Steganographer Identification

Conventional steganalysis detects the presence of steganography within single objects. In the real-world, we may face a complex scenario that one or some of multiple users called actors are guilty of using steganography, which is typically defined as the Steganographer Identification Problem (SIP). One might use the conventional steganalysis algorithms to separate stego objects from cover objects and then identify the guilty actors. However, the guilty actors may be lost due to a number of false alarms. To deal with the SIP, most of the state-of-the-arts use unsupervised learning based approaches. In their solutions, each actor holds multiple digital objects, from which a set of feature vectors can be extracted. The well-defined distances between these feature sets are determined to measure the similarity between the corresponding actors. By applying clustering or outlier detection, the most suspicious actor(s) will be judged as the steganographer(s). Though the SIP needs further study, the existing works have good ability to identify the steganographer(s) when non-adaptive steganographic embedding was applied. In this chapter, we will present foundational concepts and review advanced methodologies in SIP. This chapter is self-contained and intended as a tutorial introducing the SIP in the context of media steganography.Comment: A tutorial with 30 page

Diagnostic criteria and severity assessment of acute cholecystitis: Tokyo Guidelines

The aim of this article is to propose new criteria for the diagnosis and severity assessment of acute cholecystitis, based on a systematic review of the literature and a consensus of experts. A working group reviewed articles with regard to the diagnosis and treatment of acute cholecystitis and extracted the best current available evidence. In addition to the evidence and face-to-face discussions, domestic consensus meetings were held by the experts in order to assess the results. A provisional outcome statement regarding the diagnostic criteria and criteria for severity assessment was discussed and finalized during an International Consensus Meeting held in Tokyo 2006. Patients exhibiting one of the local signs of inflammation, such as Murphy’s sign, or a mass, pain or tenderness in the right upper quadrant, as well as one of the systemic signs of inflammation, such as fever, elevated white blood cell count, and elevated C-reactive protein level, are diagnosed as having acute cholecystitis. Patients in whom suspected clinical findings are confirmed by diagnostic imaging are also diagnosed with acute cholecystitis. The severity of acute cholecystitis is classified into three grades, mild (grade I), moderate (grade II), and severe (grade III). Grade I (mild acute cholecystitis) is defined as acute cholecystitis in a patient with no organ dysfunction and limited disease in the gallbladder, making cholecystectomy a low-risk procedure. Grade II (moderate acute cholecystitis) is associated with no organ dysfunction but there is extensive disease in the gallbladder, resulting in difficulty in safely performing a cholecystectomy. Grade II disease is usually characterized by an elevated white blood cell count; a palpable, tender mass in the right upper abdominal quadrant; disease duration of more than 72 h; and imaging studies indicating significant inflammatory changes in the gallbladder. Grade III (severe acute cholecystitis) is defined as acute cholecystitis with organ dysfunction

Antimicrobial therapy for acute cholangitis: Tokyo Guidelines

Antimicrobial agents should be administered to all patients with suspected acute cholangitis as a priority as soon as possible. Bile cultures should be performed at the earliest opportunity. The important factors which should be considered in selecting antimicrobial therapy include the agent’s activity against potentially infecting bacteria, the severity of the cholangitis, the presence or absence of renal and hepatic diseases, the patient’s recent history of antimicrobial therapy, and any recent culture results, if available. Biliary penetration of the microbial agents should also be considered in the selection of antimicrobials, but activity against the infecting isolates is of greatest importance. If the causative organisms are identified, empirically chosen antimicrobial drugs should be replaced by narrower-spectrum antimicrobial agents, the most appropriate for the species and the site of the infection

Tissue-specific gene expression templates for accurate molecular characterization of the normal physiological states of multiple human tissues with implication in development and cancer studies

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>To elucidate the molecular complications in many complex diseases, we argue for the priority to construct a model representing the normal physiological state of a cell/tissue.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>By analyzing three independent microarray datasets on normal human tissues, we established a quantitative molecular model GET, which consists of 24 tissue-specific <it>G</it>ene <it>E</it>xpression <it>T</it>emplates constructed from a set of 56 genes, for predicting 24 distinct tissue types under disease-free condition. 99.2% correctness was reached when a large-scale validation was performed on 61 new datasets to test the tissue-prediction power of GET. Network analysis based on molecular interactions suggests a potential role of these 56 genes in tissue differentiation and carcinogenesis.</p> <p>Applying GET to transcriptomic datasets produced from tissue development studies the results correlated well with developmental stages. Cancerous tissues and cell lines yielded significantly lower correlation with GET than the normal tissues. GET distinguished melanoma from normal skin tissue or benign skin tumor with 96% sensitivity and 89% specificity.</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>These results strongly suggest that a normal tissue or cell may uphold its normal functioning and morphology by maintaining specific chemical stoichiometry among genes. The state of stoichiometry can be depicted by a compact set of representative genes such as the 56 genes obtained here. A significant deviation from normal stoichiometry may result in malfunction or abnormal growth of the cells.</p

Tokyo Guidelines 2018 management bundles for acute cholangitis and cholecystitis

Management bundles that define items or procedures strongly recommended in clinical practice have been used in many guidelines in recent years. Application of these bundles facilitates the adaptation of guidelines and helps improve the prognosis of target diseases. In Tokyo Guidelines 2013 (TG13), we proposed management bundles for acute cholangitis and cholecystitis. Here, in Tokyo Guidelines 2018 (TG18), we redefine the management bundles for acute cholangitis and cholecystitis. Critical parts of the bundles in TG18 include the diagnostic process, severity assessment, transfer of patients if necessary, and therapeutic approach at each time point. Observance of these items and procedures should improve the prognosis of acute cholangitis and cholecystitis. Studies are now needed to evaluate the dissemination of these TG18 bundles and their effectiveness. Free full articles and mobile app of TG18 are available at: . Related clinical questions and references are also include

TG18 management strategies for gallbladder drainage in patients with acute cholecystitis: Updated Tokyo Guidelines 2018 (with videos)

Since the publication of the Tokyo Guidelines in 2007 and their revision in 2013, appropriate management for acute cholecystitis has been more clearly established. Since the last revision, several manuscripts, especially for alternative endoscopic techniques, have been reported; therefore, additional evaluation and refinement of the 2013 Guidelines is required. We describe a standard drainage method for surgically high-risk patients with acute cholecystitis and the latest developed endoscopic gallbladder drainage techniques described in the updated Tokyo Guidelines 2018 (TG18). Our study confirmed that percutaneous transhepatic gallbladder drainage should be considered the first alternative to surgical intervention in surgically high-risk patients with acute cholecystitis. Also, endoscopic transpapillary gallbladder drainage or endoscopic ultrasound-guided gallbladder drainage can be considered in high-volume institutes by skilled endoscopists. In the endoscopic transpapillary approach, either endoscopic naso-gallbladder drainage or gallbladder stenting can be considered for gallbladder drainage. We also introduce special techniques and the latest outcomes of endoscopic ultrasound-guided gallbladder drainage studies. Free full articles and mobile app of TG18 are available at: . Related clinical questions and references are also include

Correlated long-range mixed-harmonic fluctuations measured in pp, p+Pb and low-multiplicity Pb+Pb collisions with the ATLAS detector

For abstract see published article

Search for strong gravity in multijet final states produced in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV using the ATLAS detector at the LHC

A search is conducted for new physics in multijet final states using 3.6 inverse femtobarns of data from proton-proton collisions at √s = 13TeV taken at the CERN Large Hadron Collider with the ATLAS detector. Events are selected containing at least three jets with scalar sum of jet transverse momenta (HT) greater than 1TeV. No excess is seen at large HT and limits are presented on new physics: models which produce final states containing at least three jets and having cross sections larger than 1.6 fb with HT > 5.8 TeV are excluded. Limits are also given in terms of new physics models of strong gravity that hypothesize additional space-time dimensions

Performance of top-quark and W -boson tagging with ATLAS in Run 2 of the LHC

The performance of identification algorithms (“taggers”) for hadronically decaying top quarks and W bosons in pp collisions at √s=13 TeV recorded by the ATLAS experiment at the Large Hadron Collider is presented. A set of techniques based on jet shape observables are studied to determine a set of optimal cut-based taggers for use in physics analyses. The studies are extended to assess the utility of combinations of substructure observables as a multivariate tagger using boosted decision trees or deep neural networks in comparison with taggers based on two-variable combinations. In addition, for highly boosted top-quark tagging, a deep neural network based on jet constituent inputs as well as a re-optimisation of the shower deconstruction technique is presented. The performance of these taggers is studied in data collected during 2015 and 2016 corresponding to 36.1 fb −1 for the tt ¯ and γ+jet and 36.7 fb −1 −1 for the dijet event topologies