Clonal Immune Responses of Mycobacterium-Specific γδ T Cells in Tuberculous and Non-Tuberculous Tissues during M. tuberculosis Infection

BACKGROUND: We previously demonstrated that unvaccinated macaques infected with large-dose M.tuberculosis(Mtb) exhibited delays for pulmonary trafficking of Ag-specific αβ and γδ T effector cells, and developed severe lung tuberculosis(TB) and "secondary" Mtb infection in remote organs such as liver and kidney. Despite delays in lungs, local immunity in remote organs may accumulate since progressive immune activation after pulmonary Mtb infection may allow IFNγ-producing γδ T cells to adequately develop and traffic to lately-infected remote organs. As initial efforts to test this hypothesis, we comparatively examined TCR repertoire/clonality, tissue trafficking and effector function of Vγ2Vδ2 T cells in lung with severe TB and in liver/kidney without apparent TB. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: We utilized conventional infection-immunity approaches in macaque TB model, and employed our decades-long expertise for TCR repertoire analyses. TCR repertoires in Vγ2Vδ2 T-cell subpopulation were broad during primary Mtb infection as most TCR clones found in lymphoid system, lung, kidney and liver were distinct. Polyclonally-expanded Vγ2Vδ2 T-cell clones from lymphoid tissues appeared to distribute and localize in lung TB granuloms at the endpoint after Mtb infection by aerosol. Interestingly, some TCR clones appeared to be more predominant than others in lymphocytes from liver or kidney without apparent TB lesions. TCR CDR3 spetratyping revealed such clonal dominance, and the clonal dominance of expanded Vγ2Vδ2 T cells in kidney/liver tissues was associated with undetectable or low-level TB burdens. Furthermore, Vγ2Vδ2 T cells from tissue compartments could mount effector function for producing anti-mycobacterium cytokine. CONCLUSION: We were the first to demonstrate clonal immune responses of mycobacterium-specific Vγ2Vδ2 T cells in the lymphoid system, heavily-infected lungs and lately subtly-infected kidneys or livers during primary Mtb infection. While clonally-expanded Vγ2Vδ2 T cells accumulated in lately-infected kidneys/livers without apparent TB lesions, TB burdens or lesions appeared to impact TCR repertoires and tissue trafficking patterns of activated Vγ2Vδ2 T cells

Comprehensive association analysis of candidate genes for generalized vitiligo supports XBP1, FOXP3, and TSLP

We previously carried out a genome-wide association study of generalized vitiligo (GV) in non-Hispanic whites, identifying 13 confirmed susceptibility loci. In this study, we re-analyzed the genome-wide data set (comprising 1,392 cases and 2,629 controls) to specifically test association of all 33 GV candidate genes that have previously been suggested for GV, followed by meta-analysis incorporating both current and previously published data. We detected association of three of the candidate genes tested: TSLP (rs764916, P3.0E-04, odds ratio (OR)1.60; meta-P for rs38069333.1E-03), XBP1 (rs6005863, P3.6E-04, OR1.17; meta-P for rs22695779.5E-09), and FOXP3 (rs11798415, P5.8E-04, OR1.19). Association of GV with CTLA4 (rs12992492, P5.9E-05, OR1.20; meta-P for rs2317751.0E-04) seems to be secondary to epidemiological association with other concomitant autoimmune diseases. Within the major histocompatibility complex (MHC), at 6p21.33, association with TAP1-PSMB8 (rs3819721, P5.2E-06) seems to derive from linkage disequilibrium with major primary signals in the MHC class I and class II regions

BANAID: a sensor network test-bed for wormhole attacks

The development of wireless sensor devices in terms of low power and inexpensive data-relaying has been partially achieved because of the rapid progress in integrated circuits and radio transceiver designs and device technology. Due to these achievements, the wireless sensor devices are able to gather information, process them if required, and send them to the next sensor device. In some applications, these wireless sensor devices must be secured, especially when the captured information is valuable, sensitive or for military usage. Wormhole attacks are a significant type of security attacks which can damage the wireless sensor networks if they go undetected. Unfortunately, these attacks are still possible, even if the communication is secured. The wormhole attack records packets at one point of the network, passes them into another node and this last node injects the packet into the wireless sensor network again. This type of attacks can not be avoided by using cryptographic techniques because attackers neither generate new nor alter existing packets. They only forward legitimate packets from part of the network to another part. This attack can cause damage to the route discovery mechanism used in many routing schemes. In this paper we build an actual test bed, which is called BANAID, to simulate the wormhole attack on a wireless sensor network and then implement one of the current solutions against this attack. BANAID consists of a combination of Mica2 motes and Stargate sensor devices

Dynamic IoT Malware Detection in Android Systems Using Profile Hidden Markov Models

The prevalence of malware attacks that target IoT systems has raised an alarm and highlighted the need for efficient mechanisms to detect and defeat them. However, detecting malware is challenging, especially malware with new or unknown behaviors. The main problem is that malware can hide, so it cannot be detected easily. Furthermore, information about malware families is limited which restricts the amount of “big data” that is available for analysis. The motivation of this paper is two-fold. First, to introduce a new Profile Hidden Markov Model (PHMM) that can be used for both app analysis and classification in Android systems. Second, to dynamically identify suspicious calls while reducing infection risks of executed codes. We focused on Android systems, as they are more vulnerable than other IoT systems due to their ubiquitousness and sideloading features. The experimental results showed that the proposed Dynamic IoT malware Detection in Android Systems using PHMM (DIP) achieved superior performance when benchmarked against eight rival malware detection frameworks, showing up to 96.3% accuracy at 5% False Positive Rate (FP rate), 3% False Negative Rate (FN rate) and 94.9% F-measure

Influence of Soil Conductivity and Rod-to-Earth Gaps on Lightning Breakdown Voltage and Peak Current of Rod-to-Plane Air Gaps

International audienceThis study deals with the influence of soil conductivity and a rod-to-earth electrode gap on lightning impulse voltages. Two types of soils are considered: homogeneous and non-homogeneous/heterogeneous. The heterogeneous soil consists of a metallic plate in contact with a parallelepiped tank filled with water or wetted sand of different conductivities. It is shown that, for homogeneous Earth, the U50 decreases when 50% increasing the soil conductivity and the electrodes gap decreases. For heterogeneous soil configuration and a given distance from the HV electrode to the metallic electrode, the U50 is higher for lower conductivities of 50% homogeneous soil

Detecting Wormhole Attacks in Wireless Sensor Networks

The development of wireless sensor devices in terms of low power and inexpensive data-relaying has been partially achieved because of the rapid progress in integrated circuits and radio transceiver designs and device technology. Due to these achievements, the wireless sensor devices are able to gather information, process them if required and send them to the next sensor device. The captured information might be regarding temperature, pressure or light, and so on.\ud \ud In some applications, these wireless sensor devices must be secured, especially when the captured information is valuable, sensitive or for military usage. Wormhole attacks are a significant type of security attacks which can damage the wireless sensor networks if they go undetected. Unfortunately, these attacks are still possible, even if the communication is secured. The wormhole attack records packets at one point of the network, passes them into another node and this last node injects the packet into the wireless sensor network again.\ud \ud The main objective of this project is to build an actual test bed to simulate the wormhole attack on a wireless sensor network and to implement one of the current solutions which is called packet leashes to protect sensor networks from these kinds of attacks. This project’s test bed consists of a combination of Mica 2 motes and Stargate sensor devices

Practical management of acne for clinicians: an international consensus from the global alliance to improve outcomes in Acne

Scientific advances are continually improving the knowledge of acne and contributing to the refinement of treatment options; it is important for clinicians to regularly update their practice patterns to reflect current standards. The Global Alliance to Improve Outcomes in Acne is an international group of dermatologists with an interest in acne research and education that has been meeting regularly since 2001. As a group, we have continuously evaluated the literature on acne. This supplement focuses on providing relevant clinical guidance to health care practitioners managing patients with acne, with an emphasis on areas where the evidence base may be sparse or need interpretation for daily practice.Galderma International SAS, Paris, Franc