The discovery of an increasing number of histone demethylases has highlighted the dynamic nature of the regulation of histone methylation, a key chromatin modification that is involved in eukaryotic ...genome and gene regulation. A flurry of recent studies has offered glimpses into the specific biological roles of these enzymes and their potential connections to human diseases. These advances have also catalysed a resurgence of interest in epigenetic regulators as potential therapeutic targets.
Alzheimer disease is more than a pure proteopathy. Chronic neuroinflammation stands out during the pathogenesis of the disease and in turn modulates disease progression. The central nervous system ...(CNS) is separated from the blood circulation by the blood-brain barrier. In Alzheimer disease, neuroinflammation heavily relies on innate immune responses that are primarily mediated by CNS-resident microglia. APOE (which encodes apolipoprotein E) is the strongest genetic risk factor for Alzheimer disease, and APOE was recently shown to affect the disease in part through its immunomodulatory function. This function of APOE is likely linked to triggering receptor expressed on myeloid cells 2 (TREM2), which is expressed by microglia in the CNS. Here, we review the rapidly growing literature on the role of disease-associated microglia, TREM2 and APOE in the pathogenesis of Alzheimer disease and present an integrated view of innate immune function in Alzheimer disease.
Histone methylation can occur at various sites in histone proteins, primarily on lysine and arginine residues, and it can be governed by multiple positive and negative regulators, even at a single ...site, to either activate or repress transcription. It is now apparent that histone methylation is critical for almost all stages of development, and its proper regulation is essential for ensuring the coordinated expression of gene networks that govern pluripotency, body patterning and differentiation along appropriate lineages and organogenesis. Notably, developmental histone methylation is highly dynamic. Early embryonic systems display unique histone methylation patterns, prominently including the presence of bivalent (both gene-activating and gene-repressive) marks at lineage-specific genes that resolve to monovalent marks during differentiation, which ensures that appropriate genes are expressed in each tissue type. Studies of the effects of methylation on embryonic stem cell pluripotency and differentiation have helped to elucidate the developmental roles of histone methylation. It has been revealed that methylation and demethylation of both activating and repressive marks are essential for establishing embryonic and extra-embryonic lineages, for ensuring gene dosage compensation via genomic imprinting and for establishing body patterning via HOX gene regulation. Not surprisingly, aberrant methylation during embryogenesis can lead to defects in body patterning and in the development of specific organs. Human genetic disorders arising from mutations in histone methylation regulators have revealed their important roles in the developing skeletal and nervous systems, and they highlight the overlapping and unique roles of different patterns of methylation in ensuring proper development.
This note investigates the output feedback stabilization of networked control systems (NCSs). The sensor-to-controller (S-C) and controller-to-actuator (C-A) random network-induced delays are modeled ...as Markov chains. The focus is on the design of a two-mode-dependent controller that depends on not only the current S-C delay but also the most recent available C-A delay at the controller node. The resulting closed-loop system is transformed to a special discrete-time jump linear system. Then, the sufficient and necessary conditions for the stochastic stability are established. Further, the output feedback controller is designed via the iterative linear matrix inequality (LMI) approach. Simulation examples illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.
This article studies the problem of prescribed-time global stabilization of a class of nonlinear systems, where the nonlinear functions are unknown but satisfy a linear growth condition. By using ...solutions to a class of parametric Lyapunov equations containing a time-varying parameter that goes to infinity as the time approaches the prescribed settling time, linear time-varying feedback is designed explicitly to solve the considered problem, with the help of a Lyapunov-like function. It is shown moreover that the control signal is uniformly bounded by a constant depending on the initial condition. Both linear state feedback and linear observer-based output feedback are considered. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is illustrated by a numerical example borrowed from the literature.
In this paper, we mainly review the topics in consensus and coordination of multi-agent systems, which have received a tremendous surge of interest and progressed rapidly in the past few years. ...Focusing on different kinds of constraints on the controller and the self-dynamics of each individual agent, as well as the coordination schemes, we categorize the recent results into the following directions: consensus with constraints, event-based consensus, consensus over signed networks, and consensus of heterogeneous agents. We also review some applications of the very well developed consensus algorithms to the topics such as economic dispatch problem in smart grid and k -means clustering algorithms.
This paper studies the trajectory tracking control problem of an autonomous underwater vehicle (AUV). We develop a novel Lyapunov-based model predictive control (LMPC) framework for the AUV to ...utilize computational resource (online optimization) to improve the trajectory tracking performance. Within the LMPC framework, the practical constraints, such as actuator saturation, can be explicitly considered. Also, the thrust allocation subproblem can be addressed simultaneously with the LMPC controller design. Taking advantage of a nonlinear backstepping tracking control law, we construct the contraction constraint in the formulated LMPC problem so that the closed-loop stability is theoretically guaranteed. Sufficient conditions that ensure the recursive feasibility, and hence the closed-loop stability, are provided analytically. A guaranteed region of attraction is explicitly characterized. In the meantime, the robustness of the tracking control can be improved by the receding horizon implementation that is adopted in the LMPC control algorithm. Simulation results on the Saab SeaEye Falcon model AUV demonstrate the significantly enhance trajectory tracking control performance via the proposed LMPC method.
This technical note investigates the problem of extended dissipative finite-time control for Markov jump systems (MJSs) with cyber-attacks and actuator failures. A probabilistic event-triggered ...mechanism (PETM) is proposed to relieve the communication burden by exploiting both the pattern variation of triggering thresholds and the time-varying characteristic of transmission delays. To characterize the actual control inputs, a stochastic actuator failure model (SAFM) is established using a random variable of any discrete-time distribution over 0,1. Firstly, based on the PETM and SAFM, static output feedback controllers are devised which may not switch with the system synchronously. Then, novel sufficient conditions with less conservatism are obtained to achieve the extended dissipative finite-time control performance of the closed-loop system under admissible cyber-attacks and actuator failures. Furthermore, controller gains with non-convex constraints are calculated with the aid of a newly proposed lemma. Finally, an application oriented example is provided to verify the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed results.
This brief examines the problem of attitude tracking control with prescribed performance guarantees for a spacecraft subjected to actuator faults and input saturation. To pursue this, the open-loop ...tracking error dynamics with certain designer-specified performance constraints is first transformed into an equivalent "state-constrained" one, via an error transformation; furthermore, the resulting dynamics is augmented with a dynamic system, which is tactfully constructed to ensure that the control input satisfies the magnitude limits. Subsequently, a robust fault-tolerant controller is developed by using a low-pass filter and an auxiliary system in conjunction with adaptive backstepping design. It is shown that the control algorithm developed not only achieves the stable attitude tracking with prescribed behavioral metrics but also guarantees the boundedness of all the closed-loop signals. Finally, simulation results are given to evaluate the efficacy of the proposed scheme.
In order to provide the ancillary service for smart grid, this paper proposes a modelling and control protocol design approach for the aggregation of heterogeneous thermostatically controlled loads ...(TCLs). A 2-D state bin is proposed to model the second-order TCL dynamics in a population model. Detailed procedure of calculating the transition probability in the system matrix is provided. In the controller design, a model predictive control (MPC) scheme is proposed to obtain the optimal control actions along the prediction horizon. In addition, implementation of the control signal for adjusting TCLs' statuses are also investigated with practical situations considered. Simulation results reveal the feasibility and efficacy of the proposed modelling and control approach when applied on a large population of TCLs. Some factors that may affect the service performance are also discussed in this paper.
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