The Adaptive Quadratic Linear Unit (AQuLU): Adaptive Non Monotonic Piecewise Activation Function

The activation function plays a key role in influencing the performance and training dynamics of neural networks. There are hundreds of activation functions widely used as rectified linear units (ReLUs), but most of them are applied to complex and large neural networks, which often have gradient explosion and vanishing gradient problems. By studying a variety of non-monotonic activation functions, we propose a method to construct a non-monotonic activation function, x·Φ(x), with Φ(x) [0, 1]. With the hardening treatment of Φ(x), we propose an adaptive non-monotonic segmented activation function, called the adaptive quadratic linear unit, abbreviated as AQuLU, which ensures the sparsity of the input data and improves training efficiency. In image classification based on different state-of-the-art neural network architectures, the performance of AQuLUs has significant advantages for more complex and deeper architectures with various activation functions. The ablation experimental study further validates the compatibility and stability of AQuLUs with different depths, complexities, optimizers, learning rates, and batch sizes. We thus demonstrate the high efficiency, robustness, and simplicity of AQuLUs

A Review of Particle Removal Due to Thermophoretic Deposition

Thermophoretic deposition is an important technique for particle removal. The thermophoretic force of the particles under an appropriate temperature gradient can achieve a good particle removal effect. At present, there have been many studies on the deposition mechanism of ultrafine particles under the action of thermophoresis. In this chapter, the development history and current research status of the research on the thermophoretic deposition effect of ultrafine particles are summarized, and the future direction of thermophoretic deposition is proposed

Delay-probability-distribution-dependent H∞ FIR filtering design with envelope constraints

Published version of an article in the journal: Mathematical Problems in Engineering. Also available from the publisher at: http://dx.doi.org/10.1155/2013/930927 Open AccessThis paper studies the problem of H∞ finite-impulse response (FIR) filtering design of time-delay system. The time-delay considered here is time-varying meanwhile with a certain stochastic characteristic, and the probability of delay distribution is assumed to be known. Furthermore, the requirement of pulse-shape is also considered in filter design. Employing the information about the size and probability distribution of delay, a delay-probability-distribution-dependent criterion is proposed for the filtering error system. Based on a Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional, a set of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs) are formulated to solve the problem. At last, a numerical example is used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the filter design approach proposed in the paper

Investigating gene methylation signatures for fetal intolerance prediction

Pregnancy is a complicated and long procedure during one or more offspring development inside a woman. A short period of oxygen shortage after birth is quite normal for most babies and does not threaten their health. However, if babies have to suffer from a long period of oxygen shortage, then this condition is an indication of pathological fetal intolerance, which probably causes their death. The identification of the pathological fetal intolerance from the physical oxygen shortage is one of the important clinical problems in obstetrics for a long time. The clinical syndromes typically manifest five symptoms that indicate that the baby may suffer from fetal intolerance. At present, liquid biopsy combined with high-throughput sequencing or mass spectrum techniques provides a quick approach to detect real-time alteration in the peripheral blood at multiple levels with the rapid development of molecule sequencing technologies. Gene methylation is functionally correlated with gene expression; thus, the combination of gene methylation and expression information would help in screening out the key regulators for the pathogenesis of fetal intolerance. We combined gene methylation and expression features together and screened out the optimal features, including gene expression or methylation signatures, for fetal intolerance prediction for the first time. In addition, we applied various computational methods to construct a comprehensive computational pipeline to identify the potential biomarkers for fetal intolerance dependent on the liquid biopsy samples. We set up qualitative and quantitative computational models for the prediction for fetal intolerance during pregnancy. Moreover, we provided a new prospective for the detailed pathological mechanism of fetal intolerance. This work can provide a solid foundation for further experimental research and contribute to the application of liquid biopsy in antenatal care

Identification of COVID-19-Specific Immune Markers Using a Machine Learning Method

Notably, severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) has a tight relationship with the immune system. Human resistance to COVID-19 infection comprises two stages. The first stage is immune defense, while the second stage is extensive inflammation. This process is further divided into innate and adaptive immunity during the immune defense phase. These two stages involve various immune cells, including CD4+ T cells, CD8+ T cells, monocytes, dendritic cells, B cells, and natural killer cells. Various immune cells are involved and make up the complex and unique immune system response to COVID-19, providing characteristics that set it apart from other respiratory infectious diseases. In the present study, we identified cell markers for differentiating COVID-19 from common inflammatory responses, non-COVID-19 severe respiratory diseases, and healthy populations based on single-cell profiling of the gene expression of six immune cell types by using Boruta and mRMR feature selection methods. Some features such as IFI44L in B cells, S100A8 in monocytes, and NCR2 in natural killer cells are involved in the innate immune response of COVID-19. Other features such as ZFP36L2 in CD4+ T cells can regulate the inflammatory process of COVID-19. Subsequently, the IFS method was used to determine the best feature subsets and classifiers in the six immune cell types for two classification algorithms. Furthermore, we established the quantitative rules used to distinguish the disease status. The results of this study can provide theoretical support for a more in-depth investigation of COVID-19 pathogenesis and intervention strategies

Meta-Analysis of the Alzheimer\u27s Disease Human Brain Transcriptome and Functional Dissection in Mouse Models.

We present a consensus atlas of the human brain transcriptome in Alzheimer\u27s disease (AD), based on meta-analysis of differential gene expression in 2,114 postmortem samples. We discover 30 brain coexpression modules from seven regions as the major source of AD transcriptional perturbations. We next examine overlap with 251 brain differentially expressed gene sets from mouse models of AD and other neurodegenerative disorders. Human-mouse overlaps highlight responses to amyloid versus tau pathology and reveal age- and sex-dependent expression signatures for disease progression. Human coexpression modules enriched for neuronal and/or microglial genes broadly overlap with mouse models of AD, Huntington\u27s disease, amyotrophic lateral sclerosis, and aging. Other human coexpression modules, including those implicated in proteostasis, are not activated in AD models but rather following other, unexpected genetic manipulations. Our results comprise a cross-species resource, highlighting transcriptional networks altered by human brain pathophysiology and identifying correspondences with mouse models for AD preclinical studies

Model reduction of fuzzy logic systems

This paper deals with the problem of l 2 - l ∞ model reduction for continuous-time nonlinear uncertain systems. The approach of the construction of a reduced-order model is presented for high-order nonlinear uncertain systems described by the T-S fuzzy systems, which not only approximates the original high-order system well with an l 2 - l ∞ error performance level γ but also translates it into a linear lower-dimensional system. Then, the model approximation is converted into a convex optimization problem by using a linearization procedure. Finally, a numerical example is presented to show the effectiveness of the proposed method. © 2014 Zhandong Yu et al

The Adaptive Quadratic Linear Unit (AQuLU): Adaptive Non Monotonic Piecewise Activation Function

The activation function plays a key role in influencing the performance and training dynamics of neural networks. There are hundreds of activation functions widely used as rectified linear units (ReLUs), but most of them are applied to complex and large neural networks, which often have gradient explosion and vanishing gradient problems. By studying a variety of non-monotonic activation functions, we propose a method to construct a non-monotonic activation function, x·Φ(x), with Φ(x) [0, 1]. With the hardening treatment of Φ(x), we propose an adaptive non-monotonic segmented activation function, called the adaptive quadratic linear unit, abbreviated as AQuLU, which ensures the sparsity of the input data and improves training efficiency. In image classification based on different state-of-the-art neural network architectures, the performance of AQuLUs has significant advantages for more complex and deeper architectures with various activation functions. The ablation experimental study further validates the compatibility and stability of AQuLUs with different depths, complexities, optimizers, learning rates, and batch sizes. We thus demonstrate the high efficiency, robustness, and simplicity of AQuLUs

Quantifying the competitiveness of transit relative to taxi with multifaceted data

This paper proposes an assessment framework to quantify the competitiveness of transit relative to a taxi-like service. The framework centers on a transit route builder, which searches, using a hyperpath-based algorithm, for the best available transit route that matches the origin and the destination of a given taxi trip. Based on the optimal transit route, we then measure the relative competitiveness of the transit service according to the preference of a rational traveler, which is determined by the generalized cost defined by fare, in-vehicle travel time and other service attributes. The framework is evaluated using a case study constructed with multifaceted data sources collected in Shenzhen, China. The results show that, while 90% of all taxi trips are faster than its best alternative transit option, only about 36% is shorter. Also, the relative competitiveness of transit decreases with the passenger\u27s value of time, and increases with the average trip distance. We also find that the preference of the middle-income passengers for transit is the most sensitive to the changes in trip distance, mode (bus or rail) and fare