Magnetic Behavior of Trinuclear Vanadium(II)–Diamine Complexes. Part 2. Large Intramolecular Antiferromagnetic Exchange Interactions in a Triangular Unit

This study reports the magnetic structures of newly reported trinuclear vanadium(II)–diamine complexes. Using the isotropic Heisenberg exchange Hamiltonian, it is suggested that there are strong intramolecular antiferromagnetic interactions among the vanadium(II) ions. It is also suggested that these complexes are good candidates to the geometrically frustrated systems. For part 1 see A. Bayri, J. Inorg. Organomet. Polym. Mater., (in press) An erratum to this article can be found at     

Profile based routing in vehicular ad-hoc networks

One of the main problems in the VANET(vehicular ad-hoc network)routing algorithms is how to establish the stable routes.The link duration in these networks is often very short because of the frequent changes in the network topology.Short link duration reduce the network efficiency.Different speeds of the vehicles and choosing different directions by the vehicles in the junctions are the two reasons that lead to link breakage and a reduction in link duration.Several routing protocols have been proposed for VANET in order to improve the link duration,while none of them avoids the link breakages caused by the second reason.In this paper,a new method for routing algorithms is proposed based on the vehicles trips history.Here,each vehicle has a profile containing its movement patterns extracted from its trips history.The next direction which each vehicle may choose at the next junction is predicted using this profile and is sent to other vehicles.Afterward each vehicle selects a node the future direction of which is the same as its predicted direction.Our case study indicates that applying our proposed method to ROMSGP(receive on most stable group-path)routing protocol reduces the links breakages and increases the link duration time.     

A review study on blockchain-based IoT security and forensics

The term Internet of Things (IoT) represents all communicating countless heterogeneous devices to share data and resources via the internet. The speedy advance of IoT devices proposes limitless benefits, but it also brings new challenges regarding security and forensics. Likewise, IoT devices can generate a massive amount of data that desires integrity and security during its handling and processing in an efficient way. IoT devices and data can be vulnerable to various types of cyber-crimes at each IoT layer. For combating these cyber-crimes in IoT infrastructure, IoT forensic term has shown up. The IoT forensic is the process of performing digital forensic investigation in the IoT environment in a forensically sound and timely fashion manner. Sundry challenges face the IoT forensics that requires urgent solutions and mitigation methods; digital evidence needs to be collected, preserved, analyzed, processed, and reported in a trusted manner to be acceptable for presenting in the court of law. Preserving the evidence unchanged or tampered with is the most critical challenge in digital forensics. Authentication is another challenge facing digital forensics; who is allowed to deal with the evidence? One of the most recent solutions for supporting IoT forensics is the use of Blockchain. Using Blockchain in digital forensics guarantees data integrity, immutability, scalability, and security. Therefore, this paper presents a comprehensive review of IoT security and forensics with the integration with Blockchain technology. It begins by providing an inclusive discussion of IoT security, as well as the need for IoT forensics, and the concepts of Blockchain. Then, a review of Blockchain-based IoT security and forensics issues is presented. Finally, a discussion of open research directions is provided.

     

Genetic algorithm-based initial contour optimization for skin lesion border detection

Multimedia Tools and Applications - Automated segmentation has an essential role in detecting several diseases, such as skin lesions. In segmentation, the active contour (AC) is an efficient method...     

Graphene oxide-containing isocyanate-based polyimide foams: Enhanced thermal stability and flame retardancy

Isocyanate-based graphene oxide-containing polyimide foams were synthesized by a semi-prepolymer method. In this method, while the first solution containing pre-polymer was derived from pyromellitic dianhydride and excess polymethylene polyphenylene isocyanate (PM200), the second solution contains dianhydride derivatives, water, catalysts, surfactants, and graphene oxide. PIFs were prepared with 0%, 0.25%, 0.50%, 0.75%, and 1% graphene oxide by weight, respectively. PIFs exhibited a minimum side reaction and urea generation was not seen for all PIFs instead of imide bonding. The addition of graphene oxide (GO) leads to a more close-packed structure. Therefore, crosslinking density and thermal stability of graphene oxide-containing polyimide foams increased. Upon the addition of 1% GO, almost seven times higher compression strength was obtained compared to neat PIFs. Also, LOI values supported the theory that thermally stable and flame retardant PIFs can be synthesized via the isocyanate-based process with GO.     

Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) authentication and batch-to-batch consistency for different types of paints using benchtop and handheld FTIR spectrophotometers for oil and gas industry

Standardization of Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) fingerprint region for paints and assessment on the reproducibility using different spectrophotometers were investigated. While selective fingerprint regions may be confusing for technicians/analysts who are non-chemists, we attempt to generalize these regions (e.g., 1300–1000 cm⁻¹ for Epoxy part A and 1400–1000 cm⁻¹ for Epoxy part B) by choosing a universal region (2000–900 cm⁻¹) that works for different paints. Comparison result using a paired student t-test shows that the degree of similarity (r) values from the studied regions are not statistically different. The paint fails the screening analysis occasionally on-site when analyzed using handheld FTIR due to the higher level of noise that gives low r values (r < 0.900 ± 0.002). The same samples were analyzed using a benchtop FTIR and the r values are above 0.900 ± 0.002. While the screening may lead to a false rejection of the sample on-site, there could be occurrence of false acceptance. The on-site screening of EPZ part A with different formulations, for instance, shows that the r values over the entire IR spectrum are above 0.900 ± 0.002 when analyzed using handheld FTIR. After the samples were analyzed using the benchtop, the r values fall below 0.900 ± 0.002.     

Topology-Aware Multiple Routing Configurations for Fault Tolerant Networking

Real-time services require reliable and fault tolerant communication networks to support their stringent Quality of Service requirements. Multi Topology Routing based IP Fast Re-route (MT-IPFRR) technologies provide seamless forwarding of IP packets during network failures by constructing virtual topologies (VTs) to re-route the disrupted traffic. Multiple Routing Configurations (MRC) is a widely studied MT-IPFRR technique. In this paper, we propose two heuristics, namely mMRC-1 and mMRC-2, to reduce the number of VTs required by the MRC to provide full coverage for single link/node failures, and hence, to decrease its operational complexity. Both heuristics are designed to construct more robust VTs against network partitioning by taking their topological characteristics into consideration. We perform extensive experiments on 3200 topologies with diverse structural properties using our automated topology generation and analysis tool. Numerical results show that the amount of reductions in VT requirements get higher up to 31.84 %, as the networks tend to have more hub nodes whose degree is much higher than the rest of the network.     

Exploiting SSDs in operational multiversion databases

Multiversion databases store both current and historical data. Rows are typically annotated with timestamps representing the period when the row is/was valid. We develop novel techniques to reduce index maintenance in multiversion databases, so that indexes can be used effectively for analytical queries over current data without being a heavy burden on transaction throughput. To achieve this end, we re-design persistent index data structures in the storage hierarchy to employ an extra level of indirection. The indirection level is stored on solid-state disks that can support very fast random I/Os, so that traversing the extra level of indirection incurs a relatively small overhead. The extra level of indirection dramatically reduces the number of magnetic disk I/Os that are needed for index updates and localizes maintenance to indexes on updated attributes. Additionally, we batch insertions within the indirection layer in order to reduce physical disk I/Os for indexing new records. In this work, we further exploit SSDs by introducing novel DeltaBlock techniques for storing the recent changes to data on SSDs. Using our DeltaBlock, we propose an efficient method to periodically flush the recently changed data from SSDs to HDDs such that, on the one hand, we keep track of every change (or delta) for every record, and, on the other hand, we avoid redundantly storing the unchanged portion of updated records. By reducing the index maintenance overhead on transactions, we enable operational data stores to create more indexes to support queries. We have developed a prototype of our indirection proposal by extending the widely used generalized search tree open-source project, which is also employed in PostgreSQL. Our working implementation demonstrates that we can significantly reduce index maintenance and/or query processing cost by a factor of 3. For the insertion of new records, our novel batching technique can save up to 90 % of the insertion time. For updates, our prototype demonstrates that we can significantly reduce the database size by up to 80 % even with a modest space allocated for DeltaBlocks on SSDs.