SIMON: Integration of mobility and parking solutions for people with disabilities.

Mobility and parking in urban areas are often difficult for people with disabilities. Obstacles include lack of accessible information on routes, transport alternatives and parking availability, as well as fraud in the use of the specific services intended for these citizens. The SIMON project aims to improve this situation through the integration of different ICT solutions.

Real-time evaluation of binding mechanisms in multivalent interactions: a surface plasmon resonance kinetic approach.

Multivalency is a key, ubiquitous phenomenon in nature characterized by a complex combination of binding mechanisms, with special relevance in carbohydrate-lectin recognition. Herein we introduce an original surface plasmon resonance kinetic approach to analyze multivalent interactions that has been validated with dendrimers as monodisperse multivalent analytes binding to lectin clusters. The method, based on the analysis of early association and late dissociation phases of the sensorgrams provides robust information of the glycoconjugate binding efficiency and real-time structural data of the binding events under the complex scenario of the glyco-cluster effect.

Probing the relevance of lectin clustering for the reliable evaluation of multivalent carbohydrate recognition.

Experiments by Surface Plasmon Resonance (SPR) illustrate the relevance of lectin density for the reliable evaluation of binding efficiencies in surface-based multivalent carbohydrate recognition. The difference between affinity data obtained by solution and surface-based experiments is also stressed.

Microwave disinfestation of bulk timber.

In this paper a complete microwave system for bulk timber disinfestation is developed and tested. A commercial FEM simulator has been used to design the applicator, looking for structures providing uniform field distributions, which is a factor of capital relevance for a successful treatment. Special attention has also been given to the reduction of electromagnetic energy leakage.

A prototype calix[4]arene-based receptor for carbohydrate recognition containing peptide and phosphate binding groups.

A novel class of macrobicyclic receptors for carbohydrate recognition based on upper rim, peptide-bridged calix[4]arenes has been designed and synthesized. Receptor 12, in which a charged phosphate group cooperates with peptide hydrogen-bonding donor and acceptor groups in the binding process, is the most efficient and selective in the complexation of simple carbohydrate derivatives. The selectivity observed is toward beta-glucoside 13a, which is better bound (DeltaG degrees = 19.

The relevance of carbohydrate hydrogen-bonding cooperativity effects: a cooperative 1,2-trans-diaxial diol and amido alcohol hydrogen-bonding array as an efficient carbohydrate-phosphate binding motif in nonpolar media.

Carbohydrates with suitably positioned intramolecularly hydrogen-bonded hydroxyl and amide groups have the potential to act as efficient bidentate phosphate binders by taking advantage of sigma- and/or ,sigma,pi-H-bonding cooperativity in nonpolar solvents. Donor-donor 1,2-trans-diaxial amido alcohol (1) and diol (3), in which one of the donor centres is cooperative, are very efficient carbohydrate-phosphate binding motifs. We have proven and quantified the key role of hydrogen-bonding centres indirectly involved in complexation, which serve to generate an intramolecular H-bond (six-membered cis H-bond) in 1 and 3.