Ditto: Towards Decentralised Similarity Search for Web3 Services

The Web has become an integral part of life, and over the past decade, it has become increasingly centralised, leading to a number of challenges such as censorship and control, particularly in search engines. Recently, the paradigm of the decentralised Web (DWeb), or Web3, has emerged, which aims to provide decentralised alternatives to current systems with decentralised control, transparency, and openness. In this paper we introduce Ditto, a decentralised search mechanism for DWeb content, based on similarity search. Ditto uses locality sensitive hashing (LSH) to extract similarity signatures and records from content, which are stored on a decentralised index on top of a distributed hash table (DHT). Ditto uniquely supports numerous underlying content networks and types, and supports various use-cases, including keyword-search. Our evaluation shows that our system is feasible and that our search quality, delay, and overhead are comparable to those currently accepted by users of DWeb and search systems

Thermochronology of the modern Indus River bedload: New insight into the controls on the marine stratigraphic record

The Indus River is the only major drainage in the western Himalaya and delivers a long geological record of continental erosion to the Arabian Sea, which may be deciphered and used to reconstruct orogenic growth if the modern bedload can be related to the mountains. In this study we collected thermochronologic data from river sediment collected near the modern delta. U-Pb ages of zircons spanning 3 Gyr show that only ∼5% of the eroding crust has been generated since India-Asia collision. The Greater Himalaya are the major source of zircons, with additional contributions from the Karakoram and Lesser Himalaya. The 39Ar/40Ar dating of muscovites gives ages that cluster between 10 and 25 Ma, differing from those recorded in the Bengal Fan. Biotite ages are generally younger, ranging 0–15 Ma. Modern average exhumation rates are estimated at ∼0.6 km/m.y. or less, and have slowed progressively since the early Miocene (∼20 Ma), although fission track (FT) dating of apatites may indicate a recent moderate acceleration in rates since the Pliocene (∼1.0 km/m.y.) driven by climate change. The 39Ar/40Ar and FT techniques emphasize the dominance of high topography in controlling the erosional flux to the ocean. Localized regions of tectonically driven, very rapid exhumation (e.g., Nanga Parbat, S. Karakoram metamorphic domes) do not dominate the erosional record

MicroRNAs: exploring a new dimension in the pathogenesis of kidney cancer

Renal cell carcinoma (RCC) is the most common neoplasm of the adult kidney. The role of the von-Hippel-Lindeau (VHL) tumour suppressor gene is well established in RCC with a loss of VHL protein leading to accumulated hypoxia-induced factor (HIF) and the subsequent transcriptional activation of multiple downstream targets. Recently, microRNAs (miRNAs) have been shown to be differentially expressed in RCC and their role in RCC pathogenesis is emerging. This month, in BMC Medicine, Gleadle and colleagues show that certain miRNAs are regulated by VHL in either a hypoxia-inducible factor (HIF)-dependent or HIF-independent manner in RCC. They also show that miRNA expression correlates with the survival of RCC patients

PLASMA PROTEINS AND SELECTED ACUTE-PHASE PROTEINS IN THE WHITESPOTTED BAMBOO SHARK ( CHILOSCYLLIUM PLAGIOSUM

Plasma protein electrophoresis has been shown to be an important tool when recognizing disease in various species. Plasma was harvested from twenty captive whitespotted bamboo sharks (Chiloscyllium plagiosum) and gel electrophoresis was used to characterize the following protein fractions: total protein, prealbumin, albumin, α-1 globulin, α-2 globulin, β globulin, γ globulin, C-reactive protein, serum amyloid A, and haptoglobin. The selected acute-phase proteins were assayed and reference intervals created for a population of captive whitespotted bamboo sharks, and then used to assess relationships between these protein concentration values, sex, and health status. There were significantly higher β fractions and total protein in females than in males. There did not appear to be a relationship between physical examination abnormalities of individual sharks and their plasma protein levels. Further research is needed to characterize the clinical importance of this response