A Blockchain-Based Retribution Mechanism for Collaborative Intrusion Detection

Collaborative intrusion detection approach uses the shared detection signature between the collaborative participants to facilitate coordinated defense. In the context of collaborative intrusion detection system (CIDS), however, there is no research focusing on the efficiency of the shared detection signature. The inefficient detection signature costs not only the IDS resource but also the process of the peer-to-peer (P2P) network. In this paper, we therefore propose a blockchain-based retribution mechanism, which aims to incentivize the participants to contribute to verifying the efficiency of the detection signature in terms of certain distributed consensus. We implement a prototype using Ethereum blockchain, which instantiates a token-based retribution mechanism and a smart contract-enabled voting-based distributed consensus. We conduct a number of experiments built on the prototype, and the experimental results demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach

Expansion of amphibian intronless interferons revises the paradigm for interferon evolution and functional diversity

Citation: Sang, Y. M., Liu, Q. F., Lee, J., Ma, W. J., McVey, D. S., & Blecha, F. (2016). Expansion of amphibian intronless interferons revises the paradigm for interferon evolution and functional diversity. Scientific Reports, 6, 17. doi:10.1038/srep29072Interferons (IFNs) are key cytokines identified in vertebrates and evolutionary dominance of intronless IFN genes in amniotes is a signature event in IFN evolution. For the first time, we show that the emergence and expansion of intronless IFN genes is evident in amphibians, shown by 24-37 intronless IFN genes in each frog species. Amphibian IFNs represent a molecular complex more complicated than those in other vertebrate species, which revises the established model of IFN evolution to facilitate re-inspection of IFN molecular and functional diversity. We identified these intronless amphibian IFNs and their intron-containing progenitors, and functionally characterized constitutive and inductive expression and antimicrobial roles in infections caused by zoonotic pathogens, such as influenza viruses and Listeria monocytogenes. Amphibians, therefore, may serve as overlooked vectors/hosts for zoonotic pathogens, and the amphibian IFN system provides a model to study IFN evolution in molecular and functional diversity in coping with dramatic environmental changes during terrestrial adaption

Impact of Porcine Arterivirus, Influenza B, and Their Coinfection on Antiviral Response in the Porcine Lung

Interferon (IFN) cytokines induce an autonomous antiviral state in cells of the infected site to restrict virus spreading and critically regulate overall antiviral response. The antiviral state leads to host protection through expression of hundreds of IFN-stimulated genes that restrict viral infection through multiple mechanisms, for example, directly in viral genome degradation and indirectly through cellular metabolic inhibition. Young pigs were split into four treatment groups: control, porcine reproductive and respiratory syndrome virus (PRRSV, also known as porcine arterivirus) infected, influenza B virus (IBV) infected, and IBV/PRRSV coinfection. Lung tissue was collected at 3, 5, and 7 days post infection (dpi) for control, PRRSV and IBV/PRRSV coinfection, and at 3 and 5 dpi for IBV. Transcriptomic analysis, using usegalaxy.org tools, was performed against the S.scrofa 11.1 reference genome. Differentially expressed gene (DEG) analysis was carried out using DeSeq2 based on the model treatment + dpi + treatment:dpi + E. Downstream analysis examined the interaction of DEG at each dpi for over-enriched gene ontology (G.O.) terms and pathways. Comparisons of the infected groups vs. the controls yielded a total of (n = 1412) DEGs for the PRRSV group and (n = 1578) for the IBV/PRRSV group across all timepoints. The IBV group had (n = 64) total DEGs across 3 and 5 dpi. Expression data were considered statistically significant based on false discovery rate (FDR) ⫹ 0.1. Venn diagram comparisons of the DEGs across dpi showed that groups shared only 16 DEGs at 3 dpi, no DEGs were shared at 5 dpi, and for 7 dpi, only the PRRSV and IBV/PRRSV groups were compared and shared a total of 43 DEGs. Across the comparisons, differential expression was observed in antiviral genes such as IRF1, MX1, and OAS2. The IBV and IBV/PRRSV groups showed higher expression of antiviral genes at earlier dpi than the PRRSV group. Additionally, downregulated genes from the comparisons clustered around Kyoto Encyclopedia of Genes and Genomes (KEGG) pathways effecting lung development and cellular integrity. Early expression of host IFN and antiviral genes may lead to viral RNA degradation, and assembly and transcription inhibition in the IBV infections. In comparison, expression of antiviral genes in the PRRSV group decreased across time. The decrease may explain why PRRSV infections persist, while IBV clears. Moreover, all infected groups showed prolonged upregulation in neutrophil degranulation pathway activity, possibly exacerbating symptomatic lung lesion pathology seen in these respiratory infections

Cross-Species Genome-Wide Analysis Reveals Molecular and Functional Diversity of the Unconventional Interferon-ω Subtype

Innate immune interferons (IFNs), particularly type I IFNs, are primary mediators regulating animal antiviral, antitumor, and cell-proliferative activity. These antiviral cytokines have evolved remarkable molecular and functional diversity to confront ever-evolving viral threats and physiological regulation. We have annotated IFN gene families across 110 animal genomes, and showed that IFN genes, after originating in jawed fishes, had several significant evolutionary surges in vertebrate species of amphibians, bats and ungulates, particularly pigs and cattle. For example, pigs have the largest but still expanding type I IFN family consisting of nearly 60 IFN-coding genes that encode seven IFN subtypes including multigene subtypes of IFN-α, -δ, and -ω. Whereas, subtypes such as IFN-α and -β have been widely studied in many species, the unconventional subtypes such as IFN-ω have barely been investigated. We have cross-species defined the IFN evolution, and shown that unconventional IFN subtypes particularly the IFN-ω subtype have evolved several novel features including: (1) being a signature multi-gene subtype expanding primarily in mammals such as bats and ungulates, (2) emerging isoforms that have superior antiviral potency than typical IFN-α, (3) highly cross-species antiviral (but little anti-proliferative) activity exerted in cells of humans and other mammalian species, and (4) demonstrating potential novel molecular and functional properties. This study focused on IFN-ω to investigate the immunogenetic evolution and functional diversity of unconventional IFN subtypes, which may further IFN-based novel antiviral design pertinent to their cross-species high antiviral and novel activities

Albumin Binding Function: The Potential Earliest Indicator for Liver Function Damage

Background. Currently there is no indicator that can evaluate actual liver lesion for early stages of viral hepatitis, nonalcoholic fatty liver disease (NAFLD), and cirrhosis. Aim of this study was to investigate if albumin binding function could better reflect liver function in these liver diseases. Methods. An observational study was performed on 193 patients with early NAFLD, viral hepatitis, and cirrhosis. Cirrhosis patients were separated according to Child-Pugh score into A, B, and C subgroup. Albumin metal ion binding capacity (Ischemia-modified albumin transformed, IMAT) and fatty acid binding capacity (total binding sites, TBS) were detected. Results. Both IMAT and TBS were significantly decreased in patients with NAFLD and early hepatitis. In hepatitis group, they declined prior to changes of liver enzymes. IMAT was significantly higher in cirrhosis Child-Pugh class A group than hepatitis patients and decreased in Child-Pugh class B and class C patients. Both IMAT/albumin and TBS/albumin decreased significantly in hepatitis and NAFLD group patients. Conclusions. This is the first study to discover changes of albumin metal ion and fatty acid binding capacities prior to conventional biomarkers for liver damage in early stage of liver diseases. They may become potential earliest sensitive indicators for liver function evaluation

SegRap2023: A Benchmark of Organs-at-Risk and Gross Tumor Volume Segmentation for Radiotherapy Planning of Nasopharyngeal Carcinoma

Radiation therapy is a primary and effective NasoPharyngeal Carcinoma (NPC) treatment strategy. The precise delineation of Gross Tumor Volumes (GTVs) and Organs-At-Risk (OARs) is crucial in radiation treatment, directly impacting patient prognosis. Previously, the delineation of GTVs and OARs was performed by experienced radiation oncologists. Recently, deep learning has achieved promising results in many medical image segmentation tasks. However, for NPC OARs and GTVs segmentation, few public datasets are available for model development and evaluation. To alleviate this problem, the SegRap2023 challenge was organized in conjunction with MICCAI2023 and presented a large-scale benchmark for OAR and GTV segmentation with 400 Computed Tomography (CT) scans from 200 NPC patients, each with a pair of pre-aligned non-contrast and contrast-enhanced CT scans. The challenge's goal was to segment 45 OARs and 2 GTVs from the paired CT scans. In this paper, we detail the challenge and analyze the solutions of all participants. The average Dice similarity coefficient scores for all submissions ranged from 76.68\% to 86.70\%, and 70.42\% to 73.44\% for OARs and GTVs, respectively. We conclude that the segmentation of large-size OARs is well-addressed, and more efforts are needed for GTVs and small-size or thin-structure OARs. The benchmark will remain publicly available here: https://segrap2023.grand-challenge.orgComment: A challenge report of SegRap2023 (organized in conjunction with MICCAI2023

Design of Integrated Communication System under UAV Network

It is becoming a key feature of UAV communication network to integrate sensing function into communication equipment to realize sensing communication integration.The existing perceptual communication fusion schemes focus on the design under a single waveform and single frequency band, and lack of discussion on the adaptation of scene and algorithm complexity.The current perception mode of UAV focuses on radar active detection and perception, and there is a problem of time delay in perception information sharing.For this reason, this paper first proposes a waveform library idea based on perceptual information drive to achieve the best cost performance ratio of the communication scheme adopted by UAVs in different flight scenarios.Based on the hybrid waveform concept, this paper proposes a design scheme of active passive fusion synchronous sensing, and matches with an adaptive sensing algorithm based on compressed sensing.Through simulation, it is proved that the overhead caused by sharing perceptual information among UAVs can be reduced, And improve the passive side sensing accuracy.Comment: the paper has too many problems,it need to be withdra

Evaluation of the Near Source Air Quality Impact of Distributed Generation

Distributed generation (DG) has been adopted in California because of its potential to supply a significant fraction of increased power demand in the future. DG offers several advantages over conventional centralized power plants. The relatively small size of a DG unit (usually less than 5 MW) allows location of the unit in the immediate vicinity of the area that requires the power. This independence from a large power supplier results in 1) reliability of power supply, 2) potential cost control because the DG unit is tied to the community that it services, 3) reduction of transmission losses, and 4) increased efficiency when waste heat is utilized for local heating and cooling needs. However, the emissions from a DG unit can impact the air quality in the populated area where it is located. This report summarizes the results from a project designed to estimate the local air quality impact of DG growth in the South Coast Air Basin. This project takes advantage of emission inventories developed by UCI (Samuelsen et al., 2005), for several DG growth scenarios in the South Coast Air Basin (SoCAB). We first developed and applied a systematic method to allocate the 5 km by 5 km gridded emission inventory from UCI to individual DG units within each grid. Then, a state of the art dispersion model, AERMOD (Cimorelli et al., 2005) was used to examine the air quality impact of the DG units in these emission inventories. The meteorological inputs for AERMOD were constructed from observations made at 26 meteorological stations maintained by the South Coast Air Quality Management District (AQMD). Finally, we examines the air quality impact of using distributed generation (DG) to satisfy future growth in power demand in the South Coast Air Basin, relative to the impact when the same power is supplied by expanding current central generation (CG) units. In these two scenarios, the emission factors for both the DGs and the CGS are assumed to meet the California standard for new sources. The impact of decreasing boiler emissions by capturing the waste heat from DGs is not examined. The impact from some micro turbines and fuel cells, which are located on the ground but have relative low emissions, is not examined either. The results from this study indicate that 1) Meteorology plays a major role in determining both the maximum hourly as well as annually averaged concentrations associated with DG units, 2) Because of the interaction between buoyant plume rise and meteorology, ground-level impact does not always increase with size of the DG: a 10 MW unit can have a smaller air quality impact than a 1 MW unit. These results suggest that siting of DG units has to pay attention to meteorology to reduce air quality impact. Simulations with AERMOD suggest that DG growth in the SoCAB is likely to have its greatest impact on NO2 and PM levels, which are already close to or exceed either NAAQS or CAAQS in several areas in the SoCAB in 2007. Areas near Central LA meteorological station will exceed the California NO2 annual standard if any future generating capacity is located in the area. The air quality impacts of the two alternate scenarios indicate that the shift to DGs has the potential for decreasing maximum hourly impacts of power generation in the vicinity of the power plants. The maximum impact on hourly concentrations is reduced from 24.5 ppb to 6 ppb if DGs rather than CGs are used to generate power. However, the annually averaged concentrations are likely to be higher than the scenario in which existing CGs are used to satisfy power demand growth. Future DG penetration will add an annual average of 0.1 ppb to the current basin average of 20 ppb, while expanding existing CGs will add 0.05 ppb to the existing level

In-situ characterization of twin nucleation and correlated crystal plasticity modeling of deformation behavior in alpha titanium using 3D X-ray diffraction data

The goal of this study is to gain a clearer understanding of the conditions that favor nucleation of T1 twinning in commercial purity titanium. A tensile specimen with a strong c-texture was deformed to about 2% global strain. Concurrently, far field 3D X-ray diffraction from the synchrotron source at the APS was used to identify type 1 (T1) deformation twinning events. Identification of the twin-parent grain pairs was done using criteria for c and a axes misorientation and spatial proximity. Two approaches are used to assess the geometrical plausibility of a twin resulting from slip transfer (S+T); or twin induced shear transfer (T+T) across a grain boundary. The first step involved calculation of the slip transfer parameter. Second, the relative elevation (along the tensile direction) of the parent grain with respect to the adjacent grain(s) is examined. In addition, Voronoi tessellation is used to generate a representative volume element of the microstructure. Local stress–strain data from a spectral crystal plasticity based model is compared to experimental values, to identify local stress states associated with nucleation of a twin