VarDefense: Variance-Based Defense against Poison Attack

The emergence of poison attack brings a serious risk to deep neural networks (DNNs). Specifically, an adversary can poison the training dataset to train a backdoor model, which behaves fine on clean data but induces targeted misclassification on arbitrary data with the crafted trigger. However, previous defense methods have to purify the backdoor model with the compromising degradation of performance. In this paper, to relieve the problem, a novel defense method VarDefense is proposed, which leverages an effective metric, i.e., variance, and purifying strategy. In detail, variance is adopted to distinguish the bad neurons that play a core role in poison attack and then purifying the bad neurons. Moreover, we find that the bad neurons are generally located in the later layers of the backdoor model because the earlier layers only extract general features. Based on it, we design a proper purifying strategy where only later layers of the backdoor model are purified and in this way, the degradation of performance is greatly reduced, compared to previous defense methods. Extensive experiments show that the performance of VarDefense significantly surpasses state-of-the-art defense methods.

The Ethnic Stacking in Africa Dataset: When leaders use ascriptive identity to build military loyalty

Ethnicity has played a core role in the construction of African security institutions, with leaders often relying on coethnics to secure military loyalty. Such practices, termed ethnic stacking, likely have profound consequences for a range of important outcomes, from combat effectiveness to coup propensity to democratization. The Ethnic Stacking in Africa Dataset provides the first comprehensive data on the ethnic stacking practices of all African countries, from independence to 2018 (with 95.7% of leaders and 98.3% of country years recovered). This new data will allow scholars to better understand African militaries and their behavior and capabilities.

Mitochondrial Effects on Seeds of Cancer Survival in Leukemia

The cancer metabolic alteration is considered a hallmark and fast becoming a road for therapeutic intervention. Mitochondria have been regarded as essential cell elements that fuel the metabolic needs of most cancer cell types. Leukemia stem cells (LSCs) are a heterogeneous, highly self-renewing, and pluripotent cell population within leukemic cells. The most important source of ATP and metabolites to fulfill the bioenergetics and biosynthetic needs of most cancer stem cells is the mitochondria. In addition, mitochondria have a core role in autophagy and cell death and are the main source of reactive oxygen species (ROS) generation. Overall, growing evidence now shows that mitochondrial activities and pathways have changed to adapt with different types of leukemia, thus mitochondrial metabolism could be targeted for blood malignancy therapy. This review focuses on the function of mitochondria in LSC of the different leukemia types.

Patients’ Perspectives on User Involvement in General Practice. A Qualitative Analysis of Free-Text Comments

Background: General practice plays a core role in managing the pathways of patients with chronic diseases. Despite the increased focus on patient involvement in healthcare practice and well-established knowledge of the benefits of involvement and personalized care, involvement in general practice appears to be challenged. This study aimed to explore patient involvement in general practice from the patients’ perspectives. Method: The study involved a questionnaire survey investigating patient involvement in general practice from the patients’ perspectives. The validated questionnaire includes an open-ended question encouraging responders to provide additional comments regarding their involvement in general practice. The results from these comments are presented in this paper. A thematic analysis was applied. Results: Of the 468 responses, 139 included additional comments to the free-text question. Through our analysis, six analytic themes were generated—To be seen, met, or heard, To feel safe or not, To be involved or dictated to, Accessibility, COVID-19, and For the resourceful—across 116 codings and 25 descriptive themes. The themes’ interwovenness underscores the complexity of both involvement and how it is to live with a chronic disease. Our analysis indicates that involvement in general practice is for the resourceful.Conclusion: The six themes describing involvement in general practice from the perspectives of patients with T2DM and/or COPD were deeply intertwined. Involvement is dependent on being seen, met, and heard, all of which contribute to the patients’ sense of feeling safe (or not). These aspects are dependent on accessibility to a general practitioner; thus, COVID-19 was a barrier during the data-collection period. Furthermore, it appeared that being resourceful not only contributed to a sense of being involved in general practice but was perhaps even a prerequisite for being involved.

Adiponectin in psoriasis and its comorbidities: a review

Psoriasis is a chronic, immune-mediated inflammatory skin disease characterized by abnormal T cell activation and excessive proliferation of keratinocytes. In addition to skin manifestations, psoriasis has been associated with multiple metabolic comorbidities, such as obesity, insulin resistance, and diabetes. An increasing amount of evidence has highlighted the core role of adipokines in adipose tissue and the immune system. This review focus on the role of adiponectin in the pathophysiology of psoriasis and its comorbidities, highlighting the future research avenues.

Smart Manufacturing Scheduling Approaches—Systematic Review and Future Directions

The recent advances in technology and the demand for highly customized products have been forcing manufacturing companies to adapt and develop new solutions in order to become more dynamic and flexible to face the changing markets. Manufacturing scheduling plays a core role in this adaptation since it is crucial to ensure that all operations and processes are running on time in the factory. However, to develop robust scheduling solutions it is necessary to consider different requirements from the shopfloor, but it is not clear which constraints should be analyzed and most research studies end up considering very few of them. In this review article, several papers published in recent years were analyzed to understand how many and which requirements they consider when developing scheduling solutions for manufacturing systems. It is possible to understand that the majority of them are not able to be adapted to real systems since some core constraints are not even considered. Consequently, it is important to consider how manufacturing scheduling solutions can be structured to be adapted effortlessly for different manufacturing scenarios.

Religion, Institutionalization and Legitimation of the Creed: Beyond Institutional Fundamentalism

This article argues that the association between institutionalization and strong epistemological, political, anthropological and ontological objectivity leads to institutional fundamentalism in three basic and problematic aspects for societal-cultural-institutional current dynamics: first, the institution’s centralization and monopolization of the constitution, legitimation and public foment of the creed, so that the institution becomes self-referential, self-subsisting and autonomous regarding common sense and common people, as opposed to other religious institutions; second, the institution’s vertical and direct affirmation and imposition on believers and non-believers of essentialist and naturalized foundations which do not seriously consider the differences as epistemological-political subjects, practices and codes; third, the institution’s self-affirmation of its special core-role in terms of linking Earth and Heaven, people and God, so that it becomes the one and supreme institution representing God on Earth, delegitimizing other religious institutions and popular practices as alternative ways to God, alternative ways of life and epistemological, political, anthropological and ontological grounding. From that point, the article advocates that only the weakening of the essentialist and naturalized foundations, the moderation or even the abandonment of their problematic parts, as the deconstruction of institutional self-referentiality, self-subsistence and autonomy regarding common sense and common people, as well as of the opposition between religious institutions one to each other, can tackle the problem of fundamentalism, enabling the valuing of differences as epistemological-political subjects and the performance of an ecumenical and pluralistic dialog-praxis which assembles all peoples into a same minimal project of global peace, justice and solidarity.