New Cache Attacks and Defenses

The sharing of last-level cache (LLC) among different physical cores makes cache vulnerable to side channel attacks. An attacker can get private information about co-running applications (victims) by monitoring their accesses. Cache side channel attacks can be mitigated by partitioning cache between the victim and attacker. However, previous partition works make the incorrect assumption that only the victim's cache misses are visible to attackers. In this work, we provide the key insight that both cache hits and cache misses from the victim are vulnerable. For a cache hit, although it does not affect the existence state, it can still change the replacement state and coherence state, which can also leak information to attackers. Based on this, we propose Invisible-Victim cache (IVcache), a new cache design that can mitigate both traditional LLC attacks and the new variants. IVcache classifies all processes as protected and unprotected. For accesses from protected processes, IVcache handles state changes in a slightly different way to make those accesses absolutely invisible to any other processes. We evaluate the defense effectiveness and performance of IVcache in the gem5 simulator. We show that IVcache can defend against real-world attacks, and that it introduces negligible performance effect to both protected and unprotected processes

Charles Dickens’ Benevolent Spirit as Revealed in A Tale of Two Cities

A Tale of Two Cities, one of Charles Dickens’ most representative work, reveals and criticizes the fact that the working people suffered the oppression from the aristocracy. Moreover, the novel showed that the revolution was bloody and cruel. Dickens revealed his benevolent spirit, namely, he showed sympathy for the poor working people and urged people to use love to dissolve hatred. Some critics thought that his spirit was unpractical fantasy. Through the analysis of Dickens’ life and times, the novel A Tale of Two Cities as well as his other works, the author points out that Dickens’ benevolent spirit has its practical meaning in modern times

Theoretical Investigation of Kainate Receptor GluK2 and Channelrhodopsin-2: Structure and Mechanism

This work focuses on the structures and mechanisms of functions of two different proteins: kainate receptor GluK2 and channelrhodopsin-2. They are able to activate neuron cells or transfer signals upon illumination, and thus, control and monitor neuron cell activities in living tissues. This technique is called optogenetics. The structure-function relationships of the proteins were investigated with multi-scale techniques, combining classic mechanical (MM) and quantum mechanical (QM) methods

Potentials of arts education initiatives for promoting emotional wellbeing of Chinese university students

The present study explores the intricate dynamics influencing the self-efficacy of Chinese university students through the interplay of participation in artistic activities, positive psychological capital, and emotional intelligence. In the context of technological advancements and various challenges post pandemic, this study delves into the multifaceted aspects of university life, where arts education plays a pivotal role in addressing students' emotional needs. By integrating emotional intelligence with self-efficacy, this study underscores the positive impact of artistic engagement on self-efficacy, while emphasizing on the transformative power of these pursuits. Also, this study establishes that the optimism and resilience contribute to this relationship by considering the mediating role of positive psychological capital. The moderating influence of emotional intelligence in the complex dynamics between arts education and positive psychological capital is another concern, thereby emphasizing the nuanced role of emotional intelligence. With a structured set of questions that were administered to 673 participants with 93.61% recovery rate, this study performs the Cronbach's α-test, validation factor, and several related tests in SPSSStatistics 29.0, bootstrap, and AMOS 25.0 software. Current results shows the importance of a holistic approach in Chinese institutions. With a focus on promoting artistic engagement to enhance students' self-efficacy, this study determines the profound impact of arts education on students' overall wellbeing and educational experience. In conclusion, this research highlights the constructive impact of artistic engagement on the self-efficacy of Chinese university students. Chinese institutions should encourage a varied range of artistic engagements as a response to the contemporary challenges confronted by their students

Engineering the side facets of vertical [100] oriented InP nanowires for novel radial heterostructures

In addition to being grown on industry-standard orientation, vertical [100] oriented nanowires present novel families of facets and related cross-sectional shapes. These nanowires are engineered to achieve a number of facet combinations and cross-sectional shapes, by varying their growth parameters within ranges that facilitate vertical growth. In situ post-growth annealing technique is used to realise other combinations that are unattainable solely using growth parameters. Two examples of possible novel radial heterostructures grown on these vertical [100] oriented nanowire facets are presented, demonstrating their potential in future applications

Thermal stability improvement of azobenzene for the integration of photochemical and solar thermochemical energy conversion

Azobenzene is a typical photoisomerization material that is widely used in photochemical energy conversion. However, it's generally operated below 200 °C to avoid thermal decomposition. To improve the thermal stability of azobenzene for higher temperature applications, this paper discussed an option that grafting azobenzene onto graphite-like carbon nitride sheets. The synthesis was evaluated based on the performance of micro morphology and structure, thermal stability, and photochemical energy conversion. Furthermore, the photochemical conversion performance was analyzed with diverse irradiation intensities. The results demonstrate that the synthesis has a strong thermal stability below 530 °C. In this study, the most favorable excitation wavelength for photochemical conversion was 445 nm with an irradiation intensity of 40 mW/cm2.</p

Influence of catwalk design parameters on the galloping of constructing main cables in long-span suspension bridges

A main cable of a long-span suspension bridge is semi-surrounded by a catwalk during construction. Thus, design parameters of a catwalk may have influences on the galloping stability of a main cable during construction. To study the influence of catwalk design parameters on the galloping of steepled main cables, two main foci have been conducted. Firstly, the aerodynamic coefficients of the catwalk with actual design parameters are obtained by numerical simulation based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD), and the numerical results are compared with those of the previous wind tunnel test. Several typical main cables with different cross sections of a long-span suspension bridge during construction are selected, and their Den Hartog coefficients are obtained based on the numerical simulation considering the aerodynamic influences of the catwalks. Then four typical working conditions of a main cable which have great potential to occur galloping are selected based on the galloping analyze, and their aerodynamic coefficients considering the influence of the catwalk with different design parameters are obtained. The influence of the catwalk design parameters on galloping of the main cables is analyzed based on the Den Hartog criterion. Results indicate that catwalk design parameters have evident influences on aerodynamic coefficients and galloping of the main cables. The parameters of the catwalk which are favorable for suppressing the galloping of the main cables are determined, which establish a good guideline for the galloping-resistant design of the catwalk-main cable system on suspension bridges

Antimikrobna rezistencija i svojstva virulencije bakterije Enterococcus faecium izolirane u goveda s kliničkim mastitisom iz pokrajine Ningxia, Kina

This study was conducted to determine the antimicrobial resistance and virulence traits of 32 Enterococcus faecium isolates from clinical bovine mastitis cases in Ningxia Province, China. In total, 32 E. faecium isolates were taken from subclinical bovine mastitis on the basis of morphological characterization and biochemical testing, and screened for antimicrobial susceptibility. The virulence genes of the isolates were studied using polymerase chain reaction (PCR). The disc diffusion assay revealed a high occurrence of resistance against tetracycline (78.1%) and erythromycin (68.8%) in the E. faecium isolates. However, all tested E. faecium were susceptible to linezolid and vancomycin. Moreover, all E. faecium isolates harbored the erythromycin-resistant genes ermA, ermB and ermC, as well as the tetracycline-resistant genes tetK, tetL and tetM. Furthermore, all E. faecium isolates carried more than 3 of the tested virulence genes. The presence of agg (100%), cpd (100%), efaA (100%), gelE (93.4%), and esp (75.0%) was found most frequently in all the tested isolates. These findings are useful for making appropriate antimicrobial choices and developing antivirulence therapies for subclinical bovine mastitis caused by E. faecium in Ningxia Province, China.Istraživanje je provedeno kako bi se odredila antimikrobina rezistencija i svojstva virulencije izolata bakterije Enterococcus faecium uzetih u goveda s kliničkim mastitisom. U ukupno 32 izolata goveda iz pokrajine Ningxia u Kini, procijenjena je antimikrobna osjetljivost na temelju morfološke karakterizacije i biokemijskih pretraga. Geni virulencije izolata istraženi su polimeraznom lančanom reakcijom (PCR). Disk-difuzijski test je u izolatu bakterije E. faecium pokazao visoku pojavnost rezistencije na tetraciklin (78,1 %) i eritromicin (68,8 %). Svi su pretraženi izolati bili osjetljivi na linezolid i vankomicin i imali gene rezisentne na eritromicin ermA, ermB i ermC, kao i na tetraciklin, tetK, tetL i tetM. Osim toga svi izolati E. faecium nosili su više od tri istraživana gena virulencije. Najčešći geni bili agg (100 %), cpd (100 %), efaA (100 %), gelE (93,4 %) i esp (75,0 %). Ovi rezultati mogu u pokrajini Ningxia u Kini pridonijeti pravilnom izboru antimikrobnog lijeka i razvoju uspješne terapije za supklinički goveđi mastitis uzrokovan bakterijom E. faecium

Prognostic value of osteopontin splice variant-c expression in breast cancers: a meta-analysis

Objectives. Osteopontin (OPN) is overexpressed in breast cancers, while its clinical and prognostic significance remained unclear. This study aimed to assess the prognostic value of OPN, especially its splice variants, in breast cancers. Methods. Data were extracted from eligible studies concerning the OPN and OPN-c expression in breast cancer patients and were used to calculate the association between OPN/OPN-c and survival. Two reviewer teams independently screened the literatures according to the inclusion and exclusion criteria based on quality evaluation. Following the processes of data extraction, assessment, and transformation, meta-analysis was carried out via RevMan 5.3 software. Results. A total of ten studies involving 1,567 patients were included. The results demonstrated that high level OPN indicated a poor outcome in the OS (HR = 2.22, 95% CI: 1.23–4.00, and ; random-effects model) with heterogeneity (%) of breast cancer patients. High level OPN-c appeared to be more significantly associated with poor survival (HR = 2.14, 95% CI: 1.51–3.04, and ; fixed-effects model) with undetected heterogeneity (%). Conclusions. Our analyses indicated that both OPN and OPN-c could be considered as prognostic markers for breast cancers. The high level of OPN-c was suggested to be more reliably associated with poor survival in breast cancer patients

CosmoVAE: Variational Autoencoder for CMB Image Inpainting

Cosmic microwave background radiation (CMB) is critical to the understanding of the early universe and precise estimation of cosmological constants. Due to the contamination of thermal dust noise in the galaxy, the CMB map that is an image on the two-dimensional sphere has missing observations, mainly concentrated on the equatorial region. The noise of the CMB map has a significant impact on the estimation precision for cosmological parameters. Inpainting the CMB map can effectively reduce the uncertainty of parametric estimation. In this paper, we propose a deep learning-based variational autoencoder --- CosmoVAE, to restoring the missing observations of the CMB map. The input and output of CosmoVAE are square images. To generate training, validation, and test data sets, we segment the full-sky CMB map into many small images by Cartesian projection. CosmoVAE assigns physical quantities to the parameters of the VAE network by using the angular power spectrum of the Gaussian random field as latent variables. CosmoVAE adopts a new loss function to improve the learning performance of the model, which consists of $\ell_1$ reconstruction loss, Kullback-Leibler divergence between the posterior distribution of encoder network and the prior distribution of latent variables, perceptual loss, and total-variation regularizer. The proposed model achieves state of the art performance for Planck \texttt{Commander} 2018 CMB map inpainting.Comment: 7 pages, 6 figure