Search results for: fertility rebound
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Exploring COVID-19 Conspiracy Theories: Education, Religiosity, Trust in Scientists, and Political Orientation in 26 European countries
PublicationThe COVID-19 virus disseminated globally at an accelerated pace, culminating in a worldwide pandemic; it engendered a proliferation of spurious information and a plethora of misinformation and conspiracy theories (CTs). While many factors contributing to the propensity for embracing conspiracy ideation have been delineated, the foremost determinant influencing individuals’ proclivity towards CT endorsement appears to be their...
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Enhanced interfacial and mechanical performance of styrene-butadiene rubber/silica composites compatibilized by soybean oil derived silanized plasticization
PublicationSilanized plasticizer (SP) was chemically derived and synthesized from soybean oil (SBO) co-vulcanized with bis-(3-(triethoxysilyl)-propyl) tetrasulfide (TESPT) by using the sulfur-accelerated curing system. SP extended styrene-butadiene rubber (SBR)/silica composites have been studied for their improved filler dispersion through coupling interaction at the SBR/silica interface. The effect of SP on cross-link density, thermal,...
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Tyre/road noise measurements on ISO tracks using the modified CPX method
PublicationTyre rolling noise test method specified in the UNECE Regulation 117 is directly used in the Tyre Labelling Directive. Noise level specified on EU Tyre Label of each new tyre available on the European market was determined based on vehicle coast-by noise measurements performed on the standard reference road surface proscribed in the ISO 10844:2014. Available data from investigations by the vehicle and tyre industry and results...
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EFFECT OF SURFACE STATE AND STRESS ON AN OXIDATION OF THE ZIRCALOY-2 ALLOY
PublicationZr alloys are widely used as materials for nuclear fuel pellets in the nuclear industry. In the case of the LOCA or RIA happen, a temperature may locally reach high values. Even if the high temperature maintains shortly, the zirconium oxides may become permeable, absorb hydrogen appearing in cooling water from decomposition reaction and crack because of formation and brittle failure of hydrides. Such model cannot so far take into...
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Crystal structures of aminotransferases Aro8 and Aro9 from Candida albicans and structural insights into their properties
PublicationAminotransferases catalyze reversibly the transamination reaction by a ping-pong bi-bi mechanism with pyridoxal 5′-phosphate (PLP) as a cofactor. Various aminotransferases acting on a range of substrates have been reported. Aromatic transaminases are able to catalyze the transamination reaction with both aromatic and acidic substrates. Two aminotransferases from C. albicans, Aro8p and Aro9p, have been identified recently, exhibiting...
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Digits Recognition with Quadrant Photodiode and Convolutional Neural Network
PublicationIn this paper we have investigated the capabilities of a quadrant photodiode based gesture sensor in the recognition of digits drawn in the air. The sensor consisting of 4 active elements, 4 LEDs and a pinhole was considered as input interface for both discrete and continuous gestures. Index finger and a round pointer were used as navigating mediums for the sensor. Experiments performed with 5 volunteers...
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Increased Certification of Semi-device Independent Random Numbers using Many Inputs and More Postprocessing
PublicationQuantum communication with systems of dimension larger than two provides advantages in information processing tasks. Examples include higher rates of key distribution and random number generation. The main disadvantage of using such multi-dimensional quantum systems is the increased complexity of the experimental setup. Here, we analyze a not-so-obvious problem: the relation between randomness certification and computational requirements...
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PRELIMINARY RESULTS FROM APPLICATION PHOSLOCK® TO REMOVE PHOSPHORUS COMPOUNDS FROM WASTEWATER
PublicationThe aim of the study is to assess the removal effectiveness of phosphorus compoundsby using lanthanum-modified bentonite. This material was produced by the Australian company Phoslock® Water Solutions Pty Ltd. According to the company, Phoslock® has substantial capacity to bound phosphate anions. The investigation was carried out in steady conditions in laboratory model with beakers. The results of the study are related to the...
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Graph Decomposition for Memoryless Periodic Exploration
PublicationWe consider a general framework in which a memoryless robot periodically explores all the nodes of a connected anonymous graph by following local information available at each vertex. For each vertex v, the endpoints of all edges adjacent to v are assigned unique labels within the range 1 to deg (v) (the degree of v). The generic exploration strategy is implemented using a right-hand-rule transition function: after entering vertex...
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Structure of Microemulsion Formulated with Monoacylglycerols in the Presence of Polyols and Ethanol
PublicationThe influence of polyols as cosurfactants (propylene glycol PG; glycerol G) and short chain alcohol as a cosolvent (ethanol EtOH) on the formation and solubilization capacity of the systems: hexadecane/monoacylglycerols (MAG)/polyol/water:EtOH, at 60C, was investigated. Electrical conductivity measurement, and the DSC method were applied to determine the structure and type of microemulsions formed. The dimension of the droplets...
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Long-distance quantum communication over noisy networks without long-time quantum memory
PublicationThe problem of sharing entanglement over large distances is crucial for implementations of quantum cryptography. A possible scheme for long-distance entanglement sharing and quantum communication exploits networks whose nodes share Einstein-Podolsky-Rosen (EPR) pairs. In Perseguers et al. [Phys. Rev. A 78, 062324 (2008)] the authors put forward an important isomorphism between storing quantum information in a dimension D and transmission...
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Immunization with an anti-idiotypic antibody against the broadly lipopolysaccharide-reactive antibody WN1 222-5 induces Escherichia coli R3-core-type specific antibodies in rabbits
PublicationThe mouse monoclonal antibody (mAb) WN1 222-5 recognizes a carbohydrate epitope in the inner core region of LPS that is shared by all strains of Escherichia coli and Salmonella enterica and is able to neutralize their endotoxic activity in vitro and in vivo. Immunization of mice with mAb WN1 222-5 yielded several anti-idiotypic mAbs one of which (mAb S81-19) competitively inhibited binding of mAb WN1 222-5 to E. coli and Salmonella...
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Foliate-Targeting Quantum Dots-β-Cyclodextrin Nanocarrier for Efficient Delivery of Unsymmetrical Bisacridines to Lung and Prostate Cancer Cells
PublicationTargeted drug delivery by nanocarriers molecules can increase the efficiency of cancer treatment. One of the targeting ligands is folic acid (FA), which has a high affinity for the folic acid receptors, which are overexpressed in many cancers. Herein, we describe the preparation of the nanoconjugates containing quantum dots (QDs) and β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) with foliate-targeting properties for the delivery of anticancer compound...
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A shear stress micromodel of urinary tract infection by the Escherichia coli producing Dr adhesin
PublicationIn this study, we established a dynamic micromodel of urinary tract infection to analyze the impact of UT-segment-specific urinary outflow on the persistence of E. coli colonization. We found that the adherence of Dr+ E. coli to bladder T24 transitional cells and type IV collagen is maximal at lowest shear stress and is reduced by any increase in flow velocity. The analyzed adherence was effective in the whole spectrum of physiological...
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Non-ergodic fragmentation upon collision-induced activation of cysteine–water cluster cations
PublicationCysteine–water cluster cations Cys(H2O)3,6 + and Cys(H2O)3,6H+ are assembled in He droplets and probed by tandem mass spectrometry with collision-induced activation. Benchmark experimental data for this biologically important system are complemented with theory to elucidate the details of the collisioninduced activation process. Experimental energy thresholds for successive release of water are compared to water dissociation energies...
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Molecular mechanism and energetics of coupling between substrate binding and product release in the F 1 -ATPase catalytic cycle
PublicationF1-ATPase is a motor protein that couples the rotation of its rotary γ subunit with ATP synthesis or hydrolysis. Single-molecule experiments indicate that nucleotide binding and release events occur almost simultaneously during the synthesis cycle, allowing the energy gain due to spontaneous binding of ADP to one catalytic β subunit to be directly harnessed for driving the release of ATP from another rather than being dissipated...
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Catalytic Mechanism of Non-Target DNA Cleavage in CRISPR-Cas9 Revealed by Ab Initio Molecular Dynamics
PublicationCRISPR-Cas9 is a cutting-edge genome editing technology, which uses the endonuclease Cas9 to introduce mutations at desired sites of the genome. This revolutionary tool is promising to treat a myriad of human genetic diseases. Nevertheless, the molecular basis of DNA cleavage, which is a fundamental step for genome editing, has not been established. Here, quantum–classical molecular dynamics (MD) and free energy methods are used...
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Scheduling on Uniform and Unrelated Machines with Bipartite Incompatibility Graphs
PublicationThe problem of scheduling jobs on parallel machines under an incompatibility relation is considered in this paper. In this model, a binary relation between jobs is given and no two jobs that are in the relation can be scheduled on the same machine. We consider job scheduling under the incompatibility relation modeled by a bipartite graph, under the makespan optimality criterion, on uniform and unrelated machines. Unrelated machines...
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Molecular mechanism of proton-coupled ligand translocation by the bacterial efflux pump EmrE
PublicationThe current surge in bacterial multi-drug resistance (MDR) is one of the largest challenges to public health, threatening to render ineffective many therapies we rely on for treatment of serious infections. Understanding different factors that contribute to MDR is hence crucial from the global “one health” perspective. In this contribution, we focus on the prototypical broad-selectivity proton-coupled antiporter EmrE, one of the...
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Porous structures in aspects of transpirating cooling of oxycombustion chamber walls
PublicationA wet oxycombustion chamber, which must be effectively cooled due to high temperature evolved during the oxy-combustion process, by using the phenomena of Reynolds thermal transpiration and Navier slip velocity. Closures needed to execute mass flow rate in a microchannel, which should be treated as a single porous structure in the walls of the combustion chamber, have been obtained by applying a local 3D approach. The Navier-Stokes...
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A highly thermostable, homodimeric single-stranded DNA-binding protein from Deinococcus radiopugnans
PublicationWe report the identification and characterization of the single-stranded DNA-binding protein (SSB) from the mesophile and highly radiation-resistant Deinococcus radiopugnans (DrpSSB). PCR-derived DNA fragment containing the complete structural gene for DrpSSB protein was cloned and expressed in Escherichia coli. The gene consisting of an open reading frame of 900 nucleotides encodes a protein of 300 amino acids with a calculated...
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Bankruptcy system model and efficiency versus the entrepreneurship and innovation in selected European countries
Publicationmodel and its efficiency on the development of entrepreneurship and innovation in selected European countries and Turkey. This goal was achieved by examining the relationships between debtor-friendliness of the bankruptcy law model and its efficiency on one side and entrepreneurship and innovation on the other. The cross-sectional ANOVA test and OLS regression method were chosen as the research method. In order to verify the research...
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Long range molecular dynamics study of interactions of the eukaryotic glucosamine-6-phosphate synthase with fructose-6-phosphate and UDP-GlcNAc
PublicationGlucosamine-6-phosphate synthase (EC 2.6.1.16) is responsible for catalysis of the first and practically irreversible step in hexosamine metabolism. The final product of this pathway, uridine 5 diphospho Nacetyl- d-glucosamine (UDP-GlcNAc), is an essential substrate for assembly of bacterial and fungal cell walls. Moreover, the enzyme is involved in phenomenon of hexosamine induced insulin resistance in type II diabetes, which...
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The long-term properties of mineral-cement-emulsion mixtures
PublicationThis publication presents evaluation of long-term behavior of mineral-cement-emulsion (MCE) mixtures. MCE mixtures are among the major products of cold recycling of old asphalt pavements. They are composed by binding of the old materials reclaimed from the pavement and new mineral aggregate using two different binding agents – cement and bituminous emulsion. While bituminous emulsion dissolutes and binds materials quite fast, it...
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Thermal and physical properties of ZrO2–AlO(OH) nanopowders synthesised by microwave hydrothermal method
PublicationIndustrially relevant nanopowder was synthesised by microwave hydrothermal synthesis to obtain well-controlled composition (ZrO2–AlO(OH) system) which was found to determine a number of physical and thermal characteristics. This study reports variation of particle size, density, specific surface area (SSABET), as well as thermal behaviour of nanopowder mixtures of ZrO2–AlO(OH) in the whole range of compositions. It was found that...
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Influence of laser processing of the low alloy medium carbon structural steel on the development of the fatigue crack
PublicationThe paper contains the results of the structural analysis, hardness tests and fatigue tests conducted for the medium carbon structural steel with low content of Cr and Ni after its processing with CO2 laser beam. Pre-cracks were made in the round compact tension (RCT) specimen used for fatigue test. Next, four paths, parallel to each other, were melted on both sides of the samples using a laser beam. The paths were perpendicular...
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Novel fast analytical method for indirect determination of MCPD fatty acid esters in edible oils and fats based on simultaneous extraction and derivatization
PublicationA novel method for indirect determination of MCPD esters levels in lipid samples has been developed. The method is based on combination of extraction and derivatisation in the same sample preparation step. It is achieved by the application of diethyl ether as extraction solvent for isolation of released from esterified forms analytes from water phase and dilution solvent for solid PBA – derivatisation agent. It is a noteworthy...
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On the hat problem on a graph
PublicationThe topic of this paper is the hat problem in which each of n players is uniformly and independently fitted with a blue or red hat. Then everybody can try to guess simultaneously his own hat color by looking at the hat colors of the other players. The team wins if at least one player guesses his hat color correctly, and no one guesses his hat color wrong; otherwise the team loses. The aim is to maximize the probability of winning....
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Imunofan—RDKVYR Peptide—Stimulates Skin Cell Proliferation and Promotes Tissue Repair
PublicationRegeneration and wound healing are vital to tissue homeostasis and organism survival. One of the biggest challenges of today’s science and medicine is finding methods and factors to stimulate these processes in the human body. Effective solutions to promote regenerative responses will accelerate advances in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, transplantology, and a number of other clinical specialties. In this study, we...
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New Unsymmetrical Bisacridine Derivatives Noncovalently Attached to Quaternary Quantum Dots Improve Cancer Therapy by Enhancing Cytotoxicity toward Cancer Cells and Protecting Normal Cells
PublicationThe use of nanoparticles for the controlled drug delivery to cells has emerged as a good alternative to traditional systemic delivery. Quantum dots (QDs) offer potentially invaluable societal benefits such as drug targeting and in vivo biomedical imaging. In contrast, QDs may also pose risks to human health and the environment under certain conditions. Here, we demonstrated that unique combination of nanocrystals core components...
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Role of Silicon in Counteracting Cadmium Stress in Pea Plants (Pisum sativum L.): Insights Into Cadmium Binding Mechanisms and Pectin Methylesterase Activity
PublicationPurpose: The aim of this study was to investigate the role of silicon (Si) in counteracting a cadmium (Cd) stress to pea plants (Pisum sativum L.) and to identify the mechanism by which Cd is bound within pea roots. Methods: These goals were achieved through (i) a histochemical study of Cd localization in pea roots, (ii) spectrophotometric determination of pectin content and the activity...
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Mercury in suspended matter of the Gulf of Gdańsk: Origin, distribution and transport at the land–sea interface
PublicationThe coastal regions of inland seas are particularly vulnerable to Hg pollution. An important carrier of toxic Hg in the marine environment is suspended matter originating from multiple sources. The present study was conducted in the Gulf...
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Imunofan - RDKVYR peptide - stimulates skin cell proliferation and promotes tissue repair
PublicationRegeneration and wound healing are vital to tissue homeostasis and organism survival. One of the biggest challenges of today's science and medicine is finding methods and factors to stimulate these processes in the human body. Effective solutions to promote regenerative responses will accelerate advances in tissue engineering, regenerative medicine, transplantology, and a number of other clinical...
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Linear-scaling calculation of Hartree-Fock exchange energy with Non-orthogonal Generalised Wannier Functions
PublicationWe present a method for the calculation of four-centre two-electron repulsion integrals in terms of localised non-orthogonal generalised Wannier functions (NGWFs). Our method has been imple- mented in the ONETEP program and is used to compute the Hartree-Fock exchange energy component of Hartree-Fock and Density Functional Theory (DFT) calculations with hybrid exchange-correlation functionals. As the NGWFs are optimised in situ...
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Bounds on the Cover Time of Parallel Rotor Walks
PublicationThe rotor-router mechanism was introduced as a deterministic alternative to the random walk in undirected graphs. In this model, a set of k identical walkers is deployed in parallel, starting from a chosen subset of nodes, and moving around the graph in synchronous steps. During the process, each node maintains a cyclic ordering of its outgoing arcs, and successively propagates walkers which visit it along its outgoing arcs in...
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3-MCPD: A worldwide problem of food chemistry
Publication3-MCPD is a heat-induced food contaminant which has been widely investigated for decades. This paper presents an overview of current knowledge about 3-MCPD including its formation routes, occurrence in various foodstuffs, analytical approach, toxicological aspects and future research perspectives. So far 3-MCPD was determined in its free and bound form in thermally-treated foods, edible oils and fats, and infant foods including...
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Analiza i badania pomiarowe dokładności lokalizowania terminali ruchomych w sieciach komórkowych
PublicationJakość oferowanych przez operatorów sieci komórkowych usług o wartości wzbogaconej (usług dodanych) zależy od efektywności metod estymacji położenia geograficznego terminala ruchomego MS (Mobile Station). Dokładność istniejących w sieciach komórkowych metod lokalizacyjnych jest niewystarczająca, szczególnie w odniesieniu do usług związanych z wywołaniem w niebezpieczeństwie. Obecnie, do najbardziej popularnej w sieciach komórkowych...
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Comparability of Raman Spectroscopic Configurations: A Large Scale Cross-Laboratory Study
PublicationThe variable configuration of Raman spectroscopic platforms is one of the major obstacles in establishing Raman spectroscopy as a valuable physicochemical method within real-world scenarios such as clinical diagnostics. For such real world applications like diagnostic classification, the models should ideally be usable to predict data from different setups. Whether it is done by training a rugged model with data from many setups...
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Bortezomib induces methylation changes in neuroblastoma cells that appear to play a significant role in resistance development to this compound
PublicationThe anticancer activity of bortezomib (BTZ) has been increasingly studied in a number of indications and promising results for the use of this treatment have been shown in neuroblastoma. As BTZ treatment is usually administered in cycles, the development of resistance and side effects in patients undergoing therapy with BTZ remains a major challenge for the clinical usage of this compound. Common resistance development also means...
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On symmetric extendibility of quantum states and its applications
PublicationThis dissertation is focused on analysis of the symmetric extendibility of quantum states and its applications in the quantum information theory, with special attention paid to the area of quantum entanglement distillation, quantum channels theory, quantum security, and monogamy of quantum entanglement in time. We analyze geometry of the set of symmetric extendible states, i.e. such states that possess symmetric extensions and...
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Conjugates of Ciprofloxacin and Levofloxacin with Cell-Penetrating Peptide Exhibit Antifungal Activity and Mammalian Cytotoxicity
PublicationSeven conjugates composed of well-known fluoroquinolone antibacterial agents, ciprofloxacin (CIP) or levofloxacin (LVX), and a cell-penetrating peptide transportan 10 (TP10-NH2) were synthesised. The drugs were covalently bound to the peptide via an amide bond, methylenecarbonyl moiety, or a disulfide bridge. Conjugation of fluoroquinolones to TP10-NH2 resulted in congeners demonstrating antifungal in vitro activity against human...
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Sugar matters: sugar moieties as reactivity-tuning factors in quercetin O-glycosides
PublicationQuercetin, one of the most abundant flavonoids in plant-based foods, commonly occurs in nature in various glycosylated forms. There is still a less explored aspect regarding the cause of its glycosides diversity, depending on the sugars moiety attached. This work focuses on four widespread quercetin glycosides—hyperoside, isoquercitrin, quercitrin and rutin—by testing property-tuning capacity of different sugar moieties and thus...
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Seasonal and spatial differences in metal and metalloid concentrations in the snow cover of Hansbreen, Svalbard
PublicationMetals and metalloids in snow on glaciers, depending on the season of deposition, may come from various sources: local rock dust (erosion of the geological substratum), marine aerosol, local human activity (e.g. fuel combustion, waste incineration) and long-range atmospheric transport. Hansbreen glacier, located close to the Polish Polar Station in Svalbard, is a perfect site to study metals and metalloids: it has complex geological...
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Linear game non-contextuality and Bell inequalities—a graph-theoretic approach
PublicationWe study the classical and quantum values of a class of one-and two-party unique games, that generalizes the well-known XOR games to the case of non-binary outcomes. In the bipartite case the generalized XOR(XOR-d) games we study are a subclass of the well-known linear games. We introduce a 'constraint graph' associated to such a game, with the constraints defining the game represented by an edge-coloring of the graph. We use the...
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Randomness Amplification under Minimal Fundamental Assumptions on the Devices
PublicationRecently, the physically realistic protocol amplifying the randomness of Santha-Vazirani sources producing cryptographically secure random bits was proposed; however, for reasons of practical relevance, the crucial question remained open regarding whether this can be accomplished under the minimal conditions necessary for the task. Namely, is it possible to achieve randomness amplification using only two no-signaling components...
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Mechanochemical Energy Transduction during the Main Rotary Step in the Synthesis Cycle of F1-ATPase
PublicationF1-ATPase is a highly efficient molecular motor that can synthesize ATP driven by a mechanical torque. Its ability to function reversibly in either direction requires tight mechanochemical coupling between the catalytic domain and the rotating central shaft, as well as temporal control of substrate binding and product release. Despite great efforts and significant progress, the molecular details of this synchronized and fine-tuned...
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Solvent influence on the crystal structures of new cadmium tri-tert -butoxysilanethiolate complexes with 1,4-bis(3-aminopropyl)piperazine: luminescence and antifungal activity
PublicationMonocrystals of dinuclear -1,4-bis(3-aminopropyl)piperazine-4N1,N10:N4,N40-bis[bis(tri-tert-butoxysilanethiolato-S)cadmium(II)], [Cd2(C12H27O3SSi)4(C10-H24N4)] or [Cd2{SSi(OtBu)3}4(-BAPP)], 1, and polynuclear catena-poly[[bis-(tri-tert-butoxysilanethiolato-S)cadmium(II)]--1,4-bis(3-aminopropyl)piperazine-2N10:N40], [Cd(C12H27O3SSi)2(C10H24N4)]n or [Cd{SSi(OtBu)3}2(-BAPP)]n,2, with 1,4-bis(3-aminopropyl)piperazine (BAPP)...
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Molecular Recognition in Complexes of TRF Proteins with Telomeric DNA
PublicationTelomeres are specialized nucleoprotein assemblies that protect the ends of linear chromosomes. In humans and many other species, telomeres consist of tandem TTAGGG repeats bound by a protein complex known as shelterin that remodels telomeric DNA into a protective loop structure and regulates telomere homeostasis. Shelterin recognizes telomeric repeats through its two major components known as Telomere Repeat-Binding Factors, TRF1...
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Impact of abiotic stressors on nutrient removal and rhizomicrobiome composition in floating treatment wetland with Equisetum hyemale
PublicationFloating treatment wetlands (FTW) are receiving growing interest as a phyto-technology. However, there are significant research gaps regarding the actual role of plant species and plant-microbiome interactions. In this study, the nutrient uptake of Equisetum hyemale was examined in FTW microcosms under the influence of abiotic stressors: As (3 mg/L) and Pb (3 mg/L) as well as Cl− (300 and 800 mg/L) in reference to a control during...
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Electrochemical detection of bacterial endotoxin lipopolysaccharide (LPS) on gold electrode modified with DAL-PEG-DK5-PEG-OH - Antimicrobial peptide conjugate
PublicationThis work describes fabrication of gold electrodes modified with peptide conjugate DAL-PEG-DK5-PEG-OH that enables ultra-sensitive detection of lipopolysaccharide (LPS) isolated from the reference strain of Escherichia coli O26:B6. The initial step of the established procedure implies immobilization of the fully protected DAL-PEG-DK5-PEG-OH peptide on the surface of the gold electrode previously modified by cysteamine. Then side...