IncogniSense: An anonymity-preserving reputation framework for participatory sensing applications

Reputation systems are fundamental for assessing the quality of user contributions in participatory sensing. However, naively associating reputation scores to contributions allows adversaries to establish links between multiple contributions and thus de-anonymize users. We present the IncogniSense framework as a panacea to these privacy threats. IncogniSense utilizes periodic pseudonyms generated using blind signature and relies on reputation transfer between these pseudonyms. Simulations are used to analyze various reputation cloaking schemes that address the inherent trade-off between anonymity protection and loss in reputation. Our threat analysis confirms the robustness of IncogniSense and a prototype demonstrates that associated overheads are minimal.     

First principles calculations of thermal equations of state and thermodynamical properties of MgH2 at finite temperatures

We present the first principles calculations of the thermodynamical properties of magnesium hydride (MgH₂) over a temperature range of 0–1000 K. The phonon dispersions are determined within the density functional framework and are used to calculate the free energy of MgH₂ within the quasiharmonic approximation (QHA) at each cell volume and temperature T. Using the free energies the thermal equation of state (EOS) is derived at several temperatures. From the thermal EOS structural parameters such as the equilibrium cell volume (V₀) and elastic properties, namely, bulk modulus (K₀) and its pressure derivative are computed. The free energies are also used to calculate various thermodynamical properties within QHA. These include internal energy E, entropy S, specific heat capacity at constant pressure C_P, thermal pressure P_thermal(V, T) and volume thermal expansion ΔV/V (%). The good agreement of calculated values of S and C_P with experimental data exhibits that QHA can be used as a tool for calculating the thermodynamical properties of MgH₂ over a wide temperature range. P_thermal(V,T) increases strongly with T at all the volumes but it is a slowly varying function of volume for T = 298–500 K. According to Karki [B.B. Karki, Am. Miner. 85 (2000) 1447] such volume based variations can be neglected and so it is possible to estimate the thermal EOS only with the knowledge of the measured P_thermal(V, T) versus temperature at ambient pressure and isothermal compression data at ambient temperature. Temperature dependence of ΔV/V(%) shows that V₀ increased with increase in temperature. However, the percentage decrease in K₀ superseded this percentage increase in V₀ even at temperatures moderately higher than 298 K. Therefore, we suggest application of temperature (T > 298 K) as an approach to enhance the hydrogen storage capacity of MgH₂ because of its better compressibility at these temperatures.     

A Reputation Framework for Social Participatory Sensing Systems

Social participatory sensing is a newly proposed paradigm that tries to address the limitations of participatory sensing by leveraging online social networks as an infrastructure. A critical issue in the success of this paradigm is to assure the trustworthiness of contributions provided by participants. In this paper, we propose an application-agnostic reputation framework for social participatory sensing systems. Our framework considers both the quality of contribution and the trustworthiness level of participant within the social network. These two aspects are then combined via a fuzzy inference system to arrive at a final trust rating for a contribution. A reputation score is also calculated for each participant as a resultant of the trust ratings assigned to him. We adopt the utilization of PageRank algorithm as the building block for our reputation module. Extensive simulations demonstrate the efficacy of our framework in achieving high overall trust and assigning accurate reputation scores.     

Application of capillary gas chromatography to a survey of wheat for five trichothecenes

A previously published method for the determination of deoxynivalenol (DON) and nivalenol (NIV) in grains by capillary gas chromatography (GC) with electron-capture detection (ECD) has been modified to include HT-2 toxin (HT-2), T-2 toxin (T-2) and diacetoxyscirpenol (DAS). Recoveries of the five trichothecenes from wheat averaged 71-92% in the range 0.8-4 micrograms/g. Detection or quantitation limits found in two laboratories were from 0.02 to 0.4 micrograms/g, with those for T-2 and DAS at the high end of this range. The method proved of practical use in survey work for the screening and determination of these trichothecenes in wheat from the 1987 western Canadian crop. There were no false positives for HT-2, T-2 and DON in durum and HY-320 wheat. However, interferences precluded the determination of 4- and 15-monoacetoxyscirpenol (MAS) by GC-ECD. The natural occurrence of HT-2 toxin (0.06-0.59 micrograms/g) was demonstrated by GC-ECD and confirmed by GC-mass spectrometry (MS) in 23 samples of durum and HY-320 wheats (1986 and 1987 crops); it was almost always accompanied by DON and in one sample a low concentration of NIV (0-05 micrograms/g). False positives for HT-2 and DAS in red spring wheat detected in 1987 by GC-ECD were 6% (nearly all identified as variety Katepwa) and 8%, respectively. Hence confirmation of suspected HT-2 and DAS by GC-MS is necessary, particularly with red spring wheat.     

Privacy in targeted advertising on mobile devices: a survey

Targeted advertising has transformed the marketing landscape for a wide variety of businesses, by creating new opportunities for advertisers to reach prospective customers by delivering personalised ads, using an infrastructure of a number of intermediary entities and technologies. The advertising and analytics companies collect, aggregate, process, and trade a vast amount of users’ personal data, which has prompted serious privacy concerns among both individuals and organisations. This article presents a comprehensive survey of the privacy risks and proposed solutions for targeted advertising in a mobile environment. We outline details of the information flow between the advertising platform and ad/analytics networks, the profiling process, the measurement analysis of targeted advertising based on user’s interests and profiling context, and the ads delivery process, for both in-app and in-browser targeted ads; we also include an overview of data sharing and tracking technologies. We discuss challenges in preserving the mobile user’s privacy that include threats related to private information extraction and exchange among various advertising entities, privacy threats from third-party tracking, re-identification of private information and associated privacy risks. Subsequently, we present various techniques for preserving user privacy and a comprehensive analysis of the proposals based on such techniques; we compare the proposals based on the underlying architectures, privacy mechanisms, and deployment scenarios. Finally, we discuss the potential research challenges and open research issues.

     

Anchored opportunity queueing: a low-latency scheduler for fair arbitration among virtual channels

Many wormhole interconnection networks for parallel systems, and more recently system area networks, implement virtual channels to provide a number of services including improved link utilization and lower latencies. The forwarding of flits from the virtual channels on to the physical channel is typically accomplished using flit-based round-robin (FBRR) scheduling. This paper presents a novel scheduling strategy, anchored opportunity queueing (AOQ), which preserves the throughput and fairness characteristics of FBRR while significantly reducing the average delay experienced by packets. The AOQ scheduler achieves lower average latencies by trying, as far as possible, to complete the transmission of a complete packet before beginning the transmission of flits from another packet. The AOQ scheduler achieves provable fairness in the number of opportunities it offers to each of the virtual channels for transmissions of flits over the physical channel. We prove this by showing that the relative fairness bound, a popular measure of fairness, is a small finite constant in the case of the AOQ scheduler. Finally, we present simulation results comparing the delay characteristics of AOQ with other schedulers for virtual channels. The AOQ scheduler is simple to implement in hardware, and also offers a practical solution in other contexts such as in scheduling ATM cells in Internet backbone switches.     

Efficient Ag@AgCl Cubic Cage Photocatalysts Profit from Ultrafast Plasmon‐Induced Electron Transfer Processes

Photon‐coupling and electron dynamics are the key processes leading to the photocatalytic activity of plasmonic metal‐semiconductor nanohybrids. To better utilize and explore these effects, a facile large‐scale synthesis route to form Ag@AgCl cubic cages with well‐defined hollow interiors is carried out using a water‐soluble sacrificial salt‐crystal‐template process. Theoretical calculations and experimental probes of the electron transfer process are used in an effort to gain insight into the underlying plasmonic properties of the Ag@AgCl materials. Efficient utilization of solar energy to create electron‐hole pairs is attributed to the significant light confinement and enhancement around the Ag/AgCl interfacial plasmon hot spots and multilight‐reflection inside the cage structure. More importantly, an ultrafast electron transfer process (≤150 fs) from Ag nanoparticles to the AgCl surface is detected, which facilitates the charge separation efficiency in this system, contributing to high photocatalytic activity and stability of Ag@AgCl photocatalyst towards organic dye degradation.