Providing Efficient Privacy-Aware Incentives for Mobile Sensing

Abstract—Mobile sensing relies on data contributed by users through their mobile device (e.g., smart phone) to obtain useful information about people and their surroundings. However, users may not want to contribute due to lack of incentives and concerns on possible privacy leakage. To effectively promote user participation, both incentive and privacy issues should be addressed. Existing work on privacy-aware incentive is limited to special scenario of mobile sensing where each sensing task needs only one data report from each user, and thus not appropriate for generic scenarios in which sensing tasks may require multiple reports from each user (e.g., in environmental monitoring applications). In this paper, we propose a privacy-aware incentive scheme for general mobile sensing, which allows each sensing task to collect one or multiple reports from each user as needed. Besides being more flexible in task management, our scheme has much lower computation and communication cost compared to the existing solution. Evaluations show that, when each node only contributes data for a small fraction of sensing tasks (e.g, due to the incapability or disqualification to generate sensing data for other tasks), our scheme runs at least one order of magnitude faster. I

Routing in Socially Selfish Delay Tolerant Networks

Abstract—Existing routing algorithms for Delay Tolerant Networks (DTNs) assume that nodes are willing to forward packets for others. In the real world, however, most people are socially selfish; i.e., they are willing to forward packets for nodes with whom they have social ties but not others, and such willingness varies with the strength of the social tie. Following the philosophy of design for user, we propose a Social Selfishness Aware Routing (SSAR) algorithm to allow user selfishness and provide better routing performance in an efficient way. To select a forwarding node, SSAR considers both users ’ willingness to forward and their contact opportunity, resulting in a better forwarding strategy than purely contact-based approaches. Moreover, SSAR formulates the data forwarding process as a Multiple Knapsack Problem with Assignment Restrictions (MKPAR) to satisfy user demands for selfishness and performance. Trace-driven simulations show that SSAR allows users to maintain selfishness and achieves better routing performance with low transmission cost. I

Spatial shift unwrapping for digital fringe profilometry based on spatial shift estimation

An approach is presented to solve the problem of spatial shift wrapping associated with spatial shift estimation-based fringe pattern profilometry (FPP). This problem arises as the result of fringe reuses (that is, use of fringes with periodic light intensity variance), and the spatial shift can only be identified without ambiguity within the range of a fringe width. It is demonstrated that the problem is similar to the phase unwrapping problem associated with the phase-detection-based FPP, and the proposed method is inspired by the existing ideas of using multiple images with different wavelengths proposed for phase unwrapping. The effectiveness of the proposed method is verified by comparing experimental results against several objects, with the last object consisting of more complex surface features. We conclude by showing that our method is successful in reconstructing the fine details of the more complex object

Providing privacy-aware incentives for mobile sensing

Abstract—Mobile sensing exploits data contributed by mobile users (e.g., via their smart phones) to make sophisticated infer-ences about people and their surrounding and thus can be applied to environmental monitoring, traffic monitoring and healthcare. However, the large-scale deployment of mobile sensing applica-tions is hindered by the lack of incentives for users to participate and the concerns on possible privacy leakage. Although incentive and privacy have been addressed separately in mobile sensing, it is still an open problem to address them simultaneously. In this paper, we propose two privacy-aware incentive schemes for mobile sensing to promote user participation. These schemes allow each mobile user to earn credits by contributing data without leaking which data it has contributed, and at the same time ensure that dishonest users cannot abuse the system to earn unlimited amount of credits. The first scheme considers scenarios where a trusted third party (TTP) is available. It relies on the TTP to protect user privacy, and thus has very low computation and storage cost at each mobile user. The second scheme removes the assumption of TTP and applies blind signature and commitment techniques to protect user privacy. I

TAM: A method for enrichment and depletion analysis of a microRNA category in a list of microRNAs

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>MicroRNAs (miRNAs) are a class of important gene regulators. The number of identified miRNAs has been increasing dramatically in recent years. An emerging major challenge is the interpretation of the genome-scale miRNA datasets, including those derived from microarray and deep-sequencing. It is interesting and important to know the common rules or patterns behind a list of miRNAs, (i.e. the deregulated miRNAs resulted from an experiment of miRNA microarray or deep-sequencing).</p> <p>Results</p> <p>For the above purpose, this study presents a method and develops a tool (TAM) for annotations of meaningful human miRNAs categories. We first integrated miRNAs into various meaningful categories according to prior knowledge, such as miRNA family, miRNA cluster, miRNA function, miRNA associated diseases, and tissue specificity. Using TAM, given lists of miRNAs can be rapidly annotated and summarized according to the integrated miRNA categorical data. Moreover, given a list of miRNAs, TAM can be used to predict novel related miRNAs. Finally, we confirmed the usefulness and reliability of TAM by applying it to deregulated miRNAs in acute myocardial infarction (AMI) from two independent experiments.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>TAM can efficiently identify meaningful categories for given miRNAs. In addition, TAM can be used to identify novel miRNA biomarkers. TAM tool, source codes, and miRNA category data are freely available at <url>http://cmbi.bjmu.edu.cn/tam</url>.</p

Constructing multi-level urban clusters based on population distributions and interactions

A city (or an urban cluster) is not an isolated spatial unit, but a combination of areas with closely linked socio-economic activities. However, so far, we lack a consistent and quantitative approach to define multi-level urban clusters through these socio-economic connections. Here, using granular population distribution and flow data from China, we propose a bottom-up aggregation approach to quantify urban clusters at multiple spatial scales. We reveal six 'phases' (i.e., levels) in the population density-flow diagram, each of which corresponds to a spatial configuration of urban clusters from large to small. Besides, our results show that Zipf's law appears only after the fifth level, confirming the spatially dependent nature of urban laws. Our approach does not need pre-defined administrative boundaries and can be applied effectively on a global scale

Renal collecting duct carcinoma with extensive coagulative necrosis mimicking anemic infarct: report of a case and the literature review

Collecting duct carcinoma (CDC) with a mass of coagulative necrosis is very rare. We report here a case of CDC with extensive geographic coagulative necrosis mimicking anemic infarct with tumor cells embedded around the necrotic foci in a 73-years-old man. Histopathological examination showed that tumor nests near the necrotic foci were arranged as angulated tubules, tubulopapillary and glandular structures. Neoplastic cells had moderate to abundant eosinophilic cytoplasm and large hyperchromatic nuclei with prominent nucleoli as Fuhrman nuclear grade 3 or 4. The tumor cells were positive for pan-Cytokeratin, Vimentin, E-cadherin, CD10, and CK7, confirming the diagnosis as CDC. The patient is still alive 6 months later from nephrectomy, a long time following up is needed to learn the prognosis. Conclusively, morphology from different portions of the lesion, immunohistochemical stain and the combination analysis of the radiological features is essential to make a precise pathological diagnosis of CDC. And CDC should also be distinguished from clear cell renal cell carcinoma, renal medullary carcinoma, urothelial carcinoma with glandular differentiation, renal neuroendocrine tumor, renal epithelioid angiomyolipoma, renal pigmented paraganglioma and renal mesenchymal chondrosarcoma etc. VIRTUAL SLIDES: The virtual slide(s) for this article can be found here: http://www.diagnosticpathology.diagnomx.eu/vs/126427052597503

Forwarding redundancy in opportunistic mobile networks: Investigation and elimination

Abstract—Opportunistic mobile networks consist of mobile devices which are intermittently connected via short-range radios. Forwarding in such networks relies on selecting relays to carry and deliver data to destinations upon opportunistic contacts. Due to the intermittent network connectivity, relays in current for-warding schemes are selected separately in a distributed manner. The contact capabilities of relays hence may overlap when they contact the same nodes and cause forwarding redundancy. This redundancy reduces the efficiency of resource utilization in the network, and may impair the forwarding performance if being ignored. In this paper, based on experimental investigations on the characteristics of forwarding redundancy in realistic mobile networks, we propose methods to eliminate unnecessary for-warding redundancy and ensure efficient utilization of network resources. We first develop techniques to eliminate forwarding redundancy with global network information, and then improve these techniques to be operable in a fully distributed manner with limited network information. I

Interface-engineered hole doping in Sr2IrO4/LaNiO3 heterostructure

The relativistic Mott insulator Sr2IrO4 driven by large spin-orbit interaction is known for the Jeff = 1/2 antiferromagnetic state which closely resembles the electronic structure of parent compounds of superconducting cuprates. Here, we report the realization of hole-doped Sr2IrO4 by means of interfacial charge transfer in Sr2IrO4/LaNiO3 heterostructures. X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy on Ir 4f edge along with the X-ray absorption spectroscopy at Ni L2 edge confirmed that 5d electrons from Ir sites are transferred onto Ni sites, leading to markedly electronic reconstruction at the interface. Although the Sr2IrO4/LaNiO3 heterostructure remains non-metallic, we reveal that the transport behavior is no longer described by the Mott variable range hopping mode, but by the Efros-Shklovskii model. These findings highlight a powerful utility of interfaces to realize emerging electronic states of the Ruddlesden-Popper phases of Ir-based oxides.Comment: 9 pages including 3 figures and reference

HS-Diffusion: Learning a Semantic-Guided Diffusion Model for Head Swapping

Image-based head swapping task aims to stitch a source head to another source body flawlessly. This seldom-studied task faces two major challenges: 1) Preserving the head and body from various sources while generating a seamless transition region. 2) No paired head swapping dataset and benchmark so far. In this paper, we propose an image-based head swapping framework (HS-Diffusion) which consists of a semantic-guided latent diffusion model (SG-LDM) and a semantic layout generator. We blend the semantic layouts of source head and source body, and then inpaint the transition region by the semantic layout generator, achieving a coarse-grained head swapping. SG-LDM can further implement fine-grained head swapping with the blended layout as condition by a progressive fusion process, while preserving source head and source body with high-quality reconstruction. To this end, we design a head-cover augmentation strategy for training and a neck alignment trick for geometric realism. Importantly, we construct a new image-based head swapping benchmark and propose two tailor-designed metrics (Mask-FID and Focal-FID). Extensive experiments demonstrate the superiority of our framework. The code will be available: https://github.com/qinghew/HS-Diffusion