Combination of vegetable soup and glucan demonstrates synergistic effects on macrophage-mediated immune responses

Vegetable soup (VS), a plant-based functional food, has been used as a traditional folk medicine and is attracting attention for its ability to enhance the immune response. β-Glucan, a well-established and effective immunomodulator, has synergistic effects when used in combination with some bioactive compounds. In the present study, we aimed to evaluate the synergistic immunomodulatory effects of the combination of VS and β-glucan on macrophage-mediated immune responses. β-Glucan was demonstrated to synergistically enhance the VS-stimulated immune response, including the production of interleukin-6, tumor necrosis factor-α, and nitric oxide, mainly through the mitogen-activated protein kinase pathway in macrophages. In addition, this combination has the potential for further development in functional foods with immune-enhancing activity.Supplementary InformationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s10068-021-00888-x.     

Multiple Empirical Kernel Learning with Majority Projection for imbalanced problems

Traditional Multiple Empirical Kernel Learning (MEKL) expands the expressions of the sample and brings better classification ability by using different empirical kernels to map the original data space into multiple kernel spaces. To make MEKL suit for the imbalanced problems, this paper introduces a weight matrix and a regularization term into MEKL. The weight matrix assigns high misclassification cost to the minority samples to balanced misclassification cost between minority and majority class. The regularization term named Majority Projection (MP) is used to make the classification hyperplane fit the distribution shape of majority samples and enlarge the between-class distance of minority and majority class. The contributions of this work are: (i) assigning high cost to minority samples to deal with imbalanced problems, (ii) introducing a new regularization term to concern the property of data distribution, (iii) and modifying the original PAC-Bayes bound to test the error upper bound of MEKL-MP. Through analyzing the experimental results, the proposed MEKL-MP is well suited to the imbalanced problems and has lower generalization risk in accordance with the value of PAC-Bayes bound.     

Common due date assignment scheduling for a no-wait flowshop with convex resource allocation and learning effect

This article addresses the no-wait flowshop scheduling problem with simultaneous consideration of common due date assignment, convex resource allocation and learning effect in a two machine setting. The processing time of each job can be controlled by its position in a sequence and also by allocating extra resource, which is a convex function of the amount of a common continuously divisible resource allocated to the job. The objective is to determine the optimal common due date, the resource allocation and the schedule of jobs such that the total earliness, tardiness and common due date cost (the total resource consumption cost) are minimized under the constraint condition that the total resource consumption cost (the total earliness, tardiness and common due date cost) is limited. Polynomial time algorithms are developed for two versions of the problem.     

面向不平衡数据流的自适应加权在线超限学习机算法

一般的在线学习算法对不平衡数据流的分类识别会遇到较大困难,特别是当数据流发生概念漂移时,对其进行分类会变得更困难.文中提出面向不平衡数据流的自适应加权在线超限学习机算法,自动调整实时到达的训练样本的惩罚参数,达到在线学习不平衡数据流的目的.文中算法可以适用于不同偏斜程度的静态数据流的在线学习和发生概念漂移时数据流的在线学习.理论分析和在多个真实数据流上的实验表明文中算法的正确性和有效性.     

基于PU学习的链接预测方法

基于分类的链接预测方法中,由于链接未知节点对的大规模性与不确定性,选择可靠负例成为构造链接预测分类器的难点问题.为此,文中提出基于正例和无标识样本(PU)学习的链接预测方法.首先,提取节点对的拓扑信息以构造样本集.再利用社区结构确定候选负例的分布,基于分布进行多次欠采样,获得多个候选负例子集,集成多个负例集与正例集中构建的分类器选择可靠负例.最后基于正例与可靠负例构造链接预测分类器.在4个网络数据集上的实验表明文中方法预测结果较优.     

基于多尺度高斯核的分布式正则化回归学习算法

针对工业、信息等领域出现的基于较大规模、非平稳变化复杂数据的回归问题,已有算法在计算成本及拟合效果方面无法同时满足要求.因此,文中提出基于多尺度高斯核的分布式正则化回归学习算法.算法中的假设空间为多个具有不同尺度的高斯核生成的再生核Hilbert空间的和空间.考虑到整个数据集划分的不同互斥子集波动程度不同,建立不同组合系数核函数逼近模型.利用最小二乘正则化方法同时独立求解各逼近模型.最后,通过对所得的各个局部估计子加权合成得到整体逼近模型.在2个模拟数据集和4个真实数据集上的实验表明,文中算法既能保证较优的拟合性能,又能降低运行时间.     

基于结构化遮挡编码和极限学习机的局部遮挡人脸识别

提出使用结构化遮挡编码（SOC）结合极限学习机（ELM）的算法来处理人脸识别中的遮挡问题。首先，使用SOC去除图像上的遮挡物，将遮挡物体与人脸分离开；同时，通过局部性约束字典（LCD）来估计遮挡物的位置，建立遮挡字典和人脸字典。然后，将建立好的人脸字典矩阵进行归一化处理，并利用ELM对归一化的数据进行分类识别。最后，在AR人脸库上进行的仿真实验结果表明，所提方法对不同遮挡物和不同区域遮挡的图像具有较好的识别率和鲁棒性。     

基于ELM的英语教学质量评价研究

对英语教学质量实施科学化的评价关系到英语教学质量的提升,为减少主观因素的影响,本文提出一种ELM的教学质量评价方法,该种方法将可以在很大程度上提高教学质量评价的精度。对影响英语教学质量的12个指标进行打分,以此作为ELM的输入,同时将英语教学质量的综合得分作为ELM的输出。评价结果表明,基于EIM的英语教学质量评价结果比SVM、BP具有了很大程度的提升,为实施英语教学质量的评价提供了参考。     

Microenvironment and related genes predict outcomes of patients with cervical cancer: evidence from TCGA and bioinformatic analysis

Cervical cancer (CESC) is one of the most common cancers and affects the female genital tract. Consistent HPV infection status has been determined to be a vital cause of tumorigenesis. HPV infection may induce changes to the immune system and limit the host’s immune response. Immunotherapy is therefore essential to improving the overall survival of both locally advanced and recurrent CESC patients. Using 304 relevant samples from TCGA, we assessed immune cell function in CESC patients to better understand the status of both tumor micro-environment cells and immune cells in CESC. Functional enrichment analysis, pathway enrichment analysis, and PPI network construction were performed to explore the differentially expressed genes (DEGs). The analysis identified 425 DEGs, which included 295 up-regulated genes and 130 down-regulated genes. We established that upregulation of CCL5 was correlated with significantly better survival, meaning that CCL5 expression could serve as a novel prognostic biomarker for CESC patients. We further focused on CCL5 as a hub gene in CESC, as it had significant correlations with increased numbers of several types of immune cells. Cell-type fractions of M1 macrophages were significantly higher in the high-immune-scores group, which was associated with better overall survival. Finally, we concluded that CCL5 is a promising prognostic biomarker for CESC, as well as a novel chemotherapeutic target.     

Functions of ULK1 in autophagy and non-autophagy pathways and its implications in human physiology and disease

ULK1 (unc-51 like autophagy activating kinase 1), a mammalian serine/threonine kinase, is a key component of autophagy initiation complex and helps to induce all types of autophagy. Canonical autophagy is a process in which, through the interactions of a series of autophagy-related proteins, damaged organelles or misfolded proteins are engulfed by autophagosomes and then merged with lysosomes to be degraded. Thus, canonical autophagy is an important constituent part of the cellular “quality control.” Besides, accumulating evidence indicates that ULK1 exerts autophagy-independent effects in a cell-specific manner. For example, ULK1 facilitates neurite elongation through the regulation of endoplasmic reticulum (ER)–Golgi trafficking in neurons, stimulates phosphopentose pathway to help NADPH (nicotinamide adenine dinucleotide phosphate hydrogen) production, and acts as a duplex regulator in type I IFN (type I interferon) induced innate immune response. Considering the importance and diversity of ULK1 in various biological processes, this review aims to present a comprehensive overview of autophagy and non-autophagy related functions of ULK1 in a variety of human physiological, pathological, and disease processes.