Search

Deep reinforcement learning has achieved great success in many fields. However, the agent may get trapped during the exploration, lingering around feckless states that pull the agent away from optimal policies. Thus it's worth studying how to improve learning strategies by forecasting future states. To solve the problem, an algorithm that predicts behaviour consequences before taking action, referred to as Thinking about Action Consequence (TAC), based on the combination of the current state and the policy, is proposed. Deep reinforcement learning approaches equipped with TAC take advantage of the intrinsic prediction framework of TAC as well as bad consequence experiences to determine whether to continue exploring the current region or to evade the potential undesired state discriminated by TAC and instead turn to explore other areas. Since TAC will modify the future plan according to the execution of the policy and the changes of the environment, considering the consequences enables the agent to carry out a suitable exploration mechanism, leading to better performance. Compared with traditional Deep Q Learning (DQN), Double DQN, Dueling DQN, Prioritised Experience Replay DQN, and Intrinsic Reward (IR) methods with uncertain stimulus exploration, our TAC method shows better performance in Atari and Box2d environments. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Protein kinase CK2 is a ubiquitously expressed kinase in eukaryotes, which is known to phosphorylate many protein substrates. Because CK2 is involved in the regulation of various signaling pathways, we wondered whether CK2 participated in the regulation of ionizing radiation (IR) induced biological process. In this study, we investigated the effect of IR on the subcellular localization and kinase activity in human non-small cell lung cancer (NSCLC) cells. Immunofluorescent results showed that CK2 subunits shuttle into the nucleus mostly beginning 1 h after IR and lasting more than 6 h. We also conducted in vitro kinase assay and observed an increase in CK2 kinase activity at 6 h after IR. Furthermore, an increase in S phase was observed at 6 h after IR. Colony formation assay results demonstrated that CK2 inhibitor CX-4945 significantly enhanced the effect of irradiation in NSCLC cells. These results indicated that CK2 may be implicated in the regulation of IR-induced biological process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A new route for the preparation of liquid crystalline polyorganosiloxanes containing laterally linked mesogenic units on the main chains (LLM-POS) is described. First, a novel polyorganosiloxane containing hydroquinone units on the main chains (HQ-POS) was synthesized by hydrosilylation polymerization. To avoid the oxygen silylation side reaction of phenolic groups, tetrahydropyranyl (THP) protective groups were used on the phenols taking part in the hydrosilylation reaction, the results indicating that THP groups are very stable and effective in hydrosilylation reactions. Then HQ-POS was further modified by a grafting reaction with 4- n -octyloxybenzoyl chloride, giving the desired LLM-POS, which has an increased molecular mass in comparison with similar polymers prepared by commonly used approaches. The titled LLM-POS was characterized by DSC, POM and XRD and shown to give smectic textures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A trefoil-shaped liquid crystal containing an aromatic hetero-nucleus has been synthesized by the reaction of cyanuric chloride with 3,6-didecanoyl carbazole (DDC). The molecular structure was characterized by [sup 1]H NMR and [sup 13]C NMR spectroscopy, mass spectroscopy and elemental analysis. The core consists of 1,3,5-triazine directly linked to three carbazole groups. The trefoil-shaped conformation is suggested by molecular modelling. The mesophase was investigated using DSC, X-ray diffraction and polarizing optical microscopy. The X-ray diffraction pattern of a sample cooled slowly from the isotropic state showed sharp peaks in the small angle and wide angle regions implying the existence of a columnar phase with interand intra-columnar ordering. An unusual reticular texture similar to a cholesteric texture was observed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]