A miRNA-HERC4 pathway promotes breast tumorigenesis by inactivating tumor suppressor LATS1.

The E3 ligase HERC4 is overexpressed in human breast cancer and its expression levels correlated with the prognosis of breast cancer patients. However, the roles of HERC4 in mammary tumorigenesis remain unclear. Here we demonstrate that the knockdown of HERC4 in human breast cancer cells dramatically suppressed their proliferation, survival, migration, and tumor growth in vivo, while the overexpression of HERC4 promoted their aggressive tumorigenic activities. HERC4 is a new E3 ligase for the tumor suppressor LATS1 and destabilizes LATS1 by promoting the ubiquitination of LATS1. miRNA-136-5p and miRNA-1285-5p, expression of which is decreased in human breast cancers and is inversely correlated with the prognosis of breast cancer patients, are directly involved in suppressing the expression of HERC4. In summary, we discover a miRNA-HERC4-LATS1 pathway that plays important roles in the pathogenesis of breast cancer and represents new therapeutic targets for human breast cancer

Safety-critical optimal control in autonomous traffic systems

Traffic congestion is a central problem in transportation systems, especially in urban areas. The rapid development of Connected and Automated Vehicles (CAVs) and new traffic infrastructure technologies provides a promising solution to solve this problem. This work focuses on the safety-critical optimal control of CAVs in autonomous traffic systems. The dissertation starts with the roundabout problem of controlling CAVs travelling through a roundabout so as to jointly minimize their travel time, energy consumption, and centrifugal discomfort while providing speed-dependent safety guarantees. A systematic approach is developed to determine the safety constraints for each CAV dynamically. The joint optimal control and control barrier function (OCBF) controller is applied, where the unconstrained optimal control solution is derived which is subsequently optimally tracked by a real-time controller while guaranteeing the satisfaction of all safety constraints. Secondly, the dissertation deals with the feasibility problem of OCBF. The feasibility problem arises when the control bounds conflict with the Control Barrier Function (CBF) constraints and is solved by adding a single feasibility constraint to the Quadratic Problem (QP) in the OCBF controller to derive the feasibility guaranteed OCBF. The feasibility guaranteed OCBF is applied in the merging control problem which provably guarantees the feasibility of all QPs derived from the OCBF controller. Thirdly, the dissertation deals with the performance loss of OCBF due to the improperly selected reference trajectory which deviates largely from the complete optimal solution especially when the vehicle limitations are tight. A neural network is used to learn the control policy from data retrieved by offline calculation from the complete optimal solutions. Tracking the learnt reference trajectory with CBF outperforms OCBF in simulation experiments. Finally, a hierarchical framework of modular control zones (CZ) is proposed to extend the safety-critical optimal control of CAV from a single CZ to a traffic network. The hierarchical modular CZ framework is developed consisting of a lower-level OCBF controller and a higher-level feedback flow controller to coordinate adjacent CZs which outperforms a direct extension of the OCBF framework to multiple CZs without any flow control in simulation

Attention, Please! Adversarial Defense via Attention Rectification and Preservation

This study provides a new understanding of the adversarial attack problem by examining the correlation between adversarial attack and visual attention change. In particular, we observed that: (1) images with incomplete attention regions are more vulnerable to adversarial attacks; and (2) successful adversarial attacks lead to deviated and scattered attention map. Accordingly, an attention-based adversarial defense framework is designed to simultaneously rectify the attention map for prediction and preserve the attention area between adversarial and original images. The problem of adding iteratively attacked samples is also discussed in the context of visual attention change. We hope the attention-related data analysis and defense solution in this study will shed some light on the mechanism behind the adversarial attack and also facilitate future adversarial defense/attack model design

CBCT Analysis of Root Resorption in Orthodontic Patients with Short Root Anomaly

The objective of this study was to evaluate the amount of root resorption after orthodontic treatment in patients with Short Root Anomaly (SRA) in comparison with control patients using Cone Beam Computed Tomography (CBCT). We hypothesized that patients with SRA present more susceptibility to root resorption during orthodontic treatment when compared to the normal population

Research on the Development of Measurement Scale for The Synergy of College Technological and Creative Team

Based on the strictly scale development program and the sorting of existing literature, we used the methods of interview and open questionnaire to collect measurement items for the synergy of college technological and creative team. Next we preliminarily revised measurement items through expert interview, then explored and verified the presurvey scale by using exploratory factor analysis and confirmatory factor analysis. The results show that the measurement scale, consisted of 17 items with good reliability and validity, is constituted of member\u27s identification of team goals, information communication among members, commitment of cooperation, inter-behavior between members