AUTHENTICATION AND KEY MANAGEMENT OF IOT APPLICATIONS WITH EXTENDED WIFI AUTHENTICATION (WIFI AKMA)

Internet of things (IoT) devices frequently apply insufficient authentication mechanisms with their application servers due to the constrained nature of such devices. For example, most IoT devices lack the resources that are necessary to store usernames and passwords, certificates, and keys in a secured manner. The challenge that was described above is solved in a 3rd Generation Partnership Project (3GPP) fifth-generation (5G) wireless environment through the Authentication and Key Management for Applications (AKMA) initiative. However, there is no AKMA-equivalent facility within a WiFi environment. Accordingly, techniques are presented herein that extend the WiFi authentication process to support application server authentication for constrained devices. Aspects of the presented techniques support an exchange of a WiFi key and a key identifier (which may be referred to herein as a KAKMA key and an A-KID) as part of an Extensible Authentication Protocol (EAP) tunnel using a new information element (IE) once an authentication process has successfully completed. Such an exchange allows a station (STA) device to use the key tuple {KAKMA, A-KID} to access any application functions that are grouped with that key identifier (i.e., A-KID) without requiring any further authentication

Record size black marlin, Makaira indica (Cuvier, 1832) landed at Bhimilipatnam, Andhra Pradesh

A gigantic black marlin, Makaira indica measuring 4.3 m in length and weighing around 450 kg was landed at Bhimilipatnam beach landing centre and brought to Visakhapatnam Fishing Harbour

Induction of male flowers on female plants of Cannabis sativa by gibberellins and its inhibition by abscisic acid

Gibberellins (GA3, GA4+7, GA7 and GA9) induce male flowers on female plants of Cannabis sativa. This is, depending on concentration, partially or fully inhibited by abscisic acid (ABA). The ABA effect can in turn be partially overcome by increasing the concentration of GA3

PROACTIVE EXCHANGE OF DATA BETWEEN CLOUD PROVIDERS VIA CONTROLLER COORDINATION AND TRIGGER DYNAMIC WORKFLOWS

A multi-cloud Software Defined Network (SDN) controller proactively learns insights about subscribers, such as enterprise users, end users, and/or other cloud providers. Based on the learned insights, the multi-SDN controller applies dynamic policies on other cloud provides to which those subscribers are attached to. The multi-cloud SDN controller co-ordinates with various cloud providers, enterprise network controllers, and Internet Service Providers (ISPs) to proactively notify other cloud providers with information about affected users so that those providers can install additional resources at cloud edge/core on the fly. Additionally, the multi-cloud SDN controller facilitates a warm hand off from one cloud region to another cloud region. When the multi-cloud SDN controller learns about an enterprise outage, it proactively notifies other cloud providers of the outage event and the other cloud providers can use this for a warm hand off of session to the region(s) through which the users will be reconnected. The likely regions are derived based on telemetry obtained from multi-cloud SDN controller. The multi-cloud SDN controller also triggers a proactive cleanup of user context of the cloud provider side. The cloud provider cleans up after the connection reset event based on information from the multi-cloud SDN controller, rather than wait on a timeout of the connection

Specificity of gibberellin and sucrose-promoted flower bud growth in gladiolus

A critical stage in flower bud growth in the spike of Gladiolus which is initiated by gibberellic acid (GA3) and sustained by sucrose has been identified. This corresponds to the stage at which separation of the outer bract occurs. In buds at different developmental stages isolated and held in water, it is the same bud stage that first shows increased growth. Buds not induced by light were shown to respond more significantly to GA3 and sucrose than those induced by light. Since the separation of the outer bract results in light-induced amylase production and starch hydrolysis leading to petal growth, it is proposed that growth promotion by GA3 is related to light-induced petal growth at this specific stage

SECURITY CLASSIFICATION BASED QUIC TRAFFIC STEERING IN A SECURE INTERNET GATEWAY (SIG)

The Quick User Datagram Protocol (UDP) Internet Connection (QUIC) protocol is slated to become the next (third) major version of the Hypertext Transfer Protocol (HTTP) – i.e., HTTP/3. As applications transition to QUIC for web traffic, a Secure Internet Gateway (SIG) needs to effectively load balance, proxy, and classify QUIC traffic. Techniques are presented herein that make use of a custom Connection ID (CID) artifact to allow a load balancer to determine, with minimal processing, a target server, and potentially the application that the QUIC flow is serving, in support of steering traffic to the appropriate upstream services. Additionally, techniques are presented herein that leverage an exchange of data over an out-of-band channel in support of the enforcement of Quality of Service (QoS) requirements on an enterprise gateway

Field star contamination in open star cluster NGC 2301

Photographic photometry of about 900 stars down to V = 17 mag has been carried out in the region of the open cluster NGC 2301. The cluster region seems to be severely contaminated by field stars. Statistical criteria yield only 96 ± 17 cluster members. Stars fainter than ~ 15 mag are found to be absent among cluster members. Star counts indicate a diameter of ~ 20 arcmin. The data suggest mass segregation in the cluster

Floral sexuality and breeding system in gum karaya tree, Sterculia urens

Comprehensive studies were carried out on phenology, floral sexuality, pollination biology, pollen-pistil interaction, breeding system and fruit and seed set on three populations of gum karaya tree (Sterculia urens). The species is andromonoecious and produces a large number of male and a limited number of bisexual (functionally female) flowers. The numbers of male and bisexual flowers varies not only between trees but also during the flowering period within a tree. Each male flower produces about 5000 fertile pollen grains. Neither in morphology nor in number, is there any difference between pollen grains in the bisexual and male flowers. However, pollen grains of bisexual flowers are completely sterile and incapable of siring any seeds. Their anthers, however, serve to attract pollinators; the emasculated bisexual flowers fail to do so. Thus S. urens is apparently andromonoecious but exhibits cryptic monoecy. That the species is self-incompatible was confirmed by controlled pollinations. The self-incompatibility is of the late-acting type and manifests after the entry of the pollen tube into the ovule. Apis indica is the only pollinator recorded by us and wind plays no role in pollination. The efficacy of pollination is low as only 56% of flowers were estimated to be pollinated. The pollen load on one-third the number of pollinated stigmas was lower than the number of ovules present. Fruit set under open pollination is poor and is highly variable from tree to tree (0.7-3.2%). Apart from pollination constraint, limited resource availability may also contribute to low fruit set