MARINE: Man-in-the-middle attack resistant trust model IN connEcted vehicles

Vehicular Ad-hoc NETwork (VANET), a novel technology holds a paramount importance within the transportation domain due to its abilities to increase traffic efficiency and safety. Connected vehicles propagate sensitive information which must be shared with the neighbors in a secure environment. However, VANET may also include dishonest nodes such as Man-in-the-Middle (MiTM) attackers aiming to distribute and share malicious content with the vehicles, thus polluting the network with compromised information. In this regard, establishing trust among connected vehicles can increase security as every participating vehicle will generate and propagate authentic, accurate and trusted content within the network. In this paper, we propose a novel trust model, namely, Man-in-the-middle Attack Resistance trust model IN connEcted vehicles (MARINE), which identifies dishonest nodes performing MiTM attacks in an efficient way as well as revokes their credentials. Every node running MARINE system first establishes trust for the sender by performing multi-dimensional plausibility checks. Once the receiver verifies the trustworthiness of the sender, the received data is then evaluated both directly and indirectly. Extensive simulations are carried out to evaluate the performance and accuracy of MARINE rigorously across three MiTM attacker models and the bench-marked trust model. Simulation results show that for a network containing 35% MiTM attackers, MARINE outperforms the state of the art trust model by 15%, 18%, and 17% improvements in precision, recall and F-score, respectively.N/A

Increased expression of the interleukin-1 receptor-associated kinase (IRAK)-1 is associated with adipose tissue inflammatory state in obesity

Figure S2. Comparison of IRAK-1 gene and protein expression in the adipose tissue. The gene and protein expression of IRAK-1 in non-diabetic obese, overweight, and lean adipose tissue samples, 5 each, were determined by using real-time RT-PCR and immunohistochemistry, respectively, as described in Patients and Methods. The relative mRNA expression was measured as fold expression over average of control gene expression taken as 1. The protein expression was measured as intensity which was calculated by using Aperio positive pixel count algorithm software (version 9)

Effect of doping concentration on absorbance, structural, and magnetic properties of cobalt-doped ZnO nano-crystallites

Abstract Controlled conduction of magnetic spins is desired for data processing in modern spintronic devices. Transition metal-doped ZnO is a potential candidate for this purpose. We studied the effects of cobalt doping on structural, absorbance, and magnetic properties of ZnO nano-particles. Different compositions (Zn0.99Co0.1O, Zn0.97Co0.3O, and Zn0.95Co0.5O) of cobalt-doped ZnO were fabricated using metallic chlorides by co-precipitation method. XRD revealed standard ZnO wurtzite crystal structure without lattice distortion due to impurities but showed presence of additional phases at higher doping ratios. Fourier transformed infrared spectroscopy also confirmed the standard ZnO profiles at lower doping ratios but additional phases at higher doping. Vibrating sample magnetometer showed soft ferromagnetic behavior for low impurity samples and harder ferromagnetic behavior for higher doping at room temperature. A simultaneous differential scanning calorimetry/thermo gravimetric analysis was performed to study the phase variations during crystallization.</jats:p

Buckling of Nonprismatic Column on Varying Elastic Foundation with Arbitrary Boundary Conditions

Citation: Ahmad A. Ghadban, Ahmed H. Al-Rahmani, Hayder A. Rasheed, and Mohammed T. Albahttiti, “Buckling of Nonprismatic Column on Varying Elastic Foundation with Arbitrary Boundary Conditions,” Mathematical Problems in Engineering, vol. 2017, Article ID 5976098, 14 pages, 2017. doi:10.1155/2017/5976098Buckling of nonprismatic single columns with arbitrary boundary conditions resting on a nonuniform elastic foundation may be considered as the most generalized treatment of the subject. The buckling differential equation for such columns is extremely difficult to solve analytically. Thus, the authors propose a numerical approach by discretizing the column into a finite number of segments. Each segment has constants  (modulus of elasticity),  (moment of inertia), and  (subgrade stiffness). Next, an exact analytical solution is derived for each prismatic segment resting on uniform elastic foundation. These segments are then assembled in a matrix from which the critical buckling load is obtained. The derived formulation accounts for different end boundary conditions. Validation is performed by benchmarking the present results against analytical solutions found in the literature, showing excellent agreement. After validation, more examples are solved to illustrate the power and flexibility of the proposed method. Overall, the proposed method provides reasonable results, and the examples solved demonstrate the versatility of the developed approach and some of its many possible applications

Employment of single-diode model to elucidate the variations in photovoltaic parameters under different electrical and thermal conditions

In this research work, numerical simulations are performed to correlate the photovoltaic parameters with various internal and external factors influencing the performance of solar cells. Single-diode modeling approach is utilized for this purpose and theoretical investigations are compared with the reported experimental evidences for organic and inorganic solar cells at various electrical and thermal conditions. Electrical parameters include parasitic resistances (Rs and Rp) and ideality factor (n), while thermal parameters can be defined by the cells temperature (T). A comprehensive analysis concerning broad spectral variations in the short circuit current (Isc), open circuit voltage (Voc), fill factor (FF) and efficiency (η) is presented and discussed. It was generally concluded that there exists a good agreement between the simulated results and experimental findings. Nevertheless, the controversial consequence of temperature impact on the performance of organic solar cells necessitates the development of a complementary model which is capable of well simulating the temperature impact on these devices performance

Characterization of endoreplicated nuclei in Arabidopsis thaliana

A model plant, Arabidopsis thaliana, duplicates its chromosomes without cell division, in a process known as endoreplication. The primary objective of this study was to identify genes and proteins that specifically accumulate in endoreplicated nuclei in Arabidopsis thaliana. Analysis of nuclei sorted by fluorescent activated cell sorter (FACS) revealed that ploidy levels and nuclear volume were positively correlated. However, the protein amounts among 2C, 4C, and 8C nuclei had no significant differences. This indicated a decrease of the protein concentration in endoreplicated nuclei. In contrast, the RNA amount in the 8C nuclei was 1.3- and 1.4-fold higher than that in the 4C and 2C nuclei, respectively. This suggested an increase of RNA after the second round of endoreplication. The secondary objective was to identify the biological function of unique domains found in Arabidopsis topoisomerase VI subunit B (AtTopVIB) that contributes to endoreplication. Using the AtTopVIB amino acid sequence and protein database search engine, I identified two unique domains to which I designated the insertion of the N-terminal domain (IND) and the extension in the C-terminal domain (ECD). These domains are well conserved between Arabidopsis and Oryza sativa (rice) but very unique in the entire family. Towards understanding the biological function of these domains, I analyzed the localization of AtTopVIB in Arabidopsis protoplasts with yellow-fluorescent protein (YFP). The results indicated that AtTopVIB was localized in the nucleus. Also, I analyzed AtTopVIB self interaction in Arabidopsis protoplasts using split-luciferase. The results indicated a weak self interaction of AtTopVIB. These results suggested that the IND and ECD may be involved in the localization or self-interaction of AtTopVIB in Arabidopsis cells

Characteristics of chicken slaughterhouse wastewater

The chicken slaughterhouse wastewater is a class of wastewater, which is heavily polluted with organic matters including proteins, blood residues, fats and lard. Therefore, the direct discharged of untreated chicken slaughterhouse wastewater into the environment is associated with the occurrence of eutrophication phenomenon. In the present study, the characteristics of chicken slaughterhouse wastewater were investigated to ascertain the role of these wastes in the adverse effect on the environment and natural water system. The parameter tested included biological oxygen demand (BOD), chemical oxygen demand (COD), total suspended solid (TSS), total nitrogen (TN), total organic carbon (TOC), orthophosphate (PO4 3-), temperature and pH. The results revealed available high concentrations of BOD (1,341 - 1,821 ± 242.7 mg L1 ), COD (3,154.19 - 7,719.3 ± 2,282.69 mg L-1), TSS (377.67 - 5,462 ± 2,696.1 mg L-1) which have exceeded the EQA1974 standard limits for disposal of wastewater into the environment. The concentrations of TN (162.6 -563.8 ± 215 mg L-1) and PO4 3- (7.047 - 17.111 ± 4.25 mg L-1) were within the range required for microalgae growth which confirm their role in the occurrence of eutrophication phenomenon. It can be concluded that the direct discharge of chicken slaughterhouse wastewater contributes negatively on the environmental biodiversity and thus they should be subjected for an effective treated before the final disposal

An Evaluation of the Performance of Government of Pakistan

The use of social and economic indicators to evaluate and rank governments’ performance is often found in literature. The Anglo-Commonwealth and Scandinavian countries rest on the surveillance of work in the various ministries. This performance accounting approach thus becomes crucial for any regime to perform superlatively to their predecessors and thus it provides the basis to suggest why it is important to inspect governance of a government. Government’s efficacy also depends on the magnitude of the welfare that it is able to achieve. Debate on welfare is dated back to Adam Smith at-least. Now the question is what should be the welfare gauging indicators. We understand that, issues related to poverty, land utilisation, agriculture and industrial sectors, health services, education, growth rate of national income, per capita income, employment, etc. are important factors that can explain welfare status of a nation. Thus by developing an index based on performance in these areas, various political regimes can be evaluated and ranked. These evaluations and rankings set standards for future governments to improve. Thus these studies can be useful for developing and improving social welfare standards