A HEURISTIC FOR OPTIMIZING THE PHYSICAL LAYOUT AND NETWORK TOPOLOGY OF INTEGRATED 3D MULTI-CHIP SYSTEMS UNDER TEMPERATURE CONSTRAINTS

M.S. Thesis. University of Hawaiʻi at Mānoa 2018

Snapshot Samplings of the Bitcoin Transaction Network and Analysis of Cryptocurrency Growth

The purpose of this work was to perform a network analysis on the rapidly growing bitcoin transaction network. Using a web-socket API, we collected data on all transactions occurring during a six hour window. Sender and receiver addresses as well as the amount of bitcoin exchanged were record. Graphs were generated, using R and Gephi, in which nodes represent addresses and edges represent the exchange of bitcoin. The six hour data set was subsetted into a one and two hour sampling snapshot of the network. We performed comparisons and analysis on all subsets of the data in an effort to determine the minimum sampling length that represented the network as a whole. Our results suggest that the six hour sampling was the minimum limit with respect to sampling time needed to accurately characterize the bitcoin transaction network.Anonymity is a desired feature of the blockchain and bitcoin network however, it limited us in our analysis and conclusions we drew from our results were mostly inferred. Future work is needed and being done to gather more comprehensive data so that the bitcoin transaction network can be better analyzed.Comment: 8 pages, 8 figures, 2 table

Digit Recognition From Wrist Movements and Security Concerns with Smart Wrist Wearable IOT Devices

In this paper, we investigate a potential security vulnerability associated with wrist wearable devices. Hardware components on common wearable devices include an accelerometer and gyroscope, among other sensors. We demonstrate that an accelerometer and gyroscope can pick up enough unique wrist movement information to identify digits being written by a user. With a data set of 400 writing samples, of either the digit zero or the digit one, we constructed a machine learning model to correctly identify the digit being written based on the movements of the wrist. Our model’s performance on an unseen test set resulted in an area under the receiver operating characteristic (AUROC) curve of 1.00. Loading our model onto our fabricated device resulted in 100% accuracy when predicting ten writing samples in real-time. The model’s ability to correctly identify all digits via wrist movement and orientation changes raises security concerns. Our results imply that nefarious individuals may be able to gain sensitive digit based information such as social security, credit card, and medical record numbers from wrist wearable devices

Australia IBD Microbiome (AIM) Study: protocol for a multicentre longitudinal prospective cohort study.

INTRODUCTION: Crohn's disease and ulcerative colitis are common chronic idiopathic inflammatory bowel diseases (IBD), which cause considerable morbidity. Although the precise mechanisms of disease remain unclear, evidence implicates a strong multidirectional interplay between diet, environmental factors, genetic determinants/immune perturbations and the gut microbiota. IBD can be brought into remission using a number of medications, which act by suppressing the immune response. However, none of the available medications address any of the underlying potential mechanisms. As we understand more about how the microbiota drives inflammation, much interest has focused on identifying microbial signals/triggers in the search for effective therapeutic targets. We describe the establishment of the Australian IBD Microbiota (AIM) Study, Australia's first longitudinal IBD bioresource, which will identify and correlate longitudinal microbial and metagenomics signals to disease activity as evaluated by validated clinical instruments, patient-reported surveys, as well as biomarkers. The AIM Study will also gather extensive demographic, clinical, lifestyle and dietary data known to influence microbial composition in order to generate a more complete understanding of the interplay between patients with IBD and their microbiota. METHODS: The AIM Study is an Australian multicentre longitudinal prospective cohort study, which will enrol 1000 participants; 500 patients with IBD and 500 healthy controls over a 5-year period. Assessment occurs at 3 monthly intervals over a 24-month period. At each assessment oral and faecal samples are self-collected along with patient-reported outcome measures, with clinical data also collected at baseline, 12 and 24 months. Intestinal tissue will be sampled whenever a colonoscopy is performed. Dietary intake, general health and psychological state will be assessed using validated self-report questionnaires. Samples will undergo metagenomic, transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and culturomic analyses. Omics data will be integrated with clinical data to identify predictive biomarkers of response to therapy, disease behaviour and environmental factors in patients with IBD. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: Ethical approval for this study has been obtained from the South Eastern Sydney Local Health District Research Ethics Committee (HREC 2019/ETH11443). Findings will be reported at national and international gastroenterology meetings and published in peer-reviewed journals. TRIAL REGISTRATION NUMBER: ACTRN12619000911190

Survey of advanced nuclear technologies for potential applications of sonoprocessing

Ultrasonics has been used in many industrial applications for both sensing at low power and processing at higher power. Generally, the high power applications fall within the categories of liquid stream degassing, impurity separation, and sonochemical enhancement of chemical processes. Examples of such industrial applications include metal production, food processing, chemical production, and pharmaceutical production. There are many nuclear process streams that have similar physical and chemical processes to those applications listed above. These nuclear processes could potentially benefit from the use of high-power ultrasonics. There are also potential benefits to applying these techniques in advanced nuclear fuel cycle processes, and these benefits have not been fully investigated. Currently the dominant use of ultrasonic technology in the nuclear industry has been using low power ultrasonics for non-destructive testing/evaluation (NDT/NDE), where it is primarily used for inspections and for characterizing material degradation. Because there has been very little consideration given to how sonoprocessing can potentially improve efficiency and add value to important process streams throughout the nuclear fuel cycle, there are numerous opportunities for improvement in current and future nuclear technologies. In this paper, the relevant fundamental theory underlying sonoprocessing is highlighted, and some potential applications to advanced nuclear technologies throughout the nuclear fuel cycle are discussed

Musashi proteins are post-transcriptional regulators of the epithelial-luminal cell state

The conserved Musashi (Msi) family of RNA binding proteins are expressed in stem/progenitor and cancer cells, but generally absent from differentiated cells, consistent with a role in cell state regulation. We found that Msi genes are rarely mutated but frequently overexpressed in human cancers and are associated with an epithelial-luminal cell state. Using ribosome profiling and RNA-seq analysis, we found that Msi proteins regulate translation of genes implicated in epithelial cell biology and epithelial-to-mesenchymal transition (EMT), and promote an epithelial splicing pattern. Overexpression of Msi proteins inhibited the translation of Jagged1, a factor required for EMT, and repressed EMT in cell culture and in mammary gland in vivo. Knockdown of Msis in epithelial cancer cells promoted loss of epithelial identity. Our results show that mammalian Msi proteins contribute to an epithelial gene expression program in neural and mammary cell types.National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant RO1-CA084198)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant U01-CA184897)National Institutes of Health (U.S.) (Grant R01-GM085319)National Science Foundation (U.S.). Graduate Research Fellowship (Grant 1122374

Salespeople’s Renqing Orientation, Self-esteem, and Selling Behaviors: An Empirical Study in Taiwan

The purpose of this study was to investigate how salespeople’s renqing orientation and self-esteem jointly affect their selling behavior. Data were obtained from a survey of salespeople from 17 pharmaceutical and consumer-goods companies in Taiwan (n = 216). Salespeople’s renqing orientation (i.e., their propensity to adhere to the accepted norm of reciprocity) compensates the negative effect of self-esteem on their selling behaviors, such as adaptive selling and hard work. Our study results underscore the critical role of the character trait of renqing orientation in a culture emphasizing a norm of reciprocity. Therefore, it would be useful to consider a strategy of recruiting salespeople with either a high self-esteem or a combination of high renqing orientation and low self-esteem. The existing literature of industrial/organizational psychology and marketing primarily relies on constructs that are derived from Western cultural contexts. However, the present paper extended these literatures by investigating the possible joint effects of self-esteem with a trait originated from the Chinese culture on salespeople’s selling behaviors