The Digital Fingerprinting Analysis of Generic Twitter Sessions from Internet of Things Security Aspect

Nowadays, the unparalleled growth of Internet of Things (IoT) is a new digital disruption which intelligent devices are connected and working together. IoT connects personal computers, tablets, and smart phones in our daily communications from leisure purposes to business tasks. However, the security concern of IoT can’t be overemphasized due to the connectivity among communication gadgets. Sustainably, Twitter is one of the most popular Instant Message (IM) toolkits today. When Twitter is being utilized, there will be some negligible and imperceptible digital remnants left in the computing devices, which could be probative digital evidences in a court of law when IoT application is involved. Hence, the digital forensics of IM has been a relatively rigorous, competitive, and novel research field by the law enforcement agency officers and the information security staffs with respect to some cybercrimes concerning IoT. Consequently, this research is targeting on the utilization of Twitter on the desktop PC under Windows 7 operating system via the acquisition of volatile digital bread crumbs inside physical memory of the computing device for the purpose of presenting supportive digital evidences for some information security concerns. The proposed various scenarios in the design of the experiment could be the paradigms for digital forensics specialists or law enforcement agencies to follow in order to reconstruct the previous operations in the Twitter sessions of a certain user under the IoT ecosystems.

     

Study on cerium-doped nano-TiO2 coatings for corrosion protection of 316?L stainless steel

Many methods have been reported on improving the photogenerated cathodic protection of nano-TiO₂ coatings for metals. In this work, nano-TiO₂ coatings doped with cerium nitrate have been developed by sol–gel method for corrosion protection of 316 L stainless steel. Surface morphology, structure, and properties of the prepared coatings were investigated by X-ray diffraction, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy, scanning electron microscopy and energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy. The corrosion protection performance of the prepared coatings was evaluated in 3 wt% NaCl solution by using electrochemical techniques in the presence and absence of simulated sunlight illumination. The results indicated that the 1.2% Ce-TiO₂ coating with three layers exhibited an excellent photogenerated cathodic protection under illumination attributed to the higher separation efficiency of electron–hole pairs and higher photoelectric conversion efficiency. The results also showed that after doping with an appropriate concentration of cerium nitrate, the anti-corrosion performance of the TiO₂ coating was improved even without irradiation due to the self-healing property of cerium ions.     

Measuring scale efficiency and returns to scale on large commercial rooftop photovoltaic systems in California

Electricity generated by solar Photovoltaic (PV) power systems is emerging as one of the most promising cleaner alternatives to replace conventional energy sources, such as coal, oil, and natural gas. This study examines managerial sources of operational efficiency or inefficiency on 855 large commercial rooftop PV power systems in California by examining both scale efficiency and Returns to Scale (RTS). For the research purpose, this study utilizes Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) as a methodology to assess the scale measures. A difficulty in applying DEA to the performance analysis of PV power systems is that it contains uncontrollable variables such as ambient temperature and solar irradiation, all of which are influenced by weather. It is also widely known that PV power systems cannot produce electricity during night, so being unable to serve as a base load. Thus, these uncontrollable factors often influence the performance of PV power systems. Paying attention to the effects of those uncontrollable factors, this study discusses how to measure scale efficiency and RTS within the framework of DEA. Then, as an application of the proposed approach, this study examines the performance of large commercial rooftop PV power systems in California. This study finds that they belong to increasing (48), constant (807) and decreasing (0) RTS, implying that most of the PV power systems in California have been operating in their appropriate sizes. This further indicates that the operational inefficiency of PV power systems is due to managerial inappropriateness, not their sizes for generation. Thus, there is a space to improve operational efficiency of rooftop PV systems under constant RTS, through managerial efforts such as increase in transmission capacity and operational flexibility to improve solar penetration, and routine maintenance to minimize detrimental effects of dust deposition.