Background Cyclotides are disulfide-rich miniproteins with the unique structural features of a circular backbone and knotted arrangement of three conserved disulfide bonds. These features make them exceptionally stable and they have applications as plant defense (insecticidal) agents and stable drug frameworks. So far they have been found mainly in two plant families, including in every species...

In September 2016, routine screening of a female infant aged 9 months in Manchester, Connecticut, showed normocytic anemia and a blood lead level of 41 μg/dL (levels exceeding 5 μg/dL are abnormal) (1). The child was cared for only in the home, which was built in 1926. Epidemiologic investigation identified two interior window wells with peeling lead-based paint; however, the health department ...

J ust when the silly season was starting to get on top of us, some welcome relief in the form of good solid science arrived on my desk. A study published in the BMJ looked at the therapeutic effect of wearing magnetic bracelets for pain control in osteoarthritis. I must admit my personal bias here. When I was the team doctor for one of our professional football clubs, we used to be inundated wi...

The increase in positive cases of COVID-19 makes it grave to monitor the level oxygen saturation blood (SPO2) patients. purpose is prevent silent hypoxia, which lowers levels without symptoms. In general, a conventional pulse oximeter clip that clamped on finger measure SPO2 and heart rate per minute (HR). This research aims design compact monitoring bracelet. main components bracelet are Seeed...

This paper presents hardware implementation of Artificial Neural Networks (ANN) that are used for human hand’s natural gestures recognition. Main goal of this project is to implement a recognition system that recognizes data gathered from various sensors placed on a bracelet. This easy to use interface can be used even by elderly or impaired people to control electronic/electric devices only wi...

This paper presents an attractive solution to integrate multiple services in the context of sports associations. The mobile solution is tailored to youngsters and makes use of a contactless RFID chip embedded in a bracelet. It realizes a reasonable trade-off between multiple (often conflicting) requirements, namely low-cost and low-power, security, privacy and flexibility to allow for easily ad...

The articles in this forum issue describe various aspects of the folding of disulfide-rich proteins. They include review articles using proteins such as bovine pancreatic trypsin inhibitor as models to highlight the range of folding pathways seen in disulfide-rich proteins, along with a detailed analysis of the methods used to study them. Following two comprehensive reviews on the methods and a...

Cyclotides or cyclic cystine-knot peptides have emerged as a promising class of pharmacological ligands that modulate protein function. Interestingly, very few cyclotides have been shown to enter into cells. Yet, it remains unknown whether backbone cyclization is required for their cellular internalization. In this report, we studied the cellular behavior of EETI-II, a model acyclic cystine-kno...