Event-Triggered Mechanism-Based Discrete-Time Nash Equilibrium Seeking for Graphic Game With Outlier-Resistant ESO.

In this article, we consider a discrete-time Nash equilibrium (NE) seeking problem for graphic game subject to disturbances. For the first-order dynamics, the discrete-time outlier-resistant extended state observer (ESO)-based game strategy is proposed to enable the players to estimate the disturbances under effect of anomaly measurements and then compensate them. An event-triggered mechanism is applied between adjacent players to reduce the frequency of communication. The convergence of the outlier-resistant ESO and control strategy is presented. Moreover, the upper bound of ϵ -NE solution deviating from the unique point of nominal system is given analytically. Then, the addressed issues are extended to high-order game systems. The NE seeking-based control strategy for each player is designed such that the equilibrium point converges to the ϵ -NE which is also analytically calculated. Finally, in order to verify the effectiveness of the proposed game strategy, an example of satellite system is given.

The impact of different states of type 2 diabetes when stratified by baseline HbA1c on the periodontal outcomes of non-surgical periodontal treatment: A systematic review and network meta-analysis.

BACKGROUND: Type 2 diabetes mellitus (T2DM) has been considered by many studies to have a bidirectional relationship with periodontitis. This systematic review and network meta-analysis aimed to investigate the impact of different states of T2DM when stratified by baseline HbA1c on the clinical outcomes of non-surgical periodontal treatment (NSPT). METHODS: This study followed the Preferred Reporting Items for Meta-Analyses (PRISMA) guidelines and involved an electronic literature search (from inception to the 2nd of January 2023). The study included at least two groups of patients: chronic periodontitis only (No-DM) or periodontitis and well-controlled/poorly controlled type 2 diabetes mellitus (WC/PC-T2DM). Clinical outcomes included probing depth (PD) reduction, bleeding on probing reduction, and clinical attachment level (CAL) gain. Direct and indirect comparisons between groups were assessed by network meta-analysis, thus allowing us to establish a treatment ranking. RESULTS: Ten prospective cohort studies (11 data sets) were included for qualitative analysis and network meta-analysis. The data included in this study had high consistency; in addition, a funnel plot and Egger's test showed that the articles had low publication bias. Network meta-analysis showed that the effect of NSPT in the No-DM group was significantly better than the WC-T2DM group [weighted mean difference (WMD) = 0.09, 95% confidence interval (CI) (0.01, 0.18)] and the PC-T2DM group [WMD = 0.09, 95% CI (0.01, 0.18)] in terms of CAL gain and better than the PC-T2DM group [WMD = 0.15, 95% CI (0.02, 0.28)] in terms of PD reduction. According to the surface under the cumulative ranking value, the No-DM group had the highest probability of achieving the best outcome following NSPT. CONCLUSIONS: Collectively, our analyses show that T2DM exerts significant effects on the outcomes of NSPT.

New Dawn for Atherosclerosis: Vascular Endothelial Cell Senescence and Death.

Endothelial cells (ECs) form the inner linings of blood vessels, and are directly exposed to endogenous hazard signals and metabolites in the circulatory system. The senescence and death of ECs are not only adverse outcomes, but also causal contributors to endothelial dysfunction, an early risk marker of atherosclerosis. The pathophysiological process of EC senescence involves both structural and functional changes and has been linked to various factors, including oxidative stress, dysregulated cell cycle, hyperuricemia, vascular inflammation, and aberrant metabolite sensing and signaling. Multiple forms of EC death have been documented in atherosclerosis, including autophagic cell death, apoptosis, pyroptosis, NETosis, necroptosis, and ferroptosis. Despite this, the molecular mechanisms underlying EC senescence or death in atherogenesis are not fully understood. To provide a comprehensive update on the subject, this review examines the historic and latest findings on the molecular mechanisms and functional alterations associated with EC senescence and death in different stages of atherosclerosis.

[Overexpression of miRNA-130a-3p alleviates LPS-induced cardiomyocyte injury by regulating autophagy and apoptosis].

Objective: To investigate the effects of miRNA-130a-3p on autophagy and apoptosis induced by LPS in myocardial cells and its molecular mechanisms. Methods: H9C2 cells were divided into five groups: normal control group, LPS model group, miRNA negative control group miRNA-130a-3p mimics group(overexpression of miRNA-130a-3p) and miRNA-130a-3p mimics + LY294002 group(overexpression of miRNA-130a-3p + PI3K inhibitor). The LPS model group was induced by LPS at a final concentration of 10 µg/ml for 24 h. In the miRNA negative control group and miRNA-130a-3p mimics group, negative contro miRNA or miRNA-130a-3p mimics were transfected into H9C2 cells by lipo3000. After 24 h of culture, LPS was added into the medium for 24 hours. In the miRNA -130A-3P mimics + LY294002 group, miRNA -130A-3P mimics was transfected into H9C2 cells by using lipo3000, and LY294002 at a final concentration of 10 µmol/L was added to the culture medium for 24 h, followed by LPS at a concentration of 10 µg/ml for 24 h. The expression of miRNA-130a-3p mRNA in cells was detected by RT-qPCR. The CCK-8 assay was used to detect the cell viability. The contents of TNF-α, IL-6 and IL-1ß were detected by ELISA assay. The contents of SOD and LDH in cell culture medium were detected by colorimetry. Western blot was used to detect the protein expressions of p-PI3K, p-AKT, Bax, Bcl-2, cleaved-caspase-3, LC3 and p62. Results: The results showed that the levels of miRNA-130a-3p mRNA, p-PI3K protein and p-AKT protein in LPS model cells were significantly lower than those in normal control group(P<0.01), and the expressions of p-PI3K, p-AKT protein in miRNA-130a-3p mimics group were increased significantly compared with LPS group(P<0.01,P<0.05). Compared with normal control group, the cell viability was decreased significantly and the contents of TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1ß and LDH were increased significantly(P<0.01), the contents of SOD was decreased significantly in LPS group(P<0.01). The protein expression levels of Bax, cleaved-caspase-3 and p62 were increased significantly, while the expression level of Bcl-2 and LC3II/I ratio were decreased significantly in LPS group(P<0.01). miRNA-130a-3p mimics could increase the cell viability, decrease the contents of TNF-α, IL-6, IL-1ß and LDH(P<0.01,P<0.05), increase the contents of SOD(P<0.05), decrease the expressions of Bax, cleaved caspase-3, p62(P<0.01), promote the expression of Bcl-2(P<0.01) and increase the ratio of LC3II/I(P<0.05). Compared with miRNA-130a-3p mimics group, LY294002 reversed the effects of miRNA-130a-3p mimics on cells. Conclusion: Overexpression miRNA-130a-3p could partly promote autophagy and inhibit cell apoptosis by activating PI3K/AKT signaling pathway to alleviate LPS-induced myocardial injury.

Event-based distributed filtering against deception attacks for sensor networks with quantization effect.

This paper considers a distributed secure filtering problem for a category of time-varying system subject to uncertainty and model-reality mismatch, two-stage deception attacks and bandwidth limitation. Both deception attacks between sensor and corresponding estimator and among estimators appear randomly. To alleviate communication burden, a quantization strategy is introduced before transmitting measurement and estimation signals. An event-triggered mechanism is employed for each estimator node thus only necessary data are transmitted to its neighbour sensors when a setting event occurs. The desired target of the problem to be handled is to devise a series of time-varying filters such that the H∞ secure performance is guaranteed against random deception attacks over a finite time horizon. Sufficient conditions ensuring the existence of time-varying filters under effect of complex factors are derived, where filter gains are obtained by finding the solution of a sequence of recursive matrix inequalities online. Simulation results in both numerical example and industrial continuous-stirred tank reactor system are given to show the validity of the presented methodology.

In Situ Transmission Electron Microscopy Investigation of Melting/Evaporation Kinetics in Anisotropic Gold Nanoparticles.

We report on thermal stability and phase transition behaviors of triangular Au nanoprisms through in situ heating transmission electron microscopy. With rising temperature, Au nanoprisms exhibit fluctuating surface reconstructions at the corner regions. When a quasi-melting state is reached at the temperature below bulk melting points, the evaporation is initiated commonly at a corner with low curvature and containing sharp intersection points. The subsequent annealing process leads to the gradual evaporation, which, in the absence of thick carbon coverages, is accompanied by marked shape reconstructions. The thermal stability and evaporation behaviors are not evidently regulated by nanoprism aggregations.

Output regulation for decentralized networked control systems under jamming attacks and actuator saturation.

Output regulation problem for a decentralized networked control system under jamming attacks and actuator saturation is solved by state feedback in this paper. A jammer's power allocation strategy aiming at degrading signal-interference-plus-noise ratios and leading to packets dropout in different wireless transmission channels of the decentralized networked control system is derived. In the presence of attack-induced packets dropout, a relation between null controllable region and regulatable region is described. For a plant and an exosystem, an asymptotically regulatable region is constructed based on a null controllable region. At last, an illustrative example certificates effectiveness of the presented techniques.

Optimal power allocation for multiple DoS attackers in wireless networked control systems.

In this paper, an optimal power allocation strategy for multiple denial-of-service attackers is investigated in a wireless networked control system with stochastic disturbances. In the presence of denial-of-service attackers, effective signals sent by a transmitter are interfered with causing degradation of signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and even packet loss. The effect of multiple attacks on the wireless networked control system is maximized by cooperative game. An H∞ minimax controller is also designed to guarantee an optimal performance for the wireless networked control system in the worst case. A numerical example is conducted to verify the validity of the proposed methodology.

Resilient Control of Wireless Networked Control System Under Denial-of-Service Attacks: A Cross-Layer Design Approach.

The resilient control refers to the control methodology which provides an interdisciplinary solution to secure the control system. In this paper, the resilient control problem is investigated for a class of wireless networked control systems (WNCS) under a denial-of-service (DoS) attack. In the presence of the DoS attacker, the control command sent by the transmitter may be interfered, which can cause the degradation of the signal-to-interference-plus-noise ratio and further lead to packet dropout phenomenon. Such a packet dropout phenomenon is described by a two-state Markov-chain. A cross-layer view is adopted toward the security issue of the considered WNCS. The Nash power strategies and optimal control strategy in the delta-domain are obtained in the cyber- and physical-layer, respectively. Based on the obtained strategies, the coupled-design problem is solved which aims to drive the underlying control performance to the desired security region by dynamically manipulating the cyber-layer pricing parameters. Finally, a numerical simulation is conducted to verify the validity of the proposed methodology.

Wine polysaccharides modulating astringency through the interference on interaction of flavan-3-ols and BSA in model wine.

Polysaccharides and flavan-3-ols from Cabernet Sauvignon wine were isolated and then characterized by high performance liquid chromatography coupled with diode array detector (HPLC-DAD), high performance size exclusion chromatography (HPSEC) and HPLC-MS. The influence of purified polysaccharides on the aggregation of flavan-3-ols-proteins were investigated using fluorescence spectroscopy, circular dichroism (CD) and sodium dodecyl sulfate polyacrylamide gel electrophoresis (SDS-PAGE) to evaluate the co-effect of polysaccharides on wine astringency. The results indicated that mannoproteins (MPs) and rhamnogalacturonans II (RG II) were the major polysaccharides to significantly alter the interaction of flavan-3-ols with bovine serum albumin (BSA). The interaction of polysaccharides-flavan-3-ols-BSA was enhanced with the concentration (from 0.2 to 0.6 g/L) of the studied polysaccharides. Furthermore, the reaction of BSA-flavan-3-ols was strengthened in the absence of polysaccharides when percentage of galloylation (%G) was higher (11.29). When mean degree of polymerization (mDP) of flavan-3-ols was from 5.14 to 6.88, the secondary structure of proteins was changed from mainly α-helix to random curl and the formation of protein precipitation increased. This work pointed out that the important property of polysaccharides and different structural characteristic flavan-3-ols are able to modulate wine astringency perception.

Highly Reversible Lithium-Metal Anode and Lithium-Sulfur Batteries Enabled by an Intrinsic Safe Electrolyte.

Rechargeable lithium-metal batteries have gained significant attention as potential candidates of energy storage systems; however, severe safety issues including flammable electrolyte and dendritic lithium formation hinder their further practical application. In this work, we develop a novel intrinsic flame-retardant electrolyte, which enables a stable and dendrite-free cycling with lithium plating/stripping Coulombic efficiency of up to 99.1% over 500 cycles. Raman spectra indicate that no free molecular solvent exists, and X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy reveals the LiF-rich interphase on the Li-metal anode. When coupled with sulfurized pyrolyzed poly(acrylonitrile) cathode, it shows a benign electrochemical reversibility with the areal capacity of up to 3.41 mAh cm-2 after 70 cycles. To further check its compatibility with sulfur cathode, a higher sulfur content (51.6%) is examined with the areal capacity of 3.92 mAh cm-2 and sulfur utilization of 81.7%. This work provides an alternative for safe and high-performance Li-S batteries via a novel electrolyte strategy.

A methyl pivalate based electrolyte for non-aqueous lithium-oxygen batteries.

A methyl pivalate (MP) based electrolyte was for the first time reported for non-aqueous lithium-oxygen (Li-O2) batteries. This new electrolyte in both superoxide radical solution and a real Li-O2 battery environment showed good chemical stability against superoxide radicals, which was confirmed by 1H NMR and 13C NMR measurements.

Barriers to community-based drug dependence treatment: implications for police roles, collaborations and performance indicators.

INTRODUCTION: Worldwide, people who use drugs (PWUD) are among the populations at highest risk for HIV infection. In China, PWUD are primarily sentenced to compulsory detainment centres, in which access to healthcare, including HIV treatment and prevention services, is limited or non-existent. In 2008, China's 2008 Anti-Drug Law encouraged the development and use of community-based drug dependence rehabilitation, yet there is limited evidence evaluating the efficacy and challenges of this model in China. In this study, we explore these challenges and describe how cooperation between law enforcement and health departments can meet the needs of PWUD. METHODS: In 2015, we conducted semi-structured, in-depth interviews with all four staff members and 16 clients of the Ping An Centre No. 1 for community-based drug treatment, three local police officers and three officials from the local Centre for Disease Control. Interviews explored obstacles in implementing community-based drug dependence treatment and efforts to resolve these difficulties. Transcripts were coded and analyzed with qualitative data analysis software (MAXQDA 11). RESULTS: We identified three challenges to community-based drug treatment at the Ping An Centre No. 1: (1) suboptimal coordination among parties involved, (2) a divergence in attitudes towards PWUD and harm reduction between law enforcement and health officials and (3) conflicting performance targets for police and health officials that undermine the shared goal of treatment. We also identified the take-home methadone maintenance treatment model at the Ping An Centre No. 1 as an example of an early successful collaboration between the police, the health department and PWUD. CONCLUSIONS: To overcome barriers to effective community-based drug treatment, we recommend aligning the goals of law enforcement and public health agencies towards health-based performance indicators. Furthermore, tensions between PWUD and police need to be addressed and trust between them fostered, using community-based treatment centres as mediators. The preliminary success of the take-home methadone maintenance treatment pilot can serve as an example of how collaboration with the police and other government agencies can meet the needs of PWUD and contribute to the success of community-based treatment.

[Effect of catalpol and puerarin freeze-dried powder on coagulability, hemorheology and no in rats with Qi-deficiency and blood-stasis syndrome].

OBJECTIVE: To study the effect of catalpol and puerarin freeze-dried powder for injection (CPFPI), a new compound traditional Chinese medicine (TCM) preparation, on coagulability, hemorheology and NO in rats with qi-deficiency and blood-stasis syndrome. METHOD: The model of rats with qi-deficiency and blood-stasis syndrome was established by hunger, fatigue, cold-dampness, panic and high fat diet. Coagulation time (CT) was observed by the glass method, and bleeding time (BT) was measured by tail-cutting method. The effects of CPFPI were also evaluated with prothrombin time (PT), activated partial thromboplastin time (APTT) and thrombin time (TT). HCT was measured by the electric tesistance method, hemorheology indicators were observed by auto-hemorheological instrument. The level of NO in blood serum was measured by NO assay kit. RESULT: CPFPI 65.40 mg x kg(-1) significantly prolonged CT, BT, PT, APTT and TT in rats. The viscosity of whole blood and plasma, hematocrit, erythrocyte aggregation and rigidity index, and reduced viscosity of whole blood in 65.40 mg x kg(-1) groups were lower than model group. CPFPI 65.40 mg x kg(-1) can raise the level of NO in blood serum. 32.70 mg x kg(-1) markedly prolonged CT, PT and APTT and decreased whole blood viscosity, erythrocyte aggregation index and whole blood reduction viscosity. CONCLUSION: CPFPI has a significant effect in improving coagulability and hemorheology index and enhancing NO content in blood serum.

[Study on pharmacokinetics of ferulic acid loaded liposome-in-chitosan-microspheres in rats].

In this paper, the pharmacokinetics of ferulic acid loaded liposome-in-chitosan-microspheres was investigated. Eighteen Sprague-Dawley rats were divided into 3 groups randomly. Each group was administered orally of ferulic acid, ferulic acid loaded chitosan microspheres and ferulic acid loaded liposome-in-chitosan-microspheres, respectively. Then blood samples were obtained from fossa orbitalis at different time points. The concentration of ferulic acid in blood was analyzed by a HPLC method using coumarin as internal standard. The data were analyzed by DAS program. The t(max), MRT and t(1/2beta) of liposome-in-chitosan-microspheres were 2.500, 7.487 and 7.818 h, respectively, which were much longer than crude drug and chitosan microspheres. This results demonstrated that liposome-in-chitosan-microspheres had better sus-tained-releasing property. The AUC of liposome-in-chitosan-microspheres was 6.08 times higher than crude drug and 1.21 times higher than chitosan microspheres, which verified that liposome-in-chitosan-microspheres could enhance oral absorption.