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This paper investigates performance output tracking for a boundary controlled multidimensional heat equation. It is assumed that the so-called total disturbance (which is composed of internal possibly nonlinear uncertainty and external disturbance) the equation is subject to is on one part of the boundary, and that the control is applied on the rest of the boundary. Using only partial boundary measurement, we first propose an extended state observer to estimate both system state and the total disturbance. This allows us to design a servomechanism and then an output feedback controller. Under the condition that both the reference signal and the disturbance vanish or belong to spaces $H^1(0,\infty ;L^1(\Gamma _1))$ and $L^2(0,\infty ;L^2(\Gamma _0))$ , respectively. We show that the over-all control strategy achieves three objectives on the system performance: first, exponentially output tracking for arbitrary given reference signal; second, uniformly boundedness of all internal signals; and, third, the internal asymptotic stability of the closed-loop system. In addition, the control strategy turns out to be robust to the measurement noise. We provide numerical experiments to illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed control strategy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the relationship between the appearance of the formation of the stars and the evolution of living organisms. A hypothesis states that a star is formed by the condensation of a cloud of dust and gas, which explains the origin of the solar system. According to astronomers, a life-bearing planet would have to travel on an orbit close to one of the stars in a separated system or on an orbit at a large distance from the stars in a close system.

Allele-specific (AS) assessment of chromatin has the potential to elucidate specific cis-regulatory mechanisms, which are predicted to underlie the majority of the known genetic associations to complex disease. However, development of chromatin landscapes at allelic resolution has been challenging since sites of variable signal strength require substantial read depths not commonly applied in sequencing based approaches. In this study, we addressed this by performing parallel analyses of input DNA and chromatin immunoprecipitates (ChIP) on high-density Illumina genotyping arrays. Allele-specificity for the histone modifications H3K4me1, H3K4me3, H3K27ac, H3K27me3, and H3K36me3 was assessed using ChIP samples generated from 14 lymphoblast and 6 fibroblast cell lines. AS-ChIP SNPs were combined into domains and validated using high-confidence ChIP-seq sites. We observed characteristic patterns of allelic-imbalance for each histone-modification around allele-specifically expressed transcripts. Notably, we found H3K4me1 to be significantly anti-correlated with allelic expression (AE) at transcription start sites, indicating H3K4me1 allelic imbalance as a marker of AE. We also found that allelic chromatin domains exhibit population and cell-type specificity as well as heritability within trios. Finally, we observed that a subset of allelic chromatin domains is regulated by DNase I-sensitive quantitative trait loci and that these domains are significantly enriched for genome-wide association studies hits, with autoimmune disease associated SNPs specifically enriched in lymphoblasts. This study provides the first genome-wide maps of allelic-imbalance for five histone marks. Our results provide new insights into the role of chromatin in cis-regulation and highlight the need for high-depth sequencing in ChIP-seq studies along with the need to improve allele-specificity of ChIP-enrichment.

Objective To objectively investigate the auditory status of mainland Chinese infants with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate and to evaluate an auditory assessment protocol for this group.Design Prospective cohort case review.Patients or other Participants A total of 42 Chinese infants with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate aged 6 to 24 months.Intervention The hearing profiles of participants were acquired using otoscopy, tympanometry, transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions, and auditory brainstem response estimated hearing threshold. The efficiency of the current audiological test battery was analyzed also.Results Sixty-four (64.2) percent of infants with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate (55.9% of ears) were suspected to have middle ear disorder, and 85.7% of all subjects (83.3% of ears) were found to have hearing loss. Of those with confirmed loss, the overall mean auditory brainstem response estimated air-conduction hearing threshold was 53.5 ± 13.6 decibel normal hearing level [db nHL]. Using auditory brainstem response thresholds as a reference standard, the diagnostic agreement with the other assessment tools for normal/abnormal results was otoscopy, 69% (? = .57); tympanometry, 66.7% (? = .53); and transient-evoked otoacoustic emissions, 80% (? = .64).Conclusion The high prevalence of middle ear disease and hearing loss in mainland Chinese infants with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate in this study was in contrast to previous studies of older age groups of Chinese children conducted in Hong Kong and Singapore. The audiological assessment protocol used in our study could provide useful information; although, modifications may be necessary to ensure a complete diagnostic overview for children with craniofacial clefts.

Objective To investigate possible structural abnormalities of the central auditory pathway in infants with nonsyndromic cleft lip and/or palate (NSCL/P).Participants Twenty-seven Chinese infants with NSCL/P, aged from 6 to 24 months.Intervention Morphological magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) measurements of the central auditory nervous system (CANS) in infants with NSCL/P were analyzed and compared with those of age- and sex-matched normal controls.Results No significant group differences were found in general brain measurements, including volumes of the brain stem and right hemisphere. However, infants with NSCL/P had statistically significantly smaller volumes of the left thalamus and left auditory cortex and notably decreased thickness of the left auditory cortex.Conclusion Cortical abnormalities were more marked compared with other MRI measurements. Structural CANS abnormalities in infants with NSCL/P may be located mainly in the left cerebral hemisphere. The development and maturation of the auditory cortex in infants with NSCL/P may be abnormal when compared with those of normal children.

Onthophagus trituber, O. taurinus, and O. proletarius, three sympatric dung beetle species native to southern Taiwan, exhibit normally distributed body size (pronotum width) but non-normally distributed horn length due to the presence of horned and hornless morphs. The scaling relationships between horn length and body size were established by using sigmoidal and segmented linear estimation, and the horned/hornless ratio in each of the species was estimated. The ratios estimated by sigmoidal curves showed that all three species were biased toward the hornless morph, whereas the ratios from segmented lines showed that only one species (O. taurinus) was biased toward the hornless morph. Nevertheless, the results of the two methods of estimation were concordant in ranking the horned morph proportions among the three species; O. proletarius had the largest proportion of horned morphs, whereas O. taurinus had the smallest, suggesting that the fewer horned morph in O. taurinus likely resulted from both intra- and inter-specific competition. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we calculate the production of a charged top pion in association with a boson at the CERN Large Hadron Collider (LHC) in the context of the topcolor assisted technicolor model. We find that the cross section of is roughly corresponding to the result of the process in the minimal supersymmetric standard model, and for reasonable ranges of the parameters, the cross section can reach a few hundred fb. The signal should be clearly visible at LHC unless is very heavy.

We calculate the flavor changing decay in the framework of the topcolor assisted multiscale technicolor model. We find that (a) the branching ratio of is insensitive to and , while it increases quickly as ? increases; (b) for reasonable ranges of the parameters, the maximum of the branching ratio in this model may reach , seven orders larger compared to the one calculated in the standard model. This might provide an opportunity to detect the rare decay of the top quark in experiments.

In the framework of topcolor-assisted technicolor model we calculate the contributions from the pseudo Goldstone bosons and new gauge bosons to . We find that for reasonable ranges of the parameters, the pseudo Goldstone bosons afford dominate contribution, the correction arising from new gauge bosons is negligibly small, the maximum of the relative corrections is with the center-of-mass energy ; whereas in the case of , the relative corrections could be up to 16%. Thus large new physics might be observable at the experiments of next-generation linear colliders.

For a single-machine, infinite-bus power system, digital robust stabilizers (controllers) are designed using modern H optimization. The objective is to design high-performance digital stabilizers with low cost in implementation on microprocessors; in particular, the digital stabilizers designed have low orders, require considerably slow sampling rates for implementation, and outperform the conventional (analogue) power system stabilizer on a series of dynamic performance tests. Four H stabilizers are designed and investigated: (1) an analogue SISO stabilizer measuring the speed signal and then implemented digitally; (2) a SISO digital stabilizer designed in discrete time; (3) a multivariable digital stabilizer measuring both speed and power signals with a single sampling rate; (4) a multirate digital stabilizer involving two sampling rates and designed using recently developed multirate control theory. The importance of weighting functions is stressed in the design process.

An intelligent modular fixture design system based on case-based reasoning (CBR) is proposed in this paper. Knowledge in CBR is represented in cases instead of rules. Descriptions of the CBR algorithm and its advantage over the rule-based expert system are introduced. Modification is a main operation in the CBR algorithm. Functional features are applied at this stage. Each component in a modular fixture is assigned a functional feature according its function. These components for which the functions are unsatisfactory are modified to fit the new problem. The modified case is stored in a knowledge base and becomes new knowledge. An illustrated example is presented. Two characteristics are expected of this modular fixture design system. First, the design system becomes more intelligent than the traditional CAD system; it participates in complete design work rather than just printing the design. Secondly, the system can learn from every consultation and become more experienced.

This study aimed to investigate whether hydroxynonenal (HNE) depletion is responsible for the switch from cyclooxygenase-2 (COX-2) and microsomal prostaglandin E2 synthase-1 (mPGES-1) to 5-lipoxygenase-activating protein (FLAP) and 5-lipoxygenase (5-LOX).