Profiling the vendors of COVID‐19 related product on the Darknet: An observational study

Background In a time of unprecedented global change, the COVID-19 pandemic has led to a surge in demand of COVID-19 vaccines and related certifications. Mainly due to supply shortages, counterfeit vaccines, fake documentation, and alleged cures to illegal portfolios, have been offered on darkweb marketplaces (DWMs) with important public health consequences. We aimed to profile key DWMs and vendors by presenting some in-depth case studies. Methods A non-systematic search for COVID-19 products was performed across 118 DWMs. Levels of activity, credibility, content, COVID-19 product listings, privacy protocols were among the features retrieved. Open web fora and other open web sources were also considered for further analysis of both functional and non functional DWMs. Collected data refers to the period between January 2020 and October 2021. Results A total of 42 relevant listings sold by 24 vendors across eight DWMs were identified. Four of these markets were active and well-established at the time of the study with good levels of credibility. COVID-19 products were listed alongside other marketplace content. Vendors had a trusted profile, communicated in English language and accepted payments in cryptocurrencies (Monero or Bitcoin). Their geographical location included the USA, Asia and Europe. While COVID-19 related goods were mostly available for regional supply, other listings were also shipped worldwide. Interpretation Findings emerging from this study rise important questions about the health safety of certain DWMs activities and encourage the development of targeted interventions to overcome such new and rapidly expanding public health threats. Funding CovSaf, National Research centre on Privacy, Harm Reduction and Adversarial Influence Online (REPHRAIN), Commonwealth Fund

Acid Sphingomyelinase Downregulation Enhances Mitochondrial Fusion and Promotes Oxidative Metabolism in a Mouse Model of Melanoma

Melanoma is the most severe type of skin cancer. Its unique and heterogeneous metabolism, relying on both glycolysis and oxidative phosphorylation, allows it to adapt to disparate conditions. Mitochondrial function is strictly interconnected with mitochondrial dynamics and both are fundamental in tumour progression and metastasis. The malignant phenotype of melanoma is also regulated by the expression levels of the enzyme acid sphingomyelinase (A-SMase). By modulating at transcriptional level A-SMase in the melanoma cell line B16-F1 cells, we assessed the effect of enzyme downregulation on mitochondrial dynamics and function. Our results demonstrate that A-SMase influences mitochondrial morphology by affecting the expression of mitofusin 1 and OPA1. The enhanced expression of the two mitochondrial fusion proteins, observed when A-SMase is expressed at low levels, correlates with the increase of mitochondrial function via the stimulation of the genes PGC-1alpha and TFAM, two genes that preside over mitochondrial biogenesis. Thus, the reduction of A-SMase expression, observed in malignant melanomas, may determine their metastatic behaviour through the stimulation of mitochondrial fusion, activity and biogenesis, conferring a metabolic advantage to melanoma cells

Illicit COVID-19 products online: A mixed-method approach for identifying and preventing online health risks

Aims The COVID-19 pandemic triggered a demand for vaccines, cures, and the need of related documentation for travel, work and other purposes. Our project aimed to identify the illicit availability of such products across the Dark Web Markets (DWMs). Methods A retrospective search for COVID-19 related products was carried out across 118 DWMs since the start of the pandemic (March 2020-October 2021). Data on vendors as well as advertised goods such as asking price, marketplace, listed date were collected and further validated through additional searches on the open web to verify the information relating to specific marketplaces. Both quantitative and qualitative methods were used for data analysis. Results Forty-two listings of unlicenced COVID-19 cures and vaccination certificates were identified across 8 marketplaces sold by 25 vendors with significant variation in prices. The listings were found to be geographically specific and followed the progression of the pandemic in terms of availability. Correlations between vendor portfolios of COVID-19 products and variety of goods of other illicit nature such as illegal weaponry, medication/drugs of abuse also emerged from our analysis. Conclusion This study is one of the first attempts to identify the availability of unlicenced COVID-19 products on DWMs. The easy accessibility to vaccines, fake test certificates and hypothetical/illegal cures poses serious health risks to (potential) buyers due to the uncontrolled nature of such products. It also exposes buyers to an unwanted contact with vendors selling a variety of other dangerous illicit goods. Further monitoring and regulatory responses should be implemented to protect the health and safety of citizens especially at times of global crisis

Fashionable curiosities: extreme footwear as wearable fantasies

This paper considers an aspect of the material culture fashion, focusing on shoes. Like clothes, shoes are used every day: they are essential objects that primarily allow people to perform daily and socially accepted activities, walk comfortably and adorn the body in a fashionable way. Furthermore, shoes are associated with the idea of individuality and can be highly practical or decorative, depending on their design and fashion style. With regard to their style, one phenomenon emerging in high fashion is that of the “impossible-to-wear shoes”: exhibitions and fashion shows staging designers’ bizarre shoes are becoming more frequent. During these shows, the spectators are presented with an unusual variety of footwear (e.g. heelless shoes; shoes without soles; fish-shaped shoes). These shoes are not made to fit the individual. On the contrary, their shape and forms are imposed on the individuals. This paper explores the extreme, impossible-to-wear shoes and considers the visual statements they make about contemporary society, women and femininity. I will argue that impossible-to-wear shoes are puzzling yet charming objects, epitomizing a spectacle-centered society: they are part of unexpected and personal performances, which blend the boundaries of fashion and art and allow the wearers to shift from an ordinary “self” to the extraordinary “other”

Cosmic-Ray Anisotropies in Right Ascension Measured by the Pierre Auger Observatory

We present measurements of the large-scale cosmic-ray (CR) anisotropies in R.A., using data collected by the surface detector array of the Pierre Auger Observatory over more than 14 yr. We determine the equatorial dipole component, through a Fourier analysis in R.A. that includes weights for each event so as to account for the main detector-induced systematic effects. For the energies at which the trigger efficiency of the array is small, the east-west method is employed. Besides using the data from the array with detectors separated by 1500 m, we also include data from the smaller but denser subarray of detectors with 750 m separation, which allows us to extend the analysis down to ∼0.03 EeV. The most significant equatorial dipole amplitude obtained is that in the cumulative bin above 8 EeV, %, which is inconsistent with isotropy at the 6σ level. In the bins below 8 EeV, we obtain 99% CL upper bounds on d ⊥ at the level of 1%-3%. At energies below 1 EeV, even though the amplitudes are not significant, the phases determined in most of the bins are not far from the R.A. of the Galactic center, at GC =-94°, suggesting a predominantly Galactic origin for anisotropies at these energies. The reconstructed dipole phases in the energy bins above 4 EeV point instead to R.A. that are almost opposite to the Galactic center one, indicative of an extragalactic CR origin

The depth of the shower maximum of air showers measured with AERA

The Auger Engineering Radio Array (AERA) is currently the largest array of radio antennas for the detection of cosmic rays, spanning an area of 17 km2 with 153 radio antennas, measuring in the energy range from 1017.0 to 1019.0 eV. It detects the radio emission of extensive air showers produced by cosmic rays in the 30 − 80 MHz band. The cosmic-ray mass composition is a crucial piece of information in determining the sources of cosmic rays and their acceleration mechanisms. The depth of the shower maximum, Xmax, a probe for mass composition can be determined with a likelihood analysis that compares the measured radio-emission footprint on the ground to an ensemble of footprints from CORSIKA/CoREAS Monte-Carlo air shower simulations. These simulations are also used to determine the resolution of the method and to validate the reconstruction by identifying and correcting for systematic uncertainties. We will present the method for the reconstruction of the depth of the shower maximum, achieving a resolution of up to 15 g/cm2, show compatibility with the independent fluorescence detector reconstruction measured on an event-by-event basis, and show that the data taken over the past seven years with AERA shows a light cosmic-ray mass composition reconstruction in the energy range from 1017.5 to 1018.8 eV

The 2021 Open-Data release by the Pierre Auger Collaboration

The Pierre Auger Observatory is used to study the extensive air-showers produced by cosmic rays above 1017 eV. The Observatory is operated by a Collaboration of about 400 scientists, engineers, technicians and students from more than 90 institutions in 18 countries. The Collaboration is committed to the public release of their data for the purpose of re-use by a wide community including professional scientists, in educational and outreach initiatives, and by citizen scientists. The Open Access Data for 2021 comprises 10% of the samples used for results reported at the Madison ICRC 2019, amounting to over 20000 showers measured with the surface-detector array and over 3000 showers recorded simultaneously by the surface and fluorescence detectors. Data are available in pseudo-raw (JSON) format with summary CSV file containing the reconstructed parameters. A dedicated website is used to host the datasets that are available for download. Their detailed description, along with auxiliary information needed for data analysis, is given. An online event display is also available. Simplified codes derived from those used for published analyses are provided by means of Python notebooks prepared to guide the reader to an understanding of the physics results. Here we describe the Open Access data, discuss the notebooks available and show material accessible to the user at https://opendata.auger.org/

Deep-learning based reconstruction of the shower maximum Xmax using the water-Cherenkov detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory

The atmospheric depth of the air shower maximum Xmax is an observable commonly used for the determination of the nuclear mass composition of ultra-high energy cosmic rays. Direct measurements of Xmax are performed using observations of the longitudinal shower development with fluorescence telescopes. At the same time, several methods have been proposed for an indirect estimation of Xmax from the characteristics of the shower particles registered with surface detector arrays. In this paper, we present a deep neural network (DNN) for the estimation of Xmax. The reconstruction relies on the signals induced by shower particles in the ground based water-Cherenkov detectors of the Pierre Auger Observatory. The network architecture features recurrent long short-term memory layers to process the temporal structure of signals and hexagonal convolutions to exploit the symmetry of the surface detector array. We evaluate the performance of the network using air showers simulated with three different hadronic interaction models. Thereafter, we account for long-term detector effects and calibrate the reconstructed Xmax using fluorescence measurements. Finally, we show that the event-by-event resolution in the reconstruction of the shower maximum improves with increasing shower energy and reaches less than 25 g/cm2 at energies above 2×1019 eV