This paper studies the active fault-tolerant control (FTC) problem for nonidentical high-order multi-agent systems, in the presence of actuator faults and network disconnections. The follower agents ...are enabled to track the output of a leader agent in faulty cases, by performing output feedback actuator fault compensations and distributed accommodations of network disconnections. In view of nonidentical nonlinearities, a high-gain observer like-protocol and a cooperative FTC controller are presented, with a synchronization condition to govern the global behavior in undirected/directed graphs. To distributively achieve the synchronization condition by updating local controller parameters, two broadcast mechanisms are presented on a spanning tree (for undirected graphs) and a cycle containing all nodes (for directed graphs). To ensure the tolerance to disconnections, the proposed broadcast mechanisms are redesigned by adding redundant information flows on spanning trees (for undirected graphs) and cycles containing all nodes (for directed graphs).
Structural damage detection is still a challenging problem owing to the difficulty of extracting damage‐sensitive and noise‐robust features from structure response. This article presents a novel ...damage detection approach to automatically extract features from low‐level sensor data through deep learning. A deep convolutional neural network is designed to learn features and identify damage locations, leading to an excellent localization accuracy on both noise‐free and noisy data set, in contrast to another detector using wavelet packet component energy as the input feature. Visualization of the features learned by hidden layers in the network is implemented to get a physical insight into how the network works. It is found the learned features evolve with the depth from rough filters to the concept of vibration mode, implying the good performance results from its ability to learn essential characteristics behind the data.
This article studies an optimal dynamic formation problem for heterogeneous affine nonlinear systems. The nonidenticality in agents and the requirement for dynamic spatial reconfiguration make it a ...challenging task to coordinate different types of agents to maintain an optimized formation shape. In an architecture of event-triggered decision and control, this article investigates how to fulfill dynamic formation by distributively optimizing a team cost function. The basic idea is to design a decision unit for each agent to generate an implicit trajectory as a servo signal, based on which a control unit is designed with a displacement-gradient-based law to achieve the desired local solution. Typical heterogeneous characteristics including different nonlinearities and nonidentical dimensions are dealt with in a unified framework. It is shown that with the proposed triggering mechanisms, the optimal dynamic formation problem can be solved by a distributed control law with only intermittent communication. In theory, the properties of convergence of trajectory tracking errors, optimality of the team solution, and Zeno-freeness of event-triggered mechanisms are proved. Two simulation examples are given to verify the proposed method.
Transition‐metal‐catalyzed coupling reactions are useful tools for synthesizing aryl sulfur compounds. However, conventional transition‐metal‐catalyzed thiolation of aryl bromides and chlorides ...typically requires the use of strong base under elevated reaction temperature. Herein, we report the first examples of nickel‐catalyzed electrochemical thiolation of aryl bromides and chlorides in the absence of an external base at room temperature using undivided electrochemical cells.
It's electrifying! Nickel‐catalyzed thiolation of aryl halides was achieved in the absence of an external base and at room temperature through an electrochemical reaction in undivided electrochemical cells. This method provides a practical approach for the construction of aryl and heteroaryl C−S bonds.
This article addresses the decentralized tracking control problem for a class of strong interconnected nonlinear systems with actuator faults. The considered interconnections are allowed to be ...dominated by some bounding functions, which are linear growth in the status of all subsystems. First, an adaptive high-gain technique is introduced to deal with the unknown strong interconnections. Then, a group of fault-tolerant controllers is designed to adaptively compensate for the effects of the actuator failures, in which the controller gain parameters are adjusted online only according to local available information. Furthermore, with the aid of an algebraic graph theory result, it is proved that all signals of the closed-loop system are globally uniformly bounded, and the tracking errors of all subsystems converge to zero asymptotically. The effectiveness of the proposed control algorithm is demonstrated by a numerical simulation.
A highly regioselective Ni‐catalyzed electrochemical reductive relay cross‐coupling between an aryl halide and an alkyl halide has been developed in an undivided cell. Various functional groups are ...tolerated under these mild reaction conditions, which provides an alternative approach for the synthesis of 1,1‐diarylalkanes.
Electrochemical reductive relay: A highly regioselective Ni‐catalyzed electrochemical reductive relay cross‐coupling between an aryl halide and an alkyl halide has been developed in an undivided cell. Various functional groups are tolerated under these mild reaction conditions, which provides an alternative approach for the synthesis of 1,1‐diarylalkanes.
Pulmonary hypertension (PH) is a devastating disease characterized by vasoconstriction and vascular remodeling, leading to right ventricular failure and death. PH is a common complication of chronic ...obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD). Accumulating evidence demonstrate that microRNAs participate in the pathobiology of PH in COPD patients. In this study, we aimed to evaluate the expression and function of microRNA-4640-5p (miR-4640-5p) in PH.
The mRNA and protein levels were determined by quantitative polymerase chain reaction (qPCR) and western blot, separately. Functional assays and western blot were performed to determine the effects of miR-4640-5p and NOS1 on cell growth, migration. Besides, the dual-luciferase reporter assays were used to validate miR-4640-5p and NOS1 interactions.
We found that miR-4640-5p expression was significantly higher in the lung tissues of COPD-PH patients than in the healthy controls while higher expression of miR-4640-5p was correlated with more severe COPD-PH. By using pulmonary artery smooth muscle cell (PASMC) in in vitro assays, we demonstrated that inhibition of miR-4640-5p suppressed cell proliferation and migration of PASMC via regulating mTOR/S6 signaling. Bioinformatics analysis and validation experiments revealed that nitric oxide synthase 1 (NOS1) was a direct downstream target of miR-4640-5p. Overexpression of NOS1 partially antagonized the effect of miR-4640-5p in regulating PASMC cell proliferation and migration. In addition, our findings suggested that miR-4640-5p/NOS1 axis regulated mitochondrial dynamics in PASMCs. Furthermore, in the hypoxia-induced PH rat model, inhibition of miR-4640-5p ameliorated PH with reduced right ventricular systolic pressure and Fulton index.
miR-4640-5p regulates PH via targeting NOS1, which provides a potential diagnostic biomarker and therapeutic target for COPD-PH patients.
Background. Actin filament-associated protein 1-antisense RNA 1 (AFAP1-AS1) plays an important role in the development and progression of several human cancers. However, its biological function in ...gastric cancer (GC) progression is still unknown. Methods. We used qRT-PCR to detect the relative expression of AFAP1-AS1 in GC tissues and cell lines. The loss-of-function assays were conducted to detect the effect of AFAP1-AS1 on GC development. Bioinformatics analysis, luciferase reporter gene analysis, and RIP analysis were used to identify and validate target genes of AFAP1-AS1. Finally, rescue tests were performed to confirm the influence of the AFAP1-AS1-miR-155-5p-FGF7 axis on GC development. Results. AFAP1-AS1 was upregulated in GC tissues and cell lines and was closely correlated with poor prognosis of GC patients. AFAP1-AS1 knockdown inhibited proliferation, migration, and invasion of GC cells, indicating that AFAP1-AS1 acts as an oncogene in GC. Bioinformatics analysis, dual-luciferase reporter gene detection, and RIP assays validated that AFAP1-AS1 directly interacts to miR-155-5p and could positively affect cell proliferation, migration, and invasion by regulation of the expression of miR-155-5p and FGF7. Further rescue assays revealed that AFAP1-AS1 promotes cell proliferation and metastasis through the miR-155-5p/FGF7 axis in GC. Conclusions. AFAP1-AS1 might be an oncogenic lncRNA that promoted GC progression by acting as a competing endogenous RNA (ceRNA) that regulates the expression of FGF7 through sponging miR-155-5p, suggesting that AFAP1-AS1 may be a novel potential therapeutic target for GC.
Emerging evidence indicates that inflammasome-induced inflammation plays a crucial role in the pathogenesis of Parkinson's disease (PD). Several proteins including α-synuclein trigger the activation ...of NLRP3 inflammasome. However, few studies examined whether inflammasomes are activated in the periphery of PD patients and their possible value in the diagnosis or tracking of the progress of PD. The aim of this study was to determine the association between inflammasome-induced inflammation and clinical features in PD.
There were a total of 67 participants, including 43 patients with PD and 24 controls, in the study. Participants received a complete evaluation of motor and non-motor symptoms, including Hoehn and Yahr (H-Y) staging scale. Blood samples were collected from all participants. The protein and mRNA expression levels of inflammasomes subtypes and components in peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs) were determined using western blotting and RT-qPCR. We applied Meso Scale Discovery (MSD) immunoassay to measure the plasma levels of IL-1β and α-synuclein.
We observed increased gene expression of NLRP3, ASC, and caspase-1 in PBMCs, and increased protein levels of NLRP3, caspase-1, and IL-1β in PD patients. Plasma levels of IL-1β were significantly higher in patients with PD compared with controls and have a positive correlation with H-Y stage and UPDRS part III scores. Furthermore, plasma α-synuclein levels were also increased in PD patients and have a positive correlation with both UPDRS part III scores and plasma IL-1β levels.
Our data demonstrated that the NLRP3 inflammasome is activated in the PBMCs from PD patients. The related inflammatory cytokine IL-1β and total α-synuclein in plasma were increased in PD patients than controls, and both of them presented a positive correlation with motor severity in patients with PD. Furthermore, plasma α-synuclein levels have a positive correlation with IL-1β levels in PD patients. All these findings suggested that the NLRP3 inflammasome activation-related cytokine IL-1β and α-synuclein could serve as non-invasive biomarkers to monitor the severity and progression of PD in regard to motor function.
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