A Thematic Analysis of the Novel Open Secrets from Psychoanalysis Perspective

Alice Munro,the first short story writer in Canada to receive the Nobel Prize laureate in 2013,applies the unconscious to the portrayal of characters and the construction of engrossing stories.Based on the unconscious theory of Sigmund Freud’s psychoanalysis,this article focuses on one of Alice Munro’s short stories,Open Secrets,by analyzing the unconscious of representative characters,to explore their power conversion through the conflicts triggered by their unconscious mind.Via uncovering their unique personalities and values,as well as displaying their power against each other through conflict,this article reveals that the relationship between characters is sophisticated and changeable,and their power against each other has been a state of change in continuous conflicts.Behind the unconscious displays a thoroughly different comparison of forces:the strong who behaves violently and arrogantly actually shows weakness;in turn,the obedience and endurance of the weak strongly manifest a tenacious resistance.

A Visual Secret Sharing Scheme for Progressively Restoring Secrets

Visual secret sharing has received more and more attention over the past years due to the fact that neither complex computation nor cryptographic knowledge is required to decrypt the secret image directly according to the characteristics of the human vision system. Considering the issue of sharing the secret image at multiple image resolutions with the meaningful shadows, in this paper, we present a friendly progressive visual secret sharing scheme without expanding the image size in the shadows and the reconstructed secret image based on applying a 2x2-sized block-wise operation to generate the shadows block by block. The proposed method can achieve these benefits： 1） the generated shadows are meaningful, and their sizes are not expanded, and 2） the secret image can be recovered at different resolutions by stacking different quantities of shadows together. The experimental results also show that the proposed method is superior to other compared schemes.

Best Kept Secrets of Cantonese Cuisine

IT is a common notion that Cantonese seldom make noodles because the climate of southern China’s Guangdong Province is unsuitable for growing highquality wheat.But along with the exchanges and integration between northern and southern food in China,Cantonese have mastered their own way of making jook-sing noodles,or bamboo pressed noodles,ingredients for a variety of local specialties like wonton noodles,shrimp noodles,longevity noodles and Teochew-style sweet and sour fried noodles.

FEVA：Tiny Secrets

英国Feva公司的童话娃娃推出了新的系列——Tiny Secrets（小人秘密）。该系列新品包括三个可爱的时尚小伙伴，每个都带有一个“守护者钥匙”，利用这个钥匙你可以打开一个神秘开关。

The Secrets of Long Life

Living to a ripe old age in China is on the increase - and a healthy lifestyle emerges as the key by Tang Yuankai SHE moves about with ease and sees and hears without any trouble.And on most days she climbs a mountain to work on

Secrets of Survival and Revival of Jews

History shows that once a nation declines, chances of revival are slim, especially for very small nations. They are either assimilated by other strong nations or shut up deep in the mountains, living a slash and burn way of living. Even if there are some ancient nations that have survived and made some progress, they did so with great difficulty. Mesopotamia, Egypt, India, Greece and Persia all are proud of their glorious past and are ambitious for national revival. But the path is not smooth. The Jewish nation, however, is an exception. What is the secret of its survival and seemingly sudden revival？

莱卡风尚 璀璨星光后的Secrets

一年一度的莱卡风尚大典,每次都是明星的聚会,时尚的 SHOW 场。从星光大道的红地毯到华丽大气的颁奖现场再到与记者面对面的采访大厅,他们时时刻刻都在展示着自己的绰约丰姿。当天的盛况你可能已经从其他媒体领略了一二,但你一定没有看过 Easy 要Show 你的聚光灯背后的点点滴滴。不信?Let's Go.

Near-Optimal Placement of Secrets in Graphs

We consider the reconstruction of shared secrets in communication networks, which are modelled by graphs whose components are subject to possible failure. The reconstruction probability can be approximated using minimal cuts, if the failure probabilities of vertices and edges are close to zero. As the main contribution of this paper, node separators are used to design a heuristic for the near-optimal placement of secrets sets on the vertices of the graph.

Cryptanalysis of efficient semi-quantum secret sharing protocol using single particles

In paper[Chin.Phys.B 32070308(2023)],Xing et al.proposed a semi-quantum secret sharing protocol by using single particles.We study the security of the proposed protocol and find that it is not secure,that is,the three dishonest agents,Bob,Charlie and Emily can collude to obtain Alice's secret without the help of David.

A Probing Model of Secret Key Generation Based on Channel Autocorrelation Function

Secret key generation(SKG)is a promising solution to the problem of wireless communications security.As the first step of SKG,channel probing affects it significantly.Although there have been some probing schemes,there is a lack of research on the optimization of the probing process.This study investigates how to optimize correlated parameters to maximize the SKG rate(SKGR)in the time-division duplex(TDD)mode.First,we build a probing model which includes the effects of transmitting power,the probing period,and the dimension of sample vectors.Based on the model,the analytical expression of the SKGR is given.Next,we formulate an optimization problem for maximizing the SKGR and give an algorithm to solve it.We conclude the SKGR monotonically increases as the transmitting power increases.Relevant mathematical proofs are given in this study.From the simulation results,increasing appropriately the probing period and the dimension of the sample vector could increase the SKGR dramatically compared to a yardstick,which indicates the importance of optimizing the parameters related to the channel probing phase.

A New Double Layer Multi-Secret Sharing Scheme

Cryptography is deemed to be the optimum strategy to secure the data privacy in which the data is encoded ahead of time before sharing it.Visual Secret Sharing(VSS)is an encryption method in which the secret message is split into at least two trivial images called’shares’to cover it.However,such message are always targeted by hackers or dishonest members who attempt to decrypt the message.This can be avoided by not uncovering the secret message without the universal share when it is presented and is typically taken care of,by the trusted party.Hence,in this paper,an optimal and secure double-layered secret image sharing scheme is proposed.The proposed share creation process contains two layers such as threshold-based secret sharing in the first layer and universal share based secret sharing in the second layer.In first layer,Genetic Algorithm(GA)is applied to find the optimal threshold value based on the randomness of the created shares.Then,in the second layer,a novel design of universal share-based secret share creation method is proposed.Finally,Opposition Whale Optimization Algorithm(OWOA)-based optimal key was generated for rectange block cipher to secure each share.This helped in producing high quality reconstruction images.The researcher achieved average experimental outcomes in terms of PSNR and MSE values equal to 55.154225 and 0.79365625 respectively.The average PSNRwas less(49.134475)and average MSE was high(1)in case of existing methods.

Quantum-Resistant Multi-Feature Attribute-Based Proxy Re-Encryption Scheme for Cloud Services

Cloud-based services have powerful storage functions and can provide accurate computation.However,the question of how to guarantee cloud-based services access control and achieve data sharing security has always been a research highlight.Although the attribute-based proxy re-encryption(ABPRE)schemes based on number theory can solve this problem,it is still difficult to resist quantum attacks and have limited expression capabilities.To address these issues,we present a novel linear secret sharing schemes(LSSS)matrix-based ABPRE scheme with the fine-grained policy on the lattice in the research.Additionally,to detect the activities of illegal proxies,homomorphic signature(HS)technology is introduced to realize the verifiability of re-encryption.Moreover,the non-interactivity,unidirectionality,proxy transparency,multi-use,and anti-quantum attack characteristics of our system are all advantageous.Besides,it can efficiently prevent the loss of processing power brought on by repetitive authorisation and can enable precise and safe data sharing in the cloud.Furthermore,under the standard model,the proposed learning with errors(LWE)-based scheme was proven to be IND-sCPA secure.

Multi-dimensional multiplexing optical secret sharing framework with cascaded liquid crystal holograms

Secret sharing is a promising technology for information encryption by splitting the secret information into different shares.However,the traditional scheme suffers from information leakage in decryption process since the amount of available information channels is limited.Herein,we propose and demonstrate an optical secret sharing framework based on the multi-dimensional multiplexing liquid crystal(LC)holograms.The LC holograms are used as spatially separated shares to carry secret images.The polarization of the incident light and the distance between different shares are served as secret keys,which can significantly improve the information security and capacity.Besides,the decryption condition is also restricted by the applied external voltage due to the variant diffraction efficiency,which further increases the information security.In implementation,an artificial neural network(ANN)model is developed to carefully design the phase distribution of each LC hologram.With the advantage of high security,high capacity and simple configuration,our optical secret sharing framework has great potentials in optical encryption and dynamic holographic display.

Mannogalactoglucan from mushrooms protects pancreatic islets via restoring UPR and promotes insulin secretion in TIDM mice

Type 1 diabetes mellitus(T1DM) lacks insulin secretion due to autoimmune deficiency of pancreaticβ-cells.Protecting pancreatic islets and enhancing insulin secretion has been therapeutic approaches.Mannogalactoglucan is the main type of polysaccharide from natural mushroom,which has potential medicinal prospects.Nevertheless,the antidiabetic property of mannogalactoglucan in T1DM has not been fully elucidated.In this study,we obtained the neutral fraction of alkali-soluble Armillaria mellea polysaccharide(AAMP-N) with the structure of mannogalactoglucan from the fruiting body of A.mellea and investigated the potential therapeutic value of AAMP-N in T1DM.We demonstrated that AAMP-N lowered blood glucose and improved diabetes symptoms in T1DM mice.AAMP-N activated unfolded protein response(UPR) signaling pathway to maintain ER protein folding homeostasis and promote insulin secretion in vivo.Besides that,AAMP-N promoted insulin synthesis via upregulating the expression of transcription factors,increased Ca^(2+) signals to stimulate intracellular insulin secretory vesicle transport via activating calcium/calmodulin-dependent kinase Ⅱ(CamkⅡ) and cAMP/PKA signals,and enhanced insulin secretory vesicle fusion with the plasma membrane via vesicle-associated membrane protein 2(VAMP2).Collectively,these studies demonstrated that the therapeutic potential of AAMP-N on pancreatic islets function,indicating that mannogalactoglucan could be natural nutraceutical used for the treatment of T1DM.

Molecular investigation of exoU and exoY virulence genes in Pseudomonas aeruginosa collected from hospitalized patients in North of Iran:A descriptive-analytical study

Objective:To investigate the frequency of exoU and exoY genes in patients with Pseudomonas aeruginosa infection.Methods:In this study,100 clinical isolates of Pseudomonas aeruginosa were collected from patients hospitalized in educational-therapeutic hospitals and were identified using standard microbiological tests.Then,the antibiotic resistance pattern of the isolates was determined by the disk agar diffusion method.The bacterial DNAs were extracted by the alkaline lysis method.Finally,the presence of exoU and exoY genes was evaluated by the PCR test.Results:In this study,47%,72%,29%,39%,40%,and 44%of the isolates were non-susceptible to piperacillin,aztreonam,ceftazidime,imipenem,tobramycin,and ciprofloxacin,respectively.In addition,95%and 93%of the clinical isolates carried the exoU and exoY genes.Blood and fecal isolates had both virulence genes,while only one wound isolate had neither genes.Meanwhile,all urinary isolates contained the exoY gene and only one isolate lacked the exoU gene.Also,88 isolates simultaneously had both exoU and exoY genes.Conclusions:High prevalence of exoU and exoY genes in this region indicates a significant role of typeⅢsecretion system in pathogenesis of Pseudomonas aeruginosa.The typeⅢsecretion system may be a suitable target to reduce the pathogenicity of this bacterium.

Mogroside IIE,an in vivo metabolite of sweet agent,alleviates acute lung injury via Pla2g2a-EGFR inhibition

In the face of increasingly serious environmental pollution,the health of human lung tissues is also facing serious threats.Mogroside IIE(M2E)is the main metabolite of sweetening agents mogrosides from the anti-tussive Chinese herbal Siraitia grosvenori.The study elucidated the anti-inflammatory action and molecular mechanism of M2E against acute lung injury(ALI).A lipopolysaccharide(LPS)-induced ALI model was established in mice and MH-S cells were employed to explore the protective mechanism of M2E through the western blotting,co-immunoprecipitation,and quantitative real time-PCR analysis.The results indicated that M2E alleviated LPS-induced lung injury through restraining the activation of secreted phospholipase A2 type IIA(Pla2g2a)-epidermal growth factor receptor(EGFR).The interaction of Pla2g2a and EGFR was identified by co-immunoprecipitation.In addition,M2E protected ALI induced with LPS against inflammatory and damage which were significantly dependent upon the downregulation of AKT and m TOR via the inhibition of Pla2g2a-EGFR.Pla2g2a may represent a potential target for M2E in the improvement of LPS-induced lung injury,which may represent a promising strategy to treat ALI.

The Effect of Umami Stimulation on Salivary Secretion Rate and Duration

Purpose: Umami reportedly promotes salivation. We aimed to investigate the effects of taste stimuli on slow and fast salivary secretion in humans using umami, sweet, and sour stimuli. Methods: Eight healthy women participated between 14:00 and 15:00, taking the circadian rhythm of salivary secretion into account. The types and concentrations of the taste solutions were glutamic acid (1.7 × 10−3 M), inosinic acid (9.8 × 10−3 M), and guanylic acid (9.8 × 10−3 M) for umami stimulation, citric acid (6.5 × 10−3 M) for acidity stimulation, and sucrose (1.6 × 10−2 M) for sweetness stimulation. First, the unstimulated salivary flow rate was measured. Then, 3 ml of a flavor solution was dropped under the tongue using a syringe. The saliva was expelled into an aluminum cup every minute and weighed. The first minute’s value minus 3 ml flavor solution was the stimulated salivary secretion rate produced by each flavor. The time-to-return to the initial unstimulated salivary flow rate was the duration of the stimulated saliva secretion rate. Results: The mean unstimulated salivary flow rate across participants was 0.64 ± 0.25 ml/min (range: 0.23 - 1.03 ml/min). The highest amount of saliva was induced by citric acid. There were significant differences between citric acid and the other flavor solutions (p < 0.05 for glutamic acid, inosinic acid, and sucrose;p < 0.01 for guanylic acid). There were no significant differences in duration of salivation between the flavor solutions. When the participants were divided into slow (0.45 ± 0.16 ml/min) and fast groups (0.83 ± 0.15 ml/min) based on their median resting salivary secretion rate, there were no significant differences between the two groups in the amount of saliva secreted at 1 minute after stimulation and the duration of the salivary secretion rate. Conclusion: Umami stimulation was effective in slowing salivary secretion and sustaining salivary secretion after stimulation.

Dietary Green Tea Extract and Antioxidants Improve Insulin Secretory Functions of Pancreatic β-Cells in Mild and Severe Experimental Rodent Model of Chronic Pancreatitis

Chronic pancreatitis (CP) is a progressive inflammatory disorder of the pancreas. It is predominantly idiopathic (with an unknown cause) in India and mostly due to alcohol in the West. Diabetes that occur secondary to chronic pancreatitis (T3c Diabetes) is often brittle, and is difficult to attain normoglycemia with conventional treatment requiring multiple doses of insulin. Mild and severe model of CP was induced in mice by repeated intraperitoneal injections of cerulein and L-arginine respectively with an intent to study islet dysfunction and develop therapeutic strategy in animal models of CP. Dietary intervention of epigallocatechin-3-gallate (EGCG) was tested in both the models of CP for its beneficial effects on insulin secretory functions. Pancreata collected upon euthanasia were used to study alterations in the morphology of pancreatic parenchyma and inflammation by staining with H&E and fibrotic changes by Masson’s trichrome and picrosirius staining. Insulin secretory functions of islets were evaluated to test the efficacy of the dietary intervention on β-cell functions. Intraperitoneal glucose tolerance test was performed to monitor the glucose homeostasis before and after the dietary intervention. Both the models resulted in CP with dispersed acini, inflammation and fibrosis. The loss of acini and extent of fibrosis was more in L-arginine model. 2-fold improvement in glucose-stimulated insulin secretory functions of islets was observed with 0.5% EGCG dietary intervention in cerulein model of CP and 1.6-fold in L-arginine model of CP. A further improvement in insulin secretion by 3.2-fold was observed with additional dietary supplements like N-acetyl cysteine, curcumin in combination with EGCG. Our results thus demonstrate and highlight the therapeutic potential of dietary green tea (EGCG) supplementation in reversing islet dysfunction and improving glucose homeostasis in experimental chronic pancreatitis in mice.