S-Mbank: Secure Mobile Banking Authentication Scheme Using Signcryption, Pair Based Text Authentication, and Contactless Smartcard

Nowadays, mobile banking becomes a popular tool which consumers can conduct financial transactions such as shopping, monitoring accounts balance, transferring funds and other payments. Consumers dependency on mobile needs, make people take a little bit more interest in mobile banking. The use of the one-time password which is sent to the user mobile phone by short message service (SMS) is a vulnerability which we want to solve with proposing a new scheme called S-Mbank. We replace the authentication using the one-time password with the contactless smart card to prevent attackers to use the unencrypted message which is sent to the user's mobile phone. Moreover, it deals vulnerability of spoofer to send an SMS pretending as a bank's server. The contactless smart card is proposed because of its flexibility and security which easier to bring in our wallet than the common passcode generators. The replacement of SMS-based authentication with contactless smart card removes the vulnerability of unauthorized users to act as a legitimate user to exploit the mobile banking user's account. Besides that, we use public-private key pair and PIN to provide two factors authentication and mutual authentication. We use signcryption scheme to provide the efficiency of the computation. Pair based text authentication is also proposed for the login process as a solution to shoulder-surfing attack. We use Scyther tool to analyze the security of authentication protocol in S-Mbank scheme. From the proposed scheme, we are able to provide more security protection for mobile banking service.Comment: 6 page

A microarray study of gene and protein regulation in human and rat brain following middle cerebral artery occlusion

This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License.-- et al.[Background]: Altered gene expression is an important feature of ischemic cerebral injury and affects proteins of many functional classes. We have used microarrays to investigate the changes in gene expression at various times after middle cerebral artery occlusion in human and rat brain.[Results]: Our results demonstrated a significant difference in the number of genes affected and the time-course of expression between the two cases. The total number of deregulated genes in the rat was 335 versus 126 in the human, while, of 393 overlapping genes between the two array sets, 184 were changed only in the rat and 36 in the human with a total of 41 genes deregulated in both cases. Interestingly, the mean fold changes were much higher in the human. The expression of novel genes, including p21-activated kinase 1 (PAK1), matrix metalloproteinase 11 (MMP11) and integrase interactor 1, was further analyzed by RT-PCR, Western blotting and immunohistochemistry. Strong neuronal staining was seen for PAK1 and MMP11.[Conclusion]: Our findings confirmed previous studies reporting that gene expression screening can detect known and unknown transcriptional features of stroke and highlight the importance of research using human brain tissue in the search for novel therapeutic agents.This work was supported by the Higher Education Funding Council for England (HEFCE) and the Research Institute for Health and Social Change (RIHSC).Peer reviewe

The anterior gradient homologue 2 (AGR2) co‑localises with the glucose‑regulated protein 78 (GRP78) in cancer stem cells, and is critical for the survival and drug resistance of recurrent glioblastoma: in situ and in vitro analyses

open access articleBackground: Glioblastomas (GBs) are characterised as one of the most aggressive primary central nervous system tumours (CNSTs). Single-cell sequencing analysis identified the presence of a highly heterogeneous population of cancer stem cells (CSCs). The proteins anterior gradient homologue 2 (AGR2) and glucose-regulated protein 78 (GRP78) are known to play critical roles in regulating unfolded protein response (UPR) machinery. The UPR machinery influences cell survival, migration, invasion and drug resistance. Hence, we investigated the role of AGR2 in drug-resistant recurrent glioblastoma cells. Methods: Immunofluorescence, biological assessments and whole exome sequencing analyses were completed under in situ and in vitro conditions. Cells were treated with CNSTs clinical/preclinical drugs taxol, cisplatin, irinotecan, MCK8866, etoposide, and temozolomide, then resistant cells were analysed for the expression of AGR2. AGR2 was repressed using single and double siRNA transfections and combined with either temozolomide or irinotecan. Results: Genomic and biological characterisations of the AGR2-expressed Jed66_GB and Jed41_GB recurrent glioblastoma tissues and cell lines showed features consistent with glioblastoma. Immunofluorescence data indicated that AGR2 co-localised with the UPR marker GRP78 in both the tissue and their corresponding primary cell lines. AGR2 and GRP78 were highly expressed in glioblastoma CSCs. Following treatment with the aforementioned drugs, all drug-surviving cells showed high expression of AGR2. Prolonged siRNA repression of a particular region in AGR2 exon 2 reduced AGR2 protein expression and led to lower cell densities in both cell lines. Co-treatments using AGR2 exon 2B siRNA in conjunction with temozolomide or irinotecan had partially synergistic effects. The slight reduction of AGR2 expression increased nuclear Caspase-3 activation in both cell lines and caused multinucleation in the Jed66_GB cell line. Conclusions: AGR2 is highly expressed in UPR-active CSCs and drug-resistant GB cells, and its repression leads to apoptosis, via multiple pathways

Constraints on the χ_(c1) versus χ_(c2) polarizations in proton-proton collisions at √s = 8 TeV

The polarizations of promptly produced χ_(c1) and χ_(c2) mesons are studied using data collected by the CMS experiment at the LHC, in proton-proton collisions at √s=8  TeV. The χ_c states are reconstructed via their radiative decays χ_c → J/ψγ, with the photons being measured through conversions to e⁺e⁻, which allows the two states to be well resolved. The polarizations are measured in the helicity frame, through the analysis of the χ_(c2) to χ_(c1) yield ratio as a function of the polar or azimuthal angle of the positive muon emitted in the J/ψ → μ⁺μ⁻ decay, in three bins of J/ψ transverse momentum. While no differences are seen between the two states in terms of azimuthal decay angle distributions, they are observed to have significantly different polar anisotropies. The measurement favors a scenario where at least one of the two states is strongly polarized along the helicity quantization axis, in agreement with nonrelativistic quantum chromodynamics predictions. This is the first measurement of significantly polarized quarkonia produced at high transverse momentum