A distributed key establishment scheme for wireless mesh networks using identity-based cryptography

In this paper, we propose a secure and efficient key establishment scheme designed with respect to the unique requirements of Wireless Mesh Networks. Our security model is based on Identity-based key establishment scheme without the utilization of a trusted authority for private key operations. Rather, this task is performed by a collaboration of users; a threshold number of users come together in a coalition so that they generate the private key. We performed simulative performance evaluation in order to show the effect of both the network size and the threshold value. Results show a tradeoff between resiliency and efficiency: increasing the threshold value or the number of mesh nodes also increases the resiliency but negatively effects the efficiency. For threshold values smaller than 8 and for number of mesh nodes in between 40 and 100, at least 90% of the mesh nodes can compute their private keys within at most 70 seconds. On the other hand, at threshold value 8, an increase in the number of mesh nodes from 40 to 100 results in 25% increase in the rate of successful private key generations

Labor-force Participation of Married Women in Turkey: A Study of the Added-Worker Effect and the Discouraged-Worker Effect

Cataloged from PDF version of article.We analyze married women's labor-supply responses to their husbands' job loss (added-worker effect) and worsening of unemployment conditions (discouraged-worker effect). We construct six two-year pseudopanels based on the previous year's labor market outcomes using nationally representative Turkish Household Labor Force Surveys from 2005 to 2010. We find that women whose husbands involuntarily transition from employment to unemployment are more likely to participate in the labor force. We pool the six-year pseudopanels and examine the effects of aggregate employment conditions on wives' transition to the labor force. A worsening of unemployment conditions has a small discouraging effect on wives' labor-supply responses

Optimal design of single-tuned passive filters using response surface methodology

This paper presents an approach based on Response Surface Methodology (RSM) to find the optimal parameters of the single-tuned passive filters for harmonic mitigation. The main advantages of RSM can be underlined as easy implementation and effective computation. Using RSM, the single-tuned harmonic filter is designed to minimize voltage total harmonic distortion (THDV) and current total harmonic distortion (THDI). Power factor (PF) is also incorporated in the design procedure as a constraint. To show the validity of the proposed approach, RSM and Classical Direct Search (Grid Search) methods are evaluated for a typical industrial power system

Mexico\u27s Banks after the December 1994 Devaluation--A Chronology of the Government\u27s Response

The immediate effects of the December 1994 peso devaluation and the period of high interest rates and economic recession that followed had important repercussions for the Mexican banking and financial system. Since the onset of the crisis, the Mexican government has undertaken a number of important actions designed to assure adequate capitalization of financial institutions and continued public confidence in the banking system. The goal throughout has been to avoid a banking crisis that would exacerbate the contraction in the real economy and to set the stage for a recovery of the financial system based on sound institutions and efficient financial markets. The steps taken have included amendments to the legal framework for foreign ownership of banks, reinforcement of supervision, programs for re capitalizing troubled banks, the introduction of inflation-indexed lending and the provision of indexed funding to banks, a debtor relief program and direct intervention of those banks that proved unable to weather the crisis and its aftermath. The combination of these meas- ures has permitted most of the banks and the banking and payments system as a whole to continue to operate throughout 1995, despite a very sharp contraction in the real econom

Using response surface design to determine the optimal parameters of genetic algorithm and a case study

Copyright © 2013 Taylor & Francis. This is an Accepted Manuscript of an article published by Taylor & Francis in International Journal of Production Research on 09 June 2013, available online: http://www.tandfonline.com/10.1080/00207543.2013.784411Genetic algorithms are efficient stochastic search techniques for approximating optimal solutions within complex search spaces and used widely to solve NP hard problems. This algorithm includes a number of parameters whose different levels affect the performance of the algorithm strictly. The general approach to determine the appropriate parameter combination of genetic algorithm depends on too many trials of different combinations and the best one of the combinations that produces good results is selected for the program that would be used for problem solving. A few researchers studied on parameter optimisation of genetic algorithm. In this paper, response surface depended parameter optimisation is proposed to determine the optimal parameters of genetic algorithm. Results are tested for benchmark problems that is most common in mixed-model assembly line balancing problems of type-I (MMALBP-I)

Optimizing Plastic Extrusion Process via Grey Wolf Optimizer Algorithm and Regression Analysis

34-41One of the most widely used methods in the production of plastic products is the extrusion process. There are many factors that affect the product quality throughout the extrusion process. Examining the effects of these factors and determining the optimum process parameters which will provide the desired product characteristics; is important for reducing costs and increasing competitiveness. This study is performed in a manufacturer that produces plastic cups. The aim is to optimize extrusion process parameters of this company in order to achieve 1.15 mm thickness at the produced plastic sheets. For this reason, in order to be able to model the problem as an optimization problem through regression modelling, the thicknesses of the sheet generated with different process parameters were observed during the production processes. Then, considering the desired 1.15 mm sheet thickness, the established model is optimized by running the grey wolf optimizer (GWO) algorithm through the model

Optimizing Plastic Extrusion Process via Grey Wolf Optimizer Algorithm and Regression Analysis

One of the most widely used methods in the production of plastic products is the extrusion process. There are many factors that affect the product quality throughout the extrusion process. Examining the effects of these factors and determining the optimum process parameters which will provide the desired product characteristics; is important for reducing costs and increasing competitiveness. This study is performed in a manufacturer that produces plastic cups. The aim is to optimize extrusion process parameters of this company in order to achieve 1.15 mm thickness at the produced plastic sheets. For this purpose, the thicknesses of the sheet produced with different process parameters were observed throughout the production processes to be able to model the problem as an optimization problem by means of the regression modelling. Then, the developed model is optimized via the grey wolf optimizer (GWO) algorithm considering the desired 1.15 mm sheet thickness

Secure key agreement using pure biometrics

In this paper, we propose a novel secure key agreement protocol that uses biometrics with unordered set of features. Our protocol enables the user and the server to agree on a symmetric key, which is generated by utilizing only the feature points of the user's biometrics. It means that our protocol does not generate the key randomly or it does not use any random data in the key itself. As a proof of concept, we instantiate our protocol model using fingerprints. In our protocol, we employ a threshold-based quantization mechanism, in order to group the minutiae in a predefined neighborhood. In this way, we increase the chance of user-server agreement on the same set of minutiae. Our protocol works in rounds. In each round, depending on the calculated similarity score on the common set of minutiae, the acceptance/rejection decision is made. Besides, we employ multi-criteria security analyses for our proposed protocol. These security analyses show that the generated keys possess acceptable randomness according to Shannon's entropy. In addition, the keys, which are generated after each protocol run, are indistinguishable from each other, as measured by the Hamming distance metric. Our protocol is also robust against brute-force, replay and impersonation attacks, proven by high attack complexity and low equal error rates