Multimedia Information Retrieval (MIR) is a problem domain that includes programming tasks such as salient feature extraction, machine learning, indexing, and retrieval. There are a variety of implementations and algorithms for these tasks in different languages and frameworks, which are difficult to compose and reuse due to the interface and language incompatibility. Due to this low reusabilit...

This study evaluated changes in phytoplankton and nutrients after an increase in river discharge in four estuaries of northeastern Brazil. Samples were taken during a markedly freshwater-deprived period (Nov/2010, dry season), and during a rainy season (May/2011). While two estuaries are located in urban areas (Ceará CE and Cocó CO), the others are markedly freshwater-deprived (Pacoti PAC and P...

Private information retrieval (PIR) is a way for clients to query a remote database without the database holder learning the clients’ query terms or the responses they generate. Compelling applications for PIR are abound in the cryptographic and privacy research literature, yet existing PIR techniques are notoriously inefficient. Consequently, no such PIRbased application to date has seen real-...

A Private Information Retrieval (PIR) protocol enables a user to retrieve a data item from a database while hiding the identity of the item being retrieved; specifically, in a t-private, k-server PIR protocol the database is replicated among k servers, and the user’s privacy is protected from any collusion of up to t servers. The main cost-measure of such protocols is the communication complexi...

Private Information Retrieval (PIR), despite being well studied, is computationally costly and arduous to scale. We explore lower-cost relaxations of information-theoretic PIR, based on dummy queries, sparse vectors, and compositions with an anonymity system. We prove the security of each scheme using a flexible differentially private definition for private queries that can capture notions of i...

BACKGROUND Peste des petits ruminants (PPR) is an acute infectious viral disease affecting domestic small ruminants (sheep and goats) and some wild ruminant species in Africa, the Middle East and Asia. A global PPR control strategy based on mass vaccination-in regions where PPR is endemic-was recently designed and launched by international organizations. Sahelian Africa is one of the most chall...

An emerging family of cell surface inhibitory receptors is characterized by the presence of intracytoplasmic immunoreceptor tyrosine-based inhibition motifs (ITIM). These ITIM-bearing inhibitory receptors, which are typically paired with activating isoforms, associate with Src homology domain 2-containing phosphatases following ITIM tyrosine phosphorylation. Two categories of phosphatases are r...

Abnormal T cell immune responses induce aberrant expression of inflammatory cytokines such as TNF-alpha, leading to osteoclastmediated bone erosion and osteoporosis in autoimmune arthritis. However, the mechanism underlying enhanced osteoclastogenesis in arthritis is not completely understood. Here we show that TNF-alpha contributes to inflammatory bone loss by enhancing the osteoclastogenic po...