Fixed-time control of delayed neural networks with impulsive perturbations

This paper is concerned with the fixed-time stability of delayed neural networks with impulsive perturbations. By means of inequality analysis technique and Lyapunov function method, some novel fixed-time stability criteria for the addressed neural networks are derived in terms of linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). The settling time can be estimated without depending on any initial conditions but only on the designed controllers. In addition, two different controllers are designed for the impulsive delayed neural networks. Moreover, each controller involves three parts, in which each part has different role in the stabilization of the addressed neural networks. Finally, two numerical examples are provided to illustrate the effectiveness of the theoretical analysis

Cross-Architecture Knowledge Distillation

Transformer attracts much attention because of its ability to learn global relations and superior performance. In order to achieve higher performance, it is natural to distill complementary knowledge from Transformer to convolutional neural network (CNN). However, most existing knowledge distillation methods only consider homologous-architecture distillation, such as distilling knowledge from CNN to CNN. They may not be suitable when applying to cross-architecture scenarios, such as from Transformer to CNN. To deal with this problem, a novel cross-architecture knowledge distillation method is proposed. Specifically, instead of directly mimicking output/intermediate features of the teacher, a partially cross attention projector and a group-wise linear projector are introduced to align the student features with the teacher's in two projected feature spaces. And a multi-view robust training scheme is further presented to improve the robustness and stability of the framework. Extensive experiments show that the proposed method outperforms 14 state-of-the-arts on both small-scale and large-scale datasets

Aging and Sex Influence Cortical Auditory-Motor Integration for Speech Control

It is well known that acoustic change in speech production is subject to age-related declines. How aging alters cortical sensorimotor integration in speech control, however, remains poorly understood. The present event-related potential study examined the behavioral and neural effects of aging and sex on the auditory-motor processing of voice pitch errors. Behaviorally, older adults produced significantly larger vocal compensations for pitch perturbations than young adults across the sexes, while the effects of sex on vocal compensation did not exist for both young and older adults. At the cortical level, there was a significant interaction between aging and sex on the N1-P2 complex. Older males produced significantly smaller P2 amplitudes than young males, while young males produced significantly larger N1 and P2 amplitudes than young females. In addition, females produced faster N1 responses than males regardless of age, while young adults produced faster P2 responses than older adults across the sexes. These findings provide the first neurobehavioral evidence that demonstrates the aging influence on auditory feedback control of speech production, and highlight the importance of sex in understanding the aging of the neuromotor control of speech production

IL-1β-Mediated Up-Regulation of WT1D via miR-144-3p and Their Synergistic Effect with NF-κB/COX-2/HIF-1α Pathway on Cell Proliferation in LUAD

Background/Aims: IL-1β is an important mediator of “inflammation-cancer" transformation through IL-1β/NF-κB/COX-2/HIF-1α signaling pathway, whereas certain portion of patients with lung adenocarcinoma (LUAD) still suffer from rapid tumor progression in clinical practice, indicating the occurrence of potential bypass. Methods: Real-time polymerase chain reaction was applied to examine the expressions of mir-144-3p, WT1, NF-κB, COX2 and HIF-1α at the mRNA level in 127 LUAD samples and corresponding adjacent tissues. miR-144-3p mimic and antagormiR were used to trigger activation and suppression of miR-144-3p in A549 cells, respectively. MTT assay and Western blotting analysis were carried out to evaluate the cell proliferation. Stable clones with over-expression or knockdown of WT1 were generated with plasmid or shRNA by lentiviral vector technology in H1568 and H1650 NSCLC cell lines, respectively. Dual luciferase reporter assay was performed to validate the effect of miR-144-3p on WT1D. Xenograft model was established for in vivo experiment, and TCGA data were extracted for validation. Results: miR-144-3p could suppress the WT1D expression at the post-transcriptional level, hence regulating cell proliferation in LUAD. WT1 and COX-2 were independent prognostic factors of LUAD patients. In addition, inhibition of IL-1β/miR-144-3p/WT1D and IL-1β/NF-κB/COX-2/HIF-1α pathways using miR-144-3p mimic and Celecoxib, respectively, displayed synergistic suppressive effect on cell proliferation in LUAD. Conclusion: A de novo IL-1β/miR-144-3p/WT1D axis was involved in proliferative regulation of LUAD. Moreover, simultaneous blockade of both IL-1β/miR-144-3p/WT1D and IL-1β/NF-κB/COX-2/ HIF-1α pathways might have synergistic suppressive effect on cell proliferation in LUAD

Robust estimation of bacterial cell count from optical density

Optical density (OD) is widely used to estimate the density of cells in liquid culture, but cannot be compared between instruments without a standardized calibration protocol and is challenging to relate to actual cell count. We address this with an interlaboratory study comparing three simple, low-cost, and highly accessible OD calibration protocols across 244 laboratories, applied to eight strains of constitutive GFP-expressing E. coli. Based on our results, we recommend calibrating OD to estimated cell count using serial dilution of silica microspheres, which produces highly precise calibration (95.5% of residuals <1.2-fold), is easily assessed for quality control, also assesses instrument effective linear range, and can be combined with fluorescence calibration to obtain units of Molecules of Equivalent Fluorescein (MEFL) per cell, allowing direct comparison and data fusion with flow cytometry measurements: in our study, fluorescence per cell measurements showed only a 1.07-fold mean difference between plate reader and flow cytometry data

Study on Anti-Aging Performance Enhancement of Polymer Modified Asphalt with High Linear SBS Content

Modified asphalt with high content SBS is widely used in asphalt pavement due to its excellent high and low temperature performance. However, its anti-aging performance is insufficient. In order to improve the anti-aging performance of SBS modified asphalt, nano-ZnO, nano-TiO2, nano-SiO2 and polyphosphoric acid (PPA) were added to high content (6.5 wt%) linear SBS modified asphalt as anti-aging agents in this study. Moreover, Dynamic Shear Rheometer (DSR), Fluorescence Microscope, and Fourier Transform Infrared Spectroscopy were employed to reveal the mechanism, through the investigation of the rheological and microscopic properties of modified asphalt before and after aging. The results showed that the influence of nanoparticles on the rutting resistance and fatigue resistance of high content SBS modified asphalt is weak, mainly because there is only weak physical interaction between nanoparticles and the SBS modifier, but no obvious chemical reaction. The significant cross-networking structure of high content SBS modified asphalt even has an adverse effect on the anti-aging performance of nano-modifiers. However, PPA obviously makes the cross-linked network structure of SBS modified asphalt more compact, and significantly improves the performance after short-term aging and long-term aging, mainly due to the chemical reaction between PPA and the active groups in SBS modified asphalt

Correction: LMethyR-SVM: Predict Human Enhancers Using Low Methylated Regions based on Weighted Support Vector Machines.

[This corrects the article DOI: 10.1371/journal.pone.0163491.]

The association between two common polymorphisms in MicroRNAs and hepatocellular carcinoma risk in Asian population.

BACKGROUND: Emerging evidence has shown that microRNAs (miRNAs) participate in human carcinogenesis as tumor suppressors or oncogenes. Single nucleotide polymorphism (SNP) located in the miRNAs may influence the function of mature miRNAs and then affect the processing of carcinogenesis. It has been suggested that two common SNPs rs2910164 in miR-146a and rs3746444 in miR-499 are associated with susceptibility to hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC). However, published results are inconsistent and inconclusive. To acquire a more precise effect of the association between these polymorphisms and HCC risk, we performed this meta-analysis. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We have conducted a search of case-control studies on the associations of SNPs rs2910164 and/or rs3746444 with susceptibility to HCC in PubMed, ScienceDirect, Cochrane Central Register of Controlled Trials, and Chinese National Knowledge Infrastructure databases for the period up to Sep 10th, 2012. A total of 6 studies were identified with 2071 cases and 2350 controls for miR-146a rs2910164 polymorphism, 667 cases and 1006 controls for miR-499 rs3746444 polymorphism. It was found that neither allele frequency nor genotype distribution of the two polymorphisms was associated with risk of HCC in all genetic models. Similarly, subgroup analysis in Asian population showed no associations between the two SNPs and the susceptibility to HCC. CONCLUSIONS/SIGNIFICANCE: This meta-analysis suggests that miR-146a rs2910164 and miR-499 rs3746444 polymorphisms may not be associated with the risk of HCC, especially for Asian population. However, well-designed studies with larger sample size and more detailed data are needed to confirm these conclusions