Robust Consensus Problem of Heterogeneous Uncertain Second-Order Multi-Agent Systems Based on Sliding Mode Control

This paper investigates the robust consensus problem for heterogeneous second-order multi-agent systems with uncertain parameters. Based on the sliding mode control method, novel robust consensus protocols are designed for the linear multi-agent systems with uncertain parameters and a class of uncertain nonlinear multi-agent systems. Finally, numerical simulations are given to verify the effectiveness of the proposed protocols.

Does Rural Living in Early Life Increase the Risk for Reduced Cognitive Functioning in Later Life?

Background: There is a robust consensus, most recently articulated in the 2020 Lancet Commission, that the roots of dementia can be traced to early life, and that the path to prevention may start there as well. Indeed, a growing body of research demonstrates that early life disadvantage may influence the risk for later life dementia and cognitive decline. A still understudied risk, however, is early life rural residence, a plausible pathway given related economic and educational disadvantages, as well as associations between later life rural living and lower levels of cognitive functioning. Objective: We aim to examine whether living in rural environments during early life has long term implications for cognitive health in later life. Methods: We employed the Wisconsin Longitudinal Study, which tracked 1 in every 3 high school graduates from the class of 1957, from infancy to ∼age 72. The data include a rich array of prospectively collected early life data, unique among existing studies, as well as later life measures of cognitive functioning. Results: We found a robust relationship between early life rural residence, especially living on a farm, and long-term risk for reduced cognitive performance on recall and fluency tasks. Controls for adolescent cognitive functioning, APOE ɛ2 and APOE ɛ4, as well as childhood and adult factors, ranging from early life socioeconomic conditions to later life health and rural and farm residency, did not alter the findings. Conclusion: Rural living in early life is an independent risk for lower levels of cognitive functioning in later life.

VCFCons: a versatile VCF-based consensus sequence generator for small genomes

We had developed VCFCons to address urgent need for a robust consensus sequence generator for SARS-CoV-2 viral surveillance, which presented several unique requirements, including: (a) low coverage areas should be noted with ‘N’s, (b) low frequency or suspicious variant calls need to be filtered. We have found that, while some existing tools such as bcftools can generate the desired consensus sequence, it required multiple filtering steps and additional scripting. VCFCons can generate consensus sequences based on variant calls in a VCF format with versatile filtering criteria based on coverage and estimated variant frequency. We applied VCFCons to the Labcorp SARS-CoV-2 sequencing data and showed that it generated correct consensus sequences that were successfully submitted to GISAID and NCBI. We hope the community will find value in this tool and aim to continue developing VCFCons to handle more complex viral data in the future.