In the last few decades, there is substantial evidence that male reproductive function is deteriorating in humans and wildlife and this is associated with unintentional exposure to widely used synthetic chemicals. Subsequently, much has been done to show that certain chemicals in the environment adversely interfere with the developing fetal gonads of the laboratory animals. Some in vitro studie...

To enable large-scale atomistic simulations of material processes involving chemical reactions, we have designed linear-scaling molecular dynamics (MD) algorithms based on an embedded divide-and-conquer (EDC) framework: first principles-based fast reactive forcefield (F-ReaxFF) MD; and quantum-mechanical MD in the framework of the density functional theory (DFT) on adaptive multigrids. To map t...

Endocrine-disrupting compounds (EDCs) have the capacity of altering the normal function of the endocrine system. EDCs have shown dramatic effects on the reproductive biology of aquatic wildlife and may affect human reproduction as well. Studies on EDCs in mammalian species have often investigated the effects of short-term, high doses on male and female reproductive physiology. However, it is di...

The properties and fundamental limits of chemical computers have recently attracted significant interest as a model of computation, an unifying principle of cellular organisation and in the context of bio-engineering. As of yet, research in this topic is based on case-studies. There exists no generally accepted criterion to distinguish between chemical processes that compute and those that do n...

Tag recommendation, as a branch of recommendation engine, has drawn more and more attention, which is also extensively exploited in e-commerce and SNS (Social Networking Services). The results generated by the current algorithms could describe the items with a high relevance. However, they are often of poor diversity in the recommended results. That indicates there is a redundancy in the result...

There is longstanding environmental concern regarding endocrine disrupting chemicals and wastewater treatment facilities’ inability to remove them. Estrogens in particular, including 17 β-estradiol, 17 α-ethynylestradiol, and bis-phenol A, have been reported to depress cortisol levels and cause development of intersexual gonads in fish, along with various additional disruptions to the endocrine...

Objective(s): Polyethylenimine (PEI) is one of the most widely used polymers in gene delivery. The aim of this study was to modify PEI by replacing some of its primary amines with Brevinin 2R (BR-2R) peptide in order to increase the efficiency of gene delivery.Materials and Methods: Polyethylenimine was modified by BR-2R peptide by two d...

BACKGROUND The issue of endocrine disrupting chemicals (EDCs) is receiving wide attention from both the scientific and regulatory communities. Recent analyses of the EDC literature have been criticized for failing to use transparent and objective approaches to draw conclusions about the strength of evidence linking EDC exposures to adverse health or environmental outcomes. Systematic review met...