V-Cloak: Intelligibility-, Naturalness- & Timbre-Preserving Real-Time Voice Anonymization

Voice data generated on instant messaging or social media applications contains unique user voiceprints that may be abused by malicious adversaries for identity inference or identity theft. Existing voice anonymization techniques, e.g., signal processing and voice conversion/synthesis, suffer from degradation of perceptual quality. In this paper, we develop a voice anonymization system, named V-Cloak, which attains real-time voice anonymization while preserving the intelligibility, naturalness and timbre of the audio. Our designed anonymizer features a one-shot generative model that modulates the features of the original audio at different frequency levels. We train the anonymizer with a carefully-designed loss function. Apart from the anonymity loss, we further incorporate the intelligibility loss and the psychoacoustics-based naturalness loss. The anonymizer can realize untargeted and targeted anonymization to achieve the anonymity goals of unidentifiability and unlinkability. We have conducted extensive experiments on four datasets, i.e., LibriSpeech (English), AISHELL (Chinese), CommonVoice (French) and CommonVoice (Italian), five Automatic Speaker Verification (ASV) systems (including two DNN-based, two statistical and one commercial ASV), and eleven Automatic Speech Recognition (ASR) systems (for different languages). Experiment results confirm that V-Cloak outperforms five baselines in terms of anonymity performance. We also demonstrate that V-Cloak trained only on the VoxCeleb1 dataset against ECAPA-TDNN ASV and DeepSpeech2 ASR has transferable anonymity against other ASVs and cross-language intelligibility for other ASRs. Furthermore, we verify the robustness of V-Cloak against various de-noising techniques and adaptive attacks. Hopefully, V-Cloak may provide a cloak for us in a prism world.Comment: Accepted by USENIX Security Symposium 202

Evaluation on Transfer Efficiency at Integrated Transport Terminals through Multilevel Grey Evaluation

AbstractTransfer efficiency in integrated transportation terminal is greatly important for both passengers and operational companies. In this paper, we proposed various criteria and a hierarchy index system to evaluate the performance of the transfer condition inside Beijing South Railway Station. To make the assessment more scientific, we assign weightings to each of them by integrated weighting method. Then we use an evaluation method, Multi-level Grey Evaluation, to calculate the performance indexes of different transfer modes in the station and further we compare the ranking results of transfer efficiency of different transfer modes

Protective Effect of Calculus Bovis Sativus

Calculus Bovis Sativus (CBS) is a commonly used traditional Chinese medicine, which has been reported to exhibit antispasmodic, fever-reducing, anti-inflammatory, and gallbladder-repairing effects. The present study aims to investigate the protective effect of CBS on dextran sulphate sodium- (DSS-) induced ulcerative colitis (UC) in mice. C57BL/6 male mice were exposed to 5% DSS in drinking water. CBS was given orally at 50 and 150 mg/kg once per day for 7 days. Body weight, disease activity index (DAI), colon length, colonic myeloperoxidase (MPO) activity, superoxide dismutase (SOD) activity, and malondialdehyde (MDA) and nitric oxide (NO) levels were measured. Administration of CBS significantly reserved these changes, decreased the MPO activity and MDA and NO level, and increased the SOD activity in the colon tissue. Histological observation suggested that CBS alleviated edema, mucosal damage, and inflammatory cells infiltration induced by DSS in the colon. Moreover, CBS significantly downregulated the mRNA expression of tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α), interleukin- (IL-) 1β and IL-6 in the colon tissue. Our data suggested that CBS exerted protective effect on DSS-induced UC partially through the antioxidant and anti-inflammatory activities

lncRNA ZEB1-AS1 Mediates Oxidative Low-Density Lipoprotein-Mediated Endothelial Cells Injury by Post-transcriptional Stabilization of NOD2

Oxidized-low density lipoprotein (ox-LDL) can induce injury of endothelial cells, causing atherosclerosis, which is an important initial event in several cardiovascular diseases. Long non-coding RNAs (lncRNAs) have emerged as regulators of diverse biological processes, but their specific biological functions and biochemical mechanisms in ox-LDL-induced endothelial cell injury have not been well investigated. Here, we describe the initial functional analysis of a poorly characterized human lncRNA ZEB1 antisense 1 (ZEB1-AS1). We found that ox-LDL treatment could induce a decreased cell viability and an increased cell apoptosis in endothelial cells, and knockdown of ZEB1-AS1 significantly reversed this effect. Mechanistically, ox-LDL treatment could sequester p53 from binding to ZEB1-AS1 promoter region, causing transcriptional activation and upregulation of ZEB1-AS1. Moreover, enhanced ZEB1-AS1 could upregulate Nucleotide-Binding Oligomerization Domain 2 (NOD2) expression through recruiting leucine-rich pentatricopeptide repeat motif-containing protein (LRPPRC) to stabilize NOD2 mRNA. Experimental data showed that knockdown of NOD2 or LRPPRC dramatically abrogated the functional role of ZEB1-AS1 in ox-LDL-induced endothelial cell injury. In summary, we demonstrated that lncRNA ZEB1-AS1 regulates the ox-LDL-induced endothelial cell injury via an LRPPRC-dependent mRNA stabilization mechanism. Therefore, ZEB1-AS1 may serve as a multi-potency target to overcome endothelial cell injury, atherosclerosis and other cardiovascular diseases

Unveiling the Intricate Intercalation Mechanism in Manganese Sesquioxide as Positive Electrode in Aqueous Zn‐Metal Battery

In the family of Zn/manganese oxide batteries with mild aqueous electrolytes, cubic α-Mn$_{2}$O$_{3}$ with bixbyite structure is rarely considered, because of the lack of the tunnel and/or layered structure that are usually believed to be indispensable for the incorporation of Zn ions. In this work, the charge storage mechanism of α-Mn$_{2}$O$_{3}$ is systematically and comprehensively investigated. It is demonstrated that the electrochemically induced irreversible phase transition from α-Mn$_{2}$O$_{3}$ to layered-typed L-Zn$_{x}$MnO$_{2}$, coupled with the dissolution of Mn$^{2+}$ and OH$^{-}$ into the electrolyte, allows for the subsequent reversible de-/intercalation of Zn$^{2+}$. Moreover, it is proven that α-Mn$_{2}$O$_{3}$ is not a host for H$^{+}$. Instead, the MnO$_{2}$ formed from L-Zn$_{x}$MnO$_{2}$ and the Mn^{2+ in the electrolyte upon the initial charge is the host for H$^{+}$. Based on this electrode mechanism, combined with fabricating hierarchically structured mesoporous α-Mn$_{2}$O$_{3}$ microrod array material, an unprecedented rate capability with 103 mAh g−1 at 5.0 A g−1 as well as an appealing stability of 2000 cycles (at 2.0 A g$^{-1}$) with a capacity decay of only ≈0.009% per-cycle are obtained

The ratio of CRP to prealbumin levels predict mortality in patients with hospital-acquired acute kidney injury

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Animal and human studies suggest that inflammation and malnutrition are common in acute kidney injury (AKI) patients. However, only a few studies reported CRP, a marker of inflammation, albumin, prealbumin and cholesterol, markers of nutritional status were associated with the prognosis of AKI patients. No study examined whether the combination of inflammatory and nutritional markers could predict the mortality of AKI patients.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>155 patients with hospital-acquired AKI were recruited to this prospective cohort study according to RIFLE (Risk, Injury, Failure, Lost or End Stage Kidney) criteria. C-reactive protein (CRP), and the nutritional markers (albumin, prealbumin and cholesterol) measured at nephrology consultation were analyzed in relation to all cause mortality of these patients. In addition, CRP and prealbumin were also measured in healthy controls (n = 45), maintenance hemodialysis (n = 70) and peritoneal dialysis patients (n = 50) and then compared with AKI patients.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>Compared with healthy controls and end-stage renal disease patients on maintenance hemodialysis or peritoneal dialysis, patients with AKI had significantly higher levels of CRP/prealbumin (<it>p </it>< 0.001). Higher level of serum CRP and lower levels of albumin, prealbumin and cholesterol were found to be significant in the patients with AKI who died within 28 days than those who survived >28 days. Similarly, the combined factors including the ratio of CRP to albumin (CRP/albumin), CRP/prealbumin and CRP/cholesterol were also significantly higher in the former group (<it>p </it>< 0.001 for all). Multivariate analysis (Cox regression) revealed that CRP/prealbumin was independently associated with mortality after adjustment for age, gender, sepsis and sequential organ failure assessment (SOFA, <it>p </it>= 0.027) while the others (CRP, albumin, prealbumin, cholesterol, CRP/albumin and CRP/cholesterol) became non-significantly associated. The hazard ratio was 1.00 (reference), 1.85, 2.25 and 3.89 for CRP/prealbumin increasing according to quartiles (<it>p </it>= 0.01 for the trend).</p> <p>Conclusions</p> <p>Inflammation and malnutrition were common in patients with AKI. Higher level of the ratio of CRP to prealbumin was associated with mortality of AKI patients independent of the severity of illness and it may be a valuable addition to SOFA score to independent of the severity of illness and it may be a valuable addition to SOFA score to predict the prognosis of AKI patients.</p

Synthesis of carbon-supported PdSn–SnO2 nanoparticles with different degrees of interfacial contact and enhanced catalytic activities for formic acid oxidation

The conjunction of the PdSn alloy and SnO2 is of interest for improving catalytic activity in formic acid oxidation (FAO). Here, we report the synthesis of PdSn–SnO2 nanoparticles and a study of their catalytic FAO activity. Different degrees of interfacial contact between SnO2 and PdSn were obtained using two different stabilizers (sodium citrate and EDTA) during the reduction process in catalyst preparation. Compared to the PdSn alloy, PdSn–SnO2 supported on carbon black showed enhanced FAO catalytic activity due to the presence of SnO2 species. It was also found that interfacial contact between the PdSn alloy and the SnO2 phase has an impact on the activity towards CO oxidation and FAO.Web of Scienc

Screening and characterization of the scFv for chimeric antigen receptor T cells targeting CEA-positive carcinoma

IntroductionChimeric antigen receptor T (CAR-T) cell therapy presents a promising treatment option for various cancers, including solid tumors. Carcinoembryonic antigen (CEA) is an attractive target due to its high expression in many tumors, particularly gastrointestinal cancers, while limited expression in normal adult tissues. In our previous clinical study, we reported a 70% disease control rate with no severe side effects using a humanized CEA-targeting CAR-T cell. However, the selection of the appropriate single-chain variable fragment (scFv) significantly affects the therapeutic efficacy of CAR-T cells by defining their specific behavior towards the target antigen. Therefore, this study aimed to identify the optimal scFv and investigate its biological functions to further optimize the therapeutic potential of CAR-T cells targeting CEA-positive carcinoma.MethodsWe screened four reported humanized or fully human anti-CEA antibodies (M5A, hMN-14, BW431/26, and C2-45), and inserted them into a 3rd-generation CAR structure. We purified the scFvs and measured the affinity. We monitored CAR-T cell phenotype and scFv binding stability to CEA antigen through flow cytometry. We performed repeated CEA antigen stimulation assays to compare the proliferation potential and response of the four CAR-T cells, then further evaluated the anti-tumor efficacy of CAR-T cells ex vivo and in vivo.ResultsM5A and hMN-14 CARs displayed higher affinity and more stable CEA binding ability than BW431/26 and C2-45 CARs. During CAR-T cell production culture, hMN-14 CAR-T cells exhibit a larger proportion of memory-like T cells, while M5A CAR-T cells showed a more differentiated phenotype, suggesting a greater tonic signal of M5A scFv. M5A, hMN-14, and BW431/26 CAR-T cells exhibited effective tumor cell lysis and IFN-γ release when cocultured with CEA-positive tumor cells in vitro, correlating with the abundance of CEA expression in target cells. While C2-45 resulted in almost no tumor lysis or IFN-γ release. In a repeat CEA antigen stimulation assay, M5A showed the best cell proliferation and cytokine secretion levels. In a mouse xenograft model, M5A CAR-T cells displayed better antitumor efficacy without preconditioning.DiscussionOur findings suggest that scFvs derived from different antibodies have distinctive characteristics, and stable expression and appropriate affinity are critical for robust antitumor efficacy. This study highlights the importance of selecting an optimal scFv in CAR-T cell design for effective CEA-targeted therapy. The identified optimal scFv, M5A, could be potentially applied in future clinical trials of CAR-T cell therapy targeting CEA-positive carcinoma