Bearing-Based Target Entrapping Control of Multiple Uncertain Agents With Arbitrary Maneuvers

This paper is concerned with bearing-based cooperative target entrapping control of multiple uncertain agents with arbitrary maneuvers including shape deformation, rotations, scalings, etc. A leader-follower structure is used, where the leaders move with the predesigned trajectories, and the followers are steered by an estimation-based control method, integrating a distance estimator using bearing measurements and a stress matrix-based formation controller. The signum functions are used to compensate for the uncertainties so that the agents' accelerations can be piecewise continuous and bounded to track the desired dynamics. With proper design of the leaders' trajectories and a geometric configuration, an affine matrix is determined so that the persistently exciting conditions of the inter-agent relative bearings can be satisfied since the bearing rates are related to different weighted combinations of the affine matrix vectors. The asymptotic convergence of the estimation error and control error is proved using Filipov properties and cascaded system theories. A sufficient condition for inter-agent collision avoidance is also proposed. Finally, simulation results are given to validate the effectiveness of the method in both 2D and 3D cases.Comment: 13 pages, 6 figures, the paper has been accepted by IFAC WC 202

A moderate spin for the black hole in X-ray binary MAXI J1348-630 revealed by Insight-HXMT

MAXI J1348-630 is a low-mass X-ray black hole binary located in the Galaxy and undergone the X-ray outburst in 2019. We analyzed the observation data in very soft state during the outburst between MJD 58588 and MJD 58596 based on the Insight-HXMT observations from 2 -- 20 keV via the continuum fitting method to measure the spin of the stellar-mass black hole in MAXI J1348-630. The inner disk temperature and the apparent inner disk radius were found to be $0.47\pm 0.01 \rm keV$ and $5.33\pm 0.10 \ R_{g}$ from the observation data modeled by the multicolor disc blackbody model. Assuming the distance of the source $D\sim 3.4 \rm kpc$, the mass of the black hole $M\sim 11 \ M_{\odot}$, and the inclination of the system $i\sim 29.2^{\circ}$, the spin is determined to be $a_{\star}=0.41\pm 0.03$ for fixing hardening factor at 1.6 and $n_{H}=8.6\times 10^{21} \rm cm^{-2}$. Besides, considering the uncertainty of the parameters $D, M, i$ of this system, with the Monte Carlo analysis, we still confirm the moderate spin of the black hole as $a_{\star}=0.42^{+0.13}_{-0.50}$. Some spectral parameters (e.g., column density and hardening factor) which could affect the measurements of the BH spin are also briefly discussed.Comment: 10 pages, 14 figures, 5 tables, accept for publication in MNRA

RIS-Assisted Robust Hybrid Beamforming AgainstSimultaneous Jamming and Eavesdropping Attacks

Wireless communications are increasingly vulnera-ble to simultaneous jamming and eavesdropping attacks due tothe inherent broadcast nature of wireless channels. With thisfocus, due to the potential of reconfigurable intelligent surface(RIS) in substantially saving power consumption and boostinginformation security, this paper is the first work to investigate theeffect of the RIS-assisted wireless transmitter in improving boththe spectrum efficiency and the security of multi-user cellularnetwork. Specifically, with the imperfect angular channel stateinformation (CSI), we aim to address the worst-case sum ratemaximization problem by jointly designing the receive decoder atthe users, both the digital precoder and the artificial noise (AN)at the base station (BS), and the analog precoder at the RIS, whilemeeting the minimum achievable rate constraint, the maximumwiretap rate requirement, and the maximum power constraint.To address the non-convexity of the formulated problem, we firstpropose an alternative optimization (AO) method to obtain anefficient solution. In particular, a heuristic scheme is proposedto convert the imperfect angular CSI into a robust one andfacilitate the developing a closed-form solution to the receivedecoder. Then, after reformulating the original problem into atractable one by exploiting the majorization-minimization (MM)method, the digital precoder and AN can be addressed by thequadratically constrained quadratic programming (QCQP), andthe RIS-aided analog precoder is solved by the proposed pricemechanism-based Riemannian manifold optimization (RMO).To further reduce the computational complexity of the pro-posed AO method and gain more insights, we develop a low-complexity monotonic optimization algorithm combined with thedual method (MO-dual) to identify the closed-form solution.Numerical simulations using realistic RIS and communicationmodels demonstrate the superiority and validity of our proposedschemes over the existing benchmark schemes

Development of a Fully Human Anti-PDGFRβ Antibody That Suppresses Growth of Human Tumor Xenografts and Enhances Antitumor Activity of an Anti-VEGFR2 Antibody

Platelet-derived growth factor receptor β (PDGFRβ) is upregulated in most of solid tumors. It is expressed by pericytes/smooth muscle cells, fibroblast, macrophage, and certain tumor cells. Several PDGF receptor-related antagonists are being developed as potential antitumor agents and have demonstrated promising antitumor activity in both preclinical and clinical settings. Here, we produced a fully human neutralizing antibody, IMC-2C5, directed against PDGFRβ from an antibody phage display library. IMC-2C5 binds to both human and mouse PDGFRβ and blocks PDGF-B from binding to the receptor. IMC-2C5 also blocks ligand-stimulated activation of PDGFRβ and downstream signaling molecules in tumor cells. In animal studies, IMC-2C5 significantly delayed the growth of OVCAR-8 and NCI-H460 human tumor xenografts in nude mice but failed to show antitumor activities in OVCAR-5 and Caki-1 xenografts. Our results indicate that the antitumor efficacy of IMC-2C5 is primarily due to its effects on tumor stroma, rather than on tumor cells directly. Combination of IMC-2C5 and DC101, an anti-mouse vascular endothelial growth factor receptor 2 antibody, resulted in significantly enhanced antitumor activity in BxPC-3, NCI-H460, and HCT-116 xenografts, compared with DC101 alone, and the trend of additive effects to DC101 treatment in several other tumor models. ELISA analysis of NCI-H460 tumor homogenates showed that IMC-2C5 attenuated protein level of vascular endothelial growth factor and basic fibroblast growth factor elevated by DC101 treatment. Finally, IMC-2C5 showed a trend of additive effects when combined with DC101/chemotherapy in MIA-PaCa-2 and NCI-H460 models. Taken together, these results lend great support to the use of PDGFRβ antagonists in combination with other antiangiogenic agents in the treatment of a broad range of human cancers

Identification of Piwil2-Like (PL2L) Proteins that Promote Tumorigenesis

PIWIL2, a member of PIWI/AGO gene family, is expressed in the germline stem cells (GSCs) of testis for gametogenesis but not in adult somatic and stem cells. It has been implicated to play an important role in tumor development. We have previously reported that precancerous stem cells (pCSCs) constitutively express Piwil2 transcripts to promote their proliferation. Here we show that these transcripts de facto represent Piwil2-like (PL2L) proteins. We have identified several PL2L proteins including PL2L80, PL2L60, PL2L50 and PL2L40, using combined methods of Gene-Exon-Mapping Reverse Transcription Polymerase Chain Reaction (GEM RT-PCR), bioinformatics and a group of novel monoclonal antibodies. Among them, PL2L60 rather than Piwil2 and other PL2L proteins is predominantly expressed in various types of human and mouse tumor cells. It promotes tumor cell survival and proliferation in vitro through up-regulation of Stat3 and Bcl2 gene expressions, the cell cycle entry from G0/1 into S-phase, and the nuclear expression of NF-κB, which contribute to the tumorigenicity of tumor cells in vivo. Consistently, PL2L proteins rather than Piwil2 are predominantly expressed in the cytoplasm or cytoplasm and nucleus of euchromatin-enriched tumor cells in human primary and metastatic cancers, such as breast and cervical cancers. Moreover, nuclear PL2L proteins are always co-expressed with nuclear NF-κB. These results reveal that PL2L60 can coordinate with NF-κB to promote tumorigenesis and might mediate a common pathway for tumor development without tissue restriction. The identification of PL2L proteins provides a novel insight into the mechanisms of cancer development as well as a novel bridge linking cancer diagnostics and anticancer drug development

Algorithm for Detection and Quantification of Hyperreflective Dots on Optical Coherence Tomography in Diabetic Macular Edema

Purpose: To develop an algorithm to detect and quantify hyperreflective dots (HRDs) on optical coherence tomography (OCT) in patients with diabetic macular edema (DME).Materials and Methods: Twenty OCTs (each OCT contains 128 b scans) from 20 patients diagnosed with DME were included in this study. Two types of HRDs, hard exudates and small HRDs (hypothesized to be activated microglia), were identified and labeled independently by two raters. An algorithm using deep learning technology was developed based on input (in total 2,560 OCT b scans) of manual labeling and differentiation of HRDs from rater 1. 4-fold cross-validation was used to train and validate the algorithm. Dice coefficient, intraclass coefficient (ICC), correlation coefficient, and Bland–Altman plot were used to evaluate agreement of the output parameters between two methods (either between two raters or between one rater and proposed algorithm).Results: The Dice coefficients of total HRDs, hard exudates, and small HRDs area of the algorithm were 0.70 ± 0.10, 0.72 ± 0.11, and 0.46 ± 0.06, respectively. The correlations between rater 1 and proposed algorithm (range: 0.95–0.99, all p < 0.001) were stronger than the correlations between the two raters (range: 0.84–0.96, all p < 0.001) for all parameters. The ICCs were higher for all the parameters between rater 1 and proposed algorithm (range: 0.972–0.997) than those between the two raters (range: 0.860–0.953).Conclusions: Our proposed algorithm is a good tool to detect and quantify HRDs and can provide objective and repeatable information of OCT for DME patients in clinical practice and studies

Additional file 3: Figure S1. of Neuron navigator 2 overexpression indicates poor prognosis of colorectal cancer and promotes invasion through the SSH1L/cofilin-1 pathway

NAV2 protien expression level was detected by Western blotting in tumor tissues (T) and metastatic site (MS) were higher than paired normal tissues (NT) and primary tumor (PT) (P value calculated by paired t-test,*P< 0.0001; **P=0.0043) (DOC 56 kb)

Additional file 2: Table S2. of Neuron navigator 2 overexpression indicates poor prognosis of colorectal cancer and promotes invasion through the SSH1L/cofilin-1 pathway

The intensity of staining for NAV2 in 138 paired CRC cancer and normal mucosa samples (cohort 1) (DOC 28 kb)