Cheating-Resilient Incentive Scheme for Mobile Crowdsensing Systems

Mobile Crowdsensing is a promising paradigm for ubiquitous sensing, which explores the tremendous data collected by mobile smart devices with prominent spatial-temporal coverage. As a fundamental property of Mobile Crowdsensing Systems, temporally recruited mobile users can provide agile, fine-grained, and economical sensing labors, however their self-interest cannot guarantee the quality of the sensing data, even when there is a fair return. Therefore, a mechanism is required for the system server to recruit well-behaving users for credible sensing, and to stimulate and reward more contributive users based on sensing truth discovery to further increase credible reporting. In this paper, we develop a novel Cheating-Resilient Incentive (CRI) scheme for Mobile Crowdsensing Systems, which achieves credibility-driven user recruitment and payback maximization for honest users with quality data. Via theoretical analysis, we demonstrate the correctness of our design. The performance of our scheme is evaluated based on extensive realworld trace-driven simulations. Our evaluation results show that our scheme is proven to be effective in terms of both guaranteeing sensing accuracy and resisting potential cheating behaviors, as demonstrated in practical scenarios, as well as those that are intentionally harsher

Studying the unfolding process of protein G and protein L under physical property space

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The studies on protein folding/unfolding indicate that the native state topology is an important determinant of protein folding mechanism. The folding/unfolding behaviors of proteins which have similar topologies have been studied under Cartesian space and the results indicate that some proteins share the similar folding/unfolding characters.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>We construct physical property space with twelve different physical properties. By studying the unfolding process of the protein G and protein L under the property space, we find that the two proteins have the similar unfolding pathways that can be divided into three types and the one which with the umbrella-shape represents the preferred pathway. Moreover, the unfolding simulation time of the two proteins is different and protein L unfolding faster than protein G. Additionally, the distributing area of unfolded state ensemble of protein L is larger than that of protein G.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Under the physical property space, the protein G and protein L have the similar folding/unfolding behaviors, which agree with the previous results obtained from the studies under Cartesian coordinate space. At the same time, some different unfolding properties can be detected easily, which can not be analyzed under Cartesian coordinate space.</p

A pair of orthologs of a leucine-rich repeat receptor kinase-like disease resistance gene family regulates rice response to raised temperature

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Rice <it>Xa3/Xa26 </it>disease-resistance gene encodes a leucine-rich repeat (LRR) receptor kinase-type protein against <it>Xanthomonas oryzae </it>pv. <it>oryzae </it>(<it>Xoo</it>) and belongs to a multigene family. However, the functions of most genes in this family are unknown.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Here we report that two orthologs of this family, the <it>NRKe </it>from rice variety Nipponbare and <it>9RKe </it>from variety 93-11 at the <it>RKe </it>locus, have similar functions although they encode different proteins. This pair of orthologs could not mediate resistance to <it>Xoo</it>, but they were transcriptionally induced by raised temperature. Transcriptional activation of <it>NRKe </it>or <it>9RKe </it>resulted in the formation of temperature-sensitive lesion mimics, which were spots of dead cells associated with accumulation of superoxides, in different organs of the transgenic plants. These plants were more sensitive to high temperature shock than wild-type controls. Transgenic plants carrying a chimeric protein consisting of the LRR domain of NRKe and the kinase domain of Xa3/Xa26 developed the same lesion mimics as the <it>NRKe</it>-transgenic plants, whereas transgenic plants carrying another chimeric protein consisting of the LRR domain of Xa3/Xa26 and the kinase domain of NRKe were free of lesion mimic. All the transgenic plants carrying a chimeric protein were susceptible to <it>Xoo</it>.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>These results suggest that the <it>RKe </it>locus is involved in rice response to raised temperature. The LRR domain of RKe protein appears to be important to sense increased temperature. The RKe-involved temperature-related pathway and Xa3/Xa26-mediated disease-resistance pathway may partially overlap.</p

Ammonia Oxidizing Bacteria Community Dynamics in a Pilot-Scale Wastewater Treatment Plant

Background: Chemoautotrophic ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) have the metabolic ability to oxidize ammonia to nitrite aerobically. This metabolic feature has been widely used, in combination with denitrification, to remove nitrogen from wastewater in wastewater treatment plants (WWTPs). However, the relative influence of specific deterministic environmental factors to AOB community dynamics in WWTP is uncertain. The ecological principles underlying AOB community dynamics and nitrification stability and how they are related are also poorly understood. Methodology/Principal Findings: The community dynamics of ammonia oxidizing bacteria (AOB) in a pilot-scale WWTP were monitored over a one-year period by Terminal Restriction Fragment Length Polymorphism (T-RFLP). During the study period, the effluent ammonia concentrations were almost below 2 mg/L, except for the first 60 days, indicting stable nitrification. T-RFLP results showed that, during the test period with stable nitrification, the AOB community structures were not stable, and the average change rate (every 15 days) of AOB community structures was 10%68%. The correlations between T-RFLP profiles and 10 operational and environmental parameters were tested by Canonical Correlation Analysis (CCA) and Mantel test. The results indicated that the dynamics of AOB community correlated most strongly with Dissolved Oxygen (DO), effluent ammonia, effluent Biochemical Oxygen Demand (BOD) and temperature. Conclusions/Significance: This study suggests that nitrification stability is not necessarily accompanied by a stable AO

Adversarial Attacks on Video Object Segmentation with Hard Region Discovery

Video object segmentation has been applied to various computer vision tasks, such as video editing, autonomous driving, and human-robot interaction. However, the methods based on deep neural networks are vulnerable to adversarial examples, which are the inputs attacked by almost human-imperceptible perturbations, and the adversary (i.e., attacker) will fool the segmentation model to make incorrect pixel-level predictions. This will rise the security issues in highly-demanding tasks because small perturbations to the input video will result in potential attack risks. Though adversarial examples have been extensively used for classification, it is rarely studied in video object segmentation. Existing related methods in computer vision either require prior knowledge of categories or cannot be directly applied due to the special design for certain tasks, failing to consider the pixel-wise region attack. Hence, this work develops an object-agnostic adversary that has adversarial impacts on VOS by first-frame attacking via hard region discovery. Particularly, the gradients from the segmentation model are exploited to discover the easily confused region, in which it is difficult to identify the pixel-wise objects from the background in a frame. This provides a hardness map that helps to generate perturbations with a stronger adversarial power for attacking the first frame. Empirical studies on three benchmarks indicate that our attacker significantly degrades the performance of several state-of-the-art video object segmentation models

An electro-pneumatic force tracking system using fuzzy logic based volume flow control

In this paper, a fuzzy logic based volume flow control method is proposed to precisely control the force of a pneumatic actuator in an electro-pneumatic system including four on-off valves. The volume flow feature, which is the relationship between the duty cycle of the pulse width modulation (PWM) period, pressure difference, and volume flow of an on-off valve, is based on the experimental data measured by a high-precision volume flow meter. Through experimental data analysis, the maximum and minimum duty cycles are acquired. A new volume flow control method is introduced for the pneumatic system. In this method, the raw measured data are innovatively processed by a segmented, polynomial fitting method, and a newly designed procedure for calculating the duty cycle is adopted. This procedure makes it possible to combine the original data with fuzzy logic control (FLC). Additionally, the method allows us to accurately control the minimum and maximum opening pulse width of the valve. Several experiments are performed based on the experimental data, instead of the traditional theoretical models. Only 0.141 N (1.41%) overshoot and 0.03 N (0.03%) steady-state error are observed in the step response experiment, and 0.123 N average error is found while tracking the sine wave reference

Learning a Complete Image Indexing Pipeline

To work at scale, a complete image indexing system comprises two components: An inverted file index to restrict the actual search to only a subset that should contain most of the items relevant to the query; An approximate distance computation mechanism to rapidly scan these lists. While supervised deep learning has recently enabled improvements to the latter, the former continues to be based on unsupervised clustering in the literature. In this work, we propose a first system that learns both components within a unifying neural framework of structured binary encoding

Second-order optical nonlinearity and ionic conductivity of nanocrystalline GeS2-Ga2S3-LiI glass-ceramics with improved thermo-mechanical properties.

International audienceIR-transparent chalcogenide glass-ceramics were fabricated through a careful ceramization process of the as-prepared 65 GeS(2) x 25 Ga(2)S(3) x 10 LiI glasses at a temperature of 403 degrees C for various durations. Owing to the precipitation of Li(x)Ga(y)S(z) crystals with a Ga(2)S(3)-like structure, clear second-harmonic generation was observed in the sample crystallized at 403 degrees C for 60 h, which has a greatly improved resistance to environmental impairment. Additionally, it is found that the shorter crystallization process (< or = 60 h) contributed to the enhancement of Li(+) ionic conductivity, whereas a longer heat-treatment (80 h) would impair that of the glass-ceramics. The micro-structural origin of these varied properties was elucidated in detail. The corresponding results will be of benefit for the optimization of designed transparent chalcogenide glass-ceramics with improved thermo-mechanical properties, a permanent second-order optical nonlinearity, or a well-enhanced ionic conductivity for application in amorphous solid electrolytes

Phenylhexyl isothiocyanate has dual function as histone deacetylase inhibitor and hypomethylating agent and can inhibit myeloma cell growth by targeting critical pathways

Histone deacetylase (HDAC) inhibitors are a new class of chemotherapeutic agents. Our laboratory has recently reported that phenylhexyl isothiocyanate (PHI), a synthetic isothiocyanate, is an inhibitor of HDAC. In this study we examined whether PHI is a hypomethylating agent and its effects on myeloma cells. RPMI8226, a myeloma cell line, was treated with PHI. PHI inhibited the proliferation of the myeloma cells and induced apoptosis in a concentration as low as 0.5 μM. Cell proliferation was reduced to 50% of control with PHI concentration of 0.5 μM. Cell cycle analysis revealed that PHI caused G1-phase arrest of RPMI8226 cells. PHI induced p16 hypomethylation in a concentration- dependent manner. PHI was further shown to induce histone H3 hyperacetylation in a concentration-dependent manner. It was also demonstrated that PHI inhibited IL-6 receptor expression and VEGF production in the RPMI8226 cells, and reactivated p21 expression. It was found that PHI induced apoptosis through disruption of mitochondrial membrane potential. For the first time we show that PHI can induce both p16 hypomethylation and histone H3 hyperacetylation. We conclude that PHI has dual epigenetic effects on p16 hypomethylation and histone hyperacetylation in myeloma cells and targets several critical processes of myeloma proliferation