MuTent: Dynamic Android Intent Protection with Ownership-Based Key Distribution and Security Contracts

Intents are the plain-text based message object used for ICC by the Android framework. Hence the framework essentially lacks an inbuilt security mechanism to protect the visibility, accessibility, and integrity of Intent\u27s data that facilitates adversaries to intercept or manipulate the data. In this work, we investigate the Intent protection mechanism and propose a security-enhanced Intent library MuTent that allows Android apps to securely exchange sensitive data during ICC. Differently from the existing mechanism, MuTent provides accessibility and visibility of Intent data by validating the receiver\u27s capability and provides integrity by using encryption and the Arc security contract code. Especially, ICC is initiated by exchanging MuTent and follows a novel ownership-based key distribution model, that restricts the malware apps without permission from deciphering data. Through the evaluation, we show that MuTent can improve the security for popular Android apps with minimal performance overheads, demonstrated using F-Droid apps

Fine-mapping within eQTL credible intervals by expression CROP-seq

The majority of genome-wide association study (GWAS)-identified SNPs are located in noncoding regions of genes and are likely to influence disease risk and phenotypes by affecting gene expression. Since credible intervals responsible for genome-wide associations typically consist of ≥100 variants with similar statistical support, experimental methods are needed to fine map causal variants. We report here a moderate-throughput approach to identifying regulatory GWAS variants, expression CROP-seq, which consists of multiplex CRISPR-Cas9 genome editing combined with single-cell RNAseq to measure perturbation in transcript abundance. Mutations were induced in the HL60/S4 myeloid cell line nearby 57 SNPs in three genes, two of which, rs2251039 and rs35675666, significantly altered CISD1 and PARK7 expression, respectively, with strong replication and validation in single-cell clones. The sites overlap with chromatin accessibility peaks and define causal variants for inflammatory bowel disease at the two loci. This relatively inexpensive approach should be scalable for broad surveys and is also implementable for the fine mapping of individual genes

Structural damage identification of bridges from passing test vehicles

This paper presents two approaches for the structural damage identification of a bridge from the dynamic response recorded from a test vehicle during its passage over the bridge. Using the acceleration response recorded by the vibration sensors mounted on a test vehicle during its passage over the bridge, along with the computed displacement response, the bending stiffness of the bridge can be determined using either: (1) the frequency-domain method based on the improved directed stiffness method with the identified frequency and corresponding mode shape, or (2) the time-domain method based on the residual vector of the least squares method with a fourth-order displacement moment. By comparing the bending stiffness values identified from the vehicle-collected data for the bridge under the undamaged and damaged states that are monitored regularly by the test vehicle, the bridge damage location and severity can be identified. Through numerical simulations and field tests, the present approaches are shown to be effective and feasible

ART⋅\boldsymbol{\cdot}V: Auto-Regressive Text-to-Video Generation with Diffusion Models

We present ART$\boldsymbol{\cdot}$V, an efficient framework for auto-regressive video generation with diffusion models. Unlike existing methods that generate entire videos in one-shot, ART$\boldsymbol{\cdot}$V generates a single frame at a time, conditioned on the previous ones. The framework offers three distinct advantages. First, it only learns simple continual motions between adjacent frames, therefore avoiding modeling complex long-range motions that require huge training data. Second, it preserves the high-fidelity generation ability of the pre-trained image diffusion models by making only minimal network modifications. Third, it can generate arbitrarily long videos conditioned on a variety of prompts such as text, image or their combinations, making it highly versatile and flexible. To combat the common drifting issue in AR models, we propose masked diffusion model which implicitly learns which information can be drawn from reference images rather than network predictions, in order to reduce the risk of generating inconsistent appearances that cause drifting. Moreover, we further enhance generation coherence by conditioning it on the initial frame, which typically contains minimal noise. This is particularly useful for long video generation. When trained for only two weeks on four GPUs, ART$\boldsymbol{\cdot}$V already can generate videos with natural motions, rich details and a high level of aesthetic quality. Besides, it enables various appealing applications, e.g., composing a long video from multiple text prompts.Comment: 24 pages, 21 figures. Project page at https://warranweng.github.io/art.

Research on the characteristics of CO2-water interface and the law of dissolution and mass transfer under the condition of carbon sequestration in goaf

As an important negative carbon technology to solve the carbon emission problem in the coal industry, the CO2 sequestration in the mine goaf has a wide application prospect in the secondary utilization of waste resources in the goaf and the capture and storage of CO2. In this study, the influence of different temperatures and pressures, formation water salinity and cationic solution type on the interfacial tension (IFT) of CO2-formation water system was investigated by using in-situ interfacial tension meter. The gas-liquid interface diffusion effect of CO2 injection into water-bearing coal rock mass was clarified. The equation of state (SAFT-LJ equation of state) based on statistical association theory combined with the Lanner-Jones potential energy model and density gradient theory (DGT) were combined to predict the theoretical value of IFT. Using a self-developed geological sequestration and geochemical reaction simulation experimental platform, various exploratory experiments were conducted to investigate the solubility of CO2 under the same conditions. The characteristics of CO2 solubility variation in the reservoir environment of the goaf were obtained, and the corresponding theoretical values of CO2 solubility were calculated using the D-S model. The experimental results show that when the ambient temperature is constant, the reservoir pressure in the goaf is linearly negatively correlated with the IFT value. As the reservoir temperature increases, the IFT value increases correspondingly, but the change range is small. Under constant temperature and pressure conditions, there is a positive correlation between salinity and IFT value. Within the scope of this experiment, low pressure, high temperature, and high salinity promote an increase in the IFT value. The IFT values between CO2-salt solutions show an increasing trend with the increasing valence of cations (K+ < Na+ < Ca2+ < Mg2+). The pressure of the depleted reservoir is positively correlated with the CO2 solubility. When the temperature is 25 °C and under conditions of pure water, as the pressure increases from 0.5 MPa to 2.5 MPa, the corresponding CO2 solubility increases from 0.1627 mol/kg to 0.7141 mol/kg. The CO2 solubility decreases with the increases of temperature and salinity. Under the same concentration, monovalent cation solutions (NaCl, KCl) can dissolve more CO2 than divalent cation solutions (CaCl2, MgCl2). The free phase CO2 injected into the goaf overcomes the interfacial tension and breaks the geochemical balance of the goaf strata through diffusion and dissolution mass transfer. By clarifying the influence of reservoir temperature and pressure conditions and goaf water environment on IFT value and CO2 solubility, the gas-liquid interface effect and dissolution mass transfer mechanism of CO2-formation water are clarified, so as to provide a theoretical basis for the safety and evaluation of CO2 sequestration in the closed mine goaf

Pitfalls in single clone crispr-cas9 mutagenesis to fine-map regulatory intervals

The majority of genetic variants affecting complex traits map to regulatory regions of genes, and typically lie in credible intervals of 100 or more SNPs. Fine mapping of the causal variant(s) at a locus depends on assays that are able to discriminate the effects of polymorphisms or mutations on gene expression. Here, we evaluated a moderate-throughput CRISPR-Cas9 mutagenesis approach, based on replicated measurement of transcript abundance in single-cell clones, by deleting candidate regulatory SNPs, affecting four genes known to be affected by large-effect expression Quantitative Trait Loci (eQTL) in leukocytes, and using Fluidigm qRT-PCR to monitor gene expression in HL60 pro-myeloid human cells. We concluded that there were multiple constraints that rendered the approach generally infeasible for fine mapping. These included the non-targetability of many regulatory SNPs, clonal variability of single-cell derivatives, and expense. Power calculations based on the measured variance attributable to major sources of experimental error indicated that typical eQTL explaining 10% of the variation in expression of a gene would usually require at least eight biological replicates of each clone. Scanning across credible intervals with this approach is not recommended

Bevacizumab Combined With Oxaliplatin/Capecitabine in Patient With Refractory and Recurrent Mucinous Adenocarcinoma of the Appendix: A Case Report

Primary appendiceal adenocarcinoma with peritoneal pseudomyxoma (PPM) has a high recurrence rate and refractory to medical interventions such as repetitive debulking surgery and systemic chemotherapy. Genome-based targeted therapy for such cases has not been well-documented. Here we present a 63-years-old women, who was diagnosed with recurrent mucinous adenocarcinoma of the appendix with local invasions and peritoneal carcinomatosis, was refractory to systemic chemotherapy after surgery. We used a regime developed using whole exome sequencing. Somatic mutations in the genes encoding VEGFR2, FGFR1, FGFR2, FGFR3, and KRAS were identified in the patient's tumor tissue. The patient was then treated with bevacizumab plus oxaliplatin. After 4 months of treatment, pelvic CT showed dramatic reduction of pseudomyoma and a decline of CA199 level from 5436.7 to 1121.4 U/ml. Continual treatment with bevacizumab-capecitabine remained effective and the patient's CA199 level further decreased to 401.26 U/ml according to the follow-up examination on Aug 15th, 2018. Results from this study show the evidence of gene mutations involving VEGF signal activation in the recurrence of appendiceal adenocarcinoma. Our results also suggest the association of these mutations with the effectiveness of anti-VEGF treatment using bevacizumab. Therefore, the screening of gene mutations involved in VEGF signaling and targeted therapy with anti-VEGF drugs may provide a new option to manage refractory/recurrent advanced-stage appendiceal adenocarcinoma

Devil is Virtual: Reversing Virtual Inheritance in C++ Binaries

Complexities that arise from implementation of object-oriented concepts in C++ such as virtual dispatch and dynamic type casting have attracted the attention of attackers and defenders alike. Binary-level defenses are dependent on full and precise recovery of class inheritance tree of a given program. While current solutions focus on recovering single and multiple inheritances from the binary, they are oblivious to virtual inheritance. Conventional wisdom among binary-level defenses is that virtual inheritance is uncommon and/or support for single and multiple inheritances provides implicit support for virtual inheritance. In this paper, we show neither to be true. Specifically, (1) we present an efficient technique to detect virtual inheritance in C++ binaries and show through a study that virtual inheritance can be found in non-negligible number (more than 10\% on Linux and 12.5\% on Windows) of real-world C++ programs including Mysql and libstdc++. (2) we show that failure to handle virtual inheritance introduces both false positives and false negatives in the hierarchy tree. These false positves and negatives either introduce attack surface when the hierarchy recovered is used to enforce CFI policies, or make the hierarchy difficult to understand when it is needed for program understanding (e.g., during decompilation). (3) We present a solution to recover virtual inheritance from COTS binaries. We recover a maximum of 95\% and 95.5\% (GCC -O0) and a minimum of 77.5\% and 73.8\% (Clang -O2) of virtual and intermediate bases respectively in the virtual inheritance tree.Comment: Accepted at CCS20. This is a technical report versio

Fabrication and properties of zirconia/hydroxyapatite composite scaffold based on digital light processing

Zirconia and hydroxyapatite(HA) are two typical implant materials, which have the advantages of excellent mechanical strength and good biological activity respectively. It was found that composite material had good biocompatibility and mechanical strength compared to the single material. In this paper, the porous scaffolds of ZrO2/HA composite were formed by digital light processing (DLP) technology and their performance were evaluated. Cell experiments showed that the addition of HA had a positive effect on cell proliferation and differentiation. Mechanical tests showed that the composite scaffold with 10 wt% HA had the best compressive capacity due to the pinning and bridging effect of a small amount of HA grains. When scaffolds were immersed in the simulated body fluid (SBF), the compressive strengths of the composite scaffolds decreased within the first 14 days and gradually increased after 14 days. The reason for this phenomenon was the degradation of calcium phosphate components and the deposition of apatite. By the 28th day, the compressive strengths of all the composite scaffolds increased to over 20 MPa, close to that of the zirconia scaffolds during the same period (25 MPa). The compressive strengths of all scaffolds met the requirement of cancellous bone during the entire soaking period, and the composite scaffolds have potential application value in bone repair