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Amyotrophic lateral sclerosis (ALS) is a rare neurodegenerative disease with a challenging treatment landscape, due to its complex pathogenesis and limited availability of clinical drugs. Ferroptosis, an iron-dependent form of programmed cell death (PCD), stands distinct from apoptosis, necrosis, autophagy, and other cell death mechanisms. Recent studies have increasingly highlighted the role of iron deposition, reactive oxygen species (ROS) accumulation, oxidative stress, as well as systemic Xc- and glutamate accumulation in the antioxidant system in the pathogenesis of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis. Therefore, targeting ferroptosis emerges as a promising strategy for amyotrophic lateral sclerosis treatment. This review introduces the regulatory mechanism of ferroptosis, the relationship between amyotrophic lateral sclerosis and ferroptosis, and the drugs used in the clinic, then discusses the current status of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis treatment, hoping to provide new directions and targets for its treatment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Optimization methods in cyber-physical systems do not involve parameter uncertainties in most existing literature. This paper considers adaptive optimization problems in which searching for optimal solutions and identifying unknown parameters must be performed simultaneously. Due to the dual roles of the input signals on achieving optimization and providing persistent excitation for identification, a fundamental conflict arises. In this paper, a method of adding a small deterministic periodic dither signal to the input is deployed to resolve this conflict and provide sufficient excitation for estimating the unknown parameters. The designing principle of the dither is discussed. Under dithered inputs, the authors show that simultaneous convergence of parameter estimation and optimization can be achieved. Convergence properties and convergence rates of parameter estimation and optimization variable updates are presented under the scenarios of uncertainty-free observations and systems with noisy observation and unmodeled components. The fundamental relationships and trade-off among updating step sizes, dither magnitudes, parameter estimation errors, optimization accuracy, and convergence rates are further investigated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Opacity is an important property in control of information flow among networked agents. In this paper, we investigate information control problems in networked discrete event systems using opacity. In a networked discrete event system, communication among agents is via a shared communication network. Since delays and losses are unavoidable in networked discrete event systems, they must be considered in investigating opacity. We call opacity under communication delays and losses network opacity. We first define three network opacities: strong network opacity, weak network opacity, and network non-opacity. We derive necessary and sufficient conditions for network opacities and develop methods to check network opacities. We then apply network opacity to solve a problem in battery management systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Human noroviruses (NoVs) are an important cause of epidemic acute gastroenteritis. Their role in sporadic cases, however, is less clear. In this study, we performed a two-year surveillance (September 2005 to August 2007) of NoV gastroenteritis in outpatient clinics in a southern city of China, Jiangmen City. NoVs were detected in 115 patients (115/881, 13.1%) with 30 (26.1%) co-infections with rotaviruses. Sequence analysis showed that all 115 NoVs belonged to genogroup II, with GII.4 being the most predominant (87.8%). NoV-associated infection can be seen year-around, with autumn and winter peaks. This study provides basic information on sporadic cases of major NoV gastroenteritis in children in different seasons, which is valuable for future disease control and prevention. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The current research of state of charge (SoC) online estimation of lithium-ion battery (LiB) in electric vehicles (EVs) mainly focuses on adopting or improving of battery models and estimation filters. However, little attention has been paid to the accuracy of various open circuit voltage (OCV) models for correcting the SoC with aid of the ampere-hour counting method. This paper presents a comprehensive comparison study on eighteen OCV models which cover the majority of models used in literature. The low-current OCV tests are conducted on the typical commercial LiFePO4/graphite (LFP) and LiNiMnCoO2/graphite (NMC) cells to obtain the experimental OCV-SoC curves at different ambient temperature and aging stages. With selected OCV and SoC points from experimental OCV-SoC curves, the parameters of each OCV model are determined by curve fitting toolbox of MATLAB 2013. Then the fitting OCV-SoC curves based on diversified OCV models are also obtained. The indicator of root-mean-square error (RMSE) between the experimental data and fitted data is selected to evaluate the adaptabilities of these OCV models for their main features, advantages, and limitations. The sensitivities of OCV models to ambient temperatures, aging stages, numbers of data points, and SoC regions are studied for both NMC and LFP cells. Furthermore, the influences of these models on SoC estimation are discussed. Through a comprehensive comparison and analysis on OCV models, some recommendations in selecting OCV models for both NMC and LFP cells are given. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]