Quantum Cellular Neural Networks

We have previously proposed a way of using coupled quantum dots to construct digital computing elements - quantum-dot cellular automata (QCA). Here we consider a different approach to using coupled quantum-dot cells in an architecture which, rather that reproducing Boolean logic, uses a physical near-neighbor connectivity to construct an analog Cellular Neural Network (CNN).Comment: 7 pages including 3 figure

31st Annual Meeting and Associated Programs of the Society for Immunotherapy of Cancer (SITC 2016) : part two

Background The immunological escape of tumors represents one of the main ob- stacles to the treatment of malignancies. The blockade of PD-1 or CTLA-4 receptors represented a milestone in the history of immunotherapy. However, immune checkpoint inhibitors seem to be effective in specific cohorts of patients. It has been proposed that their efficacy relies on the presence of an immunological response. Thus, we hypothesized that disruption of the PD-L1/PD-1 axis would synergize with our oncolytic vaccine platform PeptiCRAd. Methods We used murine B16OVA in vivo tumor models and flow cytometry analysis to investigate the immunological background. Results First, we found that high-burden B16OVA tumors were refractory to combination immunotherapy. However, with a more aggressive schedule, tumors with a lower burden were more susceptible to the combination of PeptiCRAd and PD-L1 blockade. The therapy signifi- cantly increased the median survival of mice (Fig. 7). Interestingly, the reduced growth of contralaterally injected B16F10 cells sug- gested the presence of a long lasting immunological memory also against non-targeted antigens. Concerning the functional state of tumor infiltrating lymphocytes (TILs), we found that all the immune therapies would enhance the percentage of activated (PD-1pos TIM- 3neg) T lymphocytes and reduce the amount of exhausted (PD-1pos TIM-3pos) cells compared to placebo. As expected, we found that PeptiCRAd monotherapy could increase the number of antigen spe- cific CD8+ T cells compared to other treatments. However, only the combination with PD-L1 blockade could significantly increase the ra- tio between activated and exhausted pentamer positive cells (p= 0.0058), suggesting that by disrupting the PD-1/PD-L1 axis we could decrease the amount of dysfunctional antigen specific T cells. We ob- served that the anatomical location deeply influenced the state of CD4+ and CD8+ T lymphocytes. In fact, TIM-3 expression was in- creased by 2 fold on TILs compared to splenic and lymphoid T cells. In the CD8+ compartment, the expression of PD-1 on the surface seemed to be restricted to the tumor micro-environment, while CD4 + T cells had a high expression of PD-1 also in lymphoid organs. Interestingly, we found that the levels of PD-1 were significantly higher on CD8+ T cells than on CD4+ T cells into the tumor micro- environment (p < 0.0001). Conclusions In conclusion, we demonstrated that the efficacy of immune check- point inhibitors might be strongly enhanced by their combination with cancer vaccines. PeptiCRAd was able to increase the number of antigen-specific T cells and PD-L1 blockade prevented their exhaus- tion, resulting in long-lasting immunological memory and increased median survival

OPTIMIZATION DESIGN OF CABIN STRUT BASED ON ISIGHT AND PYTHON FOR CIVIL AIRCRAFT

In order to achieve lightweight and high efficient load transfer requirements an well as cost reduction in the strut design process of civil aircraft. In this paper,it firstly combines engineering theoretical formulas to develop a calculation program using Python,and then integrates the program into Isight platform. It utilizes multi-island genetic algorithm for optimization analysis,and an iterative optimization process for the follow-up strut analysis is established. In the case of most severe local load during axial compression,considering the actual failure model of the strut,the minimum weight of strut is taken as optimization object and the margin of safety is introduced as constraint condition,then the optimization of cross-section geometry characteristic parameters of typical strut for a certain aircraft type are carried out. Under the condition that load bearing capacity requirement and the minimum weight of strut are both met,an optimized set of cross-section geometric parameters of strut is obtained,and to achieve weight reduction of the strut by 20. 4%,which could provide a guidance for the structural weight loss design of the cabin

Screening of Food Additives and Plant Extracts against Candida Albicans in Vitro for Prevention of Denture Stomatitis

AbstractDenture stomatitis is mainly caused by a fungal species Candida albicans. The antifungal agents tested in this experiment are highly secure, especially essential oils, which have no residue after treatment. The agar well diffusion and disc diffusion methods were used to determine the antifungal activity, and the agar dilution method to determine the minimal inhibitory concentrations (MICs) of food additives and plant extracts. Butyl paraben sodium had the lowest MIC value of 0.25 mg·mL-1, followed by chitosan, 0.5 mg·mL-1, among the five food additives tested, and that thyme essential oil exhibited its MIC of 0.25μL·mL-1, the best among the five plant extracts tested. In view of its strong antifungal activity and user-friendliness (both liquid and fumigation usages), thyme essential oil may be used as a natural disinfectant for the prevention of denture stomatitis

Evaluation of Rural Tourism Landscape Resources in Terms of Carbon Neutrality and Rural Revitalization

Rural tourism landscape resources are important ingredients of rural revitalization and modernization in developing countries and regions. Evaluation methods play a crucial role in the planning, design, transformation, development, and protection of these resources. However, there has been a lack of research on the evaluation of rural tourism landscape resources, especially from the perspective of rural revitalization and carbon neutrality. From the perspective of carbon neutrality and rural revitalization, this article establishes an indicator system to evaluate rural tourism landscape resources based on previous evaluation methods and expert consultations on landscape planning. An evaluation model based on the intuitionistic fuzzy VIKOR method structure matching is also suggested. Some practical suggestions are put forward to promote the values of rural tourism landscape resources through empirical analyses of three regions in Changsha, Hunan, China. Our study shows that the evaluation results could objectively reflect the values and existing problems of rural tourism landscape resources, which could provide practical tools for local government departments to make decisions, and landscape architects to plan and design. Based on this model, further suggestions are provided to improve rural tourism landscape resources

Evaluation of Rural Tourism Landscape Resources in Terms of Carbon Neutrality and Rural Revitalization

Rural tourism landscape resources are important ingredients of rural revitalization and modernization in developing countries and regions. Evaluation methods play a crucial role in the planning, design, transformation, development, and protection of these resources. However, there has been a lack of research on the evaluation of rural tourism landscape resources, especially from the perspective of rural revitalization and carbon neutrality. From the perspective of carbon neutrality and rural revitalization, this article establishes an indicator system to evaluate rural tourism landscape resources based on previous evaluation methods and expert consultations on landscape planning. An evaluation model based on the intuitionistic fuzzy VIKOR method structure matching is also suggested. Some practical suggestions are put forward to promote the values of rural tourism landscape resources through empirical analyses of three regions in Changsha, Hunan, China. Our study shows that the evaluation results could objectively reflect the values and existing problems of rural tourism landscape resources, which could provide practical tools for local government departments to make decisions, and landscape architects to plan and design. Based on this model, further suggestions are provided to improve rural tourism landscape resources

Adolescent Social Defeat Induced Alterations in Social Behavior and Cognitive Flexibility in Adult Mice: Effects of Developmental Stage and Social Condition

Negative social experiences during adolescence increase the risk of psychiatric disorders in adulthood. Using &quot;resident-intruder&quot; stress, the present study aimed to investigate the effects of adolescent social defeat on emotional and cognitive symptoms associated with psychiatric disorders during adulthood and the effects of the developmental stage and social condition on this process. In Experiment 1, animals were exposed to social defeat or manipulation for 10 days during early adolescence (EA, postnatal days [PND] 28-37), late adolescence (LA, PND 38-47), and adulthood (ADULT, PND 70-79) and then singly housed until the behavioral tests. Behaviors, including social avoidance of the defeat context and cortically mediated cognitive flexibility in an attentional set-shifting task (AST), were assessed during the week following stress or after 6 weeks during adulthood. We determined that social defeat induced significant and continuous social avoidance across age groups at both time points. The mice that experienced social defeat during adulthood exhibited short-term impairments in reversal learning (RL) on the AST that dissipated after 6 weeks. In contrast, social defeat during EA but not LA induced a delayed deficit in extra dimensional set-shifting (EDS) in adulthood but not during adolescence. In Experiment 2, we further examined the effects of social condition (isolation or social housing after stress) on the alterations induced by social defeat during EA in adult mice. The adult mice that had experienced stress during EA exhibited social avoidance similar to the avoidance identified in Experiment 1 regardless of the isolation or social housing after the stress. However, social housing after the stress ameliorated the cognitive flexibility deficits induced by early adolescent social defeat in the adult mice, and the social condition had no effect on cognitive function. These findings suggest that the effects of social defeat on emotion and cognitive function are differentially affected by the developmental stage and social condition. EA may comprise a particularly sensitive developmental period in which social defeat may produce a delayed impairment in cognitive flexibility during adulthood, and the social condition following stress appears to play an important intermediary role in the development of these cognitive deficits

A Novel Method to Enable the Awareness Ability of Non-V2V-Equipped Vehicles in Vehicular Networks

Autonomous vehicles need to have sufficient perception of the surrounding environment to produce appropriate driving behavior. The Vehicle-to-Vehicle (V2V) communication technology can exchange the speed, position, direction, and other information between autonomous vehicles to improve the sensing ability of the traditional on-board sensors. For example, V2V communication technology does not have a blind spot like a conventional on-board sensor, and V2V communication is not easily affected by weather conditions. However, it is almost impossible to make every vehicle a V2V-equipped vehicle in the real environment due to reasons such as policy and user choice. Low penetration of V2V-equipped vehicles greatly reduces the performance of the traditional V2V system. In this paper, however, we propose a novel method that can extend the awareness ability of the traditional V2V system without adding much extra investment. In the traditional V2V system, only a V2V-equipped vehicle can broadcast its own location information. However, the situation is somewhat different in our V2V system. Although non-V2V-equipped vehicles cannot broadcast their own location information, we can let V2V-equipped vehicle with radar and other sensors detect the location information of the surrounding non-V2V-equipped vehicles and then broadcast it out. Therefore, we think that a non-V2V-equipped vehicle can also broadcast its own location information. In this way, we greatly extend the awareness ability of the traditional V2V system. The proposed method is validated by real experiments and simulation experiments

Inhibiting HIF-1α Decreases Expression of TNF-α and Caspase-3 in Specific Brain Regions Exposed Kainic Acid-Induced Status Epilepticus

Background/Aims: A recent study demonstrates that pro-inflammatory cytokines (PICs, i.e., IL-1β, IL-6 and TNF-α) in specific brain regions of rats play a role in regulating kainic acid (KA)-induced status epilepticus (SE) via a GABAergic mechanism. The purposes of this report were to examine contributions of hypoxia inducible factor subtype 1α (HIF-1α) to expression of PICs in these specific brain regions in epileptic rats. Particularly, we investigated the parietal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala. In addition, we further examined expression of Caspase-3 indicating cell apoptosis in those brain regions of epileptic rats after infusing 2-methoxyestradiol (2-MET, inhibitor of HIF-1α) and etanercept (TNF-α receptor antagonist). Methods: ELISA was used to determine the levels of HIF-1α and PICs and western blot analysis was used to examine Caspase-3 expression. Results: Our data show that HIF-1α was significantly increased in the parietal cortex, hippocampus and amygdala 1, 3 and 7 days after induction of SE (Pvs. control rats). Our results also show that inhibiting HIF-1α by central infusion of 2-MET significantly decreased the amplified TNF-α expression in these brain regions evoked by SE (Pvs. vehicle control), but did not modify IL-1β and IL-6. Our results demonstrate that 2-MET and etanercept attenuated an increase in Caspase-3 evoked by SE. Conclusion: Overall, we suggest that HIF-1α activated by SE is likely to contribute to epileptic activity via a TNF-α pathway, which has pharmacological implications to target specific HIF-1α and TNF-α pathways for neuronal dysfunction and vulnerability related to epilepsy