Evaluation of a sulfidogenic system fed with microalgal biomass of Chlorella pyrenoidosa as an electron donor: Sulfate reduction kinetics

In this study, a sulfidogenic reactor fed with microalgal biomass of Chlorella pyrenoidosa as an electron donor was operated in a continuous mode. This study evaluated the influence of various initial sulfate concentration from 1.0 to 2.5 g/L on anaerobic sulfate reduction kinetics by a sulfidogenic enrichment culture predominantly Desulfovibrio sp. VSV2. It was observed that volumetric sulfate reduction rate (VSRR) was consistently increasing with an increase in volumetric sulfate loading rate (VSLR) across the retention time of 7–10 days. For a retention time of 7 days, the maximum VSRR was noted as 0.0050 g/(L.h) with a corresponding VSLR of 0.0089 g/(L.h). When retention time was maintained for 10 days, a maximum sulfate reduction of 65% and a maximum bacterial concentration of 1.632 g/L were achieved for an initial sulfate concentration of 1.5 g/L. It was concluded that VSLR facilitated through both dilution rate and initial sulfate concentration had a significant influence over sulfate reduction kinetics. The results of the study suggested that the microalgal-fed sulfidogenic system could be effectively employed for reduction of sulfate from sulfate-rich wastewater.     

Syndecan-1 (CD138), Carcinomas and EMT

Cell surface proteoglycans are known to be important regulators of many aspects of cell behavior. The principal family of transmembrane proteoglycans is the syndecans, of which there are four in mammals. Syndecan-1 is mostly restricted to epithelia, and bears heparan sulfate chains that are capable of interacting with a large array of polypeptides, including extracellular matrix components and potent mediators of proliferation, adhesion and migration. For this reason, it has been studied extensively with respect to carcinomas and tumor progression. Frequently, but not always, syndecan-1 levels decrease as tumor grade, stage and invasiveness and dedifferentiation increase. This parallels experiments that show depletion of syndecan-1 can be accompanied by loss of cadherin-mediated adhesion. However, in some tumors, levels of syndecan-1 increase, but the characterization of its distribution is relevant. There can be loss of membrane staining, but acquisition of cytoplasmic and/or nuclear staining that is abnormal. Moreover, the appearance of syndecan-1 in the tumor stroma, either associated with its cellular component or the collagenous matrix, is nearly always a sign of poor prognosis. Given its relevance to myeloma progression, syndecan-1-directed antibody—toxin conjugates are being tested in clinical and preclinical trials, and may have future relevance to some carcinomas.     

Microscopic Methods for Identification of Sulfate-Reducing Bacteria from Various Habitats

This paper is devoted to microscopic methods for the identification of sulfate-reducing bacteria (SRB). In this context, it describes various habitats, morphology and techniques used for the detection and identification of this very heterogeneous group of anaerobic microorganisms. SRB are present in almost every habitat on Earth, including freshwater and marine water, soils, sediments or animals. In the oil, water and gas industries, they can cause considerable economic losses due to their hydrogen sulfide production; in periodontal lesions and the colon of humans, they can cause health complications. Although the role of these bacteria in inflammatory bowel diseases is not entirely known yet, their presence is increased in patients and produced hydrogen sulfide has a cytotoxic effect. For these reasons, methods for the detection of these microorganisms were described. Apart from selected molecular techniques, including metagenomics, fluorescence microscopy was one of the applied methods. Especially fluorescence in situ hybridization (FISH) in various modifications was described. This method enables visual identification of SRB, determining their abundance and spatial distribution in environmental biofilms and gut samples.     

Key-dependent side-channel cube attack on CRAFT

CRAFT is a tweakable block cipher introduced in 2019 that aims to provide strong protection against differential fault analysis. In this paper, we show that CRAFT is vulnerable to side-channel cube attacks. We apply side-channel cube attacks to CRAFT with the Hamming weight leakage assumption. We found that the first half of the secret key can be recovered from the Hamming weight leakage after the first round. Next, using the recovered key bits, we continue our attack to recover the second half of the secret key. We show that the set of equations that are solvable varies depending on the value of the key bits. Our result shows that 99.90% of the key space can be fully recovered within a practical time.     

Securing keystroke dynamics from replay attacks

Keystroke dynamics is a viable behavioral biometric technique for identity verification based on users’ keyboard interaction traits. Keystroke dynamics can help prevent credentials from being abused in case of theft or leakage. But what happens if the keystroke events are eavesdropped and being replayed? Attackers that intercept keystroke dynamics authentication sessions of benign users can easily replay them from other sources unchanged or with minor changes and gain illegitimate privileges. Hence, even with its major security advantages, keystroke dynamics can still expose authentication mechanisms to replay attacks. Although replay attack is one of the oldest techniques to manipulate authentication systems, keystroke dynamics does not help preventing it. We suggest a new protocol for dynamics exchange based on choosing a subset of real and fake information snippets shared between the client and service providers to lure potential attackers. We evaluated our method on four state-of-the-art keystroke dynamics algorithms and three publicly available datasets and showed that we can dramatically reduce the possibility of replay attacks while preserving highly accurate user verification.     

一种标准模型下无证书签名方案的安全性分析与改进

无证书签名具有基于身份密码体制和传统公钥密码体制的优点，可解决复杂的公钥证书管理和密钥托管问题.Wu和Jing提出了一种强不可伪造的无证书签名方案，其安全性不依赖于理想的随机预言机.针对该方案的安全性，提出了两类伪造攻击.分析结果表明，该方案无法实现强不可伪造性，并在"malicious-but-passive"的密钥生成中心攻击下也是不安全的.为了提升该方案的安全性，设计了一个改进的无证书签名方案.在标准模型中证明了改进的方案对于适应性选择消息攻击是强不可伪造的，还能抵抗恶意的密钥生成中心攻击.此外，改进的方案具有较低的计算开销和较短的私钥长度，可应用于区块链、车联网、无线体域网等领域.     

基于概要数据结构的全网络持续流检测方法

持续流是隐蔽的网络攻击过程中显现的一种重要特征，它不产生大量流量且在较长周期内有规律地发生，给传统的检测方法带来极大挑战。针对网络攻击的隐蔽性、单监测点的重负荷和信息有限的问题，提出全网络持续流检测方法。首先，设计一种概要数据结构，并将其部署在每个监测点；其次，当网络流到达监测点时，提取流的概要信息并更新概要数据结构的一位；然后，在测量周期结束时，主监测点将来自其他监测点的概要信息进行综合；最后，提出流持续性的近似估计，通过一些简单计算为每个流构建一个位向量，利用概率统计方法估计流持续性，使用修正后的持续性估计检测持续流。通过真实的网络流量进行实验，结果表明，与长持续时间流检测算法（TLF）相比，所提方法的准确性提高了50%，误报率和漏报率分别降低了22%和20%，说明全网络持续流检测方法能够有效监测高速网络流量。     

A new solid‐state mode of hot corrosion at temperatures below 700°C

Preliminary results on a single‐crystal nickel‐based superalloy indicated that hot corrosion can occur at temperatures as low as 550°C, where liquid formation, generally believed to be responsible for Type II hot corrosion, is not predicted. Additional tests were conducted on pure‐nickel samples at 650°C and below to more clearly elucidate the mechanism of this very low‐temperature hot corrosion. Environments in dry air and O₂‐(2.5, 10, 100, and 1000) ppm SO₂ were studied. Based on the results obtained, a solid‐state corrosion mechanism was inferred. The mechanism relies on the formation of a previously unreported compound phase, which was identified using transmission electron microscope analysis that indicated the stoichiometry of Na₂Ni₂SO₅. Furthermore, it was nanocrystalline in structure and metastable. It was deduced that the Na₂Ni₂SO₅ formation was responsible for the rapid nickel transport required for the observed accelerated corrosion process. Moreover, its eventual decomposition resulted in a mixed product of porous NiO with embedded particles of Na₂SO₄. Application of the proposed mechanism to nickel‐based alloys is discussed.     

A New NTRU-Type Public-Key Cryptosystem over the Binary Field

As the development of cloud computing and the convenience of wireless sensor netowrks, smart devices are widely used in daily life, but the security issues of the smart devices have not been well resolved. In this paper, we present a new NTRU-type public-key cryptosystem over the binary field. Specifically, the security of our scheme relies on the computational intractability of an unbalanced sparse polynomial ratio problem (DUSPR). Through theoretical analysis, we prove the correctness of our proposed cryptosystem. Furthermore, we implement our scheme using the NTL library, and conduct a group of experiments to evaluate the capabilities and consuming time of encryption and decryption. Our experiments result demonstrates that the NTRU-type public-key cryptosystem over the binary field is relatively practical and effective.     

Metal sulfate decomposition using green Pd-based catalysts supported on γAl2O3 and SiC: A common step in sulfur-family thermochemical cycles

Thermochemical water splitting cycles (TWSCs) are processes with the potential for large-scale production of carbon-free hydrogen. Among these, the sulfur-family thermochemical cycles are considered the most promising due to both, the use of readily affordable chemical reagents and the temperature required to thermally decompose oxygenated sulfur compounds, which is achievable by solar means. Indeed, solar heat assisted metal sulfate decomposition is a key step, where catalysis can be employed to reduce decomposition temperature. Here we present a green route to synthesize Ag-Pd and Fe-Pd intermetallic alloy catalysts supported over γ-Al₂O₃ and Si-C by a microwave-assisted method using glycerol both as a solvent and as a reducing and stabilizing agent. The obtained supported catalysts were physicochemically characterized. Fe-Pd/Al₂O₃ catalyst exhibited the best performance, abating the zinc sulfate decomposition temperature by ca. 85 °C in comparison with other reported catalysts.