Tissue holder for experimental and Demonstration Surgery

Development of device for holding anatomical tissues during operations is discussed. Device consists of plastic dish with hemispherical recess in center to hold excised eyes. Low vacuum applied to underside of recess insures holding of part

Cyber Creative Generative Adversarial Network for Novel Malicious Packets

Machine learning (ML) requires both quantity and variety of examples in order to learn generalizable patterns. In cybersecurity, labeling network packets is a tedious and difficult task. This leads to insufficient labeled datasets of network packets for training ML-based Network Intrusion Detection Systems (NIDS) to detect malicious intrusions. Furthermore, benign network traffic and malicious cyber attacks are always evolving and changing, meaning that the existing datasets quickly become obsolete. We investigate generative ML modeling for network packet synthetic data generation/augmentation to improve NIDS detection of novel, but similar, cyber attacks by generating well-labeled synthetic network traffic. We develop a Cyber Creative Generative Adversarial Network (CCGAN), inspired by previous generative modeling to create new art styles from existing art images, trained on existing NIDS datasets in order to generate new synthetic network packets. The goal is to create network packet payloads that appear malicious but from different distributions than the original cyber attack classes. We use these new synthetic malicious payloads to augment the training of a ML-based NIDS to evaluate whether it is better at correctly identifying whole classes of real malicious packet payloads that were held-out during classifier training. Results show that data augmentation from CCGAN can increase a NIDS baseline accuracy on a novel malicious class from 79% to 97% with a minimal degradation in accuracy on benign classes (98.9% to 98.7%)

CONVERSION OF URANIUM DIOXIDE TO URANIUM CARBIDE IN AN INDUCTION PLASMA TORCH REACTOR.

Exploratory studies were conducted to determine the feasibility of using an induction plasma torch reactor for converting uranium dioxide-graphite powder agglomerates to uranium carbide spheres

Annual Report of the Municipal Officers of the Town of Columbia Falls For The Municipal Year 1935-1936

status: publishe

Payload-Byte: A Tool for Extracting and Labeling Packet Capture Files of Modern Network Intrusion Detection Datasets

Adapting modern approaches for network intrusion detection is becoming critical, given the rapid technological advancement and adversarial attack rates. Therefore, packet-based methods utilizing payload data are gaining much popularity due to their effectiveness in detecting certain attacks. However, packet-based approaches suffer from a lack of standardization, resulting in incomparability and reproducibility issues. Unlike flow-based datasets, no standard labeled dataset exists, forcing researchers to follow bespoke labeling pipelines for individual approaches. Without a standardized baseline, proposed approaches cannot be compared and evaluated with each other. One cannot gauge whether the proposed approach is a methodological advancement or is just being benefited from the proprietary interpretation of the dataset. Addressing comparability and reproducibility issues, we introduce Payload-Byte, an open-source tool for extracting and labeling network packets in this work. Payload-Byte utilizes metadata information and labels raw traffic captures of modern intrusion detection datasets in a generalized manner. Moreover, we transformed the labeled data into a byte-wise feature vector that can be utilized for training machine learning models. The whole cycle of processing and labeling is explicitly stated in this work. Furthermore, source code and processed data are made publicly available so that it may act as a standardized baseline for future research work. Lastly, we present a brief comparative analysis of machine learning models trained on packet-based and flow-based data

The Short-Term Opening of Cyclosporin A-Independent Palmitate/Sr2+-Induced Pore Can Underlie Ion Efflux in the Oscillatory Mode of Functioning of Rat Liver Mitochondria

Mitochondria are capable of synchronized oscillations in many variables, but the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. In this study, we demonstrated that rat liver mitochondria, when exposed to a pulse of Sr2+ ions in the presence of valinomycin (a potassium ionophore) and cyclosporin A (a specific inhibitor of the permeability transition pore complex) under hypotonia, showed prolonged oscillations in K+ and Sr2+ fluxes, membrane potential, pH, matrix volume, rates of oxygen consumption and H2O2 formation. The dynamic changes in the rate of H2O2 production were in a reciprocal relationship with the respiration rate and in a direct relationship with the mitochondrial membrane potential and other indicators studied. The pre-incubation of mitochondria with Ca2+(Sr2+)-dependent phospholipase A(2) inhibitors considerably suppressed the accumulation of free fatty acids, including palmitic and stearic acids, and all spontaneous Sr2+-induced cyclic changes. These data suggest that the mechanism of ion efflux from mitochondria is related to the opening of short-living pores, which can be caused by the formation of complexes between Sr2+(Ca2+) and endogenous long-chain saturated fatty acids (mainly, palmitic acid) that accumulate due to the activation of phospholipase A(2) by the ions. A possible role for transient palmitate/Ca2+(Sr2+)-induced pores in the maintenance of ion homeostasis and the prevention of calcium overload in mitochondria under pathophysiological conditions is discussed.Peer reviewe

The Short-Term Opening of Cyclosporin A-Independent Palmitate/Sr2+-Induced Pore Can Underlie Ion Efflux in the Oscillatory Mode of Functioning of Rat Liver Mitochondria

Mitochondria are capable of synchronized oscillations in many variables, but the underlying mechanisms are still unclear. In this study, we demonstrated that rat liver mitochondria, when exposed to a pulse of Sr2+ ions in the presence of valinomycin (a potassium ionophore) and cyclosporin A (a specific inhibitor of the permeability transition pore complex) under hypotonia, showed prolonged oscillations in K+ and Sr2+ fluxes, membrane potential, pH, matrix volume, rates of oxygen consumption and H2O2 formation. The dynamic changes in the rate of H2O2 production were in a reciprocal relationship with the respiration rate and in a direct relationship with the mitochondrial membrane potential and other indicators studied. The pre-incubation of mitochondria with Ca2+(Sr2+)-dependent phospholipase A2 inhibitors considerably suppressed the accumulation of free fatty acids, including palmitic and stearic acids, and all spontaneous Sr2+-induced cyclic changes. These data suggest that the mechanism of ion efflux from mitochondria is related to the opening of short-living pores, which can be caused by the formation of complexes between Sr2+(Ca2+) and endogenous long-chain saturated fatty acids (mainly, palmitic acid) that accumulate due to the activation of phospholipase A2 by the ions. A possible role for transient palmitate/Ca2+(Sr2+)-induced pores in the maintenance of ion homeostasis and the prevention of calcium overload in mitochondria under pathophysiological conditions is discussed