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Asthma, emphysema, COVID-19 and other lung-impacting diseases cause the remodeling of tissue structural properties and can lead to changes in conducting pulmonary volume, viscoelasticity, and air flow distribution. Whole organ experimental inflation tests are commonly used to understand the impact of these modifications on lung mechanics. Here we introduce a novel, automated, custom-designed device for measuring the volume and pressure response of lungs, surpassing the capabilities of traditional machines and built to range size-scales to accommodate both murine and porcine tests. The software-controlled system is capable of constructing standardized continuous volume-pressure curves, while accounting for air compressibility, yielding consistent and reproducible measures while eliminating the need for pulmonary degassing. This device uses volume-control to enable viscoelastic whole lung macromechanical insights from rate dependencies and pressure-time curves. Moreover, the conceptual design of this device facilitates studies relating the phenomenon of diaphragm breathing and artificial ventilation induced by pushing air inside the lungs. System capabilities are demonstrated and validated via a comparative study between ex vivo murine lungs and elastic balloons, using various testing protocols. Volume-pressure curve comparisons with previous pressure-controlled systems yield good agreement, confirming accuracy. This work expands the capabilities of current lung experiments, improving scientific investigations of healthy and diseased pulmonary biomechanics. Ultimately, the methodologies demonstrated in the manufacturing of this system enable future studies centered on investigating viscoelasticity as a potential biomarker and improvements to patient ventilators based on direct assessment and comparisons of positive- and negative-pressure mechanics.

Privacy is a major issue in the age of the Internet. Many advances are being made in Cryptography regarding performing computations over private data, both in homomorphic encryption, multi-party computation, and applications that put these to use. Herein we present a multiparty protocol for the private evaluation of a finite state machine. We motivate this by noting that many features can be extracted from text using the finite state transducer, an easy extension of the general FSM. For example, this protocol could be used as the feature extraction phase of an end-to-end private machine learning algorithm over text inputs. Our protocol(s) build on those previously developed by offering a different balance between communication, computation and rounds. Notably, we offer a 2-round protocol with fairly low communication. The previous constant round protocol had higher communication, and the previous low communication protocol had rounds proportional to the input size. A very computation efficient version is provided if a third party is available who is not trusted beyond non-collusion. And a more computationally intensive version removes the need for this helper.

Delamination between lamellae of the annulus fibrosus is a crucial stage of intervertebral disc herniation, and to better understand the mechanics of the delamination process, a novel lap test was devised. Specimens consisting of two adjacent, naturally bonded lamellae were obtained from the cervical region of frozen porcine spines. They were cut into specimens nominally 3.5 mm wide by 7 mm long and tabs of the deep and superficial layers were removed from opposite ends of the specimens so that a 4.5–5.0 mm long intact interface remained between the lamellae. Specimens were mounted in a BioTester tensile instrument using BioRake attachments having 5 sharpened points side-by-side, and they were strained at 2%/s. Force–time curves were obtained and, using tracking software, a detailed map was made of the time course of the displacements within the specimens. Extensibility of the lamellae themselves was found to substantially complicate interpretation of the data. The experiments, together with mathematical analyses and finite element models, show that much of the shear load is transferred between lamellae at the ends of the bonded region, a finding of clinical importance. The inter-lamellae bond was found to have a peak strength of 0.30±0.05 N/mm of specimen width (not to be confused with lap length), and the remarkable ability to carry substantial load even when lamellae had displaced up to 10 mm relative to each other.

We propose protocols for obliviously evaluating finite-state machines, i.e., the evaluation is shared between the provider of the finite-state machine and the provider of the input string in such a manner that neither party learns the other's input, and the states being visited are hidden from both. For alphabet size \\(|\\Sigma|\\), number of states \\(|Q|\\), and input length \\(n\\), previous solutions have either required a number of rounds linear in \\(n\\) or communication \\(\\Omega(n|\\Sigma||Q|\\log|Q|)\\). Our solutions require 2 rounds with communication \\(O(n(|\\Sigma|+|Q|\\log|Q|))\\). We present two different solutions to this problem, a two-party one and a setting with an untrusted but non-colluding helper.

User profiling from user generated content (UGC) is a common practice that supports the business models of many social media companies. Existing systems require that the UGC is fully exposed to the module that constructs the user profiles. In this paper we show that it is possible to build user profiles without ever accessing the user's original data, and without exposing the trained machine learning models for user profiling -- which are the intellectual property of the company -- to the users of the social media site. We present VirtualIdentity, an application that uses secure multi-party cryptographic protocols to detect the age, gender and personality traits of users by classifying their user-generated text and personal pictures with trained support vector machine models in a privacy-preserving manner.

The genus Alena Navás, 1916, is considered the most distinct genus of Raphidiidae, because of the uncommon shape of its male genital sclerites and its geographic distribution restricted to the southwestern U.S.A. and western Mexico. Herein, we present a new species of the subgenus Aztekoraphidia U. Aspöck and H. Aspöck, 1970, – Alena (Aztekoraphidia) alanae sp. nov. Based on this discovery we present a detailed morphological study and the first morphological phylogeny of Alena . Our results recover this genus as monophyletic, including the subgenus Aztekoraphidia as sister to a clade composed by the other two monotypic subgenera, Alena s.s. Navás, 1916, and Mexicoraphidia U. Aspöck and H. Aspöck, 1970. We also provide a hypothesis about the biogeographic history of the group, which advocates that species of Alena are strongly associated with central Mexico and their ancestors were probably widely distributed through western North America in the past, of which only a few small groups survived in glacial refuges.

Background and objectives To identify factors predictive of a favourable modified Rankin score (mRS) at 12 months in patients with autoimmune encephalitis (AE). To evaluate predictors of a binary composite clinical-functional outcome measure, encompassing mRS, drug-resistant epilepsy (DRE) and memory impairment, at 12 months. Methods Univariable and multivariable logistic regression analyses for predictors of a favourable mRS (i.e. mRS ≤ 2) and a composite clinical-functional outcome at 12 months were used. Results A total of 231 patients with AE were recruited. Multivariable logistic regression identified factors predictive of reduced odds of favourable mRS at 12 months were older age (OR 0.97; 95% CI 0.95, 0.98; p  < 0.001), T2/FLAIR hyperintensity on initial MRI (OR 0.27; 95% CI 0.13, 0.56; p  < 0.001), RSE (OR 0.17; 95% CI 0.06, 0.52; p  = 0.002) and first-line immunotherapy failure (OR 0.18; 95% CI 0.09, 0.37; p  < 0.001). Anti-LGI1 antibody-mediated encephalitis relative to other subtypes (OR 4.46; 95% CI 1.55, 12.80; p  = 0.006) was associated with a better 12-month mRS. We found concordant associations for a composite outcome at 12 months, with the addition of a diagnosis of definite autoimmune limbic encephalitis (AILE) predicting a poor outcome. Discussion Older age, MRI T2/FLAIR hyperintensity, RSE and first-line immunotherapy failure predicted worse mRS and composite clinical-functional outcome at 12 months, while a diagnosis of anti-LGI1 antibody-mediated encephalitis was associated with favourable outcomes. Our data highlight acute clinical factors predictive of a more severe clinical and functional course at 12 months.

We report the discovery of the first transient with MeerKAT, MKT J170456.2\\(-\\)482100, discovered in ThunderKAT images of the low mass X-ray binary GX339\\(-\\)4. MKT J170456.2\\(-\\)482100 is variable in the radio, reaching a maximum flux density of \\(0.71\\pm0.11\\,\\mathrm{mJy}\\) on 2019 Oct 12, and is undetected in 15 out of 48 ThunderKAT epochs. MKT J170456.2\\(-\\)482100 is coincident with the chromospherically active K-type sub-giant TYC 8332-2529-1, and \\(\\sim18\\,\\mathrm{years}\\) of archival optical photometry of the star shows that it varies with a period of \\(21.25\\pm0.04\\,\\mathrm{days}\\). The shape and phase of the optical light curve changes over time, and we detect both X-ray and UV emission at the position of MKT J170456.2\\(-\\)482100, which may indicate that TYC 8332-2529-1 has large star spots. Spectroscopic analysis shows that TYC 8332-2529-1 is in a binary, and has a line-of-sight radial velocity amplitude of \\(43\\,\\mathrm{km\\,s^{-1}}\\). We also observe a spectral feature in anti-phase with the K-type sub-giant, with a line-of-sight radial velocity amplitude of \\(\\sim12\\pm10\\,\\mathrm{km\\,s^{-1}}\\), whose origins cannot currently be explained. Further observations and investigation are required to determine the nature of the MKT J170456.2\\(-\\)482100 system.