Nanjing University of Science and Technology

About: Nanjing University of Science and Technology is a education organization based out in Nanjing, China. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Control theory & Catalysis. The organization has 31581 authors who have published 36390 publications receiving 525474 citations. The organization is also known as: Nánjīng Lǐgōng Dàxué & Nánlǐgōng.

Hordenine: A Novel Quorum Sensing Inhibitor and Antibiofilm Agent against Pseudomonas aeruginosa.

Abstract: The quorum sensing (QS) inhibitory activity of hordenine from sprouting barley against foodborne pathogen Pseudomonas aeruginosa was evaluated for the first time here. At concentrations ranging from 0.5 to 1.0 mg mL–1, hordenine inhibited the levels of acyl-homoserine lactones. The enhanced susceptibility of hordenine with netilmicin on P. aeruginosa PAO1 biofilm formation as well as their efficiency in disrupting preformed biofilms was also evaluated using scanning electron microscopy and confocal laser scanning microscopy (CLSM). Hordenine treatment inhibited the production of QS-related extracellular virulence factors of P. aeruginosa PAO1. Additionally, quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction analysis demonstrated that the expressions of QS-related genes, lasI, lasR, rhlI, and rhlR, were significantly suppressed. Our results indicated that hordenine can serve as a competitive inhibitor for signaling molecules and act as a novel QS-based agent to defend against foodborne pathogens.

Joint Optimization of a UAV's Trajectory and Transmit Power for Covert Communications

Abstract: This paper considers covert communications in the context of unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) networks, aiming to hide a UAV for transmitting critical information out of an area that is monitored and where communication is not allowed. Specifically, the UAV as a transmitter intends to transmit information to a legitimate receiver (Bob) covertly while avoiding being detected by a warden (Willie), where location uncertainty exists at Bob and/or Willie. In order to enhance the considered covert communication performance, we jointly optimize the UAV's trajectory and transmit power in terms of maximizing the average covert transmission rate from the UAV to Bob subject to transmission outage constraint and covertness constraint. The formulated optimization problem is difficult to tackle directly due to the intractable constraints. As such, we first employ conservative approximation to transform a constraint into a deterministic form and then apply the first-order restrictive approximation to transform the optimization problem into a convex form. By applying the successive convex approximation technique, an efficient iterative algorithm is developed to solve the optimization problem. Our examination shows that the developed joint trajectory and transmit power optimization scheme achieves significantly better covert communication performance as compared to a benchmark scheme.