Studying cancer immunotherapy using patient-derived xenografts (PDXs) in humanized mice.

Cancer immunotherapy is a promising way to eliminate tumor cells by using the patient\u27s own immune system. Selecting the appropriate animal models to develop or validate preclinical immunotherapeutic trials is now an important aspect of many cancer research programs. Here we discuss the advantages and limitations of using genetically engineered immunodeficient mouse models, patient-derived xenografts (PDXs), and humanized mouse models for developing and testing immunotherapeutic strategies

Information Disclosure and Security Vulnerability Awareness: A Large-Scale Randomized Field Experiment in Pan-Asia

This paper investigates how the disclosure of a security vulnerability index based on outgoing spams and phishing website hosting which may serve as an indicator of a firm’s inadequate security controls affects companies’ security protection strategy. Our core objective is to study whether firms improve their security when they become aware of their vulnerabilities and such information is publicized. To achieve this goal, we conduct a randomized field experiment on 1,262 firms in six Pan-Asian countries and regions. Among 631 treatment firms, we alert them of their security vulnerability index and ranking over time, and their relative performance compared to their peers via emails and a public advisory website. Compared with control firms without being informed of their security vulnerability index, treatment firms improve their security over time, with a significant reduction of outgoing spam volume. A marginally significant improvement in reducing phishing hosting websites is also observed among non-web hosting treatment firms. The security improvement may be attributed to firms’ proactive reaction to the public security vulnerability information. Our study provides cybersecurity policy makers with useful insights to motivate firms to adopt better security measures

Why Women are not in The Live Poker Room and The Evidence on How This Could Change

A disproportional number of women who play poker can be found in the live poker room.  Despite the interest of casinos to draw more women to poker, the strategies implemented to increase interest and participation in poker tournaments for women has not improved turnout.  This is the second phase of an exploratory study to examine industry barriers for women in poker.  A survey was administered in which 309 poker players were questioned as to their poker habits, 35% female, 55% male. This study reveals key findings that are statistically significant as women have key factors that vary their experiences to men, which has little coverage in previous academic studies. Key findings include; (1) Women are more likely to play tournament style games that range from $100-$499 buy in levels than men, (2) Women are more likely to experience intimidation in the live poker room and of all poker players who experience negative experiences (intimidation, bullying, theft, etc.), women are more likely to feel the issue was NOT resolved to their satisfaction.  This secondary study furthers the initial exploratory study and will provide implications for growth to this key segment of the $40 billion-dollar industry

A conceptual framework for designing blockchain technology enabled supply chains

Despite the growing popularity of blockchain technology (BT) applications in a supply chain (SC), the academic literature has failed to offer a complete picture of BT embedded in SC, hereafter referred to as BT-enabled SC, while focusing on BT’s specifics. Against this backdrop, this paper aims to develop a conceptual framework by identifying BT’s multifaceted features and clarifying their roles in designing BT-enabled SCs. Specifically, we delve into BT’s extant definitions in business disciplines as a basis for identifying BT’s key attributes and elucidate how these attributes can be incorporated into the design of BT-enabled SCs by introducing the framework that encompasses the strategic, configural, and operational spheres. This paper contributes to clarifying BT’s conceptual boundary by framing BT as a stack of technologies and applications – seven dimensions. Based on seven dimensions, the proposed framework offers guidance on how to design BT-enabled SCs

Security defense against long-term and stealthy cyberattacks

Modern cyberattacks such as advanced persistent threats have become sophisticated. Hackers can stay undetected for an extended time and defenders do not have sufficient countermeasures to prevent advanced cyberattacks. Reflecting on this phenomenon, we propose a game-theoretic model to analyze strategic decisions made by a hacker and a defender in equilibrium. In our game model, the hacker launches stealthy cyberattacks for a long time and the defender decides when to disable a suspicious user based on noisy observations of the user???s activities. Damages caused by the hacker can be enormous if the defender does not immediately ban a suspicious user under certain circumstances, which can explain the emerging sophisticated cyberattacks with detrimental consequences. Our model also predicts that the hacker may opt to be behavioral to avoid worst cases. This is because behavioral cyberattacks are less threatening and the defender decides not to immediately block a suspicious user to reduce cost of false detection

An Energy-efficient Multi-channel Dual-mode Wireless Gas-sensor System with Performance Regulation Capability

This paper presents the prototype of a wireless gas sensor system with real-time monitoring interface. A learning-based performance regulation scheme is proposed to improve the system efficiency. The scheme can adjust the pattern recognition, mode control and prediction of successive approximation register analog-to-digital converter (SAR ADC) results with neural network algorithm. The ROIC is supported 8-channel gas sensors and multi-mode as monitoring mode and precision mode. In order to optimize the power consumption of precision mode further, auto controlled correlated double sampling (CDS) zooming is proposed in the ROIC. Thus, the system can optimize the required resolution and power consumption depending on the critical level of each gas type and concentration. The prototype ROIC was fabricated with CMOS technology and 15.8x efficiency improvement of the system were verified experimentally through real gas sensing

Experimental and numerical assessment of helium bubble lift during natural circulation for passive molten salt fast reactor

To remove insoluble fission products, which could possibly cause reactor instability and significantly reduce heat transfer efficiency from primary system of molten salt reactor, a helium bubbling method is employed into a passive molten salt fast reactor. In this regard, two-phase flow behavior of molten salt and helium bubbles was investigated experimentally because the helium bubbles highly affect the circulation performance of working fluid owing to an additional drag force. As the helium flow rate is controlled, the change of key thermal-hydraulic parameters was analyzed through a two-phase experiment. Simultaneously, to assess the applicability of numerical model for the analysis of two-phase flow behavior, the numerical calculation was performed using the OpenFOAM 9.0 code. The accuracy of the numerical analysis code was evaluated by comparing it with the experimental data. Generally, numerical results showed a good agreement with the experiment. However, at the high helium injection rates, the prediction capability for void fraction of helium bubbles was relatively low. This study suggests that the multiphaseEulerFoam solver in OpenFOAM code is effective for predicting the helium bubbling but there exists a room for further improvement by incorporating the appropriate drag flux model and the population balance equation

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