A New Product Anti-Counterfeiting Blockchain Using a Truly Decentralized Dynamic Consensus Protocol

The growth of counterfeit goods has plagued the international community for decades. Nowadays, the battle against counterfeiting remains a significant challenge. Most of the current anti‐counterfeiting systems are centralized. Motivated by the evolution of blockchain technology, we propose (Block‐Supply), a decentralized anti‐counterfeiting supply chain that exploits NFC and blockchain technologies. This paper also proposes a new truly decentralized consensus protocol that, unlike most of the existing protocols, does not require PoW and randomly employs a different set of different size of validators each time a new block is proposed. Our protocol utilizes a game theoretical model to analyze the risk likelihood of the block\u27s proposing nodes. This risk likelihood is used to determine the number of validators involved in the consensus process. Additionally, the game model enforces the honest consensus nodes\u27 behavior by rewarding honest players and penalizing dishonest ones. Our protocol utilizes a novel, decentralized, dynamic mapping between the nodes that participate in the consensus process. This mapping ensures that the interaction between these nodes is executed anonymously and blindly. This way of mapping withstands many attacks that require knowing the identities of the participating nodes in advance, such as DDoS, Bribery, and Eclipse attacks

Development of Enhanced User Interaction and User Experience for Supporting Serious Role-Playing Games in a Healthcare Setting

Education about implicit bias in clinical settings is essential for improving the quality of healthcare for underrepresented groups. Such a learning experience can be delivered in the form of a serious game simulation. WrightLIFE (Lifelike Immersion for Equity) is a project that combines two serious game simulations, with each addressing the group that faces implicit bias. These groups are individuals that identify as LGBTQIA+ and people with autism spectrum disorder (ASD). The project presents healthcare providers with a training tool that puts them in the roles of the patient and a medical specialist and immerses them in social and clinical settings. WrightLIFE games are distributed on both mobile and desktop devices and go through the entire cycle of providing healthcare professionals with experiential learning, which starts with defining the goals of the simulation and ends with collecting feedback. In this thesis work, cross-platform software frameworks like the Unity Engine have been used to develop survey scenes to comprehensively document users’ pre- and post-simulation experience and attitudes towards implicit bias. Life course scenes were designed to convey an enhanced user experience that bridges the socio-technical gap between the real and virtual worlds. By applying existing user-experience design methodologies to design the survey scenes and life course scenes, it was possible to create an immersive experiential-learning assessment tool that has the potential to deliver data-driven and targeted learning

When energy trading meets blockchain in electrical power system: The state of the art

With the rapid growth of renewable energy resources, energy trading has been shifting from the centralized manner to distributed manner. Blockchain, as a distributed public ledger technology, has been widely adopted in the design of new energy trading schemes. However, there are many challenging issues in blockchain-based energy trading, e.g., low efficiency, high transaction cost, and security and privacy issues. To tackle these challenges, many solutions have been proposed. In this survey, the blockchain-based energy trading in the electrical power system is thoroughly investigated. Firstly, the challenges in blockchain-based energy trading are identified and summarized. Then, the existing energy trading schemes are studied and classified into three categories based on their main focuses: energy transaction, consensus mechanism, and system optimization. Blockchain-based energy trading has been a popular research topic, new blockchain architectures, models and products are continually emerging to overcome the limitations of existing solutions, forming a virtuous circle. The internal combination of different blockchain types and the combination of blockchain with other technologies improve the blockchain-based energy trading system to better satisfy the practical requirements of modern power systems. However, there are still some problems to be solved, for example, the lack of regulatory system, environmental challenges and so on. In the future, we will strive for a better optimized structure and establish a comprehensive security assessment model for blockchain-based energy trading system.This research was funded by Beijing Natural Science Foundation (grant number 4182060).Scopu

From tagging to theorizing: deepening engagement with cultural heritage through crowdsourcing

Crowdsourcing, or “obtaining information or services by soliciting input from a large number of people,” is becoming known for the impressive productivity of projects that ask the public to help transcribe, describe, locate, or categorize cultural heritage resources. This essay argues that crowdsourcing projects can also be a powerful platform for audience engagement with museums, offering truly deep and valuable connection with cultural heritage through online collaboration around shared goals or resources. It includes examples of well-designed crowdsourcing projects that provide platforms for deepening involvement with citizen history and citizen science; useful definitions of “engagement”; and evidence for why some activities help audiences interact with heritage and scientific material. It discusses projects with committed participants and considers the role of communities of participants in engaging participants more deeply

ONTODL+: an ontology description language and its compiler

Dissertação de mestrado em Engenharia InformáticaOntologies are very powerful tools when it comes to handling knowledge. They offer a good solution to exchange, store, search and infer large volumes of information. Throughout the years various solutions for knowledge-based systems use ontologies at their core. OntoDL has been developed as a Domain Specific Language using ANTLR4, to allow for the specification of ontologies. This language has already been used by experts of various fields has a way to use computer-based solutions to solve their problems. In this thesis, included on the second year of the Master degree in Informatics Engineering, OntoDL+ was created as an expansion of the original OntoDL. Both the language and its compiler have been improved. The language was extended to improve usability and productivity for its users, while ensuring an easy to learn and understand language. The compiler was expanded to translate the language specifications to a vaster array of languages, increasing the potential uses of the DSL with the features provided by the languages. The compiler and some examples of the DSL can be downloaded at the website https: //epl.di.uminho.pt/∼gepl/GEPL DS/OntoDL/ created for the application and presented in the final chapters of the thesis.As ontologias são formalismos muito poderosos no que toca a manipulação de conhecimento. Estas oferecem uma boa solução para trocar, armazenar, procurar e inferir grandes volumes de informação. Ao longo dos anos, várias soluções para sistemas baseados em conhecimento usaram ontologias como uma parte central do sistema. A OntoDL é uma Linguagem de Domínio Específico que foi desenvolvida através do uso de ANTLR4, para permitir a especificação de ontologias. Esta linguagem foi já utilizada por especialistas de diversas áreas como forma de utilizar soluções informáticas para resolver os seus problemas. Nesta tese, incluída no segundo ano do Mestrado em Engenharia Informática, OntoDL+ foi criado como uma expansão tanto à linguagem e como ao seu compilador. A linguagem foi extendida para melhorar a usabilidade e produtividade dos seus utilizadores, mantendo se fácil de aprender e perceber. O compilador foi expandido para ser capaz de traduzir as especificações de OntoDL+ para um leque de linguagens mais vasto, aumentando os potenciais usos da DSL através das funcionalidades providenciadas pelas linguagens alvo. O compilador e alguns exemplos da DSL podem ser acedidos no sítio https://epl.di. uminho.pt/∼gepl/GEPL DS/OntoDL/ criado para a aplicação e mostrado nos capítulos finais da tese

Addressing Automated Adversaries of Network Applications

The Internet supports a perpetually evolving patchwork of network services and applications. Popular applications include the World Wide Web, online commerce, online banking, email, instant messaging, multimedia streaming, and online video games. Practically all networked applications have a common objective: to directly or indirectly process requests generated by humans. Some users employ automation to establish an unfair advantage over non-automated users. The perceived and substantive damages that automated, adversarial users inflict on an application degrade its enjoyment and usability by legitimate users, and result in reputation and revenue loss for the application\u27s service provider. This dissertation examines three challenges critical to addressing the undesirable automation of networked applications. The first challenge explores individual methods that detect various automated behaviors. Detection methods range from observing unusual network-level request traffic to sensing anomalous client operation at the application-level. Since many detection methods are not individually conclusive, the second challenge investigates how to combine detection methods to accurately identify automated adversaries. The third challenge considers how to leverage the available knowledge to disincentivize adversary automation by nullifying their advantage over legitimate users. The thesis of this dissertation is that: there exist methods to detect automated behaviors with which an application\u27s service provider can identify and then systematically disincentivize automated adversaries. This dissertation evaluates this thesis using research performed on two network applications that have different access to the client software: Web-based services and multiplayer online games