Securing Cyber-Physical Social Interactions on Wrist-worn Devices

Since ancient Greece, handshaking has been commonly practiced between two people as a friendly gesture to express trust and respect, or form a mutual agreement. In this article, we show that such physical contact can be used to bootstrap secure cyber contact between the smart devices worn by users. The key observation is that during handshaking, although belonged to two different users, the two hands involved in the shaking events are often rigidly connected, and therefore exhibit very similar motion patterns. We propose a novel key generation system, which harvests motion data during user handshaking from the wrist-worn smart devices such as smartwatches or fitness bands, and exploits the matching motion patterns to generate symmetric keys on both parties. The generated keys can be then used to establish a secure communication channel for exchanging data between devices. This provides a much more natural and user-friendly alternative for many applications, e.g., exchanging/sharing contact details, friending on social networks, or even making payments, since it doesn’t involve extra bespoke hardware, nor require the users to perform pre-defined gestures. We implement the proposed key generation system on off-the-shelf smartwatches, and extensive evaluation shows that it can reliably generate 128-bit symmetric keys just after around 1s of handshaking (with success rate >99%), and is resilient to different types of attacks including impersonate mimicking attacks, impersonate passive attacks, or eavesdropping attacks. Specifically, for real-time impersonate mimicking attacks, in our experiments, the Equal Error Rate (EER) is only 1.6% on average. We also show that the proposed key generation system can be extremely lightweight and is able to run in-situ on the resource-constrained smartwatches without incurring excessive resource consumption

DNA barcoding for the identification of common economic aquatic products in Central China and its application for the supervision of the market trade

Common economic aquatic products are important contributors to the human food supply. However, with the rapid globalization of the aquatic products industry, aquatic products market has become increasingly disordered. Therefore, an accurate and convenient method for identifying common economic aquatic products is important and necessary in many areas. DNA barcoding, which constitutes the analysis of a short fragment of the mitochondrial cytochrome c oxidase subunit I (COI) sequence, has been widely used in species identification. To discriminate common economic aquatic species using DNA barcoding, we collected 534 COI barcode sequences of 66 common species consisting of 39 fish, 9 crustaceans and 18 mollusks. The intraspecific genetic distances based on the Kimura 2-parameter (K2P) model were less than 1.37% for fish, 7.32% for crustaceans and 3.40% for mollusks, whereas the intragenus distances ranged from 3.91% to 13.82% for fish, 14.99%-16.17% for crustaceans and 14.82%-1636% for mollusks. The average intraspecific K2P distance was also compared with the average intragenus distance. The taxonomic resolution ratio values obtained for fish, crustaceans and mollusks were 58.50, 21.59 and 27.63 respectively, which are higher than the threshold of (10 x). A neighbor-joining (NJ) tree based on the K2P distance, and a maximum likelihood (ML) tree, based on the GTR + I + G model, were constructed, and all of the species could be identified unambiguously in the trees with several branches exhibiting high bootstrap values. Our results demonstrated high efficiency of DNA barcoding as an efficient molecular tool for the identification of common economic aquatic products, and 8 substitute species were successfully detected in 66 species. Our analyses also indicated that the common aquatic products trade industry could be effectively monitored and managed by DNA barcoding. Therefore, a simple identification database of common economic aquatic products was constructed. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier Ltd

Shake-n-shack : enabling secure data exchange between Smart Wearables via handshakes

Since ancient Greece, handshaking has been commonly practiced between two people as a friendly gesture to express trust and respect, or form a mutual agreement. In this paper, we show that such physical contact can be used to bootstrap secure cyber contact between the smart devices worn by users. The key observation is that during handshaking, although belonged to two different users, the two hands involved in the shaking events are often rigidly connected, and therefore exhibit very similar motion patterns. We propose a novel Shake-n-Shack system, which harvests motion data during user handshaking from the wrist worn smart devices such as smartwatches or fitness bands, and exploits the matching motion patterns to generate symmetric keys on both parties. The generated keys can be then used to establish a secure communication channel for exchanging data between devices. This provides a much more natural and user-friendly alternative for many applications, e.g., exchanging/sharing contact details, friending on social networks, or even making payments, since it doesn't involve extra bespoke hardware, nor require the users to perform pre-defined gestures. We implement the proposed Shake-n-Shack 1 system on off-the-shelf smartwatches, and extensive evaluation shows that it can reliably generate 128-bit symmetric keys just after around 1s of handshaking (with success rate >99%), and is resilient to real-time mimicking attacks: in our experiments the Equal Error Rate (EER) is only 1.6% on average. We also show that the proposed Shake-n-Shack system can be extremely lightweight, and is able to run in-situ on the resource-constrained smartwatches without incurring excessive resource consumption

Resveratrol Promotes Diabetic Wound Healing via SIRT1-FOXO1-c-Myc Signaling Pathway-Mediated Angiogenesis

Background/Aims: Diabetic non-healing skin ulcers represent a serious challenge in clinical practice, in which the hyperglycemia-induced disturbance of angiogenesis, and endothelial dysfunction play a crucial role. Resveratrol (RES), a silent information regulator 1 (SIRT1) agonist, can improve endothelial function and has strong pro-angiogenic properties, and has thus become a research focus for the treatment of diabetic non-healing skin ulcers; however, the underlying mechanism by which RES regulates these processes remains unclear. Therefore, the present study was intended to determine if RES exerts its observed protective role in diabetic wound healing by alleviating hyperglycemia-induced endothelial dysfunction and the disturbance of angiogenesis.Methods: We investigated the effects of RES on cell migration, cell proliferation, apoptosis, tube formation, and the underlying molecular mechanisms in 33 mM high glucose-stimulated human umbilical vein endothelial cells (HUVECs) by semi-quantitative RT-PCR, western blot analysis, terminal deoxynucleotidyl transferase-mediated dUTP nick end labeling (TUNEL) staining, and immunofluorescence in vitro. We further explored the role of RES on endothelial dysfunction and wound healing disturbance in db/db mice by TUNEL staining, immunofluorescence, and photography in vivo.Results: We observed an obvious inhibition of hyperglycemia-triggered endothelial dysfunction and a disturbance of angiogenesis, followed by the promotion of diabetic wound healing via RES, along with restoration of the activity of the hyperglycemia-impaired SIRT1 signaling pathway. Pretreatment with EX-527, a SIRT1 inhibitor, abolished the RES-mediated endothelial protection and pro-angiogenesis action, and then delayed diabetic wound healing. Furthermore, examination of the overexpression of forkhead box O1 (FOXO1), a transcription factor substrate of SIRT1, in HUVECs and db/db mice revealed that RES activated SIRT1 to restore hyperglycemia-triggered endothelial dysfunction and disturbance of angiogenesis, followed by the promotion of diabetic wound healing in a c-Myc-dependent manner. Pretreatment with 10058-F4, a c-Myc inhibitor, repressed RES-mediated endothelial protection, angiogenesis, and diabetic wound healing.Conclusion: Our findings indicate that the positive role of RES in diabetic wound healing via its SIRT1-dependent endothelial protection and pro-angiogenic effects involves the inhibition of FOXO1 and the de-repression of c-Myc expression

A common supersolid low-density skin sliperizing ice and toughening water surface

Skins of water and ice share the same attribute of supersolidity characterized by the identical H-O vibration frequency of 3450 cm-1. Molecular undercoordination and inter-electron-pair repulsion shortens the H-O bond and lengthen the O:H nonbond, leading to a dual process of nonbonding electron polarization. This relaxation-polarization process enhances the dipole moment, elasticity,viscosity, thermal stability of these skins with 25% density loss, which is responsible for the hydrophobicity and toughness of water skin and for the slippery of ice.Comment: arXiv admin note: text overlap with arXiv:1401.804

Non-Financial Enterprises’ Shadow Banking Business and Total Factor Productivity of Enterprises

This study empirically analyzes the impact of the shadow banking business (SBB) of non-financial enterprises (non-FEs) on the total factor productivity (TFP) of enterprises using data concerning non-FEs listed in China’s A-share market from 2008 to 2019. The results show that non-FEs’ SBB has a significantly negative impact on their TFP, and for every 10% increase in the involvement of non-FEs in SBB, their TFP decreases by 4.22% on average. The negative effect is more significant in the period of loose monetary policy, lower industry competition, and non-state-owned enterprises. Alleviating financing constraints, reducing information asymmetry, and optimizing financial resource allocation may mitigate the negative effect. Our study reveals the mechanism by which non-FEs’ SBB inhibits their TFP. These findings enrich the theoretical research on the two, and provide empirical evidence to alleviate the “off real to virtual” of the economy and promote long-term, high-quality and sustainable economic development