An Analysis of BitTorrent Cross-Swarm Peer Participation and Geolocational Distribution

Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing is becoming increasingly popular in recent years. In 2012, it was reported that P2P traffic consumed over 5,374 petabytes per month, which accounted for approximately 20.5% of consumer internet traffic. TV is the popular content type on The Pirate Bay (the world's largest BitTorrent indexing website). In this paper, an analysis of the swarms of the most popular pirated TV shows is conducted. The purpose of this data gathering exercise is to enumerate the peer distribution at different geolocational levels, to measure the temporal trend of the swarm and to discover the amount of cross-swarm peer participation. Snapshots containing peer related information involved in the unauthorised distribution of this content were collected at a high frequency resulting in a more accurate landscape of the total involvement. The volume of data collected throughout the monitoring of the network exceeded 2 terabytes. The presented analysis and the results presented can aid in network usage prediction, bandwidth provisioning and future network design.Comment: The First International Workshop on Hot Topics in Big Data and Networking (HotData I

Salt stress perception and metabolic regulation network analysis of a marine probiotic Meyerozyma guilliermondii GXDK6

IntroductionExtremely salt-tolerant microorganisms play an important role in the development of functional metabolites or drug molecules.MethodsIn this work, the salt stress perception and metabolic regulation network of a marine probiotic Meyerozyma guilliermondii GXDK6 were investigated using integrative omics technology.ResultsResults indicated that GXDK6 could accept the salt stress signals from signal transduction proteins (e.g., phosphorelay intermediate protein YPD1), thereby contributing to regulating the differential expression of its relevant genes (e.g., CTT1, SOD) and proteins (e.g., catalase, superoxide dismutase) in response to salt stress, and increasing the salt-tolerant viability of GXDK6. Omics data also suggested that the transcription (e.g., SMD2), translation (e.g., MRPL1), and protein synthesis and processing (e.g., inner membrane protein OXA1) of upregulated RNAs may contribute to increasing the salt-tolerant survivability of GXDK6 by improving protein transport activity (e.g., Small nuclear ribonucleoprotein Sm D2), anti-apoptotic ability (e.g., 54S ribosomal protein L1), and antioxidant activity (e.g., superoxide dismutase). Moreover, up to 65.9% of the differentially expressed genes/proteins could stimulate GXDK6 to biosynthesize many salt tolerant-related metabolites (e.g., β-alanine, D-mannose) and drug molecules (e.g., deoxyspergualin, calcitriol), and were involved in the metabolic regulation of GXDK6 under high NaCl stress.DiscussionThis study provided new insights into the exploration of novel functional products and/or drugs from extremely salt-tolerant microorganisms.Graphical Abstrac

An Analysis of BitTorrent Cross-Swarm Peer Participation and Geolocational Distribution

The First International Workshop on Hot Topics in Big Data and Networking (HotData I) in conjunction with the 23rd IEEE International Conference on Computer Communications and Networks (ICCCN), Shanghai, China, 7 August 2014Peer-to-Peer (P2P) file-sharing is becoming increasingly popular in recent years. In 2012, it was reported that P2P traffic consumed over 5,374 petabytes per month, which accounted for approximately 20.5% of consumer internet traffic. TV is the popular content type on The Pirate Bay (the world\u27s largest BitTorrent indexing website). In this paper, an analysis of the swarms of the most popular pirated TV shows is conducted. The purpose of this data gathering exercise is to enumerate the peer distribution at different geolocational levels, to measure the temporal trend of the swarm and to discover the amount of cross-swarm peer participation. Snapshots containing peer related information involved in the unauthorised distribution of this content were collected at a high frequency resulting in a more accurate landscape of the total involvement. The volume of data collected throughout the monitoring of the network exceeded 2 terabytes. The presented analysis and the results presented can aid in network usage prediction, bandwidth provisioning and future network design

Evaluating the resilience of cyber–physical​ power systems by weighted spectral analysis

With the development of the Internet of Things, the interdependency between the physical system and the cyber system becomes intense and improves operational efficiency. But the interdependency also increases the risk of failure propagation. The resilience of the cyber–physical system is important for security facing extreme events. Based on complex network theory, a weighted multiplex network model is proposed to realize the unified modeling of the power system and communication system. In addition, the cascading failure mechanism in the cyber–physical power system is built based on power dispatch and information transmission mechanisms in the actual scenario. Then, spectral metrics are introduced to evaluate structural resilience from a global perspective. Finally, simulations of cascading failure are performed to verify the effectiveness of spectral metrics on resilience evaluation. The proposed model and metrics provide a convenient approach to quantifying the resilience of an interdependent system. The results of resilience evaluation can be used as a reference for system structure planning

Spiral waves in population density distributions of invasive pests in warm-temperate deciduous forest ecosystems

Globally, forests are increasingly being affected by invasive alien pests, some of which have caused wholesale destruction of trees. Recent research suggests that, in the United States, large-scale forests have been invaded by an astonishing number (> 450) of tree-feeding pests. Invasive alien pests always induce cascading ecological effects, leading to harmful socioeconomic consequences; however, the prevention and control of invasive alien pests in forests have been facing significant challenges worldwide. Here, we studied theoretically the control of invasive nonnative pests in warm-temperate deciduous forest ecosystems by their natural enemies (biological control), and controlled them to an extent that ecosystems can bear. We obtained a novel type of spiral wave in the spatial distribution of population density, and also observed a transition phenomenon between spiral wave and anti-spiral wave, which is explained by a mathematical analysis. Specifically, the formation of this type of spiral wave is attributed to the directional transformation of states between the period-5 orbits under the impact of diffusion transport. And the transition phenomenon is caused by changes of relative positions of the period-5 orbits in phase space. Moreover, we also found a novel type of instability of spiral wave, which includes a birth-growth-death process of spiral fragments. The findings provide possible regularities in the process of biological control of invasive alien pests in the complex and changeable forest ecosystems, which may guide actual biological control projects

Protective effects of selenium yeast against cadmium-induced necroptosis through miR-26a-5p/PTEN/PI3K/AKT signaling pathway in chicken kidney

Cadmium (Cd) is a ubiquitous environmental pollutant of increasing worldwide concern to both humans and animals. Selenium yeast (Se-Y) is an organic selenium source that has been shown an advantage in antagonizing Cd-induced liver necroptosis in chicken. Herein, we described the discovery path of Se-Y antagonism in Cd-induced renal necroptosis in chicken through targeting miR-26a-5p/PTEN/PI3K/AKT signaling pathway. We set up four groups of chickens at random: control group (0.5 mg/kg Na2SeO3), Se-Y group (0.5 mg/kg Se-Y), Se-Y+Cd group (0.5 mg/kg Se-Y and 150 mg/kg CdCl2) and Cd group (150 mg/kg CdCl2 and 0.5 mg/kg Na2SeO3). Interestingly, we found Se-Y, but not Na2SeO3, significantly blocked Cd accumulation in the kidney and alleviated Cd-induced necroptosis through inhibiting the expression of RIP1, RIP3 and MLKL. Se-Y, activated miR-26a-5p expression, thereby down-regulated the expression of PTEN, resulting in the up-regulation of PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and the inhibition of oxidative stress in both Se-Y and Cd treated chickens. Besides that, Se-Y could also specifically reduce the expression levels of heat shock protein 60 (HSP60), HSP70 and HSP90 in Se-Y and Cd co-treated chickens. Taken together, our results showed that Se-Y has an added value to antagonize Cd-induced necroptosis in chicken kidney by regulating the miR-26a-5p/PTEN/PI3K/AKT signaling pathway and HSPs, indicating that Se-Y could serve as an effective antagonist on Cd-induced renal necroptosis in chickens

Analysis of Structural Parameters of Steel–NC–UHPC Composite Beams

The cracking of the negative moment area of steel–normal concrete (NC) composite bridges is common owning to the low tensile strength of concrete. In order to solve the problem, Ultra High Performance Concrete (UHPC) is used to enhance the tensile performance of the negative moment area. This paper conducted interface experiments to study the bonding behaviour of the UHPC–NC interface. The design parametric analysis of steel–NC–UHPC composite bridges was carried out based on the interface experimental results. Firstly, slant shear tests and flexural shear tests were carried out to study the rationality of the interface handling methods. Then, the finite element model was used to analyze the state of every component in the composite beams based on experimental results, such as the stress of UHPC, concrete and steel plate. Finally, the calculation results of finite analysis were compared and summarized. It is concluded that (1) the chiseling interface can meet the utilization requirements of physical bridges. The average shear stress and flexural tensile strength of the chiseling interface are 10.29 MPa and 1.93 MPa, respectively. In the failure state, a slight interface damage occurs for specimens with a chiseling interface. (2) The influence on overall performance is different for changes in different design parameters. The thickness of concrete has a significant influence on the stress distribution of composite slabs. (3) Reliable interface simulation is conducted in the finite element models based on interface test results. The stress variation patterns are reflected in the change of design parameters