A FEDERATED DEEP AUTOENCODER FOR DETECTING IOT CYBER ATTACKS

Internet of Things (IoT) devices are mass-produced and rapidly released to the public in a rough state. IoT devices are produced by various companies satisfying various goals, such as monitoring the environment, senor trigger cameras, on-demand electrical switches. These IoT devices are produced by companies to meet a market demand quickly, producing a rough software solution that customers or other enterprises willingly buy with the expectation they will have software updates after production. These IoT devices are often heterogeneous in nature, only to receive updates at infrequently intervals, and can remain out of sight on a home or office network for extended periods. Security and privacy are two of the many ongoing research and operational challenges in IoT systems. Potential threats to IoT devices, such as botnets and malware-based attacks, have always been difficult for traditional detection systems. However, deep learning-based solutions have been utilized in recent years, and many challenges have yet to be addressed. In this thesis, we propose a federated-based approach, this will employ a deep autoencoder to detect botnet attacks using on-device decentralized traffic data. This suggested federated learning solution will be able to address the privacy and security of data by ensuring that the device’s data is not transferred or moved off the network edge. Instead, the machine learning computation will be brought to where living data is born (e.g. the edge layer); thus, providing the sought-after results of a traditionally centralized machine learning technique, with the added benefit of data security. We demonstrate that our proposed model has achieved up to 98% accuracy rate in anomaly detection while using features such as source IP, MAC IP, and destination IP and socket channel for training. The comparative performance analysis between our proposed approach and a traditionally centralized format demonstrates that our approach achieves a significant improvement in the accuracy rate of attack detection

The first recorded outbreak of cryptosporidiosis due to Cryptosporidium cuniculus (formerly rabbit genotype), following a water quality incident

Background: We report the first identified outbreak of cryptosporidiosis with Cryptosporidium cuniculus following a water quality incident in Northamptonshire, UK. Methods: A standardised, enhanced Cryptosporidium exposure questionnaire was administered to all cases of cryptosporidiosis after the incident. Stool samples, water testing, microscopy slides and rabbit gut contents positive for Cryptosporidium were typed at the Cryptosporidium Reference Unit, Singleton Hospital, Swansea. Results: Twenty-three people were microbiologically linked to the incident although other evidence suggests an excess of 422 cases of cryptosporidiosis above baseline. Most were adult females; unusually for cryptosporidiosis there were no affected children identified under the age of 5 years. Water consumption was possibly higher than in national drinking water consumption patterns. Diarrhoea duration was negatively correlated to distance from the water treatment works where the contamination occurred. Oocyst counts were highest in water storage facilities. Conclusions: This outbreak is the first caused by C. cuniculus infection to have been noted and it has conclusively demonstrated that this species can be a human pathogen. Although symptomatically similar to cryptosporidiosis from C. parvum or C. hominis, this outbreak has revealed some differences, in particular no children under 5 were identified and females were over-represented. These dissimilarities are unexplained although we postulate possible explanations

A prospective cohort study comparing the reactogenicity of trivalent influenza vaccine in pregnant and non-pregnant women

Background: Influenza vaccination during pregnancy can prevent serious illness in expectant mothers and provide protection to newborns; however, historically uptake has been limited due to a number of factors, including safety concerns. Symptomatic complaints are common during pregnancy and may be mistakenly associated with reactions to trivalent influenza vaccine (TIV). To investigate this, we compared post-vaccination events self-reported by pregnant women to events reported by non-pregnant women receiving TIV. Methods: A prospective cohort of 1,086 pregnant women and 314 non-pregnant female healthcare workers (HCWs) who received TIV between March-May 2014 were followed-up seven days post-vaccination to assess local and systemic adverse events following immunisation (AEFIs). Women were surveyed by text message regarding perceived reactions to TIV. Those reporting an AEFI completed an interview by telephone or mobile phone to ascertain details. Logistic regression models adjusting for age and residence were used to compare reactions reported by pregnant women and non-pregnant HCWs. Results: Similar proportions of pregnant women and non-pregnant, female HCWs reported ≥1 reaction following vaccination with TIV (13.0% and 17.3%, respectively; OR = 1.2 [95% CI: 0.8-1.8]). Non-pregnant, female HCWs were more likely to report fever or headache compared to pregnant women (OR: 4.6 [95% CI 2.1-10.3] and OR: 2.2 [95% CI 1.0-4.6], respectively). No other significant differences in reported symptoms were observed. No serious vaccine-associated adverse events were reported, and less than 2% of each group sought medical advice for a reaction. Conclusions: We found no evidence suggesting pregnant women are more likely to report adverse events following influenza vaccination when compared to non-pregnant female HCWs of similar age, and in some cases, pregnant women reported significantly fewer adverse events. These results further support the safety of TIV administered in pregnant women

Comparative effectiveness study of patient‐reported outcomes after proton therapy or intensity‐modulated radiotherapy for prostate cancer

Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/106701/1/cncr28536.pd

MRCK-1 Drives Apical Constriction in C. elegans by Linking Developmental Patterning to Force Generation

Apical constriction is a change in cell shape that drives key morphogenetic events including gastrulation and neural tube formation. Apical force-producing actomyosin networks drive apical constriction by contracting while connected to cell-cell junctions. The mechanisms by which developmental patterning regulates these actomyosin networks and associated junctions with spatial precision are not fully understood. Here, we identify a myosin light chain kinase MRCK-1 as a key regulator of C. elegans gastrulation that integrates spatial and developmental patterning information. We show that MRCK-1 is required for activation of contractile actomyosin dynamics and elevated cortical tension in the apical cell cortex of endodermal precursor cells. MRCK-1 is apically localized by active Cdc42 at the external, cell-cell contact-free surfaces of apically constricting cells, downstream of cell fate determination mechanisms. We establish that the junctional components α-catenin, β-catenin, and cadherin become highly enriched at the apical junctions of apically-constricting cells, and that MRCK-1 and myosin activity are required in vivo for this enrichment. Taken together, our results define mechanisms that position a myosin activator to a specific cell surface where it both locally increases cortical tension and locally enriches junctional components to facilitate apical constriction. These results reveal crucial links that can tie spatial information to local force generation to drive morphogenesis

Inequity of antenatal influenza and pertussis vaccine coverage in Australia: the Links2HealthierBubs record linkage cohort study, 2012–2017

Background: Pregnancy and early infancy are increased risk periods for severe adverse effects of respiratory infections. Aboriginal and/or Torres Strait Islander (respectfully referred to as First Nations) women and children in Australia bear a disproportionately higher burden of respiratory diseases compared to non-Indigenous women and infants. Influenza vaccines and whooping cough (pertussis) vaccines are recommended and free in every Australian pregnancy to combat these infections. We aimed to assess the equity of influenza and/or pertussis vaccination in pregnancy for three priority groups in Australia: First Nations women; women from culturally and linguistically diverse (CALD) backgrounds; and women living in remote areas or socio-economic disadvantage. Methods: We conducted individual record linkage of Perinatal Data Collections with immunisation registers/databases between 2012 and 2017. Analysis included generalised linear mixed model, log-binomial regression with a random intercept for the unique maternal identifier to account for clustering, presented as prevalence ratios (PR) and 95% compatibility intervals (95%CI). Results: There were 445,590 individual women in the final cohort. Compared with other Australian women (n = 322,848), First Nations women (n = 29,181) were less likely to have received both recommended antenatal vaccines (PR 0.69, 95% CI 0.67–0.71) whereas women from CALD backgrounds (n = 93,561) were more likely to have (PR 1.16, 95% CI 1.10–1.13). Women living in remote areas were less likely to have received both vaccines (PR 0.75, 95% CI 0.72–0.78), and women living in the highest areas of advantage were more likely to have received both vaccines (PR 1.44, 95% CI 1.40–1.48). Conclusions: Compared to other groups, First Nations Australian families, those living in remote areas and/or families from lower socio-economic backgrounds did not receive recommended vaccinations during pregnancy that are the benchmark of equitable healthcare. Addressing these barriers must remain a core priority for Australian health care systems and vaccine providers. An extension of this cohort is necessary to reassess these study findings

Evolving strategies for enzyme engineering.

Directed evolution is a common technique to engineer enzymes for a diverse set of applications. Structural information and an understanding of how proteins respond to mutation and recombination are being used to develop improved directed evolution strategies by increasing the probability that mutant sequences have the desired properties. Strategies that target mutagenesis to particular regions of a protein or use recombination to introduce large sequence changes can complement full-gene random mutagenesis and pave the way to achieving ever more ambitious enzyme engineering goals. Introduction Enzymes are Nature's catalysts, tremendously accelerating the rates of a wide range of biochemical reactions, often with exquisite specificity. Harnessing enzymes for other purposes usually requires engineering them to improve their activity or stability. One approach to engineering enzymes is to make specific modifications, but this demands a detailed and frequently unattainable understanding of the relationship between sequence and function. Directed evolution bypasses this problem in much the same way as natural evolution, by combining mutation with selection or screening to identify improved variants. Because it is never possible to test more than an infinitesimal fraction of the vast number of possible protein sequences, it is essential to have a strategy for creating directed evolution sequence libraries that are rich in proteins with the desired enzymatic function. Such libraries can be designed by drawing on our knowledge of how proteins respond to mutation Directed evolution strategies Directed evolution works when the researcher can find at least one enzyme with improved properties in the sequence library. The most naïve strategy of creating a library of random protein sequences is not useful for most enzyme engineering goals. Although sequences with simple functions such as ATP binding Most directed evolution strategies involve making relatively small changes to existing enzymes. This takes advantage of the fact that enzymes often have a range of weak promiscuous activities that are quickly improved with just a few mutations Random mutagenesis The most straightforward strategy for library construction is to randomly mutate the full gene of an enzyme with a function close to the desired function. This approach requires no structural or mechanistic information, and can uncover unexpected beneficial mutations. Using sequential rounds of error-prone PCR to make an average of a few mutations per gene, followed by screening or selection for improved variants, is effective for a wide range of engineering goals. The creation of enantioselective catalysts from an enzyme whose structure is unknown is one such application. A single round of error-prone PCR produced several dozen cyclohexane monooxygenases with R or S selectivity Beneficial mutations found by random mutagenesis can be combined by DNA shuffling. A study with b-glucuronidase showed that beneficial mutations drive each other to extinction during recursive random mutagenesis, but that this problem can be eliminated by DNA shuffling Random mutagenesis can also uncover additional beneficial mutations in rationally designed enzymes. The Withers laboratory Targeted mutagenesis Some engineering goals, such as dramatically altering an enzyme's specificity or regioselectivity, may require mul- Random mutagenesis, targeted mutagenesis and recombination are three strategies for producing sequence libraries for directed evolution. (a) Random mutagenesis introduces amino acid substitutions throughout the protein and can uncover beneficial mutations distant from the active site. The red residues in the structure at top show four mutations uncovered by random mutagenesis that enhanced the activity of mammalian cytochrome P450 2B1 on several substrates Using a high-resolution crystal structure to target mutagenesis to three active site residues, Hill et al. [23] created a triple mutant of phosphotriesterase with a rate enhancement of three orders of magnitude for the degradation of organic triesters such as those used in chemical warfare agents. Crucially, two of the corresponding single mutants did not increase activity and so would not have been identified if they had been explored one at a time. The problem of inverting the enantioselectivity of a lipase offers an interesting comparison between full-gene random mutagenesis and targeted mutagenesis. Reetz and co-workers [24] used several rounds of full-gene random mutagenesis and DNA shuffling to invert the enantioselectivity of a lipase of unknown structure from S to R. Another lipase was engineered for the same goal by simultaneous mutation of four active site residues A variety of other enzymes have recently been engineered by targeted mutagenesis. Mutating three active site residues of penicillin acylase created six variants with improved activity, five of which were triple mutants [27]. Juillerat et al. [28] targeted four active site residues to engineer an O6-alkylguanine-DNA alkyltransferase for the efficient in vivo labeling of fusion proteins. They developed a selection system that allowed them to examine over 20,000 mutants and found that the best variants were triple mutants, suggesting the importance of simultaneously exploring multiple mutations. Novel DNA and RNA polymerases have also been engineered by targeted mutagenesis. Chelliserrykattil and Ellington [29] mutated four amino acids in RNA polymerase to engineer the enzyme to transcribe 2 0 -O-methyl RNA. Using a screen that selected variants that generated more RNA, they identified several mutants that incorporated nucleotides modified at the 2 0 position. Fa et al. [30] used targeted mutagenesis to engineer a DNA polymerase to specifically incorporate 2 0 -O-methyl ribonucleoside triphosphates by mutating six amino acids and selecting improved variants using phage display. Targeted mutagenesis of two active site residues was used to engineer a thioredoxin protein to replace the disulfide bond formation system in Escherichia coli Schultz and co-workers have created tRNA synthetases that charge orthogonal tRNAs with non-natural amino acids by targeting mutagenesis to five or six amino acids involved in substrate recognition. They then performed a positive selection for recognition of the non-natural amino acid and a negative selection against recognition of other amino acids The best mutants discovered by targeted mutagenesis almost always contain multiple mutations. These mutations are often beneficial as single mutants, but evidence is accumulating that at least some of them are beneficial only in combination Recombination Recombining structurally similar proteins can access larger degrees of sequence change than random mutagenesis The family shuffling protocol relies on regions of sequence identity to create crossovers that recombine the sequences of related proteins. This protocol is therefore limited to proteins with more than 70-75% identity, because libraries created from more diverged sequences tend to yield mostly parent sequences. A variety of methods have been developed to avoid this problem in the recombination of divergent sequences by using mismatched PCR primer pairs Although the studies described above demonstrate that recombining highly diverged but homologous sequences can produce libraries of diverse folded sequences, so far there has been little work to test whether it is also a useful method for discovering new functions. A tantalizing hint is that four out of fourteen chimeras of two cytochrome P450 proteins with 64% sequence identity show new product profiles Non-homologous recombination that combines fragments of unrelated proteins is another way to introduce large sequence changes. A new methodology was used to recombine the non-homologous chorismate mutase and fumarase proteins A striking application of non-homologous recombination is Ostermeier and co-workers' creation of a protein that combines the activity of a b-lactamase with the maltoseinduced conformational change of maltose-binding protein. In one experiment, they randomly inserted the lactamase sequence into the maltose-binding protein and screened for mutants with enhanced lactamase activity in the presence of maltose Conclusions Directed evolution is now an established method to engineer enzymes for a wide range of uses. Full-gene random mutagenesis continues to be a straightforward and powerful tool, and studies using this approach repeatedly illustrate that beneficial mutations can occur at unexpected sites. Targeted mutagenesis and recombination can extend directed evolution to the engineering of enzyme properties that require more than a few uncoupled changes in a protein's sequence (which are easily obtained by sequential rounds of random mutagenesis and screening). The increasing incorporation of structural and chemical knowledge will undoubtedly enhance the utility of these methods. The growing use of rational design in conjunction with directed evolution offers the exciting promise of generating libraries containing a high frequency of sequences with the desired functional properties. Update Recent work has emphasized the tendency of directed evolution to improve weak promiscuous functions by broadening specificity, as discussed i

WFPC2 Observations of Compact Star Cluster Nuclei in Low Luminosity Spiral Galaxies

We have used the Wide Field Planetary Camera 2 aboard the Hubble Space Telescope to image the compact star cluster nuclei of the nearby, late-type, low-luminosity spiral galaxies NGC 4395, NGC 4242, and ESO 359-029. We also analyze archival WFPC2 observations of the compact star cluster nucleus of M33. A comparative analysis of the structural and photometric properties of these four nuclei is presented. All of the nuclei are very compact, with luminosity densities increasing at small radii to the resolution limit of our data. NGC 4395 contains a Seyfert 1 nucleus with a distinct bipolar structure and bright associated filaments which are likely due to [OIII] emission. The M33 nucleus has a complex structure, with elongated isophotes and possible signatures of weak activity, including a jet-like component. The other two nuclei are not known to be active, but share similar physical size scales and luminosities to the M33 and NGC 4395 nuclei. The circumnuclear environments of all four of our program galaxies are extremely diffuse, have only low-to-moderate star formation, and appear to be devoid of large quantities of dust. The central gravitational potentials of the galaxies are also quite shallow, making the origin of these types of `naked' nuclei problematic.Comment: to appear in the July 1999 Astronomical Journal; 38 pages (Latex), 5 tables (postscript), 21 figures (gif); postscript versions of the figures may be obtained via anonymous ftp at ftp://ftp.cv.nrao.edu/NRAO-staff/lmatthew/lanl-nucle