• Shea Rossen posted an update 5 hours, 38 minutes ago

    Frequency estimation of physical symptoms for peoples is the most direct way to analyze and predict infectious diseases. In Internet of medical Things (IoMT), it is efficient and convenient for users to report their physical symptoms to hospitals or disease prevention departments by various mobile devices. Unfortunately, it usually brings leakage risk of these symptoms since data receivers may be untrusted. As a strong metric for health privacy, local differential privacy (LDP) requires that users should perturb their symptoms to prevent the risk. However, the widely-used data structure called sketch for frequency estimation does not satisfy the specified requirement. In this paper, we firstly define the problem of frequency estimation of physical symptoms under LDP. Then, we propose four different protocols, i.e., CMS-LDP, FCS-LDP, CS-LDP and FAS-LDP to solve the above problem. Next, we demonstrate that the designed protocols satisfy LDP and unbiased estimation. We also present two approaches to implement the key component (i.e., universal hash functions) of protocols. Finally, we conduct experiments to evaluate four protocols on two real-world datasets, representing two different distributions of physical symptoms. The results show that CMS-LDP and CS-LDP have relatively optimal utility for frequency estimation of physical symptoms in IoMT.In order to understand the impact of the COVID-19 pandemic on higher education, we surveyed approximately 1500 students at one of the largest public institutions in the United States using an instrument designed to recover the causal impact of the pandemic on students’ current and expected outcomes. Results show large negative effects across many dimensions. Due to COVID-19 13% of students have delayed graduation, 40% have lost a job, internship, or job offer, and 29% expect to earn less at age 35. Moreover, these effects have been highly heterogeneous. One quarter of students increased their study time by more than 4 hours per week due to COVID-19, while another quarter decreased their study time by more than 5 hours per week. This heterogeneity often followed existing socioeconomic divides. Lower-income students are 55% more likely than their higher-income peers to have delayed graduation due to COVID-19. Finally, we show that the economic and health related shocks induced by COVID-19 vary systematically by socioeconomic factors and constitute key mediators in explaining the large (and heterogeneous) effects of the pandemic.Rab35, a member of the Rab GTPase family, has been implicated in various cellular processes including cell motility and membrane trafficking. Although Rab35 is localized to the plasma membrane, Rab proteins that are identified to have high sequence homology with Rab35 exhibit distinct subcellular localization patterns. Comparing the amino acid sequences between Rab35 and its family members revealed a significant variation in an approximate 30-amino acid region of the C-terminus. This suggests that this region determines the subcellular localization of individual Rab proteins. To confirm this hypothesis, we constructed Rab35-Rab10 chimera proteins by exchanging their C-terminal domains with one another. Confocal microscopy of RAW264 cells expressing EGFP-fused Rab35-Rab10 chimeras has indicated that the C-terminal region of Rab35 is critical for its plasma membrane localization. Furthermore, we were able to determine that a basic amino acid cluster exists in the C-terminal region of Rab35 and that Rab35 localization shifts to the Golgi membrane when the number of basic amino acids in this region is reduced. Thus, it is likely that the approximate 30-amino acid C-terminal region containing basic clusters is responsible for Rab35 plasma membrane localization and that its preferential localization depends on the number of basic amino acids.Previous studies have shown that neonatal shaking brain injury (SBI) causes transient microhemorrhages (MHs) in the gray matter of the cerebral cortex and hippocampus. Iron deposits and iron-uptake cells are observed surrounding MHs in this SBI model, suggesting local hypoxic-ischemic conditions. However, whether the shaken pups suffered systemic hypoxic-ischemic conditions has remained uncertain. Further, histopathological correlations of MHs on magnetic resonance imaging (MRI) are still unclear. The present study examined MHs after neonatal SBI using a combination of histochemical and susceptibility-weighted imaging (SWI) analyses. see more Systemic oxygen saturation analyses indicated no significant difference between shaken and non-shaken pups. MHs on postnatal day 4 (P4) pups showed decreased signal intensity on SWI. Iron histochemistry revealed that these hypointense areas almost completely comprised red blood cells (RBCs). MHs that appeared on P4 gradually disappeared by P7-12 on SWI. These resolved areas contained small numbers of RBCs, numerous iron-positive cells, and punctate regions with iron reaction products. Perivascular iron products were evident after P12. These changes progressed faster in the hippocampus than in cortical areas. These changes in MHs following neonatal SBI may provide new insights into microvascular pathologies and impacts on brain functions as adults.Reactive gliosis is a defense mechanism to minimize and repair the initial damage after CNS injuries that is characterized by increases in astrocytic reactivity and proliferation, with enhanced expression of glial fibrillary acidic protein (GFAP) and cellular hypertrophy. Fatty acid binding protein 7 (FABP7) is abundantly expressed in several types of glial cells, such as astrocytes and oligodendrocyte precursor cells, during brain development and FABP7-positive astrocytes have been shown to be significantly increased in the mouse cortex after a stab injury. However, the functional significance of FABP7 in gliosis remains unclear. In the present study, we examined the mechanism of FABP7-mediated regulation of gliosis using an in vitro scratch-injury model using primary cultured astrocytes. Western blotting showed that FABP7 expression was increased significantly in scratch wounded astrocytes at the edge of the injury compared with intact astrocytes. Through monitoring the occupancy of the injured area, FAB7-KO astrocytes showed a slower proliferation rate compared with WT astrocytes after 48 hr, which was confirmed by BrdU immunostaining.