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The performance of hash-based Scheduling optimization algorithm for network flow cannot be bounded under the worst-case because of hash conflicts. To make up for the shortage of the above algorithm, a multiple-hash algorithm based on counting Hash Adapter, which stores the digest of flow needed to be adjusted in the Exact Stream Hash Adapter(ESHA) structure, is designed. Compared with the basic hash table, the integrity of the conversation is maintained and the query performance is improved due to the lower probability of conflict. An example is given as a validation of this method and the result data reflect the practical effect.

Anomaly-based Web application firewalls (WAFs) are vital for providing early reactions to novel Web attacks. In recent years, various machine learning, deep learning, and transfer learning-based anomaly detection approaches have been developed to protect against Web attacks. Most of them directly treat the request URL as a general string that consists of letters and roughly use natural language processing (NLP) methods (i.e., Word2Vec and Doc2Vec) or domain knowledge to extract features. In this paper, we proposed an improved feature extraction approach which leveraged the advantage of the semantic structure of URLs. Semantic structure is an inherent interpretative property of the URL that identifies the function and vulnerability of each part in the URL. The evaluations on CSIC-2020 show that our feature extraction method has better performance than conventional feature extraction routine by more than average dramatic 5% improvement in accuracy, recall, and F1-score. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fungal strain, Penicillium chrysogenum A096, was isolated from an Arctic sediment sample. Its culture supernatant inhibited mycelial growth of some plant pathogenic fungi. After saturation of P. chrysogenum A096 culture supernatant with ammonium sulfate and ion exchange chromatography, a novel antifungal protein (Pc-Arctin) was purified and identified by matrix assisted laser desorption ionization-time of flight-time of flight-mass spectrometry (MALDI-TOF-TOF-MS). The gene encoding for Pc-Arctin consisting of 195 nucleotides was cloned from P. chrysogenum A096 to confirm the mass spectrometry result. Pc-Arctin displays antifungal activity against Paecilomyces variotii, Alternaria longipes, and Trichoderma viride at minimum inhibitory concentrations (MIC) of 24, 48, and 192 ng/disc, respectively. Pc-Arctin was most sensitive to proteinase K and then to trypsin but insensitive to papain. Pc-Arctin possesses high thermostability and cannot be antagonized by common surfactants, except for sodium dodecyl sulfate (SDS). Divalent ions, such as Mn 2+, Mg 2+, and Zn 2+, inhibited the antifungal activity of Pc-Arctin. Hemagglutination assays showed that Pc-Arctin had no hemagglutinating or hemolytic activity against red blood cells (RBC) from rabbits, rats, and guinea pigs. Therefore, Pc-Arctin from Arctic P. chrysogenum may represent a novel antifungal protein with potential for application in controlling plant pathogenic fungal infection. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Interleukin-33 (IL-33) was recently implicated in cancer pathogenesis. However, the possible effect of IL-33 on tumor progression of colorectal cancer (CRC), which is one of the most commonly diagnosed and lethal cancers worldwide, was still unclear. Here we evaluated the potential role of IL-33/ST2 pathway in metastasis of human CRC. We found an elevated expression of IL-33 and ST2 in tumor tissues of CRC patients. Higher expressions of IL-33 and ST2 were observed in poor-differentiated human CRC cells. Of note, IL-33 stimulation promoted the invasion of human CRC cells in a dose dependent manner. Enhanced IL-33/ST2 signaling promoted CRC metastasis, while attenuated IL-33/ST2 signaling decreased CRC metastasis. In consistent, enforced IL-33 expression in human CRC cells enhanced their growth, metastasis and reduced the survival time in nude mice, while decreased IL-33 expression in human CRC cells inhibited their growth, metastasis and prolonged the survival time in nude mice. Finally, we observed an increased expression of IL-6, CXCR4, MMP2 and MMP9 in response to IL-33/ST2 signaling in human CRC cells, which were crucial for the enhanced metastasis by IL-33 stimulation. Collectively, our findings demonstrated that IL-33/ST2 pathway could contribute to the metastasis of human CRC, which could enlarge the understanding of CRC pathogenesis and provide clues for developing new CRC therapeutics. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Background: In recent years, a range of novel smartphone-derived data streams about human mobility have become available on a near-real-time basis. These data have been used, for example, to perform traffic forecasting and epidemic modeling. During the COVID-19 pandemic in particular, human travel behavior has been considered a key component of epidemiological modeling to provide more reliable estimates about the volumes of the pandemic's importation and transmission routes, or to identify hot spots. However, nearly universally in the literature, the representativeness of these data, how they relate to the underlying real-world human mobility, has been overlooked. This disconnect between data and reality is especially relevant in the case of socially disadvantaged minorities., Objective: The objective of this study is to illustrate the nonrepresentativeness of data on human mobility and the impact of this nonrepresentativeness on modeling dynamics of the epidemic. This study systematically evaluates how real-world travel flows differ from census-based estimations, especially in the case of socially disadvantaged minorities, such as older adults and women, and further measures biases introduced by this difference in epidemiological studies., Methods: To understand the demographic composition of population movements, a nationwide mobility data set from 318 million mobile phone users in China from January 1 to February 29, 2020, was curated. Specifically, we quantified the disparity in the population composition between actual migrations and resident composition according to census data, and shows how this nonrepresentativeness impacts epidemiological modeling by constructing an age-structured SEIR (Susceptible-Exposed-Infected- Recovered) model of COVID-19 transmission., Results: We found a significant difference in the demographic composition between those who travel and the overall population. In the population flows, 59% (n=20,067,526) of travelers are young and 36% (n=12,210,565) of them are middle-aged (P<.001), which is completely different from the overall adult population composition of China (where 36% of individuals are young and 40% of them are middle-aged). This difference would introduce a striking bias in epidemiological studies: the estimation of maximum daily infections differs nearly 3 times, and the peak time has a large gap of 46 days., Conclusions: The difference between actual migrations and resident composition strongly impacts outcomes of epidemiological forecasts, which typically assume that flows represent underlying demographics. Our findings imply that it is necessary to measure and quantify the inherent biases related to nonrepresentativeness for accurate epidemiological surveillance and forecasting., (©Chuchu Liu, Petter Holme, Sune Lehmann, Wenchuan Yang, Xin Lu. Originally published in JMIR Formative Research (https://formative.jmir.org), 28.06.2024.)

Cluster of differentiation 47 (CD47) overexpression is common in various malignancies. This study investigated whether CD47 promotes human glioblastoma invasion and, if so, the underlying mechanisms involved. CD47 expression was found to be stronger in tissues of patients with glioblastoma and in various cancer cell lines than in normal controls. CD47 downregulation via siRNA suppressed invasion in vitro, whereas CD47 overexpression through plasmid transfection exerted the opposite effect. However, overexpression or knocking down of CD47 had no effect on cell proliferation. Moreover, CD47 expression was related to Akt phosphorylation at the cellular molecular level. Suppression of Akt with a specific inhibitor impaired the invasion ability of CD47-overexpressing cells, indicating that stimulation of the PI3K/Akt pathway served as the downstream regulator of CD47-triggered invasion. These results suggest that CD47 might be a useful predictor of poor prognosis and metastasis and a potential target for treating glioblastomas.

The dysregulation of microRNAs (miRNAs) plays an important function in the onset and progression of gastric cancer (GC). In addition, aberrantly expressed miRNAs affect the chemosensitivity of GC cells to chemotherapeutic drugs. Hence, miRNA-based targeted therapy might be applied to treat patients with GC exhibiting chemotherapeutic resistance. In this study, miRNA-623 (miR-623) expression was downregulated in GC tissues and cell lines. Functional analysis showed that the restored miR-623 expression could inhibit the proliferation of GC cells and enhance their chemosensitivity to 5-FU via the cell apoptosis pathway. Cyclin D1 (CCND1) was identified as a direct target gene of miR-623 in GC. The overexpressed CCND1 in GC tissues was negatively correlated with miR-623 level. The recovered CCND1 expression counteracted the effects of miR-623 on GC cell proliferation, chemosensitivity, and 5-FU-induced apoptosis. Thus, our results suggest that miR-623 might function as a tumor suppressor in GC and could be a promising therapeutic target for patients with GC, especially those with chemotherapeutic resistance.