A peptide nucleic acid (PNA) is a synthetic nucleic acid mimic in which the sugar-phosphate backbone is replaced by a peptide backbone. PNAs hybridize to complementary DNA and RNA with higher affinity and superior sequence selectivity compared to DNA. PNAs are resistant to nucleases and proteases and have a low affinity for proteins. These properties make PNAs an attractive agent for biological...

Monitoring the traffic of wide area networks consisting of several autonomous systems connected through a high-speed backbone is a challenge due to the huge amount of traffic. Keeping logs for obtaining measurements is unfeasible. This work describes a distributed real-time strategy for backbone traffic monitoring that does not employ logs and allows arbitrary metrics to be collected about the ...

Spin-labeled polylactide brush polymers were synthesized via ring-opening metathesis polymerization (ROMP), and nitroxide radicals were incorporated at three different locations of brush polymers: the end and the middle of the backbone, and the end of the side chains (periphery). Electron paramagnetic resonance (EPR) was used to quantitatively probe the macromolecular structure of brush polymer...

We seek to understand the link between protein thermodynamics and protein structure in molecular detail. A classical approach to this problem involves assessing changes in protein stability resulting from added cosolvents. Under any given conditions, protein molecules in aqueous buffer are in equilibrium between unfolded and folded states, U(nfolded) <==> N(ative). Addition of organic osmolytes...

Suppose G is a graph and H is a subgraph of G. Let L be a mapping that assigns to each vertex v of G a set L(v) of positive integers. We say (G,H) is backbone L-colourable if there is a proper vertex colouring c of G such that c(v) ∈ L(v) for all v ∈ V , and |c(u) − c(v)| > 2 for every edge uv in H . We say (G,H) is backbone k-choosable if (G,H) is backbone Lcolourable for any list assignment L...

Recent studies have revealed the importance of centrality measures to analyze various spatial factors affecting human life in cities. Here we show how it is possible to extract the backbone of a city by deriving spanning trees based on edge betweenness and edge information. By using as sample cases the cities of Bologna and San Francisco, we show how the obtained trees are radically different f...

This paper compares the morphologies of films of conjugated polymers in which the backbone (main chain) and pendant groups are varied between ionic/hydrophilic and aliphatic/hydrophobic. We observe that conjugated polymers in which the pendant groups and backbone are matched, either ionic-ionic or hydrophobic-hydrophobic, form smooth, structured, homogeneous films from water (ionic) or tetrahyd...