Accelerating federated learning via momentum gradient descent

Federated learning (FL) provides a communication-efficient approach to solve machine learning problems concerning distributed data, without sending raw data to a central server. However, existing works on FL only utilize first-order gradient descent (GD) and do not consider the preceding iterations to gradient update which can potentially accelerate convergence. In this article, we consider momentum term which relates to the last iteration. The proposed momentum federated learning (MFL) uses momentum gradient descent (MGD) in the local update step of FL system. We establish global convergence properties of MFL and derive an upper bound on MFL convergence rate. Comparing the upper bounds on MFL and FL convergence rates, we provide conditions in which MFL accelerates the convergence. For different machine learning models, the convergence performance of MFL is evaluated based on experiments with MNIST and CIFAR-10 datasets. Simulation results confirm that MFL is globally convergent and further reveal significant convergence improvement over FL

Development of NCOVID-19 Colloidal Gold Immunochromatographic Test Strip

Purpose: To establish a fast, simple and accurate method and immunoassay test card for the detection of new coronavirus (nCOVID-19) antigen. Methods: In this study, colloidal gold immunochromatography technology was used to detect nCOVID-19 virus antigens through the sandwich method. At the same time, the preparation plan of colloidal gold was improved, and the application of rapid immune-diagnosis technology in other fields was developed. In this study, purified recombinant nCOVID-19 nucleocapsid protein is used as the antigen to prepare murine monoclonal antibodies. The BN02 antibody produced by the mouse is used as the detection antibody to couple with colloidal gold, forming a gold-labeled complex probe. BN9m1 is used as the coating antibody for the C-line, and ProA is used for the T-line. The polymerization of colloidal gold particles enables us to detect the new coronavirus antigen’s appearance. Thus an in vitro rapid detection kit for virus detection can be made. Results: The positive detection rate of the antigen quality control serum with this colloidal gold reagent was 100%. The specificity was 100%, and the sensitivity was 1ng/ml.  Conclusion: The nCOVID-19 antigen detection reagent (colloidal gold method) developed in this research has high specificity and sensitivity, and can be used in conjunction with nucleic acid detection. As a means of detecting nCOVID-19, it can achieve qualitative and rapid screening of samples with advantage such as accuracy, repeatability, and low cost

Dual phosphorylation of Sin1 at T86 and T398 negatively regulates mTORC2 complex integrity and activity

Mammalian target of rapamycin (mTOR) plays essential roles in cell proliferation, survival and metabolism by forming at least two functional distinct multi-protein complexes, mTORC1 and mTORC2. External growth signals can be received and interpreted by mTORC2 and further transduced to mTORC1. On the other hand, mTORC1 can sense inner-cellular physiological cues such as amino acids and energy states and can indirectly suppress mTORC2 activity in part through phosphorylation of its upstream adaptors, IRS-1 or Grb10, under insulin or IGF-1 stimulation conditions. To date, upstream signaling pathways governing mTORC1 activation have been studied extensively, while the mechanisms modulating mTORC2 activity remain largely elusive. We recently reported that Sin1, an essential mTORC2 subunit, was phosphorylated by either Akt or S6K in a cellular context-dependent manner. More importantly, phosphorylation of Sin1 at T86 and T398 led to a dissociation of Sin1 from the functional mTORC2 holo-enzyme, resulting in reduced Akt activity and sensitizing cells to various apoptotic challenges. Notably, an ovarian cancer patient-derived Sin1-R81T mutation abolished Sin1-T86 phosphorylation by disrupting the canonical S6K-phoshorylation motif, thereby bypassing Sin1-phosphorylation-mediated suppression of mTORC2 and leading to sustained Akt signaling to promote tumorigenesis. Our work therefore provided physiological and pathological evidence to reveal the biological significance of Sin1 phosphorylation-mediated suppression of the mTOR/Akt oncogenic signaling, and further suggested that misregulation of this process might contribute to Akt hyper-activation that is frequently observed in human cancers