Clinical and genetic factors associated with radiographic damage in patients with ankylosing spondylitis.

OBJECTIVES: To identify clinical and genetic factors associated with severe radiographic damage in patients with ankylosing spondylitis (AS). METHODS: We newly generated genome-wide single nucleotide polymorphism data (833K) for 444 patients with AS. The severity of radiographic damage was assessed using the modified Stoke Ankylosing Spondylitis Spinal Score (mSASSS). To identify clinical and genetic factors associated with severe radiographic damage, multiple linear regression analyses were performed. Human AS-osteoprogenitor and control-osteoprogenitor cells were used for functional validation. RESULTS: The significant clinical factors of final mSASSS were baseline mSASSS (ß=0.796, p=3.22×10-75), peripheral joint arthritis (ß=-0.246, p=6.85×10-6), uveitis (ß=0.157, p=1.95×10-3), and smoking (ß=0.130, p=2.72×10-2) after adjusting for sex, age and disease duration. After adjusting significant clinical factors, the Ryanodine receptor 3 (RYR3) gene was associated with severe radiographic damage (p=1.00×10-6). For pathway analysis, the PI3K-Akt signalling pathway was associated with severe radiographic damage in AS (p=2.21×10-4, false discovery rate=0.040). Treatment with rhodamine B, a ligand of RYR3, dose-dependently induced matrix mineralisation of AS osteoprogenitors. However, the rhodamine B-induced accelerated matrix mineralisation was not definitive in control osteoprogenitors. Knockdown of RYR3 inhibited matrix mineralisation in SaOS2 cell lines. CONCLUSIONS: This study identified clinical and genetic factors that contributed to better understanding of the pathogenesis and biology associated with radiographic damage in AS.

Mitochondrial peroxiredoxin 5 overexpression suppresses insulin-induced adipogenesis by downregulating the phosphorylation of p38.

Obesity is caused by the accumulation of excess lipids due to an energy imbalance. Differentiation of pre-adipocytes induces abnormal lipid accumulation, and reactive oxygen species (ROS) generated in this process promote the differentiation of pre-adipocytes through mitogen-activated protein kinase (MAPK) signaling. Peroxiredoxin (Prx) is a potent antioxidant enzyme, and peroxiredoxin 5 (Prx5), which is mainly expressed in cytosol and mitochondria, inhibits adipogenesis by regulating ROS levels. Based on previous findings, the present study was performed to investigate whether cytosolic Prx5 (CytPrx5) or mitochondrial Prx5 (MtPrx5) has a greater effect on the inhibition of adipogenesis. In this study, MtPrx5 decreased insulin-mediated ROS levels to reduce adipogenic gene expression and lipid accumulation more effectively than CytPrx5. In addition, we found that p38 MAPK mainly participates in adipogenesis. Furthermore, we verified that MtPrx5 overexpression suppressed the phosphorylation of p38 during adipogenesis. Thus, we suggest that MtPrx5 inhibits insulin-induced adipogenesis more effectively than CytPrx5.

Robust and Efficient Authentication and Group-Proof Scheme Using Physical Unclonable Functions for Wearable Computing.

Wearable computing has garnered a lot of attention due to its various advantages, including automatic recognition and categorization of human actions from sensor data. However, wearable computing environments can be fragile to cyber security attacks since adversaries attempt to block, delete, or intercept the exchanged information via insecure communication channels. In addition to cyber security attacks, wearable sensor devices cannot resist physical threats since they are batched in unattended circumstances. Furthermore, existing schemes are not suited for resource-constrained wearable sensor devices with regard to communication and computational costs and are inefficient regarding the verification of multiple sensor devices simultaneously. Thus, we designed an efficient and robust authentication and group-proof scheme using physical unclonable functions (PUFs) for wearable computing, denoted as AGPS-PUFs, to provide high-security and cost-effective efficiency compared to the previous schemes. We evaluated the security of the AGPS-PUF using a formal security analysis, including the ROR Oracle model and AVISPA. We carried out the testbed experiments using MIRACL on Raspberry PI4 and then presented a comparative analysis of the performance between the AGPS-PUF scheme and the previous schemes. Consequently, the AGPS-PUF offers superior security and efficiency than existing schemes and can be applied to practical wearable computing environments.

Provably Secure Mutual Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme Using PUF in Internet of Drones Deployments.

Internet of Drones (IoD), designed to coordinate the access of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs), is a specific application of the Internet of Things (IoT). Drones are used to control airspace and offer services such as rescue, traffic surveillance, environmental monitoring, delivery and so on. However, IoD continues to suffer from privacy and security issues. Firstly, messages are transmitted over public channels in IoD environments, which compromises data security. Further, sensitive data can also be extracted from stolen mobile devices of remote users. Moreover, drones are susceptible to physical capture and manipulation by adversaries, which are called drone capture attacks. Thus, the development of a secure and lightweight authentication scheme is essential to overcoming these security vulnerabilities, even on resource-constrained drones. In 2021, Akram et al. proposed a secure and lightweight user-drone authentication scheme for drone networks. However, we discovered that Akram et al.'s scheme is susceptible to user and drone impersonation, verification table leakage, and denial of service (DoS) attacks. Furthermore, their scheme cannot provide perfect forward secrecy. To overcome the aforementioned security vulnerabilities, we propose a secure mutual authentication and key agreement scheme between user and drone pairs. The proposed scheme utilizes physical unclonable function (PUF) to give drones uniqueness and resistance against drone stolen attacks. Moreover, the proposed scheme uses a fuzzy extractor to utilize the biometrics of users as secret parameters. We analyze the security of the proposed scheme using informal security analysis, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, a Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. We also compared the security features and performance of the proposed scheme and the existing related schemes. Therefore, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme is suitable for IoD environments that can provide users with secure and convenient wireless communications.

Blockchain-Based Data Access Control and Key Agreement System in IoT Environment.

Recently, with the increasing application of the Internet of Things (IoT), various IoT environments such as smart factories, smart homes, and smart grids are being generated. In the IoT environment, a lot of data are generated in real time, and the generated IoT data can be used as source data for various services such as artificial intelligence, remote medical care, and finance, and can also be used for purposes such as electricity bill generation. Therefore, data access control is required to grant access rights to various data users in the IoT environment who need such IoT data. In addition, IoT data contain sensitive information such as personal information, so privacy protection is also essential. Ciphertext-policy attribute-based encryption (CP-ABE) technology has been utilized to address these requirements. Furthermore, system structures applying blockchains with CP-ABE are being studied to prevent bottlenecks and single failures of cloud servers, as well as to support data auditing. However, these systems do not stipulate authentication and key agreement to ensure the security of the data transmission process and data outsourcing. Accordingly, we propose a data access control and key agreement scheme using CP-ABE to ensure data security in a blockchain-based system. In addition, we propose a system that can provide data nonrepudiation, data accountability, and data verification functions by utilizing blockchains. Both formal and informal security verifications are performed to demonstrate the security of the proposed system. We also compare the security, functional aspects, and computational and communication costs of previous systems. Furthermore, we perform cryptographic calculations to analyze the system in practical terms. As a result, our proposed protocol is safer against attacks such as guessing attacks and tracing attacks than other protocols, and can provide mutual authentication and key agreement functions. In addition, the proposed protocol is more efficient than other protocols, so it can be applied to practical IoT environments.

Asivatrep, a TRPV1 antagonist, for the topical treatment of atopic dermatitis: Phase 3, randomized, vehicle-controlled study (CAPTAIN-AD).

BACKGROUND: Asivatrep is a potent and selective antagonist of transient receptor potential vanilloid subfamily V member 1 (TRPV1), which plays an important role in itch and inflammation in atopic dermatitis (AD). OBJECTIVE: This current study aimed to evaluate the efficacy and safety of asivatrep cream in patients with AD. METHODS: For this phase 3 double-blind, vehicle-controlled study, patients aged ≥12 years with mild to moderate AD were enrolled and randomly assigned 2:1 to the 1.0% asivatrep or vehicle group for 8 weeks of twice-daily application (n = 240). The primary end point was the proportion of patients with an Investigator's Global Assessment score (IGA) of 0 or 1 at week 8. Standard safety assessments were conducted. RESULTS: At week 8, significantly more patients in the asivatrep group (36.0%) than in the vehicle group (12.8%) had IGA scores of 0 or 1 (P < .001); significantly more had ≥2 points of improvement on the IGA from baseline score (20.3% vs 7.7%; P = .01). The mean percentage reduction in the Eczema Area and Severity Index (EASI) score was 44.3% for the asivatrep group and 21.4% for the vehicle group at week 8 (P < .001). Significantly more asivatrep-treated patients experienced an improvement of at least 50%, 75%, and 90% on the EASI than the vehicle group. The mean ± SD change in the pruritus visual analog scale score at week 8 was -2.3 ± 2.4 for the asivatrep group and -1.5 ± 2.4 for the vehicle group (P = .02). No significant safety issues were reported. CONCLUSION: Asivatrep improved clinical signs and symptoms of AD and was well tolerated.

Biological insights into systemic lupus erythematosus through an immune cell-specific transcriptome-wide association study.

OBJECTIVE: Genome-wide association studies (GWAS) have identified >100 risk loci for systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), but the disease genes at most loci remain unclear, hampering translation of these genetic discoveries. We aimed to prioritise genes underlying the 110 SLE loci that were identified in the latest East Asian GWAS meta-analysis. METHODS: We built gene expression predictive models in blood B cells, CD4+ and CD8+ T cells, monocytes, natural killer cells and peripheral blood cells of 105 Japanese individuals. We performed a transcriptome-wide association study (TWAS) using data from the latest genome-wide association meta-analysis of 208 370 East Asians and searched for candidate genes using TWAS and three data-driven computational approaches. RESULTS: TWAS identified 171 genes for SLE (p<1.0×10-5); 114 (66.7%) showed significance only in a single cell type; 127 (74.3%) were in SLE GWAS loci. TWAS identified a strong association between CD83 and SLE (p<7.7×10-8). Meta-analysis of genetic associations in the existing 208 370 East Asian and additional 1498 cases and 3330 controls found a novel single-variant association at rs72836542 (OR=1.11, p=4.5×10-9) around CD83. For the 110 SLE loci, we identified 276 gene candidates, including 104 genes at recently-identified SLE novel loci. We demonstrated in vitro that putative causal variant rs61759532 exhibited an allele-specific regulatory effect on ACAP1, and that presence of the SLE risk allele decreased ACAP1 expression. CONCLUSIONS: Cell-level TWAS in six types of immune cells complemented SLE gene discovery and guided the identification of novel genetic associations. The gene findings shed biological insights into SLE genetic associations.

Enhancement of target specificity of CRISPR-Cas12a by using a chimeric DNA-RNA guide.

The CRISPR-Cas9 system is widely used for target-specific genome engineering. CRISPR-Cas12a (Cpf1) is one of the CRISPR effectors that controls target genes by recognizing thymine-rich protospacer adjacent motif (PAM) sequences. Cas12a has a higher sensitivity to mismatches in the guide RNA than does Cas9; therefore, off-target sequence recognition and cleavage are lower. However, it tolerates mismatches in regions distant from the PAM sequence (TTTN or TTN) in the protospacer, and off-target cleavage issues may become more problematic when Cas12a activity is improved for therapeutic purposes. Therefore, we investigated off-target cleavage by Cas12a and modified the Cas12a (cr)RNA to address the off-target cleavage issue. We developed a CRISPR-Cas12a that can induce mutations in target DNA sequences in a highly specific and effective manner by partially substituting the (cr)RNA with DNA to change the energy potential of base pairing to the target DNA. A model to explain how chimeric (cr)RNA guided CRISPR-Cas12a and SpCas9 nickase effectively work in the intracellular genome is suggested. Chimeric guide-based CRISPR- Cas12a genome editing with reduced off-target cleavage, and the resultant, increased safety has potential for therapeutic applications in incurable diseases caused by genetic mutations.

iAKA-CIoT: An Improved Authentication and Key Agreement Scheme for Cloud Enabled Internet of Things Using Physical Unclonable Function.

The Internet of Things (IoT) with cloud services are important functionalities in the latest IoT systems for providing various convenient services. These cloud-enabled IoT environments collect, analyze, and monitor surrounding data, resulting in the most effective handling of large amounts of heterogeneous data. In these environments, secure authentication with a key agreement mechanism is essential to ensure user and data privacy when transmitting data between the cloud server and IoT nodes. In this study, we prove that the previous scheme contains various security threats, and hence cannot guarantee essential security requirements. To overcome these security threats, we propose an improved authentication and key agreement scheme for cloud-enabled IoT using PUF. Furthermore, we evaluate its security by performing informal, formal (mathematical), and simulation analyses using the AVISPA tool and ROR model. The performance and security properties of our scheme are subsequently compared with those of other related schemes. The comparison confirms that our scheme is suitable for a practical cloud-enabled IoT environment because it provides a superior security level and is more efficient than contemporary schemes.

PUFTAP-IoT: PUF-Based Three-Factor Authentication Protocol in IoT Environment Focused on Sensing Devices.

In IoT-based environments, smart services can be provided to users under various environments, such as smart homes, smart factories, smart cities, smart transportation, and healthcare, by utilizing sensing devices. Nevertheless, a series of security problems may arise because of the nature of the wireless channel in the Wireless Sensor Network (WSN) for utilizing IoT services. Authentication and key agreements are essential elements for providing secure services in WSNs. Accordingly, two-factor and three-factor-based authentication protocol research is being actively conducted. However, IoT service users can be vulnerable to ID/password pair guessing attacks by setting easy-to-remember identities and passwords. In addition, sensors and sensing devices deployed in IoT environments are vulnerable to capture attacks. To address this issue, in this paper, we analyze the protocols of Chunka et al., Amintoosi et al., and Hajian et al. and describe their security vulnerabilities. Moreover, this paper introduces PUF and honey list techniques with three-factor authentication to design protocols resistant to ID/password pair guessing, brute-force, and capture attacks. Accordingly, we introduce PUFTAP-IoT, which can provide secure services in the IoT environment. To prove the security of PUFTAP-IoT, we perform formal analyses through Burrows Abadi Needham (BAN) logic, Real-Or-Random (ROR) model, and scyther simulation tools. In addition, we demonstrate the efficiency of the protocol compared with other authentication protocols in terms of security, computational cost, and communication cost, showing that it can provide secure services in IoT environments.

Meta-analysis of 208370 East Asians identifies 113 susceptibility loci for systemic lupus erythematosus.

OBJECTIVE: Systemic lupus erythematosus (SLE), an autoimmune disorder, has been associated with nearly 100 susceptibility loci. Nevertheless, these loci only partially explain SLE heritability and their putative causal variants are rarely prioritised, which make challenging to elucidate disease biology. To detect new SLE loci and causal variants, we performed the largest genome-wide meta-analysis for SLE in East Asian populations. METHODS: We newly genotyped 10 029 SLE cases and 180 167 controls and subsequently meta-analysed them jointly with 3348 SLE cases and 14 826 controls from published studies in East Asians. We further applied a Bayesian statistical approach to localise the putative causal variants for SLE associations. RESULTS: We identified 113 genetic regions including 46 novel loci at genome-wide significance (p<5×10-8). Conditional analysis detected 233 association signals within these loci, which suggest widespread allelic heterogeneity. We detected genome-wide associations at six new missense variants. Bayesian statistical fine-mapping analysis prioritised the putative causal variants to a small set of variants (95% credible set size ≤10) for 28 association signals. We identified 110 putative causal variants with posterior probabilities ≥0.1 for 57 SLE loci, among which we prioritised 10 most likely putative causal variants (posterior probability ≥0.8). Linkage disequilibrium score regression detected genetic correlations for SLE with albumin/globulin ratio (rg=-0.242) and non-albumin protein (rg=0.238). CONCLUSION: This study reiterates the power of large-scale genome-wide meta-analysis for novel genetic discovery. These findings shed light on genetic and biological understandings of SLE.

Induction of autophagy protects against extreme hypoxia-induced damage in porcine embryo.

In the mammalian female reproductive tract, physiological oxygen tension is lower than that of the atmosphere. Therefore, to mimic in vivo conditions during in vitro culture (IVC) of mammalian early embryos, 5% oxygen has been extensively used instead of 20%. However, the potential effect of hypoxia on the yield of early embryos with high developmental competence remains unknown or controversial, especially in pigs. In the present study, we examined the effects of low oxygen tension under different oxygen tension levels on early developmental competence of parthenogenetically activated (PA) and in vitro-fertilized (IVF) porcine embryos. Unlike the 5% and 20% oxygen groups, exposure of PA embryos to 1% oxygen tension, especially in early-phase IVC (0-2 days), greatly decreased several developmental competence parameters including blastocyst formation rate, blastocyst size, total cell number, inner cell mass (ICM) to trophectoderm (TE) ratio, and cellular survival rate. In contrast, 1% oxygen tension did not affect developmental parameters during the middle (2-4 days) and late phases (4-6 days) of IVC. Interestingly, induction of autophagy by rapamycin treatment markedly restored the developmental parameters of PA and IVF embryos cultured with 1% oxygen tension during early-phase IVC, to meet the levels of the other groups. Together, these results suggest that the early development of porcine embryos depends on crosstalk between oxygen tension and autophagy. Future studies of this relationship should explore the developmental events governing early embryonic development to produce embryos with high developmental competence in vitro.

Amyloid-beta oligomers induce Parkin-mediated mitophagy by reducing Miro1.

Alzheimer's disease (AD) is a neurodegenerative disease associated with the accumulation of amyloid-beta oligomers (AßO). Recent studies have demonstrated that mitochondria-specific autophagy (mitophagy) contributes to mitochondrial quality control by selectively eliminating the dysfunctional mitochondria. Mitochondria motility, which is regulated by Miro1, is also associated with neuronal cell functions. However, the role played by Miro1 in the mitophagy mechanism, especially relative to AßO and neurodegenerative disorders, remains unknown. In this study, AßO induced mitochondrial dysfunction, enhanced Parkin-mediated mitophagy, and reduced mitochondrial quantities in hippocampal neuronal cells (HT-22 cells). We demonstrated that AßO-induced mitochondrial fragmentation could be rescued to the elongated mitochondrial form and that mitophagy could be mitigated by the stable overexpression of Miro1 or by pretreatment with N-acetylcysteine (NAC)-a reactive oxygen species (ROS) scavenger-as assessed by immunocytochemistry. Moreover, using time-lapse imaging, under live cell-conditions, we verified that mitochondrial motility was rescued by the Miro1 overexpression. Finally, in hippocampus from amyloid precursor protein (APP)/presenilin 1 (PS1)/Tau triple-transgenic mice, we noted that the co-localization between mitochondria and LC3B puncta was increased. Taken together, these results indicated that up-regulated ROS, induced by AßO, increased the degree of mitophagy and decreased the Miro1 expression levels. In contrast, the Miro1 overexpression ameliorated AßO-mediated mitophagy and increased the mitochondrial motility. In AD model mice, AßO induced mitophagy in the hippocampus. Thus, our results would improve our understanding of the role of mitophagy in AD toward facilitating the development of novel therapeutic agents for the treatment of AßO-mediated diseases.

Provably Secure Three-Factor-Based Mutual Authentication Scheme with PUF for Wireless Medical Sensor Networks.

Wireless medical sensor networks (WMSNs) are used in remote medical service environments to provide patients with convenient healthcare services. In a WMSN environment, patients wear a device that collects their health information and transmits the information via a gateway. Then, doctors make a diagnosis regarding the patient, utilizing the health information. However, this information can be vulnerable to various security attacks because the information is exchanged via an insecure channel. Therefore, a secure authentication scheme is necessary for WMSNs. In 2021, Masud et al. proposed a lightweight and anonymity-preserving user authentication scheme for healthcare environments. We discover that Masud et al.'s scheme is insecure against offline password guessing, user impersonation, and privileged insider attacks. Furthermore, we find that Masud et al.'s scheme cannot ensure user anonymity. To address the security vulnerabilities of Masud et al.'s scheme, we propose a three-factor-based mutual authentication scheme with a physical unclonable function (PUF). The proposed scheme is secure against various security attacks and provides anonymity, perfect forward secrecy, and mutual authentication utilizing biometrics and PUF. To prove the security features of our scheme, we analyze the scheme using informal analysis, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, the Real-or-Random (RoR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. Furthermore, we estimate our scheme's security features, computation costs, communication costs, and energy consumption compared with the other related schemes. Consequently, we demonstrate that our scheme is suitable for WMSNs.

A Secure and Lightweight Authentication Protocol for IoT-Based Smart Homes.

With the information and communication technologies (ICT) and Internet of Things (IoT) gradually advancing, smart homes have been able to provide home services to users. The user can enjoy a high level of comfort and improve his quality of life by using home services provided by smart devices. However, the smart home has security and privacy problems, since the user and smart devices communicate through an insecure channel. Therefore, a secure authentication protocol should be established between the user and smart devices. In 2020, Xiang and Zheng presented a situation-aware protocol for device authentication in smart grid-enabled smart home environments. However, we demonstrate that their protocol can suffer from stolen smart device, impersonation, and session key disclosure attacks and fails to provide secure mutual authentication. Therefore, we propose a secure and lightweight authentication protocol for IoT-based smart homes to resolve the security flaws of Xiang and Zheng's protocol. We proved the security of the proposed protocol by performing informal and formal security analyses, using the real or random (ROR) model, Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, and the Automated Validation of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) tool. Moreover, we provide a comparison of performance and security properties between the proposed protocol and related existing protocols. We demonstrate that the proposed protocol ensures better security and lower computational costs than related protocols, and is suitable for practical IoT-based smart home environments.

SLUA-WSN: Secure and Lightweight Three-Factor-Based User Authentication Protocol for Wireless Sensor Networks.

Wireless sensor networks (WSN) are composed of multiple sensor nodes with limited storage, computation, power, and communication capabilities and are widely used in various fields such as banks, hospitals, institutes to national defense, research, and so on. However, useful services are susceptible to security threats because sensitive data in various fields are exchanged via a public channel. Thus, secure authentication protocols are indispensable to provide various services in WSN. In 2019, Mo and Chen presented a lightweight secure user authentication scheme in WSN. We discover that Mo and Chen's scheme suffers from various security flaws, such as session key exposure and masquerade attacks, and does not provide anonymity, untraceability, and mutual authentication. To resolve the security weaknesses of Mo and Chen's scheme, we propose a secure and lightweight three-factor-based user authentication protocol for WSN, called SLUA-WSN. The proposed SLUA-WSN can prevent security threats and ensure anonymity, untraceability, and mutual authentication. We analyze the security of SLUA-WSN through the informal and formal analysis, including Burrows-Abadi-Needham (BAN) logic, Real-or-Random (ROR) model, and Automated Verification of Internet Security Protocols and Applications (AVISPA) simulation. Moreover, we compare the performance of SLUA-WSN with some existing schemes. The proposed SLUA-WSN better ensures the security and efficiency than previous proposed scheme and is suitable for practical WSN applications.

An Efficient, Anonymous and Robust Authentication Scheme for Smart Home Environments.

In recent years, the Internet of Things (IoT) has exploded in popularity. The smart home, as an important facet of IoT, has gained its focus for smart intelligent systems. As users communicate with smart devices over an insecure communication medium, the sensitive information exchanged among them becomes vulnerable to an adversary. Thus, there is a great thrust in developing an anonymous authentication scheme to provide secure communication for smart home environments. Most recently, an anonymous authentication scheme for smart home environments with provable security has been proposed in the literature. In this paper, we analyze the recent scheme to highlight its several vulnerabilities. We then address the security drawbacks and present a more secure and robust authentication scheme that overcomes the drawbacks found in the analyzed scheme, while incorporating its advantages too. Finally, through a detailed comparative study, we demonstrate that the proposed scheme provides significantly better security and more functionality features with comparable communication and computational overheads with similar schemes.

Design of Secure Protocol for Cloud-Assisted Electronic Health Record System Using Blockchain.

In the traditional electronic health record (EHR) management system, each medical service center manages their own health records, respectively, which are difficult to share on the different medical platforms. Recently, blockchain technology is one of the popular alternatives to enable medical service centers based on different platforms to share EHRs. However, it is hard to store whole EHR data in blockchain because of the size and the price of blockchain. To resolve this problem, cloud computing is considered as a promising solution. Cloud computing offers advantageous properties such as storage availability and scalability. Unfortunately, the EHR system with cloud computing can be vulnerable to various attacks because the sensitive data is sent over a public channel. We propose the secure protocol for cloud-assisted EHR system using blockchain. In the proposed scheme, blockchain technology is used to provide data integrity and access control using log transactions and the cloud server stores and manages the patient's EHRs to provide secure storage resources. We use an elliptic curve cryptosystems (ECC) to provide secure health data sharing with cloud computing. We demonstrate that the proposed EHR system can prevent various attacks by using informal security analysis and automated validation of internet security protocols and applications (AVISPA) simulation. Furthermore, we prove that the proposed EHR system provides secure mutual authentication using BAN logic analysis. We then compare the computation overhead, communication overhead, and security properties with existing schemes. Consequently, the proposed EHR system is suitable for the practical healthcare system considering security and efficiency.

Designing Efficient Sinkhole Attack Detection Mechanism in Edge-Based IoT Deployment.

The sinkhole attack in an edge-based Internet of Things (IoT) environment (EIoT) can devastate and ruin the whole functioning of the communication. The sinkhole attacker nodes ( S H A s) have some properties (for example, they first attract the other normal nodes for the shortest path to the destination and when normal nodes initiate the process of sending their packets through that path (i.e., via S H A ), the attacker nodes start disrupting the traffic flow of the network). In the presence of S H A s, the destination (for example, sink node i.e., gateway/base station) does not receive the required information or it may receive partial or modified information. This results in reduction of the network performance and degradation in efficiency and reliability of the communication. In the presence of such an attack, the throughput decreases, end-to-end delay increases and packet delivery ratio decreases. Moreover, it may harm other network performance parameters. Hence, it becomes extremely essential to provide an effective and competent scheme to mitigate this attack in EIoT. In this paper, an intrusion detection scheme to protect EIoT environment against sinkhole attack is proposed, which is named as SAD-EIoT. In SAD-EIoT, the resource rich edge nodes (edge servers) perform the detection of different types of sinkhole attacker nodes with the help of exchanging messages. The practical demonstration of SAD-EIoT is also provided using the well known NS2 simulator to compute the various performance parameters. Additionally, the security analysis of SAD-EIoT is conducted to prove its resiliency against various types of S H A s. SAD-EIoT achieves around 95 . 83 % detection rate and 1 . 03 % false positive rate, which are considerably better than other related existing schemes. Apart from those, SAD-EIoT is proficient with respect to computation and communication costs. Eventually, SAD-EIoT will be a suitable match for those applications which can be used in critical and sensitive operations (for example, surveillance, security and monitoring systems).

Effect of Triclosan Exposure on Developmental Competence in Parthenogenetic Porcine Embryo during Preimplantation.

Triclosan (TCS) is included in various healthcare products because of its antimicrobial activity; therefore, many humans are exposed to TCS daily. While detrimental effects of TCS exposure have been reported in various species and cell types, the effects of TCS exposure on early embryonic development are largely unknown. The aim of this study was to determine if TCS exerts toxic effects during early embryonic development using porcine parthenogenetic embryos in vitro. Porcine parthenogenetic embryos were cultured in in vitro culture medium with 50 or 100 µM TCS for 6 days. Developmental parameters including cleavage and blastocyst formation rates, developmental kinetics, and the number of blastomeres were assessed. To determine the toxic effects of TCS, apoptosis, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial dysfunction were assessed. TCS exposure resulted in a significant decrease in 2-cell rate and blastocyst formation rate, as well as number of blastomeres, but not in the cleavage rate. TCS also increased the number of apoptotic blastomeres and the production of reactive oxygen species. Finally, TCS treatment resulted in a diffuse distribution of mitochondria and decreased the mitochondrial membrane potential. Our results showed that TCS exposure impaired porcine early embryonic development by inducing DNA damage, oxidative stress, and mitochondrial dysfunction.