EnergyDAO - Decentralised Autonomous Organisation for energy community governance

Energy access is liberty. Moreover, energy is a prerequisite for any secure society, and it is the most consumed product worldwide on a daily basis. As a fact, all democratic countries with the least corruption have annual per capita energy consumption of greater than 2 MWh. Moreover, many communities in the world have net energy imports which is one of the major expenses for communities. On one side, communities’ well-being is reflected by high energy use, on the other side, in poorer communities’ energy import cost is significant, and it impedes communities’ well-being. It can be described as a wealth leak problem. However, energy production comes with a cost, consumption of locally produced energy should be maximized to boost communities’ wealth and well-being.Communities’ well-being amplification rides on the wheel of governance as a system of control and operation with an accountability mechanism. This brings sustainable benefits to its people within the confines of cultural context through collective decision-making. Technology adoption has continued to change the narration in human society lifecycle, such as the decentralized autonomous organizations (DAOs). DAOs are a type of legal structure-like platform that is purely digitally existing for decentralized rule-based decision-making; DAOs are built on block-chain technology, which enables secure and transparent bookkeeping and transaction processing. In the renewable energy community, DAOs can be used to improve the transparency of local energy management and community governance. This white paper describes a new way of organizing renewable energy communities [a DAO entity; hereinafter EnergyDAO] by means of community-level joint ownership of energy infrastructure to help reduce the wealth leak in communities. The EnergyDAO allows community members to have ownership of local energy-producing and storage infrastructure. EnergyDAO allows communities to define a rule base for automatic, efficient, and democratic governance and decision-making to organize themselves in a transparent manner and create trust. Generally speaking, EnergyDAO is a bunch of smart contracts to denote a structure of ownership or control over EnergyDAO treasury and renewable energy assets/ infrastructure. This can include solar panels, windmills, battery storage, electric vehicles (EVs), etc. Moreover, such DAO-based governance can be used by already existing traditional energy cooperatives or by independent individuals working together collaboratively in any community to automate and enforce formal governance rules imposed by cooperate bylaws or law. VTT proposes, through this white paper, that EnergyDAO-based communities can have enhanced member experience and solve transparency-related governance issues found in traditional cooperatives

Analysis of Crypto-Ransomware Using Network Traffic

Ransomware is a form of malware attack that makes use of encryption to make information inaccessible for the motive of gathering a specified amount of payment. Many victims of this attack who couldn’t recover their information from backups have been compelled to decide between losing the information or paying the sum requested by the attacker. This research shows some of the various samples of ransomware, the phases of attack, and the chance of recognizing ransomware by the network traffic patterns it generates. Traffic generated from the infected system was considered. Experimental results from the ransomware detection show that some certain ransomware is very noisy and generates noticeable traffic patterns. In light of traffic information gathered from ransomware, conceivable discovery thoughts could be investigated. The result of the analysis shows that some ransomware generates traffic that is different from normal network traffic. Also, the infection of the file server system shows that the length and time vary but after infection the time for the different samples of ransomware to carry out its encryption is constant

Performance and Security of Group Signature in Wireless Networks

A Group signature protocol is a cryptographic scheme that decouples a user identity and location from verification procedure during authentication. In a group signature scheme, a user is allowed to generate signatures on behalf of other group members but identity and location information of the signer is not known by a verifier. This ensures privacy, authentication and unlinkability of users. Although group signature is expensive to implement, its existential anonymity, non-repudiation and untraceablility properties make it attractive especially for resources-constrained devices in wireless network. A general group signature scheme usually contains six basic phases: setup (or key generation), join, message signing (or signature generation), signature verification, open and user revocation. In this paper, an evaluation of the performance of group signature based on three of the phases mentioned above is considered and its security in wireless networks examined. The key generation, signing and verification algorithms are implemented in Java 8. A proof of security of group signature by implication is also presented

A Bayes-Based Model for HIV Prediction Extinction

Abstract The human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) is one of the most serious and deadly diseases in human history. It is an infectious agent that causes Acquired Immuno Deficiency Syndrome (AIDS), a disease that leaves a person vulnerable to life threatening infections. Though, there have been increase in the level of HIV awareness throughout the world and a lot of governmental and non-governmental organizations have invested huge funds, energy, and other resources into reducing the virus across the globe, but these alone cannot be enough for its extinction. In this paper, a bayes-based model technique is used to develop a predictive model for extinction of HIV/AIDS, our method is based on generating a dataset which is gotten by administering questionnaires as a means of eliciting responses from people or respondents, we used bayes-model to analyse this data. The result shows that in some years' time, there will be extinction (or reduce to control level) of HIV/AID if certain factors are carefully considered by all

Performance and Security of Group Signature in Wireless Networks

A Group signature protocol is a cryptographic scheme that decouples a user identity and location from verification procedure during authentication. In a group signature scheme, a user is allowed to generate signatures on behalf of other group members but identity and location information of the signer is not known by a verifier. This ensures privacy, authentication and unlinkability of users. Although group signature is expensive to implement, its existential anonymity, non-repudiation and untraceablility properties make it attractive especially for resources-constrained devices in wireless network. A general group signature scheme usually contains six basic phases: setup (or key generation), join, message signing (or signature generation), signature verification, open and user revocation. In this paper, an evaluation of the performance of group signature based on three of the phases mentioned above is considered and its security in wireless networks examined. The key generation, signing and verification algorithms are implemented in Java 8. A proof of security of group signature by implication is also presented

Case Reports1. A Late Presentation of Loeys-Dietz Syndrome: Beware of TGFβ Receptor Mutations in Benign Joint Hypermobility

Background: Thoracic aortic aneurysms (TAA) and dissections are not uncommon causes of sudden death in young adults. Loeys-Dietz syndrome (LDS) is a rare, recently described, autosomal dominant, connective tissue disease characterized by aggressive arterial aneurysms, resulting from mutations in the transforming growth factor beta (TGFβ) receptor genes TGFBR1 and TGFBR2. Mean age at death is 26.1 years, most often due to aortic dissection. We report an unusually late presentation of LDS, diagnosed following elective surgery in a female with a long history of joint hypermobility. Methods: A 51-year-old Caucasian lady complained of chest pain and headache following a dural leak from spinal anaesthesia for an elective ankle arthroscopy. CT scan and echocardiography demonstrated a dilated aortic root and significant aortic regurgitation. MRA demonstrated aortic tortuosity, an infrarenal aortic aneurysm and aneurysms in the left renal and right internal mammary arteries. She underwent aortic root repair and aortic valve replacement. She had a background of long-standing joint pains secondary to hypermobility, easy bruising, unusual fracture susceptibility and mild bronchiectasis. She had one healthy child age 32, after which she suffered a uterine prolapse. Examination revealed mild Marfanoid features. Uvula, skin and ophthalmological examination was normal. Results: Fibrillin-1 testing for Marfan syndrome (MFS) was negative. Detection of a c.1270G > C (p.Gly424Arg) TGFBR2 mutation confirmed the diagnosis of LDS. Losartan was started for vascular protection. Conclusions: LDS is a severe inherited vasculopathy that usually presents in childhood. It is characterized by aortic root dilatation and ascending aneurysms. There is a higher risk of aortic dissection compared with MFS. Clinical features overlap with MFS and Ehlers Danlos syndrome Type IV, but differentiating dysmorphogenic features include ocular hypertelorism, bifid uvula and cleft palate. Echocardiography and MRA or CT scanning from head to pelvis is recommended to establish the extent of vascular involvement. Management involves early surgical intervention, including early valve-sparing aortic root replacement, genetic counselling and close monitoring in pregnancy. Despite being caused by loss of function mutations in either TGFβ receptor, paradoxical activation of TGFβ signalling is seen, suggesting that TGFβ antagonism may confer disease modifying effects similar to those observed in MFS. TGFβ antagonism can be achieved with angiotensin antagonists, such as Losartan, which is able to delay aortic aneurysm development in preclinical models and in patients with MFS. Our case emphasizes the importance of timely recognition of vasculopathy syndromes in patients with hypermobility and the need for early surgical intervention. It also highlights their heterogeneity and the potential for late presentation. Disclosures: The authors have declared no conflicts of interes

Towards Preserving the Confidentiality of Information in a Local Area Network (LAN) Messaging System

Messaging system remains preeminent as themedium of official communication. The fear of confidentialitybeing breached has led many organizations in developingvarious ways in checking the excesses of unwanted users. In themessaging system designed, users are allowed to send andreceive messages with the options of either encrypting the dataor not. The Substitution Permutation Network (SPN), an AESencryption algorithm, implemented in the messaging systemmakes information sent over the network ‘useless’ whencompromised so as to reduce the damage done wheneversensitive and classified information gets to the wrong hands. Theapplication was implemented and tested and was found to be effective

A Fine-Grained Data Access Control System in Wireless Sensor Network

The evolving realities of Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) deployed to various terrain of life require serving multiple applications. As large amount of sensed data are distributed and stored in individual sensors nodes, the illegal access to these sensitive data can be devastating. Consequently, data insecurity becomes a big concern. This study, therefore, proposes a fine-grained access control system which only requires the right set of users to access a particular data, based on their access privileges in the sensor networks. It is designed using Priccess Protocol with Access policy formulation adopting the principle of Bell Lapadula model as well as Attribute-Based Encryption (ABE) to control access to sensor data. The functionality of the proposed system is simulated using Netbeans. The performance analysis of the proposed system using execution time and size of the key show that the higher the key size, the harder it becomes for the attacker to hack the system. Additionally, the time taken for the proposed work is lesser which makes the work faster than the existing work. Consequently, a well secure interactive web-based application that could facilitates the field officers access to stored data in safe and secure manner is developed