Listen to Minority: Encrypted Traffic Classification for Class Imbalance with Contrastive Pre-Training

Mobile Internet has profoundly reshaped modern lifestyles in various aspects. Encrypted Traffic Classification (ETC) naturally plays a crucial role in managing mobile Internet, especially with the explosive growth of mobile apps using encrypted communication. Despite some existing learning-based ETC methods showing promising results, three-fold limitations still remain in real-world network environments, 1) label bias caused by traffic class imbalance, 2) traffic homogeneity caused by component sharing, and 3) training with reliance on sufficient labeled traffic. None of the existing ETC methods can address all these limitations. In this paper, we propose a novel Pre-trAining Semi-Supervised ETC framework, dubbed PASS. Our key insight is to resample the original train dataset and perform contrastive pre-training without using individual app labels directly to avoid label bias issues caused by class imbalance, while obtaining a robust feature representation to differentiate overlapping homogeneous traffic by pulling positive traffic pairs closer and pushing negative pairs away. Meanwhile, PASS designs a semi-supervised optimization strategy based on pseudo-label iteration and dynamic loss weighting algorithms in order to effectively utilize massive unlabeled traffic data and alleviate manual train dataset annotation workload. PASS outperforms state-of-the-art ETC methods and generic sampling approaches on four public datasets with significant class imbalance and traffic homogeneity, remarkably pushing the F1 of Cross-Platform215 with 1.31%, ISCX-17 with 9.12%. Furthermore, we validate the generality of the contrastive pre-training and pseudo-label iteration components of PASS, which can adaptively benefit ETC methods with diverse feature extractors.Comment: Accepted by 2023 20th Annual IEEE International Conference on Sensing, Communication, and Networking, 9 pages, 6 figure

Inhibition of Stimulator of Interferon Genes Protects Against Myocardial Ischemia-Reperfusion Injury in Diabetic Mice

Background: Although the past decade has witnessed substantial scientific progress with the advent of cardioprotective pharmacological agents, most have failed to protect against myocardial ischemia/reperfusion (I/R) injury in diabetic hearts. This study was aimed at investigating the role of stimulator of interferon genes (STING) in I/R injury in diabetic mice and further exploring the underlying mechanisms. Methods: Type 2 diabetic mice were subjected to I/R or sham operation to investigate the role of STING. STING knockout mice were subjected to 30 minutes of ischemia followed by reperfusion for 24 hours. Finally, myocardial injury, cardiac function, and inflammation levels were assessed. Results: STING pathway activation was observed in diabetic I/R hearts, as evidenced by increased p-TBK and p-IRF3 expression. STING knockout significantly decreased the ischemic area and improved cardiac function after I/R in diabetic mice. STING knockout also elicited cardio-protective effects by decreasing serum cardiac troponin T and lactate dehydrogenase levels, thus diminishing the inflammatory response in the heart after I/R in diabetic mice. In vitro , STING inhibition decreased the expression of hypoxia-re-oxygenation-induced inflammatory cytokines. Conclusions: Targeting STING inhibits inflammation and prevents I/R injury in diabetic mice. Thus, STING may be a potential novel therapeutic target against myocardial I/R injury in diabetes

Optical vortices enabled by structural vortices

The structural symmetry of solids plays an important role in defining their linear and nonlinear optical properties. The quest for versatile, cost-effective, large-scale, and defect-free approaches and materials platforms for tailoring structural and optical properties on demand has been underway for decades. We experimentally demonstrate a bottom-up self-assembly-based organic engineered material comprised of synthesized molecules with large dipole moments that are crystallized into a spherulite structure. The molecules align in an azimuthal direction, resulting in a vortex polarity with spontaneously broken symmetry leading to strong optical anisotropy and nonlinear optical responses. These unique polarization properties of the judiciously designed organic spherulite combined with the symmetry of structured optical beams enable a plethora of new linear and nonlinear light-matter interactions, including the generation of optical vortex beams with complex spin states and on-demand topological charges at the fundamental, doubled, and tripled frequencies. The results of this work are likely to enable numerous applications in areas such as high-dimensional quantum information processing, with large capacity and high security. The demonstrated spherulite crystals facilitate stand-alone micro-scale devices that rely on the unique micro-scale spontaneous vortex polarity that is likely to enable future applications for high-dimensional quantum information processing, spatiotemporal optical vortices, and a novel platform for optical manipulation and trapping

Frequency-dependent orthotropic damping properties of Nomex honeycomb composites

In this paper, the orthotropic damping behavior of Nomex honeycomb composites and its causes are investigated. The needed specimen sizes for the measurement of the frequency-dependent transverse shear moduli (TSM) and fundamental damping coefficients of the honeycomb cores were analyzed at first. Then, the effects of cell side length and beam orientation on the orthotropic damping properties were explored. The results reveal that relatively high TSM (GLT) and damping values (ηWT) can be obtained by decreasing the cell side length without adding any additional weight. Damping mechanism analysis indicates that the difference in damping contribution of the interfacial phase to honeycomb core in different directions leads to the orthotropic damping behavior of honeycomb core. This study is helpful to guide the TSM measurement and structure design of honeycomb composites

A semantics aware approach to automated reverse engineering unknown protocols

Abstract—Extracting the protocol message format specifica-tions of unknown applications from network traces is important for a variety of applications such as application protocol parsing, vulnerability discovery, and system integration. In this paper, we propose ProDecoder, a network trace based protocol message format inference system that exploits the semantics of protocol messages without the executable code of application protocols. ProDecoder is based on the key insight that the n-grams of protocol traces exhibit highly skewed frequency distribution that can be leveraged for accurate protocol message format inference. In ProDecoder, we first discover the latent relationship among n-grams by first grouping protocol messages with the same semantics and then inferring message formats by keyword based clustering and cluster sequence alignment. We implemented and evaluated ProDecoder to infer message format specifications of SMB (a binary protocol) and SMTP (a textual protocol). Our experimental results show that ProDecoder accurately parses and infers SMB protocol with 100 % precision and recall. For SMTP, ProDecoder achieves approximately 95 % precision and recall

Lenalidomide potentially reduced the level of cell- associated HIV RNA and improved persistent inflammation in patients with HIV-associated cryptococcal meningitis a pilot study

BackgroundThe HIV-1 reservoir is a major barrier to curative strategies. Inflammation is an important factor for HIV-1 reservoir persistence. Lenalidomide regulates inflammatory cytokines efficiently. We examined whether lenalidomide could inhibit HIV-1 transcription and reduce systemic inflammation in people living with HIV.MethodsLenalidomide was administered orally for 48 weeks to patients with HIV-associated cryptococcal meningitis (HIV-CM). A HIV-1 latency model was treated with or without lenalidomide ex vivo for 5 days. The primary endpoints were change in HIV reservoir markers and inflammatory cytokines in both the cohort and cell model.ResultsThirteen participants were enrolled from May 2019 to September 2020. The median change in cell-associated (CA) HIV RNA between baseline and 48 weeks was 0.81 log10 copies/million peripheral blood mononuclear cells (PBMCs). The CA HIV RNA decreased significantly in the cohort (P = 0.021). Serum tumor necrosis factor-α (TNF-α) and interleukin-6 (IL-6) gradually diminished with lenalidomide treatment until 48 weeks (P = 0.007, P = 0.014, respectively). C-reactive protein/IL-6/TNF-α and CA HIV RNA were significantly correlated (P = 0.0027, 0.0496, and 0.0346, respectively). Lenalidomide also significantly decreased HIV core P24 (P = 0.0038) and CA HIV RNA in CD8-depleted PBMCs (P = 0.0178) ex vivo. TNF-α and IL-6 were significantly reduced in the CD8-depleted PBMC supernatant (P = 0.004, P < 0.0001, respectively) while IL-10 levels increased significantly on lenalidomide compared to no-lenalidomide treatment (P < 0.0001).ConclusionsLenalidomide was preliminarily confirmed to reduce the level of cell- associated HIV RNA and improve persistent inflammation in patients with HIV-Associated cryptococcal meningitis, which was a potential intervention for clinical use to inhibit viral transcription of the HIV-1 reservoir and reduced HIV-related inflammation in HIV-1 patients during ART

ASXL1 interacts with the cohesin complex to maintain chromatid separation and gene expression for normal hematopoiesis

ASXL1 is frequently mutated in a spectrum of myeloid malignancies with poor prognosis. Loss of Asxl1 leads to myelodysplastic syndrome-like disease in mice; however, the underlying molecular mechanisms remain unclear. We report that ASXL1 interacts with the cohesin complex, which has been shown to guide sister chromatid segregation and regulate gene expression. Loss of Asxl1 impairs the cohesin function, as reflected by an impaired telophase chromatid disjunction in hematopoietic cells. Chromatin immunoprecipitation followed by DNA sequencing data revealed that ASXL1, RAD21, and SMC1A share 93% of genomic binding sites at promoter regions in Lin-cKit+ (LK) cells. We have shown that loss of Asxl1 reduces the genome binding of RAD21 and SMC1A and alters the expression of ASXL1/cohesin target genes in LK cells. Our study underscores the ASXL1-cohesin interaction as a novel means to maintain normal sister chromatid separation and regulate gene expression in hematopoietic cells

Experimental Research on the Mechanical Performance of the Bolted Rock under Lateral Impact Load: Effect of Prestress, Body Material, and Anchorage Style

In order to reveal the impact mechanical properties and their key influencing factors of the bolted rock under the lateral impact load, through the lateral drop hammer impact test, the time-history curve of impact force, axial force of the bolt, and surface strain of the sample under different combination types of influencing factors is obtained, and the whole process of deformation and failure of the bolted rock is recorded. The test results show that the material of the bolt has a significant influence on the impact force and axial force of the bolt. There is a positive correlation between bolt strength and impact peak and impact attenuation slope and a negative correlation between bolt strength and impact action time. The effect of prestress on the impact resistance of the bolted rock was also evaluated by the test which suggested that prestress of the bolt can significantly reduce both impact time and bolt axial force of the bolted rock but has limited effect on the impact force. It was also found that the time-history curve of the impact force of anchoring rock mass had significant difference with full-length anchoring and nonanchoring. Compared with the nonanchoring bolt, the full-length anchored rock mass has a larger impact peak and shorter action time, which means that the impact resistance of the full-length bolted rock has a certain degree of weakening. Through scientific research, determining the reasonable bolt material, prestress value, and anchorage style can improve the impact resistance of the sample

Stable propagation of the Poincaré polarization solitons in strongly nonlocal media

We report the first experimental observation of spatial solitons with complex polarization states, called the Poincaré polarization solitons (PPSs) in lead glass with strongly nonlocal nonlinearity. The formations of PPSs with topological charge of l  = 1, including the cylindrical elliptical-polarization soliton (CEPS) and the angularly-hybrid polarization soliton (AHPS), were observed. We showed that the annular profiles and the complex polarization distributions of the first-order PPSs can be remained. Based on the linear stability analysis, we proved that the first-order PPSs are fully stable and the second-order PPS can survive only when one of the two component vortices dominates

The Present Clinical Treatment and Future Emerging Interdisciplinary for Heart Failure: Where we are and What we can do

Abstract Heart failure is a complex clinical syndrome caused by the progression to severe stages of various cardiac diseases, characterized by high morbidity and mortality. With the increasing aging of the population and the poor control of high-risk factors for heart failure such as hypertension and diabetes, the incidence of heart failure remains high. Therefore, there is widespread global attention regarding the various treatments for heart failure. Currently, pharmacological therapy, associated device therapy, interventional therapy, and end-stage surgical related therapy are the main clinical treatments for heart failure. Heart failure treatment is gradually evolving to be more precise, safe, and effective, as traditional therapies can no longer match clinical needs. A number of cutting-edge research studies are being conducted on the treatment of heart failure, based on the different pathogenesis and causes of heart failure, to treat patients with heart failure in a multifaceted and integrated way. This article summarizes the current clinical treatment of heart failure and the latest therapeutic advances in heart failure in current research to further promote the standardized management and treatment of heart failure and improve patient prognosis