Natural Language Watermarking and Tamperproofing

Two main results in the area of information hiding in natural language text are presented. A semantically-based scheme dramatically improves the information-hiding capacity of any text through two techniques: (i) modifying the granularity of meaning of individual sentences, whereas our own previous scheme kept the granularity fixed, and (ii) halving the number of sentences affected by the watermark. No longer a "long text, short watermark" approach, it now makes it possible to watermark short texts like wire agency reports. Using both the above-mentioned semantic marking scheme and our previous syntactically-based method hides information in a way that reveals any non-trivial tampering with the text (while re-formatting is not considered to be tampering---the problem would be solved trivially otherwise by hiding a hash of the text) with a probability 1--2 , n being its number of sentences and a small positive integer based on the extent of co-referencing

The catalytic subunit of the system L1 amino acid transporter (S<i>lc7a5</i>) facilitates nutrient signalling in mouse skeletal muscle

The System L1-type amino acid transporter mediates transport of large neutral amino acids (LNAA) in many mammalian cell-types. LNAA such as leucine are required for full activation of the mTOR-S6K signalling pathway promoting protein synthesis and cell growth. The SLC7A5 (LAT1) catalytic subunit of high-affinity System L1 functions as a glycoprotein-associated heterodimer with the multifunctional protein SLC3A2 (CD98). We generated a floxed Slc7a5 mouse strain which, when crossed with mice expressing Cre driven by a global promoter, produced Slc7a5 heterozygous knockout (Slc7a5+/-) animals with no overt phenotype, although homozygous global knockout of Slc7a5 was embryonically lethal. Muscle-specific (MCK Cre-mediated) Slc7a5 knockout (MS-Slc7a5-KO) mice were used to study the role of intracellular LNAA delivery by the SLC7A5 transporter for mTOR-S6K pathway activation in skeletal muscle. Activation of muscle mTOR-S6K (Thr389 phosphorylation) in vivo by intraperitoneal leucine injection was blunted in homozygous MS-Slc7a5-KO mice relative to wild-type animals. Dietary intake and growth rate were similar for MS-Slc7a5-KO mice and wild-type littermates fed for 10 weeks (to age 120 days) with diets containing 10%, 20% or 30% of protein. In MS-Slc7a5-KO mice, Leu and Ile concentrations in gastrocnemius muscle were reduced by ∼40% as dietary protein content was reduced from 30 to 10%. These changes were associated with >50% decrease in S6K Thr389 phosphorylation in muscles from MS-Slc7a5-KO mice, indicating reduced mTOR-S6K pathway activation, despite no significant differences in lean tissue mass between groups on the same diet. MS-Slc7a5-KO mice on 30% protein diet exhibited mild insulin resistance (e.g. reduced glucose clearance, larger gonadal adipose depots) relative to control animals. Thus, SLC7A5 modulates LNAA-dependent muscle mTOR-S6K signalling in mice, although it appears non-essential (or is sufficiently compensated by e.g. SLC7A8 (LAT2)) for maintenance of normal muscle mass

Distribution pattern of psoriasis, anxiety and depression as possible causes of sexual dysfunction in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis

BACKGROUND: Psoriasis may significantly impair sexual function. Depression and organic factors appear to play a key role in this relation. However, beyond genital psoriasis, the importance of the disease's distribution patterns has not been considered. OBJECTIVES: To research sexual function in psoriasis patients and investigate the roles of anxiety, depression and psoriasis' distribution patterns in sexual dysfunction. METHODS: A comparative study matched for sex and age was performed. Eighty patients with moderate to severe psoriasis and 80 healthy controls were included. The participants completed the Massachusetts General Hospital-Sexual Functioning Questionnaire, the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the Self-Administered Psoriasis Area and Severity Index. RESULTS: Psoriasis was associated with sexual dysfunction, odds ratio=5.5 (CI 95% 2.6-11.3; p<0.001). Certain distribution patterns of psoriasis, involving specific body regions, were associated with an increase in sexual dysfunction in the group presenting the disease, odds ratio 7.9 (CI 95% 2.3-33.4; p<0.001). Multivariate logistic regression analysis identified anxiety and depression, and the involvement of these specific areas, as possible independent risk factors for sexual dysfunction in patients with moderate to severe psoriasis. CONCLUSION: This study identifies body areas potentially related to sexual dysfunction, independently of anxiety and depression, in psoriasis patients. The results suggest that the assessment of sexual dysfunction and the involvement of these body areas should be considered as disease severity criteria when choosing the treatment for psoriasis patients

GM-CSF drives dysregulated hematopoietic stem cell activity and pathogenic extramedullary myelopoiesis in experimental spondyloarthritis

Dysregulated hematopoiesis occurs in several chronic inflammatory diseases, but it remains unclear how hematopoietic stem cells (HSCs) in the bone marrow (BM) sense peripheral inflammation and contribute to tissue damage in arthritis. Here, we show the HSC gene expression program is biased toward myelopoiesis and differentiation skewed toward granulocyte-monocyte progenitors (GMP) during joint and intestinal inflammation in experimental spondyloarthritis (SpA). GM-CSF-receptor is increased on HSCs and multipotent progenitors, favoring a striking increase in myelopoiesis at the earliest hematopoietic stages. GMP accumulate in the BM in SpA and, unexpectedly, at extramedullary sites: in the inflamed joints and spleen. Furthermore, we show that GM-CSF promotes extramedullary myelopoiesis, tissue-toxic neutrophil accumulation in target organs, and GM-CSF prophylactic or therapeutic blockade substantially decreases SpA severity. Surprisingly, besides CD4+ T cells and innate lymphoid cells, mast cells are a source of GM-CSF in this model, and its pathogenic production is promoted by the alarmin IL-33

On Deep Reinforcement Learning for Static Routing and Wavelength Assigment

Deep Reinforcement Learning (DRL) is rising as a promising tool for solving optimization problems in optical networks. Though studies employing DRL for solving static optimization problems in optical networks are appearing, assessing strengths and weaknesses of DRL with respect to state-of-the-art solution methods is still an open research question. In this work, we focus on Routing and Wavelength Assignment (RWA), a well-studied problem for which fast and scalable algorithms leading to better optimality gaps are always sought for. We develop two different DRL-based methods to assess the impact of different design choices on DRL performance. In addition, we propose a Multi-Start approach that can improve the average DRL performance, and we engineer a shaped reward that allows efficient learning in networks with high link capacities. With Multi-Start, DRL gets competitive results with respect to a state-of-the-art Genetic Algorithm with significant savings in computational times. Moreover, we assess the generalization capabilities of DRL to traffic matrices unseen during training, in terms of total connection requests and traffic distribution, showing that DRL can generalize on small to moderate deviations with respect to the training traffic matrices. Finally, we assess DRL scalability with respect to topology size and link capacity

Ideal test for android testing: Preliminary work [Android uygulaması testi için ideal test ön çalışması]

12th Turkish National Software Engineering Symposium, UYMS 2018 -- 10 September 2018 through 12 September 2018 -- 139255This paper proposes a hybrid method combining well-known holistic test and mutation testing in software testing for Graphical User Interface (GUI) testing of an android application. Moreover, this hybrid method satisfies requirements of ideal testing that is well known and important in software testing. Presence and absence of GUI based faults are tested within this work experimentally and comparatively in the scale of given or constructed model. First step of the method is modeling the given GUI of android application by Finite State Machine (FSM) and then converting this FSM to Regular Expression (RE). Then, test sequences are generated from a context table that is obtained analysis of the RE model. This process defines first part of the Holistic Testing namely positive testing. In second part called negative testing, the test sequence generation procedure is applied mutants of the FSM obtained after applying selected mutation operators. The generated test sequences from original and mutant models are executed on mutant and original android applications respectively. Test sequences are filtered by using pre-defined selection criteria for both positive and negative testing to achieve ideal test suites that are satisfying requirements of the ideal testing