Privacy threat analysis of mobile social network data publishing

With mobile phones becoming integral part of modern life, the popularity of mobile social networking has tremendously increased over the past few years, bringing with it many benefits but also new trepidations. In particular, privacy issues in mobile social networking has recently become a significant concern. In this paper we present our study on the privacy vulnerability of the mobile social network data publication with emphases on a re-identification and disclosure attacks. We present a new technique for uniquely identifying a targeted individual in the anonymized social network graph and empirically demonstrate the capability of the proposed approach using a very large social network datasets. The results show that the proposed approach can uniquely re-identify a target on anonymized social network data with high success rate

Strain-induced ordering in InxGa1-xN alloys

The energetics and thermodynamic properties of cubic (c-)InxGa1-xN alloys are investigated by combining first-principles total energy calculations, a concentration-dependent cluster-based model, and Monte Carlo simulations. The search for the ground-state energies leads to the conclusion that biaxial strain suppresses phase separation, and acts as a driving force for chemical ordering in c-InxGa1-xN alloys. Ordered superlattice structures, with composition xcongruent to0.5 and stable up to T=1000 K, arises as the relevant thermodynamic property of the strained alloy. We suggest that the In-rich phases recently observed by us in c-GaN/InxGa1-xN/GaN double heterostructures are ordered domains formed in the alloy layers due to biaxial strain. (C) 2003 American Institute of Physics.82244274427

Economic History and History of Economics: Complementary Approaches to Portuguese Economic Development

This chapter focuses on how the problems of economic development were addressed by the Portuguese historiography of the late nineteenth and twentieth centuries. The ensuing discussion benefits from the simultaneous consideration of two historiographical domains that complement each other: economic history and the history of economics. On the one hand, there are the authors and texts of economic history that seek to describe the facts and circumstances related to the functioning and dynamics of economic reality, for a given period or succession of periods, in order to establish evolutionary trends. On the other hand, there are the authors and texts of the history of economics that seek to adopt analytical forms (principles and laws) and doctrinal and programmatic frameworks (visions and ideologies) aimed at providing explanatory meaning to the observed economic changes, phenomena and regularities. A true understanding of the important issues pertaining to Portuguese economic development is to be found, however, in the intersection of these distinct but complementary historiographical perspectives.info:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Integrable Models of Internal Gravity Water Waves Beneath a Flat Surface

A two-layer fluid system separated by a pycnocline in the form of an internal wave is considered. The lower layer is bounded below by a flat bottom and the upper layer is bounded above by a flat surface. The fluids are incompressible and inviscid and Coriolis forces as well as currents are taken into consideration. A Hamiltonian formulation is presented and appropriate scaling leads to a KdV approximation. Additionally, considering the lower layer to be infinitely deep leads to a Benjamin-Ono approximation

The Role of the Proteinase Inhibitor Ovorubin in Apple Snail Eggs Resembles Plant Embryo Defense against Predation

BACKGROUND: Fieldwork has thoroughly established that most eggs are intensely predated. Among the few exceptions are the aerial egg clutches from the aquatic snail Pomacea canaliculata which have virtually no predators. Its defenses are advertised by the pigmented ovorubin perivitellin providing a conspicuous reddish coloration. The nature of the defense however, was not clear, except for a screening for defenses that identified a neurotoxic perivitellin with lethal effect on rodents. Ovorubin is a proteinase inhibitor (PI) whose role to protect against pathogens was taken for granted, according to the prevailing assumption. Through biochemical, biophysical and feeding experiments we studied the proteinase inhibitor function of ovorubin in egg defenses. METHODOLOGY/PRINCIPAL FINDINGS: Mass spectrometry sequencing indicated ovorubin belongs to the Kunitz-type serine proteinase inhibitor family. It specifically binds trypsin as determined by small angle X-ray scattering (SAXS) and cross-linking studies but, in contrast to the classical assumption, it does not prevent bacterial growth. Ovorubin was found extremely resistant to in vitro gastrointestinal proteolysis. Moreover feeding studies showed that ovorubin ingestion diminishes growth rate in rats indicating that this highly stable PI is capable of surviving passage through the gastrointestinal tract in a biologically active form. CONCLUSIONS: To our knowledge, this is the first direct evidence of the interaction of an egg PI with a digestive protease of potential predators, limiting predator's ability to digest egg nutrients. This role has not been reported in the animal kingdom but it is similar to plant defenses against herbivory. Further, this would be the only defense model with no trade-offs between conspicuousness and noxiousness by encoding into the same molecule both the aposematic warning signal and an antinutritive/antidigestive defense. These defenses, combined with a neurotoxin and probably unpalatable factors would explain the near absence of predators, opening new perspectives in the study of the evolution and ecology of egg defensive strategies

Mixed Th1 and Th2 Mycobacterium tuberculosis-specific CD4 T cell responses in patients with active pulmonary tuberculosis from Tanzania.

Mycobacterium tuberculosis (Mtb) and helminth infections elicit antagonistic immune effector functions and are co-endemic in several regions of the world. We therefore hypothesized that helminth infection may influence Mtb-specific T-cell immune responses. We evaluated the cytokine profile of Mtb-specific T cells in 72 individuals with pulmonary TB disease recruited from two Sub-Saharan regions with high and moderate helminth burden i.e. 55 from Tanzania (TZ) and 17 from South Africa (SA), respectively. We showed that Mtb-specific CD4 T-cell functional profile of TB patients from Tanzania are primarily composed of polyfunctional Th1 and Th2 cells, associated with increased expression of Gata-3 and reduced expression of T-bet in memory CD4 T cells. In contrast, the cytokine profile of Mtb-specific CD4 T cells of TB patients from SA was dominated by single IFN-γ and dual IFN-γ/TNF-α and associated with TB-induced systemic inflammation and elevated serum levels of type I IFNs. Of note, the proportion of patients with Mtb-specific CD8 T cells was significantly reduced in Mtb/helminth co-infected patients from TZ. It is likely that the underlying helminth infection and possibly genetic and other unknown environmental factors may have caused the induction of mixed Th1/Th2 Mtb-specific CD4 T cell responses in patients from TZ. Taken together, these results indicate that the generation of Mtb-specific CD4 and CD8 T cell responses may be substantially influenced by environmental factors in vivo. These observations may have major impact in the identification of immune biomarkers of disease status and correlates of protection