Insight into a natural Diels-Alder reaction from the structure of macrophomate synthase

The Diels-Alder reaction, which forms a six-membered ring from an alkene (dienophile) and a 1,3-diene, is synthetically very useful for construction of cyclic products with high regio- and stereoselectivity under mild conditions. It has been applied to the synthesis of complex pharmaceutical and biologically active compounds. Although evidence on natural Diels-Alderases has been accumulated in the biosynthesis of secondary metabolites, there has been no report on the structural details of the natural Diels-Alderases. The function and catalytic mechanism of the natural Diels-Alderase are of great interest owing to the diversity of molecular skeletons in natural Diels-Alder adducts. Here we present the 1.70 A resolution crystal structure of the natural Diels-Alderase, fungal macrophomate synthase (MPS), in complex with pyruvate. The active site of the enzyme is large and hydrophobic, contributing amino acid residues that can hydrogen-bond to the substrate 2-pyrone. These data provide information on the catalytic mechanism of MPS, and suggest that the reaction proceeds via a large-scale structural reorganization of the product.     

广义系统的可靠最优调节器设计

在实践应用过程中,控制元件(包括执行器或传感器)的失效往往会造成系统不稳定或性能指标难以达到·因此研究如何利用仅存的有效控制元件来实现控制目标十分必要·由此"可靠控制"应运而生,即无论特定集合中的某些控制元器件失效与否,都要求所设计的控制器能保证系统的稳定性和各项性能指标的实现·针对执行器失效的线性广义系统,给出可靠最优调节器设计方法,所设计的状态反馈控制器能够使执行器故障系统具有正则、渐近稳定、无脉冲,且此时的二次性能指标小于正常情况下的二次性能指标·     

A novel long-chain acyl-derivative of epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate prepared and purified from green tea polyphenols

Lipophilic tea polyphenols (LTP) were prepared by catalytic esterifieation of green tea polyphenols (GRIP) with hexadeeanoyl chloride. A novel long-chain aeyl-derivative of epigalloeateehin-3-o-gallate(EGCG) was first isolated from purification of LTP by high-speed eountereurrent ehromatography (HSCCC)using a solvent system composed of n-hexane-ethyl acetate-methanol-water ( 1 : 1 : 1 : 1, v/v) . The moleeularstructure of the acyl-derivative, Epigallocatechin-3-O-gallate-4‘-O-hexadeeanate , was elucidated by meansof elemental analysis, IR, 1H-NMR and MS spectra.     

Pitfalls in the analysis of ancient human mtDNA

The retrieval of DNA from ancient human specimens is not always successful owing to DNA deterioration and contamination although it is vital to provide new insights into the genetic structure of ancient people and to reconstruct the past history. Normally, only short DNA fragments can be retrieved from the ancient specimens. How to identify the authenticity of DNA obtained and to uncover the information it contained are difficult. We employed the ancient mtDNAs reported from Central Asia (including Xinjiang, China) as an example to discern potentially extraneous DNA contamination based on the updated mtDNA phylogeny derived from mtDNA control region, coding region, as well as complete sequence information. Our results demonstrated that many mtDNAs reported are more or less problematic.Startim, from a reliable mtDNA phylogeney and combining the available modern data into analysis, one can ascertain the authenticity of the ancient DNA, distinguish the potential errors in a data set, and efficiently decipher the meager information it harbored. The reappraisal of the mtDNAs with the age of more than 2000 years from Central Asia gave support to the suggestion of extensively (pre)historical gene admixture in this region.     

ENTROPY,INFORMATION,NOISE—STUDIES ON SYSTEM EVOLUTION

Universe, ecosystem, social system, etc. are evolving systems. The evolving processes of thesesystems have gradual small changes and rapid drastic changes with uncertainties under the constraintsof environment. Systems, as a whole, are evolving toward complexity, diversity and variety withfluctuations and jumps. New order emerges from "mutations". The evolution is bothchance-dependent and path-dependent. In this paper three basics: entropy, information and noise areemphasized with regard to system evolution which is a field that can give people wisdom to solvesystem problems with domain knowledge.     

Separating Latent Classes by Information Criteria

This study evaluates performance of information criteria used to separate latent classes. In the evaluations, various numbers of latent classes, sample sizes, parameter structures and latent-class complexities were designed to simulate datasets. The average accuracy rates of information criteria in selecting the designed numbers of latent classes were the core results in this experiment. The study revealed that widely used information criteria, e.g., AIC, BIC, CAIC, could perform poorly under some circumstances. By including a sample size adjustment (Rissanen, 1978), the unsatis-factory performances could be improved considerably. The sample size adjustment provides a plausible solution for separating latent classes. Guidelines are provided to help achieve optimum use of the model fit indices.     

A situation calculus based approach to dynamic management of e-business services

In the era of e-businesses, the traditional business services are greatly challenged by the ever-increasing demands from customers with various backgrounds and personalities. Large numbers of new e-businesses are driven by the needs of customers. The existing dynamics inherent in the customer needs require the corresponding dynamic management of services. Attempting to respond to customers in a rapid and intelligent way, this paper proposes a situation calculus based approach for dynamically managing e-Business services in the ubiquitous environment. By employing the formalism of the situation calculus to enable intelligence and automation, the approach can implement. the functions of service automatic composition and model verification. These functions will improve the degree of customer-orientation and enable fast responsiveness in the emerging e-service systems.     

Conflict analysis approaches for investigating attitudes and misperceptions in the War of 1812

Formal systems engineering approaches to modeling misperceptions and attitudes are employed within the framework of the graph model for conflict resolution to systematically study the War of 1812 between the United States of America and Great Britain in order to provide enhanced insights into the causes of the war. More specifically, relational definitions for preferences, movements and stability concepts are defined for describing the attitudes and associated behavior of decision makers involved in a conflict. To capture misperceptions of decision makers in the War of 1812, attitudes are studied within the structure of a hypergame. Combining attitudes and misperceptions within the paradigm of the graph model furnishes the flexible analytical tool which demonstrates that misunderstanding of attitudes by Great Britain and the United States may have contributed to the outbreak of this nasty war.     

THE λ-GROBNER BASES UNDER POLYNOMIAL COMPOSITION

Polynomial composition is the operation of replacing variables in a polynomial with other polynomials. λ-Grgbner basis is an especial Grobner basis. The main problem in the paper is： when does composition commute with λ-Grobner basis computation？ We shall answer better the above question. This has a natural application in the computation of λ-Grobner bases.     

A multiple intelligent agent system for credit risk prediction via an optimization of localized generalization error with diversity

Company bankruptcies cost billions of dollars in losses to banks each year. Thus credit risk prediction is a critical part of a bank＇s loan approval decision process. Traditional financial models for credit risk prediction are no longer adequate for describing today＇s complex relationship between the financial health and potential bankruptcy of a company. In this work, a multiple classifier system （embedded in a multiple intelligent agent system） is proposed to predict the financial health of a company. In our model, each individual agent （classifier） makes a prediction on the likelihood of credit risk based on only partial information of the company. Each of the agents is an expert, but has limited knowledge （represented by features） about the company. The decisions of all agents are combined together to form a final credit risk prediction. Experiments show that our model out-performs other existing methods using the benchmarking Compustat American Corporations dataset.