Private and secure distribution of targeted advertisements to mobile phones

Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) enables promotion companies to effectively target users with ads that best satisfy their purchasing needs. This is highly beneficial for both vendors and publishers who are the owners of the advertising platforms, such as websites and app developers, but at the same time creates a serious privacy threat for users who expose their consumer interests. In this paper, we categorize the available ad-distribution methods and identify their limitations in terms of security, privacy, targeting effectiveness and practicality. We contribute our own system, which utilizes opportunistic networking in order to distribute targeted adverts within a social network. We improve upon previous work by eliminating the need for trust among the users (network nodes) while at the same time achieving low memory and bandwidth overhead, which are inherent problems of many opportunistic networks. Our protocol accomplishes this by identifying similarities between the consumer interests of users and then allows them to share access to the same adverts, which need to be downloaded only once. Although the same ads may be viewed by multiple users, privacy is preserved as the users do not learn each other's advertising interests. An additional contribution is that malicious users cannot alter the ads in order to spread malicious content, and also, they cannot launch impersonation attacks

Behavioural verification: preventing report fraud in decentralized advert distribution systems

Service commissions, which are claimed by Ad-Networks and Publishers, are susceptible to forgery as non-human operators are able to artificially create fictitious traffic on digital platforms for the purpose of committing financial fraud. This places a significant strain on Advertisers who have no effective means of differentiating fabricated Ad-Reports from those which correspond to real consumer activity. To address this problem, we contribute an advert reporting system which utilizes opportunistic networking and a blockchain-inspired construction in order to identify authentic Ad-Reports by determining whether they were composed by honest or dishonest users. What constitutes a user's honesty for our system is the manner in which they access adverts on their mobile device. Dishonest users submit multiple reports over a short period of time while honest users behave as consumers who view adverts at a balanced pace while engaging in typical social activities such as purchasing goods online, moving through space and interacting with other users. We argue that it is hard for dishonest users to fake honest behaviour and we exploit the behavioural patterns of users in order to classify Ad-Reports as real or fabricated. By determining the honesty of the user who submitted a particular report, our system offers a more secure reward-claiming model which protects against fraud while still preserving the user's anonymity

Convergence of signalling pathways in innate immune responses and genetic forms of Parkinson's disease

In recent years progress in molecular biology and genetics have advanced our understanding of neurological disorders and highlighted synergistic relationships with inflammatory and age-related processes. Parkinson's disease (PD) is a common neurodegenerative disorder that is characterized by loss of dopaminergic neurons in the substantia nigra pars compacta (SNpc). Increasing extensive evidence supports the contribution of genetic risk variants and inflammation in the pathobiology of this disease. Functional and genetic studies demonstrate an overlap between genes linked to increased risk for PD and autoimmune diseases. Variants identified in loci adjacent to LRRK2, GBA, and HLA establish a crosstalk between the pathobiologies of the two disease spectra. Furthermore, common signalling pathways associated with the pathogenesis of genetic PD are also relevant to inflammatory signaling include MAPK, NF-κB, Wnt and inflammasome signaling. Importantly, post-mortem analyses of brain and cerebrospinal fluid from PD patients show the accumulation of proinflammatory cytokines. In this review we will focus on the principal mechanisms of genetic, inflammatory and age-related risk that intersect in the pathogenesis of PD

Effectiveness of low level laser therapy (LLLT) in the treatment of lateral elbow tendinopathy (LET): an umbrella review

Purpose: The aim of this umbrella review is to determine the effectiveness of LLLT in the treatment of LET and to provide recommendations based on this evidence. Methods: A comprehensive and systematic review was undertaken using Medline, EBSCO and EMBASE. Systematic reviews or meta-analysis were included if they compared Laser with at least one of the following: (i) placebo, (ii) no treatment, (iii) another treatment, conservative (physical therapy intervention or medical) or operative of LET. Principal outcomes included the assessment of short and long-term effect on functional status, pain, grip strength (pain-free or maximum) and a global measure (overall improvement). Results: Seven papers met the inclusion criteria for the umbrella review, Five papers were of moderate and two of low methodological quality. All reviews reported benefits associated with laser therapy Vs other intervention or placebo, however the significance of the identified benefits differed between studies and reviews. No review reported negative effects of laser therapy or harm to patients. All reviews noted significant variance between included studies with 2 reviews citing statistically significant heterogeneity. It is essential to consider this in the interpretation of these data. Conclusion: This umbrella review found poor results for the effectiveness of LLLT in the management of LET. Therefore, further research with well-designed RCTs is required to provide meaningful evidence on the effectiveness (absolute and relative) of LLLT for the management of LET

Investigation of an N5-glutamine methyltranferase, a novel partner of α2-chimaerin

Differentiating neurones respond to extracellular signalling cues that affect the actin cytoskeleton and influence the outgrowth and retraction of cellular processes. Rac1 belongs to the family of Rho GTPases that play a key role in actin organisation during neuronal development. Rac1 promotes lamellipodia formation and neurite outgrowth, and is also involved in axonal retraction pathways. α2-Chimaerin down-regulates Rac1 and is involved in neuronal plasticity and axonal guidance through a wide spectrum of interacting partners. The N5-glutamine methyltransferase HemK1 was previously identified in our lab as a novel interacting partner of α2-chimaerin, in a yeast two-hybrid screen. The aim of this study was to characterise HemK1 and investigate its role in neurite outgrowth. N5-glutamine methyltransferases are universally conserved in nature and little studied in vertebrates. HemK1 and related protein HemK2 are implicated in the control of translation termination by methylating the polypeptide chain release factors, a modification that mediates efficient translation termination in their bacterial and yeast homologues. Analyses of their transcript levels in rat embryonic brains by quantitative real-time PCR indicated that both HemK1 and HemK2 are expressed at comparable levels to α2-chimaerin in the brain and also in hippocampal neurones. HemK1 monoclonal antibodies detected an endogenous protein in brain mitochondrial fractions, but not in cytosol. When over-expressed, HemK1 co-localised with its proposed mitochondrial substrate mtRF1a in cells and also exhibited partial colocalisation with Dcp1b, a component of the mRNA decay machinery. Both HemK1 and HemK2 associated with α2-chimaerin, as well as with their proposed substrates, mtRF1a and eRF1. α2-Chimaerin influences neuronal morphology and dendritic pruning. ShRNA knock-down of HemK1 or HemK2 in primary rat hippocampal neurones in culture promoted increased branching and complexity of neurites as assessed by confocal microscopy and Sholl analysis. These results suggest a novel link between translational control mechanisms and Rac signalling pathways in developing neurones

An ASN.1 compiler for embedded/space systems

International audienceThis paper presents ASN1SCC, an open source 2 ASN.1 compiler that generates C/C++ and SPARK/Ada code suitable for low resource environments such as space systems. Moreover, the compiler can produce a test harness that provides full statement coverage in the generated code, and therefore significantly improves its quality. This paper also presents ACN, a new ASN.1 encoding that allows protocol designers to completely control the format of the encoded ASN.1 stream and hence integrate ASN.1 applications with legacy ones. With ASN.1 and ACN, various space protocols such as PUS 3 can be modeled and with the usage of this ASN.1 compiler get automatic implementations of the encoders and decoders. Finally, the ASN.1 compiler can translate an ASN.1/ACN definition into an Interface Control Document (ICD), thus allowing interoperability with projects and people who don't know/use ASN.1

Privacy-preserving and fraud-resistant targeted advertising for mobile devices

Online Behavioural Advertising (OBA) enables Ad-Networks to capitalize on the popularity of digital Publishers in order to target users with contextaware promotional materials from Advertisers. OBA has been shown to be very effective at engaging consumers but at the same time presents severe privacy and security threats for both users and Advertisers. Users view OBA as intrusive and are therefore reluctant to share their private data with Ad-Networks. In many cases this results in the adoption of anti-tracking tools and ad-blockers which reduces the system's performance. Advertisers on their part are susceptible to financial fraud due to Ad-Reports that do not correspond to real consumer activity. Consequently, user privacy is further violated as Ad-Networks are provoked into collecting even more data in order to detect fictitious Ad-Reports. Researchers have mostly approached user privacy and fraud prevention as separate issues while ignoring how potential solutions to address one problem will effect the other. As a result, previously proposed privacy-preserving advertising systems are susceptible to fraud or fail to offer fine-grain targeting which makes them undesirable by Advertisers while systems that focus on fraud prevention, require the collection of private data which renders them as a threat for users. The aim of our research is to offer a comprehensive solution which addresses both problems without resulting in a conflict of interest between Advertisers and users. Our work specifically focuses on the preservation of privacy for mobile device users who represent the majority of consumers that are targeted by OBA. To accomplish the set goal, we contribute ADS+R (Advert Distribution System with Reporting) which is an innovative advertising system that supports the delivery of personalized adverts as well as the submission of verifiable Ad-Reports on mobile devices while still maintaining user privacy. Our approach adopts a decentralized architecture which connects mobile users and Advertisers over a hybrid opportunistic network without the need for an Ad-Network to operate as administrative authority. User privacy is preserved through the use of peer-to-peer connections (serving as proxy connections), Anonymous- download technologies and cryptography, while Advertiser fraud is prevented by means of a novel mechanism which we termed Behavioural Verification. Behavioural Verification combines client-side processing with a blockchaininspired construction which enables Advertisers to certify the integrity of Ad-Reports without exposing the identity of the submitting mobile users. In comparison to previously proposed systems, ADS+R provides both (1) user privacy and (2) advert fraud prevention while allowing for (3) a tunable trade-off between resource consumption and security, and (4) the statistical analysis and data mining of consumer behaviours

Antarctic Dry Valley mineral soils contain unexpectedly high levels of microbial biomass

We have applied bioluminescent ATP detection methods to microbial enumeration in Antarctic Dry Valley mineral soils, and validated our ATP data by two independent methods. We have demonstrated that ATP measurement is a valid means of determining microbial biomass in such sites, and that the desiccated surface mineral soils of the Antarctic Dry Valleys contain cell numbers over four orders of magnitude higher than previously suggeste

Synthesis of N4-aryl-β-d-glucopyranosylcytosines: a methodology study

A number of leaving groups, including arylsulfonates, triazoles, 3-nitrotriazoles, and tetrazoles, have been studied for the substitution reaction by aryl and alkyl amines at the 4-position of β-d-glucopyranosyluracils. Examination of the stability, ease of purification and reactivity in the substitution reaction led to a number of optimized conditions with the most convenient involving substitution of triazole derivatives under microwave conditions in the presence of silica gel. Under these conditions, a number of N4-aryl-substituted β-d-glucopyranosylcytosines were prepared as potential inhibitors of glycogen phosphorylase, a molecular target for type-2 diabetes mellitus