAAm) resistant to hydrolysis and delamination and characterized by a high density of positively charged amino groups. The pulsed microwave...
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Bilateral Multi-Issue Negotiation Between Active Documents and Execution Devices
PublicationMobile document-agents are often in conflict with execution devices when attempting to perform activities of the business process they implement, since preferences of device owners may change depending on their current location and the actual class of the device in use. The paper proposes a bilateral negotiation mechanism based on a simple bargaining game that can effectively resolve such conflicts without any third party support.
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Distributed Evacuation in Graphs with Multiple Exits
PublicationWe consider the problem of efficient evacuation using multiple exits. We formulate this problem as a discrete problem on graphs where mobile agents located in distinct nodes of a given graph must quickly reach one of multiple possible exit nodes, while avoiding congestion and bottlenecks. Each node of the graph has the capacity of holding at most one agent at each time step. Thus, the agents must choose their movements strategy...
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Biobójcze wykończenie tkanin
PublicationThe problem of nosocomial infections is nothing new. In places, where people, whose immune system is weakened, are gathered and subjected to various kinds of treatments, the risk of infection increases considerably. The use of textiles with biocidal finishing, which contains nanoAg and nanoCu, may give an additional protection against nosocominal infections. This article presents the latest information regarding various methods...
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Oznaczanie tlenu – od metody Winklera do czujników enzymatycznych (Determination of oxygen – from Winkler Method to enzymatic sensor)
PublicationMonitoring of dioxygen levels is of utmost importance from the view-point of life processes, medical diagnostics, nutrition and chemical industries. In all these measurements both low and high levels of this element are important. The common methods for the determination of dioxygen are the Winkler method, Clark electrode and pulsoxymeters. A new, already strong field of research can be now recognized – the development of miniaturized...
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Metabolic transformation of antitumor acridinone C-1305 but not C-1311 via selective cellular expression of UGT1A10 increases cytotoxic response: implications for clinical use.
PublicationThe acridinone derivates C-1305 and C-1311 are promising antitumor agents with high activity against several experimental cellular and tumor models and which are under evaluation in pre-clinical and early phase clinical trials. Recent evidence from our laboratories has indicated that both compounds were conjugated by several UGT isoforms with the most active being extrahepatic UGT1A10. The present studies were designed to test...
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Amino Acid Based Antimicrobial Agents – Synthesis and Properties
PublicationStructures of several dozen of known antibacterial, antifungal or antiprotozoal agents are based on the amino acid scaffold. In most of them, the amino acid skeleton is of a crucial importance for their antimicrobial activity, since very often they are structural analogs of amino acid intermediates of different microbial biosynthetic pathways. Particularly, some aminophosphonate or aminoboronate analogs of protein amino acids are...
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Time versus space trade-offs for randezvous in trees
PublicationTwo identical (anonymous) mobile agents start from arbitrary nodes of an unknown tree and have to meet at some node. Agents move in synchronous rounds: in each round an agent can either stay at the current node or move to one of its neighbors. We consider deterministic algorithms for this rendezvous task. The main result of this paper is a tight trade-off between the optimal time of completing rendezvous and the size of memory...
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Agents in Simulation of Cyberattacks to Evaluate Security of Critical Infrastructures
PublicationIn the last years critical infrastructures have become highly dependent on the information technologies and exposed to cyberattacks. Because the effects of the attacks can be detrimental, it is crucial to comprehensively asses the security of the infrastructures' information systems. This chapter describes MAlSim - the simulator of malicious software based on software agents, developed for the needs of a testbed for critical infrastructures...
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Phylogenetic relationship and antimicrobial resistance in Escherichia coli isolated from the Reda River and the Oliwski Stream, Northern Poland = Lekooporność i przynależność filogenetyczna szczepów Escherichia Coli izolowanych z rzeki Redy i Potoku Oliwskiego
PublicationThe high abundance of fecal bacteria in surface water is usually related to poor agricultural practice, pollution caused by domesticated and wild animals as well as with septic tank failures. Identification of fecal contamination sources seems to be crucial in order to effectively estimate the inherent risk. In this study, the phylogenetic relationship of 30 isolates of E. coli, originated from surface water, was estimated by employing...
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Identification and antimicrobial susceptibility of fecal coliforms isolated from surface water
Publicationof 274 fecal coliforms isolated from two watercourses influencing the costal water quality of the gdańsk and the puck bay, 265 were identified as escherichia coli. the remained strains belonged to: acinetobacter spp. (n=1), enterobacter spp. (n=3), klebsiella spp. (n=4) and shigella spp. (n=1). the susceptibility of 222 e. coli was tested against 19 antimicrobial agents: aminoglycosides, carbapenems, cephalosporines, folate antagonists,...
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A multi-agent method for periodicity detection in distributed events
PublicationMulti-agent systems working in constantly changing environments may be challenged by instantaneous unavailability of their autonomous agents caused e.g. by limited computing resources. A new method of self-organization of distributed service components is proposed, suitable for multi-agent systems. This method relies on particular agents carrying out separate analyzes of their individual processing loads or other specific events....
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GROUP COMPOSER - System for Modeling Agents’ Team Building for Tasks
PublicationMulti-agent systems consist of many autonomous units, called agents, that can interact when trying to achieve their goals. The selection of interaction partners is called team formation. Three basic approaches can be considered to match multi-agent system resources to the problem at hand. To research the properties of different approaches, a software for modeling team formation in multi-agent systems has been created and is presented...
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Pharmacomicrobiomics of cell-cycle specific anti-cancer drugs – is it a new perspective for personalized treatment of cancer patients?
PublicationIntestinal bacteria are equipped with an enzyme apparatus that is involved in the active biotrans-formation of xenobiotics, including drugs. Pharmacomicrobiomics, a new area of pharmacology, analyses interactions between bacteria and xenobiotics. However, there is another side to the coin. Pharmacotherapeutic agents can significantly modify the microbiota, which consequently affects their efficacy. In this review, we comprehensively...
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BeesyBees: A mobile agent-based middleware for a reliable and secure execution of service-based workflow applications in BeesyCluster
PublicationIntegrating distributed services into workflows comes with its own set of challenges, including security, coordination, fault tolerance and optimisation of execution time. This paper presents an architecture and implementation - nicknamed BeesyBees - that allows distributed execution of workflow applications in BeesyCluster using agents. BeesyCluster is a middleware that allows users to access distributed resources as well as publish...
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Treatment innovation using solar/UV In book: The Treatment of Pharmaceutical Wastewater: Innovative Technologies and the Adaptation of Treatment Systems
PublicationSince ancient times, sunlight irradiation has been widely used for water purification. Apart from solar water disinfection techniques, UV irradiation is of particular interest when considering the photodegradation of various classes of emerging pollutants. Pharmaceutically active compounds are one of the largest classes of micropollutants. The main sources of these contaminants in wastewater and aqueous environments are households,...
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Natural carbon-based quantum dots and their applications in drug delivery: A review
PublicationNatural carbon based quantum dots (NCDs) are an emerging class of nanomaterials in the carbon family. NCDs have gained immense acclamation among researchers because of their abundance, eco-friendly nature, aqueous solubility, the diverse functionality and biocompatibility when compared to other conventional carbon quantum dots (CDs).The presence of different functional groups on the surface of NCDs such as thiol, carboxyl, hydroxyl,...
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Collaborative Exploration of Trees by Energy-Constrained Mobile Robots
PublicationWe study the problem of exploration of a tree by mobile agents (robots) that have limited energy. The energy constraint bounds the number of edges that can be traversed by a single agent. We use a team of agents to collectively explore the tree and the objective is to minimize the size of this team. The agents start at a single node, the designated root of the tree and the height of the tree is assumed to be less than the energy...
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Cold-adapted bacterial lipolytic enzymes and their applications
PublicationLipolytic enzymes, esterases and lipases catalyze the hydrolysis and transesterification of fatty acid esters. This class of enzymes is the most important group of biocatalysts for biotechnological applications. From this perspective, coldactive lipolytic enzymes from cold adapted bacteria display attractive properties for some industrial purposes, including high catalytic activity at low temperatures and low thermostability. To...
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Selected Features of Dynamic Voting
PublicationIn multi-agent systems composed of autonomous agents with local knowledge, it is often desirable to aggregate their knowledge in order to make an educated decision. One of the methods of agreeing to a common decision is voting. A new history-based dynamic weight protocol allows for identification of the agents which contribute to the correct system decision. The main advantage of this approach, compared to static weighted system...
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Essential oils as potential anti-staphylococcal agents
PublicationAntibiotic therapy of staphylococcal mastitis is characterized by significantly lower cure rates compared to infections caused by other microorganisms. Thus, it is necessary to search for new, alternative, non-antibiotic agents that are effective in the eradication of these bacteria. The aim of our research was to investigate the antimicrobial, especially anti-staphylococcal potential of a large collection (n=36) of essential oils...
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Activity of Polish unifloral honeys against pathogenic bacteria and its correlation with colour, phenolic content, antioxidant capacity and other parameters.
PublicationThe use of honey as an antimicrobial agent gains importance due to often ineffectiveness of conventional treatment. However, activity of honey depends mainly on its botanical and geographical origin. To date, antimicrobial potential of Polish honeys has not yet been entirely investigated. In this study, 37 unifloral samples of 14 honey types (including rare varieties) from Poland were analysed and compared with manuka honey. The...
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DNA methylation in cancer development, diagnosis and therapy-multiple opportunities for genotoxic agents to act as methylome disruptors or remediators
PublicationThe role of DNA methylation and recently discovered hydroxymethylation in the function of the human epigenome is currently one of the hottest topics in the life sciences. Progress in this field of research has been further accelerated by the discovery that alterations in the methylome are not only associated with key functions of cells and organisms, such as development, differentiation and gene expression, but may underlie a number...
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Collision-free network exploration
PublicationMobile agents start at different nodes of an n-node network. The agents synchronously move along the network edges in a collision-free way, i.e., in no round two agents may occupy the same node. An agent has no knowledge of the number and initial positions of other agents. We are looking for the shortest time required to reach a configuration in which each agent has visited all nodes and returned to its starting location. In...
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MXenes Antibacterial Properties and Applications: A Review and Perspective
PublicationThe mutations of bacteria due to the excessive use of antibiotics, and generation of antibiotic-resistant bacteria have made the development of new antibacterial compounds a necessity. MXenes have emerged as biocompatible transition metal carbide structures with extensive biomedical applications. This is related to the MXenes’ unique combination of properties, including multifarious elemental compositions, 2D-layered structure,...
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Novel molecules containing structural features of NSAIDs and 1,2,3-triazole ring: Design, synthesis and evaluation as potential cytotoxic agents
PublicationFor the first time the template containing structural features of more than one NSAIDs and the 1,2,3-triazole ring was explored for the identification of potential cytotoxic agents. These new and complex molecules were predicted to be effective inhibitors of PDE4B by molecular modelling studies in silico. The multi-step synthesis of these compounds were carried out starting from the well-known drug nimesulide and involved the use...
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Inhibitors of glucosamine-6-phosphate synthase as potential antimicrobials or antidiabetics – synthesis and properties
PublicationGlucosamine-6-phosphate synthase (GlcN-6-P synthase) is known as a promising target for antimicrobial agents and antidiabetics. Several compounds of natural or synthetic origin have been identified as inhibitors of this enzyme. This set comprises highly selective L-glutamine, amino sugar phosphate or transition state intermediate cis-enolamine analogues. Relatively low antimicrobial activity of these inhibitors, poorly penetrating...
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Fecal indicators resistance to antimicrobial agents present in municipal wastewater
PublicationIn this study removal rate of six antimicrobial compounds (belonging to folate pathway inhibitors and macrolides class) was analyzed in processes of local wastewater treatment plant (WWTP) together with susceptibility patterns of erythromycin (E) resistant Enterococcus spp. and trimethoprim/sulfamethoxazole (SXT) resistant Escherichia coli. According to the obtained data, six of tested antimicrobial agents, namely erythromycin,...
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Novel amides of mycophenolic acid and some heterocyclic derivatives as immunosuppressive agents
PublicationThe group of new amide derivatives of mycophenolic acid (MPA) and selected heterocyclic amines was synthesised as potential immunosuppressive agents functioning as inosine-5'-monophosphate dehydrogenase (IMPDH) uncompetitive inhibitors. The synthesis employed uronium-type activating system (TBTU/HOBt/DIPEA) while or phosphonic acid anhydride method (T3P/Py) facilitating amides to be obtained in moderate to excellent yields without...
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Effect of User Mobility upon Trust Building among Autonomous Content Routers in an Information-Centric Network
PublicationThe capability of proactive in-network caching and sharing of content is one of the most important features of an informationcentric network (ICN). We describe an ICN model featuring autonomous agents controlling the content routers. Such agents are unlikely to share cached content with other agents without an incentive to do so. To stimulate cooperation between agents, we adopt a reputation and trust building scheme that is able...
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Trust Dynamics Analysis of CTR Scheme Subversion under Virtual Anonymity and Trust-Unaware Partner Selection
PublicationWe propose a framework to study Markovian trust value dynamics in a centralized Computational Trust and Reputation (CTR) scheme under trust-unaware partner selection using a mean-value approximation. Analytically founded answers are sought to questions like: Can dishonest agents subvert the CTR scheme (i.e., acquire higher trust values than honest agents)? Is indirect reciprocity incentivized? Is there a qualitative impact of a...
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The Taste of Waste: The Edge of Eggshell Over Calcium Carbonate in Acrylonitrile Butadiene Rubber
PublicationRubber technology experiences a new age by the use of biowaste or natural fillers. In this regard, taking properties of reinforcing agents from biowaste fillers remains as the challenging matter. Chicken eggshell (ES) biowaste has recently been introduced to substitute calcium carbonate (CaCO3) duo to its superior properties and low price. In this work, composites based on acrylonitrile butadiene rubber (NBR) reinforced with ES...
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New 2-[(4-Amino-6-N-substituted-1,3,5-triazin-2-yl)methylthio]-N-(imidazolidin-2-ylidene)-4-chloro-5-methylbenzenesulfonamide Derivatives, Design, Synthesis and Anticancer Evaluation
PublicationIn the search for new compounds with antitumor activity, new potential anticancer agents were designed as molecular hybrids containing the structures of a triazine ring and a sulfonamide fragment. Applying the synthesis in solution, a base of new sulfonamide derivatives 20–162 was obtained by the reaction of the corresponding esters 11–19 with appropriate biguanide hydrochlorides. The structures of the compounds were confirmed...
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Anthra[1,2-d][1,2,3]triazine-4,7,12(3H)-triones as a New Class of Antistaphylococcal Agents: Synthesis and Biological Evaluation
PublicationThe development and spread of resistance of human pathogenic bacteria to the action of commonly used antibacterial drugs is one of the key problems in modern medicine. One of the especially dangerous and easily developing antibiotic resistant bacterial species is Staphylococcus aureus. Anthra[1,2-d][1,2,3]triazine-4,7,12(3H)-triones 22–38 have been developed as novel effective antistaphylococcal agents. These compounds have been...