A Provable Semi-Outsourcing Privacy Preserving Scheme for Data Transmission From IoT Devices

A semi-outsourcing privacy-preserving scheme is proposed in this paper for the IoT data collection named semi-outsourcing privacy-preserving (SOPP), which supports delegated identity authentication for the IoT devices without revealing the transmitted data. Compared with other schemes that implement the authentication based upon using trusted cloud services, the design of our scheme SOPP can achieve the delegated authentication on untrusted public clouds while providing privacy-preserving data transmission. Meanwhile, the implemented one-way authentication can reduce the communication cost for the IoT devices (especially for the low-resource ones) to prolong their battery life. The performance of the SOPP scheme is demonstrated for its use in the resource-constrained IoT devices and compared with a benchmark trusted cloud scheme including one based upon certificates and an interactive (two-way) authentication scheme

Active RIS Versus Passive RIS: Which Is Superior with the Same Power Budget?

This letter theoretically compares the active reconfigurable intelligent surface (RIS)-aided system with the passive RIS-aided system. For a fair comparison, we consider that these two systems have the same overall power budget that can be used at both the base station (BS) and the RIS. For active RIS, we first derive the optimal power splitting between the BS’s transmit signal power and RIS’s output signal power. We also analyze the impact of various system parameters on the optimal power splitting ratio. Then, we theoretically and numerically compare the performance between the active RIS and the passive RIS, which demonstrates that the active RIS would be superior if the power budget is not very small and the number of RIS elements is not very large

Performance of Machine Learning Aided Fluid Antenna System with Improved Spatial Correlation Model

Fluid antenna has emerged as a new antenna technology that enables software-controllable position reconfigurability for great diversity and multiplexing benefits. The performance of fluid antenna systems has recently been studied for single and multiuser environments adopting a generalized spatial correlation model that accounts for the channel correlation between the ports of the fluid antenna. The recent work [1] further devised machine learning algorithms to select the best port of fluid antenna in a more practical setting in which only a small number of ports is observable in the selection process, and found that extraordinary outage probability performance can be obtained. However, there is a concern of how the spatial correlation parameters are set to reflect the actual correlation structure for accurately evaluating the system performance. In this paper, the method in [2] is used to set the correlation parameter so that the model can accurately characterize the correlation amongst the ports of a fluid antenna in a given space. This paper revisits the port selection problem for single-user fluid antenna system where learning-based algorithms are employed to select the best port when only a small subset of the channel ports are known. The new results demonstrate that the impact of spatial correlation on the performance becomes more pronounced but the machine learning aided fluid antenna system is still able to match the performance of maximum ratio combining (MRC) system with many uncorrelated antennas

Private Federated Learning With Misaligned Power Allocation via Over-the-Air Computation

China Scholarship Council

Adaptive Blockchain-Based Electric Vehicle Participation Scheme in Smart Grid Platform

The electric vehicle (EV) charging scheme can reduce the power generation costs and improve the smart grid resilience. However, the huge penetrations of EVs can impact the voltage stability and operating costs. In this paper, a novel EV participation charging scheme is proposed for a decentralized blockchain-enabled smart grid system. Our objectives are to minimize the power fluctuation level in the grid network and the overall charging cost for EV users. We first formulate the power fluctuation level problem of the smart grid system that take into accounts of EV battery capacities, charging rates, and EV users charging behavior. And then, we propose a novel adaptive blockchain-based electric vehicle participation (AdBEV) scheme that uses the Iceberg order execution algorithm to obtain an improved EV charging and discharging schedule. The simulation results show the proposed scheme outperforms the scheme that applying genetic algorithm approach in term of lowering the power fluctuation level and overall charging costs

Over-the-Air Federated Averaging with Limited Power and Privacy Budgets

Part of this work will be presented in IEEE International Conference on Communications (ICC), 28 May – 01 June 2023, Rome, Italy.This paper develops an optimal design for device scheduling, alignment coefficient, and aggregation rounds within a differentially private over-the-air federated averaging (DP-OTA-FedAvg) system considering a constrained sum power budget. In DP-OTA-FedAvg, gradients are aligned using an alignment coefficient and then aggregated over the air, utilizing channel noise to ensure participant privacy. This study highlights two critical tradeoffs in aligned over-the-air federated learning (OTA-FL) systems with limited power and privacy budgets. Firstly, it reveals the tradeoff between the number of scheduled devices and the alignment coefficient. Secondly, it investigates the balance between aggregation distortion and local training error while adhering to the sum power constraint. Specifically, we measure privacy using differential privacy (DP) and perform convergence analyses for both convex and non-convex loss functions. These analyses provide insights into how device scheduling, the alignment coefficient, and the number of global aggregations affect both privacy preservation and the learning process. Building on these analytical results, we formulate an optimization problem aimed at minimizing the optimality gap of DP-OTA-FedAvg under power and privacy constraints. By specifying the number of aggregation rounds, we derive a closed-form expression describing the relationship between the alignment coefficient and the number of scheduled devices. We then tackle the problem through iterative optimization of scheduling and aggregation rounds. The effectiveness of the proposed policies is verified through simulations, and the performance advantage is particularly pronounced in scenarios where devices have poor channel conditions and limited sum-power budgets

The Two Different Isoforms of the RSC Chromatin Remodeling Complex Play Distinct Roles in DNA Damage Responses

The RSC chromatin remodeling complex has been implicated in contributing to DNA double-strand break (DSB) repair in a number of studies. Both survival and levels of H2A phosphorylation in response to damage are reduced in the absence of RSC. Importantly, there is evidence for two isoforms of this complex, defined by the presence of either Rsc1 or Rsc2. Here, we investigated whether the two isoforms of RSC provide distinct contributions to DNA damage responses. First, we established that the two isoforms of RSC differ in the presence of Rsc1 or Rsc2 but otherwise have the same subunit composition. We found that both rsc1 and rsc2 mutant strains have intact DNA damage-induced checkpoint activity and transcriptional induction. In addition, both strains show reduced non-homologous end joining activity and have a similar spectrum of DSB repair junctions, suggesting perhaps that the two complexes provide the same functions. However, the hypersensitivity of a rsc1 strain cannot be complemented with an extra copy of RSC2, and likewise, the hypersensitivity of the rsc2 strain remains unchanged when an additional copy of RSC1 is present, indicating that the two proteins are unable to functionally compensate for one another in DNA damage responses. Rsc1, but not Rsc2, is required for nucleosome sliding flanking a DNA DSB. Interestingly, while swapping the domains from Rsc1 into the Rsc2 protein does not compromise hypersensitivity to DNA damage suggesting they are functionally interchangeable, the BAH domain from Rsc1 confers upon Rsc2 the ability to remodel chromatin at a DNA break. These data demonstrate that, despite the similarity between Rsc1 and Rsc2, the two different isoforms of RSC provide distinct functions in DNA damage responses, and that at least part of the functional specificity is dictated by the BAH domains

Trends and predictions of metabolic risk factors for acute myocardial infarction: findings from a multiethnic nationwide cohort

BACKGROUND: Understanding the trajectories of metabolic risk factors for acute myocardial infarction (AMI) is necessary for healthcare policymaking. We estimated future projections of the incidence of metabolic diseases in a multi-ethnic population with AMI. METHODS: The incidence and mortality contributed by metabolic risk factors in the population with AMI (diabetes mellitus [T2DM], hypertension, hyperlipidemia, overweight/obesity, active/previous smokers) were projected up to year 2050, using linear and Poisson regression models based on the Singapore Myocardial Infarction Registry from 2007 to 2018. Forecast analysis was stratified based on age, sex and ethnicity. FINDINGS: From 2025 to 2050, the incidence of AMI is predicted to rise by 194.4% from 482 to 1418 per 100,000 population. The largest percentage increase in metabolic risk factors within the population with AMI is projected to be overweight/obesity (880.0% increase), followed by hypertension (248.7% increase), T2DM (215.7% increase), hyperlipidemia (205.0% increase), and active/previous smoking (164.8% increase). The number of AMI-related deaths is expected to increase by 294.7% in individuals with overweight/obesity, while mortality is predicted to decrease by 11.7% in hyperlipidemia, 29.9% in hypertension, 32.7% in T2DM and 49.6% in active/previous smokers, from 2025 to 2050. Compared with Chinese individuals, Indian and Malay individuals bear a disproportionate burden of overweight/obesity incidence and AMI-related mortality. INTERPRETATION: The incidence of AMI is projected to continue rising in the coming decades. Overweight/obesity will emerge as fastest-growing metabolic risk factor and the leading risk factor for AMI-related mortality. FUNDING: This research was supported by the NUHS Seed Fund (NUHSRO/2022/058/RO5+6/Seed-Mar/03) and National Medical Research Council Research Training Fellowship (MOH-001131). The SMIR is a national, ministry-funded registry run by the National Registry of Diseases Office and funded by the Ministry of Health, Singapore

The effect of lengthening contractions on neuromuscular junction structure in adult and old mice

Skeletal muscles of old mice demonstrate a profound inability to regenerate fully following damage. Such a failure could be catastrophic to older individuals where muscle loss is already evident. Degeneration and regeneration of muscle fibres following contraction-induced injury in adult and old mice are well characterised, but little is known about the accompanying changes in motor neurons and neuromuscular junctions (NMJs) following this form of injury although defective re-innervation of muscle following contraction-induced damage has been proposed to play a role in sarcopenia. This study visualised and quantified structural changes to motor neurons and NMJs in Extensor digitorum longus (EDL) muscles of adult and old Thy1-YFP transgenic mice during regeneration following contraction-induced muscle damage. Data demonstrated that the damaging contraction protocol resulted in substantial initial disruption to NMJs in muscles of adult mice, which was reversed entirely within 28 days following damage. In contrast, in quiescent muscles of old mice, ∼15 % of muscle fibres were denervated and ∼80 % of NMJs showed disruption. This proportion of denervated and partially denervated fibres remained unchanged following recovery from contraction-induced damage in muscles of old mice although ∼25 % of muscle fibres were completely lost by 28 days post-contractions. Thus, in old mice, the failure to restore full muscle force generation that occurs following damage does not appear to be due to any further deficit in the percentage of disrupted NMJs, but appears to be due, at least in part, to the complete loss of muscle fibres following damag

Stereotactic body radiation therapy with or without transarterial chemoembolization for patients with primary hepatocellular carcinoma: preliminary analysis

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>The objectives of this retrospective study was to evaluate the efficacy of stereotactic body radiation therapy (SBRT) for small non-resectable hepatocellular carcinoma (HCC) and SBRT combined with transarterial chemoembolization (TACE) for advanced HCC with portal vein tumor thrombosis (PVTT).</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Thirty one patients with HCC who were treated with SBRT were used for the study. We studied 32 HCC lesions, where 23 lesions (22 patients) were treated targeting small non-resectable primary HCC, and 9 lesions (9 patients) targeting PVTT using the Cyberknife. All the 9 patients targeting PVTT received TACE for the advanced HCC. Tumor volume was 3.6–57.3 cc (median, 25.2 cc) and SBRT dose was 30–39 Gy (median, 36 Gy) in 3 fractions for consecutive days for 70–85% of the planned target volume.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>The median follow up was 10.5 months. The overall response rate was 71.9% [small HCC: 82.6% (19/23), advanced HCC with PVTT: 44.4% (4/9)], with the complete and partial response rates of 31.3% [small HCC: 26.1% (6/23), advanced HCC with PVTT: 11.1% (1/9)], and 50.0% [small HCC: 56.5% (13/23), advanced HCC with PVTT: 33.3% (3/9)], respectively. The median survival period of small HCC and advanced HCC with PVTT patients was 12 months and 8 months, respectively. No patient experienced Grade 4 toxicity.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>SBRT for small HCC and SBRT combined with TACE for advanced HCC with PVTT showed feasible treatment modalities with minimal side effects in selected patients with primary HCC.</p