Perfect Protection Research Articles

Melanin 'dust' or 'ghost'?

Melanin 'dust' or 'ghost'?

Dissolved organic carbon from the upper Rio Negro protects zebrafish (Danio rerio) against ionoregulatory disturbances caused by low pH exposure.

The so-called “blackwaters” of the Amazonian Rio Negro are rich in highly coloured dissolved organic carbon (DOC), but ion-poor and very acidic, conditions that would cause fatal ionoregulatory failure in most fish. However these blackwaters support 8% of the world’s ichthyofauna. We tested the hypothesis that native DOC provides protection against ionoregulatory dysfunction in this extreme environment. DOCs were isolated by reverse-osmosis from two Rio Negro sites. Physico-chemical characterization clearly indicated a terrigenous origin, with a high proportion of hydroxyl and phenolic sites, high chemical reactivity to protons, and unusual proteinaceous fluorescence. When tested using zebrafish (a model organism), Rio Negro DOC provided almost perfect protection against ionoregulatory disturbances associated with acute exposure to pH 4.0 in ion-poor water. DOC reduced diffusive losses of Na+ and Cl−, and promoted a remarkable stimulation of Na+ uptake that otherwise would have been completely inhibited. Additionally, prior acclimation to DOC at neutral pH reduced rates of branchial Na+ turnover, and provided similar protection against acid-induced ionoregulatory disturbances, even if the DOC was no longer present. These results reinforce the important roles that DOC molecules can play in the regulation of gill functions in freshwater fish, particularly in ion-poor, acidic blackwaters.

Risk Factors for the Postoperative Transfusion of Allogeneic Blood in Orthopedics Patients With Intraoperative Blood Salvage: A Retrospective Cohort Study.

The purpose of this study is to explore the risk factors affecting the postoperative transfusion of allogeneic blood in patients undergoing orthopedics surgery with intraoperative blood salvage (IBS). A retrospective study of 279 patients undergoing orthopedic surgeries with IBS from May 2013 to May 2015 was enrolled. The binary logistic regression was used to find out the risk factors associated with postoperative transfusion of allogeneic blood in orthopedics patients with IBS, and then receiver operating characteristic (ROC) curve was drawn to determine the optimal threshold of the regression model.Single factor analysis showed that age, American Society of Anesthesiologists (ASA) grade, preoperative hemoglobin, operation time, received autologous blood, the laying time of autologous blood, bleeding volume, and postoperative drainage volume had significant effects on postoperative allogeneic blood transfusion.In binary logistic regression analysis, the independent factors predicting orthopedic patients with IBS need to transfuse allogeneic blood after surgeries were age (odds ratio [OR] = 0.415, P = 0.006), ASA grade (OR = 2.393, P = 0.035), preoperative hemoglobin (OR = 0.532, P = 0.022), and postoperative drainage volume (OR = 4.279, P = 0.000). The area under ROC curve was 0.79 and the predicted accuracy rate of the model was 81.58%.After operation, the orthopedic patients with IBS still have a high allogeneic blood transfusion rate, and IBS is not a perfect blood protection method. The logistic regression model of our study provides a reliable prediction for postoperative transfusion of allogeneic blood in orthopedic patients with IBS, which have a certain reference value.

Secure Multiparty Quantum Computation for Summation and Multiplication.

As a fundamental primitive, Secure Multiparty Summation and Multiplication can be used to build complex secure protocols for other multiparty computations, specially, numerical computations. However, there is still lack of systematical and efficient quantum methods to compute Secure Multiparty Summation and Multiplication. In this paper, we present a novel and efficient quantum approach to securely compute the summation and multiplication of multiparty private inputs, respectively. Compared to classical solutions, our proposed approach can ensure the unconditional security and the perfect privacy protection based on the physical principle of quantum mechanics.

Broadening the angle of view on aposematism: a comment on Skelhorn et al.

Much of previous research on aposematism has dealt with questions related to the “initial evolution” of aposematism (i.e., arise of this often striking defense strategy under conditions where predators have no previous experience of it) and to natural selection on warning signals. With their review article, Skelhorn et al. (2016) redirect our attention to what one could call the everyday ecology of predation on defended prey: When in an established community there are prey species or individuals that differ in quantity or quality of protective chemical compounds, what are the factors that influence predators’ decision to consume the prey? Behavioral ecological theory states that forager behavior approximates optimality with respect to costs and benefits and that foraging decisions are also influenced by physiological state. A series of experiments conducted by the authors confirm that this also applies to predation on chemically defended prey. The authors raise a valid point: Although aposematism is usually not considered to provide perfect protection for prey, the adaptive aspects of predation on aposematic prey have seldom been considered. Skelhorn et al. (2016) make a point of how little we know about how different factors influence predator decision making (or about cognitive processes, as they call it). There is a value to identifying areas where more knowledge or new theoretical frameworks would be needed. However, there are several research topics and areas (e.g., herbivory on defended plants or pollination of flowers that vary in quality or quantity of reward they provide, optimal foraging theory, optimal defense theory) addressing questions that are similar or related to questions about information processing and decision making by predators consuming chemically defended prey and how the optimal decisions may vary with the physiological state of the consumer or the quality of the resource. Therefore, it would be even more fruitful to review and integrate such relevant knowledge from other areas to provide a foundation for the framework that the authors are asking for, to initiate the work needed to fill the indicated gaps of knowledge. Studies dealing with the evolution of aposematism have often treated this strategy as a special case, an evolutionary paradox or peculiarity, and yet we know that there is a large range variation both in the strength of the defense and in the visual appearance (distinctiveness and conspicuousness) of defended prey. Moreover, these 2 aspects do not necessarily covary, but there are a number of prey species that possess chemical defenses and yet do not appear particularly conspicuous or distinctive at least to humans. Therefore, one of the benefits of the approach proposed by Skelhorn et al. (2016) is that it makes us consider aposematic prey as something that is incorporated in the set of everyday foraging decisions that predators face. The approach would also allow us to take into account the large variability in defenses of prey. This broader angle of view may also help us to find answers to some profound questions: What is aposematism and how can we identify aposematic prey (without subjectivity), considering the enormous variability in visual appearance and in quantity and quality of defenses among prey? In which ways does the ecology of aposematic prey differ from other, defended or undefended prey? Instead of the dichotomic categorization of prey to aposematic and nonaposematic, we maybe should think of various prey benefitting from aposematism to different degrees and even different ways.

Allocating Protection Resources to Facilities When the Effect of Protection is Uncertain

We study a new facility protection problem in which one must allocate scarce protection resources to a set of facilities given that allocating resources to a facility only has a probabilistic effect on the facility’s post-disruption capacity. This study seeks to test three common assumptions made in the literature on modeling infrastructure systems subject to disruptions: 1) perfect protection, e.g., protecting an element makes it fail-proof, 2) binary protection, i.e., an element is either fully protected or unprotected, and 3) binary state, i.e., disrupted elements are fully operational or non-operational. We model this facility protection problem as a two-stage stochastic program with endogenous uncertainty. Because this stochastic program is non-convex we present a greedy algorithm and show that it has a worst-case performance of 0.63. However, empirical results indicate that the average performance is much better. In addition, experimental results indicate that the mean-value version of this model, in which parameters are set to their mean values, performs close to optimal. Results also indicate that the perfect and binary protection assumptions together significantly affect the performance of a model. On the other hand, the binary state assumption was found to have a smaller effect.

CTAB-assisted synthesis of S@rGO composite with enhanced photocatalytic activity and photostability

S@rGO(reduced graphene oxide) composites were synthesized by a facile electrostatic attraction in the presence of cetyltriethylammnonium bromide (CTAB). Scanning electron microscopy images show that sulfur particles were wrapped by a thin layer of rGO. The rGO nanocoating enhanced the absorption of visible light, facilitated the separation of photogenerated charges, promoted the adsorption of dye moleculars, and provided the perfect chemical protection to inner sulfur particles. As a result, the rGO nanocoating improved the photocatalytic activity and photostability of the sulfur photocatalyst for the degradation of methylene blue under simulated solar light irradiation. Our results might open up a promising way to develop stable and highly efficient sulfur-based photocatalyst.

Building a Robust Client-Side Protection Against Cross Site Request Forgery

In recent years, the web has been an indispensable part of business all over the world and web browsers have become the backbones of today's systems and applications. Unfortunately, the number of web application attacks has increased a great deal, so the matter of concern is securing web applications. One of the most serious cyber-attacks has been by cross site request forgery (CSRF). CSRF has been recognized among the major threats to web applications and among the top ten worst vulnerabilities for web applications. In a CSRF attack, an attacker takes liberty be authorized to take a sensitive action on a target website on behalf of a user without his knowledge. This paper, providing an overview about CSRF attack, describes the various possible attacks, the developed solutions, and the risks in the current preventive techniques. This paper comes up with a highly perfect protection mechanism against reflected CSRF called RCSR. RCSR is a tool gives computer users with full control on the attack. RCSR tool relies on specifying HTTP request source, whether it comes from different tab or from the same one of a valid user, it observes and intercepts every request that is passed through the user’s browser and extracts session information, post the extracted information to the Server, then the server create a token for user's session. We checked the working of RCSR extension, our evaluation results show that it is working well and it successfully protects web applications against reflected CSRF.

Human rights, self-determination, and external legitimacy

It is commonly supposed that (a) at least some states possess a moral right against external intervention in their domestic affairs and (b) all human rights violations give members of the international community reasons to undertake preventive or remedial action against offending states. No state, however, currently protects or could reasonably be expected to protect its subjects’ human rights to a perfect degree. In view of this reality, many have found it difficult to explain how any existing or readily foreseeable state could enjoy a moral right of nonintervention without denying the normative force of human rights. This article seeks to reconcile these apparently incompatible commitments by arguing that, in addition to acting in defense of human rights, outsiders must be appropriately responsive to individuals’ distinct and potentially countervailing interests in collective self-determination. I show that, under certain demanding but not unrealistic conditions, individuals’ interests in self-determination are of sufficient weight not simply to ground a judgment against intervention in particular cases but to generate arobust right of nonintervention on the part of some states that nevertheless fail to secure perfect protection of their subjects’ human rights.

Silica-assistant synthesis of three-dimensional graphene architecture and its application as anode material for lithium ion batteries

A new approach for scalable synthesis of three-dimensional graphene (3d-G) with the assistant of silica is reported. Silica is generated on the surface of graphene oxide through a facile solution reaction. Graphene coated by silica is reduced through thermal reduction. 3d-G can be obtained after the subsequent etching process. The structures and morphologies of samples are investigated. It is demonstrated that the agglomeration of individual graphene sheets during the thermal reduction is effectively avoided under the perfect protection of silica. The electrochemical studies of the material show a significant enhancement in the specific capacity and rate capability of the lithium ion battery over commercially available graphite electrodes due to its unique 3D cross-linked graphene architecture. This method enables us to develop a facile and effective approach to scalable preparation of graphene.

Adverse selection versus hold up: Tenure choice, tenancy protection and equilibrium in housing markets

In this paper, we consider the tenure choice problem under different schemes of legal tenancy protection. We analyze the interaction between the rental and resale housing markets under conditions of bilateral asymmetric information regarding housing quality and the type of residents. Home ownership is associated with a trade-off between the loss caused by asymmetric information and rent exploitation by landlords in a holdup problem. With perfect protection for tenants, adverse selection in the resale housing market becomes problematic, and the market disappears. Conversely, the absence of tenancy protection mitigates adverse selection in the resale housing market and leads to a separating equilibrium.

Spyware Resistant Smartphone User Authentication Scheme

As smart phones are becoming widely used, a variety of services to store and use important information such as photos and financial information are now provided. User authentication to protect this information is increasingly important. The commonly used 4-digit PIN, however, is vulnerable to the Brute Force Attack, Shoulder-Surfing Attack, and Recording Attack. Various authentication techniques are being developed in order to solve these problems. However, the technique that provides perfect protection, even from the Recording Attack, is not yet known, and in most cases, a password can be exposed by multiple Recording Attacks. This paper proposes a new user authentication method that protects against a Recording Attack from spyware on the user's smart phone. The proposed method prevents password exposure by multiple Recording Attacks, is implemented on a real Android phone, and has been evaluated for usability.

Research and design of thermal cloak in arbitary shape

On the basis of transformation thermodynamics, a thermal conductivity expression for cylindrical thermal cloak with arbitrary cross section is derived. Based on the expression, we design a thermal cloak with a non conformal section profile. Results of full wave simulation show that the cloak possesses heat protection function, since it is capable of guiding heat fluxes to travel around its inner domain, leaving the inner region untouched; meanwhile, the heat fluxes return to their original pathways, resulting in a perfect thermal invisible effect. Arbitrary shaped cylindrical thermal cloak with conformal or non-conformal cross section can be designed based on the derived thermal conductivity expression, and all of them have perfect thermal protection and invisibility functions. It is indicated that the derived conductivity expression is applicable to designing cylindrical thermal cloaks with an arbitrary cross section. The generality of this method has been confirmed, and it may have potential applications in the designing of thermal protection devices for computer chips and satellite, etc.

Tailoring the grain structure of IN718 during selective electron beam melting

Selective electron beam melting (SEBM) is an additive manufacturing method where complex parts are built from metal powders in layers of about 50 μm. SEBM works under vacuum conditions which results in a perfect protection of the metal alloy. The electron beam is used for heating (about 900 ∘C building temperature) and selective melting. The high beam velocities allow innovative scanning strategies in order to adapt the local solidification conditions which determine the epitaxial solidification process of IN718. We show how scanning strategies can be used either to produce a columnar grain structure with a high texture in building direction or a complete texture-free fine grained structure. Numerical simulations of the selective melting process are applied to reveal the fundamental mechanisms responsible for the completely different grain structures. In addition the influence of the different grain structures on the mechanical properties of IN718 is briefly discussed.

Four Girls Mountains Savage Peak Climbing Theme Attractions Design

By the fieldwork method, describe the basic situation of the four girls mountains one peak, explores the savage peak climbing area construction. Results indicate that four girls mountains peaks of geographical conditions suitable for construction in rock climbing as the theme of tourist attractions, Can plan set low, medium level of rock climbing experience area, limit climbing, blundering area, Big rock point of the downhill, camp, viewing deck and tourists rest camps, etc. The camp content is rich and concentrated, With perfect scenic area security system protection as support, Can be used as the rock theme attractions of four maiden's mountain area, At the same time to enhance mountain guide, mountain rescue, mountain co-ordinator and other technical system to cultivate ideal training base.

Multiuser Message Authentication, Application to Verifiable Secret Sharing and Key Management Schemes

Providing authentication for the messages exchanged among a group of users is an important issue in secure group communication. We develop multiuser authentication schemes with perfect protection against colluding malicious users numbering fewer than k, where all the n users are allowed to be senders (simultaneously with being receivers). In our scheme each user is required to store secret information of size 2klog2 q 1 bits, and tags to authenticate messages are of length klog 2 q. We use this to obtain, in the setup in which the participants are allowed to employ previously distributed private keys, a non-interactive verifiable secret sharing scheme for multiple dealers, in which shares reveal no information about the secret, and dealers cannot deal inconsistent shares. We also provide authentication to the group key management schemes proposed by Blundo et al. and Fiat-Naor without incurring extra storage cost.

Fabrication and properties of nano indium tin oxide/wool keratin composites

ABSTRACTA functional keratin/indium tin oxide (ITO) composite was prepared by a route involving an ionic liquid dissolving process and a wet‐chemical codeposition technique. The crystal structure and morphology of ITO were investigated by X‐ray diffraction and transmission electron microscopy, respectively. The factors influencing the crystal structure and the size of the ITO were investigated in detail. The optimal In/Sn ratio, reaction temperature, and pH value were found to be 10:1, 70°C, and 7, respectively. The sheet resistance of the composite reached 0.39 kΩ/□. In addition, the composite films possessed a perfect UV protection ability with a UV protection factor of up to 43.78. © 2013 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 2014, 131, 39641.

Reconstruction of upper eyelid and medial canthus following basal cell carcinoma resection: a successful one‐stage repair with three local flaps

Excision of upper eyelid skin cancer often leads to moderate to large defect. Numerous procedures are available to reconstruct such defects, and the reconstructive path chosen should be individualized for each patient. The aim of the reconstruction is a movable eyelid, perfect corneal protection, good aesthetic quality, and acceptable sequelae at the donor site. The purpose of this paper was to present a unique one-stage eyelid reconstruction procedure. A 79-year-old male suffered from a skin carcinoma on his left medial canthus, which also involved medial tarsal palate of the upper eyelid. The carcinoma was excised by Mohs micrographic surgery, resulting in a 24 × 10 mm tissue defect on the upper eyelid and medial canthus. A tarsoconjunctival flap pedicled superiorly with the levator aponeurosis, Müller's muscle, and conjunctiva, was designed to reconstruct the posterior lamellar defect. The anterior lamellar defect was repaired with two local skin flaps. The tarsoconjunctival flap and skin flaps survived well. At the third month postoperative visit, the patient was symptom free, and there was no donor site morbidity at the site where tarsus was taken or at the skin flap donor sites. Complete eyelid closure was maintained. Reconstruction of moderate to large upper eyelid defects with the similar one-stage procedure is recommended.

Complete Protection against Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus-Mediated Lethal Respiratory Disease in Aged Mice by Immunization with a Mouse-Adapted Virus Lacking E Protein

Zoonotic coronaviruses, including the one that caused severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS), cause significant morbidity and mortality in humans. No specific therapy for any human coronavirus is available, making vaccine development critical for protection against these viruses. We previously showed that recombinant SARS coronavirus (SARS-CoV) (Urbani strain based) lacking envelope (E) protein expression (rU-ΔE) provided good but not perfect protection in young mice against challenge with virulent mouse-adapted SARS-CoV (MA15). To improve vaccine efficacy, we developed a second set of E-deleted vaccine candidates on an MA15 background (rMA15-ΔE). rMA15-ΔE is safe, causing no disease in 6-week-, 12-month-, or 18-month-old BALB/c mice. Immunization with this virus completely protected mice of three ages from lethal disease and effected more-rapid virus clearance. Compared to rU-ΔE, rMA15-ΔE immunization resulted in significantly greater neutralizing antibody and SARS-CoV-specific CD4 and CD8 T cell responses. After challenge, inflammatory cell infiltration, edema, and lung destruction were decreased in the lungs of rMA15-ΔE-immunized mice compared to those in rU-ΔE-immunized 12-month-old mice. Collectively, these results show that immunization with a species-adapted attenuated coronavirus lacking E protein expression is safe and provides optimal immunogenicity and long-term protection against challenge with lethal virus. This approach will be generally useful for development of vaccines protective against human coronaviruses as well as against coronaviruses that cause disease in domestic and companion animals.

Nematode Management in Potatoes (Irish or White)

Nematode species and population levels, incidence of soil-borne diseases and insects, soil moisture at field preparation time, and the intended market for the potatoes can all affect the choice of nematode control measures. Growers should use a combination of as many different kinds of control measures as feasible, since none provides perfect protection for the crop. This 7-page fact sheet was written by J.W. Noling and published by the UF Department of Entomology and Nematology, December 2012.
 http://edis.ifas.ufl.edu/ng029