System Identification of Conveyor Belt Microwave Drying Process of Polymer Foams Using Electrical Capacitance Tomography.

The microwave drying process has a wide application in industry, including drying polymer foams after the impregnation process for sealings in the construction industry. The objective of the drying process is to reach a certain moisture in the foam by adjusting the power levels of the microwave sources. A moisture controller can be designed to achieve this goal; however, a process model is required to design model-based controllers. Since complex physics governs the microwave drying process, system identification tools are employed in this paper to exploit the process input and output information and find a simplified yet accurate model of the process. The moisture content of the foam that is the process output is measured using a designed electrical capacitance tomography (ECT) sensor. The ECT sensor estimates the 2D permittivity distribution of moving foams, which correlates with the foam moisture. Experiments are conducted to collect the ECT measurements while giving different inputs to the microwave sources. A state-space model is estimated using one of the collected datasets and is validated using the other datasets. The comparison between the model response and the actual measurements shows that the model is accurate enough to design a controller for the microwave drying process.

Differential Aspects of Natural and Morphine Reward-related Behaviors in Conditioned Place Preference Paradigm.

Introduction: Natural rewards are essential for survival. However, drug-seeking behaviors can be maladaptive and endanger survival. The present study was conducted to enhance our understanding of how animals respond to food and morphine as natural and drug rewards, respectively, in a conditioned place preference (CPP) paradigm. Methods: We designed a protocol to induce food CPP and compare it as a natural reward with morphine CPP in rats. The protocol for reward induction in both groups (foods and morphine) consisted of three phases: pre-test, conditioning, and post-test. In morphine groups, we injected morphine as a reward (5 mg/kg, SC). To induce natural reward, we used two different protocols. In the first one, the rats were deprived of food for 24 h. In the other method, the rats were restricted to food for 14 days. During the conditioning period, the animals received daily chow, biscuits, or popcorn as a reward inducer. Results: Results revealed that CPP was not induced in food-deprived rats. A combination of food restriction (as a facilitator) and a biscuit or popcorn-induced reward using CPP. In contrast, food deprivation did not facilitate food CPP in response to regular food. Interestingly the CPP score of the group which received biscuits during a 7-day conditioning period was more than that of the morphine group. Conclusion: In conclusion, food restriction could be a better protocol than food deprivation to facilitate food reward.

Improving the Izhikevich Model Based on Rat Basolateral Amygdala and Hippocampus Neurons, and Recognizing Their Possible Firing Patterns.

INTRODUCTION: Identifying the potential firing patterns following different brain regions under normal and abnormal conditions increases our understanding of events at the level of neural interactions in the brain. Furthermore, it is important to be capable of modeling the potential neural activities to build precise artificial neural networks. The Izhikevich model is one of the simplest biologically-plausible models, i.e. capable of capturing most recognized firing patterns of neurons. This property makes the model efficient in simulating the large-scale networks of neurons. Improving the Izhikevich model for adapting with the neuronal activity of rat brain with great accuracy would make the model effective for future neural network implementations. METHODS: Data sampling from two brain regions, the HIP and BLA, was performed by the extracellular recordings of male Wistar rats, and spike sorting was conducted by Plexon offline sorter. Further analyses were performed through NeuroExplorer and MATLAB. To optimize the Izhikevich model parameters, a genetic algorithm was used. In this algorithm, optimization tools, like crossover and mutation, provide the basis for generating model parameters populations. The process of comparison in each iteration leads to the survival of better populations until achieving the optimum solution. RESULTS: In the present study, the possible firing patterns of the real single neurons of the HIP and BLA were identified. Additionally, an improved Izhikevich model was achieved. Accordingly, the real neuronal spiking pattern of these regions' neurons and the corresponding cases of the Izhikevich neuron spiking pattern were adjusted with great accuracy. CONCLUSION: This study was conducted to elevate our knowledge of neural interactions in different structures of the brain and accelerate the quality of future large-scale neural networks simulations, as well as reducing the modeling complexity. This aim was achievable by performing the improved Izhikevich model, and inserting only the plausible firing patterns and eliminating unrealistic ones.

Adaptive variable structure hierarchical fuzzy control for a class of high-order nonlinear dynamic systems.

In this paper, a novel adaptive hierarchical fuzzy control system based on the variable structure control is developed for a class of SISO canonical nonlinear systems in the presence of bounded disturbances. It is assumed that nonlinear functions of the systems be completely unknown. Switching surfaces are incorporated into the hierarchical fuzzy control scheme to ensure the system stability. A fuzzy soft switching system decides the operation area of the hierarchical fuzzy control and variable structure control systems. All the nonlinearly appeared parameters of conclusion parts of fuzzy blocks located in different layers of the hierarchical fuzzy control system are adjusted through adaptation laws deduced from the defined Lyapunov function. The proposed hierarchical fuzzy control system reduces the number of rules and consequently the number of tunable parameters with respect to the ordinary fuzzy control system. Global boundedness of the overall adaptive system and the desired precision are achieved using the proposed adaptive control system. In this study, an adaptive hierarchical fuzzy system is used for two objectives; it can be as a function approximator or a control system based on an intelligent-classic approach. Three theorems are proven to investigate the stability of the nonlinear dynamic systems. The important point about the proposed theorems is that they can be applied not only to hierarchical fuzzy controllers with different structures of hierarchical fuzzy controller, but also to ordinary fuzzy controllers. Therefore, the proposed algorithm is more general. To show the effectiveness of the proposed method four systems (two mechanical, one mathematical and one chaotic) are considered in simulations. Simulation results demonstrate the validity, efficiency and feasibility of the proposed approach to control of nonlinear dynamic systems.

Hybrid-controlled neurofuzzy networks analysis resulting in genetic regulatory networks reconstruction.

Reverse engineering of gene regulatory networks (GRNs) is the process of estimating genetic interactions of a cellular system from gene expression data. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid systematic algorithm based on neurofuzzy network for reconstructing GRNs from observational gene expression data when only a medium-small number of measurements are available. The approach uses fuzzy logic to transform gene expression values into qualitative descriptors that can be evaluated by using a set of defined rules. The algorithm uses neurofuzzy network to model genes effects on other genes followed by four stages of decision making to extract gene interactions. One of the main features of the proposed algorithm is that an optimal number of fuzzy rules can be easily and rapidly extracted without overparameterizing. Data analysis and simulation are conducted on microarray expression profiles of S. cerevisiae cell cycle and demonstrate that the proposed algorithm not only selects the patterns of the time series gene expression data accurately, but also provides models with better reconstruction accuracy when compared with four published algorithms: DBNs, VBEM, time delay ARACNE, and PF subjected to LASSO. The accuracy of the proposed approach is evaluated in terms of recall and F-score for the network reconstruction task.