Building an intelligent edge environment to provide essential services in smart cities

Smart Cities will cause major societal change because they will provide a comprehensive set of key services including seamless communication, intelligent transport systems, advanced healthcare platforms, urban and infrastructure management, and digital services for local and regional government. Thus, a new service and networking environment which will provide low latency and sustainable high bandwidth is needed to build new applications and services for smart cities. In this system services will be managed from the edge of the Internet and not from the centre as they currently are. This represents a new computing paradigm which is called the Intelligent Edge Environment. This paper looks at how to build this new ecosystem. Firstly, a new framework which comprises seven layers is unveiled, showing the functions that must be supported to realise this brave new world. New mechanisms are then introduced and a small prototype is developed to support storage in highly mobile environments. The results show that this approach could be used to build smart city digital platforms. The paper ends by discussing the development of a Distributed Operating System for smart cities

ARBAC Policy for a Large Multi-National Bank

Administrative role-based access control (ARBAC) is the first comprehensive administrative model proposed for role-based access control (RBAC). ARBAC has several features for designing highly expressive policies, but current work has not highlighted the utility of these expressive policies. In this report, we present a case study of designing an ARBAC policy for a bank comprising 18 branches. Using this case study we provide an assessment about the features of ARBAC that are likely to be used in realistic policies

Detection and Quantification of Multi-Analyte Mixtures Using a Single Sensor and Multi-Stage Data-Weighted RLSE

This work reports the development and experimental verification of a sensor signal processing technique for online identification and quantification of aqueous mixtures of benzene, toluene, ethylbenzene, xylenes (BTEX) and 1, 2, 4-trimethylbenzene (TMB) at ppb concentrations using time-dependent frequency responses from a single polymer-coated shear-horizontal surface acoustic wave sensor. Signal processing based on multi-stage exponentially weighted recursive leastsquares estimation (EW-RLSE) is utilized for estimating the concentrations of the analytes in the mixture that are most likely to have produced a given sensor response. The initial stages of EW-RLSE are used to eliminate analyte(s) that are erroneously identified as present in the mixture; the final stage of EW-RLSE with the corresponding sensor response model representing the analyte(s) present in the mixture is used to obtain a more accurate quantification result of the analyte(s). The success of this method in identifying and quantifying analytes in real-time with high accuracy using the response of just a single sensor device demonstrates an effective, simpler, lower-cost alternative to a sensor array that includes the advantage of not requiring a complex training protocol

Automatic detection of change in address blocks for reply forms processing

In this paper, an automatic method to detect the presence of on-line erasures/scribbles/corrections/over-writing in the address block of various types of subscription and utility payment forms is presented. The proposed approach employs bottom-up segmentation of the address block. Heuristic rules based on structural features are used to automate the detection process. The algorithm is applied on a large dataset of 5,780 real world document forms of 200 dots per inch resolution. The proposed algorithm performs well with an average processing time of 108 milliseconds per document with a detection accuracy of 98.96%

A Study on Predictive Value of Pressure Sore by the Braden Scale in Surgical Intensive Care Units

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: The aim of this study was on predictive value of the Braden scale of pressure sore in Surgical Intensive Care Units. MATERIALS AND METHODS: During the time of study, 50 patients of age more than 40 were examined , who are admitted in post op surgical ward in Stanley medical college. All patients are thoroughly examined and given scores according to Braden scale. According to the scores the patients will be categorised as severe risk, high risk, moderate risk and mild risk.All patients were regularly examined for development of pressure sores 4 times at pod-1, 7, 14 and 28 days or at the time of discharge.All details regarding the study will be recorded. RESULTS: The age distribution of sample is 51% of participants are below 50 years while 27.5% are in 51-60 years and 21.6% are in 61-70 years.Around 70% of the patients in the age group 61-70 years developed bed sore.And 30% of the patients in the age group 51-60 years developed bed sore. No patient below 50 years developed pressure sore. Except subscale sensory perception all the other scales prove to be highly significant on developing pressure sore. Other subscale such as moisture, mobility, activity, nutrition, friction and shear are highly significant with p-value <0.01.Comparison of total braden scale score reveals S.D of 1.57 and p-value of 0.0005 for those who developed pressure sore which is highly significant.The sensitivity of the scale is 90% and specificity of the scale is 93.70% with the cut off value at 16. CONCLUSION: This study proves that the braden scale has a high sensitivity and specificity in predicting pressure sore in intensive care units and it can be used widely to predict the outcome and can be regularly used to prevent pressure sores in post operative patients and this study also gives information regarding the subscales which influences on developing pressure sore

Exploring the provision of reliable network storage in highly mobile environments

Computing is fundamentally about processing data which must be readily accessible to processing elements. Hence, the use of storage hierarchies plays an important role in the overall performance of computer systems. Recently, due to the deployment of fast networks, network storage has emerged as a viable alternative to large local storage systems. However, trying to provide reliable network storage in highly mobile environments, such as vehicular networks, results in the need to address several issues. This paper explores these challenges by first looking at the communication dynamics required for seamless connectivity in these networks. It then looks at how services can be migrated as users move around. The results of this analysis are applied to the migration of a simple Network Memory Server using different migration techniques such as Docker, KVM, LXD and Unikernels in an edge environment, represented by a real Vehicle Ad-Hoc Network. The results show that a proactive approach to service migration is needed to support such services in highly mobile environments

STUDY ON THE CHEMICAL CONSTITUENTS OF THE ESSENTIAL OIL FROM NYCTANTHES ARBOR-TRISTIS AND ITS MOLECULAR DOCKING STUDIES

Objectives: The objectives of this study were to determine the chemical composition of the essential oil obtained from the flowers of Nyctanthes arbor-tristis (NAT) and to carryout molecular docking studies against three bacterial proteins to study the mechanism of the antibacterial activity. Methods: The essential oil was obtained from the flowers of NAT by hydrodistillation and the chemical composition was determined by gas chromatography–mass spectrometry analysis. Docking study was carried out for 14 compounds identified from NAT against three bacterial proteins 1UAG, 3TYE, and 3UDI. Results: Fourteen compounds were identified in the essential oil. 1-octanol (74.81%) is the predominant compound followed by phytol (6.80%), bis (2-ethylhexyl) phthalate (5.88%), and eucarvone (4.23%). Many compounds are similar to that of the essential oil from jasmine. Among the 14 compounds identified, 7,9-di-tert-butyl-1-oxaspiro (4,5) deca-6,9-diene-2,8-dione interacted well with 1UAG and 3TYE and showed binding scores of −8.9 and −7.2 K Cal/mol, respectively, involving hydrophilic and hydrophobic interactions. With the protein 3UDI, the compound eucarvone exhibited a binding score of −7.1 K Cal/mol. Conclusion: The similarities between the essential oil constituents of flowers the two plants NAT and jasmine. Therefore, it could be concluded that NAT flowers of Coimbatore are a good source of fragrance for cosmetic industry and as an antibacterial agent

A review of diaphragmless shock tubes for interdisciplinary applications

Shock tubes have emerged as an effective tool for applications in various fields of research and technology. The conventional mode of shock tube operation employs a frangible diaphragm to generate shockwaves. The last half-century has witnessed significant efforts to replace this diaphragm-bursting method with fast-acting valves. These diaphragmless methods have good repeatability, quick turnaround time between experiments, and produce a clean flow, free of diaphragm fragments in contrast to the conventional diaphragm-type operation. The constantly evolving valve designs are targeting shorter opening times for improved performance and efficiency. The present review is a compilation of the different diaphragmless shock tubes that have been conceptualized, developed, and implemented for various research endeavors. The discussions focus on essential factors, including the type of actuation mechanism, driver-driven configurations, valve opening time, shock formation distance, and operating pressure range, that ultimately influence the shockwave parameters obtained in the shock tube. A generalized mathematical model to study the behavior of these valves is developed. The advantages, limitations, and challenges in improving the performance of the valves are described. Finally, the present-day applications of diaphragmless shock tubes have been discussed, and their potential scope in expanding the frontiers of shockwave research and technology are presented.Comment: Review paper, 31 pages, 18 figures, manuscript draf

ESCUDO: A Fine-grained Protection Model for Web Browsers

Web applications are no longer simple hyperlinked documents. They have progressively evolved to become highly complex---web pages combine content from several sources (with varying levels of trustworthiness), and incorporate significant portions of client-side code. However, the prevailing web protection model, the same-origin policy, has not adequately evolved to manage the security consequences of this additional complexity. As a result, web applications have become attractive targets of exploitation. We argue that this disconnection between the protection needs of modern web applications and the protection models used by web browsers that manage those applications amounts to a failure of access control. In this paper, we present Escudo, a new web browser protection model designed based on established principles of mandatory access control. We describe our implementation of a prototype of Escudo in the Lobo web browser, and illustrate how web applications can use Escudo for securing their resources. Our evaluation results indicate that Escudo incurs low overhead. To support backwards compatibility, Escudo defaults to the same-origin policy for legacy applications

Automatic Creation of SQL Injection and Cross-Site Scripting Attacks

We present a technique for finding security vulnerabilitiesin Web applications. SQL Injection (SQLI) and cross-sitescripting (XSS) attacks are widespread forms of attackin which the attacker crafts the input to the application toaccess or modify user data and execute malicious code. Inthe most serious attacks (called second-order, or persistent,XSS), an attacker can corrupt a database so as to causesubsequent users to execute malicious code.This paper presents an automatic technique for creatinginputs that expose SQLI and XSS vulnerabilities. The techniquegenerates sample inputs, symbolically tracks taintsthrough execution (including through database accesses),and mutates the inputs to produce concrete exploits. Oursis the first analysis of which we are aware that preciselyaddresses second-order XSS attacks.Our technique creates real attack vectors, has few falsepositives, incurs no runtime overhead for the deployed application,works without requiring modification of applicationcode, and handles dynamic programming-languageconstructs. We implemented the technique for PHP, in a toolArdilla. We evaluated Ardilla on five PHP applicationsand found 68 previously unknown vulnerabilities (23 SQLI,33 first-order XSS, and 12 second-order XSS)