Lost in the Woods? Place Recognition for Navigation in Difficult Forest Environments.

Forests present one of the most challenging environments for computer vision due to traits, such as complex texture, rapidly changing lighting, and high dynamicity. Loop closure by place recognition is a crucial part of successfully deploying robotic systems to map forests for the purpose of automating conservation. Modern CNN-based place recognition systems like NetVLAD have reported promising results, but the datasets used to train and test them are primarily of urban scenes.

Using isotopic dilution to assess chemical extraction of labile Ni, Cu, Zn, Cd and Pb in soils.

Chemical extractants used to measure labile soil metal must ideally select for and solubilise the labile fraction, with minimal solubilisation of non-labile metal. We assessed four extractants (0.43 M HNO3, 0.

The relationship between income and performance indicators in general practice: a cross-sectional study.

Objective: To explore the relationship between the income of general practitioners (GPs) and the performance characteristics of their practices.

Design: Cross-sectional survey.

Setting: All practices (n = 166) in an inner city health authority, two years before the introduction of the new GP contract in April 2004 were studied.

Specific peptide inhibitors of trypanothione reductase with backbone structures unrelated to that of substrate: potential rational drug design lead frameworks.

By introducing cationic charge sites novel peptide lead inhibitor structures for trypanothione reductase have been designed using molecular modelling methods. The inhibitors showed reversible, linear competitive inhibition and the strongest peptide inhibitor to date was found to be N-benzyloxycarbonyl-Ala-Arg-Arg-4-methoxy-beta-naphthylamide with a Ki value of 2.4 microM and a selectivity for parasitic enzyme (trypanothione reductase) over the host enzyme (human glutathione reductase) of over 3 orders of magnitude.

Synthesis and enzymology of modified N-benzyloxycarbonyl-L-cysteinylglycyl-3,3-dimethylaminopropylamide++ + disulphides as alternative substrates for trypanothione reductase from Trypanosoma cruzi: Part 3.

Kinetic data for alternative substrates of recombinant trypanothione reductase from Trypanosoma cruzi were measured for a series of N-substituted-L-cysteinylglycyl-3-dimethylaminopropylamides, in which the cysteine N-substituent was either a variant of the benzyloxycarbonyl group or was L-phenylalanine or L-tryptophan. Replacing the benzylic ether oxygen atom by CH2 or NH had relatively minor effects on kcat, but raised the value of K(m) 4.5- and 10-fold, respectively.