BIO-INSPIRED SELF-ADAPTIVE MANUFACTURING SYSTEM CONTROL ARCHITECTURE

Future manufacturing systems need to cope with frequent changes and disturbances, therefore their control architectures require constant adaptability, agility, stability, self-organization, intelligence, and robustness. Bio-inspired manufacturing system can well satisfy these requirements. For this purpose, by referencing the biological organization structure and the mechanism, a bio-inspired manufacturing cell is presented from a novel view, and then a bio-inspired self-adaptive manufacturing model is established based on the ultra-short feedback mechanism of the neuro-endocrine system. A hio-inspired self-adaptive manufacturing system coordinated model is also established based on the neuro-endocrine-immunity system （NEIS）. Finally, an example based on pheromone communication mechanism indicates that the robustness of the whole manufacturing system is improved by bio-inspired technologies.

Molecular actions guiding neural regeneration in planarian

Planarian is among the simplest animals that possess a centralized nervous system （CNS）, and its neural regenera- tion involves the replacement of cells lost to normal ＇wear and tear＇ （cell turnover）, and/or injury. In this review, we state and discuss the recent studies on molecular control of neural regeneration in planarians. The spatial and temporal expression patterns of genes in intact and regenerating planarian CNS have already been described relatively clearly. The bone morphogenetic protein （BMP） and Wnt signaling pathways are identified to regulate neural regeneration. During neural regeneration, conserved axon guidance mechanisms are necessary for proper wiring of the nervous system. In addition, apoptosis may play an important role in controlling cell numbers, eliminating unnecessary tissues or cells and remodeling the old tissues for regenerating CNS. The bilateral symmetry is established by determination of anterior-posterior （A-P） and dorsal-ventral （D-V） patterns. Moreover, neurons positive to dopamine, serotonin （5-HT）, and gamma-aminobutyric acid （GABA） have been detected in planarians. Therefore, planarians present us with new, experimentally accessible contexts to study the molecular actions guiding neural regeneration.

A Modelling Scheme for Flexible Robot Manipulators

Aim To propose a modelling method for flexible manipulators. Methods The improved algorithm and structure of the ANN (artificial neural networks) were used. All of the data used in the process of modelling came from experiments based on a very flexible link which was fixed on a FANUC Robot S-Model 300 in our lab.Results and Conclusion The theoretical analysis and experiment results showed that this modelling scheme is more suitable for flexible systems with characteristics of fast changing dynamics, and also it can be more accurate than others and is more convenient for real-time use.

Irritable bowel syndrome:Diagnosis and pathogenesis

Irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) is a common gastro-intestinal (GI) disorder that considerably reduces the quality of life. It further represents an economic burden on society due to the high consumption of healthcare resources and the non-productivity of IBS patients. The diagnosis of IBS is based on symptom assessment and the Rome Ⅲ criteria. A combination of the Rome Ⅲ criteria, a physical examination, blood tests, gastros-copy and colonoscopy with biopsies is believed to be necessary for diagnosis. Duodenal chromogranin A cell density is a promising biomarker for the diagnosis of IBS. The pathogenesis of IBS seems to be multifactorial, with the following factors playing a central role in the pathogenesis of IBS:heritability and genetics, dietary/intestinal microbiota, low-grade inflammation, and disturbances in the neuroendocrine system (NES) of the gut. One hypothesis proposes that the cause of IBS is an altered NES, which would cause abnormal GI motility, secretions and sensation. All of these abnormalities are characteristic of IBS. Alterations in the NES could be the result of one or more of the following:genetic factors, dietary intake, intestinal flora, or lowgrade inflammation. Post-infectious IBS (PI-IBS) and inflammatory bowel disease-associated IBS (IBD-IBS) represent a considerable subset of IBS cases. Patients with PI-and IBD-IBS exhibit low-grade mucosal inflammation, as well as abnormalities in the NES of the gut.

Close-formed bound on generalized distributed antenna system capacity

The composite channel models of the generalized distributed antenna system （GDAS） such as Rayleigh-lognormal fading are studied. Then comparisons are performed between the GDAS and the traditional multiple-input multiple-output （MIMO） system to analyze the ergodic capacity of the GDAS and make conclusions that it is impossible to achieve an analytical expression for the ergodic capacity of the GDAS. Moreover, in order to evaluate the performance of the ergodic capacity of the GDAS conveniently, the analytical lower bound and upper bound of the ergodic capacity of the GDAS are derived by using the results from multivariate statistics and matrix inequalities, under the scenarios of Rayleigh-lognormal fading and equal power allocation scheme at transmitter. Finally, the analytical bounds are verified by comparisons with the numerical results.

Neurotoxicity and Biomarkers of Lead Exposure: a Review

Appropriate selection and measurement of lead biomarkers of exposure are critically important for health care management purposes,public health decision making,and primary prevention synthesis.Lead is one of the neurotoxicants that seems to be involved in the etiology of psychologies.Biomarkers are generally classified into three groups:biomarkers of exposure,effect,and susceptibility.The main body compartments that store lead are the blood,soft tissues,and bone;the half-life of lead in these tissues is measured in weeks for blood,months for soft tissues,and years for bone.Within the brain,lead-induced damage in the prefrontal cerebral cortex,hippocampus,and cerebellum can lead to a variety of neurological disorders,such as brain damage,mental retardation,behavioral problems,nerve damage,and possibly Alzheimer’s disease,Parkinson’s disease,and schizophrenia.This paper presents an overview of biomarkers of lead exposure and discusses the neurotoxic effects of lead with regard to children and adults.

Dysfunction of neuroendocrine system in sepsis and implication of hormone therapy

Sepsis and related syndromes are the major cause of multiple organ failure and death in patients with critical illnesses. Neuroendocrine dysfunction has long been thought to be an important event in sepsis. In clinic, optimal management of the hormones could alleviate severe complications in sepsis. In this article, we review the dysfunction ofneuroendocrine system as well as autonomic nervous system in sepsis, and summarize the respective therapy strategies.

Conceptual design of an extractive distillation process for the separation of azeotropic mixture of n-butanol-isobutanol-water

In many chemical processes, large amounts of wastewater containing butanol and isobutanol are produced.Given that n-butanol-isobutanol-water can form triple azeotrope, high-purity butanol cannot be recovered from the wastewater by ordinary distillation. To economically and effectively recover butanol from this kind of wastewater, 1,4-butanediol is selected as an extractant to break the formation of the azeotropes, and a doubleeffect extractive distillation process is proposed. The conceptual design of the proposed process is accomplished based on process simulation. With the proposed process, the purity of recovered butanol and water is greater than 99.99 wt%. In comparison with the conventional azeotropic distillation process, economic analysis shows that the operating cost of the proposed process is lower: when the capacity of wastewater treatment is 100 t·h^(-1), the total operating cost decreases by 5.385 ×10~6 USD per year, and the total annual cost of the new process decreases by 5.249 ×10~6 USD per year. In addition, in the extractive distillation system, variable effects on separation purities and cost are more complex than those in the ordinary distillation system. The method and steps to optimize the key variables of the extractive distillation system are also discussed in this paper and can provide reference for similar studies.

COMMENTS ON THE HOLISTIC ACTION OF ACUPUNCTURE IN VIEW OF ITS INFLUENCE ON NERVE-ENDOCRINE-IMMUNE NETWORK

In the present paper, the author makes some comments on the holistic action of acupuncture from the regulative effect on the nerve-endocrine-immune network, and the close relationship between the nerve-endocrine-immune network and the meridian-collateral system of TCM. The wholism concept of TCM refers to the organism being an integrated entirety, and the regulatory effect of acupuncture on functional activities of the organism relies on the integral connection of the acupoint-meridian-collateral-zangfu-organ system. When stimulated with acupuncture, the human body will brings its potential force into full play in preventing and treating diseases.

Ecological Network Analysis Quantifying the Sustainability of Regional Economies: A Case Study of Guangdong Province in China

To meet the challenge of sustainable development, sustainability must be made. Ecological network analysis(ENA) was introduced in this paper as an approach to quantitatively measure the growth, development, and sustainability of an economic system. The Guangdong economic networks from 1987 to 2010 were analyzed by applying the ENA approach. Firstly, a currency flow network among economic sectors was constructed to represent the Guangdong economic system by adapting the input-output(I-O) table data. Then, the network indicators from the ENA framework involving the total system throughput(TST), average mutual information(AMI), ascendency(A), redundancy(R) and development capacity(C) were calculated. Lastly, the network indicators were analyzed to acquire the overall features of Guangdong's economic operations during 1987–2010. The results are as follows: the trends of the network indicators show that the size of the Guangdong economic network grows exponentially at a high rate during 1987–2010, whereas its efficiency does not present a clear trend over its whole period. The growth is the main characteristic of the Guangdong economy during 1987–2010, with no clear evidence regarding its development. The quantitative results of the network also confirmed that the growth contributed to a great majority of the Guangdong economy during 1987–2010, whereas the development's contribution was tiny during the same period. The average value of the sustainability indicator(α) of the Guangdong economic network was 0.222 during 1987–2010, which is less than the theoretically optimal value of 0.37 for a sustainable human-influenced system. The results suggest that the Guangdong economic system needs a further autocatalysis to improve its efficiency to support the system maintaining a sustainable evolvement.

Molecular Study on Differentiation-Associated Genes Involved in Both Malignant Progression of Glioma and Differentiation of Human Fetal Neural Stem Cells

OBJECTIVE It is unclear whether differentiation disturbances or deregulation of neural stem cells (NSCs) are the early key steps for gliomagenesis and tumor development. Furthermore, relevant molecular changes and gene-regulation pathways are unknown. This study focused on screening and validating differentiation-associated genes from both human NSCs and glioma cells with malignant progression, for the purpose of offering an experimental basis for the cellular origin of gilomas and molecular pathology of gliomagenesis. METHODS The differential-gene expression profiles of malignant progression of gliomas were established, then the differentiation related genes were screened out with a bioinformatics analysis. Expression levels of these genes was further analyzed in cultured human fetal NSCs undergoing differentiation processes with a semi-quantitative RT-PCR assay. RESULTS Eight genes were screened out from the gene-expression profiling of which the expression levels were associated with the differentiation processes of NSCs, namely CXCR4, TN-C, GLT1, IL1-RI, EGFR-8, CDC2, Ndr3 and MAPKK4. Three of them, ie., GLT1, CDC2 and MAPKK4, were further analyzed, showing that expression levels decreased with the differentiation processes of NSCs, and increased with the malignant progression of ganglioglioma. CONCLUSION Three differentiation associated genes were found negatively associated with NSCs differentiation and positively associated with malignant progression of gliomas, suggesting that differentiation disturbances of neural stem cells may be involved in oncogenesis, and that further studies on their roles in gliomagenesis should be conducted.

Multiple objective particle swarm optimization technique for economic load dispatch

A multi-objective particle swarm optimization (MOPSO) approach for multi-objective economic load dispatch problem in power system is presented in this paper. The economic load dispatch problem is a non-linear constrained multi-objective optimization problem. The proposed MOPSO approach handles the problem as a multi-objective problem with competing and non-commensurable fuel cost, emission and system loss objectives and has a diversity-preserving mechanism using an external memory (call “repository”) and a geographically-based approach to find widely different Pareto-optimal solutions. In addition, fuzzy set theory is employed to extract the best compromise solution. Several optimization runs of the proposed MOPSO approach were carried out on the standard IEEE 30-bus test system. The results revealed the capabilities of the proposed MOPSO approach to generate well-distributed Pareto-optimal non-dominated solutions of multi-objective economic load dispatch. Com- parison with Multi-objective Evolutionary Algorithm (MOEA) showed the superiority of the proposed MOPSO approach and confirmed its potential for solving multi-objective economic load dispatch.

Structural insights into a novel histone demethylase PHF8

Dynamic regulation of histone methylation/demethylation plays an important role during development. Mutations and truncations in human plant homeodomain （PHD） finger protein 8 （PHF8） are associated with X-linked mental retardation and facial anomalies, such as a long face, broad nasal tip, cleft lip/cleft palate and large hands, yet its molecular function and structural basis remain unclear. Here, we report the crystal structures of the catalytic core of PHF8 with or without α-ketoglutarate （α-KG） at high resolution. Biochemical and structural studies reveal that PHF8 is a novel histone demethylase specific for di- and mono-methylated histone H3 lysine 9 （H3K9me2/1）, but not for H3K9me3. Our analyses also reveal how human PHF8 discriminates between methylation states and achieves sequence specificity for methylated H3K9. The in vitro demethylation assay also showed that the F279S mutant observed in clinical patients possesses no demethylation activity, suggesting that loss of enzymatic activity is crucial for pathogenesis of PHF8 patients. Taken together, these results will shed light on the molecular mechanism underlying PHF8-associated developmental and neurological diseases.

Economic Analysis of Diversified Rotational Cropping Systems in the Lateritic Belt of Lower Gangetic Plain of Eastern India

Economic analysis of different diversified rotational cropping systems under Farmers＇ package/practices and improved package/practices was conducted in Birbhum district, West Bengal, located in the red and lateritic belt of lower Gangetic plain of eastern lndia. Diversified triple cropping systems （peanut-brinjal＋brinjal, rice-potato-pumpkin, and cucumber-cabbage-basella） required higher cost for cultivation, but also produced higher rice equivalent yield, higher net return and higher return rupee1 invested in both management practices. Considering the resource-ability and risk-bearing capacity, and net return and return rupee^-1 （RPR） invested, these cropping systems can be recommended for resource-rich farmers. Rice-rapeseed-cowpea, rice-wheat-green gram and radish-tomato-amaranthus systems profitable. These cropping systems can be required less inputs for cultivation, were less risky, and economically viable and recommended for resource-poor farmers. Peanut-brinjal ＋ brinjal-okra-chilli ＋ chilli-cucumber-cabbage-basella system was the best among all the 3-year rotational systems in respect to RPR in both management practices. This rotational system will be suitable for resource-rich farmers. Vegetable-based rotational systems （ridge gourd-marigold-okra-black gram-pointed gourd ＋ pointed gourd-radish-tomato-amaranthus） or rice-based rotational system （rice-wheat-green gram-rice-rapeseed-cowpea-rice-potato-pumpkin） also found to be suitable to increase the profitability and system sustainability. These cropping systems can be recommended for all groups of farmers.

Surgicopathological classification of hepatic space-occupying lesions:A single-center experience with literature review

Accompanying rapid developments in hepatic surgery,the number of surgeries and identifications of histological types of primary hepatic space-occupying lesions (PHSOLs) have increased dramatically.This has led to many changes in the surgicopathological spectrum of PHSOLs,and has contributed to a theoretical basis for modern hepatic surgery and oncological pathology.Between 1982 and 2009 at the Eastern Hepatobiliary Surgery Hospital (EHBH) in Shanghai,31 901 patients underwent surgery and were diagnosed as having a PHSOL.In this paper,we present an analysis of the PHSOL cases at the EHBH for this time period,along with results from a systematic literature review.We describe a surgicopathological spectrum comprising more than 100 types of PHSOLs that can be stratified into three types:tumor-like,benign,and malignant.We also stratified the PHSOLs into six subtypes derived from hepatocytes;cholangiocytes;vascular,lymphoid and hemopoietic tissues;muscular,fibrous and adipose tissues;neural and neuroendocrine tissues;and miscellaneous tissues.The present study provides a new classification system that can be used as a current reference for clinicians and pathologists to make correct diagnoses and differential diagnoses among various PHSOLs.

Influence of stocking density on growth, body composition and energy budget of Atlantic salmon Salmo salar L. in recirculating aquaculture systems

Atlantic salmon Salmo salar were reared at four stocking densities--high density D1 （final density -39 kg/m^3）, medium densities DE （-29 kg/m^3） and D3 （~19 kg/m^3）, and low density D4 （-12 kg/m^3）- for 40 days to investigate the effect of stocking density on their growth performance, body composition and energy budgets. Stocking density did not significantly affect specific growth rate in terms of weight （SGRw） but did affect specific growth rate in terms of energy （SGRe）. Stocking density significantly influenced the ration level （RLw and RLe）, feed conversion ratio （FCRw and FCRe） and apparent digestibility rate （ADR）. Ration level and FCRw tended to increase with increasing density. Fish at the highest density D~ and lowest density D4 showed lower FCRe and higher ADR than at medium densities. Stocking density significantly affected protein and energy contents of the body but did not affect its moisture, lipid, or ash contents. The expenditure of energy for metabolism in the low-density and high-density groups was lower than that in the medium-density groups. Stocking density affected energy utilization from the feces but had no effect on excretion rate. The greater energy allocation to growth at high density and low density may be attributed to reduced metabolic rate and increased apparent digestibility rate. These findings provide information that will assist selection of suitable stocking densities in the Atlantic-salmon-farming industry.

Thermal and Economical Analysis of the Solar Preheating of Steam Boiler Feed Water

It is presented that a feasibility assessment of solar preheating of steam boiler feed water for opened vapor systems. Data from a medium sized dairy industry near Rio de Janeiro city, in Brazil, is used to compose a case study. Forty eight solar heating system computer simulations were carried out in TRNSYS （transient system simulation software）, for a range of design parameters corresponding to the 5% best economic results of a series of 2,700 simpler simulations （φ,f-chart method）, programmed on Matlab. It has been used TMY （typical meteorological year） hourly weather data from Rio de Janeiro. Investment cost was composed from both commercial and literature values, while revenue was based on the avoided consumption of fuel for LPG （liquefied petroleum gas）, natural gas and fuel oil, with only the first showing economically feasible. The results, however, made it possible to address environmentally sound public policies to encourage industrial solar energy use.

Effect of Inhalation of Essential Oil of Rosa Demascena Mill. on Psychomotor Functions in Human

Some studies document that odorants influence in sympathetic and parasympathetic nervous systems, and neurophysiological brain activity. Odors compounds can act on the neuroendocrine system, neurotransmitters and neuromodulators, influencing psychological behavior as well as body function. The study was conducted in 20 individuals in each test to analyze the effects of essential oil inhalation on psychomotor performance in the healthy volunteers. Two tests were performed in the present study （1） SLCT （six letter cancellation test） and （2） DLST （digit letter substitution test）. These tests were carded out for the assessment of psychopharmacological activity of essential oil of Rosa damascena Mill., in healthy young human individuals belonging to the age group 18 to 22 years. The results of the psychomotor performance test in healthy human individuals revealed that there was improvement in psychomotor functions.

Stability analysis of discrete-time BAM neural networks based on standard neural network models

To facilitate stability analysis of discrete-time bidirectional associative memory (BAM) neural networks, they were converted into novel neural network models, termed standard neural network models (SNNMs), which interconnect linear dynamic systems and bounded static nonlinear operators. By combining a number of different Lyapunov functionals with S-procedure, some useful criteria of global asymptotic stability and global exponential stability of the equilibrium points of SNNMs were derived. These stability conditions were formulated as linear matrix inequalities (LMIs). So global stability of the discrete-time BAM neural networks could be analyzed by using the stability results of the SNNMs. Compared to the existing stability analysis methods, the proposed approach is easy to implement, less conservative, and is applicable to other recurrent neural networks.