Regulation of Skp2 Expression and Activity and Its Role in Cancer Progression

The regulation of cell cycle entry is critical for cell proliferation and tumorigenesis. One of the key players regulating cell cycle progression is the F-box protein Skp2. Skp2 forms a SCF complex with Skp1, Cul-1, and Rbx1 to constitute E3 ligase through its F-box domain. Skp2 protein levels are regulated during the cell cycle, and recent studies reveal that Skp2 stability, subcellular localization, and activity are regulated by its phosphorylation. Overexpression of Skp2 is associated with a variety of human cancers, indicating that Skp2 may contribute to the development of human cancers. The notion is supported by various genetic mouse models that demonstrate an oncogenic activity of Skp2 and its requirement in cancer progression, suggesting that Skp2 may be a novel and attractive therapeutic target for cancers

Counteracting Phishing Page Polymorphism: An Image Layout Analysis Approach

Abstract. Many visual similarity-based phishing page detectors have been developed to detect phishing webpages, however, scammers now cre-ate polymorphic phishing pages to breach the defense of those detectors. We call this kind of countermeasure phishing page polymorphism. Poly-morphic pages are visually similar to genuine pages they try to mimic, but they use different representation techniques. It increases the level of difficulty to detect phishing pages. In this paper, we propose an effective detection mechanism to detect polymorphic phishing pages. In contrast to existing approaches, we analyze the layout of webpages rather than the HTML codes, colors, or content. Specifically, we compute the sim-ilarity degree of a suspect page and an authentic page through image processing techniques. Then, the degrees of similarity are ranked by a classifier trained to detect phishing pages. To verify the efficacy of our phishing detection mechanism, we collected 6, 750 phishing pages and 312 mimicked targets for the performance evaluation. The results show that our method achieves an excellent detection rate of 99.6%.

Multi-objective Non-intrusive Hearing-aid Speech Assessment Model

Without the need for a clean reference, non-intrusive speech assessment methods have caught great attention for objective evaluations. While deep learning models have been used to develop non-intrusive speech assessment methods with promising results, there is limited research on hearing-impaired subjects. This study proposes a multi-objective non-intrusive hearing-aid speech assessment model, called HASA-Net Large, which predicts speech quality and intelligibility scores based on input speech signals and specified hearing-loss patterns. Our experiments showed the utilization of pre-trained SSL models leads to a significant boost in speech quality and intelligibility predictions compared to using spectrograms as input. Additionally, we examined three distinct fine-tuning approaches that resulted in further performance improvements. Furthermore, we demonstrated that incorporating SSL models resulted in greater transferability to OOD dataset. Finally, this study introduces HASA-Net Large, which is a non-invasive approach for evaluating speech quality and intelligibility. HASA-Net Large utilizes raw waveforms and hearing-loss patterns to accurately predict speech quality and intelligibility levels for individuals with normal and impaired hearing and demonstrates superior prediction performance and transferability

Prevention and early management of carotid blowout syndrome for patients receiving head and neck salvage boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT)

Background/purpose The incidence rate of oral and pharyngeal cancers in Taiwan has increased gradually over the past few decades. The standard treatment strategy for oral and pharyngeal cancers includes surgery or radiotherapy, with concurrent chemotherapy in certain types of tumors. Unfortunately, in-field recurrence is sometimes inexorable. Furthermore, re-irradiation of the recurrence site may cause severe complications due to the tolerance of normal tissue to radiation therapy. One fatal complication is carotid blowout syndrome (CBS). Boron neutron capture therapy (BNCT) is a new modality of radiation therapy, which is also mentioned as targeted radiotherapy. It is a feasible treatment that has the potential to spare normal tissue from being damaged by irradiation while simultaneously treating the primary tumor. In this presentation, we will share our experience with BNCT in treating recurrent head and neck cancers, as well as the prevention and management of CBS. Materials and methods We evaluated 4 patients with head and neck cancers treated by BNCT in Taiwan. All patients had undergone surgery previously and had received postoperative concurrent chemoradiotherapy. Results The 4 patients in this study were diagnosed with head and neck malignancies. The median follow-up period after the first course of BNCT was 15.1 months. After BNCT, 2 patients developed impending CBS, and 1 of them died. The remaining 3 patients survived until the last date of follow-up. Conclusion Pre-BNCT carotid artery evaluation through computed tomography angiography and early intervention if necessary is crucial when treating patients with recurrent head and neck cancers by BNCT