Greater Privacy Protection for Online Credit Card Payment

Privacy is always one of the primary concerns in electronic commerce. Consumers must have the right to keep their buying habits and personal information confidential, especially when it comes to on-line credit card payment. Not just only because this payment method has been becoming the trend of modern consuming practice, but also it involves the sensitivity of privacy information. Based on the need-to-know principle, transaction information should be distributed properly among participants to be against aggregation and analysis. In this paper, the privacy required for on-line credit card payment is described, and the privacy protection on three common payment protocols such as SSL, SET and 3D SET are also analyzed in detail. Two solutions are then proposed to enhance privacy protection for cardholder

Disease History and Life History Predict Behavioral Control of the COVID-19 Pandemic

202106 bcwhVersion of RecordRGC15608415Publishe

Current reversals and metastable states in the infinite Bose-Hubbard chain with local particle loss

We present an algorithm which combines the quantum trajectory approach to open quantum systems with a density-matrix renormalization group scheme for infinite one-dimensional lattice systems. We apply this method to investigate the long-time dynamics in the Bose-Hubbard model with local particle loss starting from a Mott-insulating initial state with one boson per site. While the short-time dynamics can be described even quantitatively by an equation of motion (EOM) approach at the mean-field level, many-body interactions lead to unexpected effects at intermediate and long times: local particle currents far away from the dissipative site start to reverse direction ultimately leading to a metastable state with a total particle current pointing away from the lossy site. An alternative EOM approach based on an effective fermion model shows that the reversal of currents can be understood qualitatively by the creation of holon-doublon pairs at the edge of the region of reduced particle density. The doublons are then able to escape while the holes move towards the dissipative site, a process reminiscent---in a loose sense---of Hawking radiation

Licochalcone A exerts antitumor activity in bladder cancer cell lines and mice models

Purpose: To investigate the effect of licochalcone A (LA) on the inhibition of cell proliferation and ERK1/2 phosphorylation in bladder carcinoma cell lines.Methods: Cell viability was investigated using 3-(4,5-dimethylthiazol-2-yl)-2,5-diphenyltetrazoliumbromide (MTT) assay. Dye-binding method was used to examine the concentration of proteins. Lymphocytes were extracted from mice and after surface staining were subjected to BD fixation and permeabilization for intracellular staining. Flow cytometry was used to measure cellular fluorescence.Results: MTT results revealed a significant decrease in the proliferation of UM-UC-3, J82 and HT-1197 cell lines on treatment with LA. LA also induced reduction in phosphorylation of ERK1/2 in all three carcinoma cell lines. In the mouse model, licochalcone A treatment via intraperitoneal (ip) administration induced a significant decrease in the level of regulatory T cells (Tregs). Comparison of the mouse interferon-α (IFN-α)-treated and LA-treated groups revealed that LA treatment caused enhancement of cytotoxic T lymphocyte (CTL) activity similar to that of IFN-α. Administration of UM-UC-3 cells in C3H/HeN mice resulted in marked reduction in the counts for splenocytes and CD4+ CD25+ Foxp3+ T (regulatory T cells) cell proportion in LA-treated mice compared to untreated control group.Conclusion: Licochalcone A may be of therapeutic importance for the prevention of bladder carcinoma. However, studies are required to ascertain the compound’s usefulness in this regard.Keywords: Licochalcone A, Bladder carcinoma, Splenocytes, Phosphorylation, Cell proliferation, Interfero

A comparison between deep learning convolutional neural networks and radiologists in the differentiation of benign and malignant thyroid nodules on CT images

Introduction: We designed 5 convolutional neural network (CNN) models and ensemble models to differentiate malignant and benign thyroid nodules on CT, and compared the diagnostic performance of CNN models with that of radiologists. Material and methods: We retrospectively included CT images of 880 patients with 986 thyroid nodules confirmed by surgical pathology between July 2017 and December 2019. Two radiologists retrospectively diagnosed benign and malignant thyroid nodules on CT images in a test set. Five CNNs (ResNet50, DenseNet121, DenseNet169, SE-ResNeXt50, and Xception) were trained-validated and tested using 788 and 198 thyroid nodule CT images, respectively. Then, we selected the 3 models with the best diagnostic performance on the test set for the model ensemble. We then compared the diagnostic performance of 2 radiologists with 5 CNN models and the integrated model. Results: Of the 986 thyroid nodules, 541 were malignant, and 445 were benign. The area under the curves (AUCs) for diagnosing thyroid malignancy was 0.587–0.754 for 2 radiologists. The AUCs for diagnosing thyroid malignancy for the 5 CNN models and ensemble model was 0.901–0.947. There were significant differences in AUC between the radiologists’ models and the CNN models (p < 0.05). The ensemble model had the highest AUC value. Conclusions: Five CNN models and an ensemble model performed better than radiologists in distinguishing malignant thyroid nodules from benign nodules on CT. The diagnostic performance of the ensemble model improved and showed good potential.

Heritable and Lineage-Specific Gene Knockdown in Zebrafish Embryo

BACKGROUND: Reduced expression of developmentally important genes and tumor suppressors due to haploinsufficiency or epigenetic suppression has been shown to contribute to the pathogenesis of various malignancies. However, methodology that allows spatio-temporally knockdown of gene expression in various model organisms such as zebrafish has not been well established, which largely limits the potential of zebrafish as a vertebrate model of human malignant disorders. PRINCIPAL FINDING: Here, we report that multiple copies of small hairpin RNA (shRNA) are expressed from a single transcript that mimics the natural microRNA-30e precursor (mir-shRNA). The mir-shRNA, when microinjected into zebrafish embryos, induced an efficient knockdown of two developmentally essential genes chordin and alpha-catenin in a dose-controllable fashion. Furthermore, we designed a novel cassette vector to simultaneously express an intronic mir-shRNA and a chimeric red fluorescent protein driven by lineage-specific promoter, which efficiently reduced the expression of a chromosomally integrated reporter gene and an endogenously expressed gata-1 gene in the developing erythroid progenitors and hemangioblasts, respectively. SIGNIFICANCE: This methodology provides an invaluable tool to knockdown developmental important genes in a tissue-specific manner or to establish animal models, in which the gene dosage is critically important in the pathogenesis of human disorders. The strategy should be also applicable to other model organisms

Surgical treatment of left-sided infective endocarditis with symptomatic neurological complications before surgery in China

IntroductionWe aimed to investigate surgical treatment of left-sided infective endocarditis with symptomatic neurological complications before surgery.MethodsThis was a retrospective study of patients with left-sided infective endocarditis and symptomatic neurological complications before surgery undergoing cardiac surgery between January 2006 and November 2022 at our hospital.ResultsEight hundred thirty-two patients were divided into group with symptomatic neurological complications before surgery (n = 112) and without symptomatic neurological complications before surgery (n = 720). There were 48 operative deaths (5.4%). Univariate and multivariate analyses showed that symptomatic neurological complications before surgery is statistically significantly associated with in-hospital mortality following cardiac surgery and prolonged intubation time.ConclusionsOur study showed that symptomatic neurological complications before surgery are associated with increased in-hospital mortality following cardiac surgery and prolonged intubation time