Peer-to-Peer EnergyTrade: A Distributed Private Energy Trading Platform

Blockchain is increasingly being used as a distributed, anonymous, trustless framework for energy trading in smart grids. However, most of the existing solutions suffer from reliance on Trusted Third Parties (TTP), lack of privacy, and traffic and processing overheads. In our previous work, we have proposed a Secure Private Blockchain-based framework (SPB) for energy trading to address the aforementioned challenges. In this paper, we present a proof-on-concept implementation of SPB on the Ethereum private network to demonstrates SPB's applicability for energy trading. We benchmark SPB's performance against the relevant state-of-the-art. The implementation results demonstrate that SPB incurs lower overheads and monetary cost for end users to trade energy compared to existing solutions

BlockTorrent: A Privacy-Preserving Data Availability Protocol for Multiple Stakeholder Scenarios

As industries across the globe continue to digitize their processes, the need for a mechanism to share private data between multiple stakeholders is becoming increasingly apparent. However, sharing data poses challenges around privacy and accessibility, particularly in disputes between stakeholders with a shared interest, such as a supply chain. Auditors currently rely on stakeholders’ compliance in order to verify data. Malicious parties may falsify the data before passing it on to the auditor. Using supply chains as a case study we present BlockTorrent, a protocol to address these challenges and help facilitate data sharing between supply chain participants and named after the integration of Blockchain technology and the BitTorrent protocol. BlockTorrent allows participants to securely share their data in near real-time with other participants without the risk of information leakage or allowing data falsification, whilst guaranteeing data availability for auditors. This is achieved using a novel combination of distributed storage and on-chain secret sharing. This thesis provides an implementation and evaluation of BlockTorrent, highlighting its performance and a security discussion, specifically that a system like BlockTorrent can reach large transaction throughput as high as 500 tps and be viable in a real world environment. Lastly, the thesis provides a discussion on the privacy challenges that were considered when designing BlockTorrent

A Blockchain-Based Trust Management Framework with Verifiable Interactions

There has been tremendous interest in the development of formal trust models and metrics through the use of analytics (e.g., Belief Theory and Bayesian models), logics (e.g., Epistemic and Subjective Logic) and other mathematical models. The choice of trust metric will depend on context, circumstance and user requirements and there is no single best metric for use in all circumstances. Where different users require different trust metrics to be employed the trust score calculations should still be based on all available trust evidence. Trust is normally computed using past experiences but, in practice (especially in centralised systems), the validity and accuracy of these experiences are taken for granted. In this paper, we provide a formal framework and practical blockchain-based implementation that allows independent trust providers to implement different trust metrics in a distributed manner while still allowing all trust providers to base their calculations on a common set of trust evidence. Further, our design allows experiences to be provably linked to interactions without the need for a central authority. This leads to the notion of evidence-based trust with provable interactions. Leveraging blockchain allows the trust providers to offer their services in a competitive manner, charging fees while users are provided with payments for recording experiences. Performance details of the blockchain implementation are provided

Seeds of Promise Community Dialogue Report of Deliberative Findings One

As a team of Liberal Studies students at Grand Valley State University, we co-designed and facilitated a community dialogue in the fall of 2015 located at Seeds of Promise in the Madison Square neighborhood of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Residents from the surrounding neighborhood were invited to come for dinner and dialogue so they could share their concerns, prioritize their values, and begin to identify a broad range of interventions on issues of concern to them. The dialogue focused on concerns surrounding crime and safety. It was collaboratively designed to build upon community identified issues through surveys and discussions with host neighbors Joanna Brown and Paula Collier. As a team, our goals for this dialogue were to Empathetically listen to neighborhood residents, ensure all participants’ voices were heard, integrate and analyze our findings, and report the findings back to interested community members so that they can use this information to further their work in the neighborhood

Regular measurement is essential but insufficient to improve quality of healthcare

Background: Evidence on the detrimental effect of low quality health systems on preventable mortality worldwide has accelerated investments in large scale healthcare improvement. Regular measurement of quality of care is a core principle of quality improvement programmes that has been promoted in some low resourced settings as the primary means to improve quality of healthcare— that is, the degree to which health services for individuals and populations are effective, safe, and people centered

CHARMM-DYES : Parameterization of fluorescent dyes for use with the CHARMM force field

We present CHARMM-compatible force field parameters for a series of fluorescent dyes from the Alexa, Atto, and Cy families, commonly used in Förster resonance energy transfer (FRET) experiments. These dyes are routinely used in experiments to resolve the dynamics of proteins and nucleic acids at the nanoscale. However, little is known about the accuracy of the theoretical approximations used in determining the dynamics from the spectroscopic data. Molecular dynamics simulations can provide valuable insights into these dynamics at an atomistic level, but this requires accurate parameters for the dyes. The complex structure of the dyes and the importance of this in determining their spectroscopic properties mean that parameters generated by analogy to existing parameters do not give meaningful results. Through validation relative to quantum chemical calculation and experiments, the new parameters are shown to significantly outperform those that can be generated automatically, giving better agreement in both the charge distributions and structural properties. These improvements, in particular with regard to orientation of the dipole moments on the dyes, are vital for accurate simulation of FRET processes

Regular measurement is essential but insufficient to improve quality of healthcare.

Ambrose Agweyu and colleagues argue that large scale improvements in quality of healthcare require strong change management as well as health information systems that can provide continuous and rapid feedbac

An optimal gap theorem

By solving the Cauchy problem for the Hodge-Laplace heat equation for $d$-closed, positive $(1, 1)$-forms, we prove an optimal gap theorem for K\"ahler manifolds with nonnegative bisectional curvature which asserts that the manifold is flat if the average of the scalar curvature over balls of radius $r$ centered at any fixed point $o$ is a function of $o(r^{-2})$. Furthermore via a relative monotonicity estimate we obtain a stronger statement, namely a `positive mass' type result, asserting that if $(M, g)$ is not flat, then $\liminf_{r\to \infty} \frac{r^2}{V_o(r)}\int_{B_o(r)}\mathcal{S}(y)\, d\mu(y)>0$ for any $o\in M$

Organic matter remineralization in marine sediments : A Pan-Arctic synthesis

Natural Environment Research Council (GrantNumber(s): NE/J023094/1; Grant recipient(s): Ursula Witte) ArcticNet (GrantNumber(s): Hotspot biodiversity project; Grant recipient(s): Philippe Archambault)Peer reviewedPublisher PD

Effectiveness of a targeted exercise intervention in reversing older peoples mild balance dysfunction: A randomised controlled trail

Background: Previous research has mainly targeted older people with high risk of falling. The effectiveness of exercise interventions in older people with mild levels of balance dysfunction remains unexplored. Objective: This study evaluated the effectiveness of a home balance and strength exercise intervention in older people systematically screened as having mild balance dysfunction. Design: This was a community-based, randomized controlled trial with assessors blinded to group allocation. Participants: Study participants were older people who reported concerns about their balance but remained community ambulant (n=225). After a comprehensive balance assessment, those classified as having mild balance dysfunction (n=165) were randomized into the trial. Intervention: Participants in the intervention group (n=83) received a 6-month physical therapist–prescribed balance and strength home exercise program, based on the Otago Exercise Program and the Visual Health Information Balance and Vestibular Exercise Kit. Participants in the control group (n=82) continued with their usual activities. Outcome Measures: Laboratory and clinical measures of balance, mobility, and strength were assessed at baseline and at a 6-month reassessment.Results: After 6 months, the intervention group (n=59) significantly improved relative to the control group (n=62) for: the Functional Reach Test (mean difference=2.95 cm, 95% confidence interval [CI]=1.75 to 4.15), the Step Test (2.10 steps/15 seconds, 95% CI=1.17 to 3.02), hip abductor strength (0.02, 95% CI=0.01 to 0.03), and gait step width (2.17 cm, 95% CI=1.23 to 3.11). There were nonsignificant trends for improvement on most other measures. Fourteen participants in the intervention group (23.7%) achieved balance performance within the normative range following the exercise program, compared with 3 participants (4.8%) in the control group. Limitations: Loss to follow-up (26.6%) was slightly higher than in some similar studies but was unlikely to have biased the results. Conclusions: A physical therapist–prescribed home exercise program targeting balance and strength was effective in improving a number of balance and related outcomes in older people with mild balance impairment