MobileTrust: Secure Knowledge Integration in VANETs

Vehicular Ad hoc NETworks (VANET) are becoming popular due to the emergence of the Internet of Things and ambient intelligence applications. In such networks, secure resource sharing functionality is accomplished by incorporating trust schemes. Current solutions adopt peer-to-peer technologies that can cover the large operational area. However, these systems fail to capture some inherent properties of VANETs, such as fast and ephemeral interaction, making robust trust evaluation of crowdsourcing challenging. In this article, we propose MobileTrust—a hybrid trust-based system for secure resource sharing in VANETs. The proposal is a breakthrough in centralized trust computing that utilizes cloud and upcoming 5G technologies to provide robust trust establishment with global scalability. The ad hoc communication is energy-efficient and protects the system against threats that are not countered by the current settings. To evaluate its performance and effectiveness, MobileTrust is modelled in the SUMO simulator and tested on the traffic features of the small-size German city of Eichstatt. Similar schemes are implemented in the same platform to provide a fair comparison. Moreover, MobileTrust is deployed on a typical embedded system platform and applied on a real smart car installation for monitoring traffic and road-state parameters of an urban application. The proposed system is developed under the EU-founded THREAT-ARREST project, to provide security, privacy, and trust in an intelligent and energy-aware transportation scenario, bringing closer the vision of sustainable circular economy

Is query translation a distinct task from search?

INTRODUCTION The University of Sheffield participated in iCLEF 2002 using, as a test-bed, the prototype under development in the Clarity project. Clarity is an EU funded project aimed at developing a system for cross-language information retrieval for so-called low density languages, those with few translation resources. Currently translation between English and Finnish is supported; soon Swedish will be added and in the near future Latvian and Lithuanian. Clarity is being developed in a user-centred way with user involvement from the beginning. The design of the first user interface was based on current best practise, particular attention was paid to empirical evidence for a specific design choice. Six paper-based interface mock-ups representing important points in the cross-language search task were generated and presented for user assessment as a part of an extensive user study. The study (reported in Petrelli et al. 2002) was conducted to understand users and uses of cross-language information retrieval systems. Many different techniques were applied: contextual enquiry, interviews, questionnaires, informal evaluation of existing cross-language technology, and participatory design sessions with the interface mock-ups mentioned above. As a result, a user class profile was sketched and a long list of user requirements was compiled. As a followup, a redesign session took place and the new system was designed for users whoknow the language(s) they are searching (polyglots); • search for writing (journalists, translators business analysts); • have limited searching skills; • know the topic in advance or will learn/read on it while searching; • use many languages in the same search session and often swap between them. New system features were listed as important and the user interface was redesigned. Considering the result of the study the new interface allowed the user to dynamically change the language setting from query to query, hid the query translation and showed the retrieved set as ranked list primary. Despite the fact that this new design was considered to be more effective, a comparison between the first layout based on the relevant literature and the new one based on the user study was considered an important research question. In particular, the choice of hiding the query translation was considered an important design decision, against the common agreement to allow and support the user in controlling the system actions. Thus the participation of Sheffield in iCLEF was organized around the idea of checking if the user should validate the query translation before the search is run or instead if the system should perform the translation and search in a single step without any user’s supervision

Near-Full Genome Characterisation of Two Natural Intergenotypic 2k/1b Recombinant Hepatitis C Virus Isolates

Few natural intergenotypic hepatitis C virus (HCV) recombinants have been characterised, and only RF1_2k/1b has demonstrated widespread transmission. The near-full length genome sequences for two cases of 2k/1b recombinants (CYHCV037 and CYHCV093) sampled in Cyprus were obtained using strain-specific RT-PCR amplification and sequencing protocols. Sequence analysis confirmed their similarity with the original RF1_2k/1b strain from St. Petersburg, N687. These two isolates significantly contribute to the sequence data available on this recombinant and confirm its increasing spread among individuals from Eastern Europe, and its association with transmission through intravenous drug use. Phylogenetic analyses reveal clustering of the sequence 3′ to the recombination point, not seen in the topology of the 5′ sequences, implying a more complicated evolutionary history than that held to date. The increasing cases of HCV recombinant strains underline the requirement of their contribution to the standardised rules of HCV classification and nomenclature, molecular epidemiology, diagnosis, and treatment

Group analysis of a class of nonlinear Kolmogorov equations

A class of (1+2)-dimensional diffusion-convection equations (nonlinear Kolmogorov equations) with time-dependent coefficients is studied with Lie symmetry point of view. The complete group classification is achieved using a gauging of arbitrary elements (i.e. via reducing the number of variable coefficients) with the application of equivalence transformations. Two possible gaugings are discussed in detail in order to show how equivalence groups serve in making the optimal choice.Comment: 12 pages, 4 table

Cross-lingual document retrieval categorisation and navigation based on distributed services

The widespread use of the Internet across countries has increased the need for access to document collections that are often written in languages different from a user’s native language. In this paper we describe Clarity, a Cross Language Information Retrieval (CLIR) system for English, Finnish, Swedish, Latvian and Lithuanian. Clarity is a fully-fledged retrieval system that supports the user during the whole process of query formulation, text retrieval and document browsing. We address four of the major aspects of Clarity: (i) the user-driven methodology that formed the basis for the iterative design cycle and framework in the project, (ii) the system architecture that was developed to support the interaction and coordination of Clarity’s distributed services, (iii) the data resources and methods for query translation, and (iv) the support for Baltic languages. Clarity is an example of a distributed CLIR system built with minimal translation resources and, to our knowledge, the only such system that currently supports Baltic languages

A domain-independent semantic tagger for the study of meaning associations in English text

A comparison of semantic tagging with syntactic Part-of-Speech tagging leads us to propose that a domain-independent semantic tagger for English corpora should not aim to annotate each word with an atomic 'sem-tag', but instead that a semantic tagging should attach to each word a set of semantic primitive attributes or features. These features should include: - lemma or root, grouping together inflected and derived forms of the same lexical item; - broad subject categories where applicable; - selectional restrictions; - a meaning definition, stated in terms of a restricted Defining Vocabulary, and processed to remove stoplist-words and repetitions. A semantic tagger meeting this description can be derived from the Longman Dictionary of Contemporary English, if combined with a robust lemmatiser; allowing automated semantic tagging of large English corpora such as LOB and BNC

First records of Eledonoprius serrifrons (Reitter, 1890) from Greece and Eledona hellenica Reitter, 1885 from Bulgaria (Coleoptera: Tenebrionidae): a contribution to the Bolitophagini of southern Balkan Peninsula with a special reference to Greece

Te Western Palaearctic representatives of the tribe Bolitophagini comprise of seven species in three genera. Research on Bolitophagini of Greece has been minimal reporting on the presence of four species. In this paper, the rarely collected Eledonoprius serrifrons (Reitter, 1890) is recorded for the frst time from Greece, while the Balkan species Eledona hellenica Reitter, 1885 is proved from Bulgaria for the frst time. Material from the collection of the frst author alongside a literature survey provide a distributional overview of the Greek Bolitophagini, while raising the number of known to Greek species within the tribe to fve. Ecological remarks and the conservation of these two species are briefy discussed