Land Trusts and the Protection and Stewardship of Land in Canada: Exploring Non-Governmental Land Trust Practices and the Role of Urban Community Land Trusts

This paper explores the mandates of non-government land trust organizations in Canada, the role of urban land in current land trust practices, and possibilities for the inclusion of land protection and stewardship in Canadian cities through a discussion of the community land trust (CLT) model. Through the creation of an inventory of Canadian non-governmental land trust organizations, we demonstrate that the majority of historical and contemporary land trust organizations focus on the protection and conservation of wilderness and rural lands, with limited focus on the protection and stewardship of existing urban lands. Additionally, we suggest that the CLT model, already in existence in several Canadian cities, offers a way to re-frame this emphasis and to encourage non-governmental and community-based urban land protection and stewardship in order to resist increasing land values and provide necessary community benefits that foster equitable access and affordability

Fuzzy Logic-Based Substitution-Box for Robust Medical Image Encryption in Telemedicine

Due to privacy and sensitivity of the medical images, the creation of strong medical image encryption schemes has gained the attention of cryptographers. In this study, a robust medical image encryption scheme is developed involving a fuzzy subset of integers from 1 to 256 characterized by membership values. The S-box entries are determined using a precise mathematical formulation. Various standard analyses are performed to check the reliability and security of the newly devised S-box. Furthermore, this newly devised S-box is utilized to design proposed encrypting technique. A thorough benchmarking analysis that is specifically designed for image encryption schemes has been conducted in order to assess the algorithm’s performance. The findings of these analyses obtained through the proposed scheme, in comparison to some recently developed image encryption schemes; show that the proposed approach exhibits exceptional attributes and formidable cryptographic potency. Consequently, the algorithm not only showcases remarkable effectiveness but also holds great promise in the realm of securing medical images for telemedicine

Blood brain barrier (BBB)-disruption in intracortical silicon microelectrode implants

Chronically implanted microelectrodes in the neural tissue elicit inflammatory responses that are time varying and have been shown to depend on multiple factors. Among these factors, blood brain barrier (BBB)-disruption has been hypothesized as one of the dominant factors resulting in electrode failure. A series of events that includes BBB and cell-membrane disruption occurs during electrode implantation that triggers multiple biochemical cascades responsible for microglial and astroglial activation, hemorrhage, edema, and release of pro-inflammatory neurotoxic cytokines that causes neuronal degeneration and dysfunction. Typically, microwire arrays and silicon probes are inserted slowly into the neural tissue whereas the silicon Utah MEAs (UMEA) are inserted at a high speed using a pneumatic inserter. In this work, we report the sequelae of electrode-implant induced cortical injury at various acute time points in UMEAs implanted in the brain tissue by quantifying the expression profile for key genes mediating the inflammatory response and tight junction (TJ) and adherens junction (AJ) proteins that form the BBB and are critical to the functioning of the BBB. Our results indicated upregulation of most pro-inflammatory genes relative to naïve controls for all time points. Expression levels for the genes that form the TJ and AJ were downregulated suggestive of BBB-dysfunction. Moreover, there was no significant difference between stab and implant groups suggesting the effects of UMEA insertion-related trauma in the brain tissue. Our results provide an insight into the physiological events related to neuroinflammation and BBB-disruption occurring at acute time-points following insertion of UMEAs