Security Challenges and Efficient Security Solutions for Ad-Hoc Wireless Sensor Network

Wireless sensor networks sense the information, process them locally and communicate it to the outside world via satellite or Internet. Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs) use tiny, inexpensive sensor nodes with several distinguishing characteristics: they have very low processing power and radio ranges, permit very low energy consumption and perform limited and specific monitoring and sensing functions. Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are widely used for applications such as environment monitoring, habitat monitoring, forest fire control, border surveillance and health monitoring due to their capability of establishing communications among peer nodes in a self-organizing and adapting manner, without any infrastructure. Sensor networks use radio frequencies as a communication medium, which is vulnerable of all active and passive attacks from adversaries. The sensor net-work must be protected to avoid attacks from external parties. This protection is provided by the security primitives. This paper mainly concerns with problems associated in developing security protocols for wireless sensor networks, their requirements, and different types of attacks on sensor networks. This paper describes secure solutions for collecting and processing data in Wireless Sensor Networks (WSNs). Adequate security capabilities for medium and large scale WSNs are a hard but necessary goal to achieve to prepare these networks for the market. The paper also includes security and reliability challenges and also security solution for WSNs

A Security Architecute for Mobile Agent Based Creeper

Mobile agents are active objects that can autonomously migrate in a network to perform tasks on behalf of their owners. Though they offer an important new method of performing transactions and information retrieval in networks, mobile agents also raise several security issues related to the protection of host resources as well as the data carried by an agent itself. Mobile agent technology offers a new computing paradigm in which a program, in the form of a software agent, can suspend its execution on a host computer, transfer itself to another agent-enabled host on the network, and resume execution on the new host. Mobile Agent (MA) technology raises significant security concerns and requires a thorough security framework with a wide range of strategies and mechanisms for the protection of both agent platform and mobile agents against possibly malicious reciprocal behavior. The security infrastructure should have the ability to flexibly and dynamically offer different solutions to achieve different qualities of security service depending on application requirements. The protection of mobile agent systems continues to be an active area of research that will enable future applications to utilize this paradigm of computing. Agent systems and mobile applications must balance security requirements with available security mechanisms in order to meet application level security goals.A security solution has been introduced, which protects both the mobile agent itself and the host resources that encrypt the data before passing it to mobile agent and decrypt it on the visited host sides i.e. it transfers the URL to the Mobile Agent System that will pass that encrypted URL to the server where it will be decrypted and used. The methods of Encryption/Decryption used are a Public-key Cipher System and a Symmetric Cipher System that focuses on submitting data to the server securely. The proposed approach solves the problem of malicious host that can harm mobile agent or the information it contain

Gouty tophi of small joints of hand: A classical presentation

Gout is an acute inflammatory disorder caused by deposition of monosodium urate crystals. Gouty tophus can be the initial presenting feature of chronic disease. Diagnosis of periarticular nodules can be a challenge for clinicians. Fine needle aspiration can provide quick, cost-effective and definitive diagnosis for the early management of these patients. Here, we present the case of gouty tophi of the right-hand index finger in a 45-years-old male leading to restricted finger movements

Evaluation of Local Bacillus thuringiensis from the Soils of Westernghats, Karnataka and their Biocontrol Potential against White Grub, Holotrichia serrata (F.) (coleoptera) and House Fly, Musca domestica L. (Diptera)

he Western Ghats of India is one of the world's "biodiversity hotspots" that runs along the western part of South India through four states including Karnataka. As a result, Western Ghats are expected to yield high diversity of any taxon. With a view to understand this aspect study on the diversity of Bacillus spp. in the soils of Western Ghats was conducted. A total of 292 Bacillus isolates were identified as Bacillus thuringiensis which were recovered from 35 soil samples collected from different habitats of Western Ghats of Karnataka. Soils of different habitats varied tremendously in the natural load of Bacillus CFUs. Lowest CFU load was observed in soil W15 (2.6 x 106 ) whereas the soils W13, W20, W24, W29 (8.1 x 106) yielded the highest number of Bacillus CFUs/g of soil, with an overall mean of 6.07 x 106 CFUs per g of soil. On an average, 8.34 ( 1.95) colonies were picked from each soil sample. These colonies were subjected to standard biochemical tests to identify the B. thuringiensis colonies. On an average, 5.6 (67.12 %) of the picked colonies per soil sample were observed to be B. thuringiensis colonies. Tests of activity of these isolates against a species of white grub, Holotrichia serrata (F.) and a fly pest, Musca domestica revealed 14 isolates to be active against H. serrata and 10 against M. domestica, with three of these against both the species. The study thus demonstrated that there is potential for the use of these isolates in pest management

A comparative study of efficacy of intramuscular PGF2alpha and intramuscular oxytocin in management of third stage of labour

Background: The third stage of labour is most crutial stage begins with expulsion of baby and end with expulsion of placenta and membranes. The present study was conducted to evaluate the scope of using prophylactic intramuscular carboprost tromethamine in comparison with intramuscular oxytocin for active management of third stage of labor. Methods: Patients were divided randomly into 2 groups 39 in each group. Patients assigned to group 1 received 10 units oxytocin IM and group 2 received carboprost 125 µg IM after delivery of anterior shoulder of baby. The main outcomes measured were duration of third stage of labor, mean amount of blood loss, additional oxytocic requirement, HB changes in group and side effects of drug which were used in each group. Results: Subjects who received carboprost showed a significant reduction in duration of third stage of labor (P= 0.041), amount of blood loss (P=0.046) and requirement of additional oxytocic compared to the subject who received oxytocin 10 units. Conclusions: Carboprost 125µg is better alternative compared to injection 10 units oxytocin in the prophylactic management of third stage of labor.

A prospective observational study of prescription pattern in a tertiary care teaching hospital of Jharkhand

Background: Prescription error and irrational prescribing are the avoidable problems imposed on health care delivery system from prescriber side which must be addressed. Periodic prescription audit helps to curtail the error and irrational prescribing.Methods: A prospective observational study was conducted on patients visiting various Outpatient Department of RIMS, Ranchi, Jharkhand on all working days at 11:00 AM to 12:00 PM from 1 August 2018 to 31 July 2019. Various aspects of collected prescriptions were analyzed by using World Health Organization (WHO) prescribing indicators.Results: In this study, out of 700 prescriptions collected, 76 were excluded. Out of total 624 patients analyzed, 382 (61.28%) were male and 242 (38.72%) were female. 48 (7.69%) patients belonged to ≤18, 464 (74.36%) to 19-64 and 112 (17.95%) to ≥65 years of age group. Tablet (71%) was the most common dosage form. None of prescriptions were having registration number of the doctor. 242 (38.78%) prescriptions did not have a diagnosis duly written. The total no. of drugs prescribed in 624 prescriptions was 2176. Only 32 (5.13%) prescriptions were found to have medicines prescribed in block letters. Antibiotics (29%) were the most common class of drugs prescribed. Average number of drugs per prescription was 3.47. Only 48 (2.20%) drugs were prescribed by their generic name while total of injectables prescribed were 102 (4.68%). Total number of drugs from NLEM was 848 (38.97%). 196 (9.00%) drugs were fixed-dose combination.Conclusions: In our study, we found deficiencies in various parts of prescriptions. Prescribing pattern was not in accordance with WHO recommendation for prescribing practice

Clinical Nurses’ Knowledge and Attitude on Palliative Care: A Cross-Sectional Study

Introduction: Palliative care is a multidisciplinary approach for enhancing the quality of life of terminally ill patients. For nurses, being the core members of the palliative care team, adequate knowledge and a positive attitude are crucial. This study aimed to assess clinical nurses' knowledge and attitude on palliative care. Method: A cross-sectional descriptive study was conducted among 122 nurses. A simple random sampling technique was applied to select the sample. Internationally validated questionnaires-“The Palliative Care Quiz for Nursing” and “Frommelt Attitudes Toward Care of the Dying Scale” were used to assess knowledge and attitude. Data were analyzed using descriptive statistics and inferential statistics. Results: The mean age of participants was 25±5.42 years and a majority (70.5%) were staff nurses. None of the participants had ever received training or in-service education related to palliative care. Only 29.5% had a fair level of knowledge and, 28.7% had a good level of attitude towards palliative care. Pearson correlation test revealed a negligible correlation between the level of knowledge and attitude (r= 0.135, p=0.887). Ethnicity (p=0.02) and religion (p=0.02) were statistically significant with the level of knowledge and care for dying relatives (p=0.03) was statistically significant with the level of attitude. Conclusion: The study revealed that nurses’ have poor knowledge of palliative care but had a fair attitude. As nurses are core members, regular training and in-service education can enhance their knowledge level. Positive reinforcement, appreciation, and reward for desirable behavior can help them develop a good attitude towards palliative care

A study of the current prescribing and drug utilization pattern in Ophthalmology Department of a tertiary care teaching hospital

Background: The aim was to study the current prescribing and drug utilization pattern in Ophthalmology Department of a tertiary care teaching hospital. Drug utilization study is a part of pharmaco-epidemiological exercise quantifying the extent, nature and determinants of drug use in a population. Periodic audit of drug usage pattern forms an essential tool to ascertain the role of drug in a society, increase therapeutic efficacy and improve cost effectiveness of the therapy. It is an introspective and critical instrument providing positive impact on health care delivery to the patient. With this background, the present study was carried out to analyze the prescription pattern and drug utilization by measuring the WHO drug use indicators in ophthalmology department of a tertiary care teaching hospital.Methods: The prescriptions of 961 outpatients were included and analyzed using a predesigned case record form OPD prescription of each patient. Patient and prescription related parameters were analyzed.Results: Prescription analysis showed that the average number of drugs per prescription was 1.85. The drugs were prescribed in the form of eye drops (67.42%), followed by ointments (14.37%), capsules (15.45%), and tablets (2.71%). The dosage form and frequency of drug administration was indicated for all of the drugs prescribed, the duration of treatment for 60.97% of the drugs prescribed. Antimicrobial agents and tear substitute together constituted above 50% of all the drugs. Percentage of drugs prescribed by generic name and from NEDL was 31.62% and 37.22%, respectively. Patient’s knowledge of correct dosage was 70.44%.Conclusions: This study showed that there is scope for improvement in prescribing patterns in areas of writing generic names of drugs, essential drugs, writing legible and complete prescriptions

Event Transformation for Browser Based Web Devices

Today a smartphone or tablet supports seven to eight ways by which user can interact with it. These interaction methods are touch, mouse, keyboard, voice, gestures, hover & stylus. Future is going towards IoE (Internet of everything) but if we really want to realize this vision then we need someone who can deal with these various existing and upcoming device interaction methods. This paper talks about a custom JavaScript library, which is accountable for registering native events coming from different event sources and maps it with the user defined key map to form a proper gesture. It is not a plain mapping because it takes care of many parameters like event state, occurrence, time interval of key press etc. If the events are coming from touch screen device then complexity increases many folds because forming a touch gesture involves all mathematical steps related to identification of swipe direction. Also in order to support the acceleration, its required to know till how long key was pressed and when it was released else no gesture will be formed and all events will be discarded. Based on device capability supported events could be discarded to completely knock off a device interaction method. It could be touch, mouse or key anything. This paper investigates heterogeneity of device interaction method events to form uniform gestures so that application developer need not to write code for each and every device interaction method