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Secure scalar product computation is a special secure multi-party computation problem. A secure scalar product protocol can be used by two parties to jointly compute the scalar product of their private vectors without revealing any information about the private vector of either party. Secure scalar product protocol is of great significance in privacy-preserving scientific computing, privacy preserving data mining, privacypreserving cooperative statistical analysis and privacypreserving geometry computation, etc. Many privacy preserving computing problems can be transformed to secure scalar product computation. At present, existing scalar product protocols cannot be used to privately compute scalar product of private vectors with both positive and negative components. Based on homomorphic encryption scheme, we design three protocols to compute scalar product of three different kinds of private vectors. The components of the first kind vector are arbitrary integers; those of the second kind are positive rational numbers and those of the third kind are arbitrary rational numbers. We use simulation paradigm proving that the protocols are secure in the semi-honest model. Theoretical analysis and experimental results show that the protocols designed in this paper are efficient.

Amphiphilic Janus particles are characterized by their anisotropic morphology and unique physical and chemical properties. In the present research, amphiphilic Janus particles were used as stabilizing agents to prepare a fluorine-containing polyacrylate composite emulsion. The influences of the structure and dosage of amphiphilic Janus SiO2 particles and the amount of fluorine-containing monomer hexafluorobutyl methacrylate on the stability of the composite emulsion were investigated. It was noticed that when the hydrophilic and hydrophobic groups of Janus SiO2 particles were polyacrylamide and polymethyl methacrylate, respectively, the stabilization of the polyacrylate emulsion with Janus SiO2 particles was achieved. When 0.3 wt% of polyacrylamide/polymethyl methacrylate amphiphilic Janus SiO2 particles and 8 wt% of hexafluorobutyl methacrylate were used, a stable composite emulsion was obtained. The conversion rate reached 98.7% with an average particle size of 500 nm. The composite emulsion was applied for fabric finishing. The water contact angle of the fabric increased from 21.4° to 140.2°, demonstrating its greatly improved hydrophobicity. Therefore, it could be inferred that the synergistic effect of amphiphilic Janus SiO2 nanoparticles and hexafluorobutyl methacrylate improved the water resistance of the latex film.

Angelica polysaccharide (APS) is a polysaccharide extracted from Angelica sinensis and it is one of the main active components of Angelica sinensis. Many studies have demonstrated that APS can promote the activation and function of a variety of immune cells and is recognized as an immune enhancer, but the regulatory effect of APS on myeloid-derived suppressor cells (MDSC) is still unclear. In this study, we investigated the effects of APS on MDSC proliferation, differentiation and function through in vivo and in vitro experiments. In vitro, our results showed that APS promoted the proliferation, differentiation and immunosuppressive function of MDSC through STAT1 and STAT3 signaling pathways, and positively correlated with the expression level of Mannose receptor (MR, also known as CD206) and in a concentration-dependent manner on APS. In vivo, APS up-regulated T cells, γδT cells, CD8+T cells, natural killer cells, monocytes/macrophages, and granulocytes in the peripheral blood and spleen of mice to varying degrees and was accompanied by the same degree of increase in the proportion of MDSC. That reminds to the clinician that when applying APS as treatment they should pay attention to its possible side effects of increasing the quantity and function of MDSC, in order to increase its efficacy.

Pulmonary hypertension secondary to heart failure (HF-PH) combined with pulmonary vascular remodeling has a high mortality rate. Apolipoprotein A1 (ApoA1) has been shown to adversely affect outcomes in patients with HF. A prospective follow-up study was performed on 239 consecutive patients with HF-PH who underwent right heart catheterization. Proteomics technology was used to analyze different proteins in plasma between post- and precapillary pulmonary hypertension (CpcPH) and isolated postcapillary pulmonary hypertension (IpcPH) filtered by propensity score matching. Ultimately, 175 patients were enrolled and followed for an average of 4.4 years. Lipoprotein components in plasma were measured, and the following clinical events were tracked. Proteomics data showed that lipid metabolism and inflammation were different between CpcPH and IpcPH. ApoA1 levels in HF-PH patients with CpcPH were lower than those in HF-PH patients with IpcPH. The patients with lower ApoA1 levels (≤1.025 g/L) were in a higher New York Heart Association class and had high levels of NT-proBNP, mean pulmonary artery pressure, PVR, and diastolic pressure gradient. Besides, HF-PH patients with lower ApoA1 levels had a 2.836-fold higher relative risk of comorbid CpcPH compared with patients with higher ApoA1 levels. Moreover, patients with lower ApoA1 levels had a lower survival rate after adjusting for CpcPH. In conclusion, ApoA1 levels were negatively correlated with PVR levels. Lower ApoA1 levels were an independent risk factor for pulmonary vascular remodeling in HF-PH patients. The survival of HF-PH patients with lower ApoA1 levels was reduced.

Karst areas in southwest China have experienced significant land cover and land use change (LUCC) due to utilization for human activity and a comprehensive rocky desertification control project (RDCP) since 2008. It is important to quantify the effect of LUCC on ecosystem productivity in this region for assessing the overall benefit of this ecological restoration project. In this study, we used using MODIS land cover and NPP products to investigate the relative contribution of LUCC to the change in net primary productivity (NPP) during 2008–2013 in Huanjiang County, one of first one hundred pilot counties to implement RDCP. Our results show that NPP increased in 95.53% of the county, and the average growth of NPP in non-rocky desertification area was higher than in rocky desertification or potential rocky desertification areas. LUCC has an important contribution (25.23%) to the NPP increase in the county, especially in the LUCC area (70.97%), which increased the average NPP by 3.9% and 10.5%, respectively. Across the six RDCP regions in the county, the average increase in NPP for the vegetation restoration measure of governed karst area is significantly greater than in the ungoverned karst area, and the positive change in NPP increased with the increasing implementation area of the vegetation restoration measure.

The travel planning system is an important reference tool for passengers to choose a travel route. An efficient and safe travel plan can improve the travel efficiency and ride safety of passengers, and improve the service level of the rail transit system. At the same time, travel planning information is of great value for more accurate prediction of short-term passenger flow, and more accurate short-term passenger flow prediction information can also provide support for higher-quality travel planning. Existing related studies have hardly considered the information interaction mechanism between passenger flow predicting and travel planning. To solve this problem, this paper proposes a new regional rail transit travel planning system design idea and implementation scheme based on passenger flow prediction. This system makes short-term prediction of passenger flow based on individual travel planning information. The passenger flow prediction results are used to provide support for subsequent passenger travel planning. Finally, the Chongqing rail transit network is taken as an example to analyze the prototype case, and the feasibility of the system scheme was preliminarily verified.

The high mortality rate of ovarian cancer is connected with the development of acquired resistance to multiple cancer drugs, especially cisplatin. Activation of cytoprotective autophagy has been implicated as a contributing mechanism for acquired cisplatin resistance in ovarian cancer cells. Hexokinase 2 (HK2) phosphorylates glucose to generate glucose-6-phosphate, the rate-limiting step in glycolysis. Higher HK2 expression has been associated with chemoresistance in ovarian cancer. However, whether HK2 functionally contributes to cisplatin resistance in ovarian cancer is unclear. In this study, we investigated the role of HK2 in regulating ovarian cancer cisplatin resistance. Increased HK2 levels were detected in drug-resistant human ovarian cancer cells and tissues. Cisplatin downregulated HK2 in cisplatin-sensitive but not in resistant ovarian cancer cells. HK2 knockdown sensitized resistant ovarian cancer cells to cisplatin-induced cell death and apoptosis. Conversely, HK2 overexpression in cisplatin-sensitive cells induced cisplatin resistance. Mechanistically, cisplatin increased ERK1/2 phosphorylation as well as autophagic activity. Blocking autophagy with the autophagy inhibitor 3-MA sensitized resistant ovarian cancer cells to cisplatin. HK2 overexpression enhanced cisplatin-induced ERK1/2 phosphorylation and autophagy while HK2 knockdown showed the opposite effects. Blocking the MEK/ERK pathway using the MEK inhibitor U0126 prevented cisplatin-induced autophagy enhanced by HK2 overexpression. Furthermore, HK2 knockdown sensitized resistance ovarian tumor xenografts to cisplatin in vivo. In conclusion, our data supported that HK2 promotes cisplatin resistance in ovarian cancer by enhancing drug-induced, ERK-mediated autophagy. Therefore, targeting HK2 may be a new therapeutic strategy to combat chemoresistance in ovarian cancer.

Nowadays the rapid growth of mobile traffic has attracted researchers’ attention on the power efficiency problem in the Internet. Given the outstanding advantages of "edge cache" in content delivery services, researchers are attempting to apply this idea to reducing network power consumption. However, the power efficiency issue in the existing works is mainly researched under the background of the access networks and lack of in-depth analysis from the perspective of the cooperation between content providers (CPs) and Internet Service Providers (ISPs). Therefore, we design an edge cache-assisted power-efficient data transmission scheme in mobile wireless environments, where the power consumption problem of ISPs and CPs is formulated as a centralized model. Besides, we theoretically analyze this power efficiency model to optimize cache allocation and content distribution. Simulations are conducted in the different network scenarios and the simulation presents that the performance of the proposed minimal power model exceeds that of the current Internet solutions without deploying edge caches in the wireless networks.

Amphiphilic Janus SiO2 particles were prepared at the liquid-liquid interface by atom transfer radical polymerization (ATRP). The structure of the particles was characterized by contact angle, fluorescent labeling and dynamic light scattering (DLS). The emulsifying ability of the particle was characterized by fluorescent labeling and emulsifying experiment. The results shown that amphiphilic Janus SiO2 particles had good emulsifying ability and the critical micelle concentration was 0.079 mg/mL. The amphiphilic Janus SiO2 particles were used as surfactants to stabilize acrylate monomers, and polyacrylate emulsion was obtained through free radical polymerization. The solid content, conversion rate, infrared spectrum and DLS were characterized. The surface morphology of latex film was characterized by AFM and SEM. The properties of emulsion film were characterized by the video optical contact angle, water absorption and light transmission spectrophotometry. The results shown that the amphiphilic Janus SiO2 particles had good dispersibility and introduction of inorganic particles improved the light transmission, water resistance and mechanical properties of the polyacrylate emulsion film.

Regional rail transit is a kind of comprehensive railway transportation system, which originates from the demand of economic integration of city groups and contains various kinds of sub-transportation systems such as high speed railway, inter-city railway, subway and monorail. Due to the deficiency of coordination between different kinds of transportation systems, the global risk of regional rail transit network greatly increases. Therefore, it is urgent to evaluate the rail transit network safety from a global perspective and enhance the safety through coordinative optimization. To address this problem, a method to evaluate the global safety of regional rail transit system based on passenger flow demand load is proposed, a mathematical model to minimize the global risk of rail transit network is constructed, and the global safety is enhanced by coordinative optimization of passenger flow assignment and train scheduling. An example on the regional rail system in Chengdu-Chongqing district validates the effectiveness of the proposed method. Compared with the method in the literature where only passenger flow assignment is considered, the example shows that the proposed approach can bring a further 10% decrease of the global risk of rail transit network.