Elena Ferrante: Egy „virtuális” szerző

A jelen tanulmány az Elena Ferrante írói álnév alatt publikált regényeket vizsgálja azért, hogy kísérletet tegyen az álnév mögött rejtőző szerzőség azonosítására. A tanulmány ugyanakkor többre vállalkozik annál, minthogy egyszerűen újranyissa a szerzőazonosítás kérdését; a kutatás valódi jelentősége az, hogymagának a szerzői ujjlenyomatnak az állandóságát teszteli Ferrante műveinek vonatkozásában, rejtőzzön akárki is az írói álnév mögött. A kutatási kérdés megválaszolásához egy 150 regényből álló korpusz állt rendelkezésre, a stilisztikai hasonlóság méréséhez az úgynevezett Bootstrap Consensus Network eljárásthasználta a kutatás. Azon szerzők listája, akiknek a szerzői ujjlenyomata a leginkább egyezőnek bizonyult „Ferrante” lenyomataival – köztük Domenico Starnonéval a lista élén – az úgynevezett Rolling Classify (’mozgó osztályozás’) metódus alkalmazásával vált hozzáférhetővé. Ez a módszer – amit Ferrante ésStarnone regényein egymástól függetlenül alkalmaztunk – az irodalmi szövegek lokális stilisztikai sajátosságainak feltárására alkalmas, ami ezáltal részletesebb megfigyeléseket is megfogalmazhatóvá tesz. Az összkép, néhány kivételtől eltekintve, megerősíti, hogy Starnone és Ferrante stílusa megkülönböztethető egymástól, ami viszont erős érvnek mutatkozik a „virtuális szerzőség” hipotézise mellett. Úgy tűnik, hogy Domenico Starnone – különösen kései műveiben – képes megkülönböztetni egymástól saját és alteregója hangját.

A Dynamic Graph-Based Systems Framework for Modeling, and Control of Cyber-Physical Systems Typified by Buildings

In this chapter, we present a framework for modeling certain classes of cyber-physical systems using graph-theoretic thinking. The cyber-physical systems we consider are typified by buildings. We show that the thermal processes associated with a building can be represented as a graph in which (1) the node variables (temperature and heat flows) are governed by a dynamic system and (2) interconnections between these nodes (walls, doors, windows) are also described by a dynamic system. In general, we call a collection of such nodes and interconnections a dynamic graph (dynamic consensus network).Driven to explore this by developing thermal examples, this study outlines a practical framework for dynamic consensus networks and dynamic graphs. In a manner that seamlessly extends these concepts from the static cases, we will explore the combination of dynamic degrees, adjacency, Laplacian matrices, and incident matrices. With these conceptual tools, one can quickly identify equivalent concepts of dynamic consensus networks.

Comprehensive Analysis of Regulatory Factors and Immune-Associated Patterns to Decipher Common and BRCA1/2 Mutation-Type-Specific Critical Regulation in Breast Cancer

Background:BRCA1/2 mutations are closely related to high lifetime risk of breast cancer (BC). The objective of this study was to identify the genes, regulators, and immune-associated patterns underlying disease pathology in BC with BRCA1/2 somatic mutations and their associations with clinical traits.Methods: RNA sequencing data and clinical information from The Cancer Genome Atlas (TCGA; N = 36 BRCA1-mutant BC; N = 49 BRCA2-mutant BC; and N = 117 BRCA1/2-wild-type BC samples) were used for discovery, which included consensus network analysis, function enrichment, and analysis of hub genes; other TCGA data (N = 117 triple-negative BC) and two Gene Expression Omnibus database expression profiles were used as validation cohorts.Results: Consensus network analysis helped to identify specific co-expressed modules that showed positive correlations with tumor stage, number of positive lymph nodes, and margin status in BRCA1/2-mutant BC but lacking correlations in BRCA1/2-wild-type BC. Functional enrichment suggested potential mechanisms in BRCA1/2 carriers that could regulate the cell cycle, immune response, cellular metabolic processes, and cell migration, via enriched pathways including p53 and JAK–STAT signaling. Consensus network analysis identified the specific and common carcinogenic mechanisms involving BRCA mutations. Regulators cross-linking these modules include E2F or IRF transcription factor family, associated with cell cycle or immune response regulation module, respectively. Eight hub genes, including ISG15, BUB1, and TTK, were upregulated in several BRCA1/2-mutant BC datasets and showed prognostic value in BC. Furthermore, their genetic expression was related to higher levels of immune infiltration in BRCA1/2-mutant BC, which manifested as recruitment of T helper cells (Th1 cells), follicular helper T cells, and regulatory T cells, and T cell exhaustion. Moreover, important indicators for evaluation of BC immunotherapy, tumor mutational burden and neoantigen load also positively correlated with expression of some hub genes.Conclusion: We constructed a BRCA1/2 mutation-type-specific co-expressed gene network with related transcription factors and immune-associated patterns that could regulate and influence tumor metastasis and immune microenvironment, providing novel insights into the pathological process of this disease and the corresponding BRCA mutations.

A Challenge-Response Assisted Authorisation Scheme for Data Access in Permissioned Blockchains

Permissioned blockchains can be applied for sharing data among permitted users to authorise the data access requests in a permissioned blockchain. A consensus network constructed using pre-selected nodes should verify a data requester’s credentials to determine if he or she have the correct permissions to access the queried data. However, current studies do not consider how to protect users’ privacy for data authorisation if the pre-selected nodes become untrusted, e.g., the pre-selected nodes are manipulated by attackers. When a user’s credentials are exposed to pre-selected nodes in the consensus network during authorisation, the untrusted (or even malicious) pre-selected nodes may collect a user’s credentials and other private information without the user’s right to know. Therefore, the private data exposed to the consensus network should be tightly restricted. In this paper, we propose a challenge-response based authorisation scheme for permissioned blockchain networks named Challenge-Response Assisted Access Authorisation (CRA3) to protect users’ credentials during authorisation. In CRA3, the pre-selected nodes in the consensus network do not require users’ credentials to authorise data access requests to prevent privacy leakage when these nodes are compromised or manipulated by attackers. Furthermore, the computational burden on the consensus network for authorisation is reduced because the major computing work of the authorisation is executed by the data requester and provider in CRA3.