Political Will Needed to Effectively and Efficiently Conserve and Manage Water in India

Dr. Mansee Bal Bhargava, a research entrepreneur at the Environment Design Consultants (EDC), Ahmedabad, and a former Fulbright scholar at Centre for Behaviour, Institutions, and Environment, School of Sustainability, Arizona State University, Tempe (2016-17) — has written an open letter on behalf of water allied researchers, educators, consultants, and enthusiasts*, titled “Water Matters: Appeal for Election 2019 Onward”

Visualization of Wormholes in Sensor Networks

Several protocols have been proposed to defend against wormholes in ad hoc networks by adopting positioning devices, synchronized clocks, or directional antennas. In this paper, we propose a mechanism, MDS-VOW, to detect wormholes in a sensor network. MDS-VOW first reconstructs the layout of the sensors using multi-dimensional scaling. To compensate the distortions caused by distance measurement errors, a surface smoothing scheme is adopted. MDS-VOW then detects the wormhole by visualizing the anomalies introduced by the attack. The anomalies, which are caused by the fake connections through the wormhole, bend the reconstructed surface to pull the sensors that are faraway to each other. Through detecting the bending feature, the wormhole is located and the fake connections are identified. The contributions of MDS-VOW are: (1) it does not require the sensors to be equipped with special hardware, (2) it adopts and combines the techniques from social science, computer graphics, and scientific visualization to attack the problem in network security. We examine the accuracy of the proposed mechanism when the sensors are deployed in a circle area and one wormhole exists in the network. The results show that MDS-VOW has a low false alarm ratio when the distance measurement errors are not large

Cryptanalysis of an MPEG-Video Encryption Scheme Based on Secret Huffman Tables

This paper studies the security of a recently-proposed MPEG-video encryption scheme based on secret Huffman tables. Our cryptanalysis shows that: 1) the key space of the encryption scheme is not sufficiently large against divide-and-conquer (DAC) attack and known-plaintext attack; 2) it is possible to decrypt a cipher-video with a partially-known key, thus dramatically reducing the complexity of the DAC brute-force attack in some cases; 3) its security against the chosen-plaintext attack is very weak. Some experimental results are included to support the cryptanalytic results with a brief discuss on how to improve this MPEG-video encryption scheme.Comment: 8 pages, 4 figure

Plasma Corticotropin-Releasing Factor Receptors and B7-2⁺ Extracellular Vesicles in Blood Correlate with Irritable Bowel Syndrome Disease Severity.

Extracellular vesicles (EVs) are composed of bilayer membranes that are released by different cell types and are present in bodily fluids, such as blood, urine, and bile. EVs are thought to play a key role in intracellular communication. Based on their size and density, EVs are classified into small, medium, or large EVs. Cargo composition in EVs reflects physiological changes in health and disease. Patients with irritable bowel syndrome (IBS) exhibit visceral hypersensitivity and mood disorders. Stressful episodes often precede disease symptoms in IBS patients. Stress-induced symptoms include, but are not limited to, abdominal pain and mood swings. Perceived stress responses are mediated by two known G protein-coupled receptors (GPCRs), corticotropin-releasing factor receptor 1 and 2 (CRFRs). CRFRs belong to the Class B secretin receptor family of GPCRs. Here, we show that CRFRs were present in human and murine plasma, and in EVs purified from mouse serum. CRFRs were present in plasma from IBS patients and healthy controls. EVs secreted from immune cells influence both adaptive and innate immune responses via exchange of EVs between different immune cell types. B7-2 (CD86), a plasma membrane antigen-presenting protein, is present on EVs secreted from dendritic, B-, and mast cells, whereas CD9 is present on EVs secreted from dendritic and intestinal epithelial cells. We found that plasma CRFR levels positively correlated with B7-2+ EVs (R = 0.8597, p < 0.0001), but no association was seen with CD9+ EVs. Plasma CRFRs expression negatively correlated with IBS severity scores. Our data suggests that plasma EVs from immune cells carry CRFRs as cargos and influence cell-cell communication in health and disease

BE YOUR OWN BOSS: A CHRONIC DISEASE SELF-MANAGEMENT PROGRAM

poster abstractObjective: Describe the pilot of a peer-led chronic disease self-management workshop for youth aged 13-24 years old. Background: Fifteen to eighteen percent of children in the United States live with a chronic health condition (Perrin et al., Journal of the American Medical Association 2007, 297:2755). The Stanford chronic disease self-management program (CDSMP) has demonstrated improved self-care and health outcomes in older adults. Alberta Health Services has adapted this program from Stanford University for youth and young adults. CYACC is col-laborating with Alberta to evaluate the effectiveness of the adapted version in adolescents and young adults. Methods: Train the trainer sessions were completed to develop an initial cadre of lay leaders to implement the workshop sessions. Participants with any chronic condition attend 2 hour peer-led sessions once per week for six weeks. During the sessions, individuals with a variety of chronic diseases learn the skills needed in self-management of their condition and mainte-nance of general well-being and life’s activities. Data is collected on self-efficacy, pain, adherence, and other outcomes through pre- and post- as-sessment surveys. Results: Fourteen individuals participated in the pilot phase of the pro-gram; 5 in Lafayette, IN and 8 in Indianapolis, IN. A total of 14 pre-surveys were collected, while 10 post-surveys were collected. Analyses of the sur-veys show beneficial topics , while also indicating which topics should receive additional focus. Areas of the program identified as needing attention include recruitment, risk management, transportation issues, participant dropout rates, logistics of workshops, continued training of lay leaders, and stand-ardization of survey responses. Conclusion: The pilot study identified the importance and need for a self-management program for youth and young adults with chronic conditions. This program has the potential to improve health and self-management in the study population. Limitations of the program were addressed and will be improved for the next round of workshops