Development of a Multi-Epitope Vaccine for Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae and Evaluation of Its Immune Responses in Mice and Piglets

Mycoplasma hyopneumoniae (Mhp), the primary pathogen causing Mycoplasma pneumonia of swine (MPS), brings massive economic losses worldwide. Genomic variability and post-translational protein modification can enhance the immune evasion of Mhp, which makes MPS prone to recurrent outbreaks on farms, even with vaccination or other treatments. The reverse vaccinology pipeline has been developed as an attractive potential method for vaccine development due to its high efficiency and applicability. In this study, a multi-epitope vaccine for Mhp was developed, and its immune responses were evaluated in mice and piglets. Genomic core proteins of Mhp were retrieved through pan-genome analysis, and four immunodominant antigens were screened by host homologous protein removal, membrane protein screening, and virulence factor identification. One immunodominant antigen, {"type":"entrez-protein","attrs":{"text":"AAV27984.1","term_id":"53987783","term_text":"AAV27984.1"}}AAV27984.1 (membrane nuclease), was expressed by E. coli and named rMhp597. For epitope prioritization, 35 B-cell-derived epitopes were identified from the four immunodominant antigens, and 10 MHC-I and 6 MHC-II binding epitopes were further identified. The MHC-I/II binding epitopes were merged and combined to produce recombinant proteins MhpMEV and MhpMEVC6His, which were used for animal immunization and structural analysis, respectively. Immunization of mice and piglets demonstrated that MhpMEV could induce humoral and cellular immune responses. The mouse serum antibodies could detect all 11 synthetic epitopes, and the piglet antiserum suppressed the nuclease activity of rMhp597. Moreover, piglet serum antibodies could also detect cultured Mhp strain 168. In summary, this study provides immunoassay results for a multi-epitope vaccine derived from the reverse vaccinology pipeline, and offers an alternative vaccine for MPS.     

应用长岩心流动试验仪评价酸化缓蚀剂

利用长岩心流动试验仪,研究酸化缓蚀剂对岩心损害程度及深度的评价,以便为筛选酸化缓蚀剂提供更全面的参数依据．文中对仪器试验原理进行介绍,选取了典型试验进行分析,提出了选择缓蚀剂必备条件．     

未来弹性与AES

介绍了未来弹性的概念,对将未来弹性引入AES评估标准的优点进行了探讨,以来来弹性的观点分析了第二轮AES候选算法的遴选并提出了具体建议。     

An artificial neural network based decision support system for solving the buffer allocation problem in reliable production lines

One of the major design problems in the context of manufacturing systems is the well-known Buffer Allocation Problem (BAP). This problem arises from the cost involved in terms of space requirements on the production floor and the need to keep in mind the decoupling impact of buffers in increasing the throughput of the line. Production line designers often need to solve the Buffer Allocation Problem (BAP), but this can be difficult, especially for large production lines, because the task is currently highly time consuming. Designers would be interested in a tool that would rapidly provide the solution to the BAP, even if only a near optimal solution is found, especially when they have to make their decisions at an operational level (e.g. hours). For decisions at a strategic level (e.g. years), such a tool would provide preliminary results that would be useful, before attempting to find the optimal solution with a specific search algorithm.     

Technology evaluation through the use of interval type-2 fuzzy sets and systems

Even though fuzzy logic is one of the most common methodologies for matching different kind of data sources, there is no study which uses this methodology for matching publication and patent data within a technology evaluation framework according to the authors’ best knowledge. In order to fill this gap and to demonstrate the usefulness of fuzzy logic in technology evaluation, this study proposes a novel technology evaluation framework based on an advanced/improved version of fuzzy logic, namely; interval type-2 fuzzy sets and systems (IT2FSSs). This framework uses patent data obtained from the European Patent Office (EPO) and publication data obtained from Web of Science/Knowledge (WoS/K) to evaluate technology groups with respect to their trendiness. Since it has been decided to target technology groups, patent and publication data sources are matched through the use IT2FSSs. The proposed framework enables us to make a strategic evaluation which directs considerations to use-inspired basic researches, hence achieving science-based technological improvements which are more beneficial for society. A European Classification System (ECLA) class – H01-Basic Electric Elements – is evaluated by means of the proposed framework in order to demonstrate how it works. The influence of the use of IT2FSSs is investigated by comparison with the results of its type-1 counterpart. This method shows that the use of type-2 fuzzy sets, i.e. handling more uncertainty, improves technology evaluation outcomes.     

Transition Motion from Ladder Climbing to Brachiation with Optimal Load-Allocation Control

Abstract

This paper describes the transition motion from ladder climbing to brachiation for a multi-locomotion robot (MLR). The MLR has versatile modes of locomotion, such as biped walking, quadruped walking, brachiation and ladder climbing. The transition is a challenging motion, because the environmental boundaries change and the robot has to switch the form of its locomotion depending on its surroundings, situations and purposes. The robot supports itself with three end-effectors that maintain its stability, while one hand transfers from a rung on the vertical ladder to a new rung behind the robot for brachiation. A closed kinematic chain is formed by the robot links and the ladder. In this case, if the number of position-controlled active joints is greater than the number of the chain’s degrees of freedom, an internal stress appears because of unavoidable position errors. The huge internal stress may lead some motors to become overloaded. Since the safety of each motor is very important for a serial-link robot, a load-allocation algorithm is proposed to balance the loads of the joint motors. The algorithm is verified through experiments.     

配电网可靠性评估方法的研究

将树的操作方法融入到馈线分区和网络等值的思想中,提出一种能快速实现复杂配电网可靠性评估的分区等值法.首先运用改进的后序遍历法快速形成最小故障区,在故障解析时以最小故障区为单位进行向上和向下等效.在等效过程中利用最小故障区中根节点承上启下的作用,将各区之间的故障影响关系用根节点的等效参数来表示,从而解决了馈线分区,等效节...     

热轧带肋钢筋拉伸试验结果的不确定度评定

根据钢筋检验及评定标准,对3件热轧带肋钢筋用直接评定法进行了强度检验结果的不确定度评定,给出了合成及扩展不确定度的评定结果。     

Introducing concurrency in sequential Java via laws

Nowadays multi-core processors can be found everywhere. It is well known that one way of improving performance is by parallelization. In this paper we propose a parallelization strategy for Java using algebraic laws. We perform an experiment with two benchmarks and show that our strategy produces a gain similar to a specialized parallel version provided by the Java Grande Benchmark (JGB).     

A comparison of the four prominent user-based methods for evaluating the usability of computer software

The aim was to examine four prominent user-based computer software usability evaluation methods. Four evaluation methods (logged data, questionnaire, inter view, and verbal protocol analysis) were used to evaluate three different business software types (spreadsheet, word processor, and database) using a between-groups design, involving 148 individuals of mixed age and gender. Comparisons were made to examine the efficiency of each evaluation method in terms of its ability to highlight usability problems both between and within the evaluation strategy. Here, the verbal protocol analysis was found to be most efficient. The possibility of further efficiency gains by using two evaluation methods was also examined, where it was found that no statistically significant improvement was obtained over the verbal protocol analysis used by itself. Ways in which the utility of the methods may be enhanced was also discussed.