Bubble dynamics in the Polyakov quark-meson model

We investigate the dynamics of a first-order quark-hadron transition via homogeneous thermal nucleation in the Polyakov quark-meson model with two light quark flavors. The contribution of fermionic vacuum term in pressure has been considered and phase diagram together with the location of critical end point (CEP) has been obtained at finite temperature and density. After presenting the effective potential in the Polyakov-loop field direction and the mesonic field direction, we build a geometric approach to probe two possibly existing minima, which can actually tunnel through a bounce interpolated between a metastable vacuum to an adjacent true vacuum. When separating our discussions into a weak first-order hadron quark phase transition and strong one, the bubble profiles, the surface tension, the typical radius of the bounce and the saddle point action in the presence of a nucleation bubble as a function of temperature are calculated in detail when fixing chemical potentials at $\mu=306 \mathrm{MeV}$ and $\mu=310 \mathrm{MeV}$. our results show that the surface tension remains a small value even when the density is very high and phase boundaries for hadron and quark matter should be resized according to the saddle point action evaluated on the bounce. It is noticed that the inclusion of the deconfinement phase transition in term of the Polyakov loop does not change chiral phase transition dramatically for light quarks.Comment: 22 pages, 12 figure

A componentbased approach to online software evolution:

SUMMARY Many software systems need to provide services continuously and uninterruptedly. Meanwhile, these software systems need to keep evolving continuously to fix bugs, add functions, improve algorithms, adapt to new running environments and platforms, or prevent potential problems. This situation makes online evolution an important issue in the field of software maintenance and evolution. This paper proposes a component-based approach to online software evolution. Nowadays component technology has been widely adopted. Component technology facilitates software evolution, but also introduces some new issues. In our approach, an application server is used to evolve the application, without special support from the compiler or operating system. The implementation and performance analysis of our approach are also covered

cTFbase: a database for comparative genomics of transcription factors in cyanobacteria

BACKGROUND: Comprehensive identification and classification of the transcription factors (TFs) in a given genome is an important aspect in understanding transcriptional regulatory networks of a specific organism. Cyanobacteria are an ancient group of gram-negative bacteria with strong variation in genome size ranging from about 1.6 to 9.1 Mb and little is known about their TF repertoires. Therefore, we constructed the cTFbase database to classify and analyze all the putative TFs in cyanobacterial genomes, followed by genome-wide comparative analysis. DESCRIPTION: In the current release, cTFbase contains 1288 putative TFs identified from 21 fully sequenced cyanobacterial genomes. Through its user-friendly interactive interface, users can employ various criteria to retrieve all TF sequences and their detailed annotation information, including sequence features, domain architecture and sequence similarity against the linked databases. Furthermore, cTFbase provides phylogenetic trees of individual TF family, multiple sequence alignments of the DNA-binding domains and ortholog identification from any selected genomes. Comparative analysis revealed great variability of the TF sequences in cyanobacterial genomes. The high variance on the gene number and domain organization would be related to their diverse biological functions and their adaptation to various environmental conditions. CONCLUSION: cTFbase provides a centralized warehouse for comparative analysis of putative TFs in cyanobacterial genomes. The availability of such an extensive database would be of great interest for the community of researchers working on TFs or transcriptional regulatory networks in cyanobacteria. cTFbase can be freely accessible at and will be continuously updated when the newly sequenced cyanobacterial genomes are available

Similar operation template attack on RSA-CRT as a case study

A template attack, the most powerful side-channel attack methods, usually first builds the leakage profiles from a controlled profiling device, and then uses these profiles to recover the secret of the target device. It is based on the fact that the profiling device shares similar leakage characteristics with the target device. In this study, we focus on the similar operations in a single device and propose a new variant of the template attack, called the similar operation template attack (SOTA). SOTA builds the models on public variables (e.g., input/output) and recovers the values of the secret variables that leak similar to the public variables. SOTA’s advantage is that it can avoid the requirement of an additional profiling device. In this study, the proposed SOTA method is applied to a straightforward RSA-CRT implementation. Because the leakage is (almost) the same in similar operations, we reduce the security of RSA-CRT to a hidden multiplier problem (HMP) over GF(q), which can be solved byte-wise using our proposed heuristic algorithm. The effectiveness of our proposed method is verified as an entire prime recovery procedure in a practical leakage scenario

(1S,4S,5S,6R)-6-(4-Bromo­phen­yl)-5-nitro­bicyclo­[2.2.2]octan-2-one

The title compound, C14H14BrNO3, contains a bicyclic ring system with four chiral centers. The absolute structure was established by the Flack method

Promoter Methylation of Ezrin and its Impact on the Incidence and Prognosis of Cervical Cancer

Background/Aims: Aberrant localization and over-expression of Ezrin have been reported to be implicated in cervical cancer (CC). Aberrant promoter methylation of some gene families may serve as potential diagnostic biomarkers for CC. In this study, we explored the correlation of promoter methylation of the Ezrin gene with the incidence and prognosis of CC. Methods: Cervical tissues from a total of 483 patients with CC were collected from the China-Japan Union Hospital of Jilin University. Samples were assigned into four groups accordingly to pathological diagnosis, namely the control group, the cervical intraepithelial neoplasia (CIN) I group, the CIN II-III group and the CC group. Reverse transcription quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was performed to detect the mRNA expression of Ezrin. Methylation-specific polymerase chain reaction (MSP) was used to detect the promoter methylation of the Ezrin gene. The Kaplan-Meier product-limit method and the log-rank analysis were used for survival analysis, the Cox regression analysis for the prognostic factors for CC, and the logistic regression analysis for the risk factors for the occurrence of CC. Results: The methylation rate of the Ezrin gene was correspondingly increased from the control, the CIN I, the CIN II-III to the CC groups. Over-expressed mRNA of Ezrin was determined in CC tissues. The mRNA expression of Ezrin was correlated with tumor size, lymphatic metastasis, pathological grade and clinical stage (FIGO). The risk factors for the occurrence of CC were the number of abortions and the promoter methylation of the Ezrin gene. Poor prognosis of CC correlated to lymphatic metastasis, higher pathological grade, higher FIGO stage and positive Ezrin promoter methylation. Conclusion: These findings indicate that promoter methylation of the Ezrin gene may play a crucial role in carcinogenesis, progression and prognosis of CC