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Pap smear testing is crucial for early diagnosis of cervical cancer, but cell overlapping poses a significant challenge to diagnostic accuracy, as improper processing of overlapping cells can lead to misclassification. While significant research efforts have been devoted to segmenting overlapping cells, there is an absence of thorough reviews covering existing studies. This survey represents the first comprehensive exploration of technologies aiming to segment overlapping cells in cervical cytology images. Initially, we collected over 100 relevant papers from various open-source databases using diverse keywords. Subsequently, we conducted a thorough analysis covering various aspects, including datasets, evaluation methods, and data augmentation techniques. We then categorized the applications into conventional machine learning and deep learning approaches, further subdividing both methods into three groups. We summarized articles that utilized conventional machine learning methods and compared the outcomes with those employing deep learning methods. Finally, we provide insights into current challenges and prospects in this critical domain.

The importance of smart contracts at the legal level is increasing. However, the contract is written in natural language, and the computers cannot process it directly. Thus, accurately understanding contract content and meaning representation remains challenging. This problem leads to a lack of regularization in generating smart contract programs and legal recognition and effectiveness. Therefore, it is necessary to develop a new approach to transform real-life legal contracts into smart contract programs and ensure the regularization of legal element extraction and program conversion. In this paper, we propose a contract text markup language (CTML), which is a normative computer processing language for expressing meaning in legal contracts. A method for regulating the content and meaning representation of legal contract text is established by annotating the content and meaning representation of the syntax, structure, and vocabulary in the contract using CTML to achieve the extraction and conversion of contract elements. First, a contract metamodel of CTML, which includes a three-layer “element−property−component” semantic structure and metadata markup representation, is established. Thereafter, the contract text information is gradually refined from “large to small” and “coarse to fine” to build the corresponding relationship from real-life contracts to smart legal contracts. Furthermore, the syntax of CTML is designed such that the legal elements can be extracted and regularized to form an annotated contract using CTML. Second, we designed specific conversion rules from CTML to smart legal contract language to generate smart legal contract programs by recursively abstracting syntax trees and establishing a mapping relationship. These rules help users write contracts, improve the efficiency of converting contract text to executable code, and ensure that smart legal contracts are written on solid grounds, thereby improving the conversion chain from legal contracts to executable smart contracts. In addition, considering a factoring contract as an example, we illustrated the details of semantic extraction and code generation. Accordingly, the contract semantic extraction is clearer, the conversion is more normative, and the code development is more effective. Thus, the proposed CTML provides an alternative regularization method to generate smart legal contracts.

As a legally binding computer program, smart contracts are stored on the blockchain and can be automatically executed according to the contract terms. These features of smart contracts provide a trusted execution environment for the electronic voting system. However, since the contract is deployed on an open and transparent blockchain, this causes a considerable threat to the validity and privacy of the voting content. However, due to the openness of the blockchain network, any node linked to the network can obtain information concerning contract transactions on the chain without restriction, which greatly threatens the validity and privacy of the voting content. To address this problem, a smart-contract voting system has been designed. First, we construct a new interactive zero-knowledge set membership proof protocol (ZSMPP) based on the discrete logarithm problem. Using ZSMPP in the design of the smart-contract voting system, the voter can verify the voting content validity to the initiator without disclosing the voting content itself to avoid the impact of invalid votes. Moreover, we prove that the proposed protocol is complete and has zero knowledge. Second, we describe the voting contract by the specification language of smart-contract (SPESC) and limit the trigger conditions of stages of the voting system through contract terms. By deploying the voting contract to the blockchain as a JAR file, the proposed smart-contract voting system can be automatically executed in accordance with the predefined contract terms. Additionally, we further introduce the execution process and related algorithms of the four stages of the proposed voting system and show the related execution results in the form of contract transactions. Furthermore, we analyzed five security features of the proposed voting protocol. Particularly, the validity of the ballot content is ensured by the zero-knowledge of our protocol, which can prevent invalid votes from affecting the system. The privacy of the ballot ensures that the voting content is undisclosed either in the verification or counting stage. Uniqueness ensures that each voter can only vote once. Supervision-free means that there are no trusted supervisors in the proposed voting protocol. Self-counting indicates that smart-contract programs automatically implement the counting process. Finally, the performance of the proposed smart-contract voting system is analyzed. The experimental results show that both the voting and counting stages of our voting system can be implemented efficiently. Moreover, our smart-contract voting system can provide a reference for effectively combining the cryptographic protocol construction technology and smart-contract voting system.

With software service transactions shifting from pay-before-use to pay-as-you-go, the Software as a Service (SaaS) subscription model is facing legalization and financialization challenges. This means that it does not accept financial payment on a pay-as-you-go basis, nor does it legally regulate the rights and obligations of service providers, consumers, and platforms. To address these issues, this paper introduces a new architecture called Smart Legal Contract (SLC), which is integrated into a service computing platform (SaaSC). To begin with, a contract-type service interface scheme is intended to handle the subscription process of service registration and publication on SaaS. In this scheme, we define six types of interactions, four kinds of microservice states, and their state transition procedures, and then establish the mapping from the general service interface following the OpenAPI Specification to the contract terms in the SLC-style SPESC language. To achieve a regularized interaction approach during service registration, a new term, called Service Registration Term (SRT), is proposed. Furthermore, the legal Negotiation-Acceptance mechanism is used to grant consumer rights to obtain software services. Second, in the process of service discovery and consumption, a payment mechanism for contracting demand is proposed. Specifically, based on the service matching approach with a three-level cache, other new terms, called Service Discovery Term (SDT) and Service Customization Term (SCT), are designed to specify the requests and responses of service discovery and invocation. A billing model driven by SRT, SDT, and SCT has been developed to implement fine-grained charging on the level of service interface calls and to evidence the preservation of service transactions in the blockchain. As a result, it provides a legal guarantee for the use of pay-as-you-go mode. From the aspect of service legalization, the SaaS+SaaSC architecture supports establishing three kinds of terms, including service registration, discovery, and customization terms, in an SLC-based software subscription contract so that a complete transaction procedure can be regulated among the three above parties based on their interactions, service states, and their transition process. In terms of service financialization, the interface declaration is appended to the SLC-based contract. By automatically executing smart contracts and checking the terms, the pay-as-you-go mode is implemented through fine-grained charging every time when calling the service interface. Furthermore, we take the weather forecast service as an example to implement and analyze the acquisition, delivery, and contractual payment of software services on blockchain smart contracts. The experimental results demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of the proposed SaaS+SaaSC architecture, which should be a practicable approach for contracting of software services.

Smart legal contract (SLC), as a form of smart contract in accordance with the law, has attracted extensive attention in recent years. However, the conclusion procedure of an SLC still lacks effective technical methods to make it conform to the current legal regulations, which directly affects the legitimacy of the SLC contract. Therefore, this paper starts with the relevant legal regulations of contract conclusion and introduces the idea of contract normative pattern (CNP), which is a reusable form, model, or template for contract conclusion. Based on these regulations, we propose a standardized conclusion procedure of smart legal contracts. This procedure includes four stages: establishment, deployment, conclusion, and deposit to meet the current legal regulations for the conditions of establishment in the written contracts. Meanwhile, a written form of interactive interface is proposed to satisfy the two stages of “negotiation” and “acceptance” in the CNP. The negotiation stage supports the parties to repeatedly negotiate and determine the pending contents in the CNP, and the acceptance stage is to activate the behavioral attribute by actively triggering predefined algorithms, such as registration and signature. In addition, the syntax of contract conclusion, including parties’ negotiation and acceptance, is introduced in the SLC language, SPESC, to adhere to the “negotiation-acceptance” mechanism in the conclusion procedure. In this paper, we design three blockchain’s transaction structures to store interactive data during party registration, signature, and clause execution. Finally, considering the sales contract as an example, we analyze the legitimacy of the proposed conclusion scheme based on three aspects: negotiation confirmation, acceptance confirmation, and deposit legitimacy. This paper will provide a legal basis for the conclusion procedure of an SLC and promote better achievement of legalization of a smart contract.

With the advancement of blockchain, smart contracts have become increasingly popular. However, the uncertain status by law severely limits their practical applications. To address the problem, smart legal contract (SLC) is proposed as a transitional technology between legal and smart contracts. Starting with the basic concept of SLCs, in this paper, we discussed the legalization of smart legal contracts based on the requirements of existing legislation items and highlight that legalization should meet three elementary principles, including the specified grammatical requirements (for regulating terminology and eliminating ambiguity), the principle of nonempowerment (for resolving the inherent contradiction between automatic execution and the rights of parties), and examination criteria (for handling legal validity and code security issues). Moreover, we analyzed SLC’s legal effect by taking typical smart legal contract languages, SPESC and CML as examples, and show that the contract program or chaincode has the same legal effect as the original contract, if and only if they satisfy three necessary conditions: (1) adopting the technical specification for generation and conclusion of SLCs; (2) complying with three abovementioned elementary principles; and (3) agreeing on declaration with the same legal effect. Furthermore, investigating the smart contract architecture and deployment, the legal status of both contract program and compiled chaincode was demonstrated in legal analysis of the deployed smart contract. Last, we discussed and evaluated the current situation of smart legal contract logic models and language models on SLCs. This work shows that the research on smart legal contracts is a suitable approach to guarantee the legal status of smart contracts, and the results will contribute to grasping the future research directions in several fields, such as contract logic, arbitration process, and formal verification, from the existing legislation viewpoint.

Although endovascular treatment is a promising approach, blood blister-like aneurysms (BBAs) still present treatment challenges. This study aimed to assess the effectiveness and safety of flow diverter device-assisted coiling (FDDAC) for the treatment of BBAs, which are broad based and friable with a high rebleeding risk. Eight patients (five females and three males) who presented with subarachnoid hemorrhages (SAH) due to BBA ruptures between May 2020 and May 2022 were retrospectively enrolled. All patients were treated by flow diverter device (Tubridge) adjunctive coil embolization using a semi-deploying technique. The demographic information, angiographic data, interval between admission and treatment, materials, therapy, clinical outcomes (including periprocedural and intraprocedural mortality and morbidity), and follow-up results of all patients were reviewed. The mean age of the patients with BBAs was 48.5 years (range 31–62 years); aneurysm sizes ranged from 2.2 × 1.7 mm to 4.6 × 3.2 mm, and the median Hunt–Hess score was 3. All aneurysms were completely closed at follow-up, and all 8 patients had excellent clinical outcomes (modified Rankin scores = 0–2) at discharge. Angiograms showed complete aneurysm occlusion after 6 months to 1 year. In addition, there were no cases of re-rupture, re-treatment, or recurrence of the aneurysms. FDDAC is safe to use in patients with BBAs and provides an alternative treatment option for this disease.

Hydraulic concrete in cold regions is necessary for good frost resistance. The utilization of finely ground PS (FGPS) in the construction of hydropower projects could solve the pollution issue and the fly ash shortage problem. In this work, the influence of FGPS and fly ash on frost resistance, pore structure and fractal features of hydraulic concretes was investigated and compared. The main results are: (1) The inclusion of 15–45% FGPS reduced the compressive strength of plain cement concretes by about 21–52%, 7–23% and 0.4–8.2% at 3, 28 and 180 days, respectively. (2) The inclusion of FGPS less than 30% contributed to the enhancement of 180-day frost resistance. At the same dosage level, the FGPS concrete presented larger compressive strengths and better frost resistance than fly ash concrete at 28 and 180 days. (3) At 3 days, both the addition of FGPS and fly ash coarsened the pore structures. FGPS has a much stronger pore refinement effect than fly ash at 28 and 180 days. The correlation between frost resistance of hydraulic concrete and pore structure is weak. (4) At 28 days, the incorporation of FGPS and fly ash weakened the air void structure of hydraulic concrete. At 180 days, the presence of FGPS and fly ash was beneficial for refining the air void structure. The optimal dosage for FGPS and fly ash in terms of 180-day air void refinement was 30% and 15%, respectively. The frost resistance of hydraulic concretes is closely correlated with the air void structure. (5) The pore surface fractal dimension (Ds) could characterize and evaluate the pore structure of hydraulic concretes, but it was poorly correlated with the frost resistance.

In this paper, we address the problem of secure decision of membership. We present a Zero-Knowledge Dual Membership Proof (ZKDMP) protocol, which can support positive and negative (Pos-and-Neg) membership decisions simultaneously. To do it, two secure aggregation functions are used to compact an arbitrarily-sized subset into an element in a cryptographic space. By using these aggregation functions, a subset can achieve a secure representation, and the representation size of the subsets is reduced to the theoretical lower limit. Moreover, the zeros-based and poles-based secure representation of the subset are used to decide Pos-and-Neg membership, respectively. We further verify the feasibility of combining these two secure representations of the subset, so this result is used to construct our dual membership decision cryptosystem. Specifically, our ZKDMP protocol is proposed for dual membership decisions, which can realize a cryptographic proof of strict Pos-and-Neg membership simultaneously. Furthermore, the zero-knowledge property of our construction ensures that the information of the tested element will not be leaked during the implementation of the protocol. In addition, we provide detailed security proof of our ZKDMP protocol, including positive completeness, negative completeness, soundness and zero-knowledge.

Objective: Our group aimed to investigate the expression pattern of miRNA-873-5p in cervical cancer (CC) patients and its association with CC progression. Methods: Reverse transcription-quantitative polymerase chain reaction (RT-qPCR) was applied for the examination of the expressions of miRNA-873-5p in both CC specimens and cell lines. The clinical significance of miRNA-873-5p was statistically analyzed. MTT, colony formation, Transwell and flow cytometry assays were used to detect cell proliferation, metastasis, and apoptosis changes of Hela and Siha cell line. Luciferase reporter assays and Western blots were utilized to identify the target genes of miRNA-873-5p. Western blot and RT-PCR were used to judge the dysregulation of Notch signaling. Results: Our results indicated that miRNA-873-5p expression was distinctly reduced in CC patients. Low miRNA-873-5p expressions were distinctly correlated with positively distant metastasis, The International Federation of Gynecology and Obstetrics (FIGO) stage and poor prognosis of CC patients. A functional assay using miRNA-873-5p mimics indicated that overexpression of miRNA-873-5p distinctly suppressed CC cells proliferation and metastasis, and promoted apoptosis. Bioinformatic assays revealed that miRNA-873-5p may target the 3’-UTR of ZEB1 and lead to the suppression of its translation, which was verified by the use of luciferase assays. Finally, overexpression of miRNA-873-5p suppressed the expressions of Jag1, Maml2 and Hey1. Conclusion: Taken together, we firstly provided evidence that miRNA-873-5p expression was a poor favorable factor for CC patients, and the use of miRNA-873-5p may represent a and potential biomarker and promising therapeutic approach for CC.

Cement-based materials, including cement paste, mortar, and concrete, are the most widely used construction materials in the world [...]

Magnesium oxysulfate (MOS) cement is a typical eco-friendly cementitious material, which presents excellent performances. In this work, a novel multiscale modeling strategy is proposed to simulate the hydration and pore structure of MOS cement system. This work collected and evaluated the Gibbs free energy of formation for main hydrates and equilibrium constant of main reactions in MOS cement system based on a first principle calculation using Material Studio. Followingly, the equilibrium phase compositions of MOS cement system were simulated through PHREEQC to investigate the molar ratio dependence of equilibrium phase compositions. Results showed that large M (MgO/MgSO4) was beneficial for the formation of 5Mg(OH)2·MgSO4·7H2O (Phase 517) and large H (H2O/MgSO4) tended to decompose MOS cement paste and cause leaching. The microstructure-based method visualized the hydration status of MOS cement systems at initial and ultimate stages via MATLAB and the results showed that large M was significant to reduce porosity, and similar results for the case of small H. Fractal analysis confirms that fractal dimension of pore structure (Df) was significantly decreased after the hydration of MOS and was positively correlated to the porosity of the paste. In addition, it can be referred that large M and small H were beneficial for modifying the microstructure of MOS paste by decreasing the value of Df.

Despite the wide usage of screen media among young children, less is known about the relationships between children's screen time and their social competence development as impacted by family-related factors. Here, we investigated parents' engagement, children's screen time, and their social competence among Taiwanese Chinese children's families at three time points as the children aged (Time 1: N = 2,037, including 991 girls, M = 3.00 years; Time 2: N = 1,785, including 868 girls, M = 4.00 years; Time 3: N = 1,749, including 842 girls, M = 5.01 years). "Research Findings": From ages 3 to 5 years, parental engagement positively predicted children's social competence, whereas children's screen time negatively predicted their social competence. Examination of the mechanism underlying these longitudinal relationships suggested that when parents engaged less frequently in interacting with children, their children tended to spend more time on screen media, and then developed a lower level of social competence during the early years. "Practice or Policy": Our findings indicate that young children's time spent on screen media should be monitored and restricted. Instead of keeping children occupied with screen media, parents and educators should engage more actively in interacting with children to promote their social competence.