Mobile Payment System with Privacy Protection

Trade security is the main point of the payment system. The system should fit the security issues such as confidentiality, authentication, and non-repudiation. However, the privacy problem seems to be ignored. This article proposes a new structure to improve the privacy of mobile payment system when consumers buy something via mobile device. The new system needs to fit three points: familiarity, privacy, and non-repudiation

A combined biomarker and clinical panel for chronic graft versus host disease diagnosis.

Whilst many chronic graft versus host disease (cGVHD) biomarkers have been previously reported, few have been verified in an independent cGVHD cohort. We aimed to verify the diagnostic accuracy of previously reported markers of cGVHD in a multi-centre Chronic GVHD Consortium. A total of 42 RNA and 18 protein candidate biomarkers were assessed amongst 59 cGVHD cases and 33 matched non-GVHD controls. Total RNA was isolated from PBMC, and RNA markers were quantified using PCR. Serum protein markers were quantified using ELISA. A combined 3 RNA biomarker (IRS2, PLEKHF1 and IL1R2) and 2 clinical variables (recipient CMV serostatus and conditioning regimen intensity) panel accurately (AUC 0.81) segregated cGVHD cases from controls. Other studied RNA and protein markers were not confirmed as accurate cGVHD diagnostic biomarkers. The studied markers failed to segregate higher risk cGVHD (per overall NIH 0-3 score, and overlap versus classic cGVHD status). These data support the need for multiple independent verification studies for the ultimate clinical application of cGVHD diagnostic biomarkers

Liberation-focused Community Outreach: A Qualitative Exploration of Peer Group Supervision during Disaster Response

While it is clear that community outreach and disaster response must include cultural and social justice competence, there is a dearth of knowledge regarding the process by which this can occur. Guided by liberation psychology, this qualitative study examined the peer group supervision process of psychologists and counselors providing outreach to Haitian communities in Florida after the 2010 earthquake in Haiti. The findings suggest that peer supervision generated a cyclical process in which the practitioners focused on both content and process themes that were salient to the community outreach. During supervision, practitioners used content information on the community\u27s culture, strengths, and sociopolitical issues to conceptualize the community\u27s experiences and needs. This content informed the outreach process, including the practitioners’ roles and the ways in which they connected and developed respectful relationships with the community. Ongoing peer supervision appeared to facilitate a liberation-focused community outreach and increase consciousness among the practitioners

Sodium vanadate combined with l-ascorbic acid delays disease progression, enhances motor performance, and ameliorates muscle atrophy and weakness in mice with spinal muscular atrophy

BACKGROUND: Proximal spinal muscular atrophy (SMA), a neurodegenerative disorder that causes infant mortality, has no effective treatment. Sodium vanadate has shown potential for the treatment of SMA; however, vanadate-induced toxicity in vivo remains an obstacle for its clinical application. We evaluated the therapeutic potential of sodium vanadate combined with a vanadium detoxification agent, L-ascorbic acid, in a SMA mouse model. METHODS: Sodium vanadate (200 μM), L-ascorbic acid (400 μM), or sodium vanadate combined with L-ascorbic acid (combined treatment) were applied to motor neuron-like NSC34 cells and fibroblasts derived from a healthy donor and a type II SMA patient to evaluate the cellular viability and the efficacy of each treatment in vitro. For the in vivo studies, sodium vanadate (20 mg/kg once daily) and L-ascorbic acid (40 mg/kg once daily) alone or in combination were orally administered daily on postnatal days 1 to 30. Motor performance, pathological studies, and the effects of each treatment (vehicle, L-ascorbic acid, sodium vanadate, and combined treatment) were assessed and compared on postnatal days (PNDs) 30 and 90. The Kaplan-Meier method was used to evaluate the survival rate, with P < 0.05 indicating significance. For other studies, one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA) and Student's t test for paired variables were used to measure significant differences (P < 0.05) between values. RESULTS: Combined treatment protected cells against vanadate-induced cell death with decreasing B cell lymphoma 2-associated X protein (Bax) levels. A month of combined treatment in mice with late-onset SMA beginning on postnatal day 1 delayed disease progression, improved motor performance in adulthood, enhanced survival motor neuron (SMN) levels and motor neuron numbers, reduced muscle atrophy, and decreased Bax levels in the spinal cord. Most importantly, combined treatment preserved hepatic and renal function and substantially decreased vanadium accumulation in these organs. CONCLUSIONS: Combined treatment beginning at birth and continuing for 1 month conferred protection against neuromuscular damage in mice with milder types of SMA. Further, these mice exhibited enhanced motor performance in adulthood. Therefore, combined treatment could present a feasible treatment option for patients with late-onset SMA

The dimer interface of the SARS coronavirus nucleocapsid protein adapts a porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome virus-like structure

AbstractWe have employed NMR to investigate the structure of SARS coronavirus nucleocapsid protein dimer. We found that the secondary structure of the dimerization domain consists of five α helices and a β-hairpin. The dimer interface consists of a continuous four-stranded β-sheet superposed by two long α helices, reminiscent of that found in the nucleocapsid protein of porcine respiratory and reproductive syndrome virus. Extensive hydrogen bond formation between the two hairpins and hydrophobic interactions between the β-sheet and the α helices render the interface highly stable. Sequence alignment suggests that other coronavirus may share the same structural topology

The kSORT assay to detect renal transplant patients at high risk for acute rejection: results of the multicenter AART study

Abstract Background: Development of noninvasive molecular assays to improve disease diagnosis and patient monitoring is a critical need. In renal transplantation, acute rejection (AR) increases the risk for chronic graft injury and failure. Noninvasive diagnostic assays to improve current late and nonspecific diagnosis of rejection are needed. We sought to develop a test using a simple blood gene expression assay to detect patients at high risk for AR. Methods and Findings: We developed a novel correlation-based algorithm by step-wise analysis of gene expression data in 558 blood samples from 436 renal transplant patients collected across eight transplant centers in the US, Mexico, and Spain between 5 February 2005 and 15 December 2012 in the Assessment of Acute Rejection in Renal Transplantation (AART)study. Gene expression was assessed by quantitative real-time PCR (QPCR) in one center. A 17-gene set the Kidney Solid Organ Response Test (kSORT) was selected in 143 samples for AR classification using discriminant analysis (area under the receiver operating characteristic curve [AUC] = 0.94; 95% CI 0.91-0.98), validated in 124 independent samples (AUC = 0.95; 95% CI 0.88-1.0) and evaluated for AR prediction in 191 serial samples, where it predicted AR up to 3 mo prior to detection by the current gold standard (biopsy). A novel reference-based algorithm (using 13 12-gene models) was developed in 100 independent samples to provide a numerical AR risk score, to classify patients as high risk versus low risk for AR. kSORT was able to detect AR in blood independent of age, time post-transplantation, and sample source without additional data normalization; AUC = 0.93 (95% CI 0.86-0.99). Further validation of kSORT is planned in prospective clinical observational and interventional trials. Conclusions: The kSORT blood QPCR assay is a noninvasive tool to detect high risk of AR of renal transplants

Tox21Enricher-Shiny: an R Shiny application for toxicity functional annotation analysis

Inference of toxicological and mechanistic properties of untested chemicals through structural or biological similarity is a commonly employed approach for initial chemical characterization and hypothesis generation. We previously developed a web-based application, Tox21Enricher-Grails, on the Grails framework that identifies enriched biological/toxicological properties of chemical sets for the purpose of inferring properties of untested chemicals within the set. It was able to detect significantly overrepresented biological (e.g., receptor binding), toxicological (e.g., carcinogenicity), and chemical (e.g., toxicologically relevant chemical substructures) annotations within sets of chemicals screened in the Tox21 platform. Here, we present an R Shiny application version of Tox21Enricher-Grails, Tox21Enricher-Shiny, with more robust features and updated annotations. Tox21Enricher-Shiny allows users to interact with the web application component (available at http://hurlab.med.und.edu/Tox21Enricher/) through a user-friendly graphical user interface or to directly access the application’s functions through an application programming interface. This version now supports InChI strings as input in addition to CASRN and SMILES identifiers. Input chemicals that contain certain reactive functional groups (nitrile, aldehyde, epoxide, and isocyanate groups) may react with proteins in cell-based Tox21 assays: this could cause Tox21Enricher-Shiny to produce spurious enrichment analysis results. Therefore, this version of the application can now automatically detect and ignore such problematic chemicals in a user’s input. The application also offers new data visualizations, and the architecture has been greatly simplified to allow for simple deployment, version control, and porting. The application may be deployed onto a Posit Connect or Shiny server, and it uses Postgres for database management. As other Tox21-related tools are being migrated to the R Shiny platform, the development of Tox21Enricher-Shiny is a logical transition to use R’s strong data analysis and visualization capacities and to provide aesthetic and developmental consistency with other Tox21 applications developed by the Division of Translational Toxicology (DTT) at the National Institute of Environmental Health Sciences (NIEHS)