116 research outputs found
Few-molecule reservoir computing experimentally demonstrated with surface enhanced Raman scattering and ion-gating stimulation
Reservoir computing (RC) is a promising solution for achieving low power
consumption neuromorphic computing, although the large volume of the physical
reservoirs reported to date has been a serious drawback in their practical
application. Here, we report the development of a few-molecule RC that employs
the molecular vibration dynamics in the para-mercaptobenzoic acid (pMBA)
detected by surface enhanced Raman scattering (SERS) with tungsten oxide
nanorod/silver nanoparticles (WOx@Ag-NPs). The Raman signals of the pMBA
molecules, adsorbed at the SERS active site of WOx@Ag-NPs, were reversibly
perturbated by the application of voltage-induced local pH changes in the
vicinity of the molecules, and then used to perform RC of pattern recognition
and prediction tasks. In spite of the small number of molecules employed, our
system achieved good performance, including 95.1% to 97.7% accuracy in various
nonlinear waveform transformations and 94.3% accuracy in solving a second-order
nonlinear dynamic equation task. Our work provides a new concept of molecular
computing with practical computation capabilities.Comment: 22 pages, 4 figure
A high-performance deep reservoir computing experimentally demonstrated with ion-gating reservoirs
While physical reservoir computing (PRC) is a promising way to achieve low
power consumption neuromorphic computing, its computational performance is
still insufficient at a practical level. One promising approach to improving
PRC performance is deep reservoir computing (deep-RC), in which the component
reservoirs are multi-layered. However, all of the deep-RC schemes reported so
far have been effective only for simulation reservoirs and limited PRCs, and
there have been no reports of nanodevice implementations. Here, as the first
nanodevice implementation of Deep-RC, we report a demonstration of deep
physical reservoir computing using an ion gating reservoir (IGR), which is a
small and high-performance physical reservoir. While previously reported
Deep-RC scheme did not improve the performance of IGR, our Deep-IGR achieved a
normalized mean squared error of 0.0092 on a second-order nonlinear
autoregressive moving average task, with is the best performance of any
physical reservoir so far reported. More importantly, the device outperformed
full simulation reservoir computing. The dramatic performance improvement of
the IGR with our deep-RC architecture paves the way for high-performance,
large-scale, physical neural network devices.Comment: 21 pages, 6 figure
Introduction pathways and evolutionary mechanisms of alien species of Lolium spreading across sandy coasts in Japan
1. Estimating the role of specific processes in the spread of alien species necessitates the determination of introduction pathways and source populations of invaded areas. Alien grasses in the genus Lolium that have extensively invaded Japan provide a unique opportunity to estimate the expansion process through direct comparison between source and naturalised populations because the introduction pathways, contaminants in grain commodities and commercial cultivars for fodder crops or revegetation materials are well-known. Therefore, by directly comparing source and naturalised populations, we estimated the introduction pathways and whether adaptative evolution occurred in Lolium species on sandy coasts in Japan. 2. Lolium individuals sampled from naturalised populations in croplands, seaports, and sandy coasts were compared with those from two introduction sources for morphological and genetic variations based on a genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism analysis and a common garden experiment. Furthermore, we conducted a reciprocal transplant experiment between cropland and sandy coast. 3. Populations naturalised in croplands were closely related to the cultivars, whereas those naturalised in seaports and sandy coasts were associated with contaminants. These results indicate that the cropland and sandy coast populations are derived from cultivars and contaminants, respectively. In addition, asymmetric gene flow from cropland populations to sandy coast populations was observed. The reciprocal transplant experiment clearly demonstrated the home site advantage; populations derived from croplands yielded higher floret numbers than those derived from other habitats at the cropland site; sandy coast populations had higher survival rates than those from croplands at the coastal site. Port populations exhibited a similar tendency as sandy coast populations, indicating that contaminants may be originally adapted to salty and dry environments, such as that in sandy coasts. The flowering phenology in the sandy coast populations evolved in the late flowering; therefore, late flowering alleles may have been transferred from cropland populations to sandy coast populations. 4. Synthesis. We demonstrated that two congeneric species with different ecological characteristics were introduced through multiple introduction pathways and spread across different habitats. A direct comparison between source and naturalised populations can considerably elucidate the patterns and processes of biological invasions
Genetic suppression analysis in novel vacuolar processing enzymes reveals their roles in controlling sugar accumulation in tomato fruits
In plant cells, many vacuolar proteins are synthesized as precursors in the endoplasmic reticulum and are subsequently transported to the vacuole. These precursors are subject to post-translational modifications to allow the active mature forms to be produced. Vacuolar processing enzyme (VPE) has been identified as a family of cysteine proteases involved in protein maturation in the vacuole. In this study, novel VPE genes were isolated from tomato (Solanum lycopersicum), and they were designated SlVPE1–SlVPE5. Phylogenic analysis suggested that SlVPE1 and SlVPE2 were categorized as the seed coat type, SlVPE4 was categorized as the seed type, and both SlVPE3 and SlVPE5 were categorized as the vegetative type. Expression analysis demonstrated that these genes were expressed during fruit development, and that their expression profiles agreed with this classification. High VPE enzyme activity was observed during tomato fruit development; the enzyme activity was correlated with the SlVPE mRNA levels, indicating that the SlVPE encoded active VPE proteins. The total sugar content was higher in RNA interference (RNAi) lines compared with the control plants, suggesting negative roles for SlVPE in sugar accumulation. The quantitative expression analysis of each SlVPE gene in the RNAi lines suggested that the suppression of SlVPE5 probably had the strongest effect on the sugar accumulation observed. The suppression of SlVPE did not influence the total amino acid content, suggesting that the molecular targets of SlVPE were mainly involved in sugar accumulation
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