The ability to simulate a seaport environment, including illicit cargo and the sensors designed to detect such cargo, allows the evaluation of alternative detection methods in order to improve security at our nation’s seaports. We describe our progress towards this goal. Specifically, we describe our modeling of threats at a particle emission level, modeling of sensors as particle detectors, mo...

Kinesin-1 is the founding member of a superfamily of motor proteins that transport macromolecules along microtubules in an ATP-dependent manner. Classic studies show that kinesin-1 binds to intracellular cargos through non-covalent interactions with proteins on the cargo surface, that protein-protein interaction domains are present in the cargo-binding tail domain and that phosphorylation-depen...

The coat protein II (COPII)-coated vesicular system transports newly synthesized secretory and membrane proteins from the endoplasmic reticulum (ER) to the Golgi complex. Recruitment of cargo into COPII vesicles requires an interaction of COPII proteins either with the cargo molecules directly or with cargo receptors for anterograde trafficking. We show that cytosolic phosphatidic acid phosphol...

Endocytosis allows cargo to enter a series of specialized endosomal compartments, beginning with early endosomes harboring Rab5 and its effector EEA1. There are, however, additional structures labeled by the Rab5 effector APPL1 whose role in endocytic transport remains unclear. It has been proposed that APPL1 vesicles are transport intermediates that convert into EEA1 endosomes. Here, we tested...

Actin-based organelle movements are driven by the related multifunctional myosin motors of class V in animals and fungi and class XI in plants. The versatility of these motors depends critically on their C-terminal globular tail domain that allows them to bind to a broad variety of cargo molecules. Regulation of this motor-cargo attachment is frequently employed to modulate organelle movement. ...

Continuous growth in air cargo deliveries and increasing competition is necessitating freight forwarders to develop innovative solutions to improve performance and reduce costs. This study considers a freight forwarder's operational implementation of alternative access airport policy in a multi-airport region for air cargo transportation. Given a set of heterogeneous air cargo customers, the fo...

E ndocytosis pathways are used by eukaryotic cells for internalization of nutrients, signal transduction regulation, and modulation of plasma membrane composition. The cytoplasmic regions of plasma membrane ‘‘cargo’’ proteins harbor signals that are recognized by ‘‘cargo adaptor’’ proteins; this concentrates the cargo proteins at sites of budding for subsequent internalization via an endocytic ...

The Integrated Computerized Deployment System (ICODES) is a logistic software application of ship load-planning tools that utilizes intelligent software agents in a human-computer collaborative mode. As an example of a new generation of ‘information-centric’ military decision-support systems, ICODES includes expert agents with automatic reasoning and analysis capabilities. This is made possible...

The ongoing FP7 project “ACXIS Automated Comparison of X-ray Images for cargo Scanning” delivers enhanced inspection procedures for customs. A manufacturer independent reference data base for X-ray images of illegal and legitimate cargo is developed. One of the X-ray image recording work flow is to use 3D-CT data of illegal cargo mockups and to artificially generate arbitrary X-ray projections....

Axonal microtubule (MT) arrays are the major cytoskeleton substrate for cargo transport. How MT organization, i.e., polymer length, number, and minus-end spacing, is regulated and how it impinges on axonal transport are unclear. We describe a method for analyzing neuronal MT organization using light microscopy. This method circumvents the need for electron microscopy reconstructions and is comp...