Victimization by Deepfake in the Metaverse: Building a Practical Management Framework

Deepfake is digitally altered media aimed to deceive online users for political favor, monetary gain, extortion, and more. Deepfakes are the prevalent issues of impersonation, privacy, and fake news that cause substantial damage to individuals, groups, and organizations. The metaverse is an emerging 3-dimensional virtual platform led by AI and blockchain technology where users freely interact with each other. The purpose of this study is to identify the use of illicit deep fakes which can potentially contribute to cybercrime victimization in the metaverse. The data will be derived from expert interviews (n=8) and online open sources to design a framework and provide solutions to mitigate deepfake-related victimization in the metaverse. This study identifies and further suggests a framework for advocacy of deepfake crime victimization in the metaverse through the application of the routine activities theory, as well as offender motivation and potential explanation of criminal behavior through Eysenck’s theory of criminality

Visually Guided Inter-limb Adaptation During Walking In Children And Adults

Voluntary visually guided movements must be constantly adapted to maintain accuracy. Here we applied principles of visuomotor adaptation to drive inter-limb adaptation of joint kinematics during voluntary, visually guided walking. We tested whether step length symmetry could be adapted and stored after training with mismatched visual feedback on two legs. 17 healthy children (9M/8F, 6-15 yrs) and 8 healthy adults (7M/1F, 26±6 yrs) were tested. We created a computer task where subjects modified step length trial-by-trial to hit virtual targets while walking on a treadmill. The relationship between screen-space and treadmill-space was defined by a visuomotor gain for each leg. Each test consisted of a baseline period (same gain on both legs), an adaptation period (one high gain, one low gain) and a post-adaptation period (same gain). The ‘fast leg’ and ‘slow leg’ refers to the leg adapted with the higher and lower gain, respectively. During the adaptation period, the leg adapted with the higher gain appeared to move fast, and the other leg appeared to move slowly on display. All healthy children and adults tested could rescale step length to maintain endpoint accuracy during visually guided walking. Step length gradually became more asymmetric during adaptation. The fast leg shortened step length (to correct overshoot), and the slow leg lengthened step length (to correct undershoot). In the post-adaptation period, step length asymmetry persisted (after-effect) despite the fact that the gains have returned to normal. The presence of an after-effect indicates storage of a new inter-limb visuomotor calibration. The after-effect was partially washed out after one minute of post-adaptation walking. This study suggests that visually guided inter-limb adaptation can alter step length, a major determinant of gait stability and energetic costs. This may open up new opportunities to correct abnormal, asymmetric walking patterns in children and adults with neurological damage

Hypoxia-Inducible Factor-2α as a Novel Target in Renal Cell Carcinoma

Hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF), an important mediator of hypoxia response, is implicated in tumorigenesis in the setting of pseudohypoxia, such as in the inactivation of von Hippel–Lindau tumor suppressor protein (pVHL), leading to development and progression of clear cell renal cell carcinoma (ccRCC). Targeting downstream molecules in HIF pathway, such as vascular endothelial growth factor (VEGF), has led to improvement in clinical outcome for patients with advanced ccRCC, but such therapy thus far has been limited by eventual resistance and treatment failure. Following the discovery of HIF-2α playing a key role in ccRCC carcinogenesis, inhibitors targeting HIF-2α have been developed and have demonstrated encouraging efficacy and safety profile in clinical trials. This review discusses HIF-2α as a promising therapeutic target for ccRCC

From Dogwhistles to Bullhorns: Unveiling Coded Rhetoric with Language Models

Dogwhistles are coded expressions that simultaneously convey one meaning to a broad audience and a second one, often hateful or provocative, to a narrow in-group; they are deployed to evade both political repercussions and algorithmic content moderation. For example, in the sentence 'we need to end the cosmopolitan experiment,' the word 'cosmopolitan' likely means 'worldly' to many, but secretly means 'Jewish' to a select few. We present the first large-scale computational investigation of dogwhistles. We develop a typology of dogwhistles, curate the largest-to-date glossary of over 300 dogwhistles with rich contextual information and examples, and analyze their usage in historical U.S. politicians' speeches. We then assess whether a large language model (GPT-3) can identify dogwhistles and their meanings, and find that GPT-3's performance varies widely across types of dogwhistles and targeted groups. Finally, we show that harmful content containing dogwhistles avoids toxicity detection, highlighting online risks of such coded language. This work sheds light on the theoretical and applied importance of dogwhistles in both NLP and computational social science, and provides resources for future research in modeling dogwhistles and mitigating their online harms.Comment: ACL 2023, see https://dogwhistles.allen.ai/ for the glossary and other material

Observing the anisotropic optical response of the heavy-fermion compound UNi2Al3

The optical conductivity of heavy fermions can reveal fundamental properties of the charge carrier dynamics in these strongly correlated electron systems. Here we extend the conventional techniques of infrared optics on heavy fermions by measuring the transmission and phase shift of THz radiation that passes through a thin film of UNi2Al3, a material with hexagonal crystal structure. We deduce the optical conductivity in a previously not accessible frequency range, and furthermore we resolve the anisotropy of the optical response (parallel and perpendicular to the hexagonal planes). At frequencies around 7cm^-1, we find a strongly temperature-dependent and anisotropic optical conductivity that - surprisingly - roughly follows the dc behavior.Comment: 3 pages, 2 figures, accepted for proceedings of QCnP 200

Rac1 drives intestinal stem cell proliferation and regeneration

Adult stem cells are responsible for maintaining the balance between cell proliferation and differentiation within self-renewing tissues. The molecular and cellular mechanisms mediating such balance are poorly understood. The production of reactive oxygen species (ROS) has emerged as an important mediator of stem cell homeostasis in various systems. Our recent work demonstrates that Rac1-dependent ROS production mediates intestinal stem cell (ISC) proliferation in mouse models of colorectal cancer (CRC). Here, we use the adult Drosophila midgut and the mouse small intestine to directly address the role of Rac1 in ISC proliferation and tissue regeneration in response to damage. Our results demonstrate that Rac1 is necessary and sufficient to drive ISC proliferation and regeneration in an ROS-dependent manner. Our data point to an evolutionarily conserved role of Rac1 in intestinal homeostasis and highlight the value of combining work in the mammalian and Drosophila intestine as paradigms to study stem cell biology

A Pilot Randomized Controlled Trial of a Videoconferencing Smoking Cessation Intervention for Korean American Women: Preliminary Findings

Introduction: Korean American women prefer online or telephone smoking cessation interventions that can be remotely accessed from home. However, these interventions have been found ineffective for the group. Methods: This study is a pilot clinical trial testing the feasibility and acceptability of a videoconferencing smoking cessation intervention for Korean American women and compared its preliminary efficacy with a telephone-based smoking cessation intervention. Korean women in the United States were recruited nationwide and randomly assigned at a ratio of 1:1 to either a video arm or a telephone arm. Participants in both arms received eight 30-minute weekly individualized counseling sessions of a culturally adapted smoking cessation intervention and nicotine patches for 8 weeks. They were followed up at post-quit 1, 2, and 3 months. Results: A total of 168 Korean Americans were assessed for eligibility, 77 were determined to eligible and 49 participated in the study. The videoconferencing intervention was acceptable and feasible for women under 50 years, whereas it was not for older women. The videoconferencing intervention produced abstinence rates of 67% at post-quit 1 month and 42% at post-quit 3 months based on self-report. The rate at post-quit 3 months dropped to 33% when those women whose abstinence could not be validated with salivary cotinine tests were treated as smoking. Abstinence rates in the telephone arm did not differ from those in the video arm. Conclusion: Findings suggest that videoconferencing smoking cessation intervention may be feasible and acceptable for Korean American women under 50 years. However, for older Korean American women, the intervention may not be feasible and telephone-based intervention seems to be just as effective if smoking cessation intervention components are adapted at a deep structural level of Korean culture by integrating its core cultural values and addressing psychosocial, social and environmental forces affecting the behavior

A new spin-anisotropic harmonic honeycomb iridate

The physics of Mott insulators underlies diverse phenomena ranging from high temperature superconductivity to exotic magnetism. Although both the electron spin and the structure of the local orbitals play a key role in this physics, in most systems these are connected only indirectly --- via the Pauli exclusion principle and the Coulomb interaction. Iridium-based oxides (iridates) open a further dimension to this problem by introducing strong spin-orbit interactions, such that the Mott physics has a strong orbital character. In the layered honeycomb iridates this is thought to generate highly spin-anisotropic interactions, coupling the spin orientation to a given spatial direction of exchange and leading to strongly frustrated magnetism. The potential for new physics emerging from such interactions has driven much scientific excitement, most recently in the search for a new quantum spin liquid, first discussed by Kitaev \cite{kitaev_anyons_2006}. Here we report a new iridate structure that has the same local connectivity as the layered honeycomb, but in a three-dimensional framework. The temperature dependence of the magnetic susceptibility exhibits a striking reordering of the magnetic anisotropy, giving evidence for highly spin-anisotropic exchange interactions. Furthermore, the basic structural units of this material suggest the possibility of a new family of structures, the `harmonic honeycomb' iridates. This compound thus provides a unique and exciting glimpse into the physics of a new class of strongly spin-orbit coupled Mott insulators.Comment: 12 pages including bibliography, 5 figure

Plug-Based Microfluidics with Defined Surface Chemistry to Miniaturize and Control Aggregation of Amyloidogenic Peptides

Small with control: For miniaturization of protein aggregation experiments the interfacial chemistry must be controlled to avoid protein aggregation caused by interfacial adsorption. Plug-based microfluidics with defined surface chemistry (see schematic picture) can then be used to perform hundreds of aggregation experiments with volume-limited samples, such as cerebrospinal fluid from mice