467 research outputs found
Privacy-aware Data Trading
The growing threat of personal data breach in data trading pinpoints an
urgent need to develop countermeasures for preserving individual privacy. The
state-of-the-art work either endows the data collector with the responsibility
of data privacy or reports only a privacy-preserving version of the data. The
basic assumption of the former approach that the data collector is trustworthy
does not always hold true in reality, whereas the latter approach reduces the
value of data. In this paper, we investigate the privacy leakage issue from the
root source. Specifically, we take a fresh look to reverse the inferior
position of the data provider by making her dominate the game with the
collector to solve the dilemma in data trading. To that aim, we propose the
noisy-sequentially zero-determinant (NSZD) strategies by tailoring the
classical zero-determinant strategies, originally designed for the
simultaneous-move game, to adapt to the noisy sequential game. NSZD strategies
can empower the data provider to unilaterally set the expected payoff of the
data collector or enforce a positive relationship between her and the data
collector's expected payoffs. Both strategies can stimulate a rational data
collector to behave honestly, boosting a healthy data trading market. Numerical
simulations are used to examine the impacts of key parameters and the feasible
region where the data provider can be an NSZD player. Finally, we prove that
the data collector cannot employ NSZD to further dominate the data market for
deteriorating privacy leakage.Comment: 10 pages, 11 figure
Proof of User Similarity: the Spatial Measurer of Blockchain
Although proof of work (PoW) consensus dominates the current blockchain-based
systems mostly, it has always been criticized for the uneconomic brute-force
calculation. As alternatives, energy-conservation and energy-recycling
mechanisms heaved in sight. In this paper, we propose proof of user similarity
(PoUS), a distinct energy-recycling consensus mechanism, harnessing the
valuable computing power to calculate the similarities of users, and enact the
calculation results into the packing rule. However, the expensive calculation
required in PoUS challenges miners in participating, and may induce plagiarism
and lying risks. To resolve these issues, PoUS embraces the best-effort schema
by allowing miners to compute partially. Besides, a voting mechanism based on
the two-parties computation and Bayesian truth serum is proposed to guarantee
privacy-preserved voting and truthful reports. Noticeably, PoUS distinguishes
itself in recycling the computing power back to blockchain since it turns the
resource wastage to facilitate refined cohort analysis of users, serving as the
spatial measurer and enabling a searchable blockchain. We build a prototype of
PoUS and compare its performance with PoW. The results show that PoUS
outperforms PoW in achieving an average TPS improvement of 24.01% and an
average confirmation latency reduction of 43.64%. Besides, PoUS functions well
in mirroring the spatial information of users, with negligible computation time
and communication cost.Comment: 12 pages,10 figure
SECF: Improving SPARQL Querying Performance with Proactive Fetching and Caching
Querying on SPARQL endpoints may be unsatisfactory due to high latency of connections to the endpoints. Caching is an important way to accelerate the query response speed. In this paper, we propose SPARQL Endpoint Caching Framework (SECF), a client-side caching framework for this purpose.
In particular, we prefetch and cache the results of similar queries to recently cached query aiming to improve the overall querying performance. The similarity between queries are calculated via an improved Graph Edit Distance (GED) function. We also adapt a smoothing method to implement the cache replacement. The empirical evaluations on real world queries show that our approach has great potential to enhance the cache hit rate and accelerate the querying speed on SPARQL endpoints
Panoptic Scene Graph Generation with Semantics-prototype Learning
Panoptic Scene Graph Generation (PSG) parses objects and predicts their
relationships (predicate) to connect human language and visual scenes. However,
different language preferences of annotators and semantic overlaps between
predicates lead to biased predicate annotations in the dataset, i.e. different
predicates for same object pairs. Biased predicate annotations make PSG models
struggle in constructing a clear decision plane among predicates, which greatly
hinders the real application of PSG models. To address the intrinsic bias
above, we propose a novel framework named ADTrans to adaptively transfer biased
predicate annotations to informative and unified ones. To promise consistency
and accuracy during the transfer process, we propose to measure the invariance
of representations in each predicate class, and learn unbiased prototypes of
predicates with different intensities. Meanwhile, we continuously measure the
distribution changes between each presentation and its prototype, and
constantly screen potential biased data. Finally, with the unbiased
predicate-prototype representation embedding space, biased annotations are
easily identified. Experiments show that ADTrans significantly improves the
performance of benchmark models, achieving a new state-of-the-art performance,
and shows great generalization and effectiveness on multiple datasets
Weak Magnetic Field Accelerates Chromate Removal by Zero-Valent Iron
Weak magnetic field (WMF) was employed to improve the removal of Cr(VI) by zero-valent iron (ZVI) for the first time. The removal rate of Cr(VI) was elevated by a factor of 1.12-5.89 due to the application of a WMF, and the WMF-induced improvement was more remarkable at higher Cr(VI) concentration and higher pH. Fe2+ was not detected until Cr(VI) was exhausted, and there was a positive correlation between the WMF-induced promotion factor of Cr(VI) removal rate and that of Fe2+ release rate in the absence of Cr(VI) at pH 4.0-5.5. These phenomena imply that ZVI corrosion with Fe2+ release was the limiting step in the process of Cr(VI) removal. The superimposed WMF had negligible influence on the apparent activation energy of Cr(VI) removal by ZVI, indicating that WMF accelerated Cr(VI) removal by ZVI but did not change the mechanism. The passive layer formed with WMF was much more porous than without WMF, thereby facilitating mass transport. Therefore, WMF could accelerate ZVI corrosion and alleviate the detrimental effects of the passive layer, resulting in more rapid removal of Cr(VI) by ZVI. Exploiting the magnetic memory of ZVI, a two-stage process consisting of a small reactor with WMF for ZVI magnetization and a large reactor for removing contaminants by magnetized ZVI can be employed as a new method of ZVI-mediated remediation
Physical Activity, Screen Time, and Emotional Well-Being during the 2019 Novel Coronavirus Outbreak in China
We aimed to evaluate the effects of the COVID-19 lock down on lifestyle in China during the initial stage of the pandemic. A questionnaire was distributed to Chinese adults living in 31 provinces of China via the internet using a snowball sampling strategy. Information on 7-day physical activity recall, screen time, and emotional state were collected between January 24 and February 2, 2020. ANOVA, χ² test, and Spearman's correlation coefficients were used for statistical analysis. 12,107 participants aged 18-80 years were included. During the initial phase of the COVID-19 outbreak, nearly 60% of Chinese adults had inadequate physical activity (95% CI 56.6%-58.3%), which was more than twice the global prevalence (27.5%, 25.0%-32.2%). Their mean screen time was more than 4 hours per day while staying at home (261.3 ± 189.8 min per day), and the longest screen time was found in young adults (305.6 ± 217.5 min per day). We found a positive and significant correlation between provincial proportions of confirmed COVID-19 cases and negative affect scores (r = 0.501, p = 0.004). Individuals with vigorous physical activity appeared to have a better emotional state and less screen time than those with light physical activity. During this nationwide lockdown, more than half of Chinese adults temporarily adopted a sedentary lifestyle with insufficient physical activity, more screen time, and poor emotional state, which may carry considerable health risks. Promotion of home-based self-exercise can potentially help improve health and wellness.This study was funded by the National Key Technology R&D Program of China (2019YFF0301600),and the National Natural Science Foundation of China (11775059 and 31900845)
NUMB regulates the endocytosis and activity of the anaplastic lymphoma kinase in an isoform-specific manner
NUMB is an evolutionarily conserved protein that plays an important role in cell adhesion, migration, polarity, and cell fate determination. It has also been shown to play a role in the pathogenesis of certain cancers, although it remains controversial whether NUMB functions as an oncoprotein or tumor suppressor. Here, we show that NUMB binds to anaplastic lymphoma kinase (ALK), a receptor tyrosine kinase aberrantly activated in several forms of cancer, and this interaction regulates the endocytosis and activity of ALK. Intriguingly, the function of the NUMB-ALK interaction is isoform-dependent. While both p66-NUMB and p72-NUMB isoforms are capable of mediating the endocytosis of ALK, the former directs ALK to the lysosomal degradation pathway, thus decreasing the overall ALK level and the downstream MAP kinase signal. In contrast, the p72-NUMB isoform promotes ALK recycling back to the plasma membrane, thereby maintaining the kinase in its active state. Our work sheds light on the controversial role of different isoforms of NUMB in tumorigenesis and provides mechanistic insight into ALK regulation
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