Foreword by Joel Scheraga

Abstract

Climate change is real. The climate has changed, is changing, and will continue to change, regardless of any human influence. But since the Industrial Revolution, human activities have begun to significantly affect the Earth's atmosphere and climate, and the changes are expected to continue for the foreseeable future. Although the timing and magnitude of future climate change is uncertain, it will have consequences for human health, ecosystems, economic activity and social well-being. Some of the effects will be harmful, and some beneficial. The significance of the climate change issue was captured in the Joint G8 Statement, issued on 8 July 2005: Climate change is a serious and long-term challenge that has the potential to affect every part of the globe. We know that increased need and use of energy from fossil fuels, and other human activities, contribute in large part to increases in greenhouse gases associated with the warming of our Earth's surface. While uncertainties remain in our understanding of climate science, we know enough to act now to put ourselves on a path to slow and, as the science justifies, stop and then reverse the growth of greenhouse gases.

Analysis of Conformations of Amino Acid Residues and Prediction of Backbone Topography in Proteins

“…Although their frequency numbers are based on six different proteins, the frequencies are qualitatively similar to those reported earlier [15]. A test of the usefulness of bend predictions of this type [15] has been made on the cytochrome c family of proteins; it was difficult to assign the positions of bends even when the bend prediction profiles of homologous sequences were used [78]. However, these bend positions, predicted by the nonamer algorithm developed here, are the only predicted bends that do persist throughout all the cytochrome c sequences.…”

Conformational study of a peptide epitope shows large preferences for β‐turn conformations

“…In the case of small, highly flexible peptides it is expected that the environmental conditions play a major role in defining the preferred conformations (32,33). Conformational studies on a series of small linear peptides, however, have shown that a reasonably good agreement can be found between the computed low-energy conformations of these peptides and the experimentally determined ones (34)(35)(36)(37)(38)(39). Within this frame, we decided to explore the conformational preference of the 7-residue N-terminal portion, NH2-Glu-Val-Val-Pro-His-Lys-Lys, of the peptide antigen.…”

Solvent dependent conformational statistics of enkephalin and angiotensin II

“…The calculated values of J(NH -C"H) are in excellent agreement with the values measured in water at acidic pH (22-24). The differences between the mean values of J ( N H -F H ) , corresponding to the two sets of energy parameters used (8,13), are of the order of 10%.…”