Complementary Functions Research Articles

Stabilizing Controller Design for Nonlinear Systems Based on the H∞ Norm and Prefilter

This study analyzes the design of stabilization controllers for nonlinear systems. The proposed method is based on the synthesis control method of the H∞ norm and prefilter, which is a low-pass filter. The low-pass filter is coupled to structure an open-loop transfer function such that sensitivity and complementary sensitivity functions possess desirable frequency characteristics. The H∞ controller, which was designed to validate the proposed controller method, was applied to a representative nonlinear system of an inverted pendulum system, and results were compared with the with that of a PID controller application. Simulation results show that the designed controller well adhered to control objectives while reducing the influence of modeling error and noise.

Freshwater snail and shrimp differentially affect water turbidity and benthic primary producers

Benthic macroinvertebrates play key roles in shallow aquatic ecosystems and can contribute substantially to aquatic food webs. However, how macroinvertebrates with different behaviors (for example, pertaining to locomotion, foraging and burrowing) impact water quality and primary producers has not been fully explored. Here, we performed two consecutive microcosm experiments to test the effects of (1) macroinvertebrates with different behaviors (a low mobility scraper aquatic snail Bellamya aeruginosa and a high mobility shredder freshwater shrimp Macrobrachium nipponense) and (2) different shrimp biomasses on water clarity and the composition of benthic primary producers. The results showed that presence of snails significantly increased the biomass of filamentous green algae and decreased the biomass of periphyton. In contrast, presence of shrimp significantly decreased the biomass of filamentous green algae and increased the biomass of periphyton, and these effects were biomass dependent. Filamentous green algae disappeared when shrimp biomass reached 9.8 ​g ​m−2. No interactive effects of snail and shrimp presence were found. This could be attributed to different food preferences by the two consumers, with snails preferring periphyton (mainly diatoms) and shrimp preferring filamentous green algae. The presence of snails decreased water turbidity, while shrimp increased water turbidity, which showed a hump-shaped response to shrimp biomass with a peak at 24.2 ​g ​m−2. These results are likely because the snail is a low mobility grazer and can filter suspended particles, while the shrimp is a high mobility shredder with burrows, which can strongly disturb sediment. The decrease in water disturbance at high shrimp biomass might be due to food limitation, thus reducing burrowing and foraging activities. Neither snail nor shrimp affected the biomass of H. verticillata, while the biomass of V. spinulosa increased with shrimp biomass. The reason for this could be that shrimp increased nutrient availability and decreased the growth of filamentous green algae that compete with macrophytes. Our study demonstrated that different macroinvertebrates have complementary functions in benthic habitats; thus, maintaining macroinvertebrate diversity is important for shallow aquatic ecosystems. Furthermore, the freshwater shrimp M. nipponense could be a potential consumer to control filamentous green algal blooms in its native range, but their biomass should be taken into consideration.

A semi-analytical method for frictional contact analysis between rock mass and concrete linings

The rock–lining interface typically exhibits a complex frictional contact behavior. Thus far, there has been no analytic method to analyze the frictional contact problems of arbitrary-shaped tunnels with concrete linings. In this work, we propose a novel analytic method to perform the frictional contact analysis of multiple lined tunnels based on the generalized complex variable method. Using two special composite analytic functions, the mechanical field in a multiply-connected domain can be accurately expressed, and the solution to the contact problem can thus be obtained in a closed mathematical form. In the present theoretical framework, the general contact condition is considered, where the contact mode is described using two complementary functions. The basic linear equations are obtained by satisfying the stress and contact boundary conditions at a finite number of discrete points. Since the contact analysis is a highly nonlinear problem, we propose an iterative scheme to determine the contact states at different positions on the rock–lining interface. Finally, a verification example and parametric investigation are performed to demonstrate the effectiveness and practicability of the proposed method.

Kabul, a Forgotten Mughal Capital: Gardens, City, and Court at the Turn of the Sixteenth Century

Abstract Kabul was the seat of Mughal power during the first half of the sixteenth century, and—it is argued here—provided inspiration for the better-known Mughal metropoles of Hindustan. Sources suggest that the topography of Kabul was already well established, along with its major landmarks, decades before Babur made it the seat of his court in 1504. Among these landmarks were three remarkable royal gardens (all Timurid foundations), which performed complementary functions. The one known today as Bagh-i Babur acquired funerary connotations with the burial of Babur’s mother there in 1505, if not earlier. The Bagh-i Shahrara hosted the governor as well as distinguished guests, including widowed or divorced princesses and imperial visitors. The Chaharbagh was the seat of the court. Its functional units included residential quarters for the ruler and the harem, a courtyard of audience, administrative quarters, and service provisions. In this study, Kabul and its gardens are compared with Mughal counterparts in Hindustan, and (more briefly) with Timurid Herat and Safavid Isfahan. This comparison contributes to an understanding of the unique position occupied by gardens in the Timurid realm and in the courts of their Mughal and Safavid successors.

The gravity-driven migration of a drop in an unsteady Stokes flow

The motion of a spherical droplet through a fluid driven by gravity is revisited theoretically. Analytical expressions for the translational velocity of the droplet as well as its internal and external flows coupled at their interface and described by the unsteady Stokes equations are derived combining two-point Padé and Padé-type approximants with the Laplace transform. These expressions, involving scaled complementary error functions, are fast and globally convergent to the exact solutions of the equations. The migration of the droplet depends on three non-dimensional parameters, two of which determine the flow patterns inside and outside, and the last is related to the timescale. The analytical solutions reveal that there is a diffusive shear layer of thickness O(t) on either side of the interface in the early stage. Several plots are made to compare migration velocities of the droplet for different parameter sets and changes in the flow field with time.

Eye-tracking based quantification of the safety of human-machine interfaces of complementary protective system functions

Complementary protective measures are of increasing importance with rising degree of automation. As free robots become part of our daily life in industry, on shop floors and beyond, the overall safety of persons has to be ensured. However, assessing the reliability of complementary safety functions remains a challenge, particularly when humans are in the loop. The paper shows how to use the eye-tracking methodology to gain data for assessing the reliability of the human interaction with machine interfaces for complementary protective measures. The paper first identifies factors relevant for eye-tracking, then selects related eye tracking test parameters and finally provides a systematic procedure to assess both, in particular regarding visibility and susceptibility. The methodology is applied and the parameter selection is validated. It is found that in particular the identified and measured parameters fixation count for area of interest (AOI) and the associated average visit duration can be used to assess the factor perceptibility. The parameter deviation of fixation can thereby be used to assess usability. Based on this, a full-scale eye-tracking assessment is proposed for the reliability of the interaction of humans with the machine interfaces of supplementary protective measures. In summary, the preliminary test run execution shows that eye-tracking technology is a promising method for measuring and quantifying the human reliability when interacting with safety-related human-machine interfaces.

A generic self-assembly approach towards phototheranostics for NIR-II fluorescence imaging and phototherapy

Controllable self-assembly of photonic molecules for precise biomedicine is highly desirable but challenging to prepare multifunctional nano-phototheranostics. Herein, we developed a generic self-assembly approach to design nano-phototheranostics that provides NIR-II fluorescence imaging and phototherapy. We first designed and synthesized two amphiphilic photonic molecules, PEG2000-IR806 and BODIPY. Then, we prepared the co-self-assembled phototheranostic agents, PEG2000-IR806/BODIPY nanoparticles (PIBY NPs). The morphology of the PIBY NPs is controllable by adjusting the ratio of PEG2000-IR806 and BODIPY during self-assembly. The NIR-II fluorescence properties and phototherapy capability of the PIBY NPs were demonstrated in vitro and in vivo. By tuning the ratio of PEG2000-IR806 and BODIPY, the PIBY NPs showed various morphologies (e.g. spherical nanoparticles, nanovesicles and rod-like nanoparticles). The PEG2000-IR806 plays two roles in the co-self-assemblies, one is second near-infrared (NIR-II, 1000–1700 nm) agent, the other is the surfactant for BODIPY encapsulation. The phototherapeutic PIBY NPs all show bright NIR-II fluorescence and effective phototherapeutic (photothermal and photodynamic) properties, which are attributed to IR806 and BODIPY, respectively. The driving force of the self-assembly can be attributed to the electrostatic interaction between NIR806 and BODIPY and their hydrophobicity. The rod-like PIBY NPs (rPIBY NPs) demonstrated a low half inhibitory concentration (IC50) of 3.96 µg/mL on U87MG cells. The NIR-II imaging showed the accumulation of rPIBY NPs in the tumor region. After systemic injection of rPIBY NPs at low dose (0.5 mg/kg), the tumor growth was greatly inhibited upon laser irradiation without noticeable side effects. This study provides a generic self-assembly approach to fabricate NIR-II imaging and phototherapeutic platform for cancer phototheranostics. Statement of significanceNanophototheranostics providing NIR-II fluorescence imaging and phototherapy are expected to play a critical role in modern precision medicine. Controllable self-assembly of optical molecules for the fabrication of efficient nanophototheranostics is highly desirable but challenging. This work reports for the first time the co-assembly of a NIR-II imaging contrast agent and a phototherapeutic agent to yield nanophototheranostics with various morphologies. The design of molecular co-assembly with complementary optical functions can be a generic method for future the development of phototheranostics.

Lca_algebraic: a library bringing symbolic calculus to LCA for comprehensive sensitivity analysis

PurposeIn this paper, we present new tools to ease the analysis of the effect of variability and uncertainty on life cycle assessment (LCA) results.MethodsThe tools consist of a standard protocol and an open-source library: lca_algebraic. This library, written in Python and based on the framework Brightway2 (Mutel in J Open Source Softw 2(12):236, 2017) provides functions to support sensitivity analysis by bringing symbolic calculus to LCA. The use of symbolic calculus eases the definition of parametric inventories and enables a very fast evaluation of impacts by factorizing the background activities. Thanks to this processing speed, a large number of Monte Carlo simulations can be generated to evaluate the variation of the impacts and apply advanced statistic tools such as Sobol indices to quantify the contribution of each parameter to the final variance (Sobol in Math Comput Simul 55(1–3):271–280, 2001). An additional algorithm uses the key parameters, identified from their high Sobol indices, to generate simplified arithmetic models for fast estimates of LCA results.Results and discussionThe protocol and library were validated through their application to the assessment of impacts of mono crystalline photovoltaic (PV) systems. A comprehensive sensitivity analysis was performed based on the protocol and the complementary functions provided by lca_algebraic. The proposed tools helped building a detailed parametric reference LCA model of the PV system to identify the range of variation of multi-criterion LCA results and the key foreground-related parameters explaining these variations. Based on these key parameters, we generated simplified arithmetic models for quick and simple multi-criteria environmental assessments to be used by non-expert LCA users. The resulting models are both compact and aligned with the reference parametric LCA model of crystalline silicon PV systems.ConclusionThis work brings powerful and practical tools to the LCA community to better understand, identify, and quantify the sources of variation of environmental impacts and produce simplified models to spread the use of LCA among non-experts. The library mainly explores the uncertainties of the foreground activities. Further work could also integrate the uncertainty of background activities, described, for example, by pedigree matrices.

In Memoriam: Dr. Edward J. Huth

In MemoriamDecember 2021In Memoriam: Dr. Edward J. HuthFREEChristine Laine, MD, MPHChristine Laine, MD, MPHEditor in Chief, Annals of Internal Medicine Search for more papers by this authorAuthor, Article, and Disclosure Informationhttps://doi.org/10.7326/M21-4344 SectionsAboutVisual AbstractPDF ToolsAdd to favoritesDownload CitationsTrack CitationsPermissions ShareFacebookTwitterLinkedInRedditEmail Annals of Internal Medicine recently received the sad news of the death of Dr. Edward Huth. Dr. Huth served as Editor of the journal from 1971 to 1990 and began his 3 decades of Annals work as Assistant Editor in 1960. I never had the privilege of working with Dr. Huth, but many who did speak fondly of him and extol his many contributions to the world of scholarly medical publishing. A tribute to Dr. Huth published in Annals at the time of his retirement chronicles these contributions (1). This tribute notes:The contents of medical journals have evolved, during Ed's long tenure, from loose collections of personal observations of the clinical condition to highly complex, highly structured articles that serve two very different but complementary functions: the presentation of good science on the one hand and a forum for informed discussion of health policy on the other.Dr. Huth was an active participant in this evolution. In addition to his work at Annals, including initiating the routine inclusion of statistical editors in Annals' peer review process, Dr. Huth influenced many journals through his leadership in the Vancouver Group, which later became the International Committee of Medical Journal Editors, and the Council of Biology Editors, now known as the Council of Science Editors.Edward J. Huth, MD Download figure Download PowerPoint Whether we had the privilege of personally knowing Dr. Huth or not, I and many other medical journal editors, as well as our authors and readers, are the beneficiaries of his innovative thinking.Reference1. Ball JR. A tribute to Edward Huth, Editor [Editorial]. Ann Intern Med. 1990;112:893-5. [PMID: 2187390] LinkGoogle Scholar Comments0 CommentsSign In to Submit A Comment Carlos Julio ApontePremier Physicians16 November 2021 He was great I became an Associate of ACP in 1970, so I was reading The Annals under his editorialship. Frequently we had Journal Clubs and the comments about things published in The Annals were really well reviewed. Very few said that he was authoritarian, most realized that he was a perfectionist. DR RUSSELL C MAULITZTapestry Health Information Technologies LLC27 November 2021 A Fifty Year Friendship I did have the pleasure of knowing Ed Huth, and like so many friendships—attenuated over the years but real—it took on the patina and resonance of fine art or fine wine as we both grew older. This was mostly along the lines of Philadelphia "inside baseball," via various collegiate bodies. And mostly connected with the past, present and future of scholarship. And not just scholarship in medical journals, as he was a pioneer in that domain, but also in the love of books. He assigned me book reviews back when Annals published such things and they were more relevant. Then we talked, at great length, about the future of historically important collections of books. He was always on the side of the angels when it came to such things.Arrivederci, old friend. Nice knowing you. Alla prossima. Disclosures: Tapestry Health Information Technologies LLC Author, Article, and Disclosure InformationAffiliations: Editor in Chief, Annals of Internal Medicine This article was published at Annals.org on 16 November 2021. PreviousarticleNextarticle Advertisement FiguresReferencesRelatedDetailsSee AlsoA Tribute to Edward Huth, Editor John R. Ball Metrics December 2021Volume 174, Issue 12Page: 1763 ePublished: 16 November 2021 Issue Published: December 2021 Copyright & PermissionsCopyright © 2021 by American College of Physicians. All Rights Reserved.PDF downloadLoading ...

Cell-type- and region-specific modulation of cocaine seeking by micro-RNA-1 in striatal projection neurons

The persistent and experience-dependent nature of drug addiction may result in part from epigenetic alterations, including non-coding micro-RNAs (miRNAs), which are both critical for neuronal function and modulated by cocaine in the striatum. Two major striatal cell populations, the striato-nigral and striato-pallidal projection neurons, express, respectively, the D1 (D1-SPNs) and D2 (D2-SPNs) dopamine receptor, and display distinct but complementary functions in drug-evoked responses. However, a cell-type-specific role for miRNAs action has yet to be clarified. Here, we evaluated the expression of a subset of miRNAs proposed to modulate cocaine effects in the nucleus accumbens (NAc) and dorsal striatum (DS) upon sustained cocaine exposure in mice and showed that these selected miRNAs were preferentially upregulated in the NAc. We focused on miR-1 considering the important role of some of its predicted mRNA targets, Fosb and Npas4, in the effects of cocaine. We validated these targets in vitro and in vivo. We explored the potential of miR-1 to regulate cocaine-induced behavior by overexpressing it in specific striatal cell populations. In DS D1-SPNs miR-1 overexpression downregulated Fosb and Npas4 and reduced cocaine-induced CPP reinstatement, but increased cue-induced cocaine seeking. In DS D2-SPNs miR-1 overexpression reduced the motivation to self-administer cocaine. Our results indicate a role of miR1 and its target genes, Fosb and Npas4, in these behaviors and highlight a precise cell-type- and region-specific modulatory role of miR-1, illustrating the importance of cell-specific investigations.

Narcissistic Traits and Executive Functions.

Several personality disorders have been associated with cognitive impairment, including executive functions like working memory. Yet, it is unclear whether subclinical expression in non-clinical persons is associated with cognitive functioning. Recent studies indicate that non-clinical subjects might, in fact, perform better with increasing moderate to mild expressions of narcissistic features. We tested working memory performance in a cohort of n=70 psychiatrically and neurologically healthy subjects using Wechsler Adult Intelligence Scale (WAIS/WIE) subtests Arithmetic, Digit Span and Letter-Number Sequencing, and assessed narcissistic features using three different inventories: the widely used Narcissistic Personality Inventory (NPI), as well as two clinically used measures of narcissistic traits and states, respectively, derived from schema-focused therapy, i.e., the Young Schema Questionnaire (YSQ) entitlement/grandiosity subscale and the Schema Mode Inventory (SMI) self-aggrandizer subscale. In accordance with our hypothesis, we found nominally significant positive correlations of WIE Arithmetic performance with NPI total score (Spearman’s rho=0.208; p=0.043) and SMI self-aggrandizer scale (Spearman’s rho=0.231; p=0.027), but findings did not survive false discovery rate (FDR) adjustment for multiple comparisons (pFDR=0.189 and pFDR=0.243, respectively). While our findings add to recent studies on cognitive performance in subclinical narcissism, they fail to demonstrate an association of cognitive performance with narcissistic traits across multiple working memory tests, indicating the need for additional study, including complementary executive functions in larger cohorts and ranges of phenotype expression.

Diminishing Energy Consumption Cost and Optimal Energy Management of Photovoltaic Aided Electric Vehicle (PV-EV) By GFO-VITG Approach

ABSTRACT This paper proposes a hybrid GFO-VITG approach for the energy management system (EMS) of the photovoltaic (PV) aided electric vehicle (EV). The proposed system is the combination of Ground water flow optimization (GFO) and Vascular Invasive Tumor Growth optimization algorithm (VITG), and hence, it is known as the GFO-VITG method. The main aim of this paper is optimal energy management for diminishing the system cost with power loss of the system. Additionally, based on the enhancement of EMS for optimal control of PV-aided EVCS, the GFO-VITG method is proposed. The GFO-VITG model enhances the vehicle-to-grid (V2G) method for producing complementary functions and takes dynamic cost of electricity. The proposed technique is stimulated under MATLAB/Simulink, and efficiency is compared with that of existing techniques. Consequently, the output shows that the GFO-VITG model is efficient for getting better solution through minimal computation and also lessens the difficulty of requisite algorithms. The simulation outcomes demonstrate that the energy management system can decrease the overall expenses more than 55% in summer, 29% in winter related to typical charging policy, when ensuring the fulfillment index of electric vehicle-charging demands without knowing the departure time of electric vehicles. In the number of iterations of 100, 250, 500, and 1000, the simulation times of the proposed technique are 14.8 seconds, 29.2 seconds, 69.9 seconds, and 77.1 seconds.

Combinatorial CRISPR/Cas9 Screening Reveals Epistatic Networks of Interacting Tumor Suppressor Genes and Therapeutic Targets in Human Breast Cancer.

The majority of cancers are driven by multiple genetic alterations, but how these changes collaborate during tumorigenesis remains largely unknown. To gain mechanistic insights into tumor-promoting genetic interactions among tumor suppressor genes (TSG), we conducted combinatorial CRISPR screening coupled with single-cell transcriptomic profiling in human mammary epithelial cells. As expected, different driver gene alterations in mammary epithelial cells influenced the repertoire of tumor suppressor alterations capable of inducing tumor formation. More surprisingly, TSG interaction networks were comprised of numerous cliques-sets of three or four genes such that each TSG within the clique showed oncogenic cooperation with all other genes in the clique. Genetic interaction profiling indicated that the predominant cooperating TSGs shared overlapping functions rather than distinct or complementary functions. Single-cell transcriptomic profiling of CRISPR double knockouts revealed that cooperating TSGs that synergized in promoting tumorigenesis and growth factor independence showed transcriptional epistasis, whereas noncooperating TSGs did not. These epistatic transcriptional changes, both buffering and synergistic, affected expression of oncogenic mediators and therapeutic targets, including CDK4, SRPK1, and DNMT1. Importantly, the epistatic expression alterations caused by dual inactivation of TSGs in this system, such as PTEN and TP53, were also observed in patient tumors, establishing the relevance of these findings to human breast cancer. An estimated 50% of differentially expressed genes in breast cancer are controlled by epistatic interactions. Overall, our study indicates that transcriptional epistasis is a central aspect of multigenic breast cancer progression and outlines methodologies to uncover driver gene epistatic networks in other human cancers. SIGNIFICANCE: This study provides a roadmap for moving beyond discovery and development of therapeutic strategies based on single driver gene analysis to discovery based on interactions between multiple driver genes.See related commentary by Fong et al., p. 6078.

A semi-smooth Newton and Primal–Dual Active Set method for Non-Smooth Contact Dynamics

Multi-rigid-body dynamic contact systems, in other words Non Smooth Contact Dynamics (NSCD) problems, generate some inherent difficulties to multivocal laws, which results in non-linearities and non-smoothness associated to frictional contact models. Recently, Primal–Dual Active Set strategies (PDAS) have emerged as a promising method for solving contact problems. These methods are based on the following principle: the frictional contact conditions are restated as non-linear complementary functions for which the solution is provided by the iterative semi-smooth Newton method. Based on these prerequisites, this contribution aims to provide a generalization of the NSCD-PDAS for dynamic frictional contact problems. Several numerical experiments are reported for algorithm validation purposes and also to assess the efficiency and performances of PDAS methods with respect to the Newton/Augmented Lagrangian and the Bi-Potential methods.

Biological Roles of Lipocalins in Chemical Communication, Reproduction, and Regulation of Microbiota.

Major evolutionary transitions were always accompanied by genetic remodelling of phenotypic traits. For example, the vertebrate transition from water to land was accompanied by rapid evolution of olfactory receptors and by the expansion of genes encoding lipocalins, which – due to their transporting functions – represent an important interface between the external and internal organic world of an individual and also within an individual. Similarly, some lipocalin genes were lost along other genes when this transition went in the opposite direction leading, for example, to cetaceans. In terrestrial vertebrates, lipocalins are involved in the transport of lipophilic substances, chemical signalling, odour reception, antimicrobial defence and background odour clearance during ventilation. Many ancestral lipocalins have clear physiological functions across the vertebrate taxa while many other have – due to pleiotropic effects of their genes – multiple or complementary functions within the body homeostasis and development. The aim of this review is to deconstruct the physiological functions of lipocalins in light of current OMICs techniques. We concentrated on major findings in the house mouse in comparison to other model taxa (e.g., voles, humans, and birds) in which all or most coding genes within their genomes were repeatedly sequenced and their annotations are sufficiently informative.

Study of metabolomics in selenium deprived Przewalski's Gazelle (Procapra przewalskii).

To understand why Procapra przewalskii does not show the same white myopathy as sheep in Se-deficient regions and to provide reference for feeding nutrition level of artificial population and selection of wild reintroduction areas in the later period, a Se-deficient model was established. The mineral elements content, physiological and biochemical parameters in blood and serum metabonomics were determined. In the Se-deficient group compared with the control group, the Se content was highly significantly lower (P < 0·01), and the Cu content was significantly higher (P < 0·05). The activity of glutathione peroxidase was significantly lower (P < 0·05), but total superoxide dismutase was significantly higher (P < 0·05). By matching the mass spectrum data of compounds with the Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG database), eighty-six types of differential metabolites in the serum were identified. The main metabolic pathways included secondary bile acid biosynthesis, biosynthesis of unsaturated fatty acids and pyrimidine metabolism. Further analysis showed that there were seven different metabolites in pyrimidine metabolism pathway between the two groups. And there was no significant difference in erythrocyte, Hb and total antioxidant capacity between the two groups (P > 0·05). The above results showed that the differential metabolism of substances exhibited complementary functions, thus alleviating some adverse effects and resulting normal activities of P. przewalskii can be carried out under the condition of dietary Se content lower than 0·05 mg/kg.

Fine-Grained Analysis on Downlink LEO Satellite-Terrestrial mmWave Relay Networks

This letter investigates the downlink integrated low earth orbit (LEO) satellite-terrestrial millimeter-wave decode-and-forward relay network, where the satellite and terrestrial relays locate in uniform distribution over the spherical cap surface of the LEO and in Poisson point process over the ground, respectively. In order to obtain fine-grained information on the coverage performance, the meta distribution (MD) of signal-to-interference-to-noise ratio (SINR) is adopted for network performance evaluation, which provides the probability that certain percentage of satellite-relays-user links are able to reach a target SINR threshold. The closed-form and analytical expression of the <inline-formula xmlns:mml="http://www.w3.org/1998/Math/MathML" xmlns:xlink="http://www.w3.org/1999/xlink"> <tex-math notation="LaTeX">${b}$ </tex-math></inline-formula> -th moments of the complementary cumulative distribution functions (CCDFs) of SINR for the satellite-to-relay link and relay-to-user link are then derived, respectively. In addition, we further give the analytical MD expression via the beta approximation. Finally, numerical results are provided to validate our analytical results.

X-Band Quasi-Reflectionless MMIC Bandpass Filters With Minimum Number of Components

This article reports on the RF design and implementation of monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) bandpass filters (BPFs) with broadband symmetric quasi-reflectionless characteristics. They are based on in-series cascaded quasi-reflectionless stages that comprise one bandpass (BP) and two resistively terminated bandstop (BS) sections with approximately complementary transfer functions. This allows the resistors to absorb the reflected RF signal energy, and a quasi-reflectionless behavior is obtained at both the input and output ports of the BPF. The frequency selectivity of the BPF can be increased by: 1) introducing out-of-band transmission zeros (TZs) through inductive, capacitive, or resonant source-to-load couplings and/or by 2) increasing the number of stages in the overall filter. An on-chip integration scheme with minimum number of components is proposed using the commercially available PIH-110 GaAs MMIC process from WIN Semiconductors. Three prototypes were designed, manufactured, and measured at X-band. They demonstrated ultra-compact physical size and ultrawide >9:1 quasi-reflectionless characteristics.

A HU-like protein is required for full virulence in Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris.

Bacteria harbour several abundant small DNA‐binding proteins known as nucleoid‐associated proteins (NAPs) that contribute to the structure of the bacterial nucleoid as well as to gene regulation. Although the function of NAPs as global transcriptional regulators has been comprehensively studied in the model organism Escherichia coli, their regulatory functions in other bacteria remain relatively poorly understood. Xanthomonas campestris pv. campestris (Xcc) is a gram‐negative bacterium that causes black rot disease in almost all members of the crucifer family. In previous work, we demonstrated that a Fis homologue protein, which we named Fis‐like protein (Flp), contributes to the regulation of virulence, type III secretion, and a series of other phenotypes in Xcc. Here we have examined the role of XC_1355, which is predicted to encode a DNA‐binding protein belonging to the HU family herein named HU‐like protein (Hlp). We show that mutation of XC_1355 in Xcc reduces the virulence, extracellular polysaccharide production, and cell motility, but has no effect on the production of extracellular enzymes and induction of the hypersensitive response. These data together with transcriptome analysis indicate that hlp is a previously uncharacterized gene involved in virulence that has partially overlapping and complementary functions with flp in Xcc, although the two regulators have opposite effects on the expression of genes involved in type III secretion. The findings add to our understanding of the complex regulatory pathways that act to regulate virulence in Xcc.

Complementary Functions of Plant AP Endonucleases and AP Lyases during DNA Repair of Abasic Sites Arising from C:G Base Pairs.

Abasic (apurinic/apyrimidinic, AP) sites are ubiquitous DNA lesions arising from spontaneous base loss and excision of damaged bases. They may be processed either by AP endonucleases or AP lyases, but the relative roles of these two classes of enzymes are not well understood. We hypothesized that endonucleases and lyases may be differentially influenced by the sequence surrounding the AP site and/or the identity of the orphan base. To test this idea, we analysed the activity of plant and human AP endonucleases and AP lyases on DNA substrates containing an abasic site opposite either G or C in different sequence contexts. AP sites opposite G are common intermediates during the repair of deaminated cytosines, whereas AP sites opposite C frequently arise from oxidized guanines. We found that the major Arabidopsis AP endonuclease (ARP) exhibited a higher efficiency on AP sites opposite G. In contrast, the main plant AP lyase (FPG) showed a greater preference for AP sites opposite C. The major human AP endonuclease (APE1) preferred G as the orphan base, but only in some sequence contexts. We propose that plant AP endonucleases and AP lyases play complementary DNA repair functions on abasic sites arising at C:G pairs, neutralizing the potential mutagenic consequences of C deamination and G oxidation, respectively.