Pruned Adaptive Routing in the Heterogeneous Internet of Things

Abstract-Recent research endeavours are capitalizing on state of the art technologies to build a scalable Internet of Things (IoT). Envisioned as a technology to integrate the best of Wireless Sensor Networks and RFID systems, there is much promise for a global network of objects that are identifiable, track-able, and harmoniously informing. However, the realization of an IoT framework is hindered by many factors, the most pressing of which is attributed to the integration of these heterogeneous nodes and devices. A considerable subset of these nodes undergoes movement and dynamically enters and leaves the network backbone/topology. Routing packets and inter-nodal communication has received little attention; mainly due to the sheer reliance on the Internet as a backbone. However, spatially correlated entities in the IoT, and those which most often interact, would pose a significant overhead of communication if all intermediate packets need to be routed over distant backhauls. In remedy, we present a Pruned Adaptive IoT Routing (PAIR) protocol that selectively establishes routes of communication between IoT nodes. Since nodes in the IoT belong to different owners, we also introduce a pricing model to cater for the exchange of monetary costs by intermediate nodes to utilize their relaying resources. We also establish a cap on inter-nodal routing to dynamically utilize the Internet backbone if the source to destination distance surpasses a preset (case optimized) threshold. The PAIR routing protocol is elaborated upon, building upon the detailed system model presented in this paper. We finally present a use case to demonstrate the utility and practicality of PAIR in the heterogeneous IoT as it scales

Data-driven dynamic clustering framework for mitigating the adverse economic impact of Covid-19 lockdown practices

The COVID-19 disease has once again reiterated the impact of pandemics beyond a biomedical event with potential rapid, dramatic, sweeping disruptions to the management, and conduct of everyday life. Not only the rate and pattern of contagion that threaten our sense of healthy living but also the safety measures put in place for containing the spread of the virus may require social distancing. Three different measures to counteract this pandemic situation have emerged, namely: (i) vaccination, (ii) herd immunity development, and (iii) lockdown. As the first measure is not ready at this stage and the second measure is largely considered unreasonable on the account of the gigantic number of fatalities, a vast majority of countries have practiced the third option despite having a potentially immense adverse economic impact. To mitigate such an impact, this paper proposes a data-driven dynamic clustering framework for moderating the adverse economic impact of COVID-19 flare-up. Through an intelligent fusion of healthcare and simulated mobility data, we model lockdown as a clustering problem and design a dynamic clustering algorithm for localized lockdown by taking into account the pandemic, economic and mobility aspects. We then validate the proposed algorithms by conducting extensive simulations using the Malaysian context as a case study. The findings signify the promises of dynamic clustering for lockdown coverage reduction, reduced economic loss, and military unit deployment reduction, as well as assess potential impact of uncooperative civilians on the contamination rate. The outcome of this work is anticipated to pave a way for significantly reducing the severe economic impact of the COVID-19 spreading. Moreover, the idea can be exploited for potentially the next waves of corona virus-related diseases and other upcoming viral life-threatening calamities

Reversal of Dual Epigenetic Repression of Non-Canonical Wnt-5a Normalises Diabetic Corneal Epithelial Wound Healing and Stem Cells

AIMS/HYPOTHESIS: Diabetes is associated with epigenetic modifications including DNA methylation and miRNA changes. Diabetic complications in the cornea can cause persistent epithelial defects and impaired wound healing due to limbal epithelial stem cell (LESC) dysfunction. In this study, we aimed to uncover epigenetic alterations in diabetic vs non-diabetic human limbal epithelial cells (LEC) enriched in LESC and identify new diabetic markers that can be targeted for therapy to normalise corneal epithelial wound healing and stem cell expression. METHODS: Human LEC were isolated, or organ-cultured corneas were obtained, from autopsy eyes from non-diabetic (59.87±20.89 years) and diabetic (71.93±9.29 years) donors. The groups were not statistically different in age. DNA was extracted from LEC for methylation analysis using Illumina Infinium 850K MethylationEPIC BeadChip and protein was extracted for Wnt phospho array analysis. Wound healing was studied using a scratch assay in LEC or 1-heptanol wounds in organ-cultured corneas. Organ-cultured corneas and LEC were transfected with WNT5A siRNA, miR-203a mimic or miR-203a inhibitor or were treated with recombinant Wnt-5a (200 ng/ml), DNA methylation inhibitor zebularine (1-20 µmol/l) or biodegradable nanobioconjugates (NBCs) based on polymalic acid scaffold containing antisense oligonucleotide (AON) to miR-203a or a control scrambled AON (15-20 µmol/l). RESULTS: There was significant differential DNA methylation between diabetic and non-diabetic LEC. WNT5A promoter was hypermethylated in diabetic LEC accompanied with markedly decreased Wnt-5a protein. Treatment of diabetic LEC and organ-cultured corneas with exogenous Wnt-5a accelerated wound healing by 1.4-fold (p CONCLUSIONS/INTERPRETATION: We provide the first account of epigenetic changes in diabetic corneas including dual inhibition of WNT5A by DNA methylation and miRNA action. Overall, Wnt-5a is a new corneal epithelial wound healing stimulator that can be targeted to improve wound healing and stem cells in the diabetic cornea

Internet of Things for Sustainable Community Development: Introduction and Overview

The two-third of the city-dwelling world population by 2050 poses numerous global challenges in the infrastructure and natural resource management domains (e.g., water and food scarcity, increasing global temperatures, and energy issues). The IoT with integrated sensing and communication capabilities has the strong potential for the robust, sustainable, and informed resource management in the urban and rural communities. In this chapter, the vital concepts of sustainable community development are discussed. The IoT and sustainability interactions are explained with emphasis on Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) and communication technologies. Moreover, IoT opportunities and challenges are discussed in the context of sustainable community development

Dynamic Scheduling Algorithm in Cyber Mimic Defense Architecture of Volunteer Computing

Volunteer computing uses computers volunteered by the general public to do distributed scientific computing. Volunteer computing is being used in high-energy physics, molecular biology, medicine, astrophysics, climate study, and other areas. These projects have attained unprecedented computing power. However, with the development of information technology, the traditional defense system cannot deal with the unknown security problems of volunteer computing. At the same time, Cyber Mimic Defense (CMD) can defend the unknown attack behavior through its three characteristics: dynamic, heterogeneous, and redundant. As an important part of the CMD, the dynamic scheduling algorithm realizes the dynamic change of the service centralized executor, which can enusre the security and reliability of CMD of volunteer computing. Aiming at the problems of passive scheduling and large scheduling granularity existing in the existing scheduling algorithms, this article first proposes a scheduling algorithm based on time threshold and task threshold and realizes the dynamic randomness of mimic defense from two different dimensions; finally, combining time threshold and random threshold, a dynamic scheduling algorithm based on multi-level queue is proposed. The experiment shows that the dynamic scheduling algorithm based on multi-level queue can take both security and reliability into account, has better dynamic heterogeneous redundancy characteristics, and can effectively prevent the transformation rule of heterogeneous executors from being mastered by attackers