High Evasion Research Articles

Specific Activation of T Cells by an ACE2-Based CAR-Like Receptor upon Recognition of SARS-CoV-2 Spike Protein.

Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2) is the causative agent of the Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) pandemic, which is still a health issue worldwide mostly due to a high rate of contagiousness conferred by the high-affinity binding between cell viral receptors, Angiotensin-Converting Enzyme 2 (ACE2) and SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein. Therapies have been developed that rely on the use of antibodies or the induction of their production (vaccination), but despite vaccination being still largely protective, the efficacy of antibody-based therapies wanes with the advent of new viral variants. Chimeric Antigen Receptor (CAR) therapy has shown promise for tumors and has also been proposed for COVID-19 treatment, but as recognition of CARs still relies on antibody-derived sequences, they will still be hampered by the high evasion capacity of the virus. In this manuscript, we show the results from CAR-like constructs with a recognition domain based on the ACE2 viral receptor, whose ability to bind the virus will not wane, as Spike/ACE2 interaction is pivotal for viral entry. Moreover, we have developed a CAR construct based on an affinity-optimized ACE2 and showed that both wild-type and affinity-optimized ACE2 CARs drive activation of a T cell line in response to SARS-CoV-2 Spike protein expressed on a pulmonary cell line. Our work sets the stage for the development of CAR-like constructs against infectious agents that would not be affected by viral escape mutations and could be developed as soon as the receptor is identified.

The impact of salary level on the diagnosis and treatment of children with cow's milk protein allergy: a prospective observational cross-sectional study

Cow's milk protein allergy (CMPA) is a type of food allergy (FA), that is, a reaction of the immune system in the gastrointestinal tract due to the ingestion of proteins such as beta-lactoglobulin, alphalactalbumin, and casein. This condition most substantially affects children in the early stages of their development, about 2% of the American child population, and, consequently, directly or indirectly influences the families of each of them. In the Brazilian context, the epidemiological analysis is shallow in quantitative and qualitative data. Because of this, this study aims to understand the path of patients with CMPA, from diagnosis to treatment, and how their income and their knowledge of their rights in the Unified Health System interfere throughout this process. A form was used as a method to collect data from families with CMPA patients, accounting for 107 in all, which were consulted through online communities. Facing the financial and nutritional challenges of treating a child with CMPA and, at the same time, with the results obtained, the authors of this study were able to verify that, despite the high cost of adapting the diet of this AA, the economic factor was not it was relevant within this consulted microcosm regarding treatment, but slightly influential in the diagnosis. Analyzing the knowledge of the benefit offered by SUS concerning the child's nutritional supplementation, it was possible to verify that, of a total of 44 people, about 45%, know the benefit, but do not use it, and do not perform the supplementation. So, for this and other obtained relations, the study concluded that low income is not a limiting factor for the treatment of patients with CMPA, being slightly influential in the way in which families seek the diagnosis of this FA. In line with this view, it was possible to note the high evasion of SUS Primary Care and the non-use of the formulas offered, although they are sometimes known by the target audience.

Programas de triagem auditiva neonatal: indicadores de qualidade e acesso aos serviços de saúde

Abstract Objectives: to verify the quality indicators of neonatal hearing screening programs, identify the most prevalent risk factors for hearing loss and analyze access to the Hearing Health Care Network. Methods: cross-sectional study using secondary data. The population are children born in public maternity hospitals from 2015 to 2019. Data collection was carried out in the database of programs and hearing health service. The absolute and relative frequencies of all variables collected and the median, the interquartile range and the Mann-Whitney test were calculated to analyze the access. Results: universality increased during the study period, but was not reached (71.9%; CI95%=70.4-73.3) and the referral rate for auditory diagnosis was within the recommended range (0.9%; CI95%=0.8-0.9). The most prevalent risk factors were congenital infections and heredity. There was an evasion of children to the hearing health service of 85.1% and the type of referral interfered with the age of the child at access. Eight children with hearing loss were diagnosed, in which seven had access to therapeutic interventions. Conclusions: hearing screening was not universal. Access to the Hearing Health Care Network presents high evasion and interventions were offered to children with hearing loss.

EvadeRL: Evading PDF Malware Classifiers with Deep Reinforcement Learning

With the growing popularity of information digitization and the advancement of executable file detection technology, PDF has emerged as an important carrier of malicious documents. Despite the improved efficacy of machine learning-based classifiers in detecting PDF malware, adversaries have proposed a variety of countermeasures to evade detection, such as generating adversarial examples. In contrast to other peer works attempting to expose the vulnerability of learning-based detection models, this work addresses the deficiencies of existing research by pointing out that the stochastic manipulations they applied may be highly computationally demanding. This work proposed EvadeRL, a general framework for automatically generating adversarial examples based on double deep Q-Network. The details of EvadeRL are briefly described as follows. First, the EvadeRL agent chooses a series of actions to modify the given PDF files and uses the classification results, as well as observations returning from the environment, to calculate the approximate value of each action. Second, through the interaction of the agent and the environment, the experiences gained are stored to train the decision network. Finally, the agent can generate adversarial examples against the target detector by taking the optimal behaviors after training. This study also contributes to the sustainability of evasion attacks by online fine-tuning; to the best of our current knowledge, this is the first study in the field that focuses on evolving malware. The experiments reveal that EvadeRL obtains a high evasion rate against PDF malware detectors and outperforms other approaches in terms of execution cost, robustness against hardened detectors, and sustainability against evolving malware and detectors.

Analysis and comparison of physiochemical properties, mutations and glycosylation patterns between RNA polymerase and membrane protein of SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2.

SARS-CoV-2 is a member of β-genus of the coronavirus subfamily, alongside the virus that causes SARS (Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome). As implied by their names, SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV genome sequences have close kinship (about 79% genomic sequence similarity). In the current research, sequence-based physiochemical properties of RNA polymerase and membrane glycoprotein of SARS-CoV-2 and SARS-CoV were compared. In addition, impacts of substitution mutations on stability and glycosylation patterns of these proteins were studied. In comparison of physiochemical features of membrane and RNA polymerase proteins, only instability index of membrane protein was difference between SARS-CoV and SARS-CoV-2. Mutation analysis showed increase in stability of RNA polymerase and decrease in stability of membrane protein in SARS-CoV-2. Glycosylation pattern analysis showed glycosylation enhancement in both membrane and RNA polymerase proteins of SARS-CoV-2 in comparison to SARS-CoV. In conclusion, more glycosylation and stability of SARS-CoV-2 RNA polymerase could be one of the reasons of high pathogenicity property and host immune system evasion of SARS-CoV-2.

Critical factors of pedagogical management that influence the evasion in higher education distance learning courses: a case study

Abstract: Society is currently experiencing scientific, technical and social progress, requiring constant renewal with higher quality dedicated to higher education. Distance education (EAD) allows the raise of new learning forms. EAD uses new technologies and the internet to raise the population education level, creating a higher professional qualification and providing training for specialists in several areas of knowledge. Despite the existing facilities and technologies, EAD has evasion rates that are around twenty-five percent. The question that raises from this data is; what are the critical factors associated to pedagogical management that led to this high evasion rate? The objective of the research was to determine the critical factors of pedagogical management, which have an impact on the evasion in undergraduate courses in the EAD. The research place was a higher education center in the north of Santa Catarina state. The identification of the critical factors and main variables that can cause evasion makes use of a method developed for this analysis, with data confronted with the literature, considering the main authors dealing with this topic. The tool chosen for the results analysis was the statistical correlation. Among the critical factors related to pedagogical management, it is possible to mention the adaptation to distance education, and support and feedback as fundamental questions to reduce evasion.

Estudo da evasão dos estudantes de Licenciatura e Bacharelado em Física: uma análise à luz da Teoria do Sistema de Ensino de Bourdieu

A evasão e a retenção são problemas que circundam os cursos de Física por todo o Brasil. Neste artigo, apresentamos os resultados de uma investigação, que se propôs a levantar alguns dos motivos relacionados a esses fenômenos. Para isso, foram feitas entrevistas com estudantes e os professores dos cursos de Licenciatura e Bacharelado em Física da Universidade Federal de Ouro Preto. Para o estudo dessa problemática assumimos a Teoria do Sistema de Ensino de Bourdieu, evidenciando as diversas relações de dominância existentes nos cursos, o que contribui para que a evasão e a retenção nesta Universidade analisada sejam altíssimas. Entre as conclusões a que chegamos, após os procedimentos analíticos do corpus investigativo, ou seja, dos relatos coletados, destacamos: para os estudantes esses motivos concentram-se nas relações pessoais “complicadas” com os professores e na rotina “acelerada” nas repúblicas em que residem; para os professores, o principal fator está relacionado ao uso do curso de Física como um “trampolim” para outros cursos, principalmente, Engenharias.

A feature-vector generative adversarial network for evading PDF malware classifiers

Cyber-Physical Systems (CPS) are increasingly utilizing machine learning (ML) algorithms to resolve different control and decision making problems. CPS are traditionally vulnerable to evasion attacks and adversarial examples, hence the integration of learning algorithms requires that these vulnerabilities are reevaluated to make the cyber-physical systems more secure and robust. In this work, we propose a novel evasion method based on a feature-vector generative adversarial network (fvGAN) to attack a learning-based malware classifier. The generative adversarial network (GAN) has been widely used in the realistic fake-image generation, but it has rarely been studied for adversarial malware generation. This work uses the fvGAN to generate adversarial feature vectors in the feature space, and then transforms them into actual adversarial malware examples. We have experimentally investigated the effectiveness of the proposed approach on a well-known PDF malware classifier, PDFRate, and evaluated the fvGAN-based attack in four evasion scenarios. The results show that the fvGAN model has a high evasion rate within a limited time. We have also compared the proposed approach with two existing attack algorithms, namely Mimicry and GD-KDE, and the results prove that the proposed scheme has better performance both in terms of evasion rate and execution cost.

Fiscal policys impact on economic growth an estimation on eight Balkan countries

The analysis of the correlation between fiscal policy and economic growth is a particularly important and highly debated topic in the theoretical and empirical literature. In this study we examine the impact of fiscal policy on economic growth in the eight western Balkan countries for the period 2005-2018. The results suggest that fiscal revenues have a positive impact on the economic growth of the countries under consideration. The empirical results also suggest that tax increases have a relatively low negative impact on the flow of foreign direct investments in these countries. As well as the fact that taxes have an almost negligible impact on the formation of capital in countries taken into consideration that are notable for corruption and high tax evasion. Our study contributes to the debate on the factors that influence economic growth and the impact of different taxes on real GDP growth in Balkan countries.

Considerações sobre os indicadores de formação docente no Brasil

Resumo Neste artigo buscamos analisar e tecer algumas considerações a respeito dos indicadores divulgados pelo Instituto Nacional de Estudos e Pesquisas Educacionais Anísio Teixeira/Ministério da Educação sobre a formação de professores nos cursos de licenciatura no Brasil. Os dados selecionados para análise e discussão foram retirados das sinopses estatísticas fornecidas entre os anos de 2001 e 2015 e compreendem o número de vagas oferecidas, de ingressos e de concluintes por cursos de graduação. A partir da análise dos dados, podemos observar que, embora o número de vagas tenha aumentado no período, os cursos de licenciatura ainda apresentam baixa procura e muitas vagas ociosas. Os cursos de Física têm o menor número de concluintes em comparação com os outros cursos analisados. Essa realidade pode ser influenciada por diferentes fatores, entre os quais a baixa procura por cursos de licenciatura e a alta taxa de evasão.

Evasion of Newborn Hearing Screening retest: relation with risk factors for hearing impairment

ABSTRACT Purpose: to analyze the evasion rate of the Newborn Hearing Screening program’s retest, to verify whether the presence of risk indicators for hearing loss influences it, and to describe which risk indicators for hearing loss occur more frequently in these cases. Methods: 1,287 newborns/infants participated, who were screened between June 2015 and June 2018. All of them obtained "fail" as the Newborn Hearing Screening result, were referred to the retest and did not attend it. Information related to the occurrence of risk indicators for hearing loss was observed. Results: the study found that the evasion rate was of 15.23%. The presence of risk indicators for hearing loss did not show an association with non-attendance at this stage of the program (p-value = 0.087). The most frequent indicators in the cases of non-attendance at the retest were: ototoxic medication use and intensive care unit stay for more than five days. Conclusion: high evasion rate of the retest has been observed. It has been found that the presence of risk indicators did not influence the retest evasion rate. Use of ototoxic medication and stay at the intensive care unit were the most frequent indicators among those who did not attend the retest.

Water quality and greenhouse gas fluxes for stormwater detained in a constructed wetland

Constructed wetlands (CWs) have been extensively used to deal with stormwater runoff and prevent flooding, as well as to improve water quality. However, some studies indicate that runoff from CWs can be a source of greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions to the atmosphere, as well as have increased levels of organic matter and nitrogen that may affect the environment and water quality of receiving waterways. We collected water samples at five different locations within a constructed stormwater detention wetland and determined dissolved organic carbon (DOC) and nitrate (NO3−), as well as carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4) and nitrous oxide (N2O) concentrations and fluxes. Results showed that the water had high levels of DOC and NO3−. Analysis of DOC quality showed that the organic matter is mainly derived from soil and plant litter, but it has some contribution from microbial sources as well. Additionally, the water was supersaturated with CO2 and CH4 with respect to the atmosphere, which resulted in high evasion fluxes of 4.1 g CO2-C m−2 d−1 and 45 mg CH4-C m−2 d−1. N2O flux was low, 36.6 μg N2O-N m−2 d−1, and varied between uptake and emission throughout the study period. Consideration of water quality and GHG emissions is key to evaluate the environmental performance of stormwater management systems.

Responsiveness (Buoyancy) of Union Taxes to GDP in India (1990–91 to 2015–16)

Changes in tax receipts of government take place with changes in Gross Domestic Product (GDP). Such changes in tax receipts may be the result of two factors: (1) there may be automatic changes in the tax yield when tax parameters are held constant. Such automatic changes are referred to as elasticity or built-in flexibility. (2) Increasing tax receipts may also necessitate imposition of new taxes, changes in rate structure of existing taxes, expansion of tax base, changes in scheme of exemptions, etc., or briefly referred to as discretionary changes. The overall responsiveness of tax revenues to discretionary changes in tax scheme (including automatic responses) is called responsiveness or buoyancy of the tax system and it is measured as the percentage change in tax receipts over percentage change in GDP. The tax structure of the Union Government in India is composed of direct and indirect taxes. In terms of tax receipts, direct taxes are mainly composed of corporation tax and income tax while indirect taxes mainly include customs, excise duties and service tax. An analysis of responsiveness (buoyancy) reveals that the overall buoyancy of union taxes has been 1.04. Direct taxes have had a higher buoyancy coefficient. Within direct taxes, corporation tax has exhibited higher buoyancy as compared to income tax. Buoyancy coefficient of indirect taxes has been less than 1.0 and within indirect taxes, buoyancy of excise duties has been lower than that of customs. Service tax has, however, revealed the highest buoyancy coefficient. Some of the factors responsible for lower buoyancy (responsiveness) of Indian taxes have been relatively slower expansion in base, increase in threshold limits, and large number of exemptions, rebates and deductions under tax laws, reduction in customs and excise duty rates under the impact of New Economic Policy, increasing tax evasion etc. It is high time that tax/GDP ratio in India be considerably raised through improving buoyancy coefficients. This would necessitate considerable expansion in tax base, bringing agricultural incomes under the Central Income tax net, rationalization of tax-preferences/incentives, bringing non-filers in unorganized sectors under the tax net, concentrating on High Net Worth Individuals, checking avoidance and evasion of taxes and improving tax administration. There is also need for introducing ‘accountability’ and switching over to ‘family’ as the unit of assessment.

Constraints from observations and modeling on atmosphere–surface exchange of mercury in eastern North America

AbstractAtmosphere–surface exchange of mercury, although a critical component of its global cycle, is currently poorly constrained. Here we use the GEOS-Chem chemical transport model to interpret atmospheric Hg0 (gaseous elemental mercury) data collected during the 2013 summer Nitrogen, Oxidants, Mercury and Aerosol Distributions, Sources and Sinks (NOMADSS) aircraft campaign as well as ground- and ship-based observations in terms of their constraints on the atmosphere–surface exchange of Hg0 over eastern North America. Model–observation comparison suggests that the Northwest Atlantic may be a net source of Hg0, with high evasion fluxes in summer (our best sensitivity simulation shows an average oceanic Hg0 flux of 3.3 ng m-2 h-1 over the Northwest Atlantic), while the terrestrial ecosystem in the summer of the eastern United States is likely a net sink of Hg0 (our best sensitivity simulation shows an average terrestrial Hg0 flux of -0.6 ng m-2 h-1 over the eastern United States). The inferred high Hg0 fluxes from the Northwest Atlantic may result from high wet deposition fluxes of oxidized Hg, which are in turn related to high precipitation rates in this region. We also find that increasing simulated terrestrial fluxes of Hg0 in spring compared to other seasons can better reproduce observed seasonal variability of Hg0 concentration at ground-based sites in eastern North America.

Portugues

Exceed expectations to retain customers and become professional, an increasing challenge to martial arts academies. Introduction: In an increasingly globalized environment, where each individual has specific needs, and the martial art academies increasingly become standardized, the challenge will be how to differentiate and gain advantage, to offer quality of life and innovation to customers. Objective: To identify the factors causing the evasion of customers, levels of managerial preparation of teachers and proprietors of academies and provide solutions for threat identification and development of management improvements. Methodology: The sample consisted of 27 teachers from different martial arts academies, who responded individually to the questionnaire containing 67 questions related to nine subjects, expressed as services, promoting services, outreach / promotion, social identity, professionalism, physical structure, management, compliance and sociability, in order to assess the quality of services offered by the public academies, totaling a database with 1809 records. Results: the results indicated a low level of preparedness of both professionals and managers, poor infrastructure as well as low innovation in the sector. Conclusion: It was determined that the high evasion is given by the technical inability of the administrators and teachers in improving their facilities and make the constantly dynamic activity.

Evaluation of the implementation of a newborn hearing screening protocol specific to children with risk indicators in a public maternity in Minas Gerais

Objective: to evaluate the results of the implementation of a specific newborn hearing screening protocol as well as to describe the protocol quality indicators and verify the occurrence of risk indicators for hearing impairment. Methods: all newborns (NB) in a public maternity belonging to the group at risk for hearing impairment and showing one or more risk indicator were included. Medical charts data from the newborn hearing screening program were compiled between May of 2011 and April of 2013. The evaluated quality indicators were: scope of examinations of newborns at risk, evasion rates for retesting, and diagnosis and follow-up in accordance with the proposed protocol. Results: 362 NBs were included. Out of the evaluated records, 258 NBs (71.3%) presented the “passed” result in the screening and 104 (28.7%) “failed”. A total of 111 NBs (30.7%) were discharged and 36 (9.9%) referred for diagnosis; 176 (48.6%) did not return to complete the evaluation, 37 (10.2%) have not yet completed the evaluation, and two (0.6%) died. Conclusion: 93.1% of NBs at risk were screened. The most prevalent risk indicator was “neonatal intensive care for more than five days of life”. The number of risk indicators found ranged from one to five per neonate. The protocol still shows a high evasion index, both for retesting and diagnosis and monitoring.

The black market in China for tiger products

Poaching of tigers is a major threat to the survival of the species. China is responsible for much of the demand for tiger parts. Poaching occurs because it is profitable and organizations able to procure transport and sell tiger products over thousands of miles and international borders also exist. Unfortunately there is little corresponding data on these organizations. It appears as if these organizations operate to minimize the most significant transaction cost along the supply chain. Tigers are a minority element in a portfolio of wildlife products assembled by smugglers in range states. Within China smugglers specialize in the skins and bones of tigers, and are most likely to operate in small, discrete groups. This is a function of the high coordination and evasion costs of operating in China. The demand for tiger parts has strong cultural and medicinal influences.

TAX EVASION AND STATE PRODUCTIVITY-AN EXPERIMENTAL STUDY

In an overlapping generations experiment with multiple families participants can support their parents directly and thereby reduce their tax burden or rely on tax-financed old-age support. State productivity is captured by the factor with which total tax revenues are multiplied to determine old-age support. This factor is systematically varied from 0.75 to 1.25. Tax payments depend on declared endowment. Tax evasion is possible, but monitored. Our results suggest that state productivity influences neither direct support of own parents nor tax evasion. The main effect is that rich endowment triggers relatively low support of own parents and high (and more frequent) tax evasion.

SPOTTED DOLPHIN EVASIVE RESPONSE IN RELATION TO FISHING EFFORT

Spotted dolphins in the eastern Pacific Ocean associate with yellowfin tuna. During the chase and encirclement phases of purse-seining for tunas, dolphin attempt to evade encirclement with the purse-seine net. We used data on evasive behavior (1982–2001) and numbers of purse-seine sets (1959–2001) to study the relationship between evasion and fishing effort. Results show that in nearshore areas first exploited by the fishery in the early 1960s, dolphins exhibited high evasion, but with a limited correlation between evasion and cumulative effort. In areas farther offshore next exploited in the mid-to late-1960s, dolphins showed high evasion and a significant correlation between evasion and cumulative effort. Dolphins in far-western and southern areas, first exploited in the late 1960s to early 1970s, exhibited low evasion, with little relationship to cumulative effort. We hypothesize that this spatial pattern is the result of two types of pressure from fishing: early effort in nearshore areas with a high risk of mortality that generated a lasting evasive response, followed by a longer period of even greater effort but with lower risk of mortality that generated evasion by longer-term learning.

Public Expenditure and Optimal Government Size in an Endogenous Growth Model: An Analysis of the Case of Argentina

By using an endogenous growth model, in which public services and facilities are subject to congestion (which occurs when output growth rate exceeds that of public spending), Rezk analyzes the relationship between public spending and the rate of economic growth. He derives the optimal government size, that is the size that maximises the per capita growth rate, for Argentina and compares it with the actual size. The results point to an actual size which is smaller than the optimal, suggesting that investment efforts should be increased, particularly in public construction which can more easily be congested by users. Moreover, the Author shows that in Argentina there is in fact room for a more efficient and better administered tax system, able to produce revenues consistent with the enlargement of the government size. In particular, Rezk argues that additional financial needs, as well as revenues required to partially eliminate highly distortionary existing taxation (such as Financial Transaction Taxes and Export Tariffs) and to settle defaulted public debt, would not alter the fiscal balance, provided that the extremely high evasion levels are reduced to more reasonable standards.