CHIP: Collaborative Host Identity Protocol with Efficient Key Establishment for Constrained Devices in Internet of Things

Wireless Personal Communications - The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next evolutionary paradigm of networking technologies that interconnects almost all the smart objects and intelligent sensors...     

Anonymous Lightweight Proxy Based Key Agreement for IoT (ALPKA)

Wireless Personal Communications - The Internet of Things (IoT) technologies interconnect a broad range of network devices, differing in terms of size, weight, functionality, and resource...     

Highly efficient key agreement for remote patient monitoring in MEC-enabled 5G networks

Remote patient monitoring is one of the cornerstones to enable Ambient Assisted Living. Here, a set of devices provide their corresponding input, which should be carefully aggregated and analysed to derive health-related conclusions. In the new Fifth-Generation (5G) networks, Internet of Things (IoT) devices communicate directly to the mobile network without any need of proxy devices. Moreover, 5G networks consist of Multi-access Edge Computing (MEC) nodes, which are taking the role of a mini-cloud, able to provide sufficient computation and storage capacity at the edge of the network. MEC IoT integration in 5G offers a lot of benefits such as high availability, high scalability, low backhaul bandwidth costs, low latency, local awareness and additional security and privacy. In this paper, we first detail the procedure on how to establish such remote monitoring in 5G networks. Next, we focus on the key agreement between IoT, MEC and registration center in order to guarantee mutual authentication, anonymity, and unlinkability properties. Taking into account the high heterogeneity of IoT devices that can contribute to an accurate image of the health status of a patient, it is of utmost importance to design a very lightweight scheme that allows even the smallest devices to participate. The proposed protocol is symmetric key based and thus highly efficient. Moreover, it is shown that the required security features are established and protection against the most of the well-known attacks is guaranteed.

     

Turkish diasporic responses to the Taksim Square protests: Legacy media and social media uses in Belgium,the Netherlands and Germany

Based on an offline and online survey of 967 people of Turkish origin living in these countries, we test how legacy and social media have influenced the participation of the members of the Turkish diaspora in Belgium, Germany and the Netherlands in the mid-2013 protests in Turkey’s social movement referred to as Gezi Park. This study also investigates how living in Europe can influence the behavior and attitudes of the sampled individuals from the Turkish Diaspora of Germany, Belgium and Netherlands during the period when the Gezi Park demonstration took place. Our results make it clear that social media were used by those who supported the protest movement, while those who opposed the protest movement primarily used or followed traditional sources of media, including Turkish and European television. Furthermore, supporters amongst the diaspora for the Gezi-protests were primarily active in accruing social capital through bonding and social networking among those who belong to the Turkish diaspora under the guise of the Gezi Park protests. Finally, a significant number of the supporters of the protests in the three countries took part in several different means of supporting the movement, including: disseminating awareness about the Gezi protests through social media, engaging in meetings, and in some cases, even severing contact with friends and acquaintances who did not share their support for the protest movement.     

Inactivation of food-borne viruses using natural biochemical substances

Food-borne viruses such as human Noroviruses (NoVs), hepatitis A virus (HAV), Rotaviruses (RoVs) are a public health concern worldwide. Biochemical substances, which occur naturally in plants, animals or microorganisms, might possess considerable antimicrobial properties. In this study, the reported effects of biochemical substances on food-borne viruses are reviewed. The biochemical substances are grouped into several categories including (i) polyphenols and proanthocyanins, (ii) saponin, (iii) polysaccharides, (iv) organic acids, (v) proteins and polypeptides, (vi) essential oils. Although not fully understood, the mechanism of action for the antiviral activity of the natural compounds is presented. Generally, it is thought to be the prevention of the viral attachment to host cells, either by causing damage on the viral capsids or change of the receptors on the cell membranes. It is recommended that further studies are undertaken not only on the wide-range screening for novel antiviral substances, but also on the mechanism in-depth as well as the exploration for their potential application in controlling virus contamination in foods or food processing.     

Do overweight youngsters like food more than lean peers? Assessing their implicit attitudes with a personalized Implicit Association Task

It has been theorized that overweight and obesity are related with a heightened (unhealthy) food preference. Until now both self-reports and indirect attitude measures offer little support for this hypothesis. Using a personalized version of the Implicit Association Task [IAT; Greenwald, A. G., McGhee, D. E., & Schwartz, J. L. (1998). Measuring individual differences in implicit cognition: The Implicit Association Test. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, 74, 1464–1480], this study investigated (1) whether overweight youngsters (n = 40) implicitly prefer palatable food to an attractive non-food category such as hobbies and (2) whether they implicitly prefer unhealthy palatable food to healthy palatable food, compared to a matched group of lean controls (n = 40). Further, it was examined whether these implicit attitudes correlated with self-reported food and hobby attitudes. The results revealed no effect for food versus hobbies. Both groups implicitly preferred healthy to unhealthy food. Positive correlations between implicit and self-reported attitudes were only found for hobbies. Several interpretations of these findings are discussed.     

On hydrodynamical properties of ellipsoidal bubbles

A major part of this paper is taken up by the calculation of the first axisymmetric surface oscillation frequency and the (2, 0) mode of an ellipsoidal bubble, in order to compare with experimentally obtained values of bubbles rising in water. First, an energy method is used for an ellipsoid oscillating in stagnant water. Interestingly, with help of a paper by Bjerknes [12] at 1873!. The results compare poorly with experiments. Agreement improves when the oscillation of the rise velocity is taken into account. The remaining difference between the results of theory and experimental values is ascribed to deviation of the bubble shape from an ellipsoid. Finally, volume oscillations of ellipsoidal bubbles are calculated with the energy method and the results compare well with those of an earlier work, based on an electrical analogon.     

Economic restructuring in Eastern Europe and acid rain abatement strategies

Acid rain abatement in Europe are currently being discussed in view of the expiration of the Helsinki Protocol on SO₂ emission reduction. The changing energy situation in Eastern European countries is expected to have an influence on the deposition pattern in Europe. The paper presents a consistent energy scenario for Eastern European countries and compares optimal strategies to reduce SO₂ emissions. These strategies are based on runs with the RAINS model in which environmental targets have been set based on critical loads for sulphur. The analysis shows that economic restructuring and efficiency improvements in Eastern European countries, as well as in Western Europe, may result in significantly lower sulphur abatement. costs. Potential assistance to Eastern Europe to guarantee desired environmental standards in Western countries should therefore focus not only on providing emission control devices but also on the success of the economic transition process.     

Intravitreal sustained-release ganciclovir implantation to control cytomegalovirus retinitis in AIDS

Immunoglobulin (Ig) heavy chain class switch recombination occurs mainly by joining two switch (S) regions, segments of tandemly repeated DNA sequences that lie upstream of heavy chain constant region genes. The products of this recombination event are a chromosomal DNA joint and a 'looped-out' circular DNA joint. Although a previous study showed that 40% of chromosomal joints in the mu gene switch region (S mu) are found in the flanking regions of S mu, which do not contain typical S mu region repeats [1], other studies revealed that almost all recombination sites on looped-out circular DNA are found within S regions [2-4]. To resolve this discrepancy, we have isolated and sequenced 164 DNA fragments containing recombination joints from both chromosomal and looped-out DNA of a single cell line, the murine B lymphoma line CH12F3, which switches from IgM to IgA production with a high frequency upon cytokine stimulation [5]. The recombination sites were distributed almost evenly in the S mu region and its flanking regions, suggesting that the final joining of DNA ends may not necessarily take place in S regions. In contrast, there were few joining sites in the exon located 5' of the switch region (the I mu exon), suggesting that the 3' end of the I mu exon might be the upstream border of the recombination joint.