Practical guidelines: Lung transplantation in patients with cystic fibrosis

There are no European recommendations on issues specifically related to lung transplantation (LTX) in cystic fibrosis (CF). The main goal of this paper is to provide CF care team members with clinically relevant CF-specific information on all aspects of LTX, highlighting areas of consensus and controversy throughout Europe. Bilateral lung transplantation has been shown to be an important therapeutic option for end-stage CF pulmonary disease. Transplant function and patient survival after transplantation are better than in most other indications for this procedure. Attention though has to be paid to pretransplant morbidity, time for referral, evaluation, indication, and contraindication in children and in adults. This review makes extensive use of specific evidence in the field of lung transplantation in CF patients and addresses all issues of practical importance. The requirements of pre-, peri-, and postoperative management are discussed in detail including bridging to transplant and postoperative complications, immune suppression, chronic allograft dysfunction, infection, and malignancies being the most important. Among the contributors to this guiding information are 19 members of the ECORN-CF project and other experts. The document is endorsed by the European Cystic Fibrosis Society and sponsored by the Christiane Herzog Foundation. 

Practical Lattice-Based Digital Signature Schemes

Digital signatures are an important primitive for building secure systems and are used in most real-world security protocols. However, almost all popular signature schemes are either based on the factoring assumption (RSA) or the hardness of the discrete logarithm problem (DSA/ECDSA). In the case of classical cryptanalytic advances or progress on the development of quantum computers, the hardness of these closely related problems might be seriously weakened. A potential alternative approach is the construction of signature schemes based on the hardness of certain lattice problems that are assumed to be intractable by quantum computers. Due to significant research advancements in recent years, lattice-based schemes have now become practical and appear to be a very viable alternative to number-theoretic cryptography. In this article, we focus on recent developments and the current state of the art in lattice-based digital signatures and provide a comprehensive survey discussing signature schemes with respect to practicality. Additionally, we discuss future research areas that are essential for the continued development of lattice-based cryptography.

Practical Spectrum Aggregation for Secondary Networks with Imperfect Sensing

We investigate a collision-sensitive secondary network that intends to opportunistically aggregate and utilize spectrum of a primary network to achieve higher data rates. In opportunistic spectrum access with imperfect sensing of idle primary spectrum, secondary transmission can collide with primary transmission. When the secondary network aggregates more channels in the presence of the imperfect sensing, collisions could occur more often, limiting the performance obtained by spectrum aggregation. In this context, we aim to address a fundamental query, that is, how much spectrum aggregation is worthy with imperfect sensing. For collision occurrence, we focus on two different types of collision: one is imposed by asynchronous transmission; and the other by imperfect spectrum sensing. The collision probability expression has been derived in closed-form with various secondary network parameters: primary traffic load, secondary user transmission parameters, spectrum sensing errors, and the number of aggregated sub-channels. In addition, the impact of spectrum aggregation on data rate is analysed under the constraint of collision probability. Then, we solve an optimal spectrum aggregation problem and propose the dynamic spectrum aggregation approach to increase the data rate subject to practical collision constraints. Our simulation results show clearly that the proposed approach outperforms the benchmark that passively aggregates sub-channels with lack of collision awareness.

Book Review: Working with loss and grief: a theoretical and practical approach

THE UPDATED second edition of this text begins with an overview of theories underpinning loss and grief, followed by a comprehensive outline of the author’s ‘range of response to loss’ (RRL) model, which emerged from her own research and experience. The RRL model provides a framework to explore variability in how people respond to grief, and case studies are used to demonstrate its application in practice. This is followed by an outline of the author’s ‘adult attitude to grief’ scale, which can be used to map a person’s grief and generate a grief profile.

A Coordination and Ligand Replacement Based Three-Input Colorimetric Logic Gate Sensing Platform for Melamine, Mercury Ions, and Cysteine

Discrimination of different species in various target scopes within a single sensing platform can provide many advantages such as simplicity, rapidness, and cost effectiveness. Here we design a three-input colorimetric logic gate based on the aggregation and anti-aggregation of gold nanoparticles (Au NPs) for the sensing of melamine, cysteine, and Hg2+. The concept takes advantages of the highly specific coordination and ligand replacement reactions between melamine, cysteine, Hg2+, and Au NPs. Different outputs are obtained with the combinational inputs in the logic gates, which can serve as a reference to discriminate different analytes within a single sensing platform. Furthermore, besides the intrinsic sensitivity and selectivity of Au NPs to melamine-like compounds, the “INH” gates of melamine/cysteine and melamine/Hg2+ in this logic system can be employed for sensitive and selective detections of cysteine and Hg2+, respectively.

Small molecular logic systems can draw the outlines of objects via edge visualization

The recently-discovered ability of small logical molecules to recognize edges is exploited to achieve outline drawing from binary templates. Outlines of arbitrary curvature, several colours and thicknesses down to 1 mm are drawn in around 30 min or less by employing a common laboratory two-colour ultraviolet lamp. The outlines and the light dose-driven XOR logic with fluorescence output or ‘off-on-off’ action which is observed in the irradiated regions are modelled by combining foundational principles of photochemistry, acid-base neutralization and diffusion.

'Off-On' Fluorescent Sensors for Physiological levels of Magnesium Ions based on Photoinduced Electron Transfer (PET) which also behave as OR Logic Gates

The fluorescence of molecules 1-3 is enhanced by factors of up to 67 in the presence of magnesium and calcium ions in neutral water which allows the selective monitoring of magnesium ions under simulated physiological conditions and permits the construction of truth tables with OR logic when these molecules are viewed as ion input-photon output molecuIar devices.

From Sensing to Molecular Logic: A Journey

A personal account of the establishment of luminescent PET (photoinduced electron transfer) sensing and its development into molecular logic is given. Several applications of these two research areas, e.g. blood electrolyte diagnostics, ‘lab-on-amolecule’ systems and molecular computational identification (MCID) are illustrated.