This paper studies the problem of prescribed performance adaptive neural control for a class of uncertain multi-input and multi-output (MIMO) nonlinear systems in the presence of external ...disturbances and input saturation based on a disturbance observer. The system uncertainties are tackled by neural network (NN) approximation. To handle unknown disturbances, a Nussbaum disturbance observer is presented. By incorporating the disturbance observer and NNs, an adaptive prescribed performance neural control scheme is further developed. Then, the expected asymptotically convergent tracking errors between system output signals and desired signals are achieved. Numerical simulation results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed control scheme.
The electrocardiogram (ECG) is an efficient and noninvasive indicator for arrhythmia detection and prevention. In real-world scenarios, ECG signals are prone to be contaminated with various noises, ...which may lead to wrong interpretation. Therefore, significant attention has been paid on denoising of ECG for accurate diagnosis and analysis. A denoising autoencoder (DAE) can be applied to reconstruct the clean data from its noisy version. In this paper, a DAE using the fully convolutional network (FCN) is proposed for ECG signal denoising. Meanwhile, the proposed FCN-based DAE can perform compression with regard to the DAE architecture. The proposed approach is applied to ECG signals from the MIT-BIH Arrhythmia database and the added noise signals are obtained from the MIT-BIH Noise Stress Test database. The denoising performance is evaluated using the root-mean-square error (RMSE), percentage-root-mean-square difference (PRD), and improvement in signal-to-noise ratio (SNR<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{\textit{imp}} </tex-math></inline-formula>). The results of the experiments conducted on noisy ECG signals of different levels of input SNR show that the FCN acquires better performance as compared to the deep fully connected neural network- and convolutional neural network-based denoising models. Moreover, the proposed FCN-based DAE reduces the size of the input ECG signals, where the compressed data is 32 times smaller than the original. The results of the study demonstrate the superiority of FCN in denoising, with lower RMSE and PRD, as well as higher SNR<inline-formula> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">_{\textit{imp}} </tex-math></inline-formula>. According to the results, we believe that the proposed FCN-based DAE has a good application prospect in clinical practice.
ChIP-seq is increasingly being used for genome-wide profiling of histone modification marks. It is of particular importance to compare ChIP-seq data of two different conditions, such as disease vs. ...control, and identify regions that show differences in ChIP enrichment. We have developed a powerful and easy to use program, called diffReps, to detect those differential sites from ChIP-seq data, with or without biological replicates. In addition, we have developed two useful tools for ChIP-seq analysis in the diffReps package: one for the annotation of the differential sites and the other for finding chromatin modification "hotspots". diffReps is developed in PERL programming language and runs on all platforms as a command line script. We tested diffReps on two different datasets. One is the comparison of H3K4me3 between two human cell lines from the ENCODE project. The other is the comparison of H3K9me3 in a discrete region of mouse brain between cocaine- and saline-treated conditions. The results indicated that diffReps is a highly sensitive program in detecting differential sites from ChIP-seq data.
Our research focuses on expression patterns in human and mouse embryonic cardiomyocytes and endothelial cells at the single-cell level. We analyzed single-cell datasets containing different species, ...cardiac chambers, and cell types. We identified developmentally dynamic genes associated with different cellular lineages in the heart and explored their expression and possible roles during cardiac development. We used dynamic time warping, a method that aligns temporal sequences, to compare these developmental stages across two species. Our results indicated that atrial cardiomyocytes from E9.5 to E13.5 in mice corresponded to a human embryo age of approximately 5-6 weeks, whereas in ventricular cardiomyocytes, they corresponded to a human embryo age of 13-15 weeks. The endothelial cells in mouse hearts corresponded to 6-7-week-old human embryos. Next, we focused on expression changes in cardiac transcription factors over time in different species and chambers, and found that
might be related to interspecies cardiomyocyte differences. Moreover, we compared the developmental trajectories of cardiomyocytes differentiated from human pluripotent stem cells and embryonic cells. This analysis explored the relationship between their respective developments and provided compelling evidence supporting the relevance of our dynamic time-warping results. These significant findings contribute to a deeper understanding of cardiac development across different species.
Myocardial ischemia is the most common form of cardiovascular disease and the leading cause of morbidity and mortality. Understanding the mechanisms is very crucial for the development of effective ...therapy. Therefore, this study aimed to investigate the functional roles and mechanisms by which ELAVL1 regulates myocardial ischemia and reperfusion (I/R) injury.
Mouse myocardial I/R model and cultured myocardial cells exposed to hypoxia/reperfusion (H/R) were used in this study. Features of ferroptosis were evidenced by LDH activity, GPx4 activity, cellular iron, ROS, LPO, and GSH levels. The expression levels of autophagy markers (Beclin-1, p62, LC3), ELAVL1 and FOXC1 were measured by qRT-PCR, immunostaining and western blot. RIP assay, biotin-pull down, ChIP and dual luciferase activity assay were employed to examine the interactions of ELAVL1/Beclin-1 mRNA and FOXC1/ELAVL1 promoter. CCK-8 assay was used to examine viability of cells. TTC staining was performed to assess the myocardial I/R injury.
Myocardial I/R surgery induced ferroptosis and up-regulated ELAVL1 level. Knockdown of ELAVL1 decreased ferroptosis and ameliorated I/R injury. Si-ELAVL1 repressed autophagy and inhibition of autophagy by inhibitor suppressed ferroptosis and I/R injury in myocardial cells. Increase of autophagy could reverse the effects of ELAVL1 knockdown on ferroptosis and I/R injury. ELAVL1 directly bound with and stabilized Beclin-1 mRNA. Furthermore, FOXC1 bound to ELAVL1 promoter region and activated its transcription upon H/R exposure.
FOXC1 transcriptionally activated ELAVL1 may promote ferroptosis during myocardial I/R by modulating autophagy, leading to myocardial injury. Inhibition of ELAVL1-mediated autophagic ferroptosis would be a new viewpoint in the treatment of myocardial I/R injury.
Reopening colleges and universities during the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic poses a special challenge worldwide. Taiwan is one of the few countries where schools are functioning ...normally. To secure the safety of students and staff, the Ministry of Education in Taiwan established general guidelines for college campuses. The guidelines delineated creation of a task force at each university; school-based risk screening based on travel history, occupation, contacts, and clusters; measures on self-management of health and quarantine; general hygiene measures (including wearing masks indoors); principles on ventilation and sanitization; regulations on school assemblies; a process for reporting suspected cases; and policies on school closing and make-up classes. It also announced that a class should be suspended if 1 student or staff member in it tested positive and that a school should be closed for 14 days if it had 2 or more confirmed cases. As of 18 June 2020, there have been 7 confirmed cases in 6 Taiwanese universities since the start of the pandemic. One university was temporarily closed, adopted virtual classes, and quickly reopened after 14 days of contact tracing and quarantine of possible contacts. Taiwan's experience suggests that, under certain circumstances, safely reopening colleges and universities this fall may be feasible with a combination of strategies that include containment (access control with contact tracing and quarantine) and mitigation (hygiene, sanitation, ventilation, and social distancing) practices.
Advance care planning in Asian culture Cheng, Shao-Yi; Lin, Cheng-Pei; Chan, Helen Yue-lai ...
Japanese journal of clinical oncology,
09/2020, Letnik:
50, Številka:
9
Journal Article
Recenzirano
Odprti dostop
Abstract
Ageing has been recognized as one of the most critically important health-care issues worldwide. It is relevant to Asia, where the increasing number of older populations has drawn attention ...to the paramount need for health-care investment, particularly in end-of-life care. The advocacy of advance care planning is a mean to honor patient autonomy. Since most East Asian countries are influenced by Confucianism and the concept of ‘filial piety,’ patient autonomy is consequently subordinate to family values and physician authority. The dominance from family members and physicians during a patient’s end-of-life decision-making is recognized as a cultural feature in Asia. Physicians often disclose the patient’s poor prognosis and corresponding treatment options to the male, family member rather to the patient him/herself. In order to address this ethical and practical dilemma, the concept of ‘relational autonomy’ and the collectivism paradigm might be ideally used to assist Asian people, especially older adults, to share their preferences on future care and decision-making on certain clinical situations with their families and important others. In this review article, we invited experts in end-of-life care from Hong Kong, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Singapore and Taiwan to briefly report the current status of advance care planning in each country from policy, legal and clinical perspectives. According to the Asian experiences, we have seen different models of advance care planning implementation. The Asian Delphi Taskforce for advance care planning is currently undertaken by six Asian countries and a more detailed, culturally sensitive whitepaper will be published in the near future.
When assessing the socio‐economic impacts of climate change, it is sensible to make targeted climate projections for regions of high population density and economy activity. Much of human activity is ...concentrated at river basins, yet it has been difficult to resolve the complex boundaries of these basins in coarse resolution global climate models. The latest high‐resolution observation and climate projection datasets enable such basin‐based evaluations now, and this study assesses the historical and projected climate changes over three major river basins in China—the Yellow, Yangtze and Pearl River basins. Based on CN05.1 dataset, the Yellow River basin has significantly warmed by about 1.8°C over the past five decades, far more than the other two basins. The change in temperature extremes has been as severe, with the annual maxima of daily maximum temperatures (TXx) increasing by 1.5°C, and the annual minima of daily minimum temperatures (TNn) increasing by 2.5°C. Precipitation over the Yangtze River has significantly increased by about 0.2 mm·day−1, while changes over the other two basins were not statistically significant. The uncertainty in the change of precipitation was greater than that of temperature. A selection of simulations from the Fifth and Sixth Coupled Model Intercomparison Projects (CMIP5 and CMIP6) were validated against the CN05.1 dataset for the historical period of 1961–2018. Changes in temperature indices were well‐reproduced, but changes in precipitation indices poorly so. CMIP6 models performed better than the CMIP5 models. Both CMIP5 and CMIP6 multi‐model ensembles (MMEs) projected about 1.0–2.0°C warming over China and the three river basins by 2015–2050. Both MMEs projected wetting trends over most parts of China and the three river basins. Both warming and wetting were projected to accelerate with time, particularly warming over the Yellow River basin, and wetting over the Pearl River basin.
The locations of the three major river basins evaluated in this study: Yellow River basin (yellow shading), Yangtze River basin (purple shading), and Pearl River basin (green shading). Red lines indicate the three rivers.
The presence of DNA in the cytoplasm is normally a sign of microbial infections and is quickly detected by cyclic GMP-AMP synthase (cGAS) to elicit anti-infection immune responses. However, chronic ...activation of cGAS by self-DNA leads to severe autoimmune diseases for which no effective treatment is available yet. Here we report that acetylation inhibits cGAS activation and that the enforced acetylation of cGAS by aspirin robustly suppresses self-DNA-induced autoimmunity. We find that cGAS acetylation on either Lys384, Lys394, or Lys414 contributes to keeping cGAS inactive. cGAS is deacetylated in response to DNA challenges. Importantly, we show that aspirin can directly acetylate cGAS and efficiently inhibit cGAS-mediated immune responses. Finally, we demonstrate that aspirin can effectively suppress self-DNA-induced autoimmunity in Aicardi-Goutières syndrome (AGS) patient cells and in an AGS mouse model. Thus, our study reveals that acetylation contributes to cGAS activity regulation and provides a potential therapy for treating DNA-mediated autoimmune diseases.
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•Acetylation suppresses cGAS activity•Aspirin directly acetylates cGAS•Aspirin inhibits cGAS-mediated interferon production•Aspirin alleviates DNA-induced autoimmunity in AGS mouse models and patient cells
Activation of the DNA sensor cGAS requires a deacetylation step, and its aspirin-induced acetylation can limit innate immune responses.
We have carried out a comprehensive analysis of six air pollutants (particles with an aerodynamic diameter less than 2.5 μm (PM2.5) and less than 10 μm (PM10), carbon monoxide (CO), sulfur dioxide ...(SO2), nitrogen dioxide (NO2), and ozone (O3)) in western China, including the spatiotemporal characteristics of air pollutants, their relationship with meteorological factors and emission sources, and the efficiency of emission control strategies for the region. Based hourly observations at 23 sites in western China from June 2016 to May 2017, concentrations of most pollutants were higher outside the Tibetan Plateau, lowest in summer and highest in winter, the exception being O3. This was partially because meteorological conditions in winter were found to the most unfavorable to pollutant dispersion and dilution than other seasons. Pollutant concentrations at most sites were correlated with the residential emissions which were higher in winter, but anti-correlated with the industrial emissions which were lower during the winter holiday period. The Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry (WRF-Chem) simulations of four pollution control strategies indicated that reduction of residential emissions is crucial to alleviate PM2.5, PM10, and CO pollution in western China, although reduction of industrial and transport emissions can reduce SO2 and NO2, respectively. Since PM2.5 and PM10 were also found to be the species most and next frequently responsible for extremely serious pollution in western China, respectively, we recommend pollution control regulations that target residential emissions.
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•Investigation of spatiotemporal variations of air pollutants in western China based on abundant in-situ observations.•Six pollutants' relationships with meteorological and emission factors were investigated.•Emission control strategies to reduce air pollution were evaluated in western China.
We have carried out a comprehensive analysis of spatiotemporal characteristics of six air pollutants (PM2.5, PM10, CO, SO2, NO2, and O3) in western China, based on abundant in situ observations, and then analyzed their relationship with meteorological and emission factors. Finally, the efficiency of emission control strategies for the region was evaluated through WRF-Chem (Weather Research and Forecasting with Chemistry) modeling.
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