Dynamic EMCUD for knowledge acquisition

[[abstract]]Due to the knowledge explosion, the new objects will be evolved in a dynamic environment. Hence, the knowledge can be classified into static knowledge and dynamic knowledge. Although many knowledge acquisition methodologies, based upon the Repertory Grid technique, have been proposed to systematically elicit useful rules from static grid from domain experts, they lack the ability of grid evolution to incrementally acquire the dynamic knowledge of new evolved objects. In this paper, we propose dynamic EMCUD, a new Repertory Grid-based knowledge acquisition methodology to elicit the embedded meanings of knowledge (embedded rules bearing on m objects and k object attributes), to enhance the ability of original EMCUD to iteratively integrate new evolved objects and new added attributes into the original Acquisition Table (AT) and original Attribute Ordering Table (AOT). The AOT records the relative importance of each attribute to each object in EMCUD to capture the embedded meanings with acceptable certainty factor value by relaxing or ignoring some minor attributes. In order to discover the new evolved objects, a collaborative framework including local knowledge based systems (KBSs) and a collaborative KBS is proposed to analyze the correlations of inference behaviors of embedded rules between multiple KBSs in a dynamic environment. Each KBS monitors the frequent inference behaviors of interesting embedded rules to construct a small AT increment to facilitate the acquisition of dynamic knowledge after experts confirming the new evolved objects. Moreover, the significance of knowledge may change after a period of time, a trend of all attributes to each evolved object is used to construct a new AOT increment to help experts automatically adjust the relative importance of each attribute to each object using time series analysis approach. Besides, three cases are considered to assist experts in adjusting the certainty factor values of the dynamic knowledge of the new evolved objects from the collection of inference logs in the collaborative KBS. To evaluate the performance of dynamic EMCUD in incrementally integrating new knowledge into the knowledge base, a worm detection prototype system is implemented. (c) 2006 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved

Effects of Combinatorial Treatment with Pituitary Adenylate Cyclase Activating Peptide and Human Mesenchymal Stem Cells on Spinal Cord Tissue Repair

The aim of this study is to understand if human mesenchymal stem cells (hMSCs) and neuropeptide pituitary adenylate cyclase-activating polypeptide (PACAP) have synergistic protective effect that promotes functional recovery in rats with severe spinal cord injury (SCI). To evaluate the effect of delayed combinatorial therapy of PACAP and hMSCs on spinal cord tissue repair, we used the immortalized hMSCs that retain their potential of neuronal differentiation under the stimulation of neurogenic factors and possess the properties for the production of several growth factors beneficial for neural cell survival. The results indicated that delayed treatment with PACAP and hMSCs at day 7 post SCI increased the remaining neuronal fibers in the injured spinal cord, leading to better locomotor functional recovery in SCI rats when compared to treatment only with PACAP or hMSCs. Western blotting also showed that the levels of antioxidant enzymes, Mn-superoxide dismutase (MnSOD) and peroxiredoxin-1/6 (Prx-1 and Prx-6), were increased at the lesion center 1 week after the delayed treatment with the combinatorial therapy when compared to that observed in the vehicle-treated control. Furthermore, in vitro studies showed that co-culture with hMSCs in the presence of PACAP not only increased a subpopulation of microglia expressing galectin-3, but also enhanced the ability of astrocytes to uptake extracellular glutamate. In summary, our in vivo and in vitro studies reveal that delayed transplantation of hMSCs combined with PACAP provides trophic molecules to promote neuronal cell survival, which also foster beneficial microenvironment for endogenous glia to increase their neuroprotective effect on the repair of injured spinal cord tissue