Mobile commerce (mCommerce) security. An appraisal of current issues and trends

Millions of data capable mobile devices are currently in use around the world enabled by the growing acceptance of Internet over wireless networks. However, security mechanisms still remain nascent. Security plays a crucial role in facilitating the level of trust users place on mobile devices and applications. To effectively diffuse the mobile devices in the marketplace, sufficient levels of trust has to be established in the underlying security of mobile devices and applications. This paper is an appraisal of recent issues and emerging trends regarding mobile security, within the context of conducting mobile commerce via mobile networks by individual consumers and businesses.<br /

Mobile payments (mPayments)- an exploratory study of emerging issues and future trends

With the growing momentum of wireless revolution and mCommerce explosion, it is evident that mobile devices are becoming a critical component of the new digital economy. As mobile markets continue to mature, being able to pay using the mobile handset will be key to the development of next generation services. The current market penetration of mobile phones in conjunction with the expected growth of mCommerce, offers high potential for mPayment growth over the next few years. When mobile phones are equipped with a device to protect personal information, the security level of an entire service, including the network, improves considerably. However, the mobile payments market today is typical of an emergent one, encumbered with an abundance of approaches and concepts that may not interoperate. In this paper, we have explored the broad range of available mPayment methods, emerging issues in standardization, security and some proposed/ existing solutions.<br /

Reconsidering the Challenges of mPayments: A Roadmap to Plotting the Potential of the Future mCommerce Market

The current market penetration of mobile phones in conjunction with an expected growth of mCommerce offers a high potential for the growth of mPayment over the next few years. Research analysts have predicted that mPayments will gain a significant foothold in coming years although high-speed data services and the requisite demand will not materialize overnight. A wide variety of mPayment technologies are available today, but the value of such services is not clear. Services launched have seen both success and failure and therefore service providers need a realistic vision of the future. This paper explores the factors that affect the growth of the mPayments market and attempts to provide a roadmap for reassessing the potential success of this future market. 1

Mcommerce - a vision in time

Global mCommerce revenues are expected to grow from $400 million in 2000, to 22.2 billion by 2005 (Raczkowski, 2002) mCommerce is a key driver in developing the global information society, with applications emerging in numerous areas including banking, financial services, security services and shopping (Khalifa and Cheng, 2002). With optimistic projections regarding its growth, many researchers are actively determining the future of mCommerce. In this paper, we have tried to synthesise some predictions and evolving definitions, explored security as a critical impediment and developing solutions; investigated the mPayment scenario; and derived a futuristic research framework. Specifically, we have attempted to capture the moving mCommerce scenario in present time, with a special focus into mPayments.<br /

An unexpected alliance between stress responses to drive oncogenesis.

XBP1 is a well-characterized regulator of the unfolding protein response that is activated in response to unfolded or misfolded proteins or nutrient deprivation. The conventional wisdom is that XBP1 is activated to coordinate the unfolded protein response and promote cellular survival under stresses. A recent study provides intriguing evidence that, in triple-negative breast cancer, XBP1 plays a major role in promoting oncogenesis and cancer stem cell properties. Unexpectedly, XBP1 accomplishes this by recruiting hypoxia-inducible factor 1α and activating oncogenic transcriptional programs. This study reveals a surprising hierarchy and alliance between two stress regulators with distinct transcriptional outputs to promote an aggressive oncogenic state

Efficient Zero-shot Visual Search via Target and Context-aware Transformer

Visual search is a ubiquitous challenge in natural vision, including daily tasks such as finding a friend in a crowd or searching for a car in a parking lot. Human rely heavily on relevant target features to perform goal-directed visual search. Meanwhile, context is of critical importance for locating a target object in complex scenes as it helps narrow down the search area and makes the search process more efficient. However, few works have combined both target and context information in visual search computational models. Here we propose a zero-shot deep learning architecture, TCT (Target and Context-aware Transformer), that modulates self attention in the Vision Transformer with target and contextual relevant information to enable human-like zero-shot visual search performance. Target modulation is computed as patch-wise local relevance between the target and search images, whereas contextual modulation is applied in a global fashion. We conduct visual search experiments on TCT and other competitive visual search models on three natural scene datasets with varying levels of difficulty. TCT demonstrates human-like performance in terms of search efficiency and beats the SOTA models in challenging visual search tasks. Importantly, TCT generalizes well across datasets with novel objects without retraining or fine-tuning. Furthermore, we also introduce a new dataset to benchmark models for invariant visual search under incongruent contexts. TCT manages to search flexibly via target and context modulation, even under incongruent contexts

Phase synchronization during the processing of taxonomic and thematic relations

Semantic relations include “taxonomic” relations based on shared features and “thematic” relations based on co-occurrence in events. The “dual-hub” account proposes that the anterior temporal lobe (ATL) is functionally specialized for taxonomic relations and the inferior parietal lobule (IPL) for thematic relations. This study examined this claim by analyzing the intra- and inter-region phase synchronization of intracranial EEG data from electrodes in the ATL, IPL, and two subregions of the semantic control network: left inferior frontal gyrus (IFG) and posterior middle temporal gyrus (pMTG). Ten participants with epilepsy completed a semantic relatedness judgment task during intracranial EEG recording and had electrodes in at least one hub and at least one semantic control region. Theta band phase synchronization was partially consistent with the dual-hub account: synchronization between the ATL and IFG/pMTG increased when processing taxonomic relations, and synchronization within the IPL and between IPL and pMTG increased when processing thematic relations

Characterizing Waiting Room Time, Treatment Time, and Boarding Time in the Emergency Department Using Quantile Regression

ACADEMIC EMERGENCY MEDICINE 2010; 17:813–823 © 2010 by the Society for Academic Emergency MedicineThe objective was to characterize service completion times by patient, clinical, temporal, and crowding factors for different phases of emergency care using quantile regression (QR).A retrospective cohort study was conducted on 1-year visit data from four academic emergency departments (EDs; N  = 48,896–58,316). From each ED’s clinical information system, the authors extracted electronic service information (date and time of registration; bed placement, initial contact with physician, disposition decision, ED discharge, and disposition status; inpatient medicine bed occupancy rate); patient demographics (age, sex, insurance status, and mode of arrival); and clinical characteristics (acuity level and chief complaint) and then used the service information to calculate patients’ waiting room time, treatment time, and boarding time, as well as the ED occupancy rate. The 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles of each phase of care were estimated as a function of patient, clinical, temporal, and crowding factors using multivariate QR. Accuracy of models was assessed by comparing observed and predicted service completion times and the proportion of observations that fell below the predicted 10th, 50th, and 90th percentiles.At the 90th percentile, patients experienced long waiting room times (105–222 minutes), treatment times (393–616 minutes), and boarding times (381–1,228 minutes) across the EDs. We observed a strong interaction effect between acuity level and temporal factors (i.e., time of day and day of week) on waiting room time at all four sites. Acuity level 3 patients waited the longest across the four sites, and their waiting room times were most influenced by temporal factors compared to other acuity level patients. Acuity level and chief complaint were important predictors of all phases of care, and there was a significant interaction effect between acuity and chief complaint. Patients with a psychiatric problem experienced the longest treatment times, regardless of acuity level. Patients who presented with an injury did not wait as long for an ED or inpatient bed. Temporal factors were strong predictors of service completion time, particularly waiting room time. Mode of arrival was the only patient characteristic that substantially affected waiting room time and treatment time. Patients who arrived by ambulance had shorter wait times but longer treatment times compared to those who did not arrive by ambulance. There was close agreement between observed and predicted service completion times at the 10th, 50th, and 90th percentile distributions across the four EDs.Service completion times varied significantly across the four academic EDs. QR proved to be a useful method for estimating the service completion experience of not only typical ED patients, but also the experience of those who waited much shorter or longer. Building accurate models of ED service completion times is a critical first step needed to identify barriers to patient flow, begin the process of reengineering the system to reduce variability, and improve the timeliness of care provided.Peer Reviewedhttp://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/79320/1/j.1553-2712.2010.00812.x.pd

Ref-1/APE1 as Transcriptional Regulator and Novel Therapeutic Target in Pediatric T-cell Leukemia

The increasing characterization of childhood acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL) has led to the identification of multiple molecular targets, but have yet to translate into more effective targeted therapies, particularly for high-risk, relapsed T-cell ALL. Searching for master regulators controlling multiple signaling pathways in T-ALL, we investigated the multi-functional protein redox factor-1 (Ref-1/APE1), which acts as a signaling "node" by exerting redox regulatory control of transcription factors important in leukemia. Leukemia patients' transcriptome databases showed increased expression in T-ALL of Ref-1 and other genes of the Ref-1/SET interactome. Validation studies demonstrated that Ref-1 is expressed in high-risk leukemia T-cells, including in patient biopsies. Ref-1 redox function is active in leukemia T-cells, regulating the Ref-1 target NF-kB, and inhibited by the redox-selective Ref-1 inhibitor E3330. Ref-1 expression is not regulated by Notch signaling, but is upregulated by glucocorticoid treatment. E3330 disrupted Ref-1 redox activity in functional studies and resulted in marked inhibition of leukemia cell viability, including T-ALL lines representing different genotypes and risk groups. Potent leukemia cell inhibition was seen in primary cells from ALL patients, relapsed and glucocorticoid-resistant T-ALL cells, and cells from a murine model of Notch-induced leukemia. Ref-1 redox inhibition triggered leukemia cell apoptosis and down-regulation of survival genes regulated by Ref-1 targets. For the first time, this work identifies Ref-1 as a novel molecular effector in T-ALL and demonstrates that Ref-1 redox inhibition results in potent inhibition of leukemia T-cells, including relapsed T-ALL. These data also support E3330 as a specific Ref-1 small molecule inhibitor for leukemia

Does perception equal reality? Weight misperception in relation to weight-related attitudes and behaviors among overweight and obese US adults

<p>Abstract</p> <p>Background</p> <p>Weight misperception might preclude the adoption of healthful weight-related attitudes and behaviors among overweight and obese individuals, yet limited research exists in this area. We examined associations between weight misperception and several weight-related attitudes and behaviors among a nationally representative sample of overweight and obese US adults.</p> <p>Methods</p> <p>Data from the 2003-2006 National Health and Nutrition Examination Survey (NHANES) were used. Analyses included non-pregnant, overweight and obese (measured body mass index ≥ 25) adults aged 20 and older. Weight misperception was identified among those who reported themselves as "underweight" or "about the right weight". Outcome variables and sample sizes were: weight-loss attitudes/behaviors (wanting to weigh less and having tried to lose weight; n = 4,784); dietary intake (total energy intake; n = 4,894); and physical activity (meets 2008 US physical activity recommendations, insufficiently active, and sedentary; n = 5,401). Multivariable regression models were stratified by gender and race/ethnicity. Analyses were conducted in 2009-2010.</p> <p>Results</p> <p>These overweight/obese men and women who misperceived their weight were 71% (RR 0.29, 95% CI 0.25-0.34) and 65% (RR 0.35, 95% CI 0.29-0.42) less likely to report that they want to lose weight and 60% (RR 0.40, 95% CI 0.30-0.52) and 56% (RR 0.44, 95% CI 0.32-0.59) less likely to have tried to lose weight within the past year, respectively, compared to those who accurately perceived themselves as overweight. Blacks were particularly less likely to have tried to lose weight. Weight misperception was not a significant predictor of total energy intake among most subgroups, but was associated with lower total energy intake among Hispanic women (change -252.72, 95% CI -433.25, -72.18). Men who misperceived their weight were less likely (RR 0.68, 95% CI 0.52-0.89) to be insufficiently active (the strongest results were among Black men) and women who misperceived their weight were less likely (RR 0.74, 95% CI 0.54, 1.00, <it>p </it>= 0.047) to meet activity recommendations compared to being sedentary.</p> <p>Conclusion</p> <p>Overall, weight misperception among overweight and obese adults was associated with less likelihood of interest in or attempts at weight loss and less physical activity. These associations varied by gender and race/ethnicity. This study highlights the importance of focusing on inaccurate weight perceptions in targeted weight loss efforts.</p