Three disulfide bond-containing peptide amphiphiles (PA1−3) with different lengths of alkyl tails (PA1 for C 6 , PA2 for C 12 , and PA3 for C 18 ) were synthesized by ring-opening polymerization of α-amino acid N-carboxyanhydride followed by post-polymerization modification. The peptide segments were composed of 3-mercaptopropionic acid-modified poly(L-cysteine) [P(Cys-SS-CH 2 CH 2 COOH)]. We characterized the chemical structure and molecular parameters by 1 H NMR, 13 C NMR, gel permeation chromatography, Fourier transform infrared spectroscopy, and circular dichroism spectroscopy. It is found that alkyl-P(Cys-SS-CH 2 CH 2 COOH) mainly presents a β-sheet conformation at the solid state. However, the PAs present predominant random coils at pH 7.4 in aqueous solutions. The β-sheet conformation increased dramatically when the concentration of the PA exceeded its critical micelle concentration (ca. 0.3 mg/mL for PA3), indicating the formation of self-assembly-induced β-sheet nanostructures. Elongation of the alkyl chain length or a decrease of the pH of the PA solution can promote the formation of the β-sheet conformation. The three PAs can self-assemble into spherical micelles or nanofibrous hydrogels, which can be utilized as nanocarriers for systemic drug delivery or implants for localized drug delivery, respectively. Cisplatin (CDDP) was loaded as a model medicine to examine the drug delivery potential of PA3. We found that the CDDP-loaded PA3 micelles are stable at pH 7.4, have a spherical morphology with a hydrodynamic diameter of ca. 52 nm, and accomplish pH/reduction dual-responsive release of CDDP. In addition, alkyl-P(Cys-SS-CH 2 CH 2 COOH) can self-assemble into nanofibrous hydrogels at pH 5.0−6.0 or upon the addition of certain metal ions and show excellent dynamic reversibility. Moreover, the CDDP-loaded PA3 hydrogel exhibits a sustained release profile and a nearly linear release over 48 h. In vitro cytotoxicity of PA3 also indicates its nontoxicity. Thus, our findings suggest that alkyl-P(Cys-SS-CH 2 CH 2 COOH) has great potential for both systemic and localized delivery of therapeutics.

Abstract. The work presented in this paper is aimed at the implementation of a real-time multiple-input multiple-output (MIMO) imaging radar used for area surveillance. In this radar, the equivalent virtual array method and time-division technique are applied to make 16 virtual elements synthesized from the MIMO antenna array. The chirp signal generater is based on a combination of direct digital synthesizer (DDS) and phase locked loop (PLL). A signal conditioning circuit is used to deal with the coupling effect within the array. The signal processing platform is based on an efficient field programmable gates array (FPGA) and digital signal processor (DSP) pipeline where a robust beamforming imaging algorithm is running on. The radar system was evaluated through a real field experiment. Imaging capability and real-time performance shown in the results demonstrate the practical feasibility of the implementation.

CMS expects to manage several Pbytes of data each year, distributing them over many computing sites around the world and enabling data access at those centers for analysis. CMS has identified the distributed sites as the primary location for physics analysis to support a wide community of users, with potentially as many as 3000 users. This represents an unprecedented scale of distributed computing resources and number of users. An overview of the computing architecture, the software tools and the distributed infrastructure deployed is reported. Summaries of the experience in establishing efficient and scalable operations to prepare for CMS distributed analysis are presented, followed by the user experience in their current analysis activities.JournalofGridComputing manuscript No. (will be inserted by the editor) Abstract CMS expects to manage several Pbytes of data each year, distributing them over many computing sites around the world and enabling data access at those centers for analysis. CMS has identified the distributed sites as the primary location for physics analysis to support a wide community of users, with potentially as many as 3000 users. This represents an unprecedented scale of distributed computing resources and number of users. An overview of the computing architecture, the software tools and the distributed infrastructure deployed is reported. Summaries of the experience in establishing efficient and scalable operations to prepare for CMS distributed analysis are presented, followed by the user experience in their current analysis activities. Distributed Analysis in CMS

A simple capillary electrophoresis (CE) method that using β-cyclodextrin (β-CD) as buffer modifier has been developed for the detection of ten amino acids of jujube from five different geographical origins. The CE methodology was optimized through the variation of type, pH and concentration of the buffer solution, concentration of the additive β-CD, applied voltage, injection time and wavelength of the UV detection. It was found that the best separation of ten kinds of amino acids was achieved within less than 6 min under the optimum separation conditions: 50 mmol L-1 pH 9.5 borate-phosphate buffer with 5.0 mmol L-1 β-CD, 15 kV applied voltage, 25 °C column temperature, 210 nm detection wavelength, and 5 s injection time. This method showed good repeatability with RSD values of 1.4-3.4% for peak area, and 1.4-4.7% for migration time, when β-CD was used as buffer modifier. Under the optimum conditions, the method has been successfully applied to the detection of actual jujube samples, which also verifies the effectiveness and practicability of the method. Recovery of real samples was in ranging of 90%-105%, which proved the feasibility of the method. It also proved that the method was successfully applied to the quantitative analysis of amino acids of interest in plant samples.