Major depressive disorder (MDD) is known to be characterized by altered brain functional connectivity (FC) patterns. However, whether and how the features of dynamic FC would change in patients with MDD are unclear. In this study, we aimed to characterize dynamic FC in MDD using a large multi-site sample and a novel dynamic network-based approach. Resting-state functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) data were acquired from a total of 460 MDD patients and 473 healthy controls, as a part of the REST-meta-MDD consortium. Resting-state dynamic functional brain networks were constructed for each subject by a sliding-window approach. Multiple spatio-temporal features of dynamic brain networks, including temporal variability, temporal clustering and temporal efficiency, were then compared between patients and healthy subjects at both global and local levels. The group of MDD patients showed significantly higher temporal variability, lower temporal correlation coefficient (indicating decreased temporal clustering) and shorter characteristic temporal path length (indicating increased temporal efficiency) compared with healthy controls (corrected p < 3.14×10-3). Corresponding local changes in MDD were mainly found in the default-mode, sensorimotor and subcortical areas. Measures of temporal variability and characteristic temporal path length were significantly correlated with depression severity in patients (corrected p < 0.05). Moreover, the observed between-group differences were robustly present in both first-episode, drug-naïve (FEDN) and non-FEDN patients. Our findings suggest that excessive temporal variations of brain FC, reflecting abnormal communications between large-scale bran networks over time, may underlie the neuropathology of MDD.

Promptly discovering unknown network attacks is critical for reducing the risk of major loss imposed on organizations and information infrastructure. This paper aims at developing an intelligent intrusion detection system capable of classifying known attacks as well as inferring unknown ones. To achieve this, we formulate the problem of fine-grained known/unknown intrusion detection as a two-stage minimization problem, where the first stage is to seek a score measure for minimizing the empirical risk of misclassifying the known attacks, while the second stage is to find another score measure for minimizing the identification risk of inferring unknown attacks. The hierarchical nature of problem formulation allows us to employ the class conditioned auto-encoders to construct a hierarchical intrusion detection framework. Since the reconstruction errors of unknown attacks are generally higher than that of the known attacks, we further employ extreme value theory in the second stage to model the distribution of reconstruction errors for differentiating known/unknown attack. To further reduce the false positive rate, we add a benign clustering module for learning the multimodal distribution of benign traffic. We conduct an experiment on two widely used datasets for assessing intrusion detection. The results show that the proposed method improves the detection rate of unknown attacks while keeping a low false positive rate.

Driven by the prevalence of the computation-intensive and delay-intensive mobile applications, Mobile Edge Computing (MEC) is emerging as a promising solution. Traditional task offloading methods usually rely on centralized decision making, which inevitably involves a high computational complexity and a large state space. However, the MEC is a typical distributed system, where the edge servers are geographically separated, and independently perform the computing tasks. This fact inspires us to conceive a distributed cooperative task offloading system, where each edge server makes its own decision on how to allocate local computing resources and how to migrate tasks among the edge servers. To characterize diverse task requirements, we divide the arrival tasks into different priorities according to the tolerance time, which enables to dynamically schedule the local computing resources for reducing the task timeout. In order to coordinate the independent decision makings of geographically separate edge servers, we propose a priority driven cooperative task offloading algorithm based on multi-agent deep reinforcement learning, where the decision making of each edge server not only depends on its own state but also on the shared global information. We further develop a Variational Recurrent Neural Network (VRNN) based global state sharing model which significantly reduces the communication overhead among edge servers. The performance evaluation conducted on a movement trajectories dataset of mobile devices verifies that the proposed algorithm can reduce the task consumption time and improve the edge computing resources utilization.

The deployment of UAVs as aerial base stations (BSs) has been considered as a promising supplement to the ground networks, which can quickly build an emergency communication network in a disaster area or significantly relief the communication burden imposed by hot-spots. However, the application of UAVs as aerial BSs is constrained by the limited onboard energy and communication coverage of UAVs. In particular, for a large target area, multiple UAVs should be deployed to meet the communication requirements. Therefore, designing the optimal trajectories of multiple UAVs is crucial to boost the UAV network performance. Inspired by the promising future of UAV BSs, this paper aims at proposing a distributed 3-dimensional (3D) trajectory design algorithm for multiple UAVs to optimize the system performance. We formulate the trajectory design problem as a multi-objective optimization problem to improve the user equipment (UE) access rate, ensure fair access opportunities, increase transmitted data volume and reduce energy consumption. Further inspired by the decision-making ability of deep reinforcement learning (DRL) in complex environments, we propose a DRL based trajectory design algorithm for multiple UAVs, namely DMTD, in which UAVs can explore both the optimal flight altitude and the potential UE distribution area in the iterative interactions with the environment, and then select the optimal flight trajectories to boost the network performance from multiple aspects. Extensive experimental results under different UE distributions have demonstrated that the proposed DMTD algorithm can find the optimal altitude to provide maximum coverage. Moreover, DMTD beats existing algorithms by providing high UE access rate, ensuring fair network service and increasing total transmitted data volume at the cost of a relatively low energy consumption. Especially in the scenes with dense and randomly distributed UEs, DMTD provides a UE access rate close to 0.9 and transmits 6 times of data volume than existing algorithms.

Objectives To delineate the evolution of CT findings in patients with mild COVID-19 pneumonia. Methods CT images and medical records of 88 patients with confirmed mild COVID-19 pneumonia, a baseline CT, and at least one follow-up CT were retrospectively reviewed. CT features including lobar distribution and presence of ground glass opacities (GGO), consolidation, and linear opacities were analyzed on per-patient basis during each of five time intervals spanning the 3 weeks after disease onset. Total severity scores were calculated. Results Of patients, 85.2% had travel history to Wuhan or known contact with infected individuals. The most common symptoms were fever (84.1%) and cough (56.8%). The baseline CT was obtained on average 5 days from symptom onset. Four patients (4.5%) had negative initial CT. Significant differences were found among the time intervals in the proportion of pulmonary lesions that are (1) pure GGO, (2) mixed attenuation, (3) mixed attenuation with linear opacities, (4) consolidation with linear opacities, and (5) pure consolidation. The majority of patients had involvement of ≥ 3 lobes. Bilateral involvement was more prevalent than unilateral involvement. The proportions of patients observed to have pure GGO or GGO and consolidation decreased over time while the proportion of patients with GGO and linear opacities increased. Total severity score showed an increasing trend in the first 2 weeks. Conclusions While bilateral GGO are predominant features, CT findings changed during different time intervals in the 3 weeks after symptom onset in patients with COVID-19. Key Points • Four of 88 (4.5%) patients with COVID-19 had negative initial CT. • Majority of COVID-19 patients had abnormal CT findings in ≥ 3 lobes. • A proportion of patients with pure ground glass opacities decreased over the 3 weeks after symptom onset.