Golgi Specificity and Development of Autoreactive B Cells

B cell receptors with certain heavy/light chain pairs predominate in the periphery of anti-DNA heavy chain transgenic mice while certain other B cell receptors are absent. We wanted to know why. To answer this, we re-constructed B cell receptors represented in the anti-DNA transgenic mice by cloning them as single chain variable fragments (scFv) to analyze their affinity to dsDNA. scFv representing receptors that were recovered from the spleens of transgenic mice had very little to no affinity to dsDNA. scFv representing receptors that were absent in the spleen had high affinity to dsDNA. We therefore concluded that receptors with low or no affinity to DNA successfully passed central tolerance in the bone marrow while receptors that had high affinity to DNA were likely altered by receptor editing or deleted. We also encountered B cell receptors that did not fit this conclusion. These were receptors that had anti-DNA heavy chains paired with the light chain Vk38c. They were an exception because, though they were present in the spleen, they bound DNA very well. How did these anti-DNA B cells escape central tolerance? In our effort to answer this puzzle, we discovered that receptors with the Vk38c light chain may have specificity to a Golgi antigen in addition to DNA. This suggested that such anti-DNA receptors may bind to an intracellular Golgi antigen and remain hidden inside the cell. Thus B cell receptor-cloistering in immature B cells, during development in the bone marrow, may allow the escape of anti-DNA B cells from central tolerance. After escaping from the bone marrow, these B cells become sequestered in the marginal zone of the spleen. Splenic B cells when immortalized as hybridomas show B cell receptor (IgM) accumulation in the Golgi. Receptor accumulates in the Golgi only when the heavy chain is paired with the Vk38c light chain. The location of B cell receptor accumulation in these hybridomas ranges from the cis-Golgi to medial- and trans-Golgi with the bulk of the receptor being concentrated in the medial-Golgi. Fragmenting the Golgi architecture with nocodazole, caused the intracellular IgM accumulation to disperse to the same locations as the Golgi, further confirming the location. A novelty about these B cells is that they have an uncommon way of antibody secretion. Instead of secreting IgM pentamers as B cells normally do, these cells extrude IgM as aggregates of up to 2µm. We named the aggregates “spherons” because of their appearance. The spherons do not have a membrane and are likely composed of the m heavy chain and the k light chain. In addition to extruding spherons, the B cells secrete soluble IgM as monomers and hemimers possibly as a consequence of IgM retention in the Golgi. Spherons have a high similarity to immune complexes deposited in kidneys of mice suffering from lupus nephritis. Spherons may be relevant in autoimmune nephritis and immunoglobulin deposition diseases. Understanding the mechanism of production of spherons could help design treatment strategies for patients suffering from autoimmune disease

A secured framework for SDN-based edge computing in IoT-enabled healthcare system

The Internet of Things (IoT) consists of resource-constrained smart devices capable to sense and process data. It connects a huge number of smart sensing devices, i.e., things, and heterogeneous networks. The IoT is incorporated into different applications, such as smart health, smart home, smart grid, etc. The concept of smart healthcare has emerged in different countries, where pilot projects of healthcare facilities are analyzed. In IoT-enabled healthcare systems, the security of IoT devices and associated data is very important, whereas Edge computing is a promising architecture that solves their computational and processing problems. Edge computing is economical and has the potential to provide low latency data services by improving the communication and computation speed of IoT devices in a healthcare system. In Edge-based IoT-enabled healthcare systems, load balancing, network optimization, and efficient resource utilization are accurately performed using artificial intelligence (AI), i.e., intelligent software-defined network (SDN) controller. SDN-based Edge computing is helpful in the efficient utilization of limited resources of IoT devices. However, these low powered devices and associated data (private sensitive data of patients) are prone to various security threats. Therefore, in this paper, we design a secure framework for SDN-based Edge computing in IoT-enabled healthcare system. In the proposed framework, the IoT devices are authenticated by the Edge servers using a lightweight authentication scheme. After authentication, these devices collect data from the patients and send them to the Edge servers for storage, processing, and analyses. The Edge servers are connected with an SDN controller, which performs load balancing, network optimization, and efficient resource utilization in the healthcare system. The proposed framework is evaluated using computer-based simulations. The results demonstrate that the proposed framework provides better solutions for IoT-enabled healthcare systems. © 2013 IEEE. **Please note that there are multiple authors for this article therefore only the name of the first 5 including Federation University Australia affiliate “Venki Balasubramaniam” is provided in this record*

Security and blockchain convergence with internet of multimedia things : current trends, research challenges and future directions

The Internet of Multimedia Things (IoMT) orchestration enables the integration of systems, software, cloud, and smart sensors into a single platform. The IoMT deals with scalar as well as multimedia data. In these networks, sensor-embedded devices and their data face numerous challenges when it comes to security. In this paper, a comprehensive review of the existing literature for IoMT is presented in the context of security and blockchain. The latest literature on all three aspects of security, i.e., authentication, privacy, and trust is provided to explore the challenges experienced by multimedia data. The convergence of blockchain and IoMT along with multimedia-enabled blockchain platforms are discussed for emerging applications. To highlight the significance of this survey, large-scale commercial projects focused on security and blockchain for multimedia applications are reviewed. The shortcomings of these projects are explored and suggestions for further improvement are provided. Based on the aforementioned discussion, we present our own case study for healthcare industry: a theoretical framework having security and blockchain as key enablers. The case study reflects the importance of security and blockchain in multimedia applications of healthcare sector. Finally, we discuss the convergence of emerging technologies with security, blockchain and IoMT to visualize the future of tomorrow's applications. © 2020 Elsevier Lt

Urban data management system: Towards Big Data analytics for Internet of Things based smart urban environment using customized Hadoop

The unbroken amplfication of a versatile urban setup is challenged by huge Big Data processing. Understanding the voluminous data generated in a smart urban environment for decision making is a challenging task. Big Data analytics is performed to obtain useful insights about the massive data. The existing conventional techniques are not suitable to get a useful insight due to the huge volume of data. Big Data analytics has attracted significant attention in the context of large-scale data computation and processing. This paper presents a Hadoop-based architecture to deal with Big Data loading and processing. The proposed architecture is composed of two different modules, i.e., Big Data loading and Big Data processing. The performance and efficiency of data loading is tested to propose a customized methodology for loading Big Data to a distributed and processing platform, i.e., Hadoop. To examine data ingestion into Hadoop, data loading is performed and compared repeatedly against different decisions. The experimental results are recorded for various attributes along with manual and traditional data loading to highlight the efficiency of our proposed solution. On the other hand, the processing is achieved using YARN cluster management framework with specific customization of dynamic scheduling. In addition, the effectiveness of our proposed solution regarding processing and computation is also highlighted and decorated in the context of throughput

Wet environmental conditions affecting narrow band on-body communication channel for WBANs

© 2018 Old City Publishing, Inc. Wireless Body Area Networks (WBANs) are rising as the key building blocks of next generation networks in modern health care systems. Research in recent years has focused on channel modelling, energy conservation and design of efficient Medium Access Control (MAC) schemes for WBANs. However, less attention has been paid to the on-body channel propagation analysis. This paper presents the propagation effects of wet clothing on the on-body channel at 0.9GHz, 1.8GHz and 2.5GHz and is germane to signal budgets in body-centric and mobile communication systems. A number of transmission measurements between simple monopoles above a square ground plane, placed on the opposing shoulder and hip, wearing single and multi-layered “rainwater wet” and dry cotton T-Shirts for standing, bending, torso left and right are used to gain insight into general levels of the effect of rainwater on propagation. Measured results are statistically processed to extract the level of transmission enhancement due to a wet on-body channel. Results show that wet clothing is generally beneficial to the channel at popular mobile communications frequencies

Endo-cannabinoids system and the toxicity of cannabinoids with a biotechnological approach

Cannabinoids have shown diverse and critical effects on the body systems, which alter the physiological functions. Synthetic cannabinoids are comparatively innovative misuse drugs with respect to their nature of synthesis. Synthetic cannabinoids therapy in healthy, chain smokers, and alcoholic individuals cause damage to the immune and nervous system, eventually leading to intoxication throughout the body. Relevant studies were retrieved using major electronic databases such as PubMed, EMBASE, Medline, Scopus, and Google Scholar. The extensive use of Cannabis Sativa L. (C. Sativa) and its derivatives/analogues such as the nonpsychoactive dimethyl heptyl homolog (CBG-DMH), and tetrahydrocannabivarin (THCV) amongst juveniles and adults have been enhanced in recent years. Cannabinoids play a crucial role in the induction of respiratory, reproductive, immune and carcinogenic effects; however, potential data about mutagenic and developmental effects are still insufficient. The possible toxicity associated with the prolong use of cannabinoids acts as a tumor promoter in animal models and humans. Particular synthetic cannabinoids and analogues have low affinity for CB1 or CB2 receptors, while some synthetic members like Δ9-THC have high affinity towards these receptors. Cannabinoids and their derivatives have a direct or indirect association with acute and long-term toxicity. To reduce/attenuate cannabinoids toxicity, pharmaceutical biotechnology and cloning methods have opened a new window to develop cannabinoids encoding the gene tetrahydrocannabinolic acid (THCA) synthase. Plant revolution and regeneration hindered genetic engineering in C. Sativa. The genetic culture suspension of C. Sativa can be transmuted by the use of Agrobacterium tumefaciens to overcome its toxicity. The main aim of the present review was to collect evidence of the endo-cannabinoid system (ECS), cannabinoids toxicity, and the potential biotechnological approach of cannabinoids synthesis

SmartEdge: An end-to-end encryption framework for an edge-enabled smart city application.

The Internet of Things (IoT) has the potential to transform communities around the globe into smart cities. The massive deployment of sensor-embedded devices in the smart cities generates voluminous amounts of data that need to be stored and processed in an efficient manner. Long-haul data transmission to the remote cloud data centers leads to higher delay and bandwidth consumption. In smart cities, the delay sensitive applications have stringent requirements in term of response time. To reduce latency and bandwidth consumption, edge computing plays a pivotal role. The resource-constrained smart devices at the network core need to offload computationally complex tasks to the edge devices located in their vicinity and have relatively higher resources. In this paper, we propose an end-to-end encryption framework, SmartEdge, for a smart city application by executing computationally complex tasks at the network edge and cloud data centers. Using a lightweight symmetric encryption technique, we establish a secure connection among the smart core devices for multimedia streaming towards the registered and verified edge devices. Upon receiving the data, the edge devices encrypts the multimedia streams, encodes them, and broadcast to the cloud data centers. Prior to the broadcasting, each edge device establishes a secured connection with a data center that relies on the combination of symmetric and asymmetric encryption techniques. In SmartEdge, the execution of a lightweight encryption technique at the resource-constrained smart devices, and relatively complex encryption techniques at the network edge and cloud data centers reduce the resource utilization of the entire network. The proposed framework reduces the response time, security overhead, computational and communication costs, and has a lower end-to-end encryption delay for participating entities. Moreover, the proposed scheme is highly resilient against various adversarial attacks

A Secured Data Management Scheme for Smart Societies in Industrial Internet of Things Environment

Smart societies have an increasing demand for quality-oriented services and infrastructure in an Industrial Internet of Things (IIoT) paradigm. Smart urbanization faces numerous challenges. Among them, secured energy Demand Side Management (DSM) is of particular concern. The IIoT renders the industrial systems to malware, cyber attacks, and other security risks. The IIoT with the amalgamation of Big Data analytics can provide efficient solutions to such challenges. This paper proposes a secured and trusted multi-layered DSM engine for a smart social society using IIoT-based Big Data analytics. The proposed engine uses a centralized approach to achieve optimum DSM over a Home Area Network (HAN). To enhance the security of this engine, a payload-based authentication scheme is utilized that relies on a lightweight handshake mechanism. Our proposed method utilizes the lightweight features of Constrained Application Protocol (CoAP) to facilitate the clients in monitoring various resources residing over the server in an energy-efficient manner. In addition, data streams are processed using Big Data analytics with MapReduce parallel processing. The proposed authentication approach is evaluated using NetDuino Plus 2 boards that yield a lower connection overhead, memory consumption, response time and a robust defense against various malicious attacks. On the other hand, our data processing approach is tested on reliable datasets using Apache Hadoop with Apache Spark to verify the proposed DMS engine. The test results reveal that the proposed architecture offers valuable insights into the smart social societies in the context of IIo