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In the present work we address a simple, rapid and quantitative analytical method for detection of different proteins present in biological samples. For this, we proposed the model of titration of double protein (TDP) and its relevant leverage theory relied on the retardation signal of chip moving reaction boundary electrophoresis (MRBE). The leverage principle showed that the product of the first protein content and its absolute retardation signal is equal to that of the second protein content and its absolute one. To manifest the model, we achieved theoretical self-evidence for the demonstration of the leverage principle at first. Then relevant experiments were conducted on the TDP-MRBE chip. The results revealed that (i) there was a leverage principle of retardation signal within the TDP of two pure proteins, and (ii) a lever also existed within these two complex protein samples, evidently demonstrating the validity of TDP model and leverage theory in MRBE chip. It was also showed that the proposed technique could provide a rapid and simple quantitative analysis of two protein samples in a mixture. Finally, we successfully applied the developed technique for the quantification of soymilk in adulterated infant formula. The TDP-MRBE opens up a new window for the detection of adulteration ratio of the poor food (milk) in blended high quality one., (Copyright © 2015 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.)

The increasing use of high-throughput and large-scale bioinformatics-based studies has generated a massive amount of data stored in a number of different databases. The major need now is to explore this disparate data to find biologically relevant interactions and pathways. Thus, in the post-genomic era, there is clearly a need for the development of algorithms that can accurately predict novel protein-protein interaction networks in silico. The evolutionarily conserved Aurora family kinases have been chosen as a model for the development of a method to identify novel biological networks by a comparison of human and various model organisms. Our search methodology was designed to predict and prioritize molecular targets for Aurora family kinases, so that only the most promising are subjected to empirical testing. Four potential Aurora substrates and/or interacting proteins, TACC3, survivin, Hec1, and hsNuf2, were identified and empirically validated. Together, these results justify the timely implementation of in silico biology in routine wet-lab studies and have also allowed the application of a new approach to the elucidation of protein function in the post-genomic era.

Semi-supervised instance segmentation algorithms are mainly divided into algorithms based on pseudo-label generation and algorithms based on transfer learning. The algorithms based on pseudo-label generation need to design a specific pseudo-label generation process, but the process is not scalable for different types of source tasks. The algorithms based on transfer learning that started late have relatively high scalability, but the algorithm research ideas are relatively simple. To expand the research on semi-supervised instance segmentation based on transfer learning, this paper proposes a feature transfer-based semi-supervised instance segmentation algorithm Feature Transfer Mask R-CNN (FT-Mask). The FT-Mask algorithm is more scalable than algorithms based on pseudo-label generation and can be used to transfer knowledge from different types of source tasks. Compared with other semi-supervised instance segmentation algorithms based on transfer learning, FT-Mask uses the feature transfer method to achieve semi-supervised instance segmentation for the first time. The experimental results show that the FT-Mask model improves the semi-supervised instance segmentation accuracy of the Mask R-CNN benchmark model through the semi-supervised learning process, and can achieve effective transfer learning. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Solving optimal design problems through crowdsourcing faces a dilemma: On the one hand, human beings have been shown to be more effective than algorithms at searching for good solutions of certain real-world problems with high-dimensional or discrete solution spaces; on the other hand, the cost of setting up crowdsourcing environments, the uncertainty in the crowd's domain-specific competence, and the lack of commitment of the crowd contribute to the lack of real-world application of design crowdsourcing. We are thus motivated to investigate a solution-searching mechanism where an optimization algorithm is tuned based on human demonstrations on solution searching, so that the search can be continued after human participants abandon the problem. To do so, we model the iterative search process as a Bayesian optimization (BO) algorithm and propose an inverse BO (IBO) algorithm to find the maximum likelihood estimators (MLEs) of the BO parameters based on human solutions. We show through a vehicle design and control problem that the search performance of BO can be improved by recovering its parameters based on an effective human search. Thus, IBO has the potential to improve the success rate of design crowdsourcing activities, by requiring only good search strategies instead of good solutions from the crowd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We compare the performance of human players against that of the efficient global optimization (EGO) algorithm for an NP-complete powertrain design and control problem. Specifically, we cast this optimization problem as an online competition and received 2391 game plays by 124 anonymous players during the first month from launch. We found that while only a small portion of human players can outperform the algorithm in the long term, players tend to formulate good heuristics early on that can be used to constrain the solution space. Such constraining of the search enhances algorithm efficiency, even for different game settings. These findings indicate that human-assisted computational searches are promising in solving comprehensible yet computationally hard optimal design and control problems, when human players can outperform the algorithm in a short term. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Accurately and rapidly predicting the shrink mold shape of direct injection-expanded foam molding is an important and difficult task. This molding method is widely used by sports shoe sole manufacturers to create shock-resistant materials. Modifying the shrink mold shape using the numerical optimization method is crucial to rapidly obtaining the correct shrink mold size. This study uses a series of rectangle specimens to identify the relationship between the thermal heating of molding and the expansion ratio of ethylene vinyl acetate foam material and then uses this thermal expansion ratio to simulate expansion behavior. The experiments in this study also use the actual shoe sole type, which has the original three-dimensional (3D) shape, and use the proposed simulation method to obtain the simulation expansion shape. This study also develops an optimization algorithm based on 3D registration and the Newton–Raphson method to obtain the shrink mold shape. We also manufactured the shrink mold and obtained the shoe sole product to compare any discrepancies between the product and the original 3D shape. The results of this method meet the requirements of the shoe sole factory (i.e., achieve a difference of less than 3 mm). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: We introduce a technique to improve iterative kernel principal component analysis (KPCA) robust to outliers due to undesirable artifacts such as noises, alignment errors, or occlusion. The proposed iterative robust KPCA (rKPCA) links the iterative updating and robust estimation of principal directions. It inherits good properties from these two ideas for reducing the time complexity, space complexity, and the influence of these outliers on estimating the principal directions. In the asymptotic stability analysis, we also show that our iterative rKPCA converges to the weighted kernel principal kernel components from the batch rKPCA. Experimental results are presented to confirm that our iterative rKPCA achieves the robustness as well as time saving better than batch KPCA. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]

Sliced inverse regression (SIR) is a renowned dimension reduction method for finding an effective low-dimensional linear subspace. Like many other linear methods, SIR can be extended to nonlinear setting via the "kernel trick". The main purpose of this paper is two-fold. We build kernel SIR in a reproducing kernel Hilbert space rigorously for a more intuitive model explanation and theoretical development. The second focus is on the implementation algorithm of kernel SIR for fast computation and numerical stability. We adopt a low-rank approximation to approximate the huge and dense full kernel covariance matrix and a reduced singular value decomposition technique for extracting kernel SIR directions. We also explore kernel SIR's ability to combine with other linear learning algorithms for classification and regression including multiresponse regression. Numerical experiments show that kernel SIR is an effective kernel tool for nonlinear dimension reduction and it can easily combine with other linear algorithms to form a powerful toolkit for nonlinear data analysis. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Mathematical models are built and a nonlinear algorithm is coded to determine solutions to cutoff grade, sub-cutoff grade and sub-grade stockpile sizes which optimise the open pit mining from an economic point of view. The purpose is to study the theory that it is more reasonable economically for an open pit mine to stockpile its low grade ores and treat them later, especially if the mine has a bottleneck condition at the concentrator. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An adaptive multi-objective optimization artificial immune algorithm (AMOAIA) is presented in this paper. An innovating sorting mechanism based on its Pareto ratio is used to sort individuals in the antibody population. The selection and cloning scheme is improved by using a neighborhood-based fitness assessment. An adaptive clone selection mechanism is introduced to preserve the diversity of the antibody. A new hybrid mutation operator using chaos random series for globally optimization solution has been proposed to maintain the diversity of the antibody population. A multi-objective optimization clustering algorithm based on the distribution of distributed Pareto frontiers is proposed. In addition, the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm is verified under many difficult conditions such as local optimality, non-uniformity, discontinuity, non-convexity, high-dimension, and constraints. The comparative study shows the effectiveness of the proposed algorithm, which produces solution sets that are highly superiority in terms of global convergence, diversity and distribution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: This paper proposes an off-line feedrate scheduling method of CNC machines constrained by chord tolerance, acceleration and jerk limitations. The off-line process for curve scanning and feedrate scheduling is realized as a pre-processor, which releases the computational burden in real-time task. The proposed method first scans a non-uniform rational B-spline (NURBS) curve and finds out the crucial points with large curvature (named as critical point) or continuity (named as breakpoint). Then, the NURBS curve is divided into several NURBS sub-curves using curve splitting method which guarantees the convergence of predictor–corrector interpolation (PCI) algorithm. The suitable feedrate at critical point is adjusted according to the limits of chord error, centripetal acceleration and jerk, and at breakpoint is adjusted based on the formulation of velocity variation. The feedrate profile corresponding to each NURBS block is constructed according to the block length and the given limits of acceleration and jerk. In addition, feedrate compensation method for short NURBS blocks is performed to make the jerk-limited feedrate profile more continuous and precise. Because the feedrate profile is established in off-line, the calculation of NURBS interpolation is extremely efficient for CNC high-speed machining. Finally, simulations and experiments with two free-form NURBS curves are conducted to verify the feasibility and applicability of the proposed method. [Copyright &y& Elsevier]