@article{jin_huang_zhang_dai_2023, title={On the Privacy Guarantees of Gossip Protocols in General Networks}, volume={10}, ISSN={["2327-4697"]}, DOI={10.1109/TNSE.2023.3247626}, abstractNote={Recently, the privacy guarantees of information dissemination protocols have attracted increasing research interests, among which the gossip protocols assume vital importance in various information exchange applications. In this article, we study the privacy guarantees of gossip protocols in general networks in terms of differential privacy and prediction uncertainty. First, lower bounds of the differential privacy guarantees are derived for gossip protocols in general networks in both synchronous and asynchronous settings. The prediction uncertainty of the source node given a uniform prior is also determined. For the private gossip algorithm, the differential privacy and prediction uncertainty guarantees are derived in closed forms in the asynchronous setting. Moreover, considering that these two metrics may be restrictive in some scenarios, the relaxed variants are proposed. It is found that source anonymity is closely related to some key network structure parameters in the general network setting. Then, we investigate information spreading in wireless networks with unreliable communications, and quantify the tradeoff between differential privacy guarantees and information spreading efficiency. Finally, considering that the attacker may not be present at the beginning of the information dissemination process, the scenario of delayed monitoring is studied and the corresponding differential privacy guarantees are evaluated.}, number={6}, journal={IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NETWORK SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING}, author={Jin, Richeng and Huang, Yufan and Zhang, Zhaoyang and Dai, Huaiyu}, year={2023}, month={Nov}, pages={3114–3130} }
 @article{huang_jin_dai_2020, title={Differential Privacy and Prediction Uncertainty of Gossip Protocols in General Networks}, ISSN={["2576-6813"]}, DOI={10.1109/GLOBECOM42002.2020.9322558}, abstractNote={Recent advances in social media and information technology have enabled much faster dissemination of information, while at the same time raise concerns about privacy leakage after various privacy breaches. Therefore, the privacy guarantees of information dissemination protocols have attracted increasing research interests, among which the gossip protocols assume vital importance in various information exchange applications. Very recently, the rigorous framework of differential privacy has been introduced to measure the privacy guarantees of gossip protocols in the simplified complete network scenario. In this work, we extend the study to general networks. First, lower bounds of the differential privacy guarantees are derived for the gossip protocols in general networks in both synchronous and asynchronous settings. The prediction uncertainty of the source node given a uniform prior is also determined. It is found that source anonymity is closely related to some key network structure parameters in the general network setting. Then, we investigate information spreading in wireless networks with unreliable communications, and quantity the tradeoff between differential privacy guarantees and information spreading efficiency. Finally, considering that the attacker may not be present in the beginning of the information dissemination process, the scenario of delayed monitoring is studied and the corresponding differential privacy guarantees are evaluated.}, journal={2020 IEEE GLOBAL COMMUNICATIONS CONFERENCE (GLOBECOM)}, author={Huang, Yufan and Jin, Richeng and Dai, Huaiyu}, year={2020} }
 @article{huang_dai_2019, title={Multiplex Conductance and Gossip Based Information Spreading in Multiplex Networks}, volume={6}, ISSN={["2327-4697"]}, DOI={10.1109/TNSE.2018.2838104}, abstractNote={In this network era, not only people are connected, different networks are also coupled through various interconnections. This kind of network of networks, or multilayer networks, has attracted research interest recently, and many beneficial features have been discovered. However, quantitative study of information spreading in such networks is essentially lacking. Despite some existing results in single networks, the layer heterogeneity and complicated interconnections among the layers make the study of information spreading in this type of networks challenging. In this work, we study the information spreading time in multiplex networks, adopting the gossip (random-walk) based information spreading model. A new metric called multiplex conductance is defined based on the multiplex network structure and used to quantify the information spreading time in a general multiplex network in the idealized setting. Multiplex conductance is then evaluated for some interesting multiplex networks to facilitate understanding in this new area. Finally, the tradeoff between the information spreading efficiency improvement and the layer cost is examined to explain the user's social behavior and motivate effective multiplex network designs.}, number={3}, journal={IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON NETWORK SCIENCE AND ENGINEERING}, author={Huang, Yufan and Dai, Huaiyu}, year={2019}, pages={391–401} }
 @article{huang_dai_ke_2019, title={Principles of Effective and Robust Innate Immune Response to Viral Infections: A Multiplex Network Analysis}, volume={10}, ISSN={["1664-3224"]}, DOI={10.3389/fimmu.2019.01736}, abstractNote={The human innate immune response, particularly the type-I interferon (IFN) response, is highly robust and effective first line of defense against virus invasion. IFN molecules are produced and secreted from infected cells upon virus infection and recognition. They then act as signaling/communication molecules to activate an antiviral response in neighboring cells so that those cells become refractory to infection. Previous experimental studies have identified the detailed molecular mechanisms for the IFN signaling and response. However, the principles underlying how host cells use IFN to communicate with each other to collectively and robustly halt an infection is not understood. Here we take a multiplex network modeling approach to provide a theoretical framework to identify key factors that determine the effectiveness of the IFN response against virus infection of a host. In this approach, we consider the virus spread among host cells and the interferon signaling to protect host cells as a competition process on a two-layer multiplex network. We focused on two types of network topology, i.e., the Erdős-Rényi (ER) network and the Geometric Random (GR) network, which represent the scenarios when infection of cells is mostly well mixed (e.g., in the blood) and when infection is spatially segregated (e.g., in tissues), respectively. We show that in general, the IFN response works effectively to stop viral infection when virus infection spreads spatially (a most likely scenario for initial virus infection of a host at the peripheral tissue). Importantly, we show that the effectiveness of the IFN response is robust against large variations in the distance of IFN diffusion as long as IFNs diffuse faster than viruses and they can effectively induce antiviral responses in susceptible host cells. This suggests that the effectiveness of the IFN response is insensitive to the specific arrangement of host cells in peripheral tissues. Thus, our work provides a quantitative explanation of why the IFN response can serve an effective and robust response in different tissue types to a wide range of viral infections of a host.}, journal={FRONTIERS IN IMMUNOLOGY}, author={Huang, Yufan and Dai, Huaiyu and Ke, Ruian}, year={2019}, month={Jul} }
 @inproceedings{huang_dai_zhang_ke_2018, title={Network analysis of virus-innate immune interaction within a host}, DOI={10.1109/ciss.2018.8362278}, abstractNote={Viruses invade a host through infecting and spreading among host cells. Initial virus replication and transmission are counteracted by the host innate immune response, in particular the interferon response. Although the virus-innate immune interaction has been studied in laboratory for a long time, a theoretical understanding of how the interferon response impacts on viral spread is lacking. In this work, we model this interaction as a competition process between the virus spreading and the interferon response on a two-layer multiplex network with virus and interferon spread on the two layers separately. We specifically explore how the overlap between the two layers impacts on the threshold and the final size of virus spread. A mean-field method and a general homogeneous multiplex network are adopted to approximate and analyze the behavior of system. We find that interferon response can effectively stop the spread of the virus or reduce the final size of viral infection when the two networks largely overlap each other. This is true especially when the interferon response is strong. The results provide insights about how the innate immune response counteracts viral invasion and spread. It may also have implications for designing strategies for risk mitigation in computer or social networks.}, booktitle={2018 52nd Annual Conference on Information Sciences and Systems (CISS)}, author={Huang, Y. F. and Dai, M. and Zhang, Z. H. and Ke, R. A.}, year={2018} }
 @inproceedings{huang_dai_2017, title={Multiplex conductance and gossip based information spreading in multiplex networks}, DOI={10.1109/isit.2017.8006559}, abstractNote={In this work, we study the information spreading time in multiplex networks, adopting the gossip (random-walk) based information spreading model. A new metric called multiplex conductance is defined based on the multiplex network structure and used to quantify the information spreading time in a general multiplex network in the idealized setting. Multiplex conductance is then evaluated for some interesting multiplex networks to facilitate understanding in this new area. Finally, the tradeoff between the information spreading efficiency improvement and the layer cost is examined to explain the user's social behavior and motivate effective multiplex network designs.}, booktitle={2017 ieee international symposium on information theory (isit)}, author={Huang, Y. F. and Dai, H. Y.}, year={2017}, pages={406–410} }
 @article{zhang_dai_zhang_huang_2016, title={Mobile Conductance in Sparse Networks and Mobility-Connectivity Tradeoff}, volume={15}, ISSN={["1558-2248"]}, DOI={10.1109/twc.2015.2513776}, abstractNote={In this paper, our recently proposed mobile-conductance based analytical framework is extended to the sparse settings, thus offering a unified tool for analyzing information spreading in mobile networks. A penalty factor is identified for information spreading in sparse networks as compared to the connected scenario, which is then intuitively interpreted and verified by simulations. With the analytical results obtained, the mobility-connectivity tradeoff is quantitatively analyzed to determine how much mobility may be exploited to make up for network connectivity deficiency.}, number={4}, journal={IEEE TRANSACTIONS ON WIRELESS COMMUNICATIONS}, author={Zhang, Huazi and Dai, Huaiyu and Zhang, Zhaoyang and Huang, Yufan}, year={2016}, month={Apr}, pages={2954–2965} }