Fast Unbalanced Private Computing on (Labeled) Set Intersection with Cardinality

Private computation on (labeled) set intersection (PCSI/PCLSI) is a secure computation protocol that allows two parties to compute fine-grained functions on set intersection, including cardinality, cardinality-sum, secret shared intersection and arbitrary functions. Recently, some computationally efficient PCSI protocols have emerged, but a limitation on these protocols is the communication complexity, which scales (super)-linear with the size of the large set. This is of particular concern when performing PCSI in the unbalanced case, where one party is a constrained device with a small set, and the other is a service provider holding a large set. In this work, we first formalize a new ideal functionality called shared characteristic and its labeled variety called shared characteristic with labels, from which we propose the frameworks of PCSI/PCLSI protocols. By instantiating our frameworks, we obtain a series of efficient PCSI/PCLSI protocols, whose communication complexity is linear in the size of the small set, and logarithmic in the large set. We demonstrate the practicality of our protocols with implementations. Experiment results show that our protocols outperform previous ones and the larger difference between the sizes of two sets, the better our protocols perform. For input set sizes $2^{10}$ and $2^{22}$ with items of length $128$ bits, our PCSI requires only $4.62$MB of communication to compute the cardinality; $4.71$MB of communication to compute the cardinality-sum. Compared with the state-of-the-art PCSI proposed by Chen et al., there are $58 \times$ and $77 \times$ reductions in the communication cost of computing cardinality and cardinality-sum

Memory Impairment Induced by Borna Disease Virus 1 Infection is Associated with Reduced H3K9 Acetylation

Background/Aims: Borna disease virus 1 (BoDV-1) infection induces cognitive impairment in rodents. Emerging evidence has demonstrated that Chromatin remodeling through histone acetylation can regulate cognitive function. In the present study, we investigated the epigenetic regulation of chromatin that underlies BoDV-1-induced cognitive changes in the hippocampus. Methods: Immunofluorescence assay was applied to detect BoDV-1 infection in hippocampal neurons and Sprague-Dawley rats models. The histone acetylation levels both in vivo and vitro were assessed by western blots. The acetylation-regulated genes were identified by ChIP-seq and verified by RT-qPCR. Cognitive functions were evaluated with Morris Water Maze test. In addition, Golgi staining, and electrophysiology were used to study changes in synaptic structure and function. Results: BoDV-1 infection of hippocampal neurons significantly decreased H3K9 histone acetylation level and inhibited transcription of several synaptic genes, including postsynaptic density 95 (PSD95) and brain-derived neurotrophic factor (BDNF). Furthermore, BoDV-1 infection of Sprague Dawley rats disrupted synaptic plasticity and caused spatial memory impairment. These rats also exhibited dysregulated hippocampal H3K9 acetylation and decreased PSD95 and BDNF protein expression. Treatment with the HDAC inhibitor, suberanilohydroxamic acid (SAHA), attenuated the negative effects of BoDV-1. Conclusion: Our results demonstrate that regulation of H3K9 histone acetylation may play an important role in BoDV-1-induced memory impairment, whereas SAHA may confer protection against BoDV-1-induced cognitive impairments. This study finds important mechanism of BoDV-1 infection disturbing neuronal synaptic plasticity and inducing cognitive dysfunction from the perspective of histone modification

Rapid detection of influenza A viruses using a real-time reverse transcription recombinase-aided amplification assay

IntroductionInfluenza A viruses (IAVs) are important pathogens of respiratory infections, causing not only seasonal influenza but also influenza pandemics and posing a global threat to public health. IAVs infection spreads rapidly, widely, and across species, causing huge losses, especially zoonotic IAVs infections that are more harmful. Fast and sensitive detection of IAVs is critical for controlling the spread of this disease.MethodsHere, a real-time reverse transcription recombinase-aided amplification (real-time RT-RAA) assay targeting conserved positions in the matrix protein gene (M gene) of IAVs, is successfully established to detect IAVs. The assay can be completed within 20 min at 42°C.ResultsThe sensitivity of the real-time RT-RAA assay was 142 copies per reaction at 95% probability, which was comparable to the sensitivity of the RT-qPCR assay. The specificity assay showed that the real-time RT-RAA assay was specific to IAVs, and there was no cross-reactivity with other important viruses. In addition, 100%concordance between the real-time RT-RAA and RT-qPCR assays was achieved after testing 120 clinical specimens.DiscussionThe results suggested that the real-time RT-RAA assay we developed was a specific, sensitive and reliable diagnostic tool for the rapid detection of IAVs

Comparison of Bypass Surgery with Drug-Eluting Stents in Diabetic Patients with Left Main Coronary Stenosis

∙ The authors have no financial conflicts of interest. Purpose: Several studies have compared the effects of coronary stenting and coronary-artery bypass grafting (CABG) on left main coronary artery (LMCA) disease. However, there are limited data on the long-term outcomes of these two interventions in diabetic patients. Materials and Methods: We evaluated 56 patients with LMCA stenosis who underwent drug-eluting stent (DES) implantation and 116 patients who underwent CABG in a single hospital in China between January 2004 and December 2006. We compared long-term major adverse cardiac events (death; a “serious outcome ” composite of death, myocardial infarction, or stroke; and targetvessel revascularization). Results: In-hospital (30-day) mortality was 0 % for the DES group and 3.4 % for the CABG group (p=0.31). There was no difference between the two groups in terms of risk of death [hazard ratio for stenting group, 0.49; 95 % confidence interval (CI), 0.13-1.63; p=0.55] or risk of serious outcome (hazar

Corrigendum to: The TianQin project: current progress on science and technology

In the originally published version, this manuscript included an error related to indicating the corresponding author within the author list. This has now been corrected online to reflect the fact that author Jun Luo is the corresponding author of the article

Robust Molecular Image Recognition: A Graph Generation Approach

Molecular image recognition is a fundamental task in information extraction from chemistry literature. Previous data-driven models formulate it as an image-to-sequence task, to generate a sequential representation of the molecule (e.g. SMILES string) from its graphical representation. Although they perform adequately on certain benchmarks, these models are not robust in real-world situations, where molecular images differ in style, quality, and chemical patterns. In this paper, we propose a novel graph generation approach that explicitly predicts atoms and bonds, along with their geometric layouts, to construct the molecular graph. We develop data augmentation strategies for molecules and images to increase the robustness of our model against domain shifts. Our model is flexible to incorporate chemistry constraints, and produces more interpretable predictions than SMILES. In experiments on both synthetic and realistic molecular images, our model significantly outperforms previous models, achieving 84-93% accuracy on five benchmarks. We also conduct human evaluation and show that our model reduces the time for a chemist to extract molecular structures from images by roughly 50%.Comment: 16 pages, 8 figure

Submerged Macrophytes Exhibit Different Phosphorus Stoichiometric Homeostasis

Phosphorus (P) is a limiting element in many aquatic ecosystems. Excessive P input often leads to cyanobacterial bloom, thus triggering ecological imbalances and a series of environmental problems. Submerged macrophytes have a strong ability to absorb P and play important roles in maintaining aquatic ecosystem functions. However, the degree to which submerged macrophytes maintain their tissue P contents in various nutrient levels and the corresponding influencing factors are still not very clear. In this study, the stoichiometric characteristics and stoichiometric homeostasis of P in the aboveground and belowground parts of three submerged macrophytes, Vallisneria natans (Lour.) Hara, Hydrilla verticillata (L.f.) Royle, and Ceratophyllum demersum (L.), with great differences in growth forms, were studied under different growth times and nutrient levels via laboratory experiments. The results showed that the water conductivity, turbidity, and chlorophyll content increased significantly with the increasing nutrient levels. The variation of species, organ, growth time, and nutrient level could significantly affect the P contents of submerged macrophytes. Among these factors, the variance contribution rates caused by the differences of nutrient levels in water column were the highest at more than 50%. The P stoichiometric homeostasis index (HP) in the belowground parts of the three submerged macrophytes was higher than that of the aboveground parts. The HP decreased by the growth time; the HP of V. natans was significantly higher than those of H. verticillata and C. demersum. In summary, the P stoichiometric homeostasis in submerged macrophytes could reflect their responses to environmental changes, and the P content of submerged macrophytes was an indicator of the bioavailability of external P. H. verticillata exhibited a high growth rate and a high accumulation of P content, making it the most suitable species in this study for removing large amounts of P from water in a short term

Restriction of Access to Dark State: A New Mechanistic Model for Heteroatom-Containing AIE Systems

Aggregation-induced emission (AIE) is an unusual photophysical phenomenon and provides an effective and advantageous strategy for the design of highly emissive materials in versatile applications such as sensing, imaging, and theragnosis. "Restriction of intramolecular motion" is the well-recognized working mechanism of AIE and have guided the molecular design of most AIE materials. However, it sometimes fails to be workable to some heteroatom-containing systems. Herein, in this work, we take more than one excited state into account and specify a mechanism –"restriction of access to dark state (RADS)" – to explain the AIE effect of heteroatom-containing molecules. An anthracene-based zinc ion probe named APA is chosen as the model compound, whose weak fluorescence in solution is ascribed to the easy access from the bright (π,π*) state to the closelying dark (n,π*) state caused by the strong vibronic coupling of the two excited states. By either metal complexation or aggregation, the dark state is less accessible due to the restriction of the molecular motion leading to the dark state and elevation of the dark state energy, thus the emission of the bright state is restored. RADS is found to be powerful in elucidating the photophysics of AIE materials with excited states which favor non-radiative decay, including overlap-forbidden states such as (n,π*) and CT states, spin-forbidden triplet states, which commonly exist in heteroatom-containing molecules