ActiBot: A Botnet to Evade Active Detection

In recent years, botnets have emerged as a serious threat on the Internet. Botnets are commonly used for exploits such as distributed denial of service (DDoS) attacks, identity theft, spam, and click fraud. The immense size of botnets, some consisting of hundreds of thousands of compromised computers, increases the speed and severity of attacks. Unlike passive behavior anomaly detection techniques, active botnet detection aims to collect evidence actively, in order to reduce detection time and increase accuracy. In this project, we develop and analyze a botnet that we call ActiBot, which can evade some types of active detection mechanisms. Future research will focus on using ActiBot to strengthen existing detection techniques

The Emerging Roles of Circular RNAs in Colorectal Cancer

Colorectal cancer (CRC) is one of the most common malignant diseases and the forth common cause for death in the world. Circular RNAs (circRNAs) are a group of non-coding RNAs (ncRNAs), which have a covalent closed loop without 5’ and 3’ ends. Studies indicated that many circRNAs are differently expressed in CRC cells and tissues. Their different expression levels are significantly correlated with clinicopathological features and overall survival time of CRC patients. Additionally, they regulate CRC cell proliferation, apoptosis, invasion, and migration mainly by acting as competing endogenous RNAs (ceRNAs). In this review, we reviewed CRC-associated circRNAs, described their functions and mechanisms, discussed their potential as diagnostic or prognostic biomarkers and therapeutic targets of CRC

SEMI-SUPERVISED DEVICE TAG PREDICTION FOR AUTOMATIC NETWORK PROVISIONING

Device tagging is an important element in the world of network administration, offering an efficient way to organize network and computation resources (such as, for example, network devices, virtual machines, instances, etc.) and support efficient device provisioning and network segmentation (e.g., firewall rules, routing rules, etc.). The manual selection of tags and labelling of individual devices may be error prone and quite time consuming, particularly as the scale of a network grows. To address such challenges, techniques are presented herein that leverage aspects of Graph Convolutional Network (GCN) theory to offer a GCN-based approach for the accurate and automatic tagging of network devices employing a semi-supervised deep learning approach and requiring only minimal human expert knowledge (e.g., for training)

MEASURING AND VISUALIZING USER SENTIMENT CHANGES OVER MULTIPLE CHANNELS

Techniques are provided to simultaneously infer approximately where a speaker is looking and the speaker\u27s emotion during a conversation. Due to privacy concerns, only the speaker\u27s approximate facial features may be estimated. The inferred face may be converted into a cartoon face that retains the main facial features. This may enhance user interaction experience even when a speaker does not turn on video in teleconference

Distribution and prevalence of malaria parasites among long-tailed macaques (Macaca fascicularis) in regional populations across Southeast Asia.

BackgroundPlasmodium knowlesi and Plasmodium cynomolgi are two malaria parasites naturally transmissible between humans and wild macaque through mosquito vectors, while Plasmodium inui can be experimentally transmitted from macaques to humans. One of their major natural hosts, the long-tailed macaque (Macaca fascicularis), is host to two other species of Plasmodium (Plasmodium fieldi and Plasmodium coatneyi) and is widely distributed in Southeast Asia. This study aims to determine the distribution of wild macaques infected with malarial parasites by examining samples derived from seven populations in five countries across Southeast Asia.MethodsPlasmodium knowlesi, P. cynomolgi, P. coatneyi, P. inui and P. fieldi, were detected using nested PCR assays in DNA samples from 276 wild-caught long-tailed macaques. These samples had been derived from macaques captured at seven locations, two each in the Philippines (n = 68) and Indonesia (n = 70), and one each in Cambodia (n = 54), Singapore (n = 40) and Laos (n = 44). The results were compared with previous studies of malaria parasites in long-tailed macaques from other locations in Southeast Asia. Fisher exact test and Chi square test were used to examine the geographic bias of the distribution of Plasmodium species in the macaque populations.ResultsOut of 276 samples tested, 177 were Plasmodium-positive, with P. cynomolgi being the most common and widely distributed among all long-tailed macaque populations (53.3 %) and occurring in all populations examined, followed by P. coatneyi (20.4 %), P. inui (12.3 %), P. fieldi (3.4 %) and P. knowlesi (0.4 %). One P. knowlesi infection was detected in a macaque from Laos, representing the first documented case of P. knowlesi in wildlife in Laos. Chi square test showed three of the five parasites (P. knowlesi, P. coatneyi, P. cynomolgi) with significant bias in prevalence towards macaques from Malaysian Borneo, Cambodia, and Southern Sumatra, respectively.ConclusionsThe prevalence of malaria parasites, including those that are transmissible to humans, varied among all sampled regional populations of long-tailed macaques in Southeast Asia. The new discovery of P. knowlesi infection in Laos, and the high prevalence of P. cynomolgi infections in wild macaques in general, indicate the strong need of public advocacy in related countries

Sini San inhibits breast cancer cell migration and angiogenesis via the HIF 1 /VEGF pathway

Purpose: To investigate the effects of Sini San (SNS) on breast cancer (BC), and the mechanism of action.Methods: MDA-MB-231 and SK-BR-3 cells were used as breast cancer cell models. Cell viability, migration, and invasion were determined by CCK-8, Transwell and wound healing assays, respectively. SNS mechanism of action and its anti-cancer effect were investigated by network pharmacological analysis, and further verified by Immunoblot.Results: Sini San inhibited the proliferation of the breast cancer (BC) cells., and also suppressed the migration as well as the invasion of BC cells, and also restrained the angiogenesis of BC cells. In performing the network pharmacological analysis of Sini Powder in the treatment of BC, 337 drugdisease targets were obtained. PPI network was established through String, and GO and KEGG enrichment analysis was performed on the target sites. KEGG analysis showed that genes were enriched in HIF-1 and VEGF pathways.Conclusion: Sini San suppressed cell migration as well as angiogenesis via the HIF-1 /VEGF pathway&nbsp