A series of novel acylsulfonamide, acylsulfamide, and sulfonylurea bioisosteres of carboxylic acids were prepared as CXCR2 antagonists. Structure-activity relationships are reported for these series. One potent orally bioavailable inhibitor had excellent PK properties and was active in a lung injury model in hyperoxia-exposed newborn rats.

Previously, we reported a series of novel benzimidazole based Itk inhibitors that exhibited excellent enzymatic potency and selectivity but low microsomal stability. Employing a structure based approach a new series of inhibitors with comparable potency and selectivity to the original series and with a potential for improved microsome stability was identified.

A series of novel potent benzimidazole based inhibitors of interleukin-2 T-cell kinase (Itk) were prepared. In this report, we discuss the structure-activity relationship (SAR), selectivity, and cell-based activity for the series. We also discuss the SAR associated with an X-ray structure of one of the small-molecule inhibitors bound to ITK.

This article reports on the state-of-the-art technologies that sequence DNA using miniaturized devices. The article considers the miniaturization of existing technologies for sequencing DNA and the opportunities for cost reduction that 'on-chip' devices can deliver. The ability to construct nano-scale structures and perform measurements using novel nano-scale effects has provided new opportunities to identify nucleotides directly using physical, and not chemical, methods. The challenges that these technologies need to overcome to provide a US$1000-genome sequencing technology are also presented.

Middlewares provide the fundamental technology needed to create distributed applications, allowing developers to concentrate on their own specific needs. The developer may end up creating a very small part of the overall system themselves. They are able to make use of tried and tested middleware to aid in their application development. The tools provided by the CORBA middleware mean that much of the code used to create the distributed application is automatically generated for the developer. For a student learning about these middlewares, much of the development of the application that they are creating is done by pre-compiled, third party software. Understanding how the distributed application works can be difficult when you have only developed a very small part of the overall system. This paper describes CORBAview, a visualisation tool that gathers and displays the network communication and inner workings of the objects in a CORBA-based distributed application.

The preferential orientation of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) on a substrate using a dip-coating approach is described. The extraction of a steel fiber from a dispersion of CNTs provides the necessary forces required for preferential orientation of the CNTs on the fiber surface. We study the effect of the orientation of the long axis of the fiber relative to the direction of the extraction. We conclude that shorter CNTs are not as susceptible to these shear forces. The preferential orientation of CNTs is expected to provide a simple method for isolating one-dimensional nanostructures for imaging and analysis.