Determinant representations for scalar products of the XXZ Gaudin model with general boundary terms

We obtain the determinant representations of the scalar products for the XXZ Gaudin model with generic non-diagonal boundary terms.Comment: Latex file, 17 page

From cyber-security deception to manipulation and gratification through gamification

Over the last two decades the field of cyber-security has experienced numerous changes associated with the evolution of other fields, such as networking, mobile communications, and recently the Internet of Things (IoT) [3]. Changes in mindsets have also been witnessed, a couple of years ago the cyber-security industry only blamed users for their mistakes often depicted as the number one reason behind security breaches. Nowadays, companies are empowering users, modifying their perception of being the weak link, into being the center-piece of the network design [4]. Users are by definition "in control" and therefore a cyber-security asset. Researchers have focused on the gamification of cyber- security elements, helping users to learn and understand the concepts of attacks and threats, allowing them to become the first line of defense to report anoma- lies [5]. However, over the past years numerous infrastructures have suffered from malicious intent, data breaches, and crypto-ransomeware, clearly showing the technical "know-how" of hackers and their ability to bypass any security in place, demonstrating that no infrastructure, software or device can be consid- ered secure. Researchers concentrated on the gamification, learning and teaching theory of cyber-security to end-users in numerous fields through various techniques and scenarios to raise cyber-situational awareness [2][1]. However, they overlooked the users’ ability to gather information on these attacks. In this paper, we argue that there is an endemic issue in the the understanding of hacking practices leading to vulnerable devices, software and architectures. We therefore propose a transparent gamification platform for hackers. The platform is designed with hacker user-interaction and deception in mind enabling researchers to gather data on the techniques and practices of hackers. To this end, we developed a fully extendable gamification architecture allowing researchers to deploy virtualised hosts on the internet. Each virtualised hosts contains a specific vulnerability (i.e. web application, software, etc). Each vulnerability is connected to a game engine, an interaction engine and a scoring engine

Expression of MiR-9 promotes proliferation, migration and differentiation of human neural stem cells

Purpose: To investigate the effect of miR-9 on the proliferation, differentiation and migration of human neural stem cells (NSCs).Methods: The expression of miR-9 was investigated by quantitative real-time polymerase chain reaction (RT-PCR). Cell proliferation was assessed by cell counting kit-8 (CCK8) assay, while cell migration was studied by Transwell assay. The effect of miR-9 on differentiation of NSCs was investigated by western blot analysis of key differentiation marker proteins. Protein expression was determined by western blotting.Results: Transfection and over-expression of miR-9 in NSCs significantly enhanced the proliferation of NSCs (p < 0.05) in a time-dependent manner, as was evident from CCK8 assay data. MiR-9 overexpression caused down-regulation of Nestin and SOX-2, and up-regulation of Tuj-1 and MAP-2. The migration of NSCs was 37 % in the cells transfected with empty vector, compared to 68 % in the cells transfected with miR-9. This effect of miR-9 on cell migration was accompanied by up-regulation of matrix metallopeptidase 9 (MMP-9) and matrix metallopeptidase 2 (MMP-2).Conclusion: These results show that miR-9 promotes the proliferation, differentiation and migration of NSCs, and thus may be an important drug target for the generation of NSCs.Keywords: Neural stem cells, MicroRNA, Mir-9, Migration, Differentiation, Proliferatio

Deadline Constrained Cloud Computing Resources Scheduling through an Ant Colony System Approach

Cloud computing resources scheduling is essential for executing workflows in the cloud platform because it relates to both execution time and execution cost. In this paper, we adopt a model that optimizes the execution cost while meeting deadline constraints. In solving this problem, we propose an Improved Ant Colony System (IACS) approach featuring two novel strategies. Firstly, a dynamic heuristic strategy is used to calculate a heuristic value during an evolutionary process by taking the workflow topological structure into consideration. Secondly, a double search strategy is used to initialize the pheromone and calculate the heuristic value according to the execution time at the beginning and to initialize the pheromone and calculate heuristic value according to the execution cost after a feasible solution is found. Therefore, the proposed IACS is adaptive to the search environment and to different objectives. We have conducted extensive experiments based on workflows with different scales and different cloud resources. We compare the result with a particle swarm optimization (PSO) approach and a dynamic objective genetic algorithm (DOGA) approach. Experimental results show that IACS is able to find better solutions with a lower cost than both PSO and DOGA do on various scheduling scales and deadline conditions