Ferritin Protein Regulates the Degradation of Iron Oxide Nanoparticles

Proteins implicated in iron homeostasis are assumed to be also involved in the cellular processing of iron oxide nanoparticles. In this work, the role of an endogenous iron storage protein—namely the ferritin—is examined in the remediation and biodegradation of magnetic iron oxide nanoparticles. Previous in vivo studies suggest the intracellular transfer of the iron ions released during the degradation of nanoparticles to endogenous protein cages within lysosomal compartments. Here, the capacity of ferritin cages to accommodate and store the degradation products of nanoparticles is investigated in vitro in the physiological acidic environment of the lysosomes. Moreover, it is questioned whether ferritin proteins can play an active role in the degradation of the nanoparticles. The magnetic, colloidal, and structural follow‐up of iron oxide nanoparticles and proteins in lysosome‐like medium confirms the efficient remediation of potentially harmful iron ions generated by nanoparticles within ferritins. The presence of ferritins, however, delays the degradation of particles due to a complex colloidal behavior of the mixture in acidic medium. This study exemplifies the important implications of intracellular proteins in processes of degradation and metabolization of iron oxide nanoparticles.     

The use of coevolution and the artificial immune system for ensemble learning

This paper presents two new approaches for constructing an ensemble of neural networks (NN) using coevolution and the artificial immune system (AIS). These approaches are extensions of the CLONal Selection Algorithm for building ENSembles (CLONENS) algorithm. An explicit diversity promotion technique was added to CLONENS and a novel coevolutionary approach to build neural ensembles is introduced, whereby two populations representing the gates and the individual NN are coevolved. The former population is responsible for defining the ensemble size and selecting the members of the ensemble. This population is evolved using the differential evolution algorithm. The latter population supplies the best individuals for building the ensemble, which is evolved by AIS. Results show that it is possible to automatically define the ensemble size being also possible to find smaller ensembles with good generalization performance on the tested benchmark regression problems. More interestingly, the use of the diversity measure during the evolutionary process did not necessarily improve generalization. In this case, diverse ensembles may be found using only implicit diversity promotion techniques.     

Robust admissibility and admissibilisation of uncertain discrete singular time-delay systems

This paper is concerned with the characterisation of robust admissibility and admissibilisation for uncertain discrete-time singular system with interval time-varying delay. Considering the norm-bounded uncertainty and the interval time-varying delay, a new comparison model is introduced to transform the original singular system into two connected subsystems. After this transformation, a singular system without uncertainty and delay can be handled by the Lyapunov–Krasovskii functional method. By virtue of the scaled small gain theorem, an admissibility condition of the original singular system is proposed in terms of linear matrix inequalities. Moreover, the problem of robust admissibilisation of uncertain discrete singular time-varying system is also studied by iterative linear matrix inequality algorithm with initial condition optimisation. Several numerical examples are used to illustrate that the results are less conservative than existing ones.     

Containment control of multi-agent systems with unbounded communication delays

In this paper, we address the containment control problem for multi-agent systems under heterogeneous unbounded communication delays with emphasis on the convergence rate analysis. Different from most works on multi-agent systems, we resort to a viewpoint from the area of positive delay systems. We first cast the containment control problem into the stability analysis of an associated error system. In order to capture the convergence rate, we introduce a nondecreasing positive function whose reciprocal represents the decay rate of the associated error system. Under the assumption that each follower has access to at least one leader and some mild hypotheses on the communication delays, an explicit condition is given to characterise the decay rate of the associated error system in terms of linear programming. In addition, we provide several special cases when the communication delays are restricted by linear, sublinear and logarithmic growth rates, respectively. Finally, through numerical examples, it is shown that the convergence rate is dominated by the delays being the highest order infinitely large quantity.     

An Internet-based negotiation server for e-commerce

This paper describes the design and implementation of a replicable, Internet-based negotiation server for conducting bargaining-type negotiations between enterprises involved in e-commerce and e-business. Enterprises can be buyers and sellers of products/services or participants of a complex supply chain engaged in purchasing, planning, and scheduling. Multiple copies of our server can be installed to complement the services of Web servers. Each enterprise can install or select a trusted negotiation server to represent his/her interests. Web-based GUI tools are used during the build-time registration process to specify the requirements, constraints, and rules that represent negotiation policies and strategies, preference scoring of different data conditions, and aggregation methods for deriving a global cost-benefit score for the item(s) under negotiation. The registration information is used by the negotiation servers to automatically conduct bargaining type negotiations on behalf of their clients. In this paper, we present the architecture of our implementation as well as a framework for automated negotiations, and describe a number of communication primitives which are used in the underlying negotiation protocol. A constraint satisfaction processor (CSP) is used to evaluate a negotiation proposal or counterproposal against the registered requirements and constraints of a client company. In case of a constraint violation, an event is posted to trigger the execution of negotiation strategic rules, which either automatically relax the violated constraint, ask for human intervention, invoke an application, or perform other remedial operations. An Event-Trigger-Rule (ETR) server is used to manage events, triggers, and rules. Negotiation strategic rules can be added or modified at run-time. A cost-benefit analysis component is used to perform quantitative analysis of alternatives. The use of negotiation servers to conduct automated negotiation has been demonstrated in the context of an integrated supply chain scenario. Received: 30 October 2000 / Accepted: 12 January 2001 Published online: 2 August 2001     

A new criterion of delay-dependent asymptotic stability for Hopfield neural networks with time delay.

In this brief, the problem of global asymptotic stability for delayed Hopfield neural networks (HNNs) is investigated. A new criterion of asymptotic stability is derived by introducing a new kind of Lyapunov-Krasovskii functional and is formulated in terms of a linear matrix inequality (LMI), which can be readily solved via standard software. This new criterion based on a delay fractioning approach proves to be much less conservative and the conservatism could be notably reduced by thinning the delay fractioning. An example is provided to show the effectiveness and the advantage of the proposed result.     

A framework of interaction costs in information visualization

Interaction cost is an important but poorly understood factor in visualization design. We propose a framework of interaction costs inspired by Norman’s Seven Stages of Action to facilitate study. From 484 papers, we collected 61 interaction-related usability problems reported in 32 user studies and placed them into our framework of seven costs: (1) Decision costs to form goals; (2) System-power costs to form system operations; (3) Multiple input mode costs to form physical sequences; (4) Physical-motion costs to execute sequences; (5) Visual-cluttering costs to perceive state; (6) View-change costs to interpret perception; (7) State-change costs to evaluate interpretation. We also suggested ways to narrow the gulfs of execution (2–4) and evaluation (5–7) based on collected reports. Our framework suggests a need to consider decision costs (1) as the gulf of goal formation.