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Owing to the fluctuant renewable generation and power demand, the energy surplus or deficit in each nanogrid is embodied differently across time. To stimulate local renewable energy consumption and minimize the long-term energy cost, some issues still remain to be explored: when and how the energy demand and bidirectional trading prices are scheduled considering personal comfort preferences and environmental factors. For this purpose, the demand response and two-way pricing problems concurrently for nanogrids and a public monitoring entity (PME) are studied with exploiting the large potential thermal elastic ability of heating, ventilation and air-conditioning (HVAC) units. Different from nanogrids, in terms of minimizing time-average costs, PME aims to set reasonable prices and optimize profits by trading with nanogrids and the main grid bi-directionally. In particular, such bilevel energy management problem is formulated as a stochastic form in a long-term horizon. Since there are uncertain system parameters, time-coupled queue constraints and the interplay of bilevel decision-making, it is challenging to solve the formulated problems. To this end, we derive a form of relaxation based on Lyapunov optimization technique to make the energy management problem tractable without forecasting the related system parameters. The transaction between nanogrids and PME is captured by a one-leader and multi-follower Stackelberg game framework. Then, theoretical analysis of the existence and uniqueness of Stackelberg equilibrium (SE) is developed based on the proposed game property. Following that, we devise an optimization algorithm to reach the SE with less information exchange. Numerical experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach.

Additional file 1. Deep-learning model (AI system).

There has been a recent emphasis on production of large-sized Eriocheir sinensis broodstock. In China, aquaculturists generally prefer wild-caught (WC) crabs from the Yangtze River as broodstock because offspring performance is superior to that of pond-reared (PR) broodstock. Currently, however, there is a ban on fishing in the Yangtze River, and effects on E. sinensis breeding have not been ascertained. There was comparison in the present study of reproductive performance and semen characteristics of male broodstock of PR and WC groups. After copulation, sperm quantity in the vas deferens of crabs in specimens of both groups was large, although there was a consistent decrease in vaso-somatic index. Although sperm density of PR crabs was less, that of WC specimens remained relatively constant. Specimens of neither group, however, had changes in the hepatopancreas index or condition factor, and sperm survival was close to 100%. Although the acrosome reaction was detected in response to cold-temperature induction, there were differences in extent of reaction to cold temperatures. Importantly, in as many as 98% of sperm from female spermathecae, the reaction was completed, which was considerably greater than 15% for sperm of males post-mating. It is concluded there was no difference between PR and WC crabs with respect to reproductive performance or semen characteristics, and, notably, sperm from PR crabs were of sufficient quality for use in E. sinensis aquaculture enterprises. Accordingly, it is predicted the Yangtze River fishing ban would only have a limited effect on supply of male E. sinensis broodstock.

Additional file 1: Figure S1. Hematoxylin–eosin (HE) staining of all 15 NPC cell lines (× 20). Scale bars: 50 μm.

Additional file 1. Supplementary Methods and Table S1–6.

In the proposed SEHybridSN model, a dense block was used to reuse shallow feature and aimed at better exploiting hierarchical spatial spectral feature. Subsequent depth separable convolutional layers were used to discriminate the spatial information. Further refinement of spatial spectral features was realized by the channel attention method, which were performed behind every 3D convolutional layer and every 2D convolutional layer. Experiment results indicate that our proposed model learn more discriminative spatial spectral features using very few training data. SEHybridSN using only 0.05 and 0.01 labeled data for training, a very satisfactory performance is obtained., Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1902.06701 by other authors

Toxoplasmosis is caused by an obligate intracellular parasite, the protozoan Toxoplasma gondii. Discovery of novel drugs against T. gondii infection could circumvent the toxicity of existing drugs and T. gondii resistance to current treatments. The autophagy-related protein 8 (Atg8)–Atg3 interaction in T. gondii is a promising drug target because of its importance for regulating Atg8 lipidation. We reported previously that TgAtg8 and TgAtg3 interact directly. Here we validated that substitutions of conserved residues of TgAtg8 interacting with the Atg8 family–interacting motif (AIM) in Atg3 disrupt the TgAtg8–TgAtg3 interaction and reduce TgAtg8 lipidation and autophagosome formation. These findings were consistent with results reported previously for Plasmodium Atg8, suggesting functional conservation of Atg8 in Toxoplasma and Plasmodium. Moreover, using peptide and AlphaScreen assays, we identified the AIM sequence in TgAtg3 that binds TgAtg8. We determined that the core TgAtg3 AIM contains a Phe239-Ala240-Asp241-Ile242 (239FADI242) signature distinct from the 105WLLP108 signature in the AIM of Plasmodium Atg3. Furthermore, an alanine-scanning assay revealed that the TgAtg8–TgAtg3 interaction in T. gondii also depends strongly on several residues surrounding the core TgAtg3 AIM, such as Asn238, Asp243, and Cys244. These results indicate that distinct AIMs in Atg3 contribute to differences between Toxoplasma and Plasmodium Atg8–Atg3 interactions. By elucidating critical residues involved in the TgAtg8–TgAtg3 interaction, our work paves the way for the discovery of potential anti-toxoplasmosis drugs. The quantitative and straightforward AlphaScreen assay developed here may enable high-throughput screening for small molecules disrupting the TgAtg8–TgAtg3 interaction.