Miracle-dz/UniFAR-FTUs huggingface dataset:
Quack: Scalable Remote Measurement of Application-Layer Censorship

Remote censorship measurement tools can now detect DNSand IP-based blocking at global scale. However, a major unmonitored form of interference is blocking triggered by deep packet inspection of application-layer data. We close this gap by introducing Quack, a scalable, remote measurement system that can efficiently detect application-layer interference. We show that Quack can effectively detect applicationlayer blocking triggered on HTTP and TLS headers, and it is flexible enough to support many other diverse protocols. In experiments, we test for blocking across 4458 autonomous systems, an order of magnitude larger than provided by country probes used by OONI. We also test a corpus of 100,000 keywords from vantage points in 40 countries to produce detailed national blocklists. Finally, we analyze the keywords we find blocked to provide insight into the application-layer blocking ecosystem and compare countries’ behavior. We find that the most consistently blocked services are related to circumvention tools, pornography, and gambling, but that there is significant country-to-country variation.
Use of Some Asteraceae Plants for the Treatment of Wounds: From Ethnopharmacological Studies to Scientific Evidences

Severe wounds result in large lesions and/or loss of function of the affected areas. The treatment of wounds has challenged health professionals due to its complexity, especially in patients with chronic diseases (such as diabetes), and the presence of pathogens such as Staphylococcus aureus and Pseudomonas aeruginosa. Taking this into consideration, the development of new therapies for wound healing requires immediate attention. Ethnopharmacological studies performed in different countries have shown the use of several plants from the Asteraceae family as wound-healing agents. Evidences gained from the traditional medicine have opened new ways for the development of novel and more efficient therapies based on the pharmacological properties of these plants. In this article, we discuss the literature data on the use of Asteraceae plants for the treatment of wounds, based on the ethnopharmacological relevance of each plant. Special attention was given to studies showing the mechanisms of action of Asteraceae-derived compounds and clinical trials. Ageratina pichinchensis (Kunth) R.M. King and H. Rob. and Calendula officinalis L. preparations/compounds were found to show good efficacy when assessed in clinical trials of complicated wounds, including venous leg ulcers and foot ulcers of diabetic patients. The compounds silibinin [from Silybum marianum (L.) Gaertn. ] and jaceosidin (from Artemisia princeps Pamp.) were identified as promising compounds for the treatment of wounds. Overall, we suggest that Asteraceae plants represent important sources of compounds that may act as new and efficient healing products.
Magnetic Fe@FeOx, Fe@C and α-Fe2O3 Single-Crystal Nanoblends Synthesized by Femtosecond Laser Ablation of Fe in Acetone

There are few reports on zero-field-cooled (ZFC) magnetization measurements for Fe@FeOx or FeOx particles synthesized by laser ablation in liquids (LAL) of Fe, and the minimum blocking temperature (TB) of 120 K reported so far is still much higher than those of their counterparts synthesized by chemical methods. In this work, the minimum blocking temperature was lowered to 52 K for 4–5 nm α-Fe2O3 particles synthesized by femtosecond laser ablation of Fe in acetone. The effective magnetic anisotropy energy density (Keff) is calculated to be 2.7–5.4 × 105 J/m3, further extending the Keff values for smaller hematite particles synthesized by different methods. Large amorphous-Fe@α-Fe2O3 and amorphous-Fe@C particles of 10–100 nm in diameter display a soft magnetic behavior with saturation magnetization (Ms) and coercivities (Hc) values of 72.5 emu/g and 160 Oe at 5 K and 61.9 emu/g and 70 Oe at 300 K, respectively, which mainly stem from the magnetism of amorphous Fe cores. Generally, the nanoparticles obtained by LAL are either amorphous or polycrystalline, seldom in a single-crystalline state. This work also demonstrates the possibility of synthesizing single-crystalline α-Fe2O3 hematite crystals of several nanometers with (104), (113), (116) or (214) crystallographic orientations, which were produced simultaneously with other products including carbon encapsulated amorphous Fe (a-Fe@C) and Fe@FeOx core-shell particles by LAL in one step. Finally, the formation mechanisms for these nanomaterials are proposed and the key factors in series events of LAL are discussed.
Cross-sectional physician survey on the use of minimal residual disease testing in the management of pediatric and adult patients with acute lymphoblastic leukemia

ABSTRACT Objectives: Minimal residual disease (MRD) is a strong prognostic factor in acute lymphoblastic leukemia (ALL), which progresses quickly and is fatal within months if untreated. This study explored use of MRD testing in adult and pediatric B-cell ALL patients, and academic versus community settings. Methods: A survey was administered to US-based hematologists/oncologists currently managing ≥5 B-cell ALL patients and using MRD tests. Descriptive analyses (frequencies and percentages) and Pearson’s chi square testing assessed any differences in various characteristics. Results: 150 adult treaters (treating physicians: 100 community, 50 academic) and 30 pediatric treaters participated. Use of MRD testing was higher among pediatric treaters (93% of patients) than adult treaters (73% of patients) (p < 0.05), and higher among adult treaters at academic centers than in community settings (84% and 67% of patients, respectively; p < 0.01). MRD testing is part of a standard protocol for 93% of pediatric treaters versus 53% of adult treaters. Pediatric treaters most commonly administer an MRD test during/after induction or upon relapse. No consensus on timing among adult treaters was noted. Discussion: MRD testing is an important tool in the prediction of relapse in ALL. Resolving barriers could improve detection of molecular relapse in patients with ALL, particularly among adults and in community settings. Conclusion: MRD testing is fairly common in treatment of ALL, but some barriers still exist in access.
Modified Sequential Organ Failure Assessment sepsis score in an emergency department setting: Retrospective assessment of prognostic value

Use of the Sequential Organ Failure Assessment (SOFA) score has been proposed by the Third International Consensus Definitions for Sepsis and Septic Shock. The utility in the ED is not yet well established. We retrospectively studied the application of a modified SOFA (mSOFA) score, to assess its ability to predict mortality.
Can Digital Face-Morphs Influence Attitudes and Online Behaviors?

Self-images are among the most prevalent forms of content shared on social media streams. Face-morphs are images digitally created by combining facial pictures of different individuals. In the case of self-morphs, a person’s own picture is combined with that of another individual. Prior research has shown that even when individuals do not recognize themselves in self-morphs, they tend to trust self-morphed faces more, and judge them more favorably. Thus, self-morphs may be used online as covert forms of targeted marketing – for instance, using consumers’ pictures from social media streams to create self-morphs, and inserting the resulting self-morphs in promotional campaigns targeted at those consumers. The usage of this type of personal data for highly targeted influence without individuals' awareness, and the type of opaque effect such artifacts may have on individuals' attitudes and behaviors, raise potential issues of consumer privacy and autonomy. However, no research to date has examined the feasibility of using self-morphs for such applications. Research on self-morphs has focused on artificial laboratory settings, raising questions regarding the practical, in-the-wild applicability of reported self-morph effects. In three experiments, we examine whether self-morphs could affect individuals' attitudes or even promote products/services, using a combination of experimental designs and dependent variables. Across the experiments, we test both designs and variables that had been used in previous research in this area and new ones that had not. Questioning prior research, however, we find no evidence that end-users react more positively to self-morphs than control-morphs composed of unfamiliar facial pictures in either attitudes or actual behaviors.
Safety and long-term efficacy of AAV1.SERCA2a using nebulizer delivery in a pig model of pulmonary hypertension

Nebulization delivery of adeno-associated virus serotype 1 encoding sarcoplasmic reticulum Ca2+-ATPase2a (AAV1.SERCA2a) gene was examined in a Yukatan miniature swine model of chronic pulmonary hypertension (n = 13). Nebulization of AAV1.SERCA2a resulted in homogenous distribution of vectors, lower pulmonary vascular resistance, and a trend towards better long-term survival compared to control animals.
Electroacupuncture modulates the activity of the hippocampus-nucleus tractus solitarius-vagus nerve pathway to reduce myocardial ischemic injury

The hippocampus is involved in the regulation of the autonomic nervous system, together with the hypothalamus and brainstem nuclei, such as the paraventricular nucleus and nucleus tractus solitarius. The vagus nerve-nucleus tractus solitarius pathway has an important role in cardiovascular reflex regulation. Myocardial ischemia has been shown to cause changes in the autonomic nervous system, affecting the dynamic equilibrium of the sympathetic and vagal nerves. However, it remains poorly understood how the hippocampus communicates with brainstem nuclei to regulate the autonomic nervous system and alleviate myocardial ischemic tissue damage. A rat model of acute myocardial ischemia (AMI) was made by ligating the left anterior descending branch of the coronary artery. Three days before ischemia, the hippocampal CA1 region was damaged. Then, 3 days after ischemia, electroacupuncture (EA) at Shenmen (HT7)-Tongli (HT5) was performed (continuous wave, 1 mA, 2 Hz, duration of 30 minutes). Cluster analysis of firing patterns showed that one type of neuron was found in rats in the sham and AMI groups. Three types of neurons were observed in the AMI + EA group. Six types of neurons were found in the AMI + EA + Lesion group. Correlation analysis showed that the frequency of vagus nerve discharge in each group was negatively correlated with heart rate (HR) (P < 0.05, r = −0.424), and positively correlated with mean arterial pressure (MAP) (P < 0.05, r = 0.40987) and the rate-pressure product (RPP) (P < 0.05, r = 0.4252). The total frequency of the nucleus tractus solitarius discharge in each group was positively correlated with vagus nerve discharge (P < 0.01, r = 0.7021), but not with hemodynamic index (HR: P > 0.05, r = −0.03263; MAP: P > 0.05, r = −0.08993; RPP: P > 0.05, r = −0.03263). Some neurons (Neuron C) were negatively correlated with vagus nerve discharge, HR, MAP and RPP in the AMI + EA group (vagus nerve discharge: P < 0.05, r = −0.87749; HR: P < 0.01, r = −0.91902; MAP: P < 0.05, r = −0.85691; RPP: P < 0.01, r = −0.91902). Some neurons (Neurons C, D and E) were positively correlated with vagus nerve discharge, HR, MAP and RPP in the AMI + EA + Lesion group (vagus nerve discharge: P < 0.01, r = 0.8905, P < 0.01, r = 0.9725, P < 0.01, r = 0.9054; HR: P < 0.01, r = 0.9347, P < 0.01, r = 0.9089, P < 0.05, r = 0.8247; MAP: P < 0.05, r = 0.8474, P < 0.01, r = 0.9691, P < 0.01, r = 0.9027; RPP: P < 0.05, r = 0.8637, P < 0.01, r = 0.9407, P < 0.01, r = 0.9027). These findings show that the hippocampus-nucleus tractus solitarius-vagus nerve pathway is involved in the cardioprotective effect of EA at the heart meridian. Some interneurons in the nucleus tractus solitarius may play a particularly important role in the cardiomodulatory process.
Beam Steering for the Misalignment in UCA-Based OAM Communication Systems

Radio frequency-orbital angular momentum (RF-OAM) is a technique that provides extra degrees of freedom to improve spectrum efficiency of wireless communications. However, OAM requires perfect alignment of the transmit and the receive antennas and this harsh precondition greatly challenges practical applications of RF-OAM. In this letter, we first investigate the effect of non-parallel misalignment on the channel capacity of the RF-OAM communication system equipped with uniform circular array. Then, we propose a transmit/receive beam steering approach to circumvent the large performance degradation in not only non-parallel case, but also off-axis and other general misalignment cases. The effectiveness of the beam steering approach is validated through both mathematical analysis and numerical simulations.
Fluid Dynamics in the HeartMate 3: Influence of the Artificial Pulse Feature and Residual Cardiac Pulsation

Ventricular assist devices (VADs), among which the HeartMate 3 (HM3) is the latest clinically approved representative, are often the therapy of choice for patients with end-stage heart failure. Despite advances in the prevention of pump thrombosis, rates of stroke and bleeding remain high. These complications are attributed to the flow field within the VAD, among other factors. One of the HM3's characteristic features is an artificial pulse that changes the rotor speed periodically by 4000 rpm, which is meant to reduce zones of recirculation and stasis. In this study, we investigated the effect of this speed modulation on the flow fields and stresses using high-resolution computational fluid dynamics. To this end, we compared Eulerian and Lagrangian features of the flow fields during constant pump operation, during operation with the artificial pulse feature, and with the effect of the residual native cardiac cycle. We observed good washout in all investigated situations, which may explain the low incidence rates of pump thrombosis. The artificial pulse had no additional benefit on scalar washout performance, but it induced rapid variations in the flow velocity and its gradients. This may be relevant for the removal of deposits in the pump. Overall, we found that viscous stresses in the HM3 were lower than in other current VADs. However, the artificial pulse substantially increased turbulence, and thereby also total stresses, which may contribute to clinically observed issues related to hemocompatibility.
Shielding Software From Privileged Side-Channel Attacks

Commodity operating system (OS) kernels, such as Windows, Mac OS X, Linux, and FreeBSD, are susceptible to numerous security vulnerabilities. Their monolithic design gives successful attackers complete access to all application data and system resources. Shielding systems such as InkTag, Haven, and Virtual Ghost protect sensitive application data from compromised OS kernels. However, such systems are still vulnerable to side-channel attacks. Worse yet, compromised OS kernels can leverage their control over privileged hardware state to exacerbate existing side channels; recent work has shown that a compromised OS kernel can steal entire documents via side channels. This paper presents defenses against page table and last-level cache (LLC) side-channel attacks launched by a compromised OS kernel. Our page table defenses restrict the OS kernel’s ability to read and write page table pages and defend against page allocation attacks, and our LLC defenses utilize the Intel Cache Allocation Technology along with memory isolation primitives. We prototype our solution in a system we call Apparition, building on an optimized version of Virtual Ghost. Our evaluation shows that our side-channel defenses add 1% to 18% (with up to 86% for one application) overhead to the optimized Virtual Ghost (relative to the native kernel) on real-world applications.
Human abstracts, machine summaries, cyborg solutions?

We present a comparative study of abstracts and machine-generated summaries. This study bridges two hitherto independent lines of research: the descriptive analyses of abstracts as a genre and the testing of summaries produced by automatic text summarization (ATS). A pilot sample of eight articles was gathered from Library and Information Science Abstracts (LISA) database, with each article including an author-written abstract and one of four types of indexed abstracts. Three ATS systems (Copernic Summarizer, Microsoft AutoSummarize, SweSum) were used to produce three additional summaries per article. The structure, content and style of abstracts and summaries were analyzed by building on genre analysis methods, creating ten functional categories. Summaries and abstracts demonstrate variability in analyzed features and captured concepts, with some consistencies and overlap. Incorporating ATS output can be useful to information seekers: summaries complement abstracts by expanding representativeness of source articles. Yet certain cognitive processes performed by abstractors remain irreplaceable.
TMEM41B is a novel regulator of autophagy and lipid mobilization

Autophagy maintains cellular homeostasis by targeting damaged organelles, pathogens, or misfolded protein aggregates for lysosomal degradation. The autophagic process is initiated by the formation of autophagosomes, which can selectively enclose cargo via autophagy cargo receptors. A machinery of well‐characterized autophagy‐related proteins orchestrates the biogenesis of autophagosomes; however, the origin of the required membranes is incompletely understood. Here, we have applied sensitized pooled CRISPR screens and identify the uncharacterized transmembrane protein TMEM41B as a novel regulator of autophagy. In the absence of TMEM41B, autophagosome biogenesis is stalled, LC3 accumulates at WIPI2‐ and DFCP1‐positive isolation membranes, and lysosomal flux of autophagy cargo receptors and intracellular bacteria is impaired. In addition to defective autophagy, TMEM41B knockout cells display significantly enlarged lipid droplets and reduced mobilization and β‐oxidation of fatty acids. Immunostaining and interaction proteomics data suggest that TMEM41B localizes to the endoplasmic reticulum (ER). Taken together, we propose that TMEM41B is a novel ER‐localized regulator of autophagosome biogenesis and lipid mobilization.
Glycan binding and specificity of viral influenza neuraminidases by classical molecular dynamics and replica exchange molecular dynamics simulations

Abstract Two important glycoproteins on the influenza virus membrane, hemagglutinin (HA) and neuraminidase (NA), are relevant to virus replication. As previously reported, HA has a substrate specificity towards SIA-2,3-GAL-1,4-NAG (3SL) and SIA-2,6-GAL-1,4-NAG (6SL) glycans, while NA can cleave both types of linkages. However, the substrate binding into NA and its preference are not well understood. In this work, the glycan binding and specificity of human and avian NAs were evaluated by classical molecular dynamics (MD) simulations, whilst the conformational diversity of 3SL avian and 6SL human glycans in an unbound state was investigated by replica exchange MD simulations. The results indicated that the 3SL avian receptor fits well in the binding cavity of all NAs and does not require a conformational change for such binding compared to the flexible shape of the 6SL human receptor. From the QM/MM-GBSA binding free energy and decomposition free energy data, 6SL showed a much stronger binding towards human NAs (H1N1, H2N2 and H3N2) than to avian NAs (H5N1 and H7N9). This suggests that influenza NAs have a substrate specificity corresponding to their HA, indicating the functional balance between the two important glycoproteins. Both linkages show distinct glycan topologies when complexed with NAs, while the flexibility of torsion angles between GAL and NAG in 6SL results in the various shapes of glycan and different binding patterns. Lower conformational diversities of both glycans when bound to NA compared to the unbound state were found, and were required in order to be accommodated within the NA cavity. Communicated by Ramaswamy H. Sarma
Clinical evaluation of color change and tooth sensitivity with in-office and home bleaching treatments

Background: Among the number of vital bleaching techniques currently available to the clinicians, home bleaching and in-office bleaching are widely used in dental practice. Aim and Objectives: The aim of this in vivo study was to compare the clinical performance, durability, and related tooth sensitivity with two vital bleaching procedures (in-office and at-home bleaching), in a split-mouth design. Patients and Methods: Thirty adult participants having teeth shade mean of A2 or darker were selected for the study. One-half of the maxillary arch of each patient received in-office bleaching with 35% hydrogen peroxide gel, and the other half received 16% carbamide peroxide night guard bleaching. Shade evaluation was done with shade guide and spectrophotometer at 1, 2, 3, and 4 week intervals during bleaching and postoperatively at 3 and 6 month intervals. Tooth sensitivity was recorded using the visual analog scale during the experimental period. Statistical Analysis: Collected data of color and sensitivity readings were subjected to statistical analysis using SPSS/PC version 20 software. Intergroup comparison through unpaired t-test and within the groups using paired t-test was done. Results: At-home and in-office bleaching procedures are equally effective in producing tooth whitening. Color evaluation after 3 and 6 months showed more color decline for in-office bleaching procedure. For sensitivity parameter also, in-office procedure recorded higher sensitivity compared to home bleaching (P < 0.05). Conclusion: Both the bleaching procedures are equally effective in producing tooth whitening. In-office bleaching recorded higher levels of tooth sensitivity and greater color rebound than home bleaching.
Ultrasound Image Processing for Improving Diagnose of Renal Diseases

In this paper, an approach for ultrasound image segmentation and renal vessels evaluation is presented. The proposed approach includes the following basic stages: image enhancement of the original image, kidney segmentation via active contour, renal vessels segmentation, and renal vessels evaluation. The simulation and experimental results are presented to demonstrate its application in clinical diagnosis.
Effects Degrading Accuracy of CPW mTRL Calibration at W Band

On-wafer measurements of a Device Under Test (DUT) can yield accurate results only if the properties of the measurement environment are well defined and unwanted effects can be removed from the data. This is commonly achieved through a calibration process using a set of different calibration elements. However, various effects may degrade accuracy of this calibration, particularly at higher frequencies. This paper deals with the case of coplanar waveguide (CPW) lines and the multiline Thru Reflect Line (mTRL) method and discusses two of such issues, the influence of CPW ground width and of prober geometry.