Binding conformation prediction between human acetylcholinesterase and cytochrome c using molecular modeling methods

The acetylcholinesterase (AChE) is important to terminate acetylcholine-mediated neurotransmission at cholinergic synapses. The pivotal role of AChE in apoptosome formation through the interactions with cytochrome c (Cyt c) was demonstrated in recent study. In order to investigate the proper binding conformation between the human AChE (hAChE) and human Cyt c (hCyt c), macro-molecular docking simulation was performed using DOT 2.0 program. The hCyt c was bound to peripheral anionic site (PAS) on hAChE and binding mode of the docked conformation was very similar to the reported crystal structure of the AChE and fasciculin-II (Fas-II) complex. Two 10ns molecular dynamics (MD) simulations were carried out to refine the binding mode of docked structure and to observe the differences of the binding conformations between the absent (Apo) and presence (Holo) of heme group. The key hydrogen bonding residues between hAChE and hCyt c proteins were found in Apo and Holo systems, as well as each Tyr341 and Trp286 residue of hAChE was participated in cation-pi (π) interactions with Lys79 of hCyt c in Apo and Holo systems, respectively. From the present study, although the final structures of the Apo and Holo systems have similar binding pattern, several differences were investigated in flexibilities, interface interactions, and interface accessible surface areas. Based on these results, we were able to predict the reasonable binding conformation which is indispensable for apoptosome formation.     

Impact of a simple load balancing approach and an incentive-based scheme on MANET performance

Most reactive mobile ad hoc network (MANET) routing protocols such as AODV and DSR do not perform search for new routes until the network topology changes. But, low node mobility does not affect the MANET connectivity and the same routes may be used for a long time. This may cause concentration of traffic on few mobile stations (MSs), which results in congestion and hence longer end-to-end delay. In addition, continuous use of MSs may cause their battery power to get exhausted rapidly. Expiration of MS energy causes disruption of connections traversing through the MSs and could generate many simultaneous new routing requests. Therefore, we propose a load balancing approach called Simple Load Balancing Approach (SLBA), which can be transparently added to any current reactive routing protocol such as AODV and DSR. SLBA minimizes the traffic concentration by allowing each MS to drop RREQ or to give up packet forwarding depending on its own traffic load. Meanwhile, MSs may deliberately give up forwarding packets to save their own energy. For encouraging MSs to volunteer in forwarding packets, we introduce a reward scheme for packet forwarding, named Protocol-Independent Fairness Algorithm (PIFA). We compare the performance of AODV and DSR with and without SLBA and PIFA. Simulation results indicate that SLBA can distribute traffic very well and improve the MANET performance. PIFA is also observed to prevent MANET partitioning and any performance degradation due to selfish nodes.     

Buffer management in a real-time shared disks cluster

A great deal of research indicates that the shared disks (SD) cluster is suitable to high performance transaction processing. However, the aggregation of SD cluster with real-time processing has not been investigated. By adopting cluster technology, the real-time services will be highly available and can exploit internode parallelism. In this paper, we consider buffer management issues in a real-time SD cluster. We first propose a real-time buffer coherency algorithm that exploits inherent characteristics of real-time applications and SD cluster. Then we extend traditional buffer replacement algorithms to the real-time SD cluster. They emphasize specific attributes of buffer pages to capitalize locality of references, transaction deadline, and affinity-based routing. We evaluate the performance of the proposed algorithms under a wide variety of transaction workloads and system configurations.     

Energy- and Latency-Efficient Processing of Full-Text Searches on a Wireless Broadcast Stream

In wireless mobile computing environments, broadcasting is an effective and scalable technique to disseminate information to a massive number of clients, wherein the energy usage and latency are considered major concerns. This paper presents an indexing scheme for the energy- and latency-efficient processing of full-text searches over the wireless broadcast data stream. Although a lot of access methods and index structures have been proposed in the past for full-text searches, all of them are targeted for data in disk storage, not wireless broadcast channels. For full-text searches on a wireless broadcast stream, we firstly introduce a naive, inverted list-style indexing method, where inverted lists are placed in front of the data on the wireless channel. In order to reduce the latency overhead, we propose a two-level indexing method which adds another level of index structure to the basic inverted list-style index. In addition, we propose a replication strategy of the index list and index tree to further improve the latency performance. We analyze the performance of the proposed indexing scheme with respect to the latency and energy usage measures, and show the optimality of index replication. The correctness of the analysis is demonstrated through simulation experiments, and the effectiveness of the proposed scheme is shown by implementing a real wireless information delivery system.     

Organic wavelength‐converting‐film‐based hybrid planar white light‐emitting diodes

Abstract— In this study, organic wavelength‐converting films (WCFs) applied to InGaN blue LED‐based hybrid planar WLED has been fabricated. The organic dye layer in the WCF was formed between the upper and bottom polymer sheets by using a simple roll‐laminating technique. Subsequently, the hybrid planar WLEDs have been fabricated based upon these films. The luminous efficiency of green WCF‐based hybrid planar WLEDs with a single blue LED chip was 34.6 lm/W and that of red‐WCF‐assisted green WCF‐based hybrid planar WLEDs was 27.3 lm/W under 20 mA. The use of WCF to fabricate hybrid planar WLEDs showed better stability than that of directly coating organic color‐convergence materials (CCMs) on the LED chips. It only decreased to about 10% of the initial wavelength‐converting intensity after 1 hour of continual operation at 20 mA.     

Multiscale Bayesian texture segmentation using neural networks and Markov random fields

This paper presents a wavelet-based texture segmentation method using multilayer perceptron (MLP) networks and Markov random fields (MRF) in a multi-scale Bayesian framework. Inputs and outputs of MLP networks are constructed to estimate a posterior probability. The multi-scale features produced by multi-level wavelet decompositions of textured images are classified at each scale by maximum a posterior (MAP) classification and the posterior probabilities from MLP networks. An MRF model is used in order to model the prior distribution of each texture class, and a factor, which fuses the classification information through scales and acts as a guide for the labeling decision, is incorporated into the MAP classification of each scale. By fusing the multi-scale MAP classifications sequentially from coarse to fine scales, our proposed method gets the final and improved segmentation result at the finest scale. In this fusion process, the MRF model serves as the smoothness constraint and the Gibbs sampler acts as the MAP classifier. Our texture segmentation method was applied to segmentation of gray-level textured images. The proposed segmentation method shows better performance than texture segmentation using the hidden Markov trees (HMT) model and the HMTseg algorithm, which is a multi-scale Bayesian image segmentation algorithm.     

Design of moving magnet type pickup actuator using inserted coil

Recently, the demand of the information storage devices with large storage capacity such as Blu-ray Disc and high-definition television is increased. In keeping with this trend, the optical storage devices are also required to have high data transfer rate and large storage capacity. To satisfy these requirements, the actuator for optical disc drive should have a high servo bandwidth to compensate the vibration of optical disc. The servo bandwidth is limited by some flexible modes of the actuator, thus it is essential to make these frequencies of flexible modes to high frequency region. The frequency of flexible mode depends on materials and shape. Stiff materials and simple shape is useful to increase the frequency of flexible mode. In this paper, we suggested a moving magnet type actuator having flexible modes which are happened at high frequency region. Generally, the moving magnet type actuator has an advantage to increase the frequency of flexible mode because the moving magnet type actuator has simple structure and the Young’s modulus of magnet is high. However, large moving mass and inefficiency of Electromagnetic (EM) circuit cut down driving sensitivities of actuator. To improve driving sensitivities, we designed the model with the closed EM circuit for tracking actuation. The design of experiments (DOE) procedure is applied to get proper design parameters and the variable metric method (VMM) which is a technique of optimization is used to improve driving sensitivity. The lens holder is also improved based on the optimization result of EM circuit. And to make up for the low efficiency of EM circuit, the thermal stability is checked on condition that the input current is very high. At last, the final design of moving magnet type actuator is suggested and it is verified that the driving performance and the structural stiffness of the final design is sufficient.     

A frame‐based EM‐simulation for design of LC oscillator with MoM capacitor banks

This article presents a simulation method for the design of a digitally controlled oscillator (DCO). Electromagnetic (EM) simulations are essential and inevitable for modern LC oscillator design. Although EM‐simulators provide high accuracy, the EM‐simulation time is very long when metal‐oxide‐metal (MoM) capacitors are present. The proposed frame‐based EM‐simulation can significantly reduce the EM‐simulation time even in the presence of MoM capacitors without influencing the accuracy. To verify the proposed method, a DCO was fabricated using a 55‐nm CMOS process. Measurements of the DCO are in good agreement with the frame‐based post‐layout simulation results. In addition, the DCO has good performances with a low power consumption of approximately 0.68 mW.     

A low‐complexity design for distributed containment control of networked pure‐feedback systems and its application to fault‐tolerant control

This paper addresses a low‐complexity distributed containment control problem and its extension to fault‐tolerant control for networked nonlinear pure‐feedback systems under a directed graph. The multiple dynamic leaders are neighbors of only a subset of the followers described by completely non‐affine multi‐input multi‐output pure‐feedback dynamics. It is assumed that all followers' nonlinearities are heterogeneous and unknown. The proposed containment controller is implemented by using only error surfaces integrated by performance bounding functions and does not require any differential equations for compensating uncertainties and faults. Thus, compared with the previous containment control approaches for multi‐agent systems with unknown non‐affine nonlinearities, the distributed containment control structure is simplified. In addition, it is shown that the proposed control scheme can be applied to the fault‐tolerant containment control problem in the presence of unexpected system and actuator faults, without reconstructing any control structure. It is shown from Lyapunov stability theorem that all followers nearly converge to the dynamic convex hull spanned by the dynamic leaders and the containment control errors are preserved within certain given predefined bounds. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Adaptive Output Feedback Control of Flexible-Joint Robots Using Neural Networks: Dynamic Surface Design Approach

In this paper, we propose a new robust output feedback control approach for flexible-joint electrically driven (FJED) robots via the observer dynamic surface design technique. The proposed method only requires position measurements of the FJED robots. To estimate the link and actuator velocity information of the FJED robots with model uncertainties, we develop an adaptive observer using self-recurrent wavelet neural networks (SRWNNs). The SRWNNs are used to approximate model uncertainties in both robot (link) dynamics and actuator dynamics, and all their weights are trained online. Based on the designed observer, the link position tracking controller using the estimated states is induced from the dynamic surface design procedure. Therefore, the proposed controller can be designed more simply than the observer backstepping controller. From the Lyapunov stability analysis, it is shown that all signals in a closed-loop adaptive system are uniformly ultimately bounded. Finally, the simulation results on a three-link FJED robot are presented to validate the good position tracking performance and robustness of the proposed control system against payload uncertainties and external disturbances.