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Differential privacy, a cornerstone of privacy-preserving techniques, plays an indispensable role in ensuring the secure handling and sharing of sensitive data analysis across domains such as in census, healthcare, and social networks. Histograms, serving as a visually compelling tool for presenting analytical outcomes, are widely employed in these sectors. Currently, numerous algorithms for publishing histograms under differential privacy have been developed, striving to balance privacy protection with the provision of useful data. Nonetheless, the pivotal challenge concerning the effective enhancement of precision for small bins (those intervals that are narrowly defined or contain a relatively small number of data points) within histograms has yet to receive adequate attention and in-depth investigation from experts. In standard DP histogram publishing, adding noise without regard for bin size can result in small data bins being disproportionately influenced by noise, potentially severely impairing the overall accuracy of the histogram. In response to this challenge, this paper introduces the SReB_GCA sanitization algorithm designed to enhance the accuracy of small bins in DP histograms. The SReB_GCA approach involves sorting the bins from smallest to largest and applying a greedy grouping strategy, with a predefined lower bound on the mean relative error required for a bin to be included in a group. Our theoretical analysis reveals that sorting bins in ascending order prior to grouping effectively prioritizes the accuracy of smaller bins. SReB_GCA ensures strict ϵ -DP compliance and strikes a careful balance between reconstruction error and noise error, thereby not only initially improving the accuracy of small bins but also approximately optimizing the mean relative error of the entire histogram. To validate the efficiency of our proposed SReB_GCA method, we conducted extensive experiments using four diverse datasets, including two real-life datasets and two synthetic ones. The experimental results, quantified by the Kullback–Leibler Divergence (KLD), show that the SReB_GCA algorithm achieves substantial performance enhancement compared to the baseline method (DP_BASE) and several other established approaches for differential privacy histogram publication. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Continuous real-time location data is very important in the big data era, but the privacy issues involved is also a considerable topic. It is not only necessary to protect the location privacy at each release moment, but also have to consider the impact of data correlation. Correlated Laplace Mechanism (CLM) is a sophisticated method to implement differential privacy on correlated time series. This paper aims to solve the key problems of applying CLM in continuous location release. Based on the finding that the location increment is approximately stationary in many scenarios, a location correlation estimation method based on the location increment is proposed to solve the problem of nonstationary location data correlation estimation; an adaptive adjustment model for the CLM filter based on parameter quantization idea (QCLM) as well as its effective implementation named QCLM-Lowpass utilizing the lowpass spectral characteristics of location data series is proposed to solve the problem of output deviations due to the undesired transient response of the CLM filter in time-varying environments. Extensive simulations and real data experiments validate the effectiveness of the proposed approach and show that the privacy scheme based on QCLM-Lowpass can offer a better balance between the ability to resist correlation-based attacks and data availability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: Brachydactyly type E (BDE) is a general term characterized by variable shortening of metacarpals and metatarsals, with phalanges affected frequently. It can occur as an isolated form or part of syndromes and manifest a high degree of phenotypic variability. In this study, we have identified the clinical characteristics and pathogenic causes of a four‐generation pedigree with 10 members affected by BDE and short stature. Methods: After the informed consent was signed, clinical data and peripheral blood samples were collected from available family members. Karyotype analysis, array‐CGH, next‐generation sequencing, and Sanger sequencing were employed to identity the pathogenic candidate gene. Results: No translocation or microdeletion/duplication was found in karyotype analysis and array‐CGH; hence, a novel heterozygous mutation, c.146dupA. p.S50Vfs*22, was detected by next‐generation sequencing in PTHLH gene, leading to a premature stop codon. Subsequently, the mutation was confirmed by Sanger sequencing and co‐segregation analysis. Conclusion: In this study, we described a novel heterozygous mutation (c.146dupA. p.S50Vfs*22) of gene PTHLH in a Chinese family. The mutation could induce a premature stop codon leading to a truncation of the protein. Our study broadened the mutation spectrum of PTHLH in BDE. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A basic understanding of delayed packet loss is key to successfully applying it to multi-node hopping networks. Given the problem of delayed data loss due to network delay in a hop network environment, we review early time windowing approaches, for which most contributions focus on end-to-end hopping networks. However, they do not apply to the general hopping network environment, where data transmission from the sending host to the receiving host usually requires forwarding at multiple intermediate nodes due to network latency and network cache overflow, which may result in delayed packet loss. To overcome this challenge, we propose a delay time window and a method for estimating the delay time window. By examining the network delays of different data tasks, we obtain network delay estimates for these data tasks, use them as estimates of the delay time window, and validate the estimated results to verify that the results satisfy the delay distribution law. In addition, simulation tests and a discussion of the results were conducted to demonstrate how to maximize the reception of delay groupings. The analysis shows that the method is more general and applicable to multi-node hopping networks than existing time windowing methods. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Coal still occupies a key position in China's energy consumption structure, and ensuring safe production in coal mines is a key focus for ensuring energy security. Spontaneous combustion fires in coal mines are a serious threat to the sustainability of safe production in coal mines. In order to prevent coal mine fire risk scientifically and effectively and to assess the level of disaster risk effectively and rationally, a study was conducted on the risk of spontaneous combustion fires in underground coal mines. An evaluation cloud model of spontaneous combustion fire risk in coal mines integrating the interval gray number with the Decision-Making Trial and Evaluation Laboratory (DEMATEL) was established. Seventeen representative risk evaluation indicators were selected, and a coal mine spontaneous combustion fire risk evaluation index system was constructed based on four aspects: personnel, machinery, environment, and management. The interval gray number theory was introduced to improve the classical DEMATEL analysis method, which fully expresses the expert empirical knowledge and solves the problem of ambiguity and randomness in the semantic expression of expert evaluation. The relative importance of each indicator was determined by analyzing the influence relationships between risk evaluation indicators through the improved DEMATEL. A cloud model capable of transforming quantitative descriptions and qualitative concepts was used for comprehensive evaluation of risk, and based on the results of DEMATEL analysis, a comprehensive evaluation cloud model of coal mine spontaneous combustion fire risk was formed. Finally, the validity and practicality of the model were verified by using a mine in Shenmu City, Shaanxi Province, China as an example. This study provides a powerful tool to prevent spontaneous combustion fires in coal mines and makes a positive contribution to the sustainable development of coal mine safety management. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Differential privacy (DP) has become a de facto standard to achieve data privacy. However, the utility of DP solutions with the premise of privacy priority is often unacceptable in real-world applications. In this paper, we propose the best-effort differential privacy (B-DP) to promise the preference for utility first and design two new metrics including the point belief degree and the regional average belief degree to evaluate its privacy from a new perspective of preference for privacy. Therein, the preference for privacy and utility is referred to as expected privacy protection (EPP) and expected data utility (EDU), respectively. We also investigate how to realize B-DP with an existing DP mechanism (KRR) and a newly constructed mechanism (EXP Q ) in the dynamic check-in data collection and publishing. Extensive experiments on two real-world check-in datasets verify the effectiveness of the concept of B-DP. Our newly constructed EXP Q can also satisfy a better B-DP than KRR to provide a good trade-off between privacy and utility. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Osteosarcoma is the most prevalent primary bone malignancy in adolescents, and ferroptosis is implicated in its pathogenesis. MicroRNA (miR)-1287-5p plays critical roles in multiple human cancers, and the present study aims to investigate the role and underlying mechanisms of miR-1287-5p in regulating ferroptosis and osteosarcoma progression. Human osteosarcoma cell lines were treated with the mimic, inhibitor or matched controls of miR-1287-5p. Cell viability, colony formation, cell death ratio and ferroptosis were determined. miR-1287-5p expression was downregulated in human osteosarcoma, but upregulated upon ferroptotic stimulation. Overexpression of miR-1287-5p significantly induced, while inhibition of miR-1287-5p suppressed ferroptosis of osteosarcoma cells, thereby modulating cell viability and colony formation. Mechanistic studies indicated that miR-1287-5p directly bound to the 3′-untranslated region of glutathione peroxidase 4 (GPX4) to inhibit its protein level and activity, and that GPX4 overexpression completely abolished the miR-1287-5p mimic-mediated ferroptotic induction and tumor suppression. Moreover, the miR-1287-5p mimic dramatically sensitized human osteosarcoma cells to cisplatin chemotherapy. Our findings prove that miR-1287-5p promotes ferroptosis of osteosarcoma cells through inhibiting GPX4, identifying an adjuvant and even alternative method for the treatment of human osteosarcoma. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to explore the influence mechanism of personal initiative on the overall emergency management ability of enterprises so as to put forward effective measures to improve the emergency management ability. Based on social interaction theory and feature activation theory, the concepts of organizational support theory, executive power, and political skills were introduced to construct a corresponding theoretical model. We collected data through an online questionnaire to test this model via structural equation model analysis and regression analysis, with 208 participants of varying backgrounds. The results show that personal initiative can strengthen enterprise emergency management ability. The mediating effect of executive power between personal initiative and emergency management ability of enterprise has also been proved. In addition, the two adjustment variables of political skills and perceived organizational support both have a positive impact on the improvement of personal initiative and execution. Therefore, in order to improve the enterprise emergency management ability, it is suggested that enterprises should give full play to the personal initiative and improve the individual and overall executive power. The conclusion of this paper can provide new methodological support for improving emergency management ability. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We have witnessed rapid advances in both face presentation attack models and presentation attack detection (PAD) in recent years. When compared with widely studied 2D face presentation attacks, 3D face spoofing attacks are more challenging because face recognition systems are more easily confused by the 3D characteristics of materials similar to real faces. In this work, we tackle the problem of detecting these realistic 3D face presentation attacks and propose a novel anti-spoofing method from the perspective of fine-grained classification. Our method, based on factorized bilinear coding of multiple color channels (namely MC_FBC), targets at learning subtle fine-grained differences between real and fake images. By extracting discriminative and fusing complementary information from RGB and YCbCr spaces, we have developed a principled solution to 3D face spoofing detection. A large-scale wax figure face database (WFFD) with both images and videos has also been collected as super realistic attacks to facilitate the study of 3D face presentation attack detection. Extensive experimental results show that our proposed method achieves the state-of-the-art performance on both our own WFFD and other face spoofing databases under various intra-database and inter-database testing scenarios. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The social system can spread tightly coupled complex practices under the context that members of the social system do not have the shared experience that enables them to coordinate within longstanding tight formal organizations. To promote the understanding of such a process, and given the possibility for other members in the social system to cheat and adopt pro-environment behavior, we draw on the organizational justice literature and the perspective of justice enforceability, and construal level theory, to develop a conceptual model in which the impact of social members' perceived psychological distance on their response to other social members adoption of pro-environmental behaviors (PEBs) is contingent on their perception of justice enforceability and cognitive appraisals (positive, not significant) towards other social members' adoption of PEBs. We find that when social members perceive that the adoption of pro-environment behaviors is justice-enforceable, their cognitive appraisals of other social members' adoption of PEBs is high, and then the more proximal the psychological distance they perceive, the stronger they will react to other social members' adoption of PEBs. Further, they will adopt and enact such behaviors, otherwise, they would be unwilling to adopt and enact such behaviors. So, uneven perceived psychological distance of social members can harm their adoption and the spread of pro-environment behavior. We tested our model in a survey study. Results show that the proposed model is supported, and our understanding is enhanced about how social members' willingness to adopt and spread pro-environment behavior is contingent on their perceptions of justice enforceability. This paper is comprised of five parts, of which include an introduction, a part on the theory and hypothesis, data and methods, results and discussion, and conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Summary: The neuroinflammation following traumatic spinal cord injury (SCI) is a critical process that impacts both the injury and the recovery of spinal cord parenchyma. Infiltrating regulatory T (Treg) cells are potent anti‐inflammatory cells that restrain post‐SCI neuroinflammation. To understand the molecular mechanisms underlying the activity of infiltrating Treg cells, we used a mouse spinal cord compression injury model to analyze the role of Sirtuins (SIRTs) in the modulation of infiltrating Treg cell functions. We found that the expressions of SIRT4 and SIRT6 were up‐regulated in infiltrating Treg cells. Using lentivirus‐mediated gene expression or RNA interference, we revealed that SIRT4 substantially inhibited the expression of Foxp3, interleukin‐10, and transforming growth factor‐β in Treg cells, whereas SIRT6 had little effect on Treg cells. Consistently, SIRT4 overexpression weakened the suppressive effect of Treg cells on lipopolysaccharide‐stimulated spinal cord CD11b+ myeloid cells. Knock‐down of SIRT4 enhanced the anti‐inflammatory activity of infiltrating Treg cells in the parenchyma of injured spinal cords. Additionally, SIRT4 overexpression blocked in vitro Treg cell generation from conventional T cells. Furthermore, SIRT4 down‐regulated 5′ AMP‐activated protein kinase (AMPK) signaling in Treg cells, whereas the AMPK agonist AICAR restored the expression of Foxp3 and interleukin‐10 in SIRT4‐overexpressing Treg cells. In conclusion, our research unveils a new mechanism by which the post‐SCI neuroinflammation is regulated. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

• Clofazimine/moxifloxacin combinations showed excellent synergism against Mycobacterium tuberculosis. • Moxifloxacin showed better synergism than capreomycin when combined with clofazimine. • Multidrug-/extensively drug-resistant isolates more likely to show antagonism than drug-resistant/pan-sensitive strains. • Difference in antagonism relevant for clofazimine/moxifloxacin and clofazimine/capreomycin. Clofazimine (CFZ) is a promising candidate drug for use in the management of multidrug-resistant tuberculosis (MDR-TB) patients. In this study, the minimum inhibitory concentration (MIC) method and checkerboard method were used to investigate potential synergies between CFZ and moxifloxacin (MOX) or capreomycin (CAP). Thirty Mycobacterium tuberculosis strains were collected, including 13 MDR strains, 2 extensively drug-resistant (XDR) strains, 3 pan-sensitive strains and 12 strains resistant to other drugs. When the minimum fractional inhibitory concentration indexes (FICIs) were calculated, synergy was found in 21 (70.00%) M. tuberculosis strains against the CFZ/CAP combination and 29 (96.67%) against the CFZ/MOX combination. When the maximum FICIs were calculated, 10 of 15 MDR/XDR strains and 2 of 15 other drug-resistant or pan-sensitive strains showed antagonism against the CFZ/CAP combination, whilst 8 of 15 MDR/XDR strains and 1 of 15 other drug-resistant or pan-sensitive strains showed antagonism against the CFZ/MOX combination, respectively. In conclusion, these findings demonstrate that the combination of CFZ and MOX shows better synergism than the combination of CFZ and CAP. The MDR/XDR isolates are more likely to show antagonism than the other drug-resistant or pan-sensitive strains in both the CFZ/MOX and CFZ/CAP combinations. CFZ in combination with MOX may be a promising drug regimen for the treatment of MDR-TB, particularly for susceptible M. tuberculosis infections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The detection of frame deletion forgery is of great significance in the field of video forensics. Existing approaches, however, are not applicable to video sequences with variable motion strengths. In addition, the impact of interfering frames has not been considered in these approaches. Our research aims to develop a motion-adaptive forensic method as well as to eliminate interfering frames. Through a study of the statistical characteristics of the most common interfering frames such as relocated I-frames, we develop a new fluctuation feature based on frame motion residuals to identify frame deletion points (FDPs). The fluctuation feature is further enhanced by an intra-prediction elimination procedure so that it can be adapted to sequences with various motion levels. The enhanced feature is measured using a moving window detector to identify the location of a FDP. Finally, a postprocessing procedure is proposed to eliminate the minor interferences of sudden lighting change, focus vibration, and frame jitter. Our experimental results demonstrate that for videos with variable motion strengths and different interfering frames, the true positive rate of the algorithm can reach 90% when the false alarm rate is 0.3%. Our proposed method could provide a foundation for many practical applications of video forensics. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

Analyzing and mining time-series data by taking advantage of the correlation between the data values can provide outstanding beneficial. But data owners may be unwilling to publish the data’s true values due to privacy considerations. Recently, researchers have begun to leverage differential privacy to address this challenge. However, the Laplace noise series used in the current state-of-the-art approaches has a drawback in that it is independent and identically distributed. An adversary can remove the independent noise from the correlated time-series by utilizing a refinement method (e.g., filtering), resulting in a lesser than expected effective degree of privacy. To remedy this problem, we propose an effective correlated time-series data publication solution based on differential privacy by enforcing Series-Indistinguishability and designing a correlated Laplace mechanism. Based on the concept of indistinguishability from the unconditional security definition, Series-Indistinguishability guarantees that the correlation between the noise and original series is indistinguishable to an adversary. Furthermore, instead of using an independent Laplace mechanism, a correlated Laplace noise series is produced using four Gauss white noise series passed through a specific linear system, to satisfy Series-Indistinguishability. Experimental results demonstrate that our solution outperforms the state-of-the-art differential privacy mechanisms in terms of security and mean absolute error for large quantities of queries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Aim:The aim of this retrospective clinical study is to evaluate the long-term outcomes for single-stage transpedicular debridement, posterior instrumentation and fusion in the management of thoracic and thoracolumbar spinal tuberculosis in adults. Methods:Fifty-nine adult patients with thoracic and thoracolumbar spinal tuberculosis underwent single-stage transpedicular debridement, posterior instrumentation and fusion. These patients were followed for a minimum of 5 years. Patients were assigned to one of two groups according to the infected anatomic segment. In the thoracic spinal tuberculosis group, there were 28 cases (17 males, 11 females) with a mean age of 38.9 years; in the thoracolumbar spinal tuberculosis group, there were 31 cases (19 males, 12 females) with a mean age of 40.3 years. All cases were evaluated clinically using the visual analog scale (VAS), Kirkaldy–Willis criteria and the American Spinal Injury Association (ASIA) impairment scale. Radiographs were performed for measuring the angle of kyphosis and scoliosis. Complications related to surgery were recorded. Results:All patients successfully resolved their infections, experienced one or more ASIA grades of improvement, and improved in their VAS pain scores at final follow-up. In both groups, patient-reported outcomes reached over 90% excellent or good results using Kirkaldy–Willis criteria. The loss of kyphotic angle correction was 2.6° in the thoracic spinal tuberculosis group and 3.2° in the thoracolumbar spinal tuberculosis group. No scoliosis was observed in either group. Fifty-eight (98.3%) cases achieved solid bony fusion. In the thoracolumbar spinal tuberculosis group, one patient experienced screw loosening, and another patient with nonunion and rod breakage underwent revision surgery. Conclusions:The technique of single-stage transpedicular debridement, posterior instrumentation and fusion is an effective method for the treatment of thoracic and thoracolumbar spinal tuberculosis in adults. Long-term postoperative clinical and radiological outcomes were satisfactory. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]