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Newcastle disease (ND) and infectious bursal disease (IBD) are both one of the most economically important infectious diseases, which cause high infection rate and mortality of chickens and restrict the development of the poultry industry. Currently, vaccination is the most effective method to prevent ND and IBD. In this study, the biological adjuvant bivalent vaccine (rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF) was developed for preventing ND and IBD. Furthermore, the immune and protective effects of rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF were evaluated in specific-pathogen-free chickens. The experimental results indicated that chickens immunized with rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF vaccine significantly improved anti-IBDV and anti-NDV antibody titer; the level of CD4+ T, CD8+ T, B+, MHC-II+, and monocyte/macrophagocyte+ cells; the concentrations of IL-1β, IL-4, IL-17, IFN-α, IFN-β, and IFN-γ; and the splenocyte proliferation rate. Anti-NDV antibody titer reached the theoretical protection value of 4log2 at 7 days after immunization in chickens of rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF group; however, which at 14 days after immunization in chickens of rClone30-VP2L and rClone30. These results showed that chickens immunized with rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF stimulated stronger immune response than those with the rClone30-VP2L and rClone30. Chickens were challenged with virulent IBDV BC6/85, which were protected in the rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF group. Furthermore, IBDV RNA was not measured, and there appeared to be little apoptosis in the bursa of Fabricius in the rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF group. Therefore, rClone30-VP2L-chGM-CSF is a promising vaccine candidate against infectious bursal disease virus (IBDV) and newcastle disease virus (NDV), and it provides an idea for developing other poultry vaccines.

This article proposes an active levitation control system composed of an active magnetic bearing (AMB) rotor and an interval type-2 (IT2) model-based fuzzy logic controller (FLC). The controller aims to achieve fast and stable levitation by compensating for system uncertainties via proper design of IT2 membership functions. In particular, the complex nonlinear dynamics of the AMB are modeled as a set of local linear systems around multiple operating points, which can be stabilized by a parallel distributed compensation scheme. Sufficient conditions are derived to guarantee the asymptotical stability of the closed-loop system based on the linear matrix inequality approach and the Lyapunov stability theory. Moreover, input constraints are applied in an enhanced version of the controller. Experiments on a real AMB platform were conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed IT2 FLC.

Active magnetic bearing (AMB) system is a typical electromechanical system which requires a controller for stable levitation. Active disturbance rejection controller (ADRC) is considered as an effective way to stabilize a system under external disturbance. And a classical proportion-integration-differentiation (PID) controller is still a simple yet effective method for most engineering applications for its robustness. In this paper, ADRC and PID controller are implemented for the stable levitation of AMB system. By the mathematical analysis, the connecting relationships of control parameters between those two methods are researched. And in view of the unbalance effect while AMB-rotor is rotating, the output responses and control performance comparison are analyzed for the closed-loop system models of AMBs using ADRC and PID. The derivations reveal the advantages of ADRC than PID clearly, which means that ADRC is a great substitute for PID to suppress unbalance force. Finally, the simulations are conducted to verify the analytical conclusions of this paper.

Neurological dysfunction, one of the consequences of acute liver failure (ALF), and also referred to as hepatic encephalopathy (HE), contributes to mortality posing challenges for clinical management. FGF21 has been implicated in the inhibition of cognitive decline and fibrogenesis. However, the effects of FGF21 on the clinical and molecular presentations of HE has not been elucidated. HE was induced by fulminant hepatic failure using thioacetamide (TAA) in male C57BL/6J mice while controls were injected with saline. For two consecutive weeks, mice were treated intraperitoneally with FGF21 (3 mg/kg) while controls were treated with saline. Cognitive, neurological, and activity function scores were recorded. Serum, liver, and brain samples were taken for analysis of CCL5 and GABA by ELISA, and RT qPCR was used to measure the expressions of fibrotic and pro-inflammatory markers. We report significant improvement in both cognitive and neurological scores by FGF21 treatment after impairment by TAA. GABA and CCL5, key factors in the progression of HE were also significantly reduced in the treatment group. Furthermore, the expression of fibrotic markers such as TGFβ and Col1 were also significantly downregulated after FGF21 treatment. TNFα and IL-6 were significantly reduced in the liver while in the brain, TNFα and IL-1 were downregulated. However, both in the liver and the brain, IL-10 was significantly upregulated. FGF21 inhibits CXCR4/CCL5 activation and upregulates the production of IL-10 in the damaged liver stimulating the production pro-inflammatory cytokines and apoptosis of hepatic stellate cells through the STAT3-SOCS3 pathway terminating the underlying fibrosis in HE., EXCLI Journal; 19:Doc567; ISSN 1611-2156

Chatter is a typical kind of unstable dynamics often encountered in machining processes, which often results in overcut and rapid tool wear. Hence, chatter phenomenon worsens the surface quality and reduces productivity in milling systems as well. Recent years have witnessed a surging industrial demand of high quality and high efficiency machining. Specifically, for low radial immersion milling situation, large depth of cuts is inevitably needed so as to increase the machining efficiency. To fulfill such a task, this paper develops a robust active control method to mitigate the chatter dynamics of low radial immersion milling processes. The present approach increases the axial depth of cuts, and the improvement is inversely proportional to the radial immersion ratio. Finally, case studies are conducted to show the substantially enlarged stable region in the stability lobe diagram (SLD) spanned by spindle rotational speed and axial depth of cut. Thus, the method can be expected to improve the efficiency of milling processes. Note to Practitioners —This paper seeks to mitigate machining chatters that worsen the workpiece surface quality in high-speed machining processes. To overcome such unexpected effects, traditional passive schemes simply adjust the rotational speed and cutting depth, which do not seek assistance from external power sources. Hence, neither the damping nor stiffness of the system can be changed, and a high maximal material removal rate (MMRR) is arduous to obtain. By contrast, this paper develops a robust active control method to mitigate the chatter dynamics for low radial immersion milling. In the design stage of the milling spindle, two active magnetic bearings (AMBs) are embedded in the tool house as control actuators, which produce extra force to counteract the chatters. In real milling processes, the chatters are detected by the associated inductive displacement sensors around the AMBs, and an uncertainty model is accordingly established with low radial immersion. With the detected vibration displacements, robust active control signals are calculated online, and then fed into the power amplifiers to drive the two AMBs. By this means, a closed-loop active control system is thus established for milling processes, which substantially enlarges the stable region of the SLD spanned by rotational speed and cutting depth. As a result, the proposed active control scheme can be expected to increase the MMRR and, hence, to enhance the productivity of milling processes.

Rotor active magnetic bearing (rotor-AMB) systems are frequently used to alleviate vibrations for various applications such as in national defense, manufacturing industries, IC production, and aerospace engineering.One obstacle to improve machining efficiency and quality is the open-loop instability of rotor-AMB systems during the machining process. We built a closed-loop processing platform using aspindle rotor installed with AMBs and thereby developed a rotor-AMB suspension system embedded with a dual-mode predictive controller (DMPC).The performance of the system is thus substantially improved. In the proposed DMPC, both model-based prediction and receding horizon optimization are utilized to guarantee the closed-loop stability of the rotor-AMB suspension systems with input constraints. Finally, the effectiveness and superiority of the proposed method are examined through substantial levitation experiments on a machining platform with installed AMBs.

Active magnetic bearing (AMB) rotor system is widely applied in the industry for its remarkable advantages. However, it is a typical open-loop unstable mechatronics system suffering from nonlinear and couple characteristic. In this paper, the feedforward decoupling method is used to deal with the couple relationship of different axes. And the model reference adaptive control (MRAC) method is applied to improve the control performance and robustness and overcome the uncertainties. This control method makes the system output reach to the reference model by the designed adaptive law. Simulation results illustrate the effectiveness of the proposed scheme.

These years have witnessed increasing research works and new technologies on manufacture of micro-/nanoscale flexible and tractile electronic devices. Orderly bead-on-string microstructures fabricated by electrospinning processes have applications in flexible and tractile sensors, artificial tissues and energy harvesters. In this paper, a feedback control system is established for sedimentary microstructures produced by electrospinning processes. This system is composed of a high-speed camera, an National Instruments (NI) image processor, an NI controller, and a linear machine regulating the substrate velocity. A robust model predictive control (MPC) method is developed on practical electrospinning processes to improve the regularity of the sedimentary bead-on-string pattern suffered by external disturbances and system uncertainties. Extensive experimental results have verified that the interbead gap becomes tunable and stabilized by the closed-loop MPC controller actuated by the linear machine. This controller is beneficial to enhance the consistency and controllability of the microelectrical elements. More significantly, the adjustability of the interbead gap enables the manufacturing of uniform microstructures widely used in microscale sensors and electrical units manufacturing and tissue engineering.

Exploring the interplay between sunlight, semiconducting minerals, and microorganisms in nature has attracted great attention in recent years. Here we report for the first time the investigation of the interaction between a hematite photoelectrode and Pseudomonas aeruginosa PAO1 under visible light irradiation. Hematite is the most abundant mineral on earth, with a band gap of 2.0 eV. A hematite electrode was electrochemically deposited on fluorine-doped tin oxide (FTO). It was thoroughly characterized by environmental scanning electron microscopy (ESEM), Raman, and UV–Vis spectroscopy, and its prompt response to visible light was determined by linear sweep voltammetry (LSV). Notably, under light illumination, the hematite electrode immersed in a live cell culture was able to produce 240% more photocurrent density than that in the abiotic control of the medium, suggesting a photoenhanced extracellular electron transfer process occurring between hematite and PAO1. Different temperatures of LSV measurements showed bioelectrochemical activity in the system. Furthermore, I–t curves under various conditions demonstrated that both a direct and an indirect electron transferring process occurred between the hematite photoanode and PAO1. Moreover, the indirect electron transferring route was more dominant, which may be mainly attributed to the pyocyanin biosynthesized by PAO1. Our results have expanded our understanding in that in addition to Geobacter and Shewanella it has been shown that more microorganisms are able to perform enhanced extracellular electron transfer with semiconducting minerals under sunlight in nature.