TSH pituitary adenoma: case report

We describe a rare case of thyroid-stimulating hormone-secreting pituitary adenoma in a patient with a clinical picture of hyperthyroidism, that developed bitemporal hemianopsia after four years of a known thyroid dysfunction. CT scan showed a pituitary tumor considered grade 2 and stage C according to Hardy-Vezina and Wilson. Treatment was surgical, initially by a transsphenoidal approach, in which only a biopsy was possible. The patient was then submitted to an orbital-pterional craniotomy with sub-total resection of the tumor. Complementary treatment was indicated with radiotherapy.Descrevemos um caso raro de adenoma hipofisário produtor de TSH em uma paciente com quadro de hipertireoidismo, que após quatro anos desenvolveu hemianopsia bitemporal. TC de crânio mostrou tratar-se de tumor hipofisário de grau 2 e estadio C, de acordo com a classificação de Hardy-Vezina e Wilson. O tratamento foi cirúrgico, inicialmente por via transeptoesfenoidal, em que foi possível apenas biópsia, e a seguir a paciente foi submetida a craniotomia órbito-pterional com ressecção sub-total do tumor. Foi indicado tratamento complementar com radioterapia.Universidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) Disciplina de NeurocirurgiaFaculdade de Medicina de Jundiaí Disciplina de NeurocirurgiaUniversidade Federal de São Paulo (UNIFESP) Disciplina de Anatomia PatológicaUNIFESP, Disciplina de NeurocirurgiaUNIFESP, Disciplina de Anatomia PatológicaSciEL

D10.3: Description of Internet Science Curriculum

This document presents a proposition for a reference Internet Science curriculum that can be adapted and implemented jointly or in collaboration, by different Universities. The construction of the curriculum represents a challenge and an opportunity for the NoE, as it represents the essence of Internet Science. What are the main aspects to be taught? What is the kernel? These questions are answered by the curriculum. The curriculum is a reference document and a guideline for the different universities wishing to implement it. It has to allow for adaptation to the heterogeneous national and institutional contexts. Nonetheless, our goal is to have the curriculum provide a definitive basis for a universally - recognised degree, considering the related constraints in order to ensure compatibility. In this way, the curriculum presented here is the root of a range of curricula; it may lead to a degree within an existing Departmental course, an autonomous an d dedicated degree or a component of new joint degrees. This document presents the process that lead s to the construction of the curriculum, followed by the main goal, the scientific content and issues related to possible implementation. The version presented here is a preliminary version. This is due to several reasons; most noticeable being that the choice of the implementation schema is currently under study (deliverable due for end of 2014) and it s input might influence the form or content of the curriculum. On the other hand, we will start collecting feedback, which will might as well trigger changes. The curricula in its current form it’s been subject to a communication at WebSci Education Workshop, held in conjunction with the Web Science 2014 Conference, in Bloomington, Indiana, June 2014. We had positive feedback during the conference from the web - science community. The 6 theme balanced structure was particularly appreciated

Meningioma cordóideo: relato de dois casos

We present CT scan, MRI and histopathologic findings of two patients harboring a rare type of meningioma. In the first case, a 52 year-old male patient, a large parasellar mass invading the cavernous sinus, infiltrating the infratemporal fossa and extending as low as C2 was founded. The tumor was isointense on T1, enhanced strongly with gadolinium injection, and was hyperintense on T2. In the second case, a 19-year-old male patient, a large high density temporal right mass was disclosed by CT scan. Both patients were taken to surgery. In the first case, only a partial removal was possible to be accomplished due to a severe intra operative bleeding. In the second case, the tumor was totally removed. Both showed characteristic pathologic findings of a meningioma resembling a chordoma. Meningioma is a relatively common intracranial tumor, occurring most frequently in adults, showing a wide variety of growth patterns. We described a pattern that had a peculiar chordoma-like appearance. The pathological findings and the differential diagnosis from chordoma are discussed.Relatamos os achados tomográficos, de ressonância magnética e histopatológicos de dois pacientes com um tipo raro de meningioma. O primeiro era um paciente de 52 anos, do sexo masculino, portador de massa para selar volumosa, invadindo o seio cavernoso, infiltrando a fossa infratemporal e se estendendo ao nível de C2. O processo expansivo era isodenso em T1, contrastando-se intensamente com a injeção de gadolíneo e espontaneamente hiperintenso em T2. O segundo era um paciente de 19 anos, do sexo masculino, com grande massa, espontaneamente hiperdensa, em região temporal esquerda, na tomografia computadorizada de cranio. Ambos foram tratados cirurgicamente. No primeiro, somente a ressecção parcial foi possível devido a presença de intenso sangramento intra-operatório. No segundo o tumor foi totalmente removido. Ambos apresentavam características patológicas sugestivas de meningioma cordóideo. O meningioma intracraniano é relativamente comum, ocorre em adultos, apresentando diversos tipos histológicos. O meningioma cordóideo representa forma rara deste tipo de tumor, devendo ser diferenciado dos cordomas.Federal University of São Paulo Department of NeurosurgeryFederal University of São Paulo Department of PathologyUNIFESP, Department of NeurosurgeryUNIFESP, Department of PathologySciEL

A high throughput Intrusion Detection System (IDS) to enhance the security of data transmission among research centers

Data breaches and cyberattacks represent a severe problem in higher education institutions and universities that can result in illegal access to sensitive information and data loss. To enhance the security of data transmission, Intrusion Prevention Systems (IPS, i.e., firewalls) and Intrusion Detection Systems (IDS, i.e., packet sniffers) are used to detect potential threats in the exchanged data. IPSs and IDSs are usually designed as software programs running on a server machine. However, when the speed of exchanged data is too high, this solution can become unreliable. In this case, IPSs and IDSs designed on a real hardware platform, such as ASICs and FPGAs, represent a more reliable solution. This paper presents a packet sniffer that was designed using a commercial FPGA development board. The system can support a data throughput of 10 Gbit/s with preliminary results showing that the speed of data transmission can be reliably extended to 100 Gbit/s. The designed system is highly configurable by the user and can enhance the data protection of information transmitted using the Ethernet protocol. It is particularly suited for the security of universities and research centers, where point-to-point network connections are dominant and large amount of sensitive data are shared among different hosts.Comment: 10 pages, 10 figures, 16th Topical Seminar on Innovative Particle and Radiation Detectors (IPRD23), 25-29 September 2023, Siena, Ital

A Highly Configurable Packet Sniffer Based on Field-Programmable Gate Arrays for Network Security Applications

Web applications and online business transactions have grown tremendously in recent years. As a result, cyberattacks have become a major threat to the digital services that are essential for our society. To minimize the risks of cyberattacks, many countermeasures are deployed on computing nodes and network devices. One such countermeasure is the firewall, which is designed with two main architectural approaches: software running on standard or embedded computers, or hardware specially designed for the purpose, such as (Application Specific Integrated Circuits) ASICs. Software-based firewalls offer high flexibility and can be easily ported to upgradable hardware, but they cannot handle high data rates. On the other hand, hardware-based firewalls can process data at very high speeds, but are expensive and difficult to update, resulting in a short lifespan. To address these issues, we explored the use of an (Field-Programmable Gate Array) FPGA architecture, which offers low latency and high-throughput characteristics along with easy upgradability, making it a more balanced alternative to other programmable systems, like (Graphics Processor Unit) GPUs or microcontrollers. In this paper, we presented a packet sniffer designed on the FPGA development board KC705 produced by Xilinx, which can analyze Ethernet frames, check the frame fields against a set of user-defined rules, and calculate statistics of the received Ethernet frames over time. The system has a data transfer rate of 1 Gbit/s (with preliminary results of increased data rates to 10 Gbit/s) and has been successfully tested with both ad hoc-generated Ethernet frames and real web traffic by connecting the packet sniffer to the internet

Supermassive black holes at high redshifts

MeV blazars are the most luminous persistent sources in the Universe and emit most of their energy in the MeV band. These objects display very large jet powers and accretion luminosities and are known to host black holes with a mass often exceeding $10^9 M_{\odot}$. An MeV survey, performed by a new generation MeV telescope which will bridge the entire energy and sensitivity gap between the current generation of hard X-ray and gamma-ray instruments, will detect $>$1000 MeV blazars up to a redshift of $z=5-6$. Here we show that this would allow us: 1) to probe the formation and growth mechanisms of supermassive black holes at high redshifts, 2) to pinpoint the location of the emission region in powerful blazars, 3) to determine how accretion and black hole spin interplay to power the jet.Comment: 7 pages, 4 figure. Submitted to the Astro2020 call for Science White Paper

Insider Threats in Emerging Mobility-as-a-Service Scenarios

Mobility as a Service (MaaS) applies the everything-as- \ a-service paradigm of Cloud Computing to transportation: a MaaS \ provider offers to its users the dynamic composition of solutions of \ different travel agencies into a single, consistent interface. \ Traditionally, transits and data on mobility belong to a scattered \ plethora of operators. Thus, we argue that the economic model of \ MaaS is that of federations of providers, each trading its resources to \ coordinate multi-modal solutions for mobility. Such flexibility comes \ with many security and privacy concerns, of which insider threat is \ one of the most prominent. In this paper, we follow a tiered structure \ — from individual operators to markets of federated MaaS providers \ — to classify the potential threats of each tier and propose the \ appropriate countermeasures, in an effort to mitigate the problems

Unleashing Dynamic Pipeline Reconfiguration of P4 Switches for Efficient Network Monitoring

As it is happening in many fields that need efficient and effective classification of data, Machine Learning (ML) is becoming increasingly popular in network management and monitoring. In general we can say that ML algorithms are complex, therefore better suited for execution in the centralized control plane of modern networks, but are also heavily reliant on data, that are necessarily collected in the data plane. The inevitable consequence is that may arise the need to transfer lots of data from the data plane to the control plane, with the risk to cause congestion on the control communication channel. This may turn into a major drawback, since congestion on the control channel may have a significant impact on network operations. Therefore it is of paramount importance to design systems capable of minimizing the interaction between data and control planes while ensuring good monitoring performance. The most recent generation of data plane programmable switches supporting the P4 language can help mitigate this problem by preprocessing traffic data at line rate. In this manuscript we follow this approach and propose P4RTHENON: an architecture to distill in the data plane the relevant information to be mirrored to the control plane, where complex analysis can be performed. P4RTHENON leverages the P4-native support for runtime data plane pipeline reconfiguration to minimize the interaction between data and control planes while ensuring good monitoring performance. We tested our scheme on the volumetric DDoS detection use case: P4RTHENON reduces the volume of exchanged data by almost 75% compared to a pure control-plane-based solution, guarantees low memory consumption in the data plane, and does not degrade the overall DDoS detection capabilities

Privacy-Preserving Design of Data Processing Systems in the Public Transport Context

The public transport network of a region inhabited by more than 4 million people is run by a complex interplay of public and private actors. Large amounts of data are generated by travellers, buying and using various forms of tickets and passes. Analysing the data is of paramount importance for the governance and sustainability of the system. This manuscript reports the early results of the privacy analysis which is being undertaken as part of the analysis of the clearing process in the Emilia-Romagna region, in Italy, which will compute the compensations for tickets bought from one operator and used with another. In the manuscript it is shown by means of examples that the clearing data may be used to violate various privacy aspects regarding users, as well as (technically equivalent) trade secrets regarding operators. The ensuing discussion has a twofold goal. First, it shows that after researching possible existing solutions, both by reviewing the literature on general privacy-preserving techniques, and by analysing similar scenarios that are being discussed in various cities across the world, the former are found exhibiting structural effectiveness deficiencies, while the latter are found of limited applicability, typically involving less demanding requirements. Second, it traces a research path towards a more effective approach to privacy-preserving data management in the specific context of public transport, both by refinement of current sanitization techniques and by application of the privacy by design approach. Available at: https://aisel.aisnet.org/pajais/vol7/iss4/4