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The problem of adaptive finite-time fault-tolerant control with smooth event-triggered mechanism is addressed for quadrotor trajectory tracking systems. In light of recent studies on fault-tolerant control in the field of nonlinear systems, this article focuses on quadrotor trajectory tracking systems with actuator faults and disturbances. Different from the previous works, an ingenious smooth event-triggered mechanism is proposed to circumvent the discontinuous triggered signal and alleviate the communication burden simultaneously, which is of great significance to increase the operation life of the quadrotor. Subsequently, the finite-time performance function is designed to guarantee the prescribed tracking performance. Furthermore, a novel finite-time convergent adaptive fault-tolerant controller is proposed via the time-varying barrier Lyapunov function technique. The radial basis function neural networks are utilized to deal with the nonlinear approximation, and the adaptive laws are developed to accurately estimate the unknown model uncertainty, thus effectively handling the challenge of the controller design caused by the actuator faults and disturbances. Under the developed adaptive fault-tolerant controller, all the closed-loop system signals are bounded and the tracking errors are convergent within finite time. Meanwhile, the Zone behavior can be excluded by the positive sampling intervals. Finally, two examples are employed to verify the effectiveness and advantages of the suggested control scheme. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Three-dimensional mapping is an essential component of autonomous Micro Aerial Vehicle (MAV) navigation. The paper focuses on the 3D spatial representation method of MAV to overcome the collision problem caused by soft constraints, control error, and planning with the center of mass by inflating the occupancy grid map. A fast incremental inflated map construction method is proposed, which reduces the time-consumption caused by the increase of map range and inflated size. The method focuses on areas of the map that occupied state changes and introduces two arrays that record newly appearing and disappearing obstacles. Then, a series of breadth-first search algorithms are used to traverse the parts of the inflated map that need local modification to update the inflated map. Moreover, a sliding map model is designed based on the MAV position, which is suitable for large-range autonomous flight. The effectiveness of the proposed approach is verified with simulated and actual flight data. The proposed method takes about 3 ms to construct the inflated map with a local update range of 16 m × 16 m × 6 m. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Fogging and proximity effects (FPEs) are two major factors that cause inaccurate exposure and layout pattern distortions in e-beam lithography. In this article, we propose an analytical placement algorithm that considers both FPEs. We formulate the global placement problem as a separable minimization problem with linear constraints, where different objectives can be tackled one by one in an alternating fashion. Then, we propose a novel proximal group alternating direction method of multipliers (ADMM) to solve the separable minimization problem with two subproblems, where the first subproblem (associated with wirelength and density) is solved by the steepest descent method without line search, and the second one (associated with the FPEs) is handled by an analytical scheme. We prove the property of global convergence of the proximal group ADMM method. Finally, the FPEs-aware legalization and detailed placement are employed to legalize and improve the placement result. The experimental results show that our algorithm is effective and efficient for the addressed problem. Our algorithm achieved 5.7% smaller fogging variation, 6.8% lower proximity variation, and 5.4% lower runtime with a minor wirelength overhead compared with the state-of-the-art work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The total quota control and reserve of rare earths are important means for the sustainable development and utilization of rare-earth resources. Focusing on the government reserve of rare-earth products under stochastic demand, this paper analyses the interactive decisions of the government and the rare-earth firms from a game-theoretic perspective. The government determines the total quantity, reserve quantity and reserve–release quantity of the rare-earth products to maximize social warfare, while the firm decides the price of rare-earth products to maximize its own profit. The results show that the production cost and the expected net present value (NPV) of the reserve are important factors affecting the government's decisions. When the expected NPV of the reserve is below a threshold, the government adopts the no-reserve strategy: it determines only a total quota index that maximizes the current-period social welfare but keeps no reserve. When the expected NPV of a reserve is higher than the above threshold but lower than the production cost, the government adopts the low-reserve strategy: it determines a total quota index and a low reserve that are both in increasing in the expected NPV of reserve, and will release the reserve as many as possible if there is a supply shortage. When the expected NPV of a reserve is higher than both the above threshold and the production cost, the government adopts the high-reserve strategy: it sets a total quota index which is sufficiently large to cover the entire market demand, reserves a large amount, and releases part of the reserve to completely fill the demand gap (if any). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixed-cell-height standard cells are prevailingly used in advanced technologies to achieve better design tradeoffs among timing, power, and routability. As feature size decreases, the placement of cells with multiple threshold voltages may violate the complex minimum-implant-area (MIA) layer rule arising from the limitations of patterning technologies. Existing works consider the mixed-cell-height placement problem only during legalization or handle the MIA constraints during detailed placement. In this article, we address the mixed-cell-height placement problem with MIA constraints in two major stages: 1) post-global placement (Post-GP) and 2) MIA-aware legalization. In the Post-GP stage, we first present a continuous and differentiable cost function to address the Vdd/Vss alignment constraints and add weighted pseudonets to MIA-violation cells dynamically. Then, we propose a proximal optimization method based on the given global placement result to simultaneously consider Vdd/Vss alignment constraints, MIA constraints, cell distribution, cell displacement, and total wirelength. In the MIA-aware legalization stage, we develop a graph-based method to cluster cells of specific threshold voltages and apply a strip-packing-based binary linear programming to reshape cells. Then, we propose a matching-based technique to resolve intrarow MIA violations and reduce filler insertion. Furthermore, we formulate inter-row MIA-aware legalization as a quadratic programming problem, which is efficiently solved by a modulus-based matrix splitting iteration method. Finally, MIA-aware cell allocation and refinement are performed to further improve the result. Experimental results show that without any extra area overhead, our algorithm still can achieve 5.4% shorter final total wirelength than the state-of-the-art work. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Proximity effect is one of the most tremendous consequences that produces unacceptable exposures during electron beam lithography (EBL), and thus distorting the layout pattern. In this paper, we propose the first work which considers the proximity effect during layout stage. We first give an accurate evaluation scheme to estimate the proximity effect by fast Gauss transform. Then, we devote a proximity effect aware detailed placement objective function to simultaneously consider wirelength, density and proximity effect. Furthermore, cell swapping and cell matching based methods are used to optimize the objective function such that there is no overlap among cells. Compared with a state-of-the-art work, experimental result shows that our algorithm can efficiently reduce the proximity variations and maintain high wirelength quality at a reasonable runtime.

Metal fill insertion has become an essential step in reducing dielectric thickness variation and improving pattern uniformity, which is important in mitigating process variations, thereby achieving better manufacturing yield. However, metal fills could induce coupling capacitance, which is not often considered in existing works that typically focus more on pattern density uniformity, incurring significant problems in timing closure. However, it is a great challenge to consider three types of capacitances (i.e., area, fringe, and lateral capacitances) with design rules and density constraints at the fill insertion stage simultaneously. This article presents an efficient timing-aware fill insertion algorithm for minimizing the total capacitance and fill amount, considering the density constraints. First, we present an initial metal fill insertion and design-rule-aware legalization to obtain an initial fill insertion solution quickly. Second, from critical conductors to powers/grounds in a circuit, we divide conductors into different equivalent paths and then construct a capacitance graph to reduce the capacitance of each equivalent path globally. Third, we propose a density-aware coupling capacitance optimization method and a fast Monte Carlo-based fill selection to further reduce the coupling capacitance between any pair of conductors. Finally, we present a density-aware fill deletion method to reduce the fill amount. We evaluate the performance of our algorithm on the benchmarks of the 2018 CAD Contest at ICCAD and its official contest evaluator. Compared with the first-place team of the contest and the state-of-the-artwork, experimental results show that our algorithm achieves the lowest total capacitance and the least fill amount in a comparable runtime. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In 2020, China put forward the goals of "peak carbon dioxide emissions" and "carbon neutrality" ("double-carbon") and it is urgent for the energy industry to achieve green transformation. Aiming at the rigid requirements of the carbon-peaking and carbon-neutrality goals ("double-carbon"), this study established a performance evaluation index system for an energy supply chain of a four-tier structure based on the "double-carbon" goals, calculating its weight by the analytic hierarchy process (AHP). On this basis, a three-stage data envelopment analysis (DEA) evaluation model was established to evaluate the performance of the energy supply chain in 2010–2019. According to the three-stage DEA evaluation mode, the initial input–output efficiency value of the energy supply chain was calculated by the DEA-BCC (extended by Banker, Charnes and Cooper) model and DEA-CCR (proposed by Charnes, Cooper and Rhodes) model and the influence of environmental noise was eliminated by stochastic frontier analysis (SFA) regression; we then obtained the adjusted efficiency value for the energy supply chain. At the same time, taking 2015 as the dividing point, the advantages and disadvantages between the traditional energy supply chain and new energy supply chain were analyzed and summarized. Further analysis and suggestions are provided to consumers, enterprises and countries from four aspects: energy supply, energy production and processing, energy transmission and distribution and energy consumption. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Visual-inertial calibration is important in robotic vision navigation systems, and calibration errors will reduce navigation accuracy for the longtime autonomous operation. Aiming at the problems of the complicated offline calibration process and the high calculation cost of self-calibration, a novel visual-inertial calibration method using deep deterministic policy gradient learning is proposed. Firstly, the error model of visual-inertial calibration is established considering the intrinsic and extrinsic parameters of the camera and IMU simultaneously. Secondly, the nonlinear observable analysis of the visual-inertial system is carried out. The rank decomposition of the Fisher information matrix is used to establish the relationship between the parameters to be calibrated and the nonlinear observability. Then, the visual-inertial self-calibration process is modeled as a partially observable Markov decision process to facilitate the design and optimization of subsequent reinforcement learning policies. Finally, a reinforcement learning network model is established for visual-inertial calibration using deep deterministic policy gradient, which is used to determine unobservable motion sequences. Meanwhile, the experience playback and target network are adopted in visual-inertial calibration algorithm to solve the problem of hyperparameter training and the instability of the network. Experiments in two different environments show that the proposed method achieves comparable performance comparing with the informative segment approach and the batch calibration approach. Moreover, the proposed method has the shortest trajectory length selected for calibration. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The genomic and carbohydrate metabolic features of Pseudoalteromonas agarivorans Hao 2018 (P. agarivorans Hao 2018) were investigated through pan-genomic and transcriptomic analyses, and key enzyme genes that may encode the process involved in its extracellular polysaccharide synthesis were screened. The pan-genome of the P. agarivorans strains consists of a core-genome containing 2331 genes, an accessory-genome containing 956 genes, and a unique-genome containing 1519 genes. Clusters of Orthologous Groups analyses showed that P. agarivorans harbors strain-specifically diverse metabolisms, probably representing high evolutionary genome changes. The Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes and reconstructed carbohydrate metabolic pathways displayed that P. agarivorans strains can utilize a variety of carbohydrates, such as d-glucose, d-fructose, and d-lactose. Analyses of differentially expressed genes showed that compared with the stationary phase (24 h), strain P. agarivorans Hao 2018 had upregulated expression of genes related to the synthesis of extracellular polysaccharides in the logarithmic growth phase (2 h), and that the expression of these genes affected extracellular polysaccharide transport, nucleotide sugar synthesis, and glycosyltransferase synthesis. This is the first investigation of the genomic and metabolic features of P. agarivorans through pan-genomic and transcriptomic analyses, and these intriguing discoveries provide the possibility to produce novel marine drug lead compounds with high biological activity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Double-weight optical orthogonal codes are variable-weight optical orthogonal codes (OOCs), which have been widely applied in optical networks and systems. Some works have been devoted to optimal n , W , 1 , Q -OOCs with max w : w ∈ W ≤ 6. So far, there is no explicit construction of optimal n , W , 1 , Q -OOCs with W = 5,7 . It is known that heavier-weight codewords have better code performance than lighter-weight codewords. So, in this paper, we use cyclic packing to construct two infinite classes of optimal OOCs with weights set 5,7 explicitly, for any prime p ≡ 3 mod 4 and p ≥ 7. In addition, for 1 ≤ t < p − 1 / 2 , by breaking t blocks of size 7 into 3 of 31 p , 5,7 , 1 , 1 / 2 , 1 / 2 -OOCs and 41 p , 5,7 , 1 , 2 / 3 , 1 / 3 -OOCs, we obtain new infinite classes of optimal 31 p , 3,5,7 , 1 , 7 t / p − 1 + 6 t , p − 1 / 2 p − 1 + 6 t , p − 1 − 2 t / 2 p − 1 + 6 t -OOCs and 41 p , 3,5,7 , 1 , 14 t / 3 p − 1 + 4 t , 2 p − 1 / 3 p − 1 + 4 t , p − 1 − 2 t / 3 p − 1 + 4 t -OOCs, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Reinforced concrete shear walls in multistory buildings often undergo the combined action of vertical and horizontal loads, with their failure primarily attributed to localized damage of the concrete at the bottom of edge elements, leading to premature loss of wall functionality. To enhance the performance of shear walls, this study explores the optimization of shear wall design from the perspective of the stress path within the wall, introducing a diagonally distributed reinforcements in shear walls (referred to as DDR shear walls). To investigate the seismic performance of DDR shear walls, we consider the effects of axial compression ratio, the inclination angle of distributed reinforcing bars, reinforcing bar spacing, and shear span ratio. We design 27 shear wall models with various parameter combinations and employ ABAQUS finite element analysis software to simulate the seismic performance. The simulation results reveal that the inclined distribution of reinforcing bars significantly enhances the seismic performance of shear walls. To achieve optimal structural performance, the inclination angle of reinforcing bars should be adjusted for different floor levels, with higher floors requiring a greater angle and lower floors a smaller one. Additionally, increasing the reinforcing bar spacing and altering the shear span ratio will have varying degrees of impact on the seismic performance of shear walls, necessitating rational design adjustments based on specific circumstances. Furthermore, the application of DDR shear walls in prefabricated construction can be considered to optimize construction processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The stationary Darcy–Brinkman equations in the double-diffusive convection, which model the heat and mass transfer phenomena, are considered in this paper. Based on a suitable contractive operator, the existence and uniqueness of the problem are firstly proved by using the fixed point theorem. The regularities of the weak solution are also derived. Then, the Newton iterative method is studied for solving the nonlinear discrete system generated from the finite element approximation, including the stability and the optimal error estimates regarding the spatial mesh size and the iterative factor. The analysis indicates that the viscosity coefficient has more impact on the numerical algorithm than the thermal conductivity and the mass diffusivity coefficients. Finally, many numerical examples are shown to confirm the correctness of the theoretical prediction. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mixed-cell-height circuits have become popular in advanced technologies for better power, area, routability, and performance tradeoffs. With technology and region constraints imposed by modern circuit designs, the mixed-cell-height legalization problem has become even more challenging. Additionally, an ideal legalization method should minimize both the average and maximum cell movements to preserve the quality of a given placement as much as possible. In this article, we present an effective and efficient mixed-cell-height legalization algorithm to consider technology and region constraints while minimizing the average and maximum cell movements. We first present a fence region handling technique to unify the fence regions and the default region. To obtain a desired cell assignment, we then propose a movement-aware cell reassignment method by iteratively reassigning cells in locally dense areas to their desired rows. After cell reassignment, a technology-aware legalization is presented to remove cell overlaps while satisfying the technology constraints. Finally, we propose a technology-aware refinement to further reduce the average and maximum cell movements without increasing the technology constraints violations. Compared with the champion of the 2017 CAD Contest at ICCAD and the state-of-the-art work, experimental results based on the 2017 CAD Contest at ICCAD benchmarks show that our algorithm achieves the best average and maximum cell movements and significantly fewer technology constraint violations, in a comparable runtime. The experimental results based on the modified 2015 ISPD Contest benchmarks also demonstrate the effectiveness of our algorithm in minimizing the average and maximum cell movements, compared with state-of-the-art mixed-cell-height legalizers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Inserting redundant vias is necessary for improving via yield in circuit designs. Block copolymer directed self-assembly (DSA) is an emerging and promising lithography technology for the manufacture of vias and redundant vias, in which guiding templates are used to enhance the resolution. Considering manufacturability of via layer, multiple patterning (MP) lithography is also needed in advanced designs. In this paper, we study the redundant via insertion and guiding template assignment for DSA with MP problem at the postrouting stage. We propose a graph-methodology-based solution framework. First, by analyzing the structure of guiding templates, we propose a new solution expression by introducing the concept of multiplet to discard redundant solutions, and then, honoring the compact solution expression, we construct a conflict graph on the grid model. Second, we formulate the problem with single patterning (SP) as a constrained maximum weight-independent set problem, for which a fast linear interpolation algorithm is introduced to obtain a local optimal solution. To avoid undesirable local optima, we propose an effective initial solution generation method. Our framework is general and is further extended to solve the problem with double patterning (DP) or triple patterning (TP) in a two-stage manner. Experimental results validate the efficiency and effectiveness of our method. Specifically, compared with the state-of-the-art work for the problem with SP, DP, and TP, our method can save 58%, 82%, and 96% runtime, respectively. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Epothilones constitute a new class of microtubule-stabilizing anti-cancer agents with promising preclinical and clinical activity. However, its systemic application still causes some toxic side effects. To reduce these undesired effects, advanced drug delivery systems based on cell targeting carriers are needed currently. In this study, the high quality bacterial ghosts of the probiotic Nissle 1917 (EcN) were prepared in a large scale and retained fully intact surface structures for specific attachment to mammalian cells. The EcN ghosts could be efficiently loaded with the low hydrophilic drug Epothilone B (Epo B) and the maximal load efficiency was approximately 2.5% (w/w). Cytotoxicity assays revealed that Epo B-ghosts exhibited enhanced anti-proliferative properties on the HeLa cells. The Epo B associated with EcN ghosts was more cytotoxic at least 10 times than the free Epo B at the same concentrations. Apoptosis assays showed that both Epo B-ghosts and free Epo B induced time course-dependent apoptosis and necrosis in HeLa cells, respectively. While the former induced more apoptosis and necrosis than the latter. Furthermore, the cytochrome C release and the activation of caspase-3 were more remarkable after treatment with the Epo B-ghosts compared to the free Epo B, which implied that Epo B-ghosts might more effectively induce the apoptosis mediated by mitochondrial pathway in HeLa cells. Therefore, the higher anti-proliferative effects of the Epo B-ghosts on the HeLa cells were mediated by mitochondrial pathway of apoptosis. The EcN ghosts may provide a useful drug delivery carrier for drug candidates in cancer therapy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we consider the triple patterning lithography layout decomposition problem. To address the problem, a discrete relaxation theory is built. For designing a discrete relaxation based decomposition framework, we propose a surface projection method for identifying native conflicts in a layout, and then constructing the conflict graph. Guided by the theory, the conflict graph is reduced to small size subgraphs by vertex removals, which is a discrete relaxation. Furthermore, by ignoring stitch insertions and assigning weights to features, the layout decomposition problem on the small subgraphs is further relaxed to a 0-1 program, which is solved by the Branch-and-Bound method. To obtain a feasible solution of the original problem, legalization methods are introduced to legalize a relaxation solution. At the legalization stage, we prior utilize one-stitch insertion to eliminate conflicts, and use a backtrack coloring algorithm to obtain a better solution. We test our decomposition approach on the ISCAS-85 & 89 benchmarks. Comparisons of experimental results show that our approach finds solutions of some benchmarks better than those by the state-of-the-art decomposers. Especially, according to our discrete relaxation theory, some optimal decompositions are obtained. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The minimum weight-dominating set (MWDS) problem is NP-hard and has a lot of applications in the real world. Several metaheuristic methods have been developed for solving the problem effectively, but suffering from high CPU time on large-scale instances. In this paper, we design an effective hybrid memetic algorithm (HMA) for the MWDS problem. First, the MWDS problem is formulated as a constrained 0–1 programming problem and is converted to an equivalent unconstrained 0–1 problem using an adaptive penalty function. Then, we develop a memetic algorithm for the resulting problem, which contains a greedy randomized adaptive construction procedure, a tabu local search procedure, a crossover operator, a population-updating method, and a path-relinking procedure. These strategies make a good tradeoff between intensification and diversification. A number of experiments were carried out on three types of instances from the literature. Compared with existing algorithms, HMA is able to find high-quality solutions in much less CPU time. Specifically, HMA is at least six times faster than existing algorithms on the tested instances. With increasing instance size, the CPU time required by HMA increases much more slowly than required by existing algorithms. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

The application of bacterial ghosts as vaccines is limited because of their low lysis efficiency and production and the presence of pathogenic islands and/or antibiotic resistance genes within ghost preparations. To overcome these problems, a new lysis plasmid with fusion gene of mutant gene E and staphylococcal nuclease A gene (mE-L-SNA) were constructed and characterized. The new plasmid pBV-mELS could efficiently induce the genetic inactivation of Escherichia coli cultures, accompanied by the intracellular degradation of the genetic material of host cells, devoid of the presence of pathogenic islands and antibiotic resistance genes within ghost preparations. Furthermore, the lysis efficiency of the plasmid pBV-mELS was not affected by bacterial concentration and could reach 99.99995% for E. coli at late-log phase. However, when the 74-bp non-encoding region of the gene mE-L-SNA were deleted or the first T nucleotide of the gene mE-L-SNA were substituted, these resulting genes lost the function of bacteriolysis, which suggested the 74-bp region of the gene mE-L-SNA, especially the first T nucleotide, played a crucial role in enhancement of bacteriolysis. The lysis system with the gene mE-L-SNA had predominance for large-scale production of safety-enhanced bacterial ghosts. The strategy may provide a promising avenue for efficient production of safe bacterial ghost vaccines. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The common objective of very large-scale integration (VLSI) placement problem is to minimize the total wirelength, which is calculated by the total half-perimeter wirelength (HPWL). Since the HPWL is not differentiable, various differentiable wirelength approximation functions have been proposed in analytical placement methods. In this paper, we reformulate the HPWL as an l1 -norm model of the wirelength function, which is exact but nonsmooth. Based on the l1 -norm wirelength model and exact calculation of overlapping areas between cells and bins, a nonsmooth optimization model is proposed for the VLSI global placement problem, and a subgradient method is proposed for solving the nonsmooth optimization problem. Moreover, local convergence of the subgradient method is proved under some suitable conditions. In addition, two enhanced techniques, i.e., an adaptive parameter to control the step size and a cautious strategy for increasing the penalty parameter, are also used in the nonsmooth optimization method. In order to make the placement method scalable, a multilevel framework is adopted. In the clustering stage, the best choice clustering algorithm is modified according to the l1 -norm wirelength model to cluster the cells, and the nonsmooth optimization method is recursively used in the declustering stage. Comparisons of experimental results on the International Symposium on Physical Design (ISPD) 2005 and 2006 benchmarks show that the global placement method is promising. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Exopolysaccharides (EPSs) are carbohydrate polymers produced and secreted by microorganisms. In a changing marine environment, EPS secretion can reduce damage from external environmental disturbances to microorganisms. Meanwhile, EPSs have promising application prospects in the fields of food, cosmetics, and pharmaceuticals. Changes in external environmental pH have been shown to affect the synthesis of EPSs in microorganisms. In this study, we analyzed the effects of different initial fermentation pHs on the production, monosaccharide composition, and antioxidant activity of the EPSs of Pseudoalteromonas agarivorans Hao 2018. In addition, the transcriptome sequence of P. agarivorans Hao 2018 under different initial fermentation pH levels was determined. GO and KEGG analyses showed that the differentially expressed genes were concentrated in the two-component regulatory system and bacterial chemotaxis pathways. We further identified the expression of key genes involved in EPS synthesis during pH changes. In particular, the expression of genes encoding the glucose/galactose MFS transporter, phosphomannomutase, and mannose-1-phosphate guanylyltransferase was upregulated when the environmental pH increased, thus promoting EPS synthesis. This study not only contributes to elucidating the environmental adaptation mechanisms of P. agarivorans, but also provides important theoretical guidance for the directed development of new products using biologically active polysaccharides. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, a new method is proposed for solving a class of structured variational inequalities (SVIs). The proposed method is referred to as the partial inexact proximal alternating direction (piPAD) method. In the method, two subproblems are solved independently. One is handled by an inexact proximal point method and the other is solved directly. This feature is the major difference between the proposed method and some existing alternating direction-like methods. The convergence of the piPAD method is proved. Two examples of the modern convex optimization problem arising from engineering and information sciences, which can be reformulated into the encountered SVIs, are presented to demonstrate the applicability of the piPAD method. Also, some preliminary numerical results are reported to validate the feasibility and efficiency of the piPAD method. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Given a set of sensors distributed on the plane and a set of Point of Interests (POIs) on a line segment, a primary task of the mobile wireless sensor network is to schedule covering the POIs by the sensors, such that each POI is monitored by at least one sensor. For balancing the energy consumption, we study the min-max line barrier target coverage (LBTC) problem which aims to minimize the maximum movement of the sensors from their original positions to their final positions at which the coverage is composed. We first proved that when the radius of the sensors are non-uniform integers, even 1-dimensional LBTC (1D-LBTC), a special case of LBTC in which the sensors are distributed on the line segment instead of the plane, is NP -hard. The hardness result is interesting, since the continuous version of LBTC to cover a given line segment instead of the POIs is known polynomial solvable. Then we present an exact algorithm for LBTC with uniform radius and sensors distributed on the plane, via solving the decision version of LBTC. We argue that our algorithm runs in time O (n 2 log n) and produces an optimal solution to LBTC. The time complexity compares favorably to the state-of-art runtime O (n 3 log n) of the continuous version which aims to cover a line barrier instead of the targets. Last but not the least, we carry out numerical experiments to evaluate the practical performance of the algorithms, which demonstrates a practical runtime gain comparing with an optimal algorithm based on integer linear programming. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Bacillus subtilis is a widespread Gram-positive facultative aerobic bacterium that is recognized as generally safe. It has shown significant application value and great development potential in the animal farming industry. As a probiotic, it is frequently used as a feed growth supplement to effectively replace antibiotics due to its favourable effects on regulating the intestinal flora, improving intestinal immunity, inhibiting harmful microorganisms, and secreting bioactive substances. Consequently, the gut health and disease resistance of farmed animals can be improved. Both vegetative and spore forms of B. subtilis have also been utilized as vaccine carriers for delivering the antigens of infectious pathogens for over a decade. Notably, its spore form is regarded as one of the most prospective for displaying heterologous antigens with high activity and stability. Previously published reviews have predominantly focused on the development and applications of B. subtilis spore surface display techniques. However, this review aims to summarize recent studies highlighting the important role of B. subtilis as a probiotic and vaccine carrier in maintaining animal health. Specifically, we focus on the beneficial effects and underlying mechanisms of B. subtilis in enhancing disease resistance among farmed animals as well as its potential application as mucosal vaccine carriers. It is anticipated that B. subtilis will assume an even more prominent role in promoting animal health with in-depth research on its characteristics and genetic manipulation tools., (© 2024. The Author(s), under exclusive licence to Springer Nature B.V.)