Privacy Preserving Utility Mining: A Survey

In big data era, the collected data usually contains rich information and hidden knowledge. Utility-oriented pattern mining and analytics have shown a powerful ability to explore these ubiquitous data, which may be collected from various fields and applications, such as market basket analysis, retail, click-stream analysis, medical analysis, and bioinformatics. However, analysis of these data with sensitive private information raises privacy concerns. To achieve better trade-off between utility maximizing and privacy preserving, Privacy-Preserving Utility Mining (PPUM) has become a critical issue in recent years. In this paper, we provide a comprehensive overview of PPUM. We first present the background of utility mining, privacy-preserving data mining and PPUM, then introduce the related preliminaries and problem formulation of PPUM, as well as some key evaluation criteria for PPUM. In particular, we present and discuss the current state-of-the-art PPUM algorithms, as well as their advantages and deficiencies in detail. Finally, we highlight and discuss some technical challenges and open directions for future research on PPUM.Comment: 2018 IEEE International Conference on Big Data, 10 page

Metaverse in Education: Vision, Opportunities, and Challenges

Traditional education has been updated with the development of information technology in human history. Within big data and cyber-physical systems, the Metaverse has generated strong interest in various applications (e.g., entertainment, business, and cultural travel) over the last decade. As a novel social work idea, the Metaverse consists of many kinds of technologies, e.g., big data, interaction, artificial intelligence, game design, Internet computing, Internet of Things, and blockchain. It is foreseeable that the usage of Metaverse will contribute to educational development. However, the architectures of the Metaverse in education are not yet mature enough. There are many questions we should address for the Metaverse in education. To this end, this paper aims to provide a systematic literature review of Metaverse in education. This paper is a comprehensive survey of the Metaverse in education, with a focus on current technologies, challenges, opportunities, and future directions. First, we present a brief overview of the Metaverse in education, as well as the motivation behind its integration. Then, we survey some important characteristics for the Metaverse in education, including the personal teaching environment and the personal learning environment. Next, we envisage what variations of this combination will bring to education in the future and discuss their strengths and weaknesses. We also review the state-of-the-art case studies (including technical companies and educational institutions) for Metaverse in education. Finally, we point out several challenges and issues in this promising area.Comment: IEEE BigData 2022. 10 pages, 5 figures, 3 table

Complete genomic sequence of the temperate bacteriophage ΦAT3 isolated from Lactobacillus casei ATCC 393

AbstractThe complete genomic sequence of a temperate bacteriophage ΦAT3 isolated from Lactobacillus (Lb.) casei ATCC 393 is reported. The phage consists of a linear DNA genome of 39,166 bp, an isometric head of 53 nm in diameter, and a flexible, noncontractile tail of approximately 200 nm in length. The number of potential open reading frames on the phage genome is 53. There are 15 unpaired nucleotides at both 5′ ends of the ΦAT3 genome, indicating that the phage uses a cos-site for DNA packaging. The ΦAT3 genome was grouped into five distinct functional clusters: DNA packaging, morphogenesis, lysis, lysogenic/lytic switch, and replication. The amino acid sequences at the NH2-termini of some major proteins were determined. An in vivo integration assay for the ΦAT3 integrase (Int) protein in several lactobacilli was conducted by constructing an integration vector including ΦAT3 int and the attP (int-attP) region. It was found that ΦAT3 integrated at the tRNAArg gene locus of Lactobacillus rhamnosus HN 001, similar to that observed in its native host, Lb. casei ATCC 393

Changes in transcriptional orientation are associated with increases in evolutionary rates of enterobacterial genes

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Changes in transcriptional orientation (“CTOs”) occur frequently in prokaryotic genomes. Such changes usually result from genomic inversions, which may cause a conflict between the directions of replication and transcription and an increase in mutation rate. However, CTOs do not always lead to the replication-transcription confrontation. Furthermore, CTOs may cause deleterious disruptions of operon structure and/or gene regulations. The currently existing CTOs may indicate relaxation of selection pressure. Therefore, it is of interest to investigate whether CTOs have an independent effect on the evolutionary rates of the affected genes, and whether these genes are subject to any type of selection pressure in prokaryotes.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Three closely related enterbacteria, <it>Escherichia coli</it>, <it>Klebsiella pneumoniae</it> and <it>Salmonella enterica serovar Typhimurium</it>, were selected for comparisons of synonymous (<it>dS</it>) and nonsynonymous (<it>dN</it>) substitution rate between the genes that have experienced changes in transcriptional orientation (changed-orientation genes, “COGs”) and those that do not (same-orientation genes, “SOGs”). The <it>dN</it>/<it>dS</it> ratio was also derived to evaluate the selection pressure on the analyzed genes. Confounding factors in the estimation of evolutionary rates, such as gene essentiality, gene expression level, replication-transcription confrontation, and decreased <it>dS</it> at gene terminals were controlled in the COG-SOG comparisons.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We demonstrate that COGs have significantly higher <it>dN</it> and <it>dS</it> than SOGs when a series of confounding factors are controlled. However, the <it>dN</it>/<it>dS</it> ratios are similar between the two gene groups, suggesting that the increase in <it>dS</it> can sufficiently explain the increase in <it>dN</it> in COGs. Therefore, the increases in evolutionary rates in COGs may be mainly mutation-driven.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Here we show that CTOs can increase the evolutionary rates of the affected genes. This effect is independent of the replication-transcription confrontation, which is suggested to be the major cause of inversion-associated evolutionary rate increases. The real cause of such evolutionary rate increases remains unclear but is worth further explorations.</p