A Neural Syntactic Language Model

This paper presents a study of using neural probabilistic models in a syntactic based language model. The neural probabilistic model makes use of a distributed representation of the items in the conditioning history, and is powerful in capturing long dependencies. Employing neural network based models in the syntactic based language model enables it to use efficiently the large amount of information available in a syntactic parse in estimating the next word in a string. Several scenarios of integrating neural networks in the syntactic based language model are presented, accompanied by the derivation of the training procedures involved. Experiments on the UPenn Treebank and the Wall Street Journal corpus show significant improvements in perplexity and word error rate over the baseline SLM. Furthermore, comparisons with the standard and neural net based N-gram models with arbitrarily long contexts show that the syntactic information is in fact very helpful in estimating the word string probability. Overall, our neural syntactic based model achieves the best published results in perplexity and WER for the given data sets.This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under grant No. IIS-0085940.Editors: Dan Roth and Pascale Fung     

Comparative study of plasma position measurements using multipole moments and discrete magnetic probes methods on IR-T1 tokamak

In this paper, we present a comparative study for estimating plasma column displacement using multipole moments and discrete magnetic probes methods. It is shown that multipole moments method gives a better performance in the real time determination of the plasma column displacement in IR-T1 tokamak.     

Concurrent development and verification of an all‐software baseband for satellite ground operations

Communication systems are adopting all‐software architectures, because of their scalability, extensibility, flexibility, and cost‐effectiveness. This paper introduces a concurrent approach to the development and verification of baseband systems for satellite ground operations based on the behaviour‐driven development methodology. The open‐source GNU Radio development kit is used for developing the software‐defined radio baseband signal processing, as well as simulating the satellite and realistic channel impairments. The system performance at the end shows deviations of less than 1 dB with respect to the ideal performance and the Green Book standards specified by the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems.     

Task scheduling,resource provisioning,and load balancing on scientific workflows using parallel SARSA reinforcement learning agents and genetic algorithm

The Journal of Supercomputing - Cloud computing is one of the most popular distributed environments, in which, multiple powerful and heterogeneous resources are used by different user applications....     

Surface modification of polyurethane via creating a biocompatible superhydrophilic nanostructured layer: role of surface chemistry and structure

Advanced surface modification approaches of biomaterials alongside the advent of sophisticated analytical techniques have provided a great opportunity to understand how the physicochemical characteristics of materials determine cell–surface dynamics at molecular and atomic scale. However, there are still many contradictory reports, which are mainly due to inadequate information about the role of the two parameters of surface chemistry and structure and their synergistic effect as an adequate predictor of biological performance. Here, surface parameters were altered by grafting of poly ethylene glycol (PEG) on polyurethane (PU) surfaces through a superhydrophilic modification method. In this study, surface modification of PU films by PEG thin layer via grafting technique and TiO2 nanoparticle entrapment in the brush polymers was investigated. The surface modification led to a reduction in protein adsorption and bacterial attachment by 8.7 times and 71% respectively with no cytotoxicity effect on HeLa cells. It was also observed that when PU surface became superhydrophilic the bacterial adhesion becomes independent of bacterium type. In general, it was observed that the impact of topographical changes on the biocompatibility and biofilm formation becomes significantly more profound than that of the surface chemistry alteration.     

Mixed continuous/binary quantum-inspired learning system with non-negative least square optimisation for automated design of regularised ensemble extreme learning machines

In this paper, a hybrid quantum-inspired evolutionary algorithm (QIEA) is proposed to automatically design regularised ensemble extreme learning machines (EELMs). Quantum evolutionary computing is a relatively recent spot-lighted concept which takes advantage from both the evolutionary and quantum computing laws. In general, QIEAs have been proven to be really powerful for optimising complex engineering tasks. The fascinating trait of observation operator in QIEA enables us to transform the quantum bits to both the binary and continuous spaces. Here, the authors present a mix continuous/binary version of QIEA, to find out whether it is suited for designing regularised EELMs. Indeed, the design process of EELM is conducted at two different levels, i.e. hyper and low levels. At the low level, some novel criteria are presented in the form of penalty functions to enable the optimiser searching for parsimonious, compact and accurate regularised extreme learning machines, as individual components of the ensemble. At the hyper-level, the non-negative least square error optimisation technique is utilised to deterministically find the most eligible components for designing the ensemble. Through extensive numerical experiments, the authors demonstrate that the proposed method is really efficient for the automated design of EELM identifiers.     

Aggregation mechanism of bovine serum albumin based on collision factor by the population balance conservation law

This paper discusses a novel approach for exploring the aggregation mechanism of bovine serum albumin using collision factor. The population balance equation consisting of aggregation term was developed and solved by the moment method. Different experiments were implemented to account for effective parameters on protein aggregation and to measure variations in average size of aggregates formed in a time interval. This was done by taking pictures with a CCD camera on a sterio microscope. The pictures were exported to image processing software to analyze average number and size of aggregates. The collision factor appearing in population balance equation was optimized and declared as a global term.     

Co-delivery of paclitaxel and α-tocopherol succinate by novel chitosan-based polymeric micelles for improving micellar stability and efficacious combination therapy

The aim of this study was to develop chitosan derivative polymeric micelles for co-delivery of paclitaxel (PTX) and α-tocopherol succinate (α-TS) to the cancer cells to improve the therapeutic efficiency and reduce side effects of PTX. In this study, amphiphilic tocopheryl succinate-grafted chitosan oligosaccharide was synthesized and physically loaded by PTX and α-TS with entrapment efficiency of 67.9% and 73.2%, respectively. Physical incorporation of α-TS into the micelles increased the hydrophobic interaction between PTX and the micelles core, which improved micelle stability, reduced the micelle size and also sustained the PTX release from the micelles. The mean particle size and zeta potential of αTS/PTX-loaded micelles were about 133?nm and +25.2?mV, respectively, and PTX release was completed during 6–9?d from the micelles. Furthermore, the cytotoxicity of α-TS/PTX-loaded micelles against human ovarian cancer cell line cancer cell in vitro was higher than that of PTX-loaded micelles and the free drug solution. Half maximal inhibitory concentration values of PTX after 48-h exposure of the cells to the PTX-loaded micelles modified and unmodified with α-TS were 110 and 188?ng/ml, respectively.     

Holistic system modeling in mechatronics

This paper outlines an alternative modeling scheme for mechatronic systems, as a basis for their concurrent design. The approach divides a mechatronic system into three generic subsystems, namely generalized executive, sensory and control, and links them together utilizing a combination of bond graphs and block diagrams. It considers the underlying principles of a multidisciplinary system, and studies the flow of energy and information throughout its different constituents. The first and second laws of thermodynamics are reformulated for mechatronic systems, and as a result three holistic design criteria, namely energy,entropy and agility, are defined. These criteria are formulated using the bond graph representation of a mechatronic system. As a case study, the three criteria are employed separately for concurrent design of a five degree-of-freedom industrial robot manipulator.